Bergin hesitated. His fingers drifted toward the cigarette pack in his shirt pocket, but he thought better of it. “Maybe once a month or so. And I’ll tell you one thing-that ain’t enough flyin’ to stay current or safe, either one, Estelle. That’s flyin’ on luck.” He shrugged. “Lots of pilots do that. For most of ’em, a plane’s like a boat, or an RV. When the novelty wears off, the thing just sits.”
“Turner’s plane just sits?”
“Most of the time, yep. Like I said, he’s flyin’ on luck. That’s what I call it. As long as nothing goes wrong, as long as he don’t fly into some sort of problem, then it’s okay. That’s a nice airplane Jerry has there, that 206. Older model, but still real strong. A real workhorse.”
“Maybe on both sides of the border,” Estelle added. “What’s he actually use it for?”
Bergin grinned. “Drinkin’ coffee? That’s another one of his hobbies I think. He flies over to Cruces with a friend and has a cup. Or to Socorro. Or Grants. Wherever there’s a coffeepot.” He shrugged. “There’s good Mexican coffee to be had south of the border, but that would surprise me, Jerry doin’ something like that.”
“I was under the impression that coffee was always part of your operation right here at home, Jim.”
“Well, it is. But it always tastes better after a good flight, Estelle. Old Jerry just likes to cruise, is all. He don’t need a 206 to do that…but that’s the plane he likes, and he can afford it.” He shrugged. “He should fly it a little more often, is all.”
“So most of the time the airplane just sits inside the hangar gathering dust?”
“Sits, anyway. He keeps ’er clean and waxed up, fair enough. But he don’t fly ’er enough. That’s no way to treat a lady.” Bergin grinned.
“Somebody’s using her now,” Estelle said, turning back to the bent wall section. “I want to take a few pictures of this, and then can I ask your help to fold this back? I want to see how it works.”
“You bet.”
“I called Mark,” Torrez said. “He’s bringin’ Sebastian over.” Sebastian, a State Police dog who had earned his stripes dozens of times, lived in semiretirement with the State Police lieutenant.
“Good move,” Estelle said. “We need his nose.” More vehicles turned into the airport driveway. Linda Real’s small red Honda sedan was followed by a county pickup truck, County Manager Leona Spears’ preferred wheels.
“Something else,” Torrez added. “Tell her about the fuel, Jim.”
“Well,” Bergin said. “She’s just about full, Estelle. Maybe a gallon or two down. Both wing tanks. You don’t fly eleven hours and end up with full tanks.”
She studied Bergin for a moment, digesting the possibilities. “So the pilot refueled somewhere.”
“Yep.”
“You sell gas right here.”
“Not to this airplane. Not recently. You can check my fuel logs if you want.”
“Then he stopped in someplace like Deming? Lordsburg?”
“Not and arrive back here with full tanks. That bird burns somewhere between eight and twelve gallons an hour, Estelle. She’s only down maybe one or two in each wing.”
“Could he have fueled it himself? Right here in the hangar? Estelle asked.
Bergin looked skeptical. “Could, I suppose. I ain’t sold avgas to someone with five-gallon cans.” He held up a hand, halted by another thought that burst into his mind. “Something else we should check,” he said, but before he could explain, two State Police cruisers braked hard and turned into the airport.
“Here’s Sebastian,” Torrez said. “Let’s do it.”
Chapter Nine
“Can you give us about ten minutes?” Estelle asked the State Police lieutenant, and Mark Adams grinned.
“You can have all night as far as I’m concerned. We’re not going anywhere.” He bent down and looked through the windshield of the patrol car at his backseat passenger. Sebastian sat on the wreckage of the backseat, tail thumping his blanket expectantly. Estelle was eager to learn what the dog’s awesome nose would discover, but once that process started, other evidence could be destroyed forever.
She turned to Jerry Turner. “Show me the grass,” she said, and followed him back into the hangar.
“Bobby called me sayin’ that someone might have been in the hangar, so we came down. Now, in a preflight check, we always look at the tires pretty carefully. And it’s obvious when you do that. See right there?” He aimed his flashlight, and Estelle knelt beside the right main wheel skirt. “I saw that tuft of grass stuck where it shouldn’t be stuck. I saw that, then I saw some other marks on the skirts…like I don’t know what. Then I looked at the prop tips.” He lowered his voice as if the information might be confidential, and squatted down beside Estelle. The wheel skirt’s fiberglass was cracked in various places, including around one of the bracket bolts. Several bits of grass had been caught there.
“Show me the prop,” Estelle said, and pushed herself upright. Turner warmed up to his role as tour guide.
“Rev it up, and the tips of that prop are traveling just short of supersonic, you know. They suck in just about everything.” His eyebrows raised as he extended one hand to within an inch of the rounded propeller tip without actually touching the metal. He traced the smooth edge. “Real vulnerable part of the airplane. What I’m looking for is nicks, of course. Nicks from stones and crap off the macadam. You get a big enough nick, and it causes vibration, and that can ruin your whole day, lemme tell ya. Anyway, there’s residue on the prop tips that shouldn’t be there. She’s been in the grass. Dust and grass. I’d bet the farm on it.”
“That’s not just from gathering dust sitting here?” Estelle asked.
“Hell no, it ain’t that. Lookit.” He held the light so that the beam shot down the prop blade. “Look at the tip, now, right there on the black paint. I clean that prop every time I fly, and I clean it when I put the bird away. There’s dirt and crap all over it.”
Estelle saw the reddish film, maybe enough to prove Turner’s point, maybe just his overactive imagination.
“You don’t operate out of any locations that might-” she asked, but Turner interrupted her with an emphatic shake of the head.
“Never. Never. I don’t land on dirt roads, I don’t taxi anywhere but on the macadam or concrete. The last time I went up in this airplane, I flew over to Cruces International with Jimbo to pick up the new rotating beacon for the airport here, and the International sure as hell don’t have grass growing up through the cracks of the runway.”
“That’s a fact,” Bergin said, his head jerking up as if he’d been dozing.
Estelle regarded the taciturn Bergin for a moment. “What do you think?” Estelle asked him, understanding his need for prompting.
Bergin shrugged. “The airplane has been operated off the dirt,” he said. “Dirt, grass, whatever. No doubt in my mind. You don’t get grass in your wheel skirts by sitting on concrete floors in a locked steel hangar.”
“You were saying something about the gasoline,” Estelle said. “Explain that to me.”
Bergin stood on his tiptoes, pointing at the wing. “Filler caps are on top of each wing.”
“You want the ladder?” Turner asked. “I got me that old aluminum one over in the corner.”
“I don’t think so,” Estelle said.
“This is what I was thinkin’ outside,” Bergin said. “If whoever used this airplane was dumpin’ automotive gas in the tanks, say from jerry cans, then he could park it here and fill it.”
“They better not be putting auto gas in my airplane,” Turner said. “You want to drain some?”
“That’s what I was gettin’ at,” Bergin said.
“Can I?” Turner said to Estelle. “I got to open the left door to do that. Sampler’s in the pouch behind the pilot’s seat.”
“The plane is locked?”
“Nah,” Turner said. “I don’t lock it. The hangar’s locked.” He opened the door gingerly and retrieved the plastic fuel sampler. Thrusting the pin into one of the vents under the left wing, he squirted a jet of fuel into the sampler. “There you go,” he said, and handed it to Bergin.