Both Ends of the Night Page 20

  “And then he went to work at his father’s company?”

  “The same year I did. In marketing. He was good, he had what it takes, but you could tell he wasn’t really into it. Every now and then we’d have lunch, for old times’ sake, I guess. He’d talk about how bored he was. The job was a piece of cake, he wanted a real challenge. Well, he created one for himself, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Were you aware of what he was doing?”

  “No. I was one of the first to be let go. Dunc knew me, you see. I’m a straight arrow. My wife claims I’d be miserable if she didn’t make the laundry put extra starch in my shirts.”

  “What excuse did Duncan give for letting you go?”

  “No excuse whatsoever. He just looked me cold in the eye, said I should pick up my final check and severance pay, told me they’d supply good references. When I asked him why, he turned on one of his famous silences. So I walked out the door and never spoke to Dunc Stirling again.”

  “Do you know Winthrop Reade?”

  “Hell, yes. Everybody knows Win.”

  “What was his relationship with Duncan?”

  “Not close, but cordial. Exceptionally cordial, seeing as Win was one-sidedly competing for the affections of Dunc’s father.”

  “Win was competing, but Dunc wasn’t?”

  “That’s right. Win genuinely loves old man Stirling. Dunc didn’t love anybody but himself.”

  Carol Wizner, manager of the Razorback Tavern: “That’s right, Dunc wasn’t a drinker. He’d nurse a beer for an hour or more, sitting right down there at the end of the bar and acting aloof and mysterious. Personally, I think it was an act to get women. And he got them. Lord, how he got them!”

  “Did you know Cindy Kershner?”

  “Now, she was a sweet little thing. Nobody believed she was blackmailing him. Nobody. But then, nobody believed he would’ve had her killed, either. So much for what people think.”

  “I guess you also knew Ash Walker?”

  “Of course I did. He was about as close to a buddy as Dunc ever had. He’d come in, sit right next to Dunc, watch him perform. We all thought he was a—what d’you call them? Wanna-be. Wanted to be like Dunc—quiet and dangerous. Now, of course, we all know why he was watching him so close.”

  “Ash worked as Dunc’s pilot for a while, I understand.”

  “Only a short time, when Dunc wrecked his knee. He couldn’t fly, so he had to depend on Ash.”

  “Did Dunc go on any of his mysterious trips during that time?”

  “Now that you mention it, I think he did. We were all curious about those trips, and I remember one of the regulars complaining that he’d asked Ash where they’d gone, but he wouldn’t say. Wonder if that was because he was going to testify about them at the trial?”

  I turned off the recorder and thought about what the tavern manager had said. Exactly what kind of testimony from Ash Walker had the prosecution’s case against Dunc Stirling consisted of? After a moment I took out my credit card and address book and used the in-flight phone to call Craig Morland’s home in Bethesda, Maryland. The FBI agent’s machine picked up, and I left a message.

  “Craig, it’s Sharon McCone. Sorry to trouble you again, but I need to know how to go about getting some information about that matter we discussed on our date the other night. Call me at any of my numbers anytime. And thanks very much.”

  Morland would know that I wanted to take him up on his offer of accessing Justice Department files, and I supposed that my message constituted a nudge toward the invisible line across which he seemed so eager to step. But I’d worded it in such a way that it left him an out. Now the decision was his.

  Seventeen

  Sunday afternoon: Bodega Head, California

  “… She kept me up there when I was ready to quit. One time she actually came to my house and coaxed me to the airport. Her teaching never took a backseat to her aerobatics; the two meshed perfectly.”

  The water off Bodega Head was deep indigo, and white foam spewed high as the waves crashed on the rocks. Seabirds wheeled above it in celebration of the fine day. Those of us who had flown to Bodega Bay to honor Matty had climbed down the sandy trail from the parking area, and now we stood in a circle on a bluff halfway to the beach. Sightseers and hikers seemed to sense our serious purpose and kept a respectful distance.

