The Underground Lady (9 page)

"Not that I recall."

"Thanks for your time."

Driving toward the airport, I thought that Raymond Spruance could not have had anything to do with Hadley Welch's disappearance, and from what he told me, neither could my good friend, Earl Sanders. Suddenly the day got even brighter.

Chapter Seven

Parking in the lot beside Sander's Flying Service, I took a deep breath and hoped the next few minutes would not destroy a lifetime of friendship.

Annie Sanders looked surprised to see me. "Jay, everything okay?"

"Where's Earl?"

"He's on a trip, won't be back until tomorrow afternoon."

"Good, it's you I want to talk with. Get someone to watch the desk, we'll walk over to the terminal and get some lunch."

"Jay, I can't leave…"

"Annie, we have to talk. It's important."

She went into a back office and returned with a young woman to tend the counter. An extremely big girl, she had boldly painted lips and flashing dark eyes. Her hair was so brilliantly black that it looked almost wet. She was as luxuriously molded as the fuselage of an old C-46 cargo plane.

"We'll be in the terminal café if you need me, Wilma. I'll be back in an hour."

The girl nodded, said nothing, and stared at me as if I posed some sort of threat.

"Who's Wilma?" I asked, as we made our way to the terminal.

"One of our mechanic's daughters. She's a good worker, but a hard girl. Doesn't meet the public well. I'll have to get back pretty soon."

We sat at a small table, both eating vegetable plates and fresh-baked cornbread from the small cafeteria.

"Annie, I don't know any other way to ask this. Did Earl have an affair with Hadley Welch?"

She looked at me as if expecting the question. "Earl and I have been married for almost forty years, and not once in all that time has he strayed. If there was any one person in this world that he would have been unfaithful with, it was Hadley Welch. It never happened. Oh, Jay, he was a man, and she was so pretty and smart, and a natural flyer with a passion for learning everything about it. Sometimes the attraction is so strong; the temptation so overwhelming that it can get out of hand. It bothered Hadley to the extent that she came and talked with me about it. She was smart enough to see that if either of them faltered – well, she assured me it would never happen. Earl even confessed to me about the temptation, but vowed that their relationship would always remain mentor and student, nothing more."

"Who was the other man, Annie?"

"When Hadley went missing, you would have thought Earl had lost a daughter. In a way, maybe he did. We never were able to have children. Earl searched for that airplane for weeks. He covered every inch of that country from the air. If there had been a crash site, he would have found it."

"Annie, the other man?"

"We hired a pilot on furlough from American Airlines, who had worked as a mechanic before he started flying, and still maintained an Inspector's license. He did all the work on Hadley's PA-18, the fifty hour oil changes, the annual inspections. After she soloed, he flew with her some, when Earl was off on a trip. His status as a copilot for American naturally attracted Hadley. They had a fling for awhile. He was infatuated with her. I was not privy to all that went on, but she broke it off and things got ugly. Earl finally fired him. American called him back, but he kept his home in Meridian, and commuted back and forth to Dallas, his domicile. He didn't show up around here for a long time after Hadley went missing. Somebody said he sold his house and bought one in Waco, Texas."

"You and Earl never suspected he had anything to do with her disappearing?"

"Earl did. He called a friend of his, a Chief Pilot for American, and confirmed that this guy was flying the line between Dallas and Chicago at the time Hadley went missing."

"What's his name, Annie? I want to talk to him."

"He is retired from American, Jay, moved back to Meridian, has a home up on Okatibbe Lake. His name is Gerald VonHorner."

Back at the FBO, I said goodbye to Annie and Wilma, and headed west on Interstate Twenty into a blinding sun low on the horizon. Outside of town, all four lanes of the highway were clogged with traffic. It was strange to see people going about their personal lives without apparent concern for the mayhem that I knew went on all around them. The cars seemed to be moving faster than usual, perhaps, as if the driver's lives had speeded up and they realized it might come to an end suddenly.

This had been a rough month, the breakup with a girl I truly cared about, the move to the country, now this twenty-five year old airplane crash or disappearance. Secrets and the silences that surround them seemed to govern my life. Grief and memory are burdens that cannot be lifted by revisiting them.

Hadley Welch. Maybe the Death Angel flew with her that day, peered into her face, eager for the first error, a moment of inattention or forgetfulness. I'm familiar with that old whore, have seen the unexplained accident where she chose one crew to crash and let others, of less skill, fly on. She and I have had our face to face meetings – we don't like each other. With a little luck, I have managed to survive our encounters. Good luck, I thought, the saddest thing about having good luck is that one doesn't remember it when that same luck turns bad.

Pulling onto the terrace row that leads to my cottage in the woods, I saw a car pulled up close behind my Thunderbird. Someone stood on the porch in front of the entry door. I fingered the magnum in the pocket of the leather jacket, and continued on to the cottage. Parking behind the car, I saw something I never want to see again.

Sunny Pfeiffer turned from the door and looked at me with the most horrifying expression a person could have. B.W. ran to meet me.

"Oh, Jay, it's so terrible."

Hanging from the door facing by its neck was a coyote. The scratch marks on the door indicated it was alive when put there. A rusty, ten penny nail was driven into the doorframe and a worn, frayed grass rope was used to hang the coyote. Another nail held a hand-written note.

"Sunny, what are you doing here?"

"I arrived from St. Louis this morning. Rose said you would be back this afternoon. I drove here to wait, hoping to play with B.W. I've only been here for a minute." She pointed to the coyote. "That animal was hanging there, it's horrible."

"Did you touch anything?"

