Stranded Page 8

  Somewhere in his gut he’d known.

  “Oh, Billy,” he whispered. “What in the hell did you get yourself into?”

  Chapter Five

  “Take me by the school,” Alex told Dylan.

  “Jessica’s school? Why?”

  “Because I don’t want her to hear about Billy from someone else.”

  “Then call her,” Dylan said with his typical lack of understanding about sensitive issues. No wonder he went through women like water through a sieve.

  “Billy Summers was important to Jessica, especially in the last few months. The kid brought some color into her life and I owe it to both of them to make sure she hears what happened to him from me.”

  “Use the damn phone,” Dylan said impatiently.

  “Stop at the school. It’ll take ten minutes.”

  Dylan did as asked, immediately taking out his cell and making phone calls as Alex jogged inside. Probably because of the rain, but maybe because of the run across the drive-in lot, his leg hurt today but he ignored the pain.

  He found Jessica alone in her classroom as it was late lunch period by now. She was eating a sandwich at her desk while reading a book.

  She looked happy to see him, which warmed his heart to no end, and rose to greet him. He hugged her and held her for a moment, breathing in the fragrance of her hair and the feel of her body next to his, simple pleasures he would never take for granted again.

  “Why are you here?” she finally asked, and he requested she sit down.

  Five minutes later, tears in her eyes, she blew her nose on a tissue Alex fetched for her. “How did Lynda Summers take it?” she asked. Her voice was raw with grief.

  “Chief Smyth said she took it hard,” he said.

  “Do you have any idea who would do this to him?”

  “The drive-in gets weekend action from teens driving too fast and doing drugs. Maybe Billy was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Anyway, I just wanted you to know I’ll be late tonight and I didn’t want you hearing this from someone else.”

  “Has he been missing since he left our house?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure, but it looks like it. Far as I can tell he was wearing the same clothes. I’ll talk to his mother later and find out for sure. Are you okay? I’ve got a ton to do and Dylan is outside chomping at the bit.”

  “Go do your job,” she said. “And be careful.”

  “That’s what I was going to tell you,” he said, and kissed her on the lips. Hers were salty, but sweet, and he hugged her once more.

  He didn’t tell her about the drug angle Dylan had brought up because he knew she wouldn’t believe it, and until verified, it was just a rumor. Dylan had told him he heard that the Cummings twins used Billy like an enforcer of sorts and speculated someone got back at him by giving him some of the drugs and then killing him. Alex just wanted to make sure of the cause of death before they started making up stories.

  Within twenty minutes, they were bypassing the air terminal to drive around to the back of the airport. Alex’s gaze was drawn to the three rows of privately owned planes and specifically to the spot on the tarmac he’d rented for his Cessna. There was another plane there now.

  They parked by the maintenance building and went inside where they found Tony Machi working on the engine of a small aqua-colored single-engine plane Alex knew was owned by a local lawyer. Tony looked up from his work as he apparently heard their footsteps. He immediately broke into a grin and started wiping his hands on a grease rag hanging from an overall pocket.

  “Good to see you back,” he said to Alex, stepping forward, arm outstretched. “I’ve been dying to know what happened to the Cessna,” he added, his brow creasing. He was a middle-aged guy with a big family, as competent as he was kind and a hell of a mechanic. “I’d just worked on it a couple of days before you took off, remember? And don’t think the FAA and every other agency in the country wasn’t all over here, looking at my records and books.”

  Alex introduced Dylan before he explained. “I wasn’t feeling very good that day and my memory is shady,” Alex admitted. “I recall a sudden drop in the oil pressure, a fire, the engine seizing and the crash. A lot of people are talking sabotage but I don’t see how that could be, do you?”

  “Did you hear an explosion or something?”

  Alex searched his mind. As fuzzy as some things were, he was positive he hadn’t. “No.”

  “Well, I talked to your friend Nate Matthews on the phone. The FBI mentioned him, too, and then there was a lot of talk about that militia group and the way they were staging these horrible shootings on national holidays. You and your buddies were a threat to them, I guess.”

  “I guess,” Alex said.

  Tony shook his head. “Memorial Day is coming up—I’m keeping all the kids home. They’re throwing a fit because they want to go to the parade with their friends, but I just can’t let them do it. We’ll go tend my parents’ graves like we do every year, but then it’s home for movies on the television.”

  Alex knew Jessica would also go to the cemetery and put flowers on graves of former soldiers and that of her own grandfather, a World War II veteran. It was a tradition in her family, one they had shared over the years. But he hated to hear Tony talk about being afraid for his kids to attend a parade.

  “Probably a good idea to stay close to home,” Dylan said.

  “Yeah,” Tony said with a shake of his head. “But kind of sad, too. It’s getting so regular folks like me feel they need to carry a gun around.”

  “Which is exactly the fear these people strive to create,” Alex said.

  “Yeah. I know, I read that, too.” Tony sighed and squared his shoulders. “Okay, give it to me straight. Where is your beautiful Cessna now?”

  “Under at least twenty feet of cold lake water. Nate and I are going to dive on it.”

