“All this time, she wasn’t my wife. I wasn’t her husband. She lied to me.”
“Yes. I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry? You’re sorry? Holy shit! I’m married to a fucking bigamist, and the woman’s sorry.” While he was yelling at me, he pulled at the bottom of the shirt in anger and frustration, one of his old habits resurfacing.
“Hey!” I said, and then I lowered my voice, looking toward Flint’s bedroom door. “Stop taking your troubles out on everything and everyone else like you usually do. It’s not your shirt; it’s on loan, so don’t ruin it. And don’t take this out on me. You got involved with Kelli, and you married her, Nick, so step up to the plate. Take your strikes like a man. And keep your voice down. We don’t want to wake Flint. Although,” I said looking at my watch, “he needs to get up soon if I’m going to make it to the airport by eight.”
Just then the front door opened, and Flint walked in carrying a cardboard container with three Styrofoam coffee cups and a bag of donuts on it.
“Morning, all,” he said, looking at us. His eyes darted from Nick’s face to mine. “I see Nicky Boy just found out little Kelli had not been completely honest about her marital status.”
Nick turned to me. “You mean Flint knows, too? Am I the last to know about this?”
“Often how it goes, Nicky Boy,” answered Flint, unloading the Styrofoam cups from the container. “Look at it this way, son.
The fur of the jackal may be pleasing to touch, but he is still a jackal
…or in this case, she is still a jackal.”
Nick stared at him, his face contorted in pain. Despite the fact I was pissed at him, I tried to help out.
“Kelli is good at deceiving people, Nick, something I’ve experienced first-hand, myself,” I said. “You’re not alone in being taken in.”
“From what I’m learning about the little lady, she’s a master of deceit,” boomed Flint. “Here’s a bonus: since you’re not legally her husband, you’re not responsible for any bills she may incur or credit cards she may run up.”
He threw Nick the bag of donuts. Nick caught it without looking.
“Let’s move on to more important business,” Flint went on. “Two kinds of donuts, strawberry or blueberry jelly-filled. Fresh this morning. Help yourself. How do you take your coffee? I brought sugar, artificial sweeteners, and some creamers…” His voice trailed off, and he winked at us.
“God, I’m such an asshole,” said Nick, still staring at Flint.
“That’s true, son, so pick a donut,” said Flint.
I bit back a smile, glad to have the situation diffused, and Nick smiled after a moment, opened the bag, and peered inside.
“Would you look at this?” he said, pulling out a donut. “Real jelly-filled donuts. I haven’t had one of these in years.” He took a huge bite. Thick, dark blue filling spurted onto his left cheek. “Ummmm! Yummy,” he said, stretching his tongue to clean his cheek of the goo. “I take my coffee black,” he said, moving toward the kitchen counter.
From the bedroom, I heard my cellphone give out with Beethoven’s finest. When things slowed down, I’d really have to change it. Before hurrying for the phone, I grabbed a cup of java and a strawberry jelly donut. I’d have to do pushups for a week with one of those in my gullet, but some things are worth it.
After shutting the door, I answered the phone and allowed Gurn’s voice to wash over me like a warm sun shower. I assured him the cats and I were still okay, and we arranged to meet at the airport around eight-thirty a.m. Currently airborne in his handy-dandy Citation CJ4, he would do a quick refueling when he picked us up. He’d been kidding about the manifest. Ha ha.
* * * *
Three people, two cats, and one fish tank piled into the Jeep and headed for the airport. On the way, Flint told Nick he would be his guest for the next couple of days. Nick took it like a champ and even offered to do a few household chores. I’m not sure which one of us got through to him—I suspect it was Flint—but he was acting more mature and cooperative.
By the time Gurn landed at the small airport, Flint and I were waiting on the tarmac, me holding the cat carrier, and Flint loaded down with my knapsack, Lady Gee, and all her trappings. Nick decided to wait in the Jeep, probably not wanting to meet Gurn, which was fine with me. Flint and I trusted him to stay put, which was a certain leap of faith, but somewhere along the line, you’ve got to do that with a person important to an investigation. Besides, if he took off, odds are Spaulding’s boys would find him before us. Even Nick knew that.
