“Oh, I’d remember.” Jack lifted the glass to his lips and sipped. But his Adam’s apple didn’t shift. Agents on duty couldn’t drink alcohol. I wanted another eye roll. Was it too much for his reverse psychology theory to come in here dressed as an agent and ask for a nonalcoholic drink?
Sally smiled back at him. “Nobody’s ever come here dressed like an FBI agent.” She kept smiling but I noticed tension in her lined face. Like the smile was held together with guy-wires. “So what’s in the briefcase?”
“Two hundred grand.” Jack winked. “Well, minus the amount dug up. You know how much that is?”
She shrugged. Not believably. “I heard it was a setup.”
Jack set his glass on the bar. “What kind of setup?”
“Bait.”
He frowned. “For what?”
“Just something I heard.” She gave another shrug, just as unbelievable, and lined up the wet glasses to dry on the rubber mat. “Keep it under wraps.”
“I will.” He flashed another smile. “You must hear a lot.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Look at this place.” More butter melted, all the way to Antarctica. “You’ve got yourself a whole tribe of Coopers.”
“Yeah. We have some fun.” She glanced at me, her cool gray eyes taking in my flashy red outfit. Every ounce of melted butter froze. “Get you something—coffee, tea—a trip to Mexico?”
Jack laughed.
“Coke. Please. No crushed ice.”
“Oooh. No crushed ice. Fancy lady.” She strode down the wooden pallets that covered the floor behind the bar.
Jack and I remained silent. The loud murmur of the crowd boxed my ears and on the jukebox, a singer warned about a bad moon rising on the right. When I turned to my right, I saw it dressed as an FBI agent.
“Hi,” he said, still melting butter. “Any chance you get to keep that costume?”
“None. In fact, at midnight I turn into a pumpkin.”
“And drive men out of their gourds.”
The big flirt. First Sally, now me. All for work.
Sally plunked down a glass of Coke—no ice at all—and glanced at Jack. “You two together, make it one tab?”
“No, ma’am.” Jack winked at her. “The stewardess says I’m in the wrong seat.”
“Typical.” Sally’s smile was a high-wire act. “I’d find a new seat.”
“Hey, Sal!” A heavyset Cooper lifted his sunglasses, standing down at the other end of the bar. “How ’bout some service over here?”
She turned and walked away.
“Wow, Jack, I don’t think she appreciates your humor.”
“Flirt with me.”
My head snapped toward him. “Excuse me?”
“Harmon, she’s catching on. Cover us. Act like you want me, like you want me to go home with you tonight.”
My throat strangled itself.
“Harmon—”
“Okay.” I glanced around, stuffing down the blush coming up my throat. “But I’ll need some acting lessons. Where’s Eleanor?”
He picked up his drink, touching it to his lips. “Then act like we don’t know each other.”
“That’s easy. I don’t know you.” I turned my back to him. The sea of Coopers looked like somebody had called central casting.
“Fighting’s good,” Jack said. “Now act like I’m turning you down.”
I picked up my Coke. “I’m sorry, is your reverse psychology not working?”
“The woman looked shocked when she saw me. Like she knew I was the real deal.”
“Imagine that.” I leaned back against the counter. “I guess your charm doesn’t work on every woman.”
His eyes shifted to aquamarine, and something painful floated there. But I looked away. Take it from the stuffed monkey. Don’t make it personal.
Jack slowly set down the drink. “You find anything talking to that guy?”
Smiling like I was flirting with him, I told him about my new buddy Earl and the gambling setup that was here for generations. “There’s a theory around here that Cooper landed in the area and laundered the money gambling. Maybe that’s why he bailed out of that plane when he did. Maybe the lumberjacks helped him dispose of the parachutes.”
Jack glanced over at Sally. “Money that couldn’t be spent. Or the law would drop on her.”
The two of us glanced in opposite directions, like people playing it casual and looking for better prospects. I listened to the jukebox, telling the story of me and Bobby McGee. “Earl said Sally high-tailed it to the buried money location. Almost didn’t make it back for the festival. Why would she be that keen about the money? She doesn’t seem broke.”
