Up Close and Dangerous Page 18

  That was the correct response from a man who’d had to make hard decisions before, but Karen didn’t like having her theory shot down. She’d accepted that Cam was dead, but she hadn’t yet accepted that there was no one she could blame for it. “Stick your heads in the sand then,” she snapped, and stalked out of Bret’s office.

  Bret sighed and dropped heavily into his chair. “I’m sorry,” he muttered. “She’s having a hard time accepting this. We both are, I guess. I pulled all the Skylane’s service records and repair write-ups, and the mechanic and I have gone over them looking for something, anything, that could indicate what went wrong. It’s hard, not knowing what happened.”

  “I’m sorry,” said MaGuire. “I wish I could do more. These situations, where we know they’re gone but we can’t find them, are the toughest we deal with. People need to know. One way or another, they need to know.”

  “Yeah,” Bret said heavily. As if compelled, he picked up the Skylane’s file and opened it again, leafing through each copy of the maintenance reports, the fueling slips, the myriad pieces of paper required on each of their aircraft. Karen had everything on computer, backed up at an online data bank, but in the early days they’d lost all their records because of a catastrophic computer crash and filing their tax reports had been a nightmare. Since then they’d also kept a paper file, regardless of how redundant and archaic. Bret and Dennis had even compared each report with the computer file, to see if anything had been left out or entered incorrectly, something they hadn’t breathed a word of to Karen because she’d have taken their heads off for even suggesting she’d made an error.

  MaGuire watched him with sympathy, knowing how difficult it was to accept that sometimes shit did just happen, with no rhyme or reason.

  Suddenly Bret stiffened, and flipped back to the beginning of the file. MaGuire frowned, reading his body language, and went to stand beside him. “Don’t tell me you found something.”

  “I don’t know,” said Bret. “Maybe I read it wrong. It was the fueling report for that morning.” He leafed through the file again, pulling out the paper that was third from the top and staring at it. “That’s wrong!” he said forcefully. “That’s just fucking wrong!”

  “What is?”

  “This is! Look at the number of gallons pumped. There’s no way.”

  MaGuire looked at the fuel report. “Thirty-nine gallons.”

  “Yeah. The Skylane’s usable capacity is eighty-seven gallons. This doesn’t make sense. The fueling order was to fill the tanks. With a full load, he’d have had to refuel in Salt Lake City, so there’s no way he’d take off with less than half what he needed to get there. Even if he had, when he saw the reading he’d have radioed in and refueled at Walla Walla, not flown right past it.”

  “Yeah.” MaGuire frowned at the report, thinking hard. Karen had come to the doorway and stood there, watching and listening, every cell of her body broadcasting her alertness. “We need to get in touch with the fuel company, find out what their records show. Maybe this is an error.”

  Fueling was handled by a licensed contractor. A phone call elicited the information that their records indicated thirty-nine gallons had been pumped into the Skylane at 6:02 the morning of the flight, and the reports from that day had matched the pump’s total. More phone calls, and soon they were talking to the truck’s operator, who said flatly, “I filled the tanks, just the way the order reads. I checked the valve, and I visually verified. I even thought it was unusual that so much fuel had been left in the tanks, but thought a charter might have been canceled after the plane was already fueled.”

  A plane, especially a charter or commercial plane, didn’t carry unnecessary fuel. Fuel was heavy, and the more a plane carried, the more power was needed to get it where it was going. Usually the refueling order was for enough to get the plane to its destination, with a little extra in case it had to be rerouted or circumstances called for a delay in landing. “Little” was a relative term, of course, but Mike, who had flown the Skylane to Eugene the day before, would never have taken on over half a tank more than what was needed. To be certain, Bret pulled the fuel records from the day Mike had flown the plane. There was no way he could have flown to Eugene and back, and had that much fuel left.

  “So what does this mean?” Karen fiercely demanded. “Cam thought he had enough fuel to get to Salt Lake City, but didn’t? Somebody tampered with his fuel gauge?” Her fists were clenched, her knuckles white.

