Death Takes a Honeymoon

by Deborah Donnelly

  “Hey, that hurt! Dammit, Tracy, if you want a flower fight, you’re going to get a willow wand up your nose. Grow up, would you?”

  Show business is tough, but the wedding business is tougher. Tracy caved.

  “I’m sorry,” she whimpered. Make that a triple margarita. Tracy Kane never apologized. “I don’t blame you, Muffy, really I don’t. But I’m just doing the same thing you did with him, saying good-bye to...to an old friend. There’s no crime in saying good-bye, is there?”

  I opened my mouth, but so many things were trying to get out that they jammed in the door. An explanation that Jack’s kissing me at White Pine wasn’t my idea. Indignation at Domaso for telling her otherwise. And amused vexation that Tracy had chosen this of all moments to call me Muffy for the first time in years.

  “You know what?” I said at last. “I’m going to a baseball game. And as far as I know Boris Nevsky is on his way here right now, so you and your old friend better say good-bye for real.”

  I was almost back to the lodge before I realized that I hadn’t taken a rose for Aaron. Well, he’d get a kiss instead. A big old kiss and an apology, because however skeptical and annoying Aaron could be, he was one of the ordinary people, too. And we were at least attempting to be honest with each other, unlike Tracy and Jack...

  But no, I didn’t want to think about them right now. How was I supposed to give my all to this wedding with the groom coming on to me and the bride behaving like a cross between a soap-opera tramp and a two-year-old?

  I arrived at the lodge by the back way, past the ice rink and across the terrace, but I barely noticed the skaters and diners in my eagerness to see Aaron. I pushed open the door to the Duchin Lounge, squinting in the dimness after the glare outside, and hurried up to his bar stool.

  The trouble was, the stool was now occupied by a woman in golf clothes. She frowned at me over her martini as I stood there, nonplussed.

  “Help you?” said the bartender.

  “I was looking for a friend...” I glanced around. Aaron wasn’t at any of the tables, either. “Never mind.”

  Feeling a little foolish, and a lot let down, I retreated to the lobby to ask at the front desk for messages. None. Checked my cell for missed calls. Also none. And finally, though I really wanted to apologize in person, I tried Aaron’s cell phone. When his recorded voice invited me to leave my name, I disconnected.

  Damn the man, why couldn’t he stay put so we could kiss and make up?

  I tried his phone again when I got out to my rental car, and once more after the short drive to the smoke-jumper base. Still no answer, so I grabbed my notes about the barbecue arrangements and climbed out to survey the scene.

  The scene differed considerably from the eerie darkness of Tuesday night. A row of picnic tables was set up in the shade of the ready shack, their red-checkered cloths fluttering in the breeze, and the same breeze carried the tantalizing summer smell of hot charcoal.

  I didn’t see Food Bob, but one of his staff was busily filling tall red cups from a beer keg, while others tended the barbecue grills and set out generous bowls of potato salad and whole cherry pies. Lines of party guests in T-shirts and shorts were eagerly awaiting the food and drink.

  Most of the partygoers were men, with a few women, but all of them were laughing and talking and no doubt telling each other outrageous stories. I was pleased at that. The bride and groom could misbehave all they wanted, but I still felt a duty to the guests.

  Across from the feast, the grassy field beside the airstrip had been marked out as a baseball diamond. Various smoke jumpers and visitors were scattered across it, warming up for the game and exchanging good-natured taunts with the spectators.

  The jumpers were mostly clowning around, but not the L.A. people. I recalled Sam’s comment that the studio boasted a real team, and that’s exactly what these guys looked like. While some of them stretched and jogged in place, the others formed a widening circle and snapped a ball from player to player with nonchalant precision.

  But one of the players was a ringer from Seattle. And was he gloomy, was he sighing and consulting his watch and wondering where I was? Hell, no. He was out in the sunshine in his Red Sox cap playing catch and grinning like a kid, the bum.

  I slammed the car door and marched over to Aaron. The grass was cooler than the parking lot back at the lodge, but I was still steamed.

  “I thought you were waiting in the bar?”

