Final Approach (7 page)

Chapter Fifteen

Everyone flocked to Donna. She’d been unlucky enough to have her first malfunction on a day the drop zone was thick with curious on-lookers. I scanned faces in the crowd gathered around her and watched as she good-naturedly answered all the questions. Donna’s cutaway bothered me far more than it bothered her.

I lifted my rig, lighter without the main, from the back of Rick’s truck and headed for the loft to find Billy. Yellow nylon from the deployed reserve overflowed from my arms and hung down to my knees.

Marie was last to leave the office to check on Donna. When the door swung behind her, I caught it with my foot and managed to squeeze inside before any fabric got pinched in the door. Instead of Billy, Craig was in the loft, hunched over the workbench, dialing his cell phone. I stepped backward, out of sight, and listened.

“Monday morning at two,” he said quietly. “I’ll be in touch.” Then his phone snapped closed.

Silently, I placed my gear on the office floor and slunk away, wondering what I’d overheard. Maybe Richard could help make sense of it. My own phone was in my tent, and I went to get it. Scud stopped me in the hangar.

“Guess who’s in ground school,” he said. “The diva from this morning. Remember? The one with the sexy boots?” He laughed like he couldn’t imagine what Jeannie had been thinking.

I smiled to myself and walked on to my tent. I knew exactly what she’d been thinking:
Screw you, Emily.
I’d chosen as my best friend the only woman in the world willing to jump from a plane for spite.

“Touché,” I muttered, and slipped inside my tent. Hearing no one else around, I dialed Richard.

I started with Craig’s mysterious four-second phone call and worked backward through Donna’s malfunction and then to my midnight search. I was almost to the part about how Craig caught me when Richard interrupted.

“Did you say flight logs?”

I pictured the notebooks in the workbench drawer. “They looked like flight logs.”

“Did you read them?”

“It was too dark.”

“I’d like to know what was in those logs. Might have something to do with that pilot.”

During my pilfering, I’d neglected to study the most obvious items I’d found. What was wrong with me?

“I’ll handle it.” If I had to steal them, copy them, or sneak in and memorize them, I’d get the information from the logs. Richard didn’t have to ask. It was my mistake. I owed this to Casey.

We said goodbye and I returned to the office to take care of my gear. I found the main, crudely folded, laying along the wall of the carpeted packing area and figured Rick had moved it from the truck for me. I scooped it up and returned to the loft, feeling better prepared to face Craig.

Who, it turned out, had company.

Billy and two people I hadn’t met were with him, standing beside a collection of disassembled gear, inspecting pieces and nodding and pointing. Craig pulled a block of folded fabric from a box. As soon as it was free, it separated and expanded like a gas. Layers of beautiful crisp nylon, all shades of purple, cascaded over the bench.

It looked like the riggers were about to assemble a new parachute system. I figured the likely owner was the tan and athletic man hovering near the crisp, new canopy. A woman behind him slipped her arms around his waist and kissed the back of his shoulder, her blond hair gently falling down her back in a wispy French braid. She was the pilot Karen Lyons had recognized.

Billy noticed me first and nodded. “Heard you had a mal.”

“Not me.” I shifted my gaze to Craig. “My gear.”

I watched for something revealing in his expression but his face was bland as ever.

“Emily Locke,” I said, extending my hand to the new guy.

He took it warmly and introduced himself as David Meyer. His lovely, potentially criminal girlfriend was Trish Dalton. She shook my hand with a limp, disinterested grip. A diamond tennis bracelet shimmered on her wrist, partially obscuring a dainty tattoo. The tattoo seemed out of place on a preppy woman like her. She wore a crisp polo-style shirt with a Green Bay Packers emblem. The shirt was tucked neatly around her slender waist into carefully pressed khaki shorts.

“You from Wisconsin?” I asked.

Trish forced the type of condescending smile I associate with rich snobs. “Not originally.”

I imagined from her accent she might be an oil-snooty, southern belle type.

“She worked at the Wisconsin Jump Center outside of Green Bay for a while,” David said.

“How’d you like that DZ?” I asked. “I’ve never made it up that way.”

She shook her head dismissively, and waved off the question with a swat. “Jerks.”

