By the time we asked for seconds on the pasta, I was ready to join up myself. Of course, there was that little matter of physical fitness, and my lack thereof, not to mention the inconvenient detail that I’d be terrified out of my mind. But in telling his smoke-jumper stories, and attending to Dr. Nothstine’s, Todd made it seem like the only job in the world worth doing.
The one story that both Todd and Dr. Nothstine knew, involved “Bambi buckets,” collapsible hoppers slung from helicopters, which are used to dump hundreds or even thousands of gallons of water directly onto wildland fires.
“So where do they get the water?” I asked, still scarfing down fettuccine.
“Mostly lakes and rivers in the area,” said Todd. He had plowed through two helpings and was working on a third. “Sometimes reservoirs, if they have to go farther away, or even the ocean.”
“Tell her about that dreadful incident in California,” said Dr. Nothstine, turning aside to refill his glass.
“Oh yeah, that.” Todd’s ears were reddening, no doubt from the wine. Beer must be his usual drink.
“What happened in California?” I prompted.
“Um, there was a big fire in the Sierras, and when they went in afterward to mop up, they found a corpse. Up in a tree.”
“In a tree?”
“Quite a bizarre case, and very sad,” said Dr. Nothstine. She blinked owlishly. “He was dressed in a wet suit, with fins and air tank. The poor man had been scuba diving in the ocean when he was scooped up in a Bambi bucket and dropped into the flames.”
“Oh my God!” I imagined the diver’s panic, the endless fall, the nightmare of the flames...then I heard a snicker from across the table. The two of them exploded into laughter, and after a moment I joined in. I’d been had.
“A marvelous tall tale, marvelous.” Dr. Nothstine removed her glasses to dab her eyes with a napkin. “I’m told that scuba divers repeat that story even more often than firefighters do.”
We all loosened up after that. The stories continued, and then circled back to the most recent one: the death of Brian Thiel.
If this starstruck young man had actually killed my cousin, I’d have expected a well-rehearsed story about discovering him there in the ashes, already dead. So I nudged the conversation in that direction.
But Todd had no story at all. He spoke readily enough about the tragedy of losing a good man like Brian—or Bri, as he called him. But he shied away from my queries about the accident scene itself like a skittish horse refusing a jump.
“It must have been an awful shock, finding Brian’s body like that,” I said at one point, when our hostess had stepped into the kitchen. “You were by yourself?”
Todd simply nodded in silence and kept eating.
“I suppose there are procedures—”
“Of course there are! And I followed them.” His voice was loud, almost anguished. Guilty or innocent, I was causing him pain. “Can we talk about something else?”
“Brownies!” Dr. Nothstine set a white cardboard box on the table and fussed around with it. “Store-bought, I’m afraid. I used to bake, but when my oven broke I took the door off so John Muir could sleep in it.”
That threw me, but a glance into the kitchen identified John Muir as the tuxedo cat from the windowsill, whose tail was indeed dangling out of the stove front. It twitched like a rattlesnake as I watched, then unfurled itself in a languid arc. Good night, John.
“Hey, thanks,” said Todd, grateful for both the sweets and the interruption. He polished off a brownie in three eager bites and reached for another while still licking chocolate from his lips. “Everything was great, Dr. J., but I should get going. If you need anything else and you can’t find Al, just call me, OK?”
“I’ll be sure to do that.” She walked him to the door, watched him drive away, then returned to me. “Well?”
I listened to the engine fading. “Well, he seemed more embarrassed than guilty. I do think he’s hiding something, but I’m not sure that it’s murder.”
“I’m inclined to agree. Leave the dishes, please. I prefer to do them myself.” She settled on the sofa and was instantly bracketed by felines. “If not murder, then what?”
“Theft?” I sat beside the outer cat. “Todd could have stolen something of Brian’s, the necklace or—”
“Nonsense. Can you imagine that gallant child plundering a corpse?”
That gallant child was ready to strangle your marmalade cat, I thought. But that one incident didn’t really prove anything, and I let it go.
“No, I guess not. So where does that leave us?”