  “Won’t the FAA bring it out of the lake?”

  “Yeah, they will. But it’s in a remote spot and it’s going to take a helicopter and a lot of staging. I want to see it myself before they move it.”

  “Yeah, I would, too. I’ll make a list of things you should look for or check, okay?” Tony offered.

  “That’s great.”

  “But that’s not why we’re really here,” Dylan pointed out. He gestured at a few stools pulled up to a workbench. “Let’s sit down. We have bad news.”

  Tony froze in place. “Is it Noreen or one of my children—”

  “Nothing like that,” Alex rushed to assure him. “It’s about Billy.”

  Tony shook his head. “I know you were looking for him yesterday. He still hasn’t shown up? Well, he’s late getting here, too. He has a whole bunch of small jobs to perform and it’s getting late. When he does get here, I have half a mind to tell him to get lost.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Alex said gently. “We found his body a little while ago. He’s been dead since sometime Sunday morning.”

  Tony sat abruptly. “Dead? How?”

  “I’m not entirely sure. On the surface, he was run over at least twice. But it’s unclear why he would just lie there and let someone do that to him.”

  “An accident?” Tony said. “I mean he rode that bike of his everywhere. Did someone run him down beside a road?”

  Thinking they wouldn’t really know if Billy actually died at the drive-in until all the evidence was analyzed, Alex kept it vague while Dylan didn’t respond at all. “It’s unclear.”

  Dylan added, “Do you know if he used drugs?”

  Tony looked aghast. “Drugs? I don’t think so. They test employees but Billy wasn’t really on a formal payroll. I never saw any indications, though.”

  “How about friends?” Dylan persisted. “Did people come here to see him?”

  “Once in
a while, but he had trouble with people, you know. He was impressionable and eager to please most of the time, but then he’d get all sullen and quiet.”

  “You ever see a couple of blond boys about eighteen years old visit him? They’re twins so they stand out,” Dylan said.

  “Blond, good-looking boys?”

  “Yeah, I guess you could call them good-looking.”

  Tony nodded. “I’ve seen them. They talk to Billy sometimes. Seemed like odd kids for a guy like Billy to know, but they acted friendly enough.”

  “Billy came by our house Saturday night,” Alex said. “I don’t think he was aware there was a party.”

  “Why did he go to your house?” Tony asked, obviously surprised.

  “He befriended my wife while I was away. She got to be quite fond of him. But Saturday night he said he came to talk to me. Then he got scared off by all the cops hanging around and claimed he couldn’t remember what he wanted. While he was there, I recalled seeing him here on the tarmac the morning I took off. He was deicing a windshield for somebody else, at least that’s the impression I got because of the tools he carried. He didn’t remember seeing me, though.”

  “Ordinarily, I wouldn’t have remembered one morning out of a hundred, but that morning stands out on account of what happened to you,” Tony said. “No one else took off in a private plane that morning and I don’t remember Billy being here, either, at least not until later in the day. Now, two days before, that was a different matter. The kid got here early and stayed late, hanging over my shoulder all the time, even refusing to break for lunch.”

  “Was that unusual behavior for him?” Alex asked.

  “Well, sure. It gets a little cold in this hangar in February, you know, so we’re all anxious for a few minutes in what we refer to as the lounge. It’s that room back there with a table and chairs. Oh, and a heater. It’s where we eat our lunch and Billy was as fond of food as the rest of us. But that day, he stayed here, looking at his little cards as though he was trying to remember something.”

  “Little cards?” Dylan asked, but Alex was pretty sure he knew what Tony was talking about.

  “Yeah, you know, those little white cards my wife puts recipes on, or at least she used to before she got her computer. As long as the directions were real easy, he liked to have them written down.”

  Alex cleared his throat. “Directions to what?”

  “Oh, you know, things like, go get the broom, sweep up garbage, put garbage in can. I don’t know what he was looking at that day because it wasn’t one of my cards.”

  “And how do you know that?” Dylan asked.

  “Because mine are all pink. They’re leftovers from the wife. The one he kept fingering was white.”

  “What were you working on that day, do you remember?”

  Tony shrugged. “Just regular stuff. Engine tune-ups, maintenance checks, you know. It might have been the day I looked at your plane, Alex. Yeah, in fact, I’m sure it was.” He frowned for a second. “Sure as heck can’t figure out why he’d go to your house at night like that.”

  “His mother didn’t know what he wanted, either. Are you sure he didn’t say anything to you about my being back?”

  “I haven’t seen him since you got back. He didn’t come into work Saturday which was unusual for him. The only times he tended not to show up were when he had a problem of some sort he was working through.”

  “What kind of problem?”

  “I don’t know, he didn’t exactly tell me. I just knew when he was preoccupied. He’d get quieter than ever and go off by himself.” Tony sighed as he got to his feet. “The boy had big dreams. I think he was kind of desperate to get away from that house. I gave him rides home when the weather was real bad. His mother was always haranguing him. I don’t know how he stood living in that rat’s nest.”

