Order of the Air Omnibus: Books 1-3

by Melissa Scott

  Lewis hesitated for a moment. He couldn’t really leave the necklace with a stranger, even one of Henry’s employees. It would require too many explanations, and, anyway, the curse made it too dangerous. He slipped his hand into his pocket again, shoving the necklace deeper into security. “Would you ask him to call my room when he gets back?”

  “Certainly.” The smooth voice sharpened. “Is there a problem with the plane?”

  “Not at all,” Lewis said. “Tell him the tank installation went off just fine, it’s all in order. I’d just like to have a word with him tonight if it’s possible.”

  “I’ll give him the message,” the stranger answered, and hung up.

  Lewis replaced his own receiver more slowly, wondering if he needed to do more. Leave Henry a note, maybe? No, if that got out, it would just make trouble — and he didn’t really trust any of the hotels’ staff, not with the pack of reporters following the race, all ready to offer a five-spot for anything remotely scandalous. They’d have to catch Henry later.

  Henry slid onto the stool at the counter of the little diner around the corner from the Cactus Hotel, responded with a nod and a smile when the waitress offered coffee. She brought it and the menu, and he barricaded himself behind it, grateful to have a moment of quiet and relative privacy. Big fans were turning on the wall behind the counter, and the lights were dimmed, which at least gave the illusion of cool. The Cactus Hotel had actual air conditioning in its lower lobby, but right now he needed to get away from anything related to the race.

  He craned his neck to check the specials chalked on the blackboard — meatloaf and two sides, baked ham ditto, green chili pie — then turned back to the menu. He didn’t really care what he ate, something hot and wholesome and maybe a slice of pie, just enough to take his mind off what the Gilchrist team was up to. They knew what they were doing, he knew that. He’d seen them install the tank and pull it out, practicing in the hangar at his house in the hills until they were all confident the switch would go smoothly. Still, he couldn’t stop worrying. He wanted to be back at the field, watching from a distance since the referees had ruled he couldn’t help, but Alma was right, his being there would just raise doubts. He could safely leave it to them.

  He ordered a hamburger steak and a slice of the cherry pie, then unfolded the paper he’d bought in the hotel lobby, scanning the headlines. It was the afternoon edition, and the coverage of the race was excellent, a big story above the fold, a stop press box giving the first three arrivals, and another box promising full coverage in the next issue. We’ll give them something to talk about, all right, he thought, and accepted a refill for his coffee. The waitress brought his plate, and he applied himself to the food, trying not to think about what was happening at the hangar. The wires would already be humming.

  “Hey, Mr. Kershaw.” Carmichael slid onto the stool next to him, raising one finger to the waitress. “Just coffee, Toots, thanks. Black.”

  The waitress slapped the heavy china mug down in front of him, filled it with the last of the pot, and stalked away. Carmichael shook his head in mock sorrow.

  “There is no pleasing some dames.”

  There was no good answer to that, and Henry waited, chewing another bite of mashed potatoes that was suddenly, unaccountably tasteless.

  “So how’s the food?”

  “Good,” Henry said. It was both polite and true, but he still didn’t feel safe saying it.

  Carmichael slurped at his coffee, nodded once. “Not bad. I like it better with a little chicory in it myself — just like they make it at Café du Monde. Black coffee with chicory and a plate of beignets. There’s nothing like that anywhere else.”

  Henry made a noncommittal noise, and took another bite of his steak.

  “But that’s not the point,” Carmichael said, after a moment. “Clever girl, your Mrs. Segura. Or Gilchrist. That’s a pretty smart trick she pulled there.”

  “I try to hire people with brains,” Henry said.

  “I’m a little surprised the referees let her get away with it,” Carmichael said. “Seems kind of like cheating to me.”

  Henry put on his best smile. “Come on, Mr. Carmichael. I not only built that plane and the supplemental tank, I designed it that way. It’s a stock part, included in every Terrier we sell. You can’t expect me to say it’s not kosher.”

  “Well, no, I wouldn’t expect that,” Carmichael agreed. “It’s just whether the public will see it that way.”

  Henry’s eyes narrowed, but he made himself finish his last bite of hamburger before he spoke. “I don’t know, seems to me that the public appreciates a smart move.”