  “I was.” Aaron made a long throw to a husky blond fellow I recognized as Peter Props. Then he turned to me and the grin disappeared. “I waited quite a while, Stretch, and the longer I waited the madder I got about you locking me out. Then I started talking to these guys, and it turned out they were short an outfielder. I have to enjoy my vacation somehow, right?”

  “Right.” And I was going to apologize to this man? Please. Still, I couldn’t help relenting just a little. “You can come back tonight, you know.”

  “Maybe.”

  There was an unpleasant pause, and then he made a show of looking back at my car. “Where’s your friend?”

  “Which one?” I asked coldly. “I have a lot of friends here.”

  “I meant Boris, but maybe you mean this guy Jack, the one you don’t need your arm twisted to talk to?” Again Aaron’s eyes were hidden by sunglasses, but I could imagine the look in them. “Is that why you were here the other night, to visit your friend Jack?”

  “Of course not!”

  “Then what were you and B.J. hemming and hawing about when I asked why you came?”

  “Nothing,” I said huffily. “Not a damn thing. Not that it’s any of your business, but Jack and I are just—”

  “Hey, Gold!” Peter Props gave me an amiable nod as he approached. He wore a “Tails of the City” tank top stretched across his beefy torso, and his broad nose was sunburned already. “Center field OK with you? I’ve got a camera guy who wants left and I usually play deep right.”

  As Aaron replied, someone tapped my shoulder. It was Food Bob, wearing a “Kiss the Cook” apron around his broad middle and nibbling absently on his bushy brown mustache. He looked like a preoccupied walrus.

  “Sorry I’m late,” I began. And sorry I’m burning up work time with lovers’ quarrels.

  “No, no, you’re fine,” he said, folksy as ever. “There’s not hardly anything for you to do. Though I have got a question or three about the rehearsal dinner tomorrow...”

  He began to move away, clearly expecting me to come along. Behind me, Aaron and his teammates were deep in conversation about defense strategy. I sighed and followed Bob. Business before pleasure, I told myself virtuously. Not that I’d call this pleasure.

  Over at the picnic tables my virtue was rewarded by the sight of Al Soriano, the very man I wanted to question about Brian’s last hours. Let Aaron obsess about alibis. I wanted to understand Brian’s relationships with our three suspects.

  Al was sitting by himself with his ball cap pushed back on his dark curly hair, nursing a beer and excavating his way into a minor mountain of potato chips. I concluded my business with Bob as fast as I decently could, then snagged a beer of my own and sat next to him.

  “Hi, I’m Carnegie Kincaid. We met the other day?”

  “Sure,” said Al. “Brian’s cousin.”

  “That’s right. I didn’t get a chance to ask you, did you know him very well?”

  Al shook his head. “Not really. I would have, as the season went on.”

  “But I suppose he got along well with the rest of the jumpers. Danny and the Tyke, for instance, and Todd Gibson?”

  “Oh, everybody gets on with Danny. The Tyke kind of picks and chooses her friends, you have to let her make the call. But Toddy’s a Ned, you know, so he and Brian trained together. You could talk to him.”

  “Of course.” I could see Al wondering where these questions were going, so I shifted my ground. “But I heard you flew as spotter on the Boot Creek fire, so I was wondering if you could tell me about that
flight. About whether Brian was”—I wasn’t sure how to phrase this—“if he was distracted or anything.”

  Al wiped the crumbs from his mouth with the back of his hand and sat up straighter, donning an air of responsibility like an invisible uniform. His tone was serious, but not unkind. “You mean, did I observe some sign that Brian Thiel might fail to execute his safety procedures? No ma’am, no way. I’m the spotter. Anybody isn’t a hundred percent on the ball, I don’t send them out the door. Period.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to suggest.... So, nothing unusual was going on that day?”

  “Well, it’s not exactly usual to hang up in a tree,” he said, unbending a little. “It just happens sometimes when you get these squirrelly little wind shifts. I saw Brian’s canopy clear the plane, then he caught some down air that took him away from the jump spot. But he drifted into the black zone, so I thought he’d be OK, just get a little sooty ahead of time. I even laughed.”

  Al scooped another handful of chips and crunched on them thoughtfully. “Then I got distracted, thinking I saw a tent down there, and when I looked back he was hung up in this big stand of pondos. You want to land in lodgepole pine or Doug fir, because they’re softer and the canopy’s sturdy enough to hold you, but he didn’t have a choice.”