  MaGuire’s face looked as if it had grown additional lines and wrinkles. “It means there’s a possibility the fuel tanks looked full when they weren’t.”

  Bret closed his eyes. He looked sick. “The simplest way is to put a clear plastic airbag in the tank,” he told Karen. “Fill it with air, no one can see it, and the tank won’t hold as much fuel as it should. It isn’t complicated.”

  “I told you!” she said, trembling with pent-up fury. “He must have had something in mind or he wouldn’t have called that day!”

  “I think we should see if there are any security tapes,” MaGuire said briskly.

  24

  SETH HAD FILLED OUT THE REQUIRED PAPERWORK FOR becoming an employee of the Wingate Group, met his supervisor, was shown where to report, and given an employee badge. Grant Siebold had greased the way for him, he learned; he didn’t have to piss in a cup for a drug test the way every other new employee did. He assumed the “omission” would be discovered at a later date, after any drugs he’d smoked or swallowed would have had time to clear out of his system. He got the message, loud and clear: if he ignored this obvious warning and continued with his old ways, when his urine tested positive for drugs he’d be kicked out on his ass.

  He’d have to do some online checking, see how long marijuana showed up in the system. Thank God, smoking a little weed was as deep as he’d waded in the drug pool; his preferred anesthesia was alcohol. But even that was off the table now.

  Then he went shopping. He’d seen the dress code, even in the mail room: dark pants, white shirt, tie. The shoes could be lace-ups or loafers, but nothing resembling an athletic shoe. Black socks.

  He had always despised the corporate drones and their boring dress code, but now he applied himself with a vengeance to looking just like them. A trip to Nordstrom’s, where he resisted the more stylish choices, accomplished that. On the way home he listened to his voice mail messages. Most of them were from people he’d partied with, wanting to know where he’d been last night. He didn’t return any of the calls. Tamzin’s he deleted without bothering to listen to them.

  He remembered that he didn’t have any food at home, so he detoured to a grocery store. Again, what he bought was out of his norm, because he didn’t even go down the wine or beer aisles. Oatmeal. Cereal. Fruit. Orange juice. Milk. Coffee. His stomach turned flips at the thought of putting any of that in his mouth, but he knew he’d have to eat. Crackers and canned soup rounded out his planned menus.

  Life as he’d known it was over. If he were to survive, he couldn’t afford any more wrong choices or irresponsible behavior. Bleakness filled him like a rainy day, stretching in an endless parade of weeks, months, years, that all looked exactly the same and promised not one minute of sunshine. So be it. He’d earned the grayness.

  After he got home and had put the perishables in the refrigerator, he stripped off his clothes and lay down on the bed, hoping he could nap. The sleepless night he’d spent had left him exhausted, but he couldn’t go to sleep. Memories marched through his head like army ants.

  He must have dozed eventually, because the ringing of the phone jarred him into a sitting position. Grabbing the phone, he focused blearily on the Caller ID. His pulse gave a leap when he recognized the number. He punched the talk button and said, “Bailey?” in a cautious, incredulous tone.

  “Bailey!” Tamzin gave a tittering laugh. “Good God, wash your mouth out with soap!”

  Fuck. Seth sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. “Tamzin. What are you doing
at Bailey’s house?”

  “This isn’t Bailey’s house,” she said viciously. “It was our mother’s house, and now it’s mine. You don’t need anything this big; I have a family and you don’t.”

  “How did you get in?”

  “You don’t think she changed the alarm code, do you? It’s still the same as it was when Dad was alive. And of course I have a key.”

  There was no “of course” to it; Seth figured she’d light-fingered the key one day while she was visiting, probably even before their father died.

  “Get your ass out of there,” he said flatly. “Legally Bailey is still alive, and you can’t touch anything.”

  “What do you mean, legally she’s still alive? A death certificate hasn’t been issued yet?”

  “Don’t you ever watch the news?” he snapped. “The crash site hasn’t been found yet. There’s no body. No body, no evidence of a crash, so no death certificate.”