  Not all the reminiscences were solemn, however. As Mark Casazza, Matty’s fellow instructor, spoke, people smiled.

  “Rainy days we’d sit around the FBO and hangar-fly and play poker. She always saved her best stories for when she was running a bluff—you all remember those Wildress bluffs—and it worked most every time because her stories were so hilarious that they’d totally distract everybody.”

  Hy, Zach, and I stood beyond a patch of ice plant, a little apart from the others; Hy and I hadn’t been members of the airport family, and Zach seemed to need some distance. I’d found Hy at my house when I returned last night, and he’d explained that Zach had called and asked if we would take him along to the service. The boy, he said, had seemed remote and somewhat nervous—only natural, since it would be the first time he’d flown since Matty died. Hy had already booked a Cessna 172 so there would be room for him.

  When I asked where Hy had been while I was gone, his explanation was so simple that it made me ashamed of my feelings of panic and alienation. He hadn’t wanted to see people on Thanksgiving, so he’d flown to his ranch and spent most of the time there outdoors, riding and helping his hands mend fence. The high desert, he told me, was exactly what he’d needed to clear his head.

  And now we stood above the sea under a beautiful early-winter sky, saying good-bye to Matty.

  Bob Cuda, somewhat pale from his first flight, spoke. “What can I say? She finally got me off the ground.” He looked skyward and added, “Are you proud of me, Matty?”

  “I’ll bet she is,” Steve Buchanan, the head mechanic, said. “Matty always gave credit where it was due, and if you were slacking off, she told you, but in a nice way. Reminds me of the primer on the old 150. It was balky; no matter how often I fixed it, sooner or later it stuck. Matty’s signal that it was overdue for maintenance was to tell the students to pretend to push it in with their feet. Whenever I saw a student curled up like a pretzel in the cockpit, I knew I’d better get to work on the primer.”

  I was looking down at Matty’s yellow-and-red scarf, which I’d worn tied around my neck in tribute to her. It rippled and flowed on the air currents—as gracefully as she’d moved on the currents of life. When I raised my head several of the people I’d known from my flight-training days were watching me.

  Into the silence I said, “Matty believed you learned from your mistakes. One time after I did the run-up she said to me, ‘What have you forgotten?’ I grabbed the list, went over it; I’d checked everything, from the magnetos to the controls. Then I looked at her; she was sitting there with a wicked grin on her face—and no seat belt! Since that day I have never once neglected to make sure a passenger’s seat belt is fastened.”

  Hy squeezed my hand and moved forward. “Matty was one of my best friends, but I admit we had our differences. She called me a tree-hugger; I called her a shortsighted reactionary. Once, when I was arrested after a save-the-redwoods protest at the Russian River, I phoned her, and she refused to bail me out of jail. Said I’d gotten exactly what I deserved. I’d been in jail before, though, so it didn’t particularly bother me. And I remembered that at the time I really needed her, when it counted, she’d been there for me.”

  On my other side Zach squared his bony shoulders and cleared his throat. In a thin, shaky voice he said, “The first time my dad and I went to an air show? I was scared for Matty. Afterward she told me it was okay to be scared. She said courage doesn’t mean you’re not afraid. It means you can act effectively even when you are afraid. I’m always going to remember that, and I’m going to try to live that way.”

  There was another silence. Gray Selby coughed, and a
ll eyes moved toward him. He bent his head, kicking at stones underfoot, then looked up and began to speak, focusing mainly on me.

  “I guess you all think I’ve got a nerve being here today, much less saying anything. Well, I’ll tell you, I’ve learned a lot in the past week. I miss Matty. I admit it. She kept me on my toes, kept me honest. Last summer, for instance, I’m strolling through the tie-downs and she’s taxiing in with a student. I’m in a bad mood, so I decide I’m in no hurry, and I slow down and block them. Then all of a sudden the plane’s taxiing faster, seems out of control, coming straight at me. Man, do I run! As it goes by, I see her laughing; she’s on the controls, has everything in hand. Afterward I yelled at her, and she told me that’s what I got for acting like an asshole. Well, deep down I knew she was right.”

