Fatal Error

48

Grass Valley, California

Gil got off the phone, shaking his head, convinced that this Ali Reynolds character was one pushy broad. She wanted him to “pack a bag”? Really. It wasn’t like he didn’t have a suitcase or two. Since the chest of drawers from Target was still in the box, his clean clothes were still in the battered old suitcases on the floor of his bedroom. He picked up the one filled with his underwear and dumped the contents of that into what he thought of as his “sock suitcase.”

He gathered up a pair of socks, clean underwear, and the last of his clean shirts from the laundry and stuck those in the now-empty suitcase. He added in his shaving kit, his own Kevlar vest, and a stack of spare note cards. He put his bottle of ink in a Ziploc bag, cushioned it with some of his new paper towels, and hoped the bottle didn’t leak. He put that in a side pocket so it wouldn’t rattle around, but when he closed it, the suitcase was still more empty than it was full. Even adding in a second vest wouldn’t make much difference. This was traveling light in the extreme.

Then he remembered he’d barely eaten all day. When he’d first come home from shopping, he’d had a bowl of cereal from his new box and made a pot of coffee. Now though, thinking it might be a long time before he saw another square meal, he made himself another bologna sandwich with bread from the new loaf. He packed the sandwich in his suitcase as well-in yet another Ziploc bag in another side pocket.

He closed the suitcase, hefted it, and laughed when he heard things rattling around inside.

“Gilbert, Gilbert, Gilbert,” he laughed to himself. “You are certainly one sophisticated son of a bitch!”

He was relieved that the parking spot reserved for the chief of police was empty when he pulled into the departmental parking lot. Leaving his suitcase in the car, he hurried inside. Sergeant Andersson looked up in surprise.

“I thought you were gone for the day.”

“I am,” he said. “I just stopped by to pick something up. Do you happen to have a fax for me?”

Sergeant Andersson turned her chair around and plucked a stack of papers off her credenza. “More like War and Peace than a fax,” she said. “It came in a while ago. I hadn’t gotten around to putting it in your box.”

Taking the fax with him, Gil used a key to let himself into the armory, where he signed out one of the spare vests. Sergeant Andersson was talking on the phone when he headed back out. He waited in the doorway until she hung up.

“You might want to let Chief Jackman know that I won’t be in tomorrow,” he told her. “I’ve been called out of town. You can mark it down as a comp day. I understand I have several of those coming.”

She was making a note of it as he hurried out the door. He doubted she noticed the extra vest. Better to explain later than to ask permission.

He drove to the Nevada County Air Park and went looking for Airpark Aviation. He found a place to park and went inside, carrying his still-rattling suitcase. A young woman seated behind a counter looked up at him and smiled.

“Flying today?” she asked.

Gil nodded.

“What’s your tail number?”

“I have no idea.”

“The only aircraft we have coming in in the next little while is a You-Go Aviation CJ1, flying from here to Palm Springs.”

“That must be it, then.”

“Do you need help with luggage?”

He held up his single suitcase. “Got it. Where do I park?”

“Wherever,” she said. “Don’t worry about parking. Do you want some coffee? Popcorn?”

“No, thanks,” he said. “I’m fine.”

I’ve got my very own bologna sandwich.

Gil took a seat by a window, opened his suitcase, and pulled out the stack of faxes. He was interested to see that two sections of material were devoted to Richard Lowensdale. For right now, though, he needed to know everything there was to know about Ermina Cunningham Blaylock.

He made his way through the material. Without the call to Detective Laughlin in Missouri, Ermina would have seemed entirely harmless. And understandable. Mina and her husband had overextended in order to buy Rutherford International, but they had bet on a losing horse and now they were busted. They had lost their house in La Jolla, lost their fancy cars, lost their golf course membership. They ended up living in a house in Salton City that the county tax assessor said was worth $45,000. That was a big comedown, but nothing he read did anything to explain the relationship between Richard Lowensdale and Ermina.

The only connection Gil could see had to do with the money he had found squirreled away in Richard’s pristine garage. If that was what the killer was looking for-and Gil thought it was-where had it come from? Was it possible Richard had been blackmailing Ermina? Given the situation in Missouri, that wasn’t such an oddball idea. Maybe Mark Blaylock didn’t know about his wife’s somewhat questionable past. But if Richard was blackmailing Ermina, where was she getting the money to pay him?

Gilbert wasn’t long on forensic accounting, but from what he could see of the Blaylocks’ financial records, it seemed unlikely that there would be fifty thousand dollars just lying around loose. It also occurred to him that there was a lot more information included in the report than he would have expected. He was so engrossed in what he was reading that he lost track of time.

“Mr. Morris?”

Gil looked up. A plane had pulled up and stopped on the tarmac just outside the door. Standing in front of him was a man in a pair of chinos and a black golf shirt with the words You-Go Aviation emblazoned in gold on the pocket.

Gil stuffed his paperwork into his suitcase and zipped it. “That’s me,” he said.

“I’m Phil Canby, your pilot. I understand we’re on the way to Palm Springs?”

Gil nodded.

“We don’t need fuel, so we’ll only be on the ground here for ten minutes or so,” Phil said. “It’s not a long trip, an hour and a half. The weather’s good except for some tailwinds going into Palm Springs. That part of the trip could be a little bumpy. Now, if you’ll show me your ID, I’ll take you out to the aircraft and get you settled in. I didn’t see any catering order. Did you order food?”

“No,” Gil said, pulling out his ID. “No food. I’m fine.”

He didn’t say a word about the bologna sandwich lurking in his suitcase. He settled into the soft leather seat-a leather seat with plenty of leg room.

So this is how the other half lives, he thought as he fastened his seat belt.

The pilot came on board and pulled the steps and door shut after him. “You flown the CJ before?”

Gil shook his head.

“Okay, so let me give you the full safety briefing.”

Gil listened, but only partially, to information about emergency exits, oxygen masks, etc. “Any questions?” Phil Canby asked when the briefing ended.

“How much does all this cost?”

“Our company is unusual in that we have an all-in cost of just under two thousand dollars.”

“Get out. Two thousand bucks to fly from here to Palm Springs?”

Phil Canby looked at him, grinned, and shook his head. “That’s two thousand an hour. So it’s over three thousand, to get from here to Palm Springs plus the forty minutes it took to get from Fresno to here. I take it you’re not paying the freight, then?”

Gil shook his head.

“Then I suggest you sit back and enjoy it,” Phil said.

The pilot disappeared into the cockpit. The irony wasn’t lost on Gilbert Morris. He had just maxed out his Visa card shopping at Target. He had no idea of who or what Ali Reynolds really was, but one thing was clear. If she could afford to blow that much money on bringing him along for no other purpose than to “maintain the chain of evidence,” then the lady had to be loaded.

As his mother would have said, “More money than sense.”

That reminded him, of course, of that other “chain of evidence” problem. The phony oil containers that he had removed from Richard Lowensdale’s garage were still in his garage. In a court proceeding against Ermina Blaylock, that could turn into a big problem for Gil. Which reminded him of something else his mother always said: “I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.”