“Nah, a little adrenaline is good for you. That’s what keeps you so young.”
“Are you doing any good, or is all of this just for my beauty treatment?”
“Angie, we did it. I found the smoking gun and it’s money, lots of it. Just one airplane must have earned two hundred thousand this year, and if that’s a pattern, there must be millions.”
“I thought airplanes were supposed to earn money.”
“Yeah, but in little dribs and drabs. Someone is willing to kill for that much money. Has to be a conspiracy: Freddy doing paperwork, Celeste doing billing, surely Dave Marino as mastermind. Marino must have been around a lot longer than Celeste said, and now we know what Dave is blackmailing Reginald for, control of the company and silence while he steals a few million bucks. We just have to figure out how to prove it.”
“Can we do that in the car? I’ve had enough adrenaline for one night.”
“Is the pickup gone?”
“No, he’s over at a hangar past the airplanes.”
“Maybe we should wait. Cops need coffee and doughnuts every fifteen minutes.” I replaced the files and closed the drawer. Celeste’s desk did smell good to me but I didn’t want to start an argument I’d be sure to lose. I joined Angie at the window. The pickup worked down the line of hangars and roared away toward the coffee shop. We ducked out and ran.
The Power Wagon’s heater squeaked and belched dust, but it felt wonderful. We unzipped jackets and cracked windows. Turk didn’t meet us until we pulled into the drive, and then he came around the house wagging his tail. I forgave him for my ordeal stalking porcupines in the woods.
Angie turned on a couple of small lamps, popped a tape of Vivaldi’s
Four Seasons
into the deck, and disappeared into the kitchen. She was back in a minute, handed me a rum and Coke, ice cubes floating, and settled down on the couch with one of her own. I parked at the other end of the couch and sipped. It was Captain Morgan.
“Alex, this is pure masochism. I’m going to sit here and cry while you figure out what the money is about. I know you’re going back to Bethel eventually, so I want to get times like this out of my system while I can still get a hug if I need one. Does that make sense?”
“Perfectly. I know I’ve been harping on your beauty, but did I ever tell you you’re one smart cookie?”
“It never occurred to me you realized girls had brains. Don’t talk, flow with the music.”
Angie did cry at times, but she also smiled occasionally. When the tape ended she took our glasses into the kitchen, came back with refills and inserted Tchaikovsky’s
Andante Cantabile
into the player. It featured Itzhak Perlman on the violin, and I almost felt like crying, too.
The tape ended. Angie stood and gathered the empty glasses. “Thanks, Alex, that was what I needed. You know where the guest room is?”
“Yep, but I think I’ll spend the night on the couch. It’s comfortable and I want to be able to see the driveway. I know, Turk is on guard, the bell will chime, but still it’s a sop to my macho ego.”
“One more hug, Alex.”
I hugged her, long and close. She brushed my cheek with her lips and slipped away into her bedroom. I set the pistol on the stand beside the couch and was still wondering where the money was going when Morpheus slipped in.
I dreamed Celeste was laughing and dancing, pulling hands full of money from her bodice and tossing it up like confetti. Her partner was twirling and twirling her, her skirt flying, and her partner was Dave Marino. He was laughing and leering and he started tossing money. That woke me up.
The house was silent, the Power Wagon the only thing in the drive, with just enough light from the sky to show its outline. I turned over and went back to sleep.
I’d promised to call Celeste with a report, but now I was playing dead, and her sparkling eyes and dimples had taken on a very different connotation. No way could she be innocent and sit there day after day, tallying up Otter hours while the Otter was parked outside her window. That shed new light on everything, and I wondered about her visiting-mother story.
I dropped Angie half an hour early and drove down Wendell Street. Celeste’s Miata was parked in front of her house, and a black Cadillac was parked around the next corner. I cursed my incompetence for failing to get Marino’s license number. I parked on the next side street with a view of the house. Celeste came fluttering out, lacy white blouse with ribbons, straight dark skirt well above her knees. She wasn’t tossing money, but she did look happy to be going to work, and that’s suspicious.