"No, I tried to read that note, but it was too high."

Cutting the coyote down, I put it in the back of my pickup. I would haul it off later. Retrieving a claw hammer, I carefully pulled the nail that held the note. It was written in pencil, printed in neat, straight lines on what appeared to be a five by nine unlined note pad. I read it slowly.

CEASE LOOKING FOR HADLEY WELCH

THE COYOTE IS A WARNING

YOUR CAT WILL BE NEXT

AFTER THAT YOUR LESBO NEIGHBOR

THEN THE DAUGHTER

THEN YOU

The letters were all in caps, and there was no punctuation. Carefully holding it by one corner, I took it inside and slid it into a plastic freezer bag.

Sunny Pfeiffer followed me into the cottage. "Here, I brought this."

She handed me the original letter intimating that her mother was murdered. I put it in another freezer bag, and sat down to think.

B.W. assumed his royal pose on Sunny Pfeiffer's legs. "What does this mean, Jay?"

"It means we have opened an old wound. There are two factions working here, one wants you to know what happened to your mother, the other will go to any length to keep you from finding out, even to the extent of threatening your life, Rose English's, and mine, not to mention B.W. What do you think about that, old boy?" The big cat switched his tail in angry jerks, as if he understood. "We've got to go and inform Rose, then I must put things into motion to protect all of us."

"You really think this is something more than idle threats. Someone would actually harm us?"

"Believe it, Sunny. Whoever we are dealing with is an evil being. They hung that coyote while it was still alive. It takes a vicious person, an uncaring, unfeeling human being to inflict that kind of pain on any living thing. In my book, this makes them dangerous, and I will deal with them in the same manner."

Loading B.W. into my truck, I followed Sunny to Rose English's farmhouse. It was dark now, but Rose looked the coyote over carefully with the use of a flashlight.

"That's an old hemp rope, Jay. Keep it."

"Good idea."

Rose switched off the light. "Come on in, I've about got supper prepared. We can talk."

It was a simple meal, turnip-greens, fried country ham, mashed potatoes and field peas – the brown Crowders that I like so well – and hot, fresh cornbread.

"There was a note, Rose. Whoever this is threatened to kill B.W., you, Sunny, and me, in that order."

"You are going to need some help, and do not leave that cottage without bringing B.W. to me. I will not have some S.O.B. hanging one of my cats."

"You gave him to me when he was a kitten. He is not your cat."

"I will take better care of him. Just do it."

"The note referred to you as my 'Lesbo' neighbor," I said with a sly grin. "I did not know that about you, Rose."

"Ha, my parents were never members of PFLAG. Just because I never married, lived alone, didn't screw every man who drove up to my door, they think I'm a lesbian. What do I care?"

"PFLAG?"

"Never you mind."

Sunny sat listening to our exchange. "Oh, Rose, I'm so sorry to have gotten you in the middle of this."

"It's not your fault, little one. Jay, here, will handle things. He's been involved in worse, I can assure you."

"I'll see if Hebrone is available."

"Where is he?"

"Key West. Been there ever since Katrina destroyed the coast."

"Good, and you need to tell Shack there's a bad one in the neighborhood hanging coyotes from people's door frames."

"He will be delighted to know. He is a tough man, and one to have on our side if it gets rough."

"Who are these people you two are talking about?"

"Hebrone Opshinsky is an old friend, ex-soldier, outstanding sailor, and an even better aviator. He is also one of the deadliest human beings on the planet. A close second to Opshinsky is Shack, a local cattle rancher who lives a few miles north of here. It is not good to anger the man."

"I feel better already."

"What about your business, Sunny? Is there anyone from this area that has investments in any of your companies?"

"No, not to my knowledge. No one has ever lost money in any of our companies. Why? You think this could be related to some business deal my mother had with this person?"

"I'm grasping at straws. Your mother went missing, and if it's murder, there has to be a motive."

Rose poured coffee. "Sunny, there was a rumor about your true biological father. It came up the other day. Tell Jay what you know about it."

"What do you mean, it came up?" There was a flash of anger in her green eyes.

"A banker, man by the name of Pushkin, denied parenthood without being asked. I thought maybe it was an added reason for you looking at your mother's disappearance."

"Not true. There was a record of a blood test done that proved who my parents were. I discovered it among my mother's papers ten years ago."

"It's interesting that they needed to have that done. However that was their personal business and probably has no bearing on her disappearance. I'm glad that's cleared up." I bent down and picked up B.W. "Well, we'll leave you ladies for the night. I want to study the note and the letter. There are phone calls to Hebrone and Shack, and to our local sheriff who can help with running the documents through a forensics lab. There is also another man, a retired airline pilot who knew your mother that I need to talk with. I just found out about him this morning. You may want to accompany me, Sunny. I'll be in touch in the morning. Come on, B.W., let's go dispose of a dead coyote."

Back at the cottage, I looked at the time. It was nine p.m. B.W. and I had disposed of the coyote carcass on the back eighty at a place designated as a dump. The rope used to hang the unfortunate animal lay in the back of my truck.

Shack answered on the first ring. "Yeah?"

"Someone hung a live coyote on my front door and threatened to kill me."

"I'll be there in five minutes."

"Not necessary. The threat is not imminent. It was meant as a warning to cease my current endeavors."  

"Does it involve a woman?"

"It does, but not the way you think."

"I'm listening."

After explaining the situation to him, he offered to help anyway that he could. Shack was that kind of a man. He thought that all things would end badly if a friend tried to go it alone, but that one should never forsake the journey. He promised to come by tomorrow and we would discuss the matter.