Her disconcerting black-ringed eyes held mine. “It leaves us to continue investigating. You’ll have to question the other two, the Taichert girl and Danny Kane. Though he seems an improbable killer.”
I’d almost forgotten, Sam had called Dr. Nothstine his old friend. A family friend, it seemed. “Do you know Danny well?”
“Since birth.” She pointed a stern finger. “But don’t imagine my judgment is clouded on that account.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.” She had me talking like her now. “So do you think Danny’s capable of killing someone?”
“I’m capable of killing someone,” she said dryly. “Presumably you are, too, given the right circumstances. But Danny has always been...weak. Not physically, of course, but there’s something in his character that isn’t quite sound. He’s rather passive, despite his occupation.”
I thought of what Jack had said, about Danny’s parents’ divorce and his beloved uncle’s suicide. “Did you know Roy Kane?”
“Of course! Everyone in Ketchum knew Roy.” Her eyes grew distant. “He was a brilliant student, a natural athlete, everything a young man should be. We were all so proud to see him in his uniform. The Marines, you know. Danny absolutely idolized his Uncle Roy.”
I suspected he wasn’t the only one. I had a sudden vision of this formidable old lady as a girl, a tomboy, perhaps. And perhaps in love?
“I understand Roy was a hero,” I said. “What a shame, the way things turned out.”
“Those charges were dropped!” she snapped.
“What?” I said, taken aback. “I meant his suicide.”
“Oh. Yes, of course. Although I’ve always wondered how someone as courageous as Roy could take his own life. It seems such an admission of defeat.”
I couldn’t help being curious. “What charges? Did he have something hanging over him that might have driven him to—”
“Nonsense. There were irresponsible accusations about looting, but Roy was entirely exonerated. He was a hero, in a brutal and unappreciated war.” She shook her head impatiently and returned to the matter at hand. “Never mind, you young people don’t even read history anymore. What about Pari Taichert? Is it true that she’s acting as Jack’s best man?”
“That’s right.” I waited for her disapproval of this modern notion, but I should have known better.
“Excellent. You’ll have an opportunity to question her as you oversee the wedding.”
If I ever get time for the wedding, I thought, with a glance at my watch. “Maybe. But I don’t intend to question anyone without witnesses around. It could be dangerous. Are you sure you don’t want to take this to the police?”
“I told you, the BLM authorities rejected my hypothesis. The police would hardly favor my opinion over theirs.” She penciled the combination to Brian’s locker on a scrap of paper and handed it to me with a bitter smile. “Never get old, Miss Kincaid. It plays hell with your credibility.”
I pondered that and a lot more as I drove back out to the highway and north into Ketchum. The summer dusk hadn’t yet relinquished the last of the light, and the mountains on either side of the road crouched darkly against the luminous, silver-violet sky.
B.J.’s car wasn’t out front. When I let myself into the cabin, I found the fluorescent tube over the kitchen sink casting its cold flat light, but all the other rooms were in shadow. She had eaten dinner; a mi
crowave lasagna box sat on the counter, its congealing scraps of long-frozen cheese still reeking of long-dead oregano. I slid the box into the garbage. How deflating, to have the combination to Brian’s locker and no one to share it with.
Though to be honest, the one I really wanted to share my news with was Aaron. I relied on him to help me sort through my mental tangles; he had a knack for organizing information. That’s why he made such a good reporter. That, and his flair for language, and his uncanny ability to ask the most awkward questions.
Suddenly I missed the sound of his annoying, wonderful voice. But our last conversation had ended on such a sour note... No, I’ll figure this out myself. I don’t need him. I was still telling myself that as I took a stool at the counter and tapped in his home number on my cell phone.
“Hello—”
“Aaron, it’s me!”
“—you’ve reached Aaron Gold. Leave me a message and I’ll get back to you. My number at the Seattle Sentinel—”
I sighed and turned off the phone. Then I turned it on again, berating myself for not checking it earlier. Sure enough, I had four messages waiting. To my disappointment, but not my surprise, none of them were from Aaron.
The first voice that played back was B.J.’s, keyed up as usual. “Hey, guess what? I just found out Brian had a locker at the jump base! Call me right away, OK?”
