Coffee, Tea, or Murder? (2 page)

A few years later, I was surprised, and delighted, to read that he’d put together financing to launch a new airline, SilverAir. Shortly after that announcement, he and Christine returned to Cabot Cove to bask in the accolades thrown his way—local boy makes good, again—and to tout the airline to local civic and professional groups. That’s when I renewed my acquaintance with him and Christine, and I’d followed the progress of his start-up airline leading to the day when I, along with others from the town, received an invitation to join a group of dignitaries, members of the press, and friends on the upstart airline’s maiden voyage to England.

 

“But you are going, aren’t you?” I said to my friend of many years, Dr. Seth Hazlitt, who’d also received an invitation from Wayne Silverton.

“I can’t say I’m much inclined,” he replied. “You know I’ve never been a fan of flying. Bad enough on one of the big, established airlines. But this one is brand spankin’ new. Might be smart to wait till they’ve gotten the kinks out.”

“It doesn’t seem to me that being new means much,” Mort Metzger, our sheriff, chimed in. We were having breakfast together at Mara’s, our favorite local eatery down at the Cabot Cove dock. “I’m sure Silverton wouldn’t get involved with anything unsafe.”

“You’re just parroting what Maureen says,” Seth said. “I’m sure she’s chompin’ at the bit to go. Your wife is always up for going somewhere.”

“She’s adventurous, that’s true,” Mort said, “but—”

“Wayne Silverton was always a little too slick for my taste,” Seth said, spearing the final piece of blueberry pancake on his plate. “Made his money out in Las Vegas. Sounds a bit fishy to me.”

“It’s a big city, Doc. Lots of people make money there,” Mort said.

“There may have been times he had to be ‘slick,’ as you term it, Seth, to have been so successful in business,” I said in Wayne’s defense. “Big business can be cutthroat.”

“Well,” Seth said, patting his mouth with his napkin and leaning back in his seat, “be that as it may, I’ll have to give this inaugural flight business a little more thought.”

Mara, who’d been busy in the kitchen, came to the table, a pot of coffee in her hand. She topped off Mort’s cup. “I’ve got another pot of decaf brewing,” she said to Seth and me. “Everything else to your satisfaction?”

“Always is,” Mort said.

“So?” Mara asked, taking in the three of us. “Are you going to Boston to be on SilverAir’s first flight?”

“Looks like Mrs. F., Maureen, and I are,” Mort replied. “Doc, here, he’s not so sure.”

“He just likes to be convinced. Isn’t that right, Doc?” Mara gave me a sly wink.

Seth grunted but didn’t reply.

“You couldn’t get me on one of those things for all the money in the world,” she said.

“You’ve never flown, Mara?” Mort asked.

“Never have, never will. Don’t see any wings on this back, do you? Until you do, I’ll stay right here. Man wasn’t made to fly.”

“He wasn’t made to drive, either, Mara,” Seth said, “but I notice you get around town in a car.”

“That’s different,” she said, taking Seth’s plate before he could scrape up the last bit of syrup with his fork.

The bell over the door rang, and we all turned as Cabot Cove’s mayor, Jim Shevlin, entered the luncheonette.

“Good morning, Your Honor,” Seth said as Shevlin pulled up a chair.

“Good morning, all,” Shevlin said. To Mara: “A dry English muffin, if you don’t mind, and—”

“A bowl of fruit,” she finished for him. “Be right back.”

“On a diet?” Mort asked.

“I’m always on a diet,” the mayor said. “So, I understand you’ve all been invited on SilverAir’s first trip, too.”

“That’s right,” I said.

“Susan and I are really looking forward to it,” Shevlin said. “It was nice of Wayne to remember his Cabot Cove roots, especially since we haven’t seen the man in a few years, except in the news recently every now and then. Jenkins and Marterella were invited and are going, too.” Richard Jenkins and Sal Marterella were members of our city council. “Lucky for us Silverton doesn’t do any business with the town, so there’s no conflict. I understand there were some state officials on the invite list, but they turned him down. Still, Maine’ll be well represented. Jed Richardson told me he and the missus plan on making the flight.” Jed was a former airline pilot who’d retired, returned to Cabot Cove with his wife, Barbara, and established his own small charter airline, as well as a flight school. I’d taken flying lessons from him and earned my private pilot’s license.

