by R. R. Irvine
Nick nodded. “I’m ready to leave.”
The others joined the exodus. Mom Bennett came too, taking Guthrie up on his offer to escort her home.
“It’s a shame Grace Miller didn’t come,” Mom said as they strolled up Main Street toward the residential end of town. “She wasn’t really Gus’s widow, you know, not officially, but she was as close to family as he had. Gus lived at her place, you know. Of course, they both swore it was strictly a rental arrangement, but most people didn’t believe it.”
“What do you know,” Guthrie said. “There may be life in this town after all.”
Mom giggled. “As for me, I say people shouldn’t live alone.” She nudged Guthrie. “I always thought old Gus would leave everything he owned to Grace, not some distant cousin.”
“Maybe she’s the one I should talk to,” Nick said.
“I’d like to come with you,” Douglas said, “but I’ve been ordered back to the paper for a meeting first thing tomorrow morning. That means driving in the dark.”
He shook Nick’s hand first. “Call me if you find out what happened to the Scorpion.”
CHAPTER 17
Grace Miller’s two-story clapboard Victorian stood out harshly in the glare from a pair of security floodlights attached to the eaves. Insects swarming around the bulbs cast eerie, flickering shadows over the entire facade. Looking at it, Nick was reminded of some of the student boardinghouses in Berkeley. But there, the Victorian would have fit in; here, flanked on both sides by squat flat-roofed adobes, the house looked enormous and out of scale.
The door opened before Nick could knock. The woman standing on the threshold said, “You must be Nick Scott. Mom Bennett just called and told me you’d be standing on my porch. Come on in.”
Grace Miller appeared to be in her sixties and was still trim enough to fit nicely into jeans. The tails of a white loose-fitting man’s shirt had been tied in a knot at her waist. Her thick brown hair hung in a ponytail. She was barefoot with brightly painted nails.
“You look like you were expecting me to wear black,” she said as Nick crossed the threshold. “I’m not exactly a two-time widow, despite what people are saying.”
Grace escorted Nick into the parlor, which was filled with furniture that looked Victorian enough to have come with the house. Nick settled onto a horsehair sofa; Grace faced her in a matching armchair, tucking her feet underneath her.
“Gus told me about you,” Grace said. “He said meeting you was his lucky day. Of course, Gus was always saying things like that. He’d never had much luck, you see, so he figured his turn was just about due. „Good times are just around the corner,’ he liked to say.”
“He told me he had good luck finding gold nuggets.”
Grace shook her head. “Gus couldn’t get away with saying something like that to anyone but an outsider. The only thing he ever found bigger than a pea was that plane. And it wasn’t any use until you came along.”
“How could he afford that fancy metal detector of his?”
Grace glanced at the wooden mantelpiece filled with framed photographs. Gus Beckstead was nowhere to be seen, at least as far as Nick could tell.
“That metal detector was my gift to him. „It’s all I need,’ he said, „to change my luck.’ Well, his luck never did change, getting himself killed like that.”
She paused to breathe deeply. “I took pity on Gus when no one else would. He was a drifter, a ne’er-do-well. I knew that the first time I met him. I had no illusions. I also knew he was the exact opposite of my husband, may he rest in peace. You see, my Matt owned the tractor agency in Gallup. His whole life was tractors and farming. I came third. Anyway, he died before the farmers started going bust, otherwise I would never have been able to sell out and buy this house.”
“Why here in Cibola?”
“Why else? I was born here.”
“And Gus?”
“His folks lived in one of those mobile homes. They never stayed put long enough for him to be from anywhere. But that’s not what you’re really asking, is it? You want to know about Gus’s cousin, Ellsworth Kemp.”
This was one sharp lady, Nick decided, which made her relationship with Gus Beckstead all the more difficult to understand. “You’re a mind reader.”
“Gus used to say the same thing, only I guess I’m not very good at it, because as far as I knew, Gus had no relatives. The fact is, he always said he was leaving everything to me. He wrote out a will to that effect once.”