  “ ‘Pondos’? Oh, ponderosa pines.” The three tall evergreens in the White Pine meadow were ponderosas. “So then Brian— wait a minute, a tent? Someone was camping that close to a fire?”

  “Well, this particular fire blew up so fast, and people can be so damn foolhardy. But it was just a glimpse through the smoke. The Boot Creek drainage is pretty country, but kind of inaccessible, and we never got a report on any campers in the vicinity. So I must have been wrong.”

  Or else you were right, and the camper kept his presence quiet for a reason. The idea was dizzying, and I barely noticed when Al excused himself to go claim his hamburger. All of us, Dr. Nothstine and B.J. and Aaron and I, we’d all been so focused on the three smoke jumpers who had parachuted down with Brian. But what if a fourth person had been on the ground already?

  For one smoke jumper to kill another had seemed inconceivable, and maybe it was. Maybe Todd’s evasions and Danny’s moodiness and the Tyke’s belligerence had nothing to do with Brian, and we had to look at his death from another angle altogether. Maybe—

  “Hey, Carnegie.” Into this maelstrom of uncertainty came Jack the Knack, star pitcher. He was slapping a ball into his glove and scanning the picnic area anxiously. “Have you seen the Tyke? She’s late.”

  “Sorry, no. Can’t you start without her?”

  “Not really. We made a big deal about allowing two women on each team so Annie and the Tyke could play, and now these guys are saying that two women are required. Tracy told me they’re serious players, but this is ridiculous. Still...”

  He gave me a speculative look, nose to toes. “You used to play a little ball, didn’t you? I don’t suppose you could cover first base for a few minutes, just till the Tyke gets here? Everybody’s waiting.”

  I looked over to the diamond, where most of the players were watching Jack talk to me. The smoke jumpers had taken the field, including a lanky dark-haired woman, presumably Annie, at third base. One of the L.A. visitors, the bronzed man I’d last seen in a Speedo, stood at home plate taking practice swings with an aluminum bat that glinted in the sun.

  “Come on,” coaxed Jack. “I promise, if we have to throw to you we’ll toss it real gentle.”

  I wavered. My mind was on Boot Creek, not baseball. Then I spotted Aaron at the visitors’ bench with the rest of the California contingent, and when he saw me looking he turned his back. That tore it.

  “Never mind the tossing.” I stood up. “I can’t hit for beans, but I’m not afraid of the ball. You can throw to me.”

  “Good woman!”

  Jack draped an arm on my shoulders, and I checked for Aaron again. He was watching, so I threw back my head and gave a loud, merry laugh.

  “Happy to help. Where’s my mitt?”

  Jack was right, these friends of Tracy’s were serious players. Jack’s vaunted pitching was rusty, and all I did for the first half of the inning was scoot out of the way as they sprinted past my base. California five, Idaho zero.

  Leading off the second half, Jack redeemed himself with a home run, but it was downhill from there for the smoke jumpers. A strike is a strike whether you can do one-armed push-ups or not.

  I struck out myself—no surprise—and then it was time for our side to take the field again. The Tyke still hadn’t shown, so I checked in with Bob, gulped some beer, and went back to first base. This was fun. And if I made certain that Aaron saw me having fun without him, well, it served him right.

  The second inning took an interesting turn. Peter Props was first to bat, hitting a high fly that was caught for the first out. Then one of their two token women, a giggling script girl named Ramona, flailed the bat around for number two. Things were looking up for the home team.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Aaron called to the visitors as he strutted up to the plate with his Red Sox cap turned backward. “These guys are going down, and they won’t need parachutes.”

  That raised a laugh, and Aaron smiled as he took his stance at the plate. Then he brought the bat to his shoulder, tightened his jaw, and stared hard at Jack the Knack. Jack stared back for what felt like a long time. I realized I was holding my breath.

  An eternal moment passed, and then everything happened at once. Jack fired off a high-speed pitch and Aaron smashed it right back at him, dropped his bat, and came pounding down the baseline toward me like a locomotive. The crack of the bat was still sounding as Jack snatched at the ground, pivoted, and drilled the ball straight at my sternum and hard enough to restart my heart, which seemed to have quit beating.

