Who knew Irita would step up quite like she did? And by the time he began to see she was seriously capable, he had already set in motion the plan to get Mesa to come back to Butte. Maybe, this may have been a slight miscalculation. The truth was he didn’t want to face any big changes, especially Nana’s decline, without Mesa.
He looked at the clock again. Layton James would be on the 6:30 p.m. flight from Salt Lake, and Chance had offered to pick him up. James knew enough about FBI investigators to welcome any local sources who might offset the FBI’s stonewalling and had readily accepted the offer. They both knew the arrangement would be mutually beneficial.
Chance was flipping through the latest edition of the Messenger when Mesa walked in. She looked worn. Usually she had this crisp walk, head up, eyes sharp, but not now.
She stopped in the doorway. “I didn’t expect to see you. It’s way past quitting time.”
He took his feet off the desk and stood up.
“Don’t get up,” Mesa said. “I don’t need the computer.” She collapsed onto the sofa. “What are you doing here?”
“Just killing time,” he said, trying to sound casual. He had decided Adrienne was right. Mesa was going to think whatever she was going to think about his new relationship. He would have to rely on her to get to know Adrienne. Hopefully, that would make the difference. “I’m picking up an insurance investigator on the 6:30 flight from Salt Lake. More info on the plane crash.”
Mesa sat up on the edge of the sofa. “Like what?”
“The guy the plane belonged to. Well, he writes it off as a company plane. Anyway, he went biking in Canyonlands over the weekend. But then he flipped his bike and smacked his head bad. In the process of dealing with that accident, his company discovered that the plane had disappeared from the Moab airport.”
“There goes the theory about the pilot absconding with the company’s payroll,” Mesa said. “Simian goes from suspect to victim. Well, don’t despair. Here’s another tidbit for you,” she said. “I found your Kate.”
Her tone seemed conciliatory. Chance sat up immediately. “Who is it?”
“Would you believe Kathy DiNunzio? She used to be called Kate when she was a kid.”
“Who?” Chance asked. He didn’t know any Kate or Kathy with that last name.
“It’s Irita’s ex-daughter-in-law, and that’s not even the big shocker. Ready for it? Her father was one of the two wardens Lowell Austin killed.”
“Shut up,” Chance said in a whisper. “She lured Austin to Butte?”
Mesa nodded. “But I don’t think she had anything to do with killing him. As a matter of fact, I think she feels guilty that he’s dead.”
Chance listened intently while Mesa explained Kathy DiNunzio’s revenge of the heart. “And you think I have strange ideas about relationships,” he said with half a grin.
Mesa smiled back. “I just spent the last four hours over there. I think she’s sorry she ever encouraged him to come to Butte.”
Chance was skeptical. “Maybe she’s giving you a big snow job, too.”
Mesa shook her head, and explained Kathy’s whereabouts on Sunday morning. She was nowhere near the plane crash or the airport, and she has witnesses to prove it.
“And she has no idea who might have wanted to kill Austin?”
“I think she’s still in a state of shock about the whole thing. She can’t even remember Austin mentioning knowing anybody else in Butte.”
“Wait a minute. Weren’t there two kids?” Chance asked.
“You are on it. There is a brother. He just came back from a tour in Afghanistan, Army National Guard. Apparently, he has his own troubles. He’s AWOL.”
“Don’t suppose he flies?” Chance asked, suspecting the answer.
Mesa again shook her head. “Drives truck.”
They stared across the room at each other. Chance thought about when their mother had died. They were both in high school, but they had still relied heavily on one another. He and Mesa were closer than most brothers and sisters he knew. That was partly why what she had said earlier in the day had bothered him so much—and, he realized at that moment, probably why she was upset that he hadn’t told her about Adrienne, at least partly.
Their mother had died at home surrounded by her family, which was hard enough. He couldn’t imagine the kind of grief he might have felt if she had been the victim of a horrible crime. “How old were they when all this happened?”
“She was ten. He was eight.”