“Do you still have it?”
“Somewhere, probably. But it wouldn’t be any good. That cousin of his was already here to show me his will. It was dated this year. That makes mine null and void, though I don’t really care. Gus’s claim is worthless as far as I know, and what would I do with an old airplane?”
“You could give it to me.”
“If it were in my power, I’d do just that.”
“Let me ask you a favor, then. Find that will of yours so I can wave it in Mr. Ellsworth Kemp’s face.”
“Why not?”
Together, they rummaged through the drawers of a narrow Victorian desk until the document was found.
“All I ask,” Grace said, “is that you make a copy so I can keep the original.”
“I have a portable copier in my room. I’ll bring the original back first thing in the morning before I go after Kemp.”
CHAPTER 18
Armed with a crisp copy of Gus Beckstead’s holographic will, Nick went looking for Ellsworth Kemp right after breakfast the next morning. But he’d already checked out of the motel.
“The fact is,” Jay Ferrin confided when Nick confronted him in the office, “the bastard woke me up at five this morning to give me his cash and his key. It was still dark, for Christ’s sake.”
“Did he say where he was going?”
Ferrin shrugged halfheartedly. “Maybe he’s out at Gus’s claim. That’s the way he was heading, anyway, when he drove out of here. I’m surprised he didn’t wake you up, the way he took off like a bat out of hell.”
Since Guthrie, her father, and his students were already at ES No. 1 looking for more tasty evidence of cannibalism, Nick decided to see her B-17 one last time. But the moment she reached the turnoff leading to Gus’s Oasis, she knew something was wrong. The highway was littered with pieces of flattened tumble-weed and dirt clods. Black tire marks streaked the asphalt. The shallow ruts leading off into the desert, barely visible yesterday, now looked deeply grooved and well traveled.
As Nick followed the tracks, she remembered Gus’s warning about getting stuck in soft sand and resisted the temptation to hurry. But even driving slowly she almost passed the site without recognizing it. The mound was all but gone, along with any sign of the B-17. Gus Beckstead’s shack was missing too, and judging by the tire tracks the old boy’s warning about soft sand had been nothing but a tall tale.
Feeling stunned, she killed the Trooper’s engine and got out. There were tire tracks everywhere, double sets, probably from the big rigs that had driven through town last night. But why would someone go to all that trouble, not to mention expense, to steal a fifty-year-old war relic? There were rich collectors, of course, but that didn’t seem likely. Even the most avid of them would want to see the dead properly buried.
Maybe the answer was in that diary she’d found. Fingers crossed, she climbed back into the Trooper, U-turned without getting stuck, and headed deeper into the badlands, toward ES No. 1. The predicted cooling trend had failed to materialize. The thermometer at the mouth of the cliff dwelling read a hundred and five, though the sun had yet to reach its zenith.
Inside the ovenlike cave, Elliot and Guthrie looked totally oblivious to the furnace heat as they knelt on a ground sheet examining their latest find, a large piece of humerus bone. The half dozen students grouped in a semicircle around them looked as dirty and bedraggled as soldiers coming out of battle.
“Nick!” Elliot shouted when he saw her. “Come over here and tell us
what we’ve got.”
Her father and Guthrie exchanged conspiratorial winks as she knelt beside them. Guthrie pointed to a crack along the axis of the arm bone and said, “Show me you were listening during class.”
“My B-17 is missing,” she replied.
Guthrie squinted at her the same way he’d done when she missed one of his test questions. “Here, see for yourself where the knife slipped. This bone was deliberately split open so the marrow could be sucked out.”
“The whole goddamned plane. Those trucks we saw last night must have hauled it away.”
“Nick,” her father said, “stop and take a deep breath. Stay calm.”
She clenched her teeth, remembering him saying the same thing to her as a child. Then, her mother had been the cause of Nick’s agitation. Now it was her father’s obsession with the Anasazi.