I figured that if the Cadillac was Marino’s, they wouldn’t leave together. He seemed to set his own schedules, so I watched the Cadillac for an hour before a little old man in a business suit came out of another house and drove the Cadillac away. It was not only cold, it was overcast and threatening. I’d been running the engine and the heater in ten-minute bursts, but windows were frosting over. I crossed the bridge and found a pay phone at Piggly Wiggly. Celeste’s phone rang eight times before it was picked up. “Hello?” It was the voice of a broken violin, definitely feminine and at least a hundred years old.
“Sorry, wrong number.” I hung up the phone, but I did want to know where Marino was staying. Apparently it wasn’t too hard to find us when we were registered under an unknown name, so with the right name, that trick should work in reverse.
The store had a customer service counter in back. A sweet little lady who looked, but didn’t sound, like Celeste’s mother traded me a roll of quarters for a ten-dollar bill. I sat down with the phone book and tied up the instrument for an hour calling every hotel in the greater Fairbanks area, even the Maranatha. I wondered about the description of
greater area
, but it may apply someday.
“Hello, I need to speak to Dave Marino, please.”
“I’m sorry, sir, we have no Marino registered.”
After eighteen tries, I had that speech memorized and there were no more hotels in the yellow pages. I still had a pile of quarters, so I dialed state police headquarters and asked for Lieutenant Stella.
“Good morning, Alex. What’s the problem? You have a raccoon treed?”
“Hey, sorry about that. What can I tell you?”
“No, you did the right thing. We can’t
all
be smart. How may I waste the state’s time and resources on you today?”
“Did you have any luck tracing David Marino?”
“Oh, yeah, lots. None in Alaska, but nationwide there are nineteen thousand of them. Would you like the David A’s, David B’s…I even have a David Z here, so take your pick.”
“How about the Detroit area?”
“Yep, two hundred and nineteen and no David Z, so that narrows it right down.”
“Thanks a lot. I don’t know what I’d do without your cooperation.” The phone beeped for another quarter, but I decided Stella wasn’t worth it.
I stomped next door to the bowling alley and plunked down at the counter. I’d already wasted most of the morning, might as well finish the job. The fry cook was also manning the counter. Most of his gray hair was under his cap, and his apron was probably clean yesterday. He was smoking a cigarette while he cooked, but was careful with the ashes. I ordered a cheeseburger and coffee.
Angie had produced Wheat Chex and milk for breakfast, and toast topped with her homemade blueberry jam, so we ate like royalty, but it was wearing off. A few people were bowling and the crashing pins suited my state of mind.
The thing that was bothering me was Celeste’s statement that Marino had shown up three weeks before, but the over-billing scam had been going on for months. The Otter would have passed its Hobbs meters six months ago if the hours that were billed had actually been flown. But, if Celeste was a thief, and she obviously was, then why trust anything she said?
Did Marino really wipe his glass clean, or did Celeste do that to cover for a partner? Was Celeste plotting to have me killed while we were dancing? Even more pertinent, would she succeed? That thought was hard to take. So was the coffee, but the cheeseburger was fine and the fries no more soggy than noodles. I mixed Tabasco with the catsup for the fries. That helped.
When I stepped outside, I was slapped in the face with blowing dust, and by the time I got to the car it was mixed with tiny snowflakes. I took a drive out to the airport. The Otter and Skyvan were both tethered at Interior. Reginald and Celeste were parked in the lot, Marino was not. For the heck of it, I drove through the lot at the passenger terminal, but no black Cadillacs jumped out at me. I got to thinking that Fairbanks was a small town so maybe I could drive around and spot Marino. That wasted the afternoon and I was fifteen minutes early to pick up Angie. By that time the snow was sticking and I was peering out of the double arches the wipers made. I got out and cleaned the back window and mirrors, but they were covered again by the time I got back in the car. Before my hands were warm, the evidence of my efforts had disappeared.
Angie came out wearing a long gray coat that almost covered her nylons. Her collar was turned up, but the coat was hanging open, flying in the wind. She had a cute little matching stocking cap perched on her head like a crown. She pulled the cap down tight, but opened her arms to embrace the snow before she bent to open the car door.
“Oh, Alex, isn’t it beautiful?”
“Real white,” I agreed.
“But it covers everything, all the ugliness in the world is clean and sparkling.”
“Yep, including our rear window and the mirrors.” I rolled down my side window, braved the blast to stick my head out and look back. Snowflakes melted on my face and watered my eyes. I let one taxi go by and pulled into traffic.