  “What’s taking so damn long, then? How long can it take to find an airplane? It isn’t as if it could have crashed in some farmer’s cornfield and he wouldn’t notice.”

  The wave of dislike that swept over him was so strong that he had to bite the inside of his cheek to hold back what he wanted to say to her. He couldn’t let his temper get the best of him. He could never again say whatever popped into his head, without thought for the consequences. Instead he said, “If she isn’t dead, and she finds out you’ve made yourself at home in what she thinks of as her house, she’ll cut your fund disbursement down to twenty dollars a month. Trust me on this.”

  There was a pause, then Tamzin asked in a radically altered tone, “You mean there’s really a possibility she could come back?”

  “I mean it’s better not to take the chance. The house isn’t going anywhere. If it takes us six months to have her declared dead, it’ll still be there.”

  “But I’ve already told people…well, they just misunderstood is all. Oh, you’ll get a kick out of this. Her stupid brother called—you know, the one who came to Dad’s funeral. She was supposed to meet him in Denver. I let him know just what a bitch she was and how glad we are that she’s gone.”

  Oh, fuck. “What, exactly, did you say?”

  “I let him have it with both barrels. I couldn’t stand him, the way he wanted to be so friendly when our father had just died. I told him only a fool crossed you, and she’d got just what she deserved.”

  The satisfaction in her voice was jarring, and like a lightning bolt Seth realized that his sister hated him. Maybe she thought that if he was in prison she’d have sole control of all the money. Or that she could arrange for his murder, and then all the money would be hers, free and clear. Maybe she’d resented him all his life, because their father had made it plain he wanted Seth to succeed him at the Wingate Group. Whatever her reasoning, he suddenly knew beyond a doubt that no one had ever hated him as much as his sister did.

  “Just so you know,” he said slowly, “I have a will.”

  “So? It isn’t as if you have any other brothers or sisters.” Meaning she expected to get his money whether he had a will or not.

  “If anything happens to me, I’ve left it all to charity. You don’t get a fucking penny.” He disconnected the call and sat there for a moment, shivering. Then he called his lawyer, and turned his statement into fact.

  On the first day of his employment, he was there half an hour early. He hadn’t been able to sleep much, and he was afraid there might be a traffic tie-up that delayed him. He was unaccountably nervous. How difficult could sorting and delivering mail be? The toughest part would be enduring the curious stares, because he was almost twice the age of the youngest mail-room employee. At least no one would know him on sight, except for a few of the highest-ranked executives, and he doubted he’d see any of them. If he did take mail and packages to their offices, their assistants would take it, not the executives themselves. He was glad of that degree of separation.

  The other mail-room employees began filing in, most of them carrying the requisite Starbucks cups. Seth was swimming against the tide there, because he wasn’t the coffeehouse type. Coffee was okay, but he liked it ordinary and unflavored, and it didn’t break his heart if there wasn’t any available. Maybe he should cultivate the taste, he thought, to fit in. Or buy one cup of the stuff, dump the coffee, keep the cup, and pour his ordinary brew into it. He wondered how long one of the cups would last before disintegrating.

  The other clerks eyed him, unsure what to make of him. Maybe they thought he worked upstairs. What the hell; they were young and he wasn’t, so he made the first move. “My name’s Seth,” he said. “I’m starting work here today.”

  They exchanged glances. One of the young women, a tall, skinny girl with the cold eyes of a mongoose, said, “Here? In the mail room?”

  “That’s right.”

  More glances. “Did you just get out of prison or something?”

  Just trying to keep my ass out of one. “No,” he replied casually. “I was in a coma for fifteen years, and finally woke up.”

  “No shit?” one of the guys said, looking startled. “What happened?”

  “I huffed a can of nonstick spray.”

  “Bullshit,” the mongoose said. “You’d have to have severe brain damage to be in a coma that long.”

  Mean, but smarter than these other kids. “Who says I don’t?” he finally said, and turned away.