The next message was from Tracy’s carterer, confirming for tomorrow’s meeting, but after that it was B.J. again.
“Carnegie, where the hell are you? I can’t wait all night, this is making me crazy!” A pause, and then, “Oh, someone called from San Francisco looking for you. They said that Valerie Cox got stung by a bee and isn’t coming. Does that make sense? Anyway, call me.”
I groaned. This couldn’t be happening. Without Valerie Cox and her brilliant, undocumented floral designs, what was I supposed to do with two truckloads of blooms and greens when they arrived on Thursday? Stick them in mayonnaise jars? It didn’t make sense, it made a disaster. A bee ?
In my dismay over Valerie, I missed the final message and had to play it again.
“Look, Muffy, I’m going out to the base and sneak a peek at that locker. Don’t worry, I’ll be discreet. I bet there’s nobody around this late, anyway.”
I clutched the phone in vexation, as if clutching B.J. to give her a good shake. There was bound to be someone around this late, a dispatcher or a security guard or...a murderer?
I stood up, hearing my own gasp in the silence. Never mind flowers. B.J. had no idea that Brian’s death was anything but accidental. She didn’t know that somewhere in the Valley tonight, someone was at large with murder on his mind. Or hers? In either case, the someone could very well be at the smoke-jumper base.
I knocked over the stool on my way out the door.
Chapter Fourteen
“HELLO?” EVEN MY HALF WHISPER SOUNDED LOUD. “HELLO?”
B.J. had been right after all. There seemed to be no one around, although a couple of cars, including hers, were still out in front of the ready shack. Out past the grassy field where the baseball game would be, a Douglas D3 and a Twin Otter, the jump planes, stood silent and unattended.
I passed the office and pushed open the front door of the ready shack, flinching as it squeaked. Most of the lights were off, and I left them that way. Once my eyes adjusted, I could get by on the faint glow coming through the uncurtained windows.
I’d already decided what to say if I ran into anyone: I was checking out the facilities for the bachelor party. True, eleven P.M. was an odd time to be doing so. And the game wasn’t until Thursday, so this inspection could easily have waited for the light of day. But I’d bluff my way through that if I had to.
And what if I ran into Danny or the Tyke? Could I bluff them? Don’t think about it. Just get B.J., get the necklace, and get out. I took a few reluctant steps into the ready room, the dispatch area where the jumpers meet for briefings and suit up for fires.
“B.J.?”
To my right, behind the dispatcher’s desk, a large whiteboard gleamed ghostly pale in the dimness. It was marked up with names and notes, all circled and arrowed into hieroglyphic columns that I couldn’t quite read. Facing the desk were a few disorderly rows of plank benches, and beyond them stood a metal rack with a row of helmets making bulbous silhouettes along the top. Below the helmets I could see four Kevlar flight suits with high Elvis collars, waiting on the speed racks for jumpers to step into them and race out to the planes.
But I didn’t see B.J., and I didn’t see any lockers. Why on earth hadn’t I asked Dr. Nothstine exactly where they were? I tried to reconstruct the one base I had visited, in Boise. Office, ready shack, parachute loft, computer center, gym...
The gym! Physical conditioning was so vital to the job that each smoke-jumper base had its own workout facilities, with weight-lifting machines, cardio trainers like bikes and rowing machines, and showers. Surely showers meant lockers?
I cut behind the dispatch desk and through to the next area, which turned out to be the sewing room. It housed a central row of tables, their surfaces littered with fabric and yardsticks, tangles of strapping, piles of buckles. Along the sides were ranks of ironing boards and heavy-duty sewing machines, each with its own work light, swivel chair, and wall bracket holding oversized spools of thread.
Smoke jumpers have time on their hands between fires and they employ it well, making almost all their own gear except the parachutes themselves. And they repair all the gear, chutes included. Besides being brave and strong, the warriors of fire are excellent seamstresses.
With the work lights off and the equipment idle, this site of industrious activity felt eerie and abandoned. The heat of the day still hung in the air but I shivered anyway, and stood motionless a moment to listen. Silence. Then I hurried past the sewing machines into the next area—and stopped in my tracks to gaze around in wonder.