  “People don’t much like trick plays,” Carmichael said. “That’s why they’re illegal.”

  “Except that this move is legal,” Henry said. “The referees said so. As long as they install the tank themselves — and I’d think that would be enough of a handicap for anybody — Gilchrist can use it. And you know as well as I do that it doesn’t guarantee anything.”

  He nodded to the waitress, who took his plate and replaced it with the slice of pie, the cherries and syrup spilling deep red across the chipped plate.

  “True. It’d just be a shame if the public took it wrong.” Carmichael beckoned to the waitress. “Say, I’ll have a slice of that, too.” He waited until she slapped it in front of him to say, “Funny thing about Mrs. Gilchrist — I mean, Segura. I was kind of getting the impression it should have been Mrs. Sorley.”

  So that’s the game, Henry thought. Give me more gossip, or Winchell will make your team look bad. Winchell could, too, and with his audience… It was a chance he couldn’t afford to take.

  “Or Mrs. Ballard,” Carmichael said.

  “Ballard’s a rolling stone,” Henry said carefully. “He’s not really the marrying kind.”

  “Mrs. Segura seems fond of him.”

  “They’ve known each other a long time,” Henry said. “He and her first husband knew each other in the war.”

  “I thought that was Mr. Sorley,” Carmichael said.

  “Him, too,” Henry said, and hoped he wasn’t getting them all into a tangle. “I think if Alma had wanted to marry Sorley, she could have had him any time.”

  “So instead she marries some Mexican nobody?” Carmichael shook his head. “Who was she trying to spite?”

  “Segura’s one hell of a pilot,” Henry said. That, at least, was absolutely true. The rest… He chose his words with painful care. “I don’t think Alma could stand being married to someone who wasn’t a pilot, and Segura — well, like I said, he’s good. She’d marry a man because of it.”

  “Huh. Women.” Carmichael looked down at his plate, the casual words not quite disguising his sudden eagerness. “There’s no telling, is there?”

  “Nope,” Henry said. He hoped he’d done more good than harm, though if Alma found out — when Alma found out, he corrected dispiritedly — he was going to have some more fast talking to do to keep her from hitting him. It wouldn’t be a lady-like slap, either, but a solid roundhouse, and he probably deserved it.

  “Well, thanks for the pie,” Carmichael said. “I’ll be seeing you around.”

  Henry swore under his breath, recognizing that he’d been stuck with Carmichael’s bill as well as his own. Still, he had — he hoped — defused Carmichael’s threat, given him enough gossip to distract him and by then Henry could put a word in some other reporters’ ears, talk up how smart Gilchrist was, how plucky… He turned over his bill and Carmichael’s, reached in his pocket to count out two bits, plus a nickel tip. Time to start calling in some favors of his own.

  The passenger competition tonight was a trivia contest, sponsored by a group of local businesses and held in the ballroom of the Cactus Hotel. It was an impressive building, fourteen stories tall, and if the rooms were anything like the public spaces, Jerry wasn’t going to complain about the accommodations. The ballroom stretched the full width of the third floor, Romanesque arches supporting a rounded cei
ling hung with a trio of massive crystal chandeliers. To the left of the stage, the arches held floor-to-ceiling windows, their velvet drapes drawn against the rising dusk; to the right, French doors gave access to the hotel proper. At the moment, the ballroom was about three-quarters full, the sponsors and their wives and various local dignitaries who’d paid for what looked like a decent dinner sitting at little round tables toward the front, while fans and gawkers and the less enthusiastic of the reporters filled the rows of chairs that stretched toward the back of the room.

  The more enthusiastic ones — including Winchell’s stringer, who supposedly had hired a private plane to follow the race on his own — were crouched at the base of the stage, pressed up against the curtains that hid the temporary platform’s somewhat rickety underpinnings. One of RKO’s cameras was grinding away at the side of the stage, but everyone’s attention was on the man at the center of the stage. Charlie Bolton was in his element, ten-gallon hat pushed back on his head, a fistful of index cards in his hand, bouncing back and forth in front of the three big radio microphones. The contest was going out live on KGKL and a network of NBC stations, one of the girls had said, and Jerry had tried to forget that as soon as he’d heard it. The idea of making a fool of himself on nation-wide radio had been enough to make him feel faintly queasy.