Mort and I looked at Seth. I said, “How can you not join everyone, Seth?”

Mort said, “Silverton’ll feel insulted if Cabot Cove’s leading physician turns him down.”

“I said I’d think about it and I will,” Seth said, standing and laying money on the table. “Right now I’ve got me a waiting room full of patients who need”—he looked down at Mort—“who need Cabot Cove’s leading physician. Good day, everyone.”

 

I went up the steps leading into the 767 aircraft, followed by Seth Hazlitt, the Metzgers, the Shevlins, and other guests invited to experience the new airline on its first commercial flight to London.

A flight attendant dressed in a silver jumpsuit with blue accessories welcomed us aboard.

“What a stunning uniform,” I told her.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” she said, turning to allow me to view it from another angle. “Wayne—Mr. Silverton—hired top Italian designers. I feel like a movie star in it.”

I laughed. “And you look like one, too,” I said. The name on her ID tag read GINA MOLNARI. I didn’t know her nationality, but she could have given the most glamorous of Italian and Greek actresses a run for their money where looks were concerned. Her eyes were large and dark. Her smooth skin was a light olive color, her hair pitch black. And her outfit looked as though it had been tailored to perfectly fit her decidedly female form.

She greeted Seth, who was directly behind me, and I walked ahead to take in the aircraft’s interior. It looked vastly different than any commercial airliner I’d been on in the past few years. The wide-body jet hadn’t been configured into different classes. There was no partition for a first class or business class compartment. Instead the spacious interior was wide open and contained far fewer seats than was usual. A second flight attendant, as attractive as the first, said after reading my name tag, “Just a hundred and two seats, Mrs. Fletcher. Plenty of room to stretch out and enjoy the flight.”

“It certainly looks comfortable,” I said, continuing to inspect my surroundings. A great deal of money had obviously been spent designing and creating the single-class cabin. Everything was silver and blue, with small, tasteful touches of red to add visual contrast.

“Take any seat,” the flight attendant said. “There are no assigned seats on this special flight.”

The 102 seats in the spacious cabin were designed to swivel so that four people could create a conversation area. Seth, the Metzgers, and I manipulated them into that arrangement and sat to look through the packet of reading material that had been left on each seat. I glanced up at a video extolling SilverAir, which ran on state-of-the-art screens suspended from the ceiling.

Once we had settled into our seats, a third flight attendant, this one a young man wearing a masculine variation of what the women wore, came to offer drinks. “My name’s John Slater,” he said pleasantly. He was a good-looking fellow, of medium build, slender, with large, sensuous eyes, and wavy dark brown hair that fell softly over his brow. “I’ll be one of your flight attendants for this flight.”

“Wonderful meeting you,” I said. “This is very exciting, being on a maiden flight.”

“I’m excited, too,” he said, giving forth with an engaging smile. “I’m really happy to be working for SilverAir. I think passengers are going to come aboard as happy campers.” He laughed. “That’s not the case with the last airline I worked for. Hundreds of angry people on every flight. Mr. Silverton has the right idea: Charge a little more and give a lot more. Welcome aboard.”

We all ordered juices; it was a little too early in the day for anything stronger.

The cabin quickly filled up. Spirits were high, and there were a lot of “oohs” and “aahs” as people reacted to the posh cabin. Because we would be in London for only two nights, people had brought a minimal amount of luggage and stowed most of it in overhead bins. Maureen Metzger, however, who was affectionately known to friends who traveled with her as the “Luggage Queen,” had packed as though we’d be away for two weeks, much to Mort’s chagrin, although he was a good sport about it.

“Pretty nice plane, huh, Doc?” Mort said. “Glad you decided to come along?”

“It doesn’t matter how pretty it is, Mort. What counts are those two engines hanging from the wings. And I’ll tell you how glad I am at the end of the trip, if they function correctly and we land safely.”

As drinks were being served, Wayne Silverton moved through the cabin, chatting with his guests and making everyone feel at home. He stopped to speak with us. As he did, I looked past him to where his wife, Christine, was engaged in an animated, I’d even say angry, conversation with the flight attendant who’d greeted us as we boarded. I couldn’t make out their words, but it was evident that Christine was not happy with something the beautiful Gina had said or done. Christine straightened her back and turned sharply in our direction, with her features relaxed back into a serene expression, a smile on her lips. The flight attendant, however, couldn’t cover her emotions so swiftly. She fixed Christine’s retreating form with a hateful stare.

