"I didn't see a griddle."
"What color?"
"Blue."
"I think I'd get green, the blue's a little bold, don't you think?"
I teased. "Apparently I haven't given it as much thought as you have."
"Maybe you should. Your Mr. Loomis sounds nice enough, and what he does with the food deliveries to the needy is truly generous."
"I think he considers it kind of selfish, the cooking.
He feels he gets more out of it than he gives."
We'd begun playing footsies. "When I got home,” she said. "I was so tired that all I wanted to do was sleep. Now, after all this talk about giving and getting. I'm not so sure."
"Really?" I asked. "What did you have in mind?"
"How about Scrabble?"
I leaned forward and slid my hands up her legs. "Scrabble sounds good."
TWENTY-TWO
On the way out of town to the airport on Friday, I stopped in Spanish Hills to see how Dresden's work on the house was progressing, the hat he was wearing that day came from a remote spot on the northeast coast of Australia called Hook Island, we'd discussed this particular hat before, he'd dived that area of the Great Barrier Reef once already and had told me at least three times that it was his destination again the week after our job was finished.
"We're cooking,” he explained, as he showed me the footers and foundation walls for the main-floor addition as well as the foundation for the new garage that was going up on the north side of our house. "As soon as the cement is cured, we'll have these two framed and trussed in no time."
The inside of the house had already gone from the demo stage to the refraining stage, and the outlines of the newly designed rooms were taking shape in an array of studs and electrical and plumbing rough-ins, the tradespeople hired by Dresden were typical Boulder subs.
The electrician on the project was a huge man with dreadlocks and a Ph.D, in art history, the plumber was a retooled engineer who liked working for himself but dressed as though he were still employed by IBM.
As I did each time we met I inquired of Dresden about any new evidence of our previous intruder.
As he did each time we met he assured me that I had nothing to worry about.
Reassuring clients was one of Dresden's many innate skills. I'd already decided that he would have made a great nanny.
The plan I'd worked out with Sawyer had me flying into Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix, renting a car, and meeting her at a general aviation field in Scottsdale, she said she didn't like flying into big fields, and that it would be easier for me to rent a car at Sky Harbor than it would for her to rent one at the smaller airport.
I kissed Lauren good-bye, wished her luck with her trial, and gathered a few things together for my short trip to Arizona. Just as I was leaving the house she called me back into the kitchen and said. "Look."
She was directing me to the television, a brush and forest fire was out of control near Kittredge. "That's where Gary Hart lives, isn't it?" she asked.
"Is it?" I didn't know where Gary Hart lived, but I knew that Kittredge was twenty miles north along the foothills of the Front Range, in the sharp canyons west of Red Rocks amphitheater. Which meant we were in no danger in our temporary housing on the Hill in Boulder. I was too distracted by my need to get to Denver to pay much attention to the news. "I hope they get it under control. Did you see anything about airport traffic? I need to run."
I arrived at DIA in plenty of time to answer the page that Lauren directed toward my beeper during my drive, she hadn't used our agreed-upon emergency code, so I managed to keep my pulse in double digits as I punched in our home number and said. "Hi. It's me. What's up? Miss me too much already?"
"Hardly. Didn't you tell me that that doctor lives near Kittredge? The one who saw those patients in the emergency room? You know, the one you talked to over the weekend."
"Sheldon? He lives outside of Morrison."
"Kittredge is outside of Morrison, isn't it?"
Oh no. Oh shit. "You don't think— ?"
"I don't—"
"Jesus. I hope this is a coincidence. Find out what you can. I'll call you from Phoenix, okav? Wait, let me give you his phone number, maybe you can reach him." I dug around in my DayTimer and found the number. "His name is Sheldon Salgado. Got it?"
"Yes,” she said, her voice tight. I dictated the number.