  Luckily, though, the questions hadn’t been anything too hard, at least not yet, and while Bolton was quick to tease the girls, he’d stopped short of anything too harsh. He was also taking plenty of time to talk up the local businesses and TexAv Gasoline, the race’s main sponsor, and Jerry took a deep breath, willing himself to relax. The first prize was a hundred dollars and fifteen minutes off the team’s time, and he thought he had a decent shot at it.

  The girls from United and TWA were the first to be eliminated, followed shortly by Consolidated, who managed a sassy exit line that Jerry knew would be repeated in every paper across the country. Miss Gray was doing no harm at all to her career.

  The next round of questions were civics-class standards, and eliminated two more, leaving him with Mrs. Jezek, the girl from Bestways, and May Saltonstall. Mrs. Jezek was eliminated on what should have been an easy horse-racing question — but why would you name a horse Onion? She asked, and drew a sympathetic laugh — and Miss Bestways failed to spell “halleluiah” correctly.

  “And that leaves Dr. Jerry Ballard of Gilchrist Aviation and Miss May Saltonstall of Crimson Air,” Bolton announced. “It’s the battle of the brains, folks, but first — have you heard about the new Black and White Grocery opening over on Pruesser Street?”

  He slid smoothly into the advertisement, swapping index cards with practiced zeal, and Jerry gave Miss Saltonstall a wry smile. She smiled back, grey eyes very determined, and said, “No hard feelings, Dr. Ballard.”

  “None at all, Miss Saltsonstall,” Jerry answered, and felt his attention sharpen.

  The next round of questions was straight American history, details of the Revolution and the Civil War, and they swapped answers through the series, neither one missing a question. There was applause when they’d finished, led by Bolton.

  “What’d I tell you, folks? The battle of the brains! Dr. Ballard’s a professor and Miss Saltonstall just graduated from Radcliffe College — but let me tell you, boys, she doesn’t look like a brain!” Bolton shuffled his index cards again. “And it’s on to the next round. The subject — oh, dear, Miss Saltonstall. It’s baseball.”

  May leaned in closer to the microphone, her hands clasped behind her back like a little girl’s. “Well, that may be a tough subject, Mr. Bolton, but I’ll give it the old college try.”

  Jerry kept his smile bland and polite, but his attention sharpened. He’d heard the tone before, and he wasn’t going to be suckered.

  “I’m sure you will,” Bolton said. “Miss Saltonstall had the last correct question, so it’s over to you, Dr. Ballard. Can you tell me which pitcher set a record for most saves in a season, back in 1926?”

  “Firpo Marberry,” Jerry answered. He’d been a fan as a kid, but Ruth and the long ball had ruined the game as far as he was concerned. He had a feeling he was going to wish he’d paid more attention when Mitch and Lewis had the games on the radio.

  “Correct!” Bolton said. “Miss Saltsonstall, can you name either of the two teams who were the first to put numbers on their players’ uniforms — purely for the benefit of the fans, we’re sure, not the umpires.”

  “The New York Yankees,” she said. “And the Cleveland Indians.”

  “Correct on both counts, Miss Saltonstall!” Boltson beamed at her. “I might even think you were a fan yourself.”

  “I am from Boston, Mr. Bolton,” May said, primly.

  Jerry swallowed a profane comment. She wasn’t just from Boston. She was a Boston fan, a Royal Rooter to the core, and he hadn’t been giving baseball his serious attention since about 1924… He held his smile steady with an effort, and hoped he wasn’t about to lose too badly.

  “Dr. Ballard,” Bolton said. “What did Ty Cobb do for the last time in his career on June 15th, 1928?”

  Jerry took a careful breath. He did remember this one. Cobb might be a bastard, but he played the game the way it was meant to be played. “He stole home, Mr. Bolton.”

  “Indeed he did,” Bolton said. “Miss Saltonstall!”

