Authors: Sara Rosett
A man brushed past the car seat and dropped onto the far end of the couch across from me, the guy who’d beat me to the first parking space. He picked up a magazine, flicked through it, tossed it back on the table, then rattled a newspaper as he scanned the headlines. He lobbed the paper onto the table and leaned back against the cushions, one foot bouncing up and down. He looked familiar. I went through faces I’d met recently, trying to place him. Watching him made me feel more tired. I must have looked like I was moving underwater
compared to his fidgety energy. After he checked his watch, he jiggled his change. I was still rocking the car seat with my toe. My eyes drooped as I focused on the rhythmic movement of the car seat.
“Nick Town,” snapped a voice beside me and I nearly fell off the couch. The man seated across from me jumped up and followed the nurse through the door marked Lab/X-ray. The door on the other side of the counter opened and a nurse called Livvy’s name. I followed the nurse through a maze of twisting corridors to a small examining room. I felt like I needed bread crumbs to sprinkle behind me.
After a few minutes, Dr. Stig arrived. The nurse’s initial poking and prodding had awoken Livvy and she didn’t like the doctor’s exam much better.
“Looks like she has an ear infection.” Dr. Stig whipped out a pad and scrawled a prescription. He was young with fair hair and pale skin. He wasn’t wearing a white coat, just khakis and a knit shirt. He looked like he was ready to hit the golf course.
He handed me the slip of paper. “Here’s an antibiotic for her. Bring her in next week for a recheck. Everyone should be getting more sleep in a day or two.” He smiled and told me to give her Tylenol for the pain and was out the door before I could get Livvy back in her car seat.
With the help of a nurse, I found my way back to the waiting area, where I scheduled an appointment for the next Friday. As I signed my check for my copayment, a nurse hurried over from behind the stacks of medical records and said to the nurse who was waiting for my check, “Go on. I’ll finish this. There he is.” The newly arrived nurse, whose name tag read
YVONNE,
made
shooing motions with her hands. The other nurse giggled, flicked her blond ponytail, and went to the other end of the counter.
I waited for my receipt, bouncing the handle of the car seat in the crook of my elbow. The fidgety man from the waiting room came out the door and pulled out his wallet. He wasn’t one of our new neighbors.
Ponytail smiled and leaned over the counter. He shifted down to a lower gear and took quite a bit of time to hand over his money and get his appointment card.
“Good to see you again. Are the shots helping?” Ponytail held on to the appointment card, turning it over and over in her hands.
“Yeah, they seem to.” He smiled, pulled out his keys, and flicked them back and forth.
“Have you been flying lately?” Ponytail asked, reluctantly handing over the card. I took my card, too, and looked at the man again. His car keys glittered in the low light. Then I had it. I’d met him on the way to the car at the barbeque. He had been talking to Mitch.
I’d missed his reply to Ponytail’s question.
“See you next week,” he said and jogged up the stairs.
Ponytail dropped his file in a bin. “Isn’t he cute?”
“Too short for me.” Yvonne, who was probably close to six feet tall, tossed Livvy’s paperwork into the same bin.
“I thought you only saw dependents from the base,” I said. Mitch might rather see a doctor off-base. But as soon as I asked the question I knew the answer. No way would the Air Force allow civilians to treat pilots. The Air Force would be out of the loop.
“Yes, just dependents. Unless we get a special referral from the base for something they don’t handle. Usually
specialty things,” Yvonne replied. Nick must have been referred off-base for something, like the time Mitch pulled a ligament in his foot and had to see a physical therapist. But Nick looked healthy as a horse, a jittery thoroughbred racehorse.
I set the car seat on the table and scooted into the plastic booth with a sigh. My few hours of sleep were running out and I felt like I could put my head down on the table and sleep for hours. Mitch set down the tray with our sub sandwiches and drinks. The restaurant, Robin Hood’s, in the Base Exchange was almost deserted. One-thirty was late for lunch around the base; most people ate at eleven-thirty, since they started work at seven-thirty. As we ate, I filled Mitch in on the doctor’s visit and my trip to the base pharmacy.
Then he opened a shopping bag I hadn’t noticed and pulled out a kid-size tennis racket. “I went shopping while I waited.”
“Mitch, she won’t play tennis for years. She’s got to walk first.”
“She can work on her grip.”
Mitch can be almost as stubborn as I can, so I changed the subject. “So how’s mission planning going?” I asked. Mitch had a flight the next day.