My United shuttle departed Denver on time and arrived in Phoenix early. I tried to reach Lauren as soon as I got off the plane, the home line was busy. I wasted a few minutes in an airport bar hoping to see the news of the Colorado forest fire on CNN. Instead I raised my blood pressure fifteen points watching three representatives and two senators argue that there was really no need for campaign finance reform.
Excuse me?
After trying to call home again— no answer this time; she must have been on her way to work— I took the little yellow Hertz bus to pick up my car, they had my nondescript Ford waiting in my preassigned spot. I surprised myself by not getting lost on the way to the Scottsdale airport. I arrived at eleven-thirty, fifteen minutes before Sawyer had estimated that she would be touching down.
Forest fires, even distant ones, are not uncontaminated emotional events in my life. One of my dear friends had watched people die in a voracious fire in Wyoming, and the scars from that event affected his life every day. I'd heard his brother tell the story of the ferocity of the Wyoming fire and had even flown over the skeletal remains of the forest that had been the fuel. I'd been up between Kittredge and Morrison many times and had no trouble imagining the terrain, the dry lodgepole, and the golden brush. I could see the dream homes and the don't-bother-me cabins that dotted the dirt roads, and I had no trouble conjuring the devastation that fierce wind and abundant fuel could cause to that mountain enclave after a solitary spark.
Inside the spacious waiting area of Blue Skies Aviation. I approached the counter and asked if a plane piloted by Sawyer Faire had landed yet, the man at the counter was in his early twenties but had already lost much of his hair, the embroidery on his polo shirt told me that his name was Guy. His eyes were a distracting pale chocolate in color, after greeting me with a big smile he said they'd had no incoming this morning except for regulars, he offered to check with someone in back to be certain and disappeared into an adjacent office, a moment later he returned and told me that Gloria didn't think that mv friend had been in vet. I thanked him, turned, found a pay phone and once more tried to reach Lauren, this time at work.
"Lauren Crowder,” she answered, in her professional voice. I knew the voice well, she used it with me when it was time to take out the garbage or when it was my turn to perform the Tootsie Roll patrol duties around our house. Sometimes she used it during the almost-there moments of hurried sex.
"It's me."
"No good news. I'm afraid, the fire is definitely in the vicinity of his house, there's no answer when I call. Television reports said the fire started around three in the morning. So, he and his family— you said he had a family; right?"
"Yes."
"They must have been home when it started. I mean, at that hour? Unless they're out of town somewhere, they had to be home."
"I'd imagine, any houses destroyed yet?"
"New reports are unclear. One said two 'structures' were engulfed, whatever that means, and I haven't been able to watch the news at all since I got to work. I'm real busy here— I'm sorry. You know, the trial this afternoon? There's a plea-bargain prayer blowing in the door, we're scrambling to agree on a response."
"It's okay. I'll try to find out what I can from this end, maybe he's at work or maybe his secretary at the hospital knows something. Listen, sweets, urn, do you have your gun with you?"
She hesitated and lowered her voice before she responded. "Are we going to fight about it if I do?"
"No, we're not."
"Then, yes, I do."
"Good." I said. Instantly., I couldn't believe that I'd said it.
"Hell, yes. Give me something useful to do. I'm going nuts here. Where can I call you?"
"You can't. I'll get back to you. Say, half an hour?"
"I'll have something by then. Lauren's safe?"
"Just spoke to her at work, she has the Glock with her."
"Good. Still waiting for you to take those lessons."
"I'm thinking about it: Sam. Believe me."
"Call me back."
As I placed the receiver back on the hook. I turned and found myself looking down on the receding crown of Guy's head. I realized the floor behind the counter must be higher than the waiting area and that Guy was a good six inches smaller than I had given him credit for.
He looked up and into my eyes, quite comfortable with his height. "You know what kind of plane your friend flies, bv any chance?"
"Yes, it's a Beechcraft, a Bonanza. I think she said. Is she here?"
"There's some tower talk you might be interested in. Come on over— we'll let you listen in."