  The mail-room supervisor was a short, dumpy, gray-haired woman with the unlikely name of Candy Zurchin and all the fashion sense of a babushka. Her wardrobe seemed to run to navy blazers, gray skirts, and lace-up black shoes, and she ran the mail room with a no-nonsense efficiency that put Catholic schools to shame. Certainly she had the number of all the youngsters under her command, including the mongoose, who said “Yes, ma’am” whenever Candy told her to do something—and said it without sarcasm, which was the remarkable thing.

  Seth reined in his ego, his pride, and his temper, and did whatever she told him to do, quietly and without complaining. The work didn’t require a lot of brain cells, but when he looked at the job objectively he could see where this was good training, because while it was hugely boring it also required an attention to detail and discipline. The inclination to slack off was almost overwhelming; some of the clerks gave the job less than their all. He knew that if he were an upper-echelon executive, though, he’d pay close attention to Candy Zurchin’s recommendations and comments.

  Two days ago, he wouldn’t have paid any attention to her at all.

  The job was simple: sort and deliver all the incoming mail and packages, pick up all the outgoing stuff, apply the proper postage or shipping labels, pack the stuff that needed packing, and get it all out of there that day. Over and over. It seldom varied, and it never ended. He was astonished by the sheer volume of snail mail. Hadn’t these people ever heard of e-mail? But e-mail seemed limited to intradepartment and employee-to-employee communications; letters to outside contacts and important stuff like contracts still went to paper.

  Maybe Siebold had given Candy instructions not to let him hide in the basement, because that very first day, she sent him out with a cart piled high with letters, insulated envelopes, and packages. “The way to learn is by doing,” she said briskly. “The offices are clearly marked. If you can’t find someone, ask.”

  The floors he was delivering to were, of course, the upper ones. If being recognized humiliated him into quitting, Grant Siebold wanted it to happen sooner rather than later.

  Seth learned a lot of things. He learned that the mail-room clerks were largely invisible. He learned that one assistant had a perfect manicure because she paid a lot of attention to it. He learned who played computer games. He learned who was liked and who wasn’t, something that was easily picked up from the assistants’ attitudes. One vice president was drinking on the job; Seth smelled the faint but unmistakable odor as soon as he entered the office, pushing his cart. He also smelled the air freshener that had been sprayed t
o kill the smell. The assistant caught him sniffing the air and gave him a cold-fish stare that said, “You know nothing, you see nothing, you smell nothing.” He nodded and continued on his way.

  He learned that he had delusions of grandeur, because not one person recognized him.

  25

  LATE THAT AFTERNOON, CAM TOOK HIS NEW LEATHER overshoes for a test drive—or rather, a test walk. They were crude, laced up part of the way with the laces from his own shoes and electrical wiring the rest of the way, and the holes had been punched into the leather with his knife. But they were supple, they covered his dress shoes and came almost as high as his calf, and Bailey had made them large enough that pieces of cloth—she’d sacrificed a shirt—could be stuffed around his feet for insulation. Plus, without his shoes laced up, he’d been able to wrap part of the cloth around his feet before putting the shoes on. Altogether his feet had a lot more protection now, and, thanks to the fire, were actually warm.

  The day had been extremely busy, but oddly not too arduous. They had sat side by side on the stuffed trash bag in front of the fire, she working on his overshoes, he making a rudimentary sled for hauling what precious supplies they had, as well as some rough snowshoes for them. As the snow in the mouthwash bottle melted, they drank it. Because the melt rate was much faster now that they had a fire, for the first time since the crash they were able to drink enough that thirst wasn’t a constant factor.

  She was oddly content, sitting beside him in mostly silent companionship while they worked. It wasn’t that she didn’t worry, because how could she not? They faced a long and dangerous ordeal, one they might not survive. The mountains were treacherous and incredibly rugged, unforgiving of mistakes. Even if they did make it out, there was still the fact that someone had deliberately tried to kill them, and all the arrows pointed to Seth.