“Which one? I’ve made that trip fifty times.”
“Saturday, September thirteen.”
“That was about a week before I was fired. I suppose Smitty told you? They fired me when they found out I was married. It’s a crazy rule. If marriage interferes with efficiency, why doesn’t the Air Force discharge my husband and all the other married pilots. You’d think being a stewardess was some fancy, high-toned job when all you do really is play waitress and maid, without tips.”
“Saturday, September thirteen,” Dodd repeated patiently. “The pilot and co-pilot were Robert Forbes and James Billings, and the two stewardesses working with you were Ann Mackay and Maria Fernandez. Do you recall now?”
“Of course. That was the week end a friend of mine got sick and I offered to return to Mexico City that night and take her place on the same flight the next day. It was against the rules, but as I said, they’ve got some crazy rules.”
Dodd opened the manila folder marked A. Kellogg and took out the pictures of Amy. “This woman, I have reason to believe, boarded your plane with her husband and possibly a third party.”
Mrs. Reiner studied the pictures with interest but no immediate recognition. “She looks like a hundred other people I’ve seen. Was there anything special about her?”
“Two things. She wore a bandage over her left temple and she had a black eye.”
“The woman with the black eye — of course I remember! Maria and I were kidding around about it, wondering how she got it, whether her husband beat her up or something. He didn’t seem like the type. A good-looking man, very quiet and considerate.”
“Considerate of whom?”
“Well, of her, mainly. But of us girls too. A lot of passengers get pretty demanding in the course of a long flight. He didn’t ask for anything special. Neither did she. She slept most of the time.”
“Quite a few stewardesses are also registered nurses. Are you, Mrs. Reiner?”
“No.”
“Had any nursing experience at all?”
“Just the elementary stuff included in our training course, how to cope with air sickness, how to administer oxygen to asthmatics and cardiac patients, things like that.”
“Then you wouldn’t know if Mrs. Kellogg’s sleep was a natural one or not.”
“What do you mean ‘natural’?”
“Is there any possibility that she was drugged?”
Mrs. Reiner fidgeted with her rope of pearls. “Her husband gave her some Dramamine.”
“How do you know it was Dramamine?”
“Well, it was a little white pill that looked just like it.”
“A lot of narcotics and barbiturates are in the form of little white pills.”
“I guess I just assumed it was Dramamine because so many passengers use it these days. Don’t forget, Dramamine makes some people very sleepy. Maybe the effect’s only psychological, but it happens.” She tied the pearls in a knot, untied them, reached for her coffee. “I can’t believe — I don’t want to believe — that one of my passengers was being doped against her will, right under my nose.”
“Did she make any fuss about taking the pill, or pills?”
“I only saw her take one. There may have been others. She didn’t make a fuss, no, but I thought she looked a little scared. Not about taking the pill, just scared in general. A lot of my passengers do look scared, though, especially when the weather’s bad.”
“Were Mr. and Mrs. Kellogg traveling alone or was there a third party with them?”
“They were alone.”
“Are you sure? Mr. Kellogg was supposed to have hired a nurse to accompany his wife on the trip.” “They were alone,” Mrs. Reiner repeated firmly. “They paid no attention to anyone else, as far as I know. Lots of times when we’re passing over something interesting, the passengers will get out of their seats and fraternize. Mr. and Mrs. Kellogg didn’t.”
“This was a first-class flight?”
“Yes.”
“Double row of seats on each side of the aisle?”
“Yes. Mrs. Kellogg was in the window seat.”
“Who was sitting across the aisle from Mr. Kellogg?”
Mrs. Reiner wrinkled her forehead, then smoothed out the wrinkles with the tips of her fingers. “I can’t swear to it but I think it was a couple of Mexican women, looked like mother and daughter.”
“Which one had the aisle seat?”
“I don’t remember. You don’t seem to understand, Mr. Dodd. When you’ve made that same flight dozens of times as I did, it’s hard to differentiate them. Why, I would never even have recognized Mrs. Kellogg’s picture if you hadn’t clued me in about the black eye. It takes something special like that to make one trip stand out in my memory.”
“Now that this particular flight is standing out, you’re remembering more and more about it?”
“Yes. There was a little girl up front who kept getting sick. And an elderly man, a cardiac patient. I had to give him oxygen.”
Dodd said, “I understand the airline keeps a list of the passengers on board each flight.”
“There are several such lists. I had my own.”
“What other information was on this passenger list?”
“Where each of them was going.”
“Where were the Kelloggs going?”
“They had return tickets to San Francisco. We only made one other stop, Los Angeles.” She reached for the coffeepot again, but her hand suddenly stopped in midair. “Now that’s funny. I could have sworn that the Kelloggs were booked through to San Francisco, and yet... Wait a minute. Let me reconstruct. The plane landed at L.A. and everybody got off, as usual, for the stopover, except the cardiac patient. I stayed behind with him. He was scared, poor guy, so I gave him all the attention I could. We were in flight again before I had a chance to resume my regular duties, making the new passengers comfortable, handing out pillows and so on. I went to the rear of the plane... I remember now,” she went on, her voice rising a little with excitement. “As I passed by, I saw that there were two women in the seats where the Kelloggs had been sitting. I was just about to tell the women that those seats were taken when I noticed that Mrs. Kellogg’s coat and carryall bag and Mr. Kellogg’s hat and brief case were missing from the baggage rack.”
“They got off at L.A., then?”
“Yes. I might have been mistaken, though, about their tickets being through to San Francisco.”
“You weren’t.”
“It seems peculiar, doesn’t it? But then, I’m sure there’s some logical explanation.”
“I’m sure there’s an explanation,” Dodd said. “I’m just not sure how logical it is. In case you remember anything else, no matter how trivial it may be, call me at one of these numbers, any time.”
“All right.”
“And thank you very much, Mrs. Reiner, for the information.”
“I hope you can use it.”
“I can use it.”
After he’d gone she sat down and poured herself the rest of the pot of coffee. Now that the flight had been singled out clearly in her mind, she couldn’t stop thinking about it. By the time the plane landed at San Francisco, the old man with the heart condition was in bad shape and had to be taken off the field in an ambulance. The little girl who’d been airsick recovered in time to chew several wads of gum and get some of it stuck in her hair. It was removed with patience and an ice cube. The honeymoon couple departed with their transistor radio tuned into the final inning of a baseball game. The smart alec with the flask and the bum jokes almost fell off the landing platform. The two Mexican women who’d been sitting across the aisle from the Kelloggs and looked like mother and daughter, couldn’t have been; they left the plane separately and without speaking. The younger one had her purse clutched in both hands as if it contained her whole future.
“It was just an ordinary routine flight,” she said aloud, as if Dodd had been there to deny it. “Nothing sinister about it. Mrs. Kellogg’s black eye was the result of an accident, not a beating up. The pill her husband gave her was Dramamine. She looked scared because she didn’t like traveling by plane. They got off at Los Angeles because — well, there could have been any number of reasons: Mrs. Kellogg’s condition, or Mr. Kellogg’s suddenly remembering a business deal, or both of them deciding to visit a relative they hadn’t seen for a long time.”