Oh, my,
I thought as I returned my attention to Wayne, who was spouting forth on his determination to fix what was wrong with commercial aviation.

“We’ll talk more once we’re airborne,” he said. “Wouldn’t want to hold up the departure. We’re anticipating a very smooth flight. Sit back and enjoy the trip. You’re about to experience air travel the way it used to be—and should be.”

No turbulence expected outside, I thought, and with a bit of luck we would have the same conditions aboard. I hoped the exchange between the two women wouldn’t prove me wrong.

B
ecause the aircraft wasn’t parked at a gate, there was no need to have it pushed back. The powerful twin jet engines came to life, and we inched forward in the direction of our assigned taxiway and runway. I was looking out the window at other aircraft when Wayne suddenly appeared again.

“What’s this I hear from Jed Richardson that you’re a pilot, Jessica?” he asked.

I laughed. “I do have my private pilot’s license.”

“She can fly a plane all right,” said Seth, “but still doesn’t have a driver’s license.”

I responded with feigned indignation. “I’ll have you know that I am fully licensed to operate any bicycle with two wheels.”

“Tell you what, Jessica,” Silverton said. “How would you like to sit up front during takeoff?”

“In the cockpit?”

“Yup. Give you a great view, and you can watch the pros up there in action.”

“You lucky thing,” Maureen Metzger said.

“Don’t pass this up,” said Mort.

“Wonderful,” I said, undoing my seat belt and following Wayne to the locked door that led to the flight deck.

“Mrs. Fletcher will be using the jump seat up front during takeoff,” Wayne told the flight attendant, who sat in a small seat that pulled down from the wall. She unsnapped her seat belt and used a key to open the door, causing the captain and his first officer to turn.

“This is Jessica Fletcher, the famous mystery writer,” Wayne said in a voice loud enough to override the engine noise. “She’s also a pilot. I thought she’d enjoy watching the takeoff from up here.”

The captain, a heavyset man with close-cropped gray hair, didn’t look especially pleased with the suggestion. He grunted and pointed to a small seat directly behind him, which I knew was used for airline check pilots, FAA officials, or off-duty pilots hitching a ride back home. Having a civilian outsider in the cockpit was evidently okay, since this was a special promotional flight and the request came from the airline’s owner. Under normal circumstances, and especially after the tragedy of Nine Eleven, the notion would have been unthinkable.

I settled into my assigned seat, secured my seat belt, and watched wide-eyed as the two-man cockpit crew skillfully maneuvered the huge plane to its assigned location on the busy field. The first officer, considerably younger than the captain, seemed to be doing most of the work. After completing a rundown of the preflight checklist, he looked back at me, smiled, and said, “Welcome to the flight deck. We should have a smooth flight for most of the trip.”

“I’m looking forward to every minute of it,” I replied.

“Now that we’ve got a real pilot aboard, maybe you’d like to switch seats with me and handle the takeoff.”

I laughed and said, “Careful. I might lose my mind and take you up on it.”

He returned to his duties, and the captain turned to me and said, “Welcome aboard, Mrs. Fletcher. Don’t listen to Carl here. He’ll do anything to get out of working.”

“Carl Scherer,” the first officer said over his shoulder. “Pleased to meet you, ma’am.”

“My wife’s a fan of your books, probably has every one of them,” the captain said.

“I’m always happy to hear that,” I said, pleased that his initial gruff demeanor had softened.

“Name’s Caine, Bill Caine,” he said, managing to reach around his seat back to shake my hand.

“Thank you,” I said, “for allowing me this experience.”

“What do you fly?” he asked.

“Nothing as big as this bird,” I replied. “I have all my hours in a Cessna 172.”

“Love that plane,” he said. “I own one myself, fly it on weekends.”

“A busman’s holiday.”

“That’s
real
flying, Mrs. Fletcher. Up here we pretty much sit back and let the computers do the work. I fly my Cessna on my time off to stay honest. Why don’t you put on those headphones and listen in to the tower and traffic control.”