I wondered what Trish had against her earlier employer. Before I could probe, she whispered something to David, kissed him on the cheek, and said she’d catch us later. Just like that, she was gone.

I glanced at the drawer where I’d seen the flight logs, and wondered how to get them. With both riggers in the room, and a full complement of gear to assemble for David, it seemed unlikely the room would be vacant any time soon. I told Billy I’d check in with him later about my repack, and left.

***

Richard got busy right away running the names Trish Dalton, Trisha Dalton, and Patricia Dalton through his databases. He turned up several matches for women who’d been employed in Texas and Wisconsin and were near my estimate of thirty to thirty-five years old. Converging on the right one would take a while longer. It was the news he’d received from Don Schaffer, the owner of Wisconsin Jump Center, that he most wanted to share. Trish Dalton had been let go. And it wasn’t because she was incompetent, insubordinate, or chronically late. Trish had been let go because of unauthorized use of the planes.

I walked alone outside the hangar and mulled it over. Trish flew for Eric Lyons’ company. Karen recognized her from company travel. It was likely Trish had crossed paths with Casey on one or more of Eric’s trips. Casey was missing. Trish used planes without asking. Had she snatched him and flown him off somewhere?

***

A dog barked in the parking lot and I was happy to see Cindy. She thumped her tail at me from her post in the back of Vince’s truck. Her tongue lolled in a drooling pant and made her look like she was smiling. Vince’s guitar case rested, abandoned, in the back with her again.

I gave Cindy her requisite strokes and lifted the guitar case out of the truck. I tried to think of something witty to say when I found Vince.

It turned out he found me first.

“Tryin’ to steal it?”

He walked up from the direction of the hangar, sporting a day of stubble and the same black cowboy hat pulled low over his forehead. Evidently, his wardrobe was limited to jeans and solid colored tees. This one was hunter green and brought out his eyes. When he got closer, I smelled aftershave. I was pretty sure that was new.

“I’m not stealing it,” I said. “I’m moving it inside. You don’t deserve this guitar.”

He took the case from me, letting his palm brush the back of my hand. Then he headed for the hangar. I followed.

“Actually,” he said, “I was coming out to get it. Good thing too, because here you are, thieving it again.”

We walked to the same corner where I’d found his guitar on my first day. He set it down, crossed his arms, and looked at me.

Trish emerged from around the corner and crossed the packing area on her way to a cooler. I thought she and Vince exchanged a cold look, but it passed so quickly I doubted what I’d seen.

He turned back to me. “Get your gear,” he said, simply. “It’s time to jump.”

“Can’t.”

I explained about Donna and my disassembled gear.

Vince shook his head. “I came all the way here on my day off to jump with you, and you don’t even have a rig. Pitiful.”

He picked up his guitar case again. “Guess I should have asked you before hauling this in here.”

“You’re not…Are you leaving?”

“Yep,” he said. “And so are you. Let’s go.”

I smiled. “Go where? Since when do I take orders from you?”

He winked and gave me a playful nudge toward the parking lot.

***

I liked the rugged feel of Vince’s pick-up as it hummed down farm roads, past brown fields and rows of giant, round hay bales. Vince drove a little too fast, and I liked that too. At the highway, we passed a billboard advertising fence repairs in both English and Spanish, and headed south to Freeport, an industrial little town apparently centered around natural gas companies. Street names like Glycol Road and Chlorine Road made me think the town was all business, an impression reinforced by a long series of factories and smoke-stacks streaming by my passenger-side window.

At a red light, I stared at the gargantuan steel framework of one of the factories. Its endless maze of pipes and reinforcements struck me as cold and impersonal, and the ugly steam pumping out did nothing to soften my opinion. “You sure know how to impress a girl.”

Vince only winked and gunned the truck when the light changed. Palm trees and gulls gave me the notion water was near, even though I couldn’t see it anywhere. Then we started up an enormous bridge over the Intracoastal Waterway, and suddenly I saw water for miles.

Flat boats and industrial ships floated motionless in the channel below, and more factories and stacks populated the marshy landscape to the east. Straight ahead, the Gulf of Mexico dominated the view. Massive and infinite, the ocean was royal blue everywhere except for a wide band of white where the sun glinted off its choppy waves. It was the first truly majestic thing I had seen for years.

