Finding Harmony (Katie & Annalise Book 3) (12 page)

The smell of jet fuel polluted the air outside the terminal. We weaved in and out of doorways, across the tarmac, and finally into the open bay of a cavernous hangar. I couldn’t hear a word Gabriel said over the planes’ engines as we walked, but I got the impression he was narrating our tour. He pointed to a door in the deep end of the hangar that turned out to open onto a small windowless office. Metal desktop, too many chairs, utilitarian. No less stinky, but quieter.

“I bring people to talk to you now, no?” Gabriel asked.

I thought carefully through all I had learned from watching Nick conduct investigations. “How do we know whether these people worked the right day and shift to cross paths with Nick or the plane? And how do we talk to the ones who were on shift then, but aren’t now?”

Kurt nodded and I felt a shiver of pride. Gabriel raised an index finger and tapped the length of it against his nose. “I can compare schedules for you. We will call anyone we need to talk to who’s not working today.”

“Good. We’re ready as soon as you can round the first person up,” I said.

“One more thing,” Gabriel said. “I need to be present for these interviews. Since I’m arranging them, and these are our employees, well, I am sure you understand.”

I understand they won’t want to talk in front of the terminal manager.

I would have done the same thing as an employment lawyer in my old life, but I still didn’t like it. “If you must, but speed is critical,” I said. “As is obtaining accurate information, and all of it. My husband’s life is at stake.”

“Good. I’ll ask Nancy to help with the schedules,” Gabriel said. “She can start calling people in immediately.” He left the office.

“Have them bring any records or logs of their work so we can check for our registration number,” I called after him.

He turned and flashed me an OK sign.

For the next twenty minutes, Kurt and I talked out our theories and planned our questions, which I jotted in the notebook. Then the employees began to arrive. The three of us—Gabriel, Kurt, and I—talked to every employee that Gabriel and his assistant thought had possible access to the planes tied down around Terminal Three. Kurt took the lead with the Spanish speakers and I led for those that spoke English. For the next two hours we spoke to mechanics, men that drove the gas truck, shuttle drivers, baggage handlers, and skycaps, with barely a minute of downtime between subjects. Sometimes they stood in a line outside the door. None had seen any black island men lurking about. No one had seen anything out of the ordinary.

A few did remember our plane—the fuel truck operator remembered filling it up, and showed us our registration number and some Spanish script I couldn’t decipher in his log book—but none of them had seen anyone working on it. No one knew how many people had boarded it for departure or where it went.

Meanwhile, our phones remained stubbornly silent with no word from the Coast Guard or FAA. My iPhone notifications remained at zero, which really bothered me. I hoped my messages could get through. Nothing was going our way.

My frustration level crept up as I poked at my phone between interviews. I looked up and saw a woman walk by pushing a cart laden with a large trashcan, a mop, dustpan, and broom.

“What about her?” I asked Gabriel.

“The janitor? She doesn’t work on the planes,” he said.

“So? Does she have access to the hangar?” I asked.

“Yes,” he admitted.

“Well, anyone could have seen something. It doesn’t hurt to talk to her.”

He shrugged. “As you wish.”

Gabriel disappeared for five minutes and returned with the woman. She was middle-aged and thick through the waist, which gave her short body a squarish shape. She did not look up or greet us when she came in.

Gabriel bade her sit down. The language switched over to Spanish, so Kurt handled the questions. I was surprised by how much more I understood today than I had the day before. The accent confused my ear less, and the meanings of words in context were more evident to me. I’d be fluent by tomorrow at this rate. My high school Spanish teacher would be proud.

Kurt learned that the janitor had worked from eight a.m. to five p.m. three days before and lunched at one o’clock, right after Nick took off. She worked alone during the day shifts to keep the hangar tidy; the custodians reserved deep cleaning for the nighttime, when they could work without disrupting business.

In Spanish, Kurt asked, “So you pick up trash, clean spills, empty garbage? What else?”

She agreed and added that she kept bathrooms stocked and clean.

Kurt nodded. Gabriel and I took notes.

Next, Kurt described our plane and Nick. Had she seen them? She said yes, she had seen the plane, but not Nick. She liked the little plane with the blue stripes. She remembered the Stingray logo, a magnifying glass over a fish’s dead eye.

I shifted forward in my seat. She was the first person to mention the logo. An observant woman.

Kurt noticed, too, and spoke with more energy. “So if you didn’t see anyone that looked like Nick, did you see anyone else around the plane?”

She had. She saw the gas truck service it. This jived with the account from the truck driver. But before that, she’d seen another man working on it, one she didn’t recognize. He was a black man, and he had on the coveralls all the other workers wore, so she guessed he was new.

All the mechanics had sworn they had not touched the plane. Their manager had brought the service log for that day, and no one had recorded any work on RJ7041.

Gabriel broke in, his voice higher than before. “Are you sure? A man wearing our coveralls serviced the plane? In what way?”

She would not look at Gabriel, and her voice shook. Surprisingly, she started to speak some English. “Sí. He pour something in the tanks.”

Now she had us all quivering. Gabriel continued to take the lead, but switched to English, too. I bit my lip to keep from interrupting him. “Could you see what it was? Could you see the containers?”

“No. I was too far away.” She dropped her face. “Lo siento.”