In the dusky gloom, the space before me seemed to be hung with vast filmy curtains. Suspended parallel to one another, they made wide aisleways along the floor. Even before I looked upward, the vault of open space high above my head made itself felt on my oversensitive skin.
I was in the parachute loft, where the chutes are spread on long rods and winched up for inspection. Forest Service parachutes are round, with the classic dome-shaped canopy. But I knew that the BLM used these “square” chutes, which aren’t square at all but rectangular, like hang gliders.
What I didn’t know was how huge a parachute is, close-up. As I made my way cautiously down one of the aisles, the silken rectangles created walls on either side of me, soft walls that swayed and billowed gently. In the hush they made a faint whisper, even fainter than my own.
“Hello?” A noise, sudden and furtive, came from nearby. Very nearby. “Who’s there?”
Somewhere to my left, screened from my sight, a soft object dropped to the floor and was snatched up again. Someone was in the loft with me, and I was dead certain it wasn’t B.J. Time slowed. I drew a guarded breath.
If I can’t see him, then he can’t see me. For a long moment I strained to listen, hearing nothing but the hollow thudding of my own heart. I turned to retreat, taking one stealthy step and then another, trying not to run.
Then I heard rushing footsteps, and I ran. Ahead of me, a bulge in the silken wall thrust into my path. I dodged around it, but a veiled hand caught at my shoulder. I wrenched away, lost my bearings, and when my sandal caught in the lower edge of a parachute I stumbled and lurched forward.
As I fell, my foot came out of the sandal and my fingers scrabbled in vain down the smooth fabric to the floor. I found myself on hands and knees, gasping and winded, shrinking away from the expected blow.
It never came. The footsteps hesitated, moved away. I slumped there in relief. Thank heaven. But then relief gave way to a reckless determination to learn the identity of my attacker. I guess adrenaline makes you stupid.
“Hey!” I yelled angrily, clambering to my feet. “H
ey, stop!”
I’d barely gotten the words out when the walls came tumbling down. A creak of pulleys, a hissing slither of rope, and I was shrouded in what seemed like acres of thin, tough fabric. The more I flailed about, blind and panicky, the more I felt myself entangled like a doomed fly in a spiderweb.
And then I stopped flailing as fear coursed under my skin like a hot, prickly fluid. The footsteps were coming back. From a different direction? Hands grabbed at me, I struggled in darkness, the darkness parted as the fabric lifted and I saw...
“B.J.? What do you think you’re doing?”
“What do you mean, what I am I doing?” Her eyes were round. “I was just coming up from the gym. Who were you hollering at?”
“Brian’s killer. Come on!” I rushed for the building’s exit, but the intruder had vanished into the warm, still night. I heard a car moving away in the distance.
Swearing in frustration, I turned around, thinking B.J. was right behind me. But she wasn’t there, and I heard her voice, quavering oddly, from back inside the loft.
“C-Carnegie? W-what?...”
I was at her side in seconds. She stood with a fold of the fallen parachute in her hand, gaping down at the floor. A humped form lay at her feet, half concealed by swaths of fabric. I gaped at it myself, and a roaring darkness filled my eyes and ears. My thoughts slowed to a crawl and then ceased altogether.
The form was a man, a heavyset man in a gray uniform with a shield-shaped badge sewn to the front pocket. I studied the badge in numb detachment. It said “Wood River Security Services,” but as I watched, the W and the S were obscured by a liquid stain creeping slowly across the man’s chest. The stain showed black, but in brighter light it would be red, the unmistakable red of fresh blood. I took a long, shaky breath and forced my gaze to the other side of his chest.
The man was dead, of course. How could he be otherwise, with the ax head of a Pulaski biting deep into his heart?
Shock plays tricks with the memory. The main thing I would remember about the next few hours was Howard Larabee’s left eye. Larabee was the city of Ketchum’s chief of police—“The assistant chief’s on maternity leave, if you can believe such a thing”—and he seemed to be one of those people who are born indignant and never find reason to change.
Death Takes a Honeymoon Page 12