“Wow, that’s dark,” Chance said. Having to live with the murder of a parent was inconceivable to him. How would your world ever seem right again? “You get her to call the cops?”
“I left Irita with her. She was getting ready to call Solheim when I left.”
Chance looked at his watch. “Guess I better head for the airport. Want to come along?”
Mesa sighed and shook her head. “I promised to have dinner with Nan.”
“Oh whoops, she invited me over too,” he said. “Will you tell her I had to meet this guy?”
Mesa nodded but said nothing.
“I’ll get with Erin in the morning about the story,” Chance said. “Sounds like we might have a decent feature for the next edition.” He took a step toward the door.
Mesa nodded again. “Listen, Chance, about Adrienne.”
Chance cleared his throat. He hated these kinds of conversations, especially with Mesa. She could never bring herself to say she was sorry. But he also knew she was always much harder on herself than he could ever be.
“It’s not any of my business,” she said. “If you butted into my life like that, you know I would give you three kinds of hell.” She sounded embarrassed at this last part.
This was the best apology he was going to get, but he still wasn’t ready to talk about it. And there were some things he definitely wanted to say, but not now. “I know. See you tomorrow,” he said and walked out of the office.
* * *
Mesa sat at the oak table in the kitchen picking over what was left of what Nana called “late tea,” meaning more than biscuits—otherwise known as cookies—but less than a bona fide supper. This evening it meant scrambled eggs and English muffins.
Mesa had hurried home after Chance left, to find Nana up and about setting the table. That is, until Mesa insisted on taking over.
Now that they were finished eating, Mesa found herself with plenty on her mind—her impending flight to Portland on Friday, but more immediately her argument with Chance. “Have enough to eat?” Mesa asked absent-mindedly.
“More than enough,” Nana said and then explained how she had eaten a lovely lunch with Beryl Winstead, a woman in her English Club. They’d eaten Toad in the Hole, though Nana quickly pointed out that the sausages were quite lean and small and the Yorkshire pudding had been made with skim milk, therefore putting this English comfort food quite within her cardiologist’s dietary guidelines.
“Nana, you have to take care of yourself now. And that includes watching what you eat.” Mesa sounded too much like her own mother, and found the role reversal unsettling.
“Taking care of one’s heart also includes lifting one’s spirits,” her grandmother said in defense of her culinary choices. “It looks as though you might need a bit of that. Have a bad day?”
Mesa rolled her eyes and toyed with her eggs. “Chance and I had words.”
“Oh dear,” her grandmother said, her voice registering the rarity of such an event. “Whatever about, if I may ask?”
“Adrienne DeBrook.”
“Ah, the painter. Lovely, isn’t she? What was the scrap about?”
Nana’s tone sounded curious, as if she couldn’t imagine what the problem could be. This made Mesa even more self-conscious. “I made a remark about their age difference.”
Nana took a judiciously timed sip of tea and waited for Mesa to say more.
“Am I the only one who is uncomfortable with Chance being gaga over a woman more than fifteen ye
ars older than him?”
“Closer to twenty, I should think,” Nana said. She’s planning to go to the 25th reunion of her medical school class.”
“She’s a doctor too?” Mesa said. What a career switch. Mesa found this intriguing, even downright admirable. She sighed. “Okay, I never said she wasn’t bright and attractive in her own way.”
“And if she and Chance weren’t seeing each other, you might even be her friend?” Nana said.
Her voice now had that knowing quality that both irritated and touched Mesa. “Maybe.”
“Mesa, how many times have you heard me say you can’t help who you love? If I had listened to reason or convention, you wouldn’t be here now. I certainly wouldn’t have left Cambridge to marry your grandfather, leaving everything and everybody I knew to move to Montana.”
“I know,” Mesa said. There was no argument here. Her grandmother’s courage inspired Mesa every day. Imagine leaving London behind to move to a cattle ranch so you could be with the man you love.
Mesa wasn’t sure she had that kind of courage. Maybe that was what bugged her about Adrienne. Apparently, she wasn’t worried about what people thought. Maybe it was jealousy of both of them, Adrienne and Chance.