Jack looked around the bar, and I followed his gaze. Across the back area, a braided rope tied from wall to wall held a dangling sign. Closed To The Public. No Trespassing.
When he looked back at me, his piqued interest stopped my heart dead. Only it wasn’t for me.
“How good an actress is Eleanor?” he asked.
I picked up my Coke. “Every day she deserves an Oscar.”
“How about death scenes?”
“Death scenes are her favorite. She says they remind her she’s alive.” I looked over, suddenly suspicious. “Why?”
22
Somebody raised a toast to D.B. Cooper and the cheers swam around me, loud cries of people hiding behind costumes, drinking, celebrating. As the happy noise died down, one tiny aging stewardess clutched her chest, shoved a falsie out of the way, and cried, “Oh! The pain—the pain!”
On cue, Jack and I ran for her.
Eleanor latched onto the edge of the bar, waited two beats for Jack, then collapsed into his arms. “My heart—it’s my heart!”
I bent down, hearing Jack whisper in her ear. “Don’t overdo it.”
Fat chance. I straightened. The many faces of D.B. Cooper stared back at me. The would-be hijackers looked suddenly subdued. Raising my voice to project panic, I waved my arms. “I think she’s having a heart attack!”
Sally came running from behind the bar. I glanced down at Eleanor. Her fake eyelashes were quivering like spider legs.
“Ma’am?” Sally whisked down to Eleanor’s side. “Ma’am, can you hear me?”
Eleanor lifted one ringed hand, before letting it flop on the sawdust floor. “This is the end!”
Jack looked up at me. His expression said her acting was a bit much. But why not? Everyone in here was acting.
As if hearing my thoughts, Eleanor once more raised her hand. The fingers glittering with diamonds and rubies grabbed a nearby pant leg. It belonged to a D.B. Cooper of lumberjack size. Eleanor yanked his pants.
“What the—” The guy dropped.
Eleanor’s eyelashes were fluttering again as she rasped, “There is nothing without the kindness of strangers.”
Jack glared at me. “I don’t think we have long.”
Fortunately Marvelous appeared. He wasn’t in on the ruse, but he gave a very helpful scream. “Eleanor—my God! Somebody call an ambulance!”
I waved my phone. “Calling 9-1-1.”
“Hurry!” Marvin wailed. “She’s dying!”
Someone else ran for blankets. A glass of water appeared. I gripped the phone against my ear, kicked my boots through the sawdust, and made sure my voice carried above the crowd. “Hello? Can you hear me? This is an emergency!”
I kept moving, speaking into the dead phone until I reached the rope with the no-admittance signs. I glanced back. The crowd ringed around Eleanor and the jukebox Rolling Stones insisted I couldn’t always get what I wanted—but if I tried sometimes, I got what I needed.
I whipped a go-go boot over the rope and slid into the darkened back area. Five more steps and the crowd seemed to disappear. I flicked on the phone’s flashlight feature and found two doors. Both had signs reading NO ADMITTANCE. Which to me looked like—OPEN BOTH.
The first door was that same thin wood that model airplanes are made of. It had a simp
le knob lock. The other door, however, was steel secured with a deadbolt. Reaching into my Marvelous-styled hat, I yanked out two bobby pins, bit off the little plastic ball ends, and twisted one pin into an L-shape until it looked exactly like the torque wrench used by locksmiths. Whispering prayers, I wiggled the pins into the deadbolt. Down the hall, the crowd exclaimed. Eleanor was milking the attention. Good thing because the lock took longer than I hoped.
When it finally popped, I stepped into the room, closed the door, and coughed. The cigarette stink was even more powerful in here, and deeper. That rank heavy spice of cured tobacco leaves. Cigars. I lifted the phone, scanning the light around the space.
My phone buzzed.
Text from Jack: Someone else calling ambulance.
I texted back: How much time left?
NONE, he wrote.
Cushioned metal chairs were parked against two walls that showed bulging drywall seams. I placed my hands on the surface, pressing, feeling for any hidden chambers. My phone buzzed.
Harmon!
Three tables were in the center of the room. Each one was covered with green felt. Poker, blackjack, craps. I turned, shining the light’s beam behind me, and found a shrine.