I followed him to the office in back, where a woman no older than Guy was sitting behind a steel desk examining invoices, she had curly blond hair that tumbled past her shoulders, the phone she was holding had disappeared into the thicket of locks in the general vicinity of her ear, she smiled a toothy smile at me and pointed to a chair with the sharp end of a pencil. Guy remained standing.
Without another word she hung up and said. "Hi, I'm Gloria." She adjusted the volume on a radio tuned to the tower frequency. "I just got off the phone with the tower, they have a Beechcraft Bonanza B-36, call five-six Foxtrot. Ring a bell? It's having a problem with its front gear and they have it circling the field. Does that sound like it could be your friend?"
"What kind of problem?" I hoped it didn't mean what I thought it meant.
Guy explained. "Front landing gear won't come down."
"Oh, my God."
"She has plenty of fuel, apparently, she's going to try a few things to bring the gear down."
"And if she can't?"
Guy's full lips disappeared into a tight pink line, he said. "She's going to have to scratch her belly. I'm afraid."
For some reason I couldn't understand, I knew exactly what he meant.
"What are they saying now?" I couldn't make sense of the voices coming over the tinny speaker.
Gloria listened for a moment. "They're talking to a Lear-jet that's on final, that's not your friend."
"That's Bert's plane, he's one of our regulars." added Guy.
"Aren't they going to foam the runway or something? Get readv for her? Has somebody called an
O J J
ambulance?"
"Would you like some coffee?" asked Gloria in a sweet voice, she was trying not to be patronizing. "This is going to take a while to settle out, she'll probably get it to come down."
I thought of Sam and Sheldon Salgado. I said. "No. I think I need to make another phone call. Come get me if anything changes, okay?"
"Of course." said Gloria. "You won't have that coffee? I made it myself and I'm good."
At that, Guy blushed. I said. "Sure. I will, thanks."
Sam answered even before I heard the phone ring. "Alan?"
"Yes. You have something?"
"Talked to a JeffCo deputy, a friend of mine, they have two houses burned, six more are in danger, the fire is on both sides of a county road just outside of Kittredge, they're thinking arson."
"Jesus, any casualties?"
"None confirmed. It's a big fire, though, he says it's just chaos up there, trying to get crews in and residents out."
"I don't know if it's related to the fire, Sam, but my friend Sawyer's in trouble in her plane, she's circling the airport right now, apparently her landing gear won't come down."
"You shittin' me?"
"No."
In a voice that let me know he wasn't expecting an argument from me, he said, "If you don't have any objections. I think I'm going to go check on Lauren. I got nothing better to do today."
If this guy was trying to make me feel totally out of control, he was succeeding, a forest fire was threatening a colleague six hundred miles away and a faulty airplane was endangering an ex-lover a few thousand feet above my head, a basic tenet of psychotherapy says that if you want to know what a person is trying to communicate to you, take a look at how his behavior makes you feel.
This time it was easy. This guy wanted me to know how it felt to be absolutely out of control when everything is on the line.
He wanted me to feel vulnerable.
He wanted me to feel helpless.
He wanted me to know how it felt to know that he could rip anything he wanted from my life.
The main question in my mind right then was, did he want me to feel grief? Did he plan for Sawyer and Sheldon to die today?
I prayed not. Because if his goal was to kill them, I felt that Sawyer had no chance at all to fix her recalcitrant landing gear, and if he intended that Sheldon was to die, then Sheldon's corpse was probably already charred and curled into a fetal position in the ruins of his home.
I realized that in my mind I was granting this adversary power that seemed almost superhuman. I was feeling his presence as I might that of a malevolent god, or of some satanic force. I was feeling that he was invincible.
Outside Blue Skies I stood on the tarmac and stared into the brightness. Guy pointed out which dot traversing the airspace above the field was Sawyer's plane, ha reassured me that she had plenty of fuel.
