“And you have a reputation as the best American woman pilot in China. Also, the only American woman pilot in China.” He took her hand and squeezed it. Their fingers slid, not unpleasantly, from the oil. He thought she hesitated just a moment before pulling away, but it was one of those signals best to receive two or three times to confirm. “A pleasure to meet you, Miss Calloway. It’s not lucky for a passenger to disparage his aircraft, is it?”
“Not lucky to do what?”
“Dis… to criticize.”
“My, my. They did send our best, didn’t they? A real college boy.”
“I’m a zoologist with the American Museum of Natural History in New York. And I’ve walked to Tibet before. I’m simply in more of a hurry this time.”
“I wouldn’t care, except that Madame Chiang does.”
“I need to confer with authorities in Lhasa.”
“No one gets to confer with the authorities in Lhasa. It’s forbidden.”
“I have to un-forbid it.”
“For your museum?”
“My present employers require discretion.”
“Your what requires what?”
“My new bosses told me to keep my mouth shut.”
“Well.” She regarded him a long minute, gazing up and down. “How much do you weigh, zoo-owl-o-gist?”
Without meaning to, he drew himself up. “About one eighty-five.” Maybe one ninety, after those Clipper meals. “Why?”
“Big words, vague mission, fussy flier. I got a feeling that whatever extra fuel I can squeeze aboard is going to be a lot more useful than you.”
This one was going to require some charm, he thought.
Or taming.
15
Cascade River Road, United States
September 4, Present Day
T he mountains rose higher and drew tighter as Rominy and Jake drove up the Skagit, the twists in the highway giving an occasional glimpse of ramparts of snow. At Marblemount the valley broadened briefly into pasture, modest homes perched above the steep riverbank, the Skagit muscular as a snake. Then they turned to cross the river on a steel two-lane bridge and headed up the side valley of the Cascade River. This tributary poured from a forested canyon onto a pan of gravel bars. Ahead were hills steep as sugarloaves, rocky crags somewhere above. The new river was translucent as a jewel, the rocks of its bed bright coins.
Their banker had found an old Christmas cookie tin in the branch lunchroom, tapped out dry crumbs, and put Hood’s safety deposit box curiosities in it for Rominy to take with her. There was an old Army Colt. 45 that Barrow suggested she take for “home protection.” The fact that the journalist was willing to arm her, even with a presumably unloaded pistol, reassured her. The weapon was as heavy as a brick, however, and she’d never fired a gun in her life. More intriguingly, there were three gold coins with some kind of curious Asian design embossed in the metal. A white silk scarf. A dented compass, black with a silver arrow. A brass key, apparently to a padlock left by authorities to secure Hood’s cabin, Dunnigan had told her. And, dramatically, the mummified finger of her great-grandfather, shrunken and slightly bent. Was it a last defiant digit upraised against the unfairness of the world?
“We don’t know if any of these has meaning,” Dunnigan had said as Rominy laid the articles out on the counter in the safety deposit room, the bank of stainless steel drawers glowing green in the weird light. “Beyond meaning to your great-grandfather. The gold could fetch a couple of thousand dollars at today’s prices, and the gun may have antique value, I don’t know. The real money is the interest from the old savings account. Mr. Hood left a hefty deposit to rent the safety deposit box before he died.”
The cash they’d requested was hypnotizing. Rominy settled for $28,500, since Dunnigan said the bank couldn’t come up with more on such short notice. It was in twenties, fifties, and hundreds, the thousand-dollar packets wrapped with white paper bands. She’d never seen so much cash in her life. Jake fetched a daypack from his pickup, stuffed the money inside, and handed it to her. “Yours.”
“How did he die?” Rominy asked the banker of her great-grandfather. Given the suspicious demise of her other relatives, at least according to Jake Barrow, she half expected something truly exotic, like snakebite or Ninja throwing star.
“Natural causes, the papers said. A coroner’s guess. Someone found the body up at his cabin in the spring, and he’d passed some months before. Wouldn’t have liked to have walked in on that. There wasn’t much left, I suppose. Anyway, most important was his will in the box here, leaving any possessions to unspecified heirs. Which apparently means you, since you’re the last one.”
“So I get this key to his cabin?”
“You get his cabin. Don’t expect much. Taxes have been minimal due to the low assessment, and there’s been little maintenance.”
“I didn’t expect anything at all a few hours ago.”
“It’s astonishing how fortune can turn, isn’t it? And all thanks to Mr. Barrow.” Dunnigan had beamed at him, and he’d done his best to look modest.
S o now they were deeper in the woods than ever, the vine maple already turning scarlet and the fir that leaned over the road as high as a skyscraper. Creeks cut down from the mountain above, turning white when they flashed from the underbrush and tumbled over boulders into culverts.
Jake eventually turned left onto a dirt driveway, a tunnel in the brush. A piece of weathered-gray plywood with crudely painted house numbers was the only thing marking their exit. They traversed up the flank of a mountain above Cascade River Road, the pickup bouncing in the ruts.
“You can bet I had a hard time finding this one,” Jake said, “and then Ma Barker greeted me with the muzzle of her shotgun. That’s called an upriver hello.”
“I’m a long way from the cops, aren’t I?”
He glanced at her. “But not from friends.”
They drove a hundred yards up the dirt lane, a strip of grass in the middle and salmonberry scratching the pickup’s sides. Then they came to a clearing. There was a lichen-spotted singlewide mobile home, the color of its paint having turned indeterminate at least a decade before. The flat roof had a crew cut of moss. Smoke drifted from a pipe chimney elbowing out of the trailer, and all the curtains were drawn. Then there were the requisite junk cars being subsumed by blackberries, an old chicken coop, a weathered barn leaning like a drunk, and a scattering of rusted and plastic junk in unmown weeds. Two hounds came racing out from under a rotting deck, barking as if the place were Stalag 17. They put their muzzles up to the pickup door windows and bayed. Rominy instinctively shrank against Jake, who viewed the animals as calmly as if they’d stumbled on a petting zoo. After a minute or two, the hounds seemed to realize nothing was happening, or they ran out of breath. They quieted, pacing up and down the side of the pickup, snorting and slavering. Then an old woman appeared on the sagging porch and the dogs started up again.
“Thunder! Damnation! Shut up!” She waved a stick for emphasis. No, it wasn’t a stick, it was a gun. Good lord.
Rominy turned to Jake. “Dogpatch is where my great-grandfather lived?”
“Up the road farther, but we have to tell Mrs. Crockett-er, Clarkson-what we’re up to or she’s likely to have half the neighborhood using us for target practice. Mostly Tar Heels up here, out from the Carolinas to log the woods.”
Delphina Clarkson fit every stereotype. Wild gray hair, Carhartt overalls, rubber gardening boots, a double-barrel that dated to cowboy days, and a smile that hadn’t seen a dental hygienist for just as long. The dogs raced around howling as she strode up, doing their best to earn their supper by being obnoxious.
“Down, you two! Thunder, quiet! Dammit, Damnation…” She rapped on Jake’s window with the barrel of her gun and Barrow cranked it a hand’s width down.