  They went back and forth twice more, Jerry struggling, May quietly confident. He remembered the year the Yankees won their first World Series, dredged up the name of the Brooklyn pitcher who hit a home run in his first major-league at bat. May countered with the name of the pitcher who beaned — and killed — Ray Chapman, and, with a wince, named the Red Sox as the team that lost 107 games in 1926.

  “And the last question, for Dr. Ballard,” Bolton said. “Name the American League’s home run leader in 1925.”

  Jerry paused. It had to be Ruth, surely. He’d won that title year after year, and he wasn’t showing much sign of slowing down. “Babe Ruth?”

  “Oh! Sorry, Dr. Ballard. It was not the Babe.” Bolton turned to May, still waiting with her hands behind her back. “Miss Saltsontall. If you can answer this question correctly, you win one hundred dollars for yourself and fifteen minutes off the elapsed time. Take a deep breath, that’s a lot of new shoes!”

  May gave him a rather distant smile. “It wasn’t Ruth, but it was a Yankee, Mr. Bolton. Bob Muesel.”

  “Absolutely correct! Miss Saltsonstall is our winner, folks, with a gritty performance. That’s one hundred dollars for you, and fifteen minutes for the team!”

  Jerry offered his hand in congratulations, and May shook it, grinning openly now.

  “Well played,” he said.

  “Thanks.”

  Flashbulbs went off all around them, capturing the moment, and Jerry fought to keep his smile. He’d get fifty dollars out of this, and ten minutes off the team time; Alma would be pleased, and the Harvards were seventh out of nine, so fifteen minutes wouldn’t do them too much good. But — he truly hated Babe Ruth.

  Chapter Ten

  You would be so beautiful, it whispered. So beautiful.

  The necklace lay on the bed where it had spilled from Lewis' jacket pocket, iron lace against the matelasse bedspread. It looked just like that, like black lace over white skin. She'd seen a very daring set of combinations once, black lace with no backing, so that every inch supposedly covered was actually rendered all the more shocking, peeking through the fine tracery. Even the bottoms were lace, and she hadn't been able to help wondering if one was supposed to shave beneath it, so that everywhere there was the gleam of marble half veiled.

  Alma felt her face heat. The necklace was like that, but you could wear it in public. It was perfectly decent. It would only be your throat that showed like that, only your throat that promised hidden pleasures. Surely it wouldn't hurt to wear it just once. Henry wouldn't mind.

  Henry wouldn’t… There was something about Henry. Alma blinked. Henry said something about the necklace…

/>   That it was beautiful. That it was lost. He said it made any woman who wore it beautiful.

  Alma picked it up, feeling the cool links in her fingers, curved like soft, waiting skin. She could put it on, look at herself in the mirror. It begged to be dragged over skin, begged to lie cold against sensitive places…

  She lifted the necklace up, feeling the weight in her hands. She could just put it on for a moment. Henry wouldn't mind.

  Henry…

  It was hard to remember what Henry had said. Something about not giving it to Mabel. Something about the necklace.

  It was like pushing through dark water.

  There was a curse. The necklace was cursed and every woman who wore it died by violence.

  Her hands shook and Alma dropped the necklace, falling like thunder against the white bedspread.

  Her head was clear. "Oh, God," Alma whispered. She'd come so close to putting it on, so close. She got up and crossed the room, not even wanting to touch it, not even through a piece of cloth or something. Its attraction was too fatal. Instead she opened the door and went across the hall, knocking on the door opposite. "Jerry?"

  Jerry opened the door a moment later, his jacket off but his glasses still on his nose. "What's wrong?" he asked, frowning at the tone of her voice.

  "That is," Alma said, gesturing to the necklace on the bed. "I can't be around it right now. Can you take it?"

  Jerry didn’t ask questions. He just plunged across the hall, taking out his silk handkerchief and carefully gathering it up in it. Once it was inside the insulating silk where she couldn't see it Alma breathed a sigh of relief. "Better?" Jerry asked. He looked concerned.

  Alma nodded. Out of sight, out of mind. "That thing is powerful," she said. "I nearly put it on."

  Concern flared in his eyes, and Jerry put his arm around her. "You didn't, though?"

  "Not quite," Alma said. "Not quite." She took another breath, glad of the solidity of his arm, of his rock-solid psychic strength. "Jerry, I don't know what I'd do without you."