Gurn taxied to the refueling area, came out and had a few words with the gas jockeys, or whatever they’re called, and headed in our direction. Flint and I met him halfway on the runway, and they greeted briefly, the tarmac not being conducive for social chitchat. Flint handed everything off to Gurn and left to get back to his charge in the car.
On the way to his plane, instead of me saying, “Golly gee wimple, I love you and can’t wait to jump your bones,” the first words I uttered were, “I sure hope it’s a smooth flight home. The animals have been through enough.”
“Should be,” he said, walking up the stairs of the plane and into the cabin. “The weather looks good from here to home.”
With club seating for seven, the interior is sparsely decorated in my mother’s favorite color combo, off-white and beige. Yuk. Gurn told me the first time I saw the interior, the plane had been previously owned by a clothing designer. He traveled the globe with his latest line and gave mini-fashion shows to select clients at forty-one-thousand feet. Airborne designer wanted a boring but tasteful backdrop for his clothes and got it. As far as Gurn was concerned, the leather seats were comfortable, and the padded interior and rug were pretty much stain resistant. End of story.
We buckled the cat carrier into one of the off-white leather passenger seats. Gurn had a special buckle made for securing a cat carrier to the seat, having traveled many times before with Baba. Lady Gee and the fish tank went on the floor, her air pump and filter plugged into the electrical system. As I’d done five or six time in the past four months, I followed Gurn to the cockpit and buckled up in the co-pilot’s chair.
Less than five minutes later, we were cleared for take-off and taxied to the runway, where we each went into our usual routine: Gurn flips a bunch of switches, while analyzing a bunch of dials. I squeeze my eyes shut and don’t open them until the plane has leveled off at four-ten, as he calls it, or forty-one thousand feet.
“It should be an easy flight, so sit back and relax,” he said in a voice which makes my knees go weak even when I’m sitting down. After a moment’s silence, he said. “So this is the ritual now, is it?”
“What is?”
“The eyes closed until we’ve level off.”
“Pretty much,” I said with my eyes screwed shut.
“Are you afraid of flying?”
“Don’t be silly.”
“You are. You’re afraid of flying.”
“No, I’m not. I’m afraid of crashing.”
“I don’t get it. You fly everywhere. Just yesterday you flew here on a commercial plane.”
“A-hah! But I don’t have to look out an iddy-biddy windshield and know that’s all that’s between me and the ground. In a bigger plane, I can pretend I’m on a boat, a train, or in my living room.”
What followed was the obligatory speech, “Do you know flying is the safest mode of transportation in the world? Why, it’s a scientific fact—”
“Yeah, yeah. Yada yada,” I interrupted. “I know it all. It doesn’t help. It’s this windshield. Possibly I’m a little neurotic.”
He laughed. “What? You? Never!”
The words were perfect, but the way he said them wasn’t.
“I’ve got an idea,” he went on. “Why don’t you go back to the cabin, buckle up along-side the cats, and after the plane levels off, you can come back for a visit?”
“Great! Because I really do like looking at those white fluffy clouds. It’s all the stuff below them makes me nauseated.”
I unbuckled and hurried back to the main cabin and sat across from the cats, who were handling this a lot better than me. This time I did relax into the soft comfort of the ergonomic chair.
I thought about Gurn and me using the “L” word. Now that we had, it seemed like we were being a little more honest with each other. I’d been flying in Gurn’s jet since I met him. This was the first time he called me on the eyes-closed approach I had to take-off and landing. Of course, I usually tried to be surreptitious about it, always facing away from him. Maybe I was being more out there, too, more trusting. Boy, what love does to a person.
Less than ten-minutes later, I heard Gurn’s voice on the intercom. “Lee, I’ve got it on automatic pilot, not that I plan on leaving the cockpit, but I want to give you the bulk of my attention. So come on up and tell me what’s been going on from the beginning. Don’t leave anything out, just talk. We’re not going anywhere for over an hour, anyway.”