Vince turned onto a pitted, desolate road that ran parallel to the coast. On our left, one sign said Plant Entrance while another said Beach Access on our right.

He took the right and eventually the road morphed to sand. Vince didn’t let off the gas, though, and his tires slipped the same way mine did in snow. “Quintana Beach.”

I looked up and down the shoreline and saw only sand, waves, and tread marks. “Where do those tracks go?”

He parked the truck and opened his door. “Let’s find out.”

I stepped onto damp sand and took a deep breath. The low rumble of the surf and light ocean breeze made the beach all the more beautiful. Vince unchained Cindy and the three of us walked ankle deep in the surf, Vince and I carrying our shoes. He’d brought a faded tennis ball, and Cindy was dying for it. She lunged into the ocean and tirelessly swam into the waves until she sometimes disappeared behind them, all for that stupid little ball. Each time she came back, she shook water all over us. I was beginning to feel the tightness of salt drying to my skin.

“You really came out today to jump with me?”

He pulled the ball back, tossed it high over the waves, and didn’t take his eyes off it.

“Yep.”

We watched Cindy leap into the frothy tide and paddle until her head was barely visible.

She mouthed the ball and turned back.

“Wow,” I said. “You must really like the way I skydive.”

He directed an embarrassed smile at the sand.

“Not really,” he said, redirecting his attention to the dog. “You’re an Average Jane skydiver.”

I huffed and playfully shoved his shoulder.

“But I do like the way you sing. Nothing average about that.”

I grinned and looked away. The compliment made me uncomfortably self-aware.

“It remains to be seen about your personality,” he said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I don’t know you very well yet. You might turn out to be a nut, or a…bore.”

“A bore?”

He smiled. “I’m sure there are lots of wonderful singers with no personality.”

I moved to slug him again, and he stepped backward and stumbled over his sopping wet dog. The next wave crashed, soaking his jeans with seawater from the knees down. Cindy didn’t care. She shoved the ball into his fist and waited, staring at it.

Vince looked from his drenched pants to me, accusingly.

“Women,” he muttered to the dog, and tossed the ball.

“Men and dogs,” I replied.

Eventually we came to a fishing pier and Cindy doubled back. Vince explained this was a regular walk for them and we’d arrived at the halfway point. It felt nice to be included in their routine.

Before driving back, he asked me to play for him again. It was becoming a regular thing for us and, he joked, was mutually beneficial: He liked my voice. I liked his guitar.

My song ended abruptly when I broke a string.

“Concert’s over.” I removed the broken string and shoved it in the back pocket of my jeans.

“Naw,” he said, and brushed my cheek. “This is only intermission.”

Chapter Sixteen

“Guess I’m not supposed to skydive in leather pants,” Jeannie said, running her hands over her tightly fitted hips.

I looked her over. “Or high heels.”

She lit up again and we walked across the grass to my tent. She stomped her cigarette into the damp ground and we crawled inside, Jeannie taking care to avoid kneeling in the grass. I fished in my bag for a top and shorts to loan her. She’d need them to practice exits and parachute landing falls. I unlaced my only pair of sneakers, handed them over, and slipped into Birkenstock sandals instead. Jack used to call them my Lesbian Shoes. Jeannie just called them ugly. I told her I’d learned Trish Dalton’s name and what Richard had determined so far.

“How’s Cole treating you, anyway?”

“He’s not annoying me as much,” I said. “We’ve only talked about the case, nothing else.”

“Got any socks?”

I searched for those too and tossed her a pair.

“You know,” I said, “I’ve been thinking about this case and the first one. When Casey was kidnapped, his mom’s security system never sounded.”

She worked herself out of the leather pants. “I thought you said Casey’s dad had the pass—” she grunted “—code.”

“True, but he was later found murdered. We’re assuming he wasn’t the kidnapper. So, that leaves the question…what happened to Karen’s alarm?”

“Shit,” she said, finally free of the pants. “Makes you wonder what you pay the security company for.”

She pulled my tee over her head and reached for my shorts.

“Jeannie, do you remember…Do you remember the time Jack went to Pittsburgh?”