“I wonder what happened to Chance this evening,” Nana said. “I invited him to come over as well. I enjoy seeing the two of you together.”
“I meant to tell you,” Mesa said, absently wondering what other pieces to the Lowell Austin puzzle he might be finding. “He had to meet an investigator about the plane crash.”
Nana let out a small groan. “I hope we aren’t going to dwell on this in the Messenger for any longer than necessary.”
“It’s turning into quite a story,” Mesa said and gave her the details of Kathy DiNunzio’s account. She made a mental note to call Irita and find out what else she might have learned.
Halfway through the tale, Nana gleefully refilled their teacups. Clearly, the story interested her after all. “I can see the woman’s thinking,” Nana said. “Make him live with the pain. It’s a page out of Dickens, isn’t it? Great Expectations, remember? Miss Haversham gets left at the altar, no humiliation more public than that. So she spends a lifetime exacting her revenge.”
Public humiliation. That was certainly what Kathy’s family had endured. Scanning the news articles in the box Kathy had kept, Mesa saw how the defense had tried to cast Donovan Birch as the bad guy, saying he was an aggressive game warden who rubbed hunters the wrong way.
She thought about her own father. Like a lot of military officers, he could be a hard man at times, but he was always fair. But she could see how some of his decisions, when taken out of context, might seem arbitrary.
Whatever the case, she would never have been able to sit still while people criticized him. But how far would she have gone to stop it, or to get even with those who had maligned him? “Aren’t we supposed to turn the other cheek?”
“That, my child, is New Testament. Stories of revenge abound in the Old Testament. Righteous indignation fueled God’s destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.”
“Maybe so, but in this day and age, most people are content with fantasizing about revenge. They don’t go around actually living out their fantasies. That’s why reality TV shows are so popular.”
“So you don’t think this DiNunzio woman had anything to do with getting even with the man who killed her father?” Nana asked in a tone that begged the question.
Mesa had begun clearing the table and stopped in her tracks. Had she misread Kathy’s tears? Could there have been a much larger scheme at play, in which she was just acting her part? Mesa put the dinner dishes in the sink and went to call Irita.
Chapter 17
When the passengers from the Salt Lake flight deplaned, Layton James was head and shoulders above others around him. Chance wondered if the investigator had needed two seats on that pint-sized commuter.
It was nearly 7:30 in the evening. The plane had been almost an hour late. Backed up in Salt Lake with the evening commuter traffic, Chance figured. They shook hands. “Bet you’re hungry.”
“Dang right,” James said. “And thirsty too, if you know what I mean.”
“A couple of hours in Mormon country will do that to you,” Chance joked. “I made a reservation for you at the Copper Baron Hotel just across from the airport, like you asked. There’s a restaurant and a bar.”
“I want the biggest steak in town,” James said and patted his ample midriff, already tightly encased in a dress shirt and tie.
“You got ’er,” Chance said. He liked a man with a healthy appetite. “Let’s go over to the Lamplighter. It’s just five minutes from here and I think you’ll like the menu.”
Half an hour later, Layton James had settled for a king-sized, 32-ounce slab of prime rib, enough for a family of four, washed down by his first Moose Drool. Chance felt like a wimp eating a measly eight-ounce strip steak. After an initial satisfaction of his hunger with two gargantuan bites of beef, James said with a grin, “Must be the altitude.”
Somehow, Chance had the feeling that Layton James ate this way all the time. But the food didn’t stop him from talking.
“The guy who runs Moab Aviation, man named Jeppsen, said he gave Simian a Jeep to get into town the night he arrived. Said the keys were hung back on the hook in the office where they belonged the next morning. Made him wonder if whoever brought the car back was local and knew where the keys went.”
Chance had met Jeppsen on a trip with Hardy several summers before—a retired geologist who made his living flying aerial tours of Canyonlands and Arches, catering to rich rock hounds.