  This time the silence spun out for minutes. Finally Jim Powell, Matty’s aerobatics instructor, spoke. “Matty worked harder than any student I ever taught, but she played harder, too. She’d take that Pitts she trained in way up high and just have a ball. She told me she’d laugh and talk to the plane and even sing—the only time she ever sang because she couldn’t carry a tune, and there was nobody up there to hear her. I’m not a religious man, but I like to think that right now she’s someplace on high, pulling those G’s and singing up a storm.”

  It was the perfect closing tribute. After a moment Art Field, the airport manager, said, “Matty Wildress was a joy to fly with and a joy to know, and she had very little tolerance for sadness. So what say we take this on home to the Seven Niner Diner? Beer’s on me.”

  As the others started up the trail, I turned toward the sea. Above it gulls wheeled in the free and natural flight that we humans can only struggle to imitate.

  “Sharon, can I have a word with you?” Steve Buchanan was waiting for me on the deck outside the diner.

  “Sure.” I motioned for Hy and Zach to go on inside and followed the mechanic next door to the shop, where small planes stood in various stages of disassembly. As we came inside, a slender dark man with a wispy mustache withdrew his arm from an engine cowling and moved toward us, wiping grease-streaked fingers on his dark blue coveralls. “Shop’s open on a Sunday?” I asked Steve.

  “Yeah. Students keep busting the trainers. Flight school’s down to two, so we need to get the rest back in service. This here’s Juan.”

  I held out my hand to the other mechanic, but he waved it away, showing me his dirty fingers.

  Steve said, “Tell her about Matty and the guy in the Silver Ranger.”

  Juan nodded. “Steve told me you were asking about those guys, and I remembered that the pilot spent some time talking with Matty.”

  “Just the pilot, not the passenger?”

  “Right. The passenger was already inside the diner when the pilot brought the Ranger into the shop. After he talked with Steve about it, he started over to the diner, too. A couple of the other guys and me, we were eating at one of the outside tables, and Matty was at the next one, alone. The pilot stopped for a few minutes, and they talked about their planes and the company that manufactures them.”

  “What exactly did they say?”

  “Well, I wasn’t paying much attention, but they traded performance stats, that kind of stuff. And then the guy asked if she’d heard about the mess Stirling Aviation’d been mixed up in. She said of course she had; a friend had told her all the details, including some that were never made public. The guy seemed real interested in that, but right then somebody came out of the shop and called for him to come back there. And a few minutes later Matty split.”

  I looked at Steve. “Did the pilot ask you about Matty before or after that?”

  “After.”

  “And you’re sure you didn’t tell him John Seabrook’s name?”

  “Positive. What’s so important about Matty talking to that guy, anyway?”

  Plenty, but I couldn’t quite grasp it.

  I said to Hy, “Could John Seabrook have told Matty about his past? About Stirling? And if he did, why did she lie to us?”

  “I doubt he told her anything. The aviation community’s really pretty small; most people know about what went down at Stirling. And Matty had a lot of friends. She could’ve discussed it with anyone.”

  “But the inside details—”

  “Say it was somebody who used to work for the company or who works there now. Or somebody who was trying to impress her by claiming to have inside knowledge.”

  We were standing on the deck outside the diner, facing the field. A restored Tiger Moth was doing a touch-and-go, but I was too preoccupied to give it more than cursory attention.

  “Okay,” I said, “Calder Franklin saw Matty with the chief prosecution witness in the Stirling trials. And he misinterpreted her comment about the company to mean Walker had told her everything that happened, including details few other people knew. But so what? He also saw the way Walker ran from him; that wasn’t the behavior of a man who was planning to resurface if Dunc was ever apprehended and brought to trial.”

  “And at the time, Dunc being apprehended was a remote possibility; it only became a probability when you went to Arkansas and talked with David Stirling.”