“Your airplane wasn’t a sanctioned dig,” he went on. “It was a diversion for you, that’s all. Its disappearance is of no historical significance.” Dreamy eyed, Elliot gazed up at the three-story cliff dwellings above them. “Here is where we’ll find history.”
That was pure Elliot, she thought, oblivious to everything else when in proximity to his beloved Indians.
Guthrie said, “Stealing airplanes that won’t fly takes a lot of money and manpower.”
“Speaking of which,” Elliot broke in, glaring at his students until they wearily went back to work, climbing the extension ladder to their most recent dig site two stories above.
When they were out of sight, he shook the humerus at her. “This is a thousand years old. When your airplane’s that age, maybe I’ll worry about it.”
“I think Ken Drysdale may be right,” Nick persisted. “There could be some kind of military cover-up going on. Who else would care after so many years?”
Elliot shook his head. “Even the military isn’t that goofy.”
“You’re forgetting something,” Guthrie said. “They test bacteria and radiation on civilians all the time without telling them, in the name of national security, naturally. Then they cover their tracks by classifying everything top secret. Come to think of it, Los Alamos isn’t that far off. Maybe the poor bastards on that bomber were ordered to fly through a mushroom cloud, or some damned thing.”
“What about the bullet holes?” Nick said. “And the diary?” She held it out, still in its plastic baggie.
Guthrie nodded. “You win. The Anasazi can wait awhile longer.”
Elliot snorted derisively.
Nick would have preferred to open the diary in a more controlled environment, one without dirt and grit. But both her father and Guthrie were experts in restoration.
With an apologetic nod to her father, she handed the diary to Guthrie, who accepted the offering carefully. “Thank God for our mummifying New Mexican climate,” he said, sitting cross-legged on the ground sheet, “otherwise the paper might have disintegrated by now.”
Working slowly, he applied oil to the crusted lock and clasp, careful not to wet the leather. After a few minutes, he began scraping away the rust. Several applications of oil were necessary before the mechanism gave way. Next, he worked lanolin into the tips of his fingers and then gently rubbed the oil into the diary’s spine to keep it from cracking when opened.
Through it all, Nick wiped Guthrie’s brow to keep sweat from dripping onto the book.
Finally, Guthrie took a deep breath and slowly opened the diary. A shiny, perfectly preserved dog tag, complete with chain, fell out onto the ground sheet.
Without touching the disc, Nick bent down to examine it through a magnifying glass. “It looks Japanese.”
Elliot confirmed her opinion.
“It must be a war souvenir like the uniform pieces we found,” Guthrie said.
“Maybe,” Nick said. “But there should have been tags on all the bodies.”
Nodding, Guthrie laid the diary on the sheet and slowly spread open the covers. Despite the lanolin, the leather still cracked a bit along the spine, but the diary held together. The writing on the first page was still legible.
The Scorpion, January 1945
Ross McKinnon, navigator
“I found it in the navigator’s compartment,” Nick reminded them.
The second page contained a list of the other nine crew members.
Dennis Atwood, pilot
John Curtis, copilot
Howard Kelly, bombardier
Paul Decker, top gunner
Jack Ashton, waist gunner
Bill Lee, waist gunner
John Emerson, tail gunner
Dave Watson, radio operator
Andy Evans, ball turret
On the next page, a note was addressed to someone named Lael and signed by Ross, the navigator. Using the glass, Guthrie read the letter out loud. “ „My Dearest Lael, I’m writing to you from on board my plane, while we’re waiting to take off on a special mission. They’ve promised us leave when we’re done. If all goes well, I’ll be able to deliver this letter in person, my love. I’ll be able to hold you in my arms again. At night sometimes I wake up and think I smell your perfume, but when I open my eyes all I smell is mildew and tent canvas.’ ”
Guthrie paused to clear his throat and drink some bottled water. Nick looked away, knowing it was more than thirst that was choking him.
