“You’ve named your boat the Queen Mary now?”
“No, no. That’s just how it feels.”
April unfolded herself from the cockpit as Gracie backed down to the ramp, carefully using the toes of her high heels on the boarding stand.
“I wouldn’t mind coffee while you wolf something down,” April said as she followed Gracie off the wing and into the private terminal. She left a fuel order and her cell phone number before proceeding to Gracie’s Corvette. They drove around the field to a faded coffee shop near the Museum of Flight, where they found a booth, and Gracie began pulling things from a small briefcase.
“Okay, April. Here is a briefing sheet with all the information, names, places and potential prices you’ll need to pursue booking a salvage operation, also a floppy disk with the same files on it for your computer, and your airline ticket.”
“My… what?”
“You’re going back to Anchorage on Alaska’s one P.M. flight. You’ll meet this afternoon with the guy I think can do us the most good. Took me a few calls to find him. I’d come with you, but…”
April looked stunned, and Gracie was more or less enjoying the moment.
“I’m flying back to Anchorage? But… I have a job I have to get back to.”
“Already talked to your senior vice-president, Niles Dayton. He said to tell you he sends his deepest condolences. He’s got the two ship arrivals covered and will call if he needs anything, and said to tell you to take whatever time you need.”
“Niles Dayton said all that?”
“He did.”
April cocked her head suspiciously. “And what, exactly, did you tell him to elicit such a gracious response?”
“Oh, nothing much. Actually, I was talking to Hugh Wellsley, and he patched Niles Dayton into the call, and I might have mentioned something about the publicity value for Empress Lines.”
“Publicity value?”
“Sure. Loyal daughter and Empress vice-president embarks on noble mission to save a valuable World War Two warbird from the ravages of saltwater. The Anchorage Times reporter will meet with you tomorrow. He’s excited. Of course, he’ll be more excited when he sees the girl on the other end of the name.”
“Wait just a minute here. You arranged press coverage? Gracie, I’m not sure that’s a wise idea.”
“He loved it. So did Hugh.”
“Hugh? How do you know Hugh?”
“You introduced us at a party last fall, remember?”
“Oh, yeah,” April replied, suddenly shaken by the thought that an interview could lead to the drunk flying charge blowing into the public arena.
“We’ve got to get that bird off the bottom, April,” Gracie was saying. “At the very least we have to prove that the prop came off. Ted Greene is ready to march on the FAA the moment we get hard evidence. There are no guarantees of success, but it’s just remotely possible he could talk some sense into the enforcement division.”
“But, you really think… Does he think it’s wise to go public with this?”
Gracie nodded. “Alaska is a rarified aviation environment, and there will likely be a negative backlash against the FAA for moving so fast without evidence. Lots of Alaskans are pilots, as we both know.” Gracie looked at her watch. “There’s more to tell you, but I’d better get you over to Seatac.”
“Gracie, there’s something I have to tell you,” April said, studying her coffee cup before meeting Gracie’s eyes. “The night of the accident, Dad bought some liquor for a planned party in Sitka. That worm Harrison called me. He knows.”
Gracie sat back hard in the booth. “Oh, God, no!”
“Dad wasn’t drinking, Gracie!”
“He might as well have been,” Gracie said slowly. “Because this may kill us.”
TWENTY ONE
THURSDAY, DAY 4 ANCHORAGE, ALASKA EARLY AFTERNOON
The lobby of the Regal Alaskan Hotel had been designed to resemble the interior of a rough-hewn national-park lodge, but the hotel itself was anything but remote. The structure occupied the south end of Anchorage’s Lake Spenard, which each summer claimed the title of the busiest seaplane base in the world.
April alighted from the hotel’s airport shuttle van and unzipped her white parka as she entered the lobby, hardly noticing the array of mounted game trophies on the walls. Deer, elk, moose, and a selection of smaller animals were everywhere, but only the fire burning in the huge river-rock fireplace caught her attention.
She’d tried to fight off depression all the way from Seattle, but the dark bow wave of reality had been slowly winning. Arlie Rosen had not fallen off the wagon. Her mother would have known. She shoved the other disturbing aspects of Rachel’s responses to the back of her mind and tried to close them away.
The phone call she’d made to her mother in flight hadn’t helped.
“He’s taking this very hard, April.”
“Try to get him to go to a counselor, Mom.”
“I am trying. And he’s refusing. He says he’ll handle it, but…” April could hear her sigh deeply on the other end. “I’ve never seen your father this despondent.” The worrisome report had made the short drive to the hotel a blur of thoughts and renewed determination to extricate her father from the FAA-imposed purgatory consuming him, and her. But salvation would only truly come from raising the wreckage of the old warbird. If every one of those Anchorage-purchased liquor bottles could be found still stowed and unopened, the FAA’s case would fall apart.
Okay, where’s my pilot?
April surveyed the lobby, noting the huge, stuffed eight-foot-tall Alaskan brown bear in a glass case by the front desk. The hapless former bear had been posed by a taxidermist in all its grizzly ferocity, and even though it was long since deceased, April realized she was automatically giving it a very wide berth.
She walked toward the fireplace, spotting no one even remotely fitting the description of a bush pilot. She sat in one of the big chairs adjacent to the roaring fire and reread the note from Gracie.
April — You’ll be met in the lobby by Scott McDermott, whom I hired to fly you in his Grumman Widgeon over to Valdez to meet with a salvage operator named Jim Dobler, who will have a plan figured out when you get there. He’s been recommended by one of our major clients whom I happened to be talking to today by phone to one of his drilling rigs in Venezuela. My client’s a billionaire and very friendly. I know he owns a big ship repair and salvage operation in Mobile, Alabama. He said this was too small a job and too far north for his people to take on, but he said that Dobler’s a trusted friend, and he promised to lean on him to help us, which he did. The object is to get a diver down to position a harness around the Albatross, then use a barge-mounted winch to haul it to the surface and tow it slowly to shore, if it stays intact. He can do all that. Keep me posted. I’ll be in the office late and on the cell. Go, girl. Love ya!
The aroma of something more pungent than wood smoke was assaulting her nose. She recognized it as cigar smoke and turned to track it to the source, a long, Churchill-size stogie a man on the far end of the couch had just fired up. She wrinkled her nose in disapproval, but either he wasn’t looking or was pretending not to notice.
That figures, she thought. He had unkempt sandy hair and an abbreviated handlebar mustache, as well as a weathered brown leather jacket and a dirty, blue, oil-stained parka he’d draped boorishly over an adjacent chair. Your basic bush-class Alaskan, she concluded, rejecting the idea that he was merely some homeless male who’d wandered past hotel security. The ring on his right middle finger and the expensive boots he was wearing leavened the overall impression somewhat.