On Hot Springs Road, the snow was streaking by sideways. Leaves were gone from the trees, the branches black, but they did have snow plastered against them. Maybe they were
ridged inch deep with pearl
, but it looked to me like a creeping fungus that was attacking the world.
Turk was in the lane to meet us, but he was distracted, snapping at the flakes. He turned around and around, shaking his head when flakes piled up on his fur. Angie gave him a pat and brushed snow off his back. He was busy trying to figure out where the white things were coming from.
I went around back and started the generator. Ice was flowing steadily in the river, and snow had turned it white. It was a pinto effect, white shapes on black water. Turk gave up biting the snow and crawled into his house. I went inside and cranked up the furnace.
Angie was watching the snow through the window, humming to herself. She had two gigantic orange salmon steaks on the cutting board. “Feast tonight, Alex. These are king salmon, almost fresh from Emmonak.”
“Little out of season?”
“They were flash frozen an hour after they came out of the Yukon, and they’ve been frozen until I set them out this morning. They’re almost fresh, and this guy is so fat he doesn’t need the pan lubricated.” She fired the propane broiler on the cook stove, set the salmon steaks on a cookie sheet and shoved them under the flame. She went to work grating pickles and onions to make tartar sauce.
“Can I help? Peel potatoes or something?”
“Potatoes are boiling in that pot, but there’s a bottle of chenin blanc on the back step. You can check if it’s cool enough.”
I judged that it was, brought it in and found a corkscrew in the silverware drawer. That salmon smelled so good my mouth was already watering. Angie pulled the sheet out with a hot mitt, flipped the steaks over with a spatula and slathered mayonnaise on them before she stuck them back under the flame.
“Here, mash these.” She took the potatoes off the fire, dumped the boiling water and ran cold over them, then dumped that and handed the pot to me. An old-fashioned potato masher like my mother used was peeking out of a squat ceramic jar full of knives and spatulas. I had the spuds half mashed when Angie dropped in a stick of butter and went to set the table.
It was magic, salmon steaks, homemade tartar, asparagus, potatoes, and wine. Angie lit candles and turned off the overhead light.
“The candles aren’t for me, Alex. They’re in honor of the salmon and the snow.”
I was thinking that was the best meal I’d ever tasted and snowflakes by candlelight aren’t too bad, so long as they’re outside and I’m in. It didn’t seem right to talk, we were having a religious experience. I stuffed myself miserably full, but could not stop until my plate was polished. It didn’t seem possible, but Angie stayed right with me.
When we finally leaned back to sip the last of the wine, I was in a golden haze.
“Angie, this is heaven, and you’re an angel on earth.”
Her eyes popped wide open, she burst into tears, and ran for her bedroom. I was flummoxed. That might have been the first really sincere compliment I’d ever paid anyone. She’d left her door open, and was lying on her bed, hugging a pillow and sobbing her eyes out. I went in and fidgeted beside the bed.
“Angie, I’m so sorry, I meant…I didn’t mean….”
She reached out to take my hand and smiled through her tears. “It’s okay, Alex. I know what you meant. It’s just that your compliment was exactly what Stan used to say. Oh, damn, I’m not sure I can make it, Alex. I’m not entirely sane, you know? I kept thinking I was preparing dinner for Stan. It was his favorite and I’d been saving the salmon for some special event with him. Then you sat back, just like Stan would have, and said what he would have said, and I just lost it.”
I sat on the edge of her bed, released her hand and kneaded her shoulders. “It’s going to be okay, Angie. Why don’t I take you back to Crooked Creek? You could visit your mother, get your feet on the ground.”
“I don’t know, Alex, I don’t know what to do. Sometimes I think I should sell the house and start over, but then Stan is here and I couldn’t leave him.” She buried her face in her pillow and bawled.
I kept massaging shoulders, making soothing noises. Eventually her sobs lessened to the occasional hitching breath and she was asleep. I tiptoed out, rinsed the dishes, and left them in the sink. I sat on the couch. The snow continued to fall. Maybe it was covering the ugliness outside, but it couldn’t touch the ugliness inside people. I knew what I had to do. I didn’t have all the answers, but enough to know what was rotten. I paced for a while, then just sat down and stared out at the snow.