D.B. Cooper’s shrine.
Newspaper clippings.
I stepped closer.
Maps.
November 25, 1971. Front page of The Seattle Times. The Tacoma News Tribune. The Oregonian. And beyond. St. Louis Post-Dispatch. New York Times. The next section held updated clippings from the seventies and eighties and nineties—every single time something that ever came up about D.B. Cooper. I walked along the wall, examining the maps. One looked like an aviator’s map, displaying flight routes for Northwest Airlines. Curved blue lines leaped from Portland to Seattle to Reno. Another map looked identical to the technical analysis I found in the FBI archives. The third map showed a different route, drawn by hand, and stopping just north of the Columbia River. I leaned in closer. Something was written at the terminal point. The path ended … here. Sally’s Bar.
My phone buzzed.
Ambulance one minute away, tops.
In the distance, a siren wailed, becoming louder with every second. Lifting the phone, I took pictures of the wall and the room, then slid the door lock in place. But as I closed it, I caught another whiff of something, an odor humming under the cigars. Something as rancid as greed. Decades of it seeping from those shoddy walls and that shrine to a thief named Cooper. Were all those newspaper clippings just idle folklore? Maybe. But the maps? Maybe not.
But one thing seemed certain. Cooper had help that night. And that help meant mutually assured destruction—one person talked, everyone went to jail.
I walked down the darkened hall. In front of me, the main door burst open. EMTs rushed inside, laden with equipment and a body board. I pressed my cell phone to my ear.
“I can’t hear you!” I said to the silence on the other end. “It’s all broken up.”
23
Marvelous was a wreck—and close to causing one—as he floored the van, speeding behind the ambulance. I gripped the captain’s seat. Jack braced himself in the back, silent as still water.
“Marvelous,” I said, as the van peeled around turn. “You can take it easy, Eleanor was acting.”
“Eleanor’s always acting.” He punched the gas pedal. “But this was real.”
“No, I’m telling you, it was fake.” I glanced back at Jack, stabilized between the stuffed purple throne and the seamstress mannequin. The sight would be funny, except for his dead-serious expression. I nodded toward our berserk driver, calling in backup.
“Marvin,” he said, in his strongest FBI voice, “we told Eleanor to pretend she was having a heart attack.”
“Is that so?” Marvelous’ voice rose several octaves. “Then you’re either really cruel or really stupid.”
“Excuse me?” I squeaked.
He swung the van around a right turn so quickly I slammed into the passenger door, listening to pinwheeling prosthetic limbs clatter around the back like collapsing skeletons. Jack let out a grunt. I pushed myself upright and saw Marvelous was tailgating the ambulance so closely I could read the medics’ faces in back of the wagon. A familiar dread crept into my heart.
“Marvelous, is there something wrong—for real—with Eleanor?”
He leaned over the steering wheel, the skinny D.B. Cooper tie swinging, like a man hoping to launch himself over the hood and into the ambulance. “Her heart.”
I watched as the medics ripped open a box and yanked something out. “What?”
“Her heart speeds up all by itself. Sometimes it beats two hundred times a minute, when she’s sitting in a chair.” Marvelous flicked his gaze at me. “She never told you?”
Dread cemented itself to my gut. “No. She never told me.”
“That’s why she quit acting. Her heart was racing, it was affecting her delivery. Harry took her to all the best specialists—he once flew her to Switzerland—but even a full heart transplant was no guarantee.”
“How—”
“Medication.” He frowned at me. “Medication and keeping excitement to a minimum.”
Now the afternoon naps she took made sense. All those healthy meals she pushed at me. Even how she referred to her evening martini as “medicinal.” I opened my mouth to say something, but the ambulance squealed into a lighted hospital bay marked EMERGENCY. Marvelous sped into the first empty parking spot and jumped out before I could even unbuckle my seatbelt. I reached for the door handle. But a familiar paralyzing sensation was taking hold. My hands felt numb.
“Harmon?”
I didn’t turn around.
“It’s not your fault.”
I climbed out of the van and walked toward the Emergency Room.