Collective deflation.

So close. I sighed heavily. “It’s OK,” I said. “You’ve done well. Bueno. Did you see anything else? Anything not normal, anything different, strange?”

“I found something in the trash later, señora,” she said, speaking directly to me for the first time. “Maybe important, maybe not, but a little strange,” she added.

Just like that, we all quickened again. “Yes?” I urged her.

“Maybe is nothing. But empty rum bottles in the trash. Many big bottles. Cruzan Rum.”

Deflation again. We knew most of the charter jets offered bar service. Gabriel explained to us now, “The passengers of many of these private jets like to party on their way to vacation. That’s why we have a contractor with a crew to clean out the planes. Sometimes they are quite filthy. Vomit. Drugs, even. Disgusting, really.”

Apparently the woman spoke English pretty well, because she shook her head no and spoke to me again. “Not like that. Sometimes party planes come. None come that day. I see the trash, and I know what they throw away. This trash?” She switched back to Spanish. “No mixers, no paper napkins, no olives, no toothpicks. This was different.” Her voice didn’t waver now.

Kurt rattled off a quick translation for me. Then he shuffled and straightened his papers. He gathered his pens. He cleared his throat. He gave all the signs of a man ending an interview.

I was confused. Why was he disengaging? Was her information significant or not? Kurt showed nothing on his stern face, another feature he shared with Nick, whose outward demeanor reminded some people of Heathcliff from
Wuthering Heights
. I knew he and his father had playful streaks and warm hearts. But you wouldn’t know it from looking at them, and you sure didn’t want to play poker against them. Kurt had his poker face in place now.

Abruptly, Kurt stood up, bowed slightly at the waist, shook the woman’s hand and thanked her. Gabriel excused her. She scurried out, but cast me a backward glance and a decisive nod.

How very, very strange all around.

“Anyone else?” I asked Gabriel.

He called in his young assistant, whose long dark curls I immediately envied. “Nancy, any others?”

“No, sir, you have talked to everyone who worked that shift,” she said.

“The janitor wasn’t on the list, though. Anyone else like the janitor?” I said.

Nancy understood my question. “There are others that work inside the terminal, but if you add the custodian, you have talked to everyone who works outside and around the hangar and was on shift when your husband was here.”

Kurt stood up. “Thank you both. This was great. Now, you must excuse us. Katie and I have a phone call. Gabriel, I am sure we will return this afternoon, but if you hear from the FAA or Coast Guard, please let us know, OK?”

“Of course, of course,” Gabriel said.

Kurt’s long legs ate up the floor in two strides before I had even gathered my things and stood up. “Katie?” he said, beckoning from the door.

“Yes, of course,” I said, echoing Gabriel.

We followed Nancy and her pearls and long curly hair as she clicked her way back to the terminal. Kurt pushed through the door without a word and I called out, “Thanks!” over my shoulder as I hurried to keep up. What the hell? His sudden departure and wordy but false summary of our day were out of character.

My father-in-law had some explaining to do.

I loped after Kurt, who was all but sprinting to Victor’s car. When had he called Victor?

“What’s going on?” I asked him when we had buckled in.

“We need to get back to the laptops. I want to check on something. Too soon to say.”

Like father, like son. “OK,” I said. It wasn’t OK, but I didn’t have a choice. That much I knew from living with the Kovacs men.

My iPhone buzzed. Incoming text. I pulled it onscreen and read, “But Nick is missing. Prove you are Nick. Who did you meet in PC?”

Holy creepers!
A message from one of the numbers Nick had texted. I typed as fast as I could, and then retyped it all because it was unintelligible garbage. “I would not betray that confidence over text.” I hit send.

Thirty seconds later, the light flashed again.

“I think this is his wife, and that we’ve already communicated.”

Yes, I do believe we have. “You are A. Friend,” I typed. Send.

“Yes, I am.”

“I need help,” I sent.

“I cannot help you, but I wish you well.”

“What is your name?” I asked.

I watched for the flashing red light, but none came.

We arrived at the Puntacana Resort. If Kurt had sprinted before, he broke a world record for the hundred-yard dash now. I had no prayer of keeping up. I struggled out of the car, pants sticking to thighs as usual, and negotiated a pickup time with Victor in my now-passable Spanish. We needed to pick up my brother at 1:35, so we agreed to leave for the airport at 1:15.

I hustled after Kurt, checking my message light again as I trotted. Nothing. I caught Kurt at the door to our casita and followed him in, out of breath.
Need more exercise.

Kurt grabbed his laptop and got to work. I ordered us lunch from room service while my laptop booted up and my iPhone refused to give me any messages. I resent the message to A. Friend. I also texted Julie, who immediately answered and suggested a quick Skype while my kids were all strapped into high chairs for lunch.

In less than a minute, we were connected. Julie had positioned her laptop camera so my three beautiful children filled the screen. My heart stopped.

“Hi, guys, it’s Mom,” I said.

“Hi, Mommy!” Taylor replied. He looked adorable, even with smears of ketchup marring his perfect face. “Liv and Jess, say hi to Mommy.” He turned and looked at his sisters. “They can’t talk yet, Mommy, but they would say hi if they could.”

I laughed. Julie’s face appeared behind Taylor. “Hi, Julie. Kurