“Hayley. What a shame.”
“Do you have any idea who might have killed her?”
Something moved deep in his eyes. He looked down at the knives in the case between us. “No idea at all. Everybody loved Hayley.”
Bad body language; I didn’t believe him. “Tell me about you and her.”
“We went together all through high school. She never even looked at another guy. I thought we’d get married, have kids. Then this older guy shows up at a party, and a week later she’s gone.”
“I understand she left the party with him because you were passed out in the bathroom.”
He shrugged. “That was no reason to run off with him. We partied pretty hard in those days. But she knew I would’ve straightened up. I mean, I’ve got a great business here, I’m married, own a house on the property.” He jerked his thumb, indicating the house was behind the building. “No complaints from the wife, either-”
“A wife who was second choice and you’re never going to let me forget it,” a voice said from behind me.
I turned. A woman with long reddish-blonde hair had come inside. She was trim and well muscled, wearing only a short-sleeved T-shirt and running shorts. Not pretty, as Hayley Perez had been, but strong-featured. Her mouth was bracketed with lines of disappointment-and she must have been all of twenty-five.
No complaints from the wife. Right.
“T.C.,” her husband said, “this is a private conversation.”
“Not if you’re talking about me.” She came over and extended her hand to me. “T.C. Mathers.”
“Sharon McCone.”
Tom Mathers said, “Ms. McCone’s cooperating with the sheriff on Hayley Perez’s murder.”
T.C. rolled her eyes. “The sainted Hayley Perez. What I wonder is why somebody didn’t shoot her years ago.”
Tom’s face reddened. “Theresa!”
She winked at me. “When he gets mad, he always calls me by my given name. Knows I hate it. When he’s really mad, he calls me Theresa Christina. Gets to me because it reminds me of my goddamn reactionary Christian parents who saddled me with it.”
I was not at all pleased that I’d walked into this situation. I looked at my watch. Nearing two-thirty, I hadn’t had a bite to eat all day, and Hy’s ETA was four.
I said, “I’d like to talk with both of you again, but there’s someplace I have to be soon. May I call you here or at home?”
“We’re in the book. Call or drop in. Just keep following the driveway to the house.” Tom Mathers was trying to regain his former composure, but his stance radiated fury at his wife.
“I’ll be in touch,” I said, and walked away from their domestic conflict.
In town I bought a sandwich and a Coke before I made the drive to Tufa Tower Airport at the northwest end of the lake. It wasn’t much: a single runway, a dozen or so planes in tie-downs, a hangar that hadn’t housed a resident mechanic in years, and a shack where the manager-a garrulous septuagenarian named Amos Hinsdale-monitored the UNICOM and hoped that some fool would come in and rent one of his two dreadful planes. Normally I tolerated Amos, but today I wasn’t in the mood for one of his monologues about the good old days when flying took a real man’s skill. Forget Amelia Earhart; forget the Powder Puff Derby participants and the women who ferried planes for the military during World War II. Forget the fact that many women, including myself, frequently flew into Tufa Tower. In Amos’ mind, aviation was a man’s world-although he also thought that the current crop of male pilots, who used up-to-date computerized equipment, were “a bunch of sissies.”
I parked behind the hangar where I couldn’t be seen from the shack and ate my late lunch. Thought about the case-my absolute last one-and where it was going, where it might lead me. I came to no conclusions about either.
After half an hour I began watching the hills to the north. Hy’s and my beautiful red-and-blue Cessna 170B appeared above them; soon I heard the drone of its engine. The wings dipped from side to side, then he executed a barrel roll-showing off, knowing I was waiting for him. Afterward he angled into the pattern, took the downwind leg, and turned for final. I was at our designated tie-down when he taxied over.
He shut down the engine and got out. As always, I felt a rush of pleasure.
This man is my husband; we’ll be together the rest of our lives.
Silly thought, because we’d already spent years together before we impulsively flew to Nevada and were married by a judge in Carson City. But those years hadn’t been easy. Neither had the past one. I’d had many moments of doubt, and a recent serious crisis that I wasn’t sure the union could survive. But through it all, he’d been steady and true and honest. No more doubts. Not now, not ever.
I ran over, threw my arms around him. Kissed him and held on tight. When I stepped back he smiled, even white teeth showing under his swooping mustache. He wasn’t classically handsome, with a hawk-like nose and strong, rough-hewn features. His unruly dark-blond hair was now laced with gray. But his loose stride and long, lean body drew the attention of women as he walked through a room. And he possessed one of the finest asses I’d ever seen.
He raised an eyebrow at me and said, “Jesus, McCone, you must’ve missed me.”
“Let’s tie down this plane and I’ll take you home and show you how much.”
“Now, that’ll be pure heaven.”
That night I did not dream of being trapped in a pit.
Saturday
Numerous official choppers and private planes from surrounding counties were available for the air search. Hy and I flew together in our Cessna. The morning was crisp and clear, and we’d bundled up in down jackets, jeans, and fleece-lined boots. Hy had brewed an extra pot of coffee, and we took it along in a thermos. I piloted, since he’d had that pleasure on the trip up here.
It had been a while since I’d flown, and on liftoff I’d felt a tremendous rush. It made me realize how important not being earthbound was to me. My depression-these days always a background to whatever I was doing-slipped away, and I settled happily into what felt like a cocoon that only Hy and I could inhabit.
“You realize,” I said through our linked headsets as we lifted off, “that this is an exercise in futility.”
“Yeah, but you can’t tell that to the sheriff’s department. And it makes people feel like they’re doing something to help. Besides, maybe somebody in one of the choppers’ll spot something.” Helicopters are authorized by the FAA to fly at lower altitudes than fixed-wing aircraft, and thus are better for searches.
Hy removed a pair of binoculars from their leather case, and I set course toward the area we’d been assigned to search-a barren plain southeast of Rattlesnake Ranch, some ten miles from where Tom Mathers had his wilderness-guide business. The thousand-plus acres, Hy had told me, used to be a working cattle ranch, but had been sold off a decade or more before to a family from the East Coast, who tore down the existing buildings and put up a luxurious vacation home.
As we flew over the ranch, I saw a sprawling house-had to be a minimum of twenty thousand square feet-with a tile roof, various outbuildings, an airstrip, a tennis court, and a swimming pool.
“Who the hell are those people?” I asked.
“Don’t know their name or much about them. The property sale was handled by a law firm, and the local real-estate agent who represented the sellers is mum on the subject. They fly in on a private jet, don’t come to town at all, hire local staff who’re sworn to secrecy about what goes on there. It’s rumored that they’re anything from exiled royalty to Mafia. I say they’re just rich people who value their privacy.”
“Very rich people.”
“Well, sure.” Hy was scanning the place with the binoculars. “Nobody in residence today-too chilly for them. They’re probably off at a similar retreat on St. Bart’s or Tahiti this time of year.”