“We finished this morning. We’re lead in a two-ship.” He meant he was flying the lead plane. I could tell he was glad to have a flight. The work in the safety office was fine with him, but he’d fly every day if he could. Of course, everyone else in the squad felt the same way.
“Anything else going on?”
“Detectives from OSI are talking to everyone about Cass and the barbeque.”
“Really?” Our truce held, mostly because we didn’t talk about Jeff’s possible involvement in Cass’s death. I phrased my next questions carefully. “So they do think someone put the wasps there intentionally?”
“Who knows what they think? They’re asking questions, not answering them.”
“Did they talk to you?” I asked.
Mitch nodded. “Well, what did they ask about?” I prodded. Men can be so big-picture. I wanted the details and Mitch thought he’d covered everything with his blanket statement.
“About the barbeque. Who was in the parking lot, which was probably just about everyone. Did anyone dislike Cass?”
“What did you tell them?”
“I couldn’t tell them much. We’ve only been here a few weeks.”
“Did you tell them about the argument Jeff and Cass had?”
“They already knew. I told them it was no big deal. Why are you so interested?” He wadded up his napkin and threw it on the tray. His eyes challenged me.
I sipped my Diet Coke. “I don’t know,” I said slowly. “I guess because I found Cass and I found the wasps. I feel a little guilty, too, about washing and vacuuming the van. What if I destroyed evidence?” I set my cup back down and pushed my plate away. “I don’t want whoever did this to get away with it.” And most of all, I knew Jeff was a suspect and I’d started the whole thing, but I kept silent about that issue. I felt miserable. I hated being so guarded and careful in what I said to Mitch, but I didn’t say anything. I knew how the whole conversation would go. I knew Mitch would defend Jeff and be hurt that I suspected Jeff.
“Ellie.” Mitch hunched over the table, gripped my hand. “I know finding her was awful, but you’re not responsible for making sure her killer doesn’t get away with it, even if you did wash and vacuum the van. You were trying to help Joe. The police and the medical examiner thought it was a natural death, otherwise they’d have checked the van out better. You shouldn’t feel guilty. If it weren’t for you, there’d be a person out there who got away with murder.” Mitch squeezed my hand, then said, “That worries me. Keep your distance from this thing, okay?”
“Sure,” I said and smiled, but inside I knew it was a halfhearted promise.
Mitch studied my face without saying anything and then stood to carry the tray to the trash bin. That’s the problem with being close to your husband. He knows when you’re lying. But he knows how hardheaded I am, too, so I guess he decided not to try to press any more promises out of me. At least, not right then, anyway.
I hooked my elbow through Livvy’s car seat handle, tucked my wallet purse into the diaper bag, and slung it over my shoulder. As I walked down the narrow aisle of tables, I noticed a familiar face from the squadron’s orderly room, Airman Tessa Jones. Mitch was talking to a friend in the restaurant line, so I paused and said, “Tessa, how are you?”
Tessa put down her book. “Oh, you’ve got Livvy!” The book’s cover had a bare-chested man embracing a woman in a nightgown. The background, a field of pink flowers, contrasted with Tessa’s camouflage uniform, called Battle Dress Uniform, or BDUs. People’s reading choices always surprised me. She smiled at Livvy. Tessa’s white teeth shown brightly against her dark chocolate–colored skin as she said, “She’s still gorgeous.”
When we first arrived in Vernon we stayed in Lodging on base in a hotel room until our boxes were delivered. I could only spend so many hours in a hotel room watching TV and reading the local paper. It was too hot to do anything outside, so after I wandered around the Base Exchange and checked our mail at the post office, I’d head over to the squad where Mitch was already working. Tessa was Livvy’s biggest fan in the squad.
“Want to hold her?” I asked.
“Nah. You’ve got her all buckled in. Leave her. I’ll hold her next time you come by the squad. I haven’t seen much of you lately.”
“I’ve been unpacking.”
“But you were at the barbeque. Can you believe that?” Tessa’s soft southern drawl stopped abruptly. “Oh, I forgot. You …”
“Yeah. I found her.”
Tessa’s face turned sympathetic. “I shouldn’t have said anything. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. Don’t worry about it.”
“It’s just that everyone is talking about Cass nonstop. Especially with the questioning going on.” Tessa shook her head. “Couldn’t get any work done when she was alive and can’t get any work done with her gone, either.”