  “I wish I knew why Walker panicked when he saw Franklin but not when he exchanged words with Win Reade. Franklin may still be angry at Walker for coming forward and casting guilt by association upon him and his political buddies, but it doesn’t make sense for Walker to be afraid of him.”

  “Something just snapped, I guess. When you’ve been in hiding for that long, your reactions aren’t always in proportion to the situation.”

  “Maybe.”

  Hy was silent, lines gathering at the corners of his eyes as he watched the Moth turn downwind for another touch-and-go. “You know, I understand that Franklin and Reade showing up here was the catalyst that caused Walker to disappear, but I don’t see what it has to do with Matty being taken out.”

  “Well, I don’t suppose that the two of them went home and kept silent about seeing Walker. What if someone they talked with in Alda is still in touch with Dunc, could get a message to him as to Ash’s whereabouts? And what if Dunc decided to finish what he started when he killed Andie Walker?”

  Hy nodded grimly. “But by then Walker was gone. That left only his woman for Dunc to take revenge on.”

  I thought for a minute, tapping my fingers on the deck rail and watching the Moth as it lost speed and altitude. “Okay, Walker and his son had been safe for over ten years; he had a woman he loved, was flying again. He knew Reade and Franklin would talk about seeing him and that somebody might get word to Dunc. So he decided to get to Dunc before Dunc got to him.”

  “He decided he wasn’t going to let Dunc destroy his life a second time. He was going to put an end to things once and for all. You know, McCone, one thing really bothers me: there was nationwide coverage of Matty’s crash on TV and in the papers. If Walker saw it, he’d’ve worried about his son being alone and in danger. Wouldn’t he have come back for him?”

  “I would think so. If he was able to.”

  “So it doesn’t look good for his survival. Poor Zach.”

  I glanced back at the diner, saw the boy staring through the window at us, sorrow molding his features into a little old man’s. A hollowness expanded under my breastbone; the cold wind that always blew here on winter afternoons made me shiver. Hy slipped his arm around my shoulders.

  I said, “The only way we’re going to know what happened to Walker or to experience any sense of closure about Matty is to go after Dunc Stirling ourselves.”

  “There’s nothing I’d like better, but how the hell are we going to locate him?”

  “I don’t know, but I think we should take another look at the Seabrook house.”

  We borrowed Bob Cuda’s car and dropped Zach off to visit with Wes Payne at the tree farm. Then we drove to the house and I let us in with the key Payne had loaned me. Inside, it was cold, and the house harbored dampness from last week’s rain; e
xcept for faint grumbles from the old refrigerator, silence enveloped us. As we stood in the hallway I felt my grief and anger rekindle.

  Matty would never again stride down this hall and carelessly fling her mail on the kitchen table. She would never again turn up the sound system in the parlor and tunelessly sing along when nobody was home to hear. She would never again fill the place with the aroma of her famous garlic bread. Or laughingly but affectionately relate the latest foibles of her students. Or pack Zach a school lunch with a special treat. Or…

  Or all those things that I’d never witnessed but knew she must have done.

  “So where do we start?” Hy asked.

  “My theory is that, when in doubt, turn to the right.”

  The room to the right was the one containing Matty’s desk, aviation library, and exercise equipment. We stepped inside and I touched Hy’s arm. “Just stand and look. Aside from the disorder, does anything strike you as unusual?”

  He did as I told him, then shrugged. “I never visited here; I can’t tell.”

  “There’s got to be something somewhere in this house that’ll give us a lead on where Walker went.” I kept studying the room, blocking it out into segments. When I came to the cluttered table, I noted a stack of food magazines, some Christmas catalogs, a basket full of thread and other sewing gear, a pair of jeans with the legs pinned up to be hemmed, a throwaway type of camera, and Matty’s course plotter—

  Quickly I went over and picked it up, taking care not to change the circular piece with the arrows that indicate true magnetic course. I’d noticed it the other day when I was here and thought nothing of it, but now Matty’s voice echoed in my mind: “I haven’t been on a cross-country to unfamiliar territory in ten months; I’ve probably forgotten how to plot a course.”