  With Aaron bearing down on me, instinct took over. My glove at my chest, I planted my left foot on the base and lunged to the right. I didn’t so much catch the ball as let it strike me, like an arrow striking a target. But I closed the glove tight, and though I staggered with the force of Jack’s throw, I didn’t take my foot off the base. Yes.

  When I opened my eyes the smoke jumpers were cheering uproariously and Aaron was walking away without a backward glance. His shoulders were slumped, and my petty triumph began to feel sour. All this bickering was getting out of hand.

  “Aaron? Wait a minute.” He kept going.

  “What a play, what a woman!”

  Jack rushed over to embrace me, but I held him off, and then I heard a familiar tomboy voice.

  “Not bad, Kincaid, not bad at all.”

  The Tyke was advancing across the grass. Time to quit while I was ahead. I tossed the Tyke her mitt, waved to my teammates, and rejoined the boisterous crowd at the picnic tables.

  A few of the guys commented on my catch, but most of them were busy with their burgers. Someone handed me a beer, and I poured half of it down my throat as the adrenaline drained from my system. I headed for the grill as I drank, feeling suddenly ravenous.

  Food Bob greeted me with a flourish of his long-handled spatula. “I bet you’re a medium-rare lady.”

  “Medium-well,” I told him. “And I’ll take two.”

  I polished off both burgers and was seriously contemplating the cherry pie before I remembered B.J.’s necklace. I glanced around. With everybody playing ball or chowing down, and with Aaron busy in the outfield, this was just the right moment to search through Brian’s belongings. I felt in my pocket for the padlock combination, took a fortifying swallow of beer, and wandered casually inside.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  BESIDES HAVING DAYLIGHT TO SEE BY, ON THIS SECOND FORAY into the ready shack I knew my way around. I slipped through the dispatch room and past the sewing machines, then instead of continuing on to the parachute loft I followed B.J.’s instructions and took the stairwell down to the lower level.

  As I descended, my footsteps on the concrete stairs grew louder than the p
arty noise filtering in from outside. The base office was staffed today, but this main building seemed to be empty.

  B.J. had told me that the jumpers’ personal lockers were down on the lower level, but in a corridor on the way to the gym, not inside the shower room itself. Good thing, too. Empty building or not, I had no intention of invading the smoke-jumpers’ showers. I’d had enough naked bodies for one day.

  Except maybe Aaron’s, and something told me that putting him out at first base had probably killed my chance to get lucky tonight. Men take sports so seriously.

  I emerged from the stairwell into a wide hallway. The air down here was tinged with that sweat-and-disinfectant aroma that signals a weight room nearby. Beyond a pair of rest rooms stretched a long row of lockers, their slatted metal doors illuminated by the windows high on the opposite wall. I walked along the row with the padlock combination in my hand.

  Each locker was marked with the owner’s surname, and most of them were decorated with funny magnets and goofy stickers and snapshots of little kids and pretty girls. I saw a lot of smoke-jumper emblems, along with “Everybody Out of the Gene Pool!” and “Keep Honking, I’m Reloading” and a death’s-head logo that said “Vomit Shop,” which I hoped was a band and not a retail establishment.

  Some of the jumpers’ names were familiar: Packard, of course, and Taichert, Kane, Soriano, Gibson. But there were plenty of others: Schorzmann, Uehling, Fox... Thiel.

  My stomach knotted around Bob’s burgers. The door that said “Thiel” was hanging open, and the locker was empty. Cleared out. Absolutely bare, save for a few curling scraps of Scotch tape left clinging to its metal insides.

  Damn. B.J. would have to lie to Matt after all. And after that, she’d have to live with the possibility of the necklace resurfacing and giving rise to awkward questions. Poor B.J. I spared a moment to be grateful for the anonymity of a big city like Seattle. But only a moment, because at that point I heard footsteps in the stairwell, and then men’s voices.

  Adrenaline surged again, spreading like a hot, prickly fluid under my skin. I told myself the men were probably just guests looking for the rest rooms—which wasn’t a bad excuse for me to be down here myself. I hurried back up the corridor into the women’s room and waited for the men to pass. But instead they halted at the foot of the stairs and continued what seemed to be an argument.