  “I don’t, either,” Alex said. For the first time, he started wondering about the noise Lynda Summers claimed to have heard in the wee hours of Sunday morning. He’d written it off, but not any longer. Maybe it warranted another look around.

  “If you think of anything, let me know,” Alex said, and handed Tony a card.

  “I will. Damn shame. All and all, I’m going to miss the kid.”

  * * *

  “I THINK WE need to talk to the Cummings twins and to Billy’s mother sooner rather than later,” Alex said.

  “Which one first?”

  “You go see the twins, I’ll go see Lynda Smyth.”

  “No,” Dylan said. “We should stick together.”

  “I don’t think so,” Alex said. “Let’s drop by the office and talk to the M.E., and then you swing by my house and let me out. I’ll get my truck.”

  “I don’t know,” Dylan protested. “You heard what the FBI guy said and now Tony is talking about Billy hanging around your plane while it was getting fixed. We stick together.”

  Alex shook his head. “I’m not budging on this. It’s our job to investigate Billy Summers’s death and I’m not going to jeopardize what needs to be done so you can hold my hand. Let’s stop arguing about it.”

  “Three months in the mountains didn’t cure your stubborn streak, did it?” Dylan said.

  “Nope.”

  By the time Dylan reached Alex’s house, they knew that Billy had drugs in his system at the time of death and that he’d been alive when he was run over. There was still no explanation of how he ended up at the old drive-in except that it seemed unlikely he rode there on his bike as there were no discernible bicycle tracks. And if he hadn’t ridden the bike, then someone had taken him. Why? Hopefully Billy’s mother or the Cummings boys could shed some light on the matter.

  “Jessica isn’t home yet,” Alex said to himself as they pulled in the driveway.

  “Did you expect her to be?”

  “Kind of.”

  “Don’t worry. She’ll be cautious.”

  “Yeah,” Alex said, not at all sure his partner was right. As Dylan roared off, Alex unlocked the garage and got in his truck. It was the first time he’d turned the key in the ignition since coming home, but Jessica had told him she’d run the engine every few days. The truck started right up and he pulled out of the garage.

  As he drove away, he attempted to reason with himself. Jessica was fine, she knew he was going to be late, she probably just stopped by a friend’s house.

  The pep talk grated every raw nerve in his body.

  * * *

  THE LAST TIME Jessica felt like she did today, she’d been eighteen years old and a freshman in college. It had been the first time she’d been away from home and she remembered feeling so excited she could hardly sleep. All the new people and ideas and parties and conversations made her anxious for each new day.

  And then things began to change. It started with an uneasy feeling of being watched, causing her to turn while walking across a field or down a hall to see if someone was behind her, looking over her shoulder with uneasy glances. There never seemed to be anyone interested in her and after a few days of it, she began to think she was developing some major psychological problem.

  After a week or so of this, she began getting phone calls from a blocked line with no one speaking on the other end. This was followed by someone turning her doorknob in the middle of the night. She considered contacting the campus police but decided against it, unwilling to go public lest her parents be notified. No way did she want them to panic and demand she come home. A few times she managed to yank the door open, but there was never anyone there. When a bouquet of dead flowers greeted her one morning, she decided it was time to enlist the aid of the dorm resident assistant who helped her set a trap.

  The perpetrator turned out to be a boy she had in one of her classes. She vaguely remembered that sometime in the first month of school he had hemmed and hawed in an awkwar
d attempt to ask her out. As she wasn’t interested in dating him or anyone else at that point, she’d attempted to defuse the request by joking around and making an excuse to rush off. After that, she’d seldom seen him again. And all along, he had been furious with what he thought was her total disregard for his feelings and had decided to retaliate by anonymously stalking her. After she’d apologized up one side and down the other and he had done the same, they’d avoided each other for the rest of term. She wasn’t sure what happened to him after that.

  And that’s how she felt today as she left the Green Mountain Mall. Like someone was watching. It hadn’t started until she finished shopping and was making her way back to her car.

  In a replay of those long-ago college years, she found herself whipping around to check out the people and cars around her. And as before, she saw no one lurking, nothing threatening.

  Alex had asked her to not be alone. She’d thought a mall would be the perfect place to search for a condolence card for Billy’s mother. At this hour of the day, the place was crawling with people. But now she realized that there were several ways to be alone and one of the most disturbing ways was to be in a crowd of people you didn’t know.

  Think about Billy’s mother, stop thinking about yourself.

  Maybe it was because she was in the process of creating a child that the thought of losing one made Jessica so sick inside. But there was also the fact that Billy had been a generous companion with no agenda of his own except to help her. He’d made her world more beautiful, certainly physically with his gardening, but also figuratively by offering undemanding friendship at a time in her life when that was about all she could handle. And now he was gone.

  There was that feeling again. Once more she scanned the immediate vicinity, her eyes peeled for tall, tanned bald men in particular. “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” she whispered to herself as none materialized, but that wasn’t entirely true. The FBI don’t warn people for nothing.

  Where was all her bravado now? Was someone in this sea of cars staring at her through binoculars?