I felt like saying. "So what?" It was like telling me that somebody who was having a heart attack had a good appetite.
Gloria was inside, her focus divided between the tower traffic and, at my request, CNN. I had asked her to keep an eye out for news of a forest fire in Colorado, she was so sweet she didn't even ask why.
My pager vibrated on my hip. I'd forgotten that the pager company had told me that with my new state-of-the-art pager, I could roam. Which, the salesman explained, meant I could be reached anywhere, at the time I wondered whether or not that was a good thing.
The phone number on the screen was the DA's office in Boulder. Lauren was calling.
I raced back to the pay phone and called her.
"Sam just told me about Sawyer, Alan. Is she okay?"
"She's still up there. I can see her circling when I go outside."
"Can they do anything?"
"There is apparently a manual backup system, a crank of some kind, something that allows her an alternative way to lower the gear, she's trying it now."
"Then who's flying the plane?"
I hadn't thought about that. "Autopilot, I guess.
Anything new about the fire? About Sheldon?"
"No. Sam has calls out, he's out talking to my secretary, he's waiting for his cell phone to ring." She lowered her voice. "Alan. I'm worried about his health. Should he be doing this? Isn't this too stressful for him?"
"I don't know. But my guess is that trying to get him to leave would be more stressful on both of you than allowing him to stay and—"
"Hold on a second. I hear Sam's phone ringing. I think his call just came in."
For a long minute all I could hear was background music, then Sam speaking, and Lauren responding. Sam again.
To me, she said, "They think his house is one of the ones that burned, sheldon's house is one of the first two that went up."
My heart felt swollen with responsibility. Had I led this animal to Sheldon Salgado's door? I'd been so careful.
"Casualties?"
I heard her say, "Sam, did they find any bodies?"
To me, she said. "He doesn't know. Just shrugged his shoulders."
TWE
NTY-THREE
As I hung up the phone, my mind wandered back a few mornings and I could almost feel the sensation of watching that ceiling joist descend directly toward my head in the nibble of our renovation. I tried to shake off the image as I walked outside to the tarmac and approached Guy, he was facing away from me, toward the north. I asked him to point out Sawyer's plane again, he directed me to the far side of the field, toward a speck that was on the underside of a sheer stream of clouds just above the ridgeline of some beautiful mountains. I had trouble picking it up.
He pointed again and I tried to sight down his arm.
In the distance. I heard one siren, then, I thought, two. I wondered if the emergency vehicles were coming to the airport to prepare for Sawyer's attempt to land, as I finally identified the speck in the distance that was her plane. I said a silent prayer that this whole refrain of terror was merely her ceiling joist falling; that she would duck this bullet as I had ducked that one.
Guy said. "While you were on the phone, um.
before? Your friend told the tower that, uh, it wouldn't go, she said she couldn't lower the front gear with the crank, the fix wasn't working."
My knees felt weak. "So is she on her way down?" I wanted to put that off as long as possible.
"Not yet, they have a call out to the FBO at Sky Harbor and to the manufacturer. To see if the maintenance people at Beech have other suggestions."
I was about to ask what an FBO was when I heard Gloria's voice call my name. I turned to see her holding open the door that led from the tarmac to the waiting room. This was my first opportunity to see her out from behind the desk, she was wearing an incredibly short pleated yellow skirt and had the most attractive legs I had ever seen in my life, she held her hair with one hand as the wind gusted and called out. "It's the tower, the controller says she wants to talk to you. Your friend in the plane? She's going to switch frequencies. You'll be able to talk with her on our handheld radio."
Guy and I ran inside.
Gloria resumed her spot behind her desk. I tried to make sense of my temporary fixation on her splendid legs as she sat and those legs disappeared behind the black metal skirt of the desk. Couldn't. I watched her adjust the frequency on the handheld radio to ‘22.75 and grabbed it as soon as she offered it to me.
Manner of Death Page 20