Her expression hardened and she stopped moving. I could tell by her concerned look she got my meaning.

Shortly after I’d received the threats during my friend Nora’s investigation, Jack left for a two-day business trip. His first night away, I was attacked in my sleep. The man who broke into our house straddled me in my bed. I woke up staring at a facemask, with a gloved hand pressed over my mouth and my attacker’s body weight pinning me at the hips. I wasn’t raped. I wasn’t even hurt. The intruder shoved a piece of fabric into my hand, leaned so close to my ear I thought he might bite it, and whispered, “This is how close I can get to your daughter.”

The fabric was a swatch of pajamas he’d cut off of Annette while she slept down the hall. He’d come into our house, cut my little girl’s pajamas from right over her heart, left her sleeping in her bed, and come to threaten me in mine.

It all happened without triggering my alarm system.

Days later, a phone technician reported signs of tampering at the junction box down the street. A specialist from my home security company tinkered for hours before discovering cut wires in my attic, severed in a spot hidden by insulation. With a disabled audible alarm, temporary interruption to my monitoring service, and no immediately detectable signs of tampering, it was clear I’d been hit by professional criminals.

***

Rick and I stood in the landing field and watched Jeannie’s orange and brown Manta creep three thousand feet overhead. Rick spoke into a ground-to-air radio used to talk students back to the landing area. He asked Jeannie for a right-hand turn. Her canopy continued straight ahead. He asked for a left-hand turn. She still flew straight. Soon it was obvious Jeannie was freewheeling with a broken radio. Where she’d land was anyone’s guess.

“She’s headed for Cromwell’s place.” Rick shook his head. “Lord, keep her.”

“Cromwell’s place?”

“Our resident Farmer McNasty.”

I winced. “Rough on a first-timer. I’ll go pick her up.”

From the highway, I found the dirt road Rick said would lead to Jeannie and followed it for nearly a mile until it curved behind a leaning wooden barn. An orange and brown parachute emerged from behind the failing structure. The parachute’s cells were puffed up, obscuring most of Jeannie’s head, but I recognized my shoes. She looked like the Great Pumpkin with legs.

I put the car in park and tapped the horn. She jumped, and the fabric amassed in her arms slipped over and over itself until it rested on the ground in a sloppy heap. When she spotted me, she gathered up the parachute again and hurried to the car, dragging most of the fabric in the dirt. She was near crying.

“Take this stuff off me. We gotta get out of here.”

I couldn’t help but laugh.

“I don’t see what’s so damn funny.”

I unbuckled her helmet and slid her goggles off her head. I daisy-chained her lines, released her chest strap, and loosened her leg straps. She stepped out of the rig and I placed it in the back seat of my car.

“You shouldn’t drag a parachute.” I brushed road dust off the nylon. “It could tear.”

Jeannie was already in the passenger seat.

“Bite me.” She slammed the door.

I slid behind the wheel and looked at her. She was sweating.

“You okay?”

“Just drive.”

When we turned onto the highway, Jeannie said, “That was a treat. A guy from the cast of
Deliverance
lives back there.” She gestured behind us with her thumb.

“Rick mentioned him,” I said. “I came as fast as I could.”

“He’s a lunatic, Em. Certifiable.” She started to imitate him, stabbing a pointed finger in the air. “‘You and yer planes. Noise all day and all night with you. This private property! This private! Git off my land!’”

“I am so sorry. Your first skydive and you had a run-in with the local crank.” I hesitated. “You
are
going to jump again though, right?”

She pulled down the sun visor to check her hair in its mirror.

“Bet your ass, sister. Right after I get a cigarette.”

***

Jeannie did make another jump. She was on the sunset load, the last load of the day. When the Otter’s wheels left the ground, the beer light went on and the party was officially underway.

A bare-chested man with a nipple ring set up colossal stereo equipment in one corner of the hangar, and as he manipulated plugs and wires, Linda moved rigs and gear bags from their spots in the middle of the carpeted packing area. I gathered she was clearing a dance floor.

I pulled a bottle of Shiner out of a cooler and scanned the crowd, wondering if Vince would come. He’d bowed out after our beach walk, claiming errands to run. On my way outside to check the picnic area, Marie waved to get my attention.