So up I went, and after numerous kisses by the cockpit door, talk I did, starting from my eight a.m. wakeup call Sunday morning to getting the menagerie and me to the airport Monday morning. I have a photographic memory, when I want one, and gave him verbatim conversations with Kelli, Nick, Flint, hell, even the cats. Wonderful man that he is, he didn’t interrupt, didn’t ask questions, and didn’t offer any comments even though some things went begging for them.
“And that’s it. Welcome to my world,” I said, letting out a sigh and leaning back in the co-pilot’s seat.
“This Kelli sounds like the ultimate lying machine,” commented Gurn. “Not too perfect. Throwing in a few quirks here and there. Sometimes acting a little selfish, a little weird, anything that makes the listener trust what she’s saying as real and gospel, no matter how improbable it may seem on the face of it. She has the knack of
not
coming across too good to be true. From transcripts I’ve read of double agents in the cold war, it’s the same gift they had.”
I hadn’t thought about it before, but now that I did, I realized it was true. Kelli’s whole approach to things came off as scatty but sincere. I turned in my chair to face him. “Does that mean you’ll trust me to take care of Baba again?”
He looked over at me in surprise. “After what you went through to get her back? I don’t think most people would go through that much to get me back.”
“I would.”
He reached over and stroked my face with a tender touch. “And that’s why I trust you with my life and my cat.” I smiled, still wanting to jump his bones. While I wondered if I could be an honorary member of the mile-high club, Gurn released the automatic pilot and took the controls again.
“So once I turn over the microchip to Richard,” I said, thinking I had too much caffeine or an overactive libido, “we have to try to figure out what the list means, and why your name is on it. Meanwhile, no more races for you, mister.”
Before he could respond, my cellphone rang. Gurn has the latest of everything known to aviation, and one of them is a cell system allowing cellphones to work in the plane, no matter what the altitude.
“Beethoven’s calling,” Gurn teased. I looked at the incoming call and saw it was Flint.
“Flint, you’re on speakerphone. What’s happened?”
“Sorry to disturb your flight, but I’ve got bad news about Eddie Crackmeir.” Flint’s voice was loud and clear, sounding like any other normal call and not coming from forty-one thousand feet below. “Eddie was found this morning in his house, shot in the back of the head, hands tied behind his back.”
My stomach lurched more than it did during takeoff.
“Spaulding’s men?” I asked. I gave a quick look at Gurn, who was staring straight ahead with grim features.
“Possibly,” answered Flint. “There’s more. The police found Kelli’s Mercedes at McCarran Airport; empty, but traces of blood on the driver’s seat.”
“
Dios mio
!” Now Gurn and I turned and stared at each other. “Kelli’s missing?” I said.
“Apparently, but the cops are looking. Speaking of cops, that’s why I’m calling. My bowling buddy from LVPD phoned to say one of the neighbors reported my Jeep being outside of Eddie’s house last night around the time he was murdered.”
“The dog walker.”
“The very one. My license plate happens to be the same numbers as his wife’s birthday, so he remembered it and gave it to the police. Buddy said it would be good if I voluntarily came in and told them why I was there. I’m on my way. Am I using client confidentially? Or am I telling them everything I know? What do you want, Papoose?”
“Flint, tell them everything. D.I. will deal with the police in Palo Alto. I’ll alert Richard and Lila from my end.”
“The FBI is going to be in on this,” Gurn stated. “It’s just a matter of time. This has crossed state lines.”
“True,” I said, trying to mentally sort things out. “Whatever information is on the chip, they’re welcome to, once we make a copy of it. I think we can keep Stephen’s death and the foot races out of it for the time being. Although, Nick is probably going to have to tell them what he knows. Is he there with you?”
“We’re attached at the hip. Want to talk to him?”
“No. Just tell him to be as cooperative as possible, answer all their questions, but not to volunteer anything.”