She looked so pale her complexion blended with the white-cloud hair. They’d torn away the dazzling stewardess uniform and draped her in a drab hospital gown. I stood beside the bed and whispered.
“Eleanor.”
Without the flashy rhinestone glasses, her face looked tired. As if her energy drained with the removal of the glittery stones. Thin plastic tubes slithered to her left hand. I held her right hand in mine, touching the fingers that now looked frail, stripped of their powerful rings. Like the missing glasses, the plain appearance made her look weaker.
“Eleanor?”
The long lashes fluttered. “Raleigh, get the hook.”
“I’m sorry, what—?”
“My act is over. Get the hook, time to get off this stage.”
“No.” I shook my head. “Marvelous told me about your heart. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because Marvelous is full of nonsense. I’m fine.”
“You’re not. I saw those medics in the ambulance, they looked scared. Like your heart had stopped.”
“What you witnessed, my dear, was a truly gifted thespian doing her job.” She raised her chin. But her volume wasn’t the same. It was almost a rasp. “You call me a destitute woman but all these treasures are locked in my heart.”
I forced the words out of my mouth. “Who said that?”
“Blanche.” She squeezed my fingers. “Scene ten.”
I nodded, my own heart pounding, punching its fist into my ribcage. “Eleanor—”
She gave my fingers another good squeeze. “Be a dear, Raleigh. Go find that child-doctor they released from medical school this morning.”
The child-doctor stood beside Eleanor’s bed, his short cap of black hair looking like a Jewish yarmulke. He glared at me, then at Eleanor. But saved his final glance for Marvelous, who stood at his side.
“You do realize this is totally AMA?” the doctor said.
“Yes.” Marvelous nodded, vigorously. “And I’d like you to keep her—”
“Give me the other rings.” Eleanor was shoving a seven-carat ruby on her swollen knuckle. “What in the world did you people pump me with—fat juice?”
“Mrs. Anderson, your body’s in a stat
e of pronounced inflammation due to—”
“Your arrogant attitude. Listen to me, young man. I’m a grown woman. I’ll make my own choices, thank you very much. Now somebody, please, get me out of this expensive death trap.”
Eleanor started bellowing for her “red hat” and coat. “And what happened to my go-go boots?”
The doctor hung his head.
I stood across from him. “Doctor?”
He looked up, a hard resignation settled on his face.
I didn’t like seeing it. “You said something about ‘AMA.’ What is that?”
“Against Medical Advice.” His voice was grim. “Mrs. Anderson, your heart—”
“Belongs to me,” she sang, loudly.
He blinked. Looked at me. But I said nothing more. My entire body was being split down the middle, divided into two warring wishes.
Throwing back the white sheet, Eleanor shook her left arm, flapping the plastic tubes against the bedrails. “This is my life. And I order you to sever these blasted tethers. Now!”
Back inside the van, Marvelous drove like a man who believed the pavement was packed with landmines.
“Eleanor,” he said. “You scared me.”
She adjusted her rhinestone glasses. “Then I was really good.”
“No. No, not good.” He sounded ready to cry. “I thought we were going to lose you.”
“You can’t lose me. I’m timeless.” She patted her white hair, flattened in back. “That might be my best performance in years.”
“Tomorrow you go straight to your doctor. Promise me.”
“Marvelous, that’s an excellent suggestion.”
“Yes. Yes, it is. He knows your medical history and—”
“If he’s swayed by my performance, I’ll know there’s been no diminishment of my thespian skills.”
Sitting behind them in back, I glanced over at Jack. He’d uncuffed the briefcase, his arms bent around his knees while the glow of oncoming headlights swept across the windshield and outlined the contours of his face, the way a sketch artist might draw him. Crisp chin. High symmetrical cheekbones. The broad intelligent forehead that seemed to frame his focused gaze. He stared straight ahead, never looking over at me. But I kept looking at him, committing that face to deepest memory, the place where nothing is ever forgotten. When I closed my eyes, I saw his face traced on the back of my eyelids. Memory’s artist. And it made me wonder about a fourteen-year-old girl who had taken her sketch pad to the beach one night. I lay my head on the purple throne.
The Moon Stands Still Page 12