“ „We renamed our ship,’ ” Guthrie continued hoarsely. “ „Our sexy pinup has been replaced by a scorpion. It wasn’t our idea. It was orders but I’m not supposed to write about that. Anyway, we’ve now got a scorpion painted on our nose. It’s bright yellow with red eyes. If the Japs ever get close enough to see it, it ought to scare the you-know-what out of them.’ ”
Nick swallowed the lump in her throat. “I wish we knew what that special mission was.”
“I don’t see how it would help us,” Elliot said.
“None of it helps,” Guthrie added.
“You’re wrong,” Nick said. “Names mean service records. We can run them down eventually.”
Guthrie went through several more pages. All were blank. He put down the book, stretched, and let out a long sigh before getting to his feet. “You always hope you’ve hit the jackpot, a revelation that will change your life. But in the end archaeology comes down to hard work.”
“And persistence,” Nick said, and went over the diary again, transcribing the crew list and letter into her own notebook. After that, she leafed through the blank pages, one after the other. Halfway through the book, as if the diary had been opened at random, she found a message scrawled across both the left- and right-hand pages. Both were stained.
“Jesus.” A chill climbed her spine. “Listen to this. „Our own planes are shooting us down. P-38s. Me and Howard survived the crash. They’re still strafing. Hiding this—’ ”
Both men went down on their knees to read it for themselves.
“Son of a bitch,” Elliot said. “No wonder the military’s covering up.”
“Your father’s right, Nicolette. My advice to you is to forget the whole thing. You’re half a century too late to help anybody, so why stir up trouble now?”
“Don’t waste your breath,” Elliot said. “She’s as one-tracked as I am.”
Nick busied herself copying the navigator’s last message into her book. Then she went through the rest of the pages until she was satisfied that there was nothing else to find. Finally, she backtracked and reread the navigator’s last letter to his wife. “If she’s still alive, someone ought to deliver that letter to her.”
“You might not be doing her a favor after so much time,” Elliot said.
“Maybe not, but there are other things I can do. So you’re going to have to get along here without me.”
Guthrie groaned. “That sounds like a plea for volunteers.”
Usually when Nick tracked down military artifacts she had full cooperation from the authorities. This time, she didn’t know what kind of roadblocks were ahead of her. If it weren’t for Mark Douglas’s story and pict
ures in the Journal, she’d have no proof the B-17 ever existed. Except, of course, for her witnesses, though skeptics might dismiss both Elliot and Guthrie as being prejudiced.
“I’ll take any help I can get,” she said.
“Do you know what a professor emeritus does?” Guthrie responded. “He runs around giving speeches and raising funds for the university. I’ve sucked up to more politicians than you can count. Our governor’s one of the good guys, though, the Honorable Michael Elwood Mills. He owes me a couple of favors, so first thing tomorrow morning I’ll call him and collect. He’s head of the National Guard, for God’s sake. If anybody’s going to get through to the military, he’s our man. Better yet, I’ll drive to Santa Fe and camp on his doorstep until he agrees to help.”
Nick picked up the Japanese dog tag, tested its tensile strength, and then hung it around her own neck, not as a memento but as evidence she might need one day.
CHAPTER 19
The sun was setting by the time Nick returned to the Seven Cities. She stripped off her sweaty clothes, doused herself under the shower, and then, with her own king-size towel wrapped around her, dialed the office and asked if the Journal had arrived yet.
“The Sunday edition we don’t get till Monday,” Jay Ferrin told her. “Unless somebody we know happens to be driving through from Albuquerque.”
“And have they?”
“In that case, they’d be at Mayor Ralph’s.”
“Did I get any calls?” Nick asked.
“He said he’d call back,” Ferrin said, and hung up.
Ten minutes later her phone rang and Ken Drysdale said, “Nick, have you been watching your back, like I said?”
“It’s too late, I think.”
“Are you all right?”
“It’s my B-17. Someone arrived during the night and spirited it away. They took everything, even the prospector’s shack that was nearby. The only thing they left behind is tire tracks, and those will be gone the first time the wind blows.”
Drysdale whistled. “That sounds like the military all right. First come the sniffers, then the sweepers cleaning up behind them. We’ve had it. Your plane is history.”