“Give me a hand, hon’?”

She leaned over a long party table and arranged troughs of brisket and baked beans. I helped her lay out plastic cups and Styrofoam plates as jumpers began to congregate near the food.

“Big turn-out,” I said. “Any night jumps this weekend?”

She frowned. “Had an accident a few years back. We don’t do them anymore.” She pinched a sample of the brisket. “Not bad.”

I grabbed my own sample and stepped outside. Vince was nowhere in sight, but I did spot Craig. He was demonstrating a freestyle technique to a couple of young jumpers. It occurred to me the loft might be unattended. Maybe I could get the flight logs. If I got caught in there again, I’d say I was checking on my repack.

In the loft, a cameraman was perched on a stool, editing footage. He ran images backward and forward in slow motion and ignored me when I stepped inside and flipped open the reserve closing flap on my rig. I pulled my packing card from its pocket and verified that Billy had been the one to do the repack, not Craig. I checked Billy’s seal, and finding it intact, hoisted the parachute over a shoulder. My back was tender from sleeping on the ground the night before. I groaned.

“Sounds like someone’s a little out of shape,” the cameramen said, barely suppressing a chuckle.

“I prefer ‘out of practice.’” On the screen behind him, Big Red’s hulking image came into the frame, and I nodded toward it. “We can’t all be built like an ox. I bet his job keeps him in shape. Me, I sit at a desk.”

The cameraman followed my gaze over his shoulder to the monitor. He shook his head. “Wrong excuse. Big Red has a desk job too. CPS.”

I considered the acronym. “Child Protective Services?”

The cameraman nodded. “Meyer too,” he said. “You know Meyer?”

I stared at him. “David Meyer?”

“Sure. They work together.” He shrugged, and swiveled to the equipment again.

I thought of David Meyer, choosing a career defending children, and of his girlfriend, Trish Dalton, possibly involved in snatching them. Then I hung my gear back on the pegs and prepared for another attempt at stealing the logs.

***

I’d just pulled my second beer from a cooler when Vince found me.

“You’re not dancing,” he said.

I pulled the top off my bottle. “Not much of a dancer.”

He turned toward the DJ and they exchanged a nod I didn’t like the looks of. The DJ picked up his mike.

“I’ve got a request to slow it down, folks, so grab a honey, or a hottie, or whatever you can grab, and come out for some smoochie-smoochie on the dance floor.” He made kiss noises into the microphone.

Piano notes from Patsy Cline’s “Crazy” rang through the hangar, and Vince extended his hand. I hesitated.

“Please don’t embarrass me, girl,” he said gently. “If you don’t dance with me, I’ll hear about it for a long, long time.”

He closed a hand over mine and pulled me toward him. Then he slipped an arm around the small of my back, and immediately, it seemed, we were dancing.

It was the first time I’d danced since Jack. Vince leaned over me slightly, his chin on the side of my forehead. A faint trace of cologne clung to him.

Holding him, swaying to “Crazy,” I wished the old songs were longer. I rested my cheek on his shoulder and let my eyes close, rocking with him wherever he led me. He opened his fingers on my back and drew me nearer until there was no distance left to close. I slid my hand from his shoulder to the place between his shoulder blades. It was a conversation of sorts, only wordless.

When the song ended and I opened my eyes, I was looking straight over Vince’s shoulder at Jeannie. She leaned against the wall with a satisfied smirk on her face and raised her drink.

She walked over to us and introduced herself to Vince before I could. Jeannie wanted to tell anyone that would listen that she’d passed her second Accelerated Freefall dive. This time, her radio worked and she’d had a nice stand-up landing in the field behind the hangar.

As she carried on, I spotted Craig across the room and got an idea.

***

One thing Jeannie excelled at was approaching men. Most flirted with her, but even the ones who didn’t flirt seemed unable to ignore her. Craig didn’t fall cleanly into either category, but fortunately, another of Jeannie’s talents was idle banter.

I had verified the loft was empty and asked Jeannie to keep Craig busy until she saw me again. She was on him like a suction cup, and only one thing went wrong. When I opened the drawer, the flight logs were missing.