“He was off in the back of beyond scouting geologic formations early in the morning,” James said between bites. “Said the plane was gone before he got back.”
So someone who knew Jeppsen’s habits could have easily timed their departure to coincide with when the airport was virtually empty. But they would have had to know there was a plane for the taking. That could mean Simian might have shot off his mouth about his plane to someone. “Did Simian hook up with anybody local the night before? Unless the theft was totally random, some townie had to have known he had flown in.”
“The sheriff was asking around. But until Simian regains consciousness, who knows? His credit card shows he stayed at a fancy bed and breakfast at the north end of town, but they didn’t see him come in with anybody and they didn’t see him leave the next day. ”
That wasn’t surprising. Simian would have left early. Anybody doing serious biking in Moab, even in September, would want to do it before the sun rose too high overhead. The situation had worked right into the thief’s hands.
Again, the circumstances pointed to someone local who knew how to make sure no one would see Simian picked up or dropped off. And who knew when the airport might likely be empty. Once Simian had cycled away, the airplane was easy pickings. But the question remained, who did the picking?
* * *
Anxious to make an early start with Sheriff Solheim the next morning, Layton James left Chance at the front desk of the Copper Baron. It was already 9 o’clock, so Chance stuck his head into Shoestring Annie’s, curious to see if the FBI had stopped in for their nightcap.
It was Comedy Night, and the bar was crowded with the college crowd there for the guffaws. Chance sidled between the tables looking for Perryman and his partner, but no luck. Instead, he saw Hardy Jacobs standing at one of the bars along the wall, in deep conversation with a sturdy looking guy who looked like he could use a good laugh.
Chance fought his way to the bar for a Moose Drool. By the time he reached Hardy, his friend was moving to the far end of the room. Hardy seemed surprised to see Chance. “What brings you down to the Flat to do your drinking?” he asked.
It was true that Chance rarely ventured this far from uptown unless he was going flying. “Business,” he said and rolled his eyes. “Who was your buddy? Hope I didn’t scare him off.”
“Just some g
uy I know from working in Big Sky. He lives in Bozeman.”
Chance had never reconciled Hardy’s decision to winter at the upscale ski resort in the Gallatin Mountains south of Bozeman. Well-to-do out-of-staters, mostly Californians, liked to throw big parties and not invite the locals. Hardy was part of the service class who eked out a living on the mountain while crammed into mobile homes at the bottom. Meanwhile, their clientele lived large in fancy chalets. It just wasn’t Hardy’s style, being at anybody’s beck and call just because they had money.
“So what kind of business?” Hardy asked.
“Just dropped off a guy I been interviewing about the plane crash on Sunday. A couple of FBI agents are staying here too. Wouldn’t mind getting a word in with them if I can.”
“You still working for the Messenger?” Hardy asked. “What happened to remodeling historic buildings full-time?”
“Restoration,” Chance corrected him. “That’s still the main plan, but I had to help out with the paper until Mesa came back to town. I don’t do much writing usually, but this plane crash story has me curious. I’d like to meet the guy who landed that plane. And so would the FBI. Haven’t seen any clean-cut, out-of-town suits come in tonight, have you?”
“Not yet,” Hardy said. “How do they figure in it?”
Chance took a long swig from his beer and began to explain. Maybe Hardy would have some idea about the Moab connection. “You read about the plane crash?”
“My dad said something about it,” Hardy said. His words came slowly, his lips barely opened wide enough to let the words escape. “Gutsy.”
Chance smiled. Hardy was never a big talker, but the words he used fit. “You can say that again. Anybody else would have ended that landing with a nose plant.”
“I thought the pilot died in the crash,” Hardy said.
“Nah,” Chance said. “That guy was already dead when the plane hit the ground.”
“Gives new meaning to a dead stick landing, that’s for sure.” Hardy said, his voice half-joking and half-amazed. “What do you think happened?”
Chance shrugged. “Can’t tell. All they know for sure is that the dead guy didn’t exactly have a lot of friends.”