“What?” I slid into the chair across from her and put the car seat on the floor.
“Well, I don’t want to speak ill of the dead or anything, but that woman was at the squadron all the time. Constantly in and out of the orderly room, looking for Joe or for Colonel Briman. She always had some ‘issue’ to discuss with Briman, but I don’t know why she had to discuss everything draped over his desk. Like she was his top priority.” Tessa usually had a stack of forms for
Briman to sign on her desk. I’m sure Tessa thought the forms took priority over Cass. “But she treated all the guys that way. Like on Friday. I saw her on my way to the barbeque. There she was practically glued to Captain McCarter, laughing and flirting.”
So, Cass was snuggling up to Mr. Wandering Hands. “And I bet he didn’t discourage her.”
Tessa shook her head. “He certainly wasn’t running the other way.” Tessa leaned toward me. “Colonel Briman’s had several complaints about Captain McCarter being too friendly to the ladies, if you know what I mean.”
“I know exactly what you mean. What’s going to happen?”
“Nothing, for now. No one wants to put anything in writing.”
I asked, “Do you think there was anything going on between Cass and Brent?”
Tessa stirred the chicken noodle soup in her bread bowl before she answered. “You know, I don’t think there was. I told that closed-mouthed detective that, too. I think she wanted, maybe needed, the attention. She had to have every man in the vicinity wrapped around her little finger. She was a flirt, but I don’t think it went any deeper.”
Mitch came over, said hello to Tessa, and then we left. As we stepped into the parking lot, I wondered if Cass had died because she was a tease. Or maybe she did have an affair.
“I’d better go. Got a meeting in ten minutes,” Mitch said. He kissed me good-bye and headed for his car on the other side of the parking lot. I trudged down the row to the Cherokee. In the slot next to the Cherokee, a man sat on the open tailgate of his small white pickup truck, pulling on boots.
“Hi, Jeff.” I waved and closed the last few steps.
“Hey, Ellie. Is Mitch around?” I’d wondered what Jeff’s attitude would be when I saw him. Would he be depressed or angry? But his tone and open smile were so, well, normal that I found myself talking to him without feeling awkward. He patted Livvy’s foot and scanned the parking lot for Mitch.
I said easily, “No. He’s gone back to the squad.”
Jeff pulled the laces tight on the last boot, a pale brown desert camo boot. I nodded at the boots. “Left over from your last deployment to Iraq?”
He yanked the laces into a tight bow, then tucked them inside the top of the boot. “Yeah.” He hopped off the tailgate. Without his weight, the pickup rose several inches. “I’m going scouting. Best use of these dang boots, yet.”
“Oh. Scouting. Like for a place to hunt?” Abby had explained that scouting out good hunting locations and obtaining the owner’s permission to hunt on the land could take as much, or more, time than the actual hunting.
“Yep.” Jeff stowed his shiny black boots that went with his flight suit in the bed of the pickup and grabbed a plastic bag with the AAFES logo, the company that ran the Base Exchange. He slammed the tailgate closed.
“I thought you were in a hunting lease.” He eyed me for a second before he stripped the plastic bag off of a grid map of Eastern Washington.
“Abby told me,” I explained.
Jeff smiled, his eyes crinkling and the second of tension I’d felt dispersed. “Yeah. Abby tells everyone everything. I’m in a deer lease. Today, I’m looking for a place to hunt ducks.”
“Oh. So who else is in the lease with you?” To keep
the relaxed atmosphere, I quickly added, “Is there room for Mitch?”
“Sorry. We’re full up. Got me, Tommy, and two other local guys. They won’t take anyone else, but maybe someone will drop out and Mitch can join next year.”
“Okay. I’ll tell him. Is it close?”
“North of town. About an hour up 247,” Jeff said, naming a state highway. “Okay, I’ll let you go. Good to see you.” He patted Livvy’s foot again and got in his pickup.
I drove home from the base on automatic pilot. So Jeff really was in a hunting lease and I bet the guys at the squad would back him up. And his disposition was sunny, upbeat. He looked like his biggest worry was finding a pond full of unsuspecting ducks. I should have felt better after seeing how relaxed he was. He wasn’t worried about a murder charge. But shouldn’t he have looked a little worried? If detectives were asking questions about me, I’d be a nervous wreck. Of course, he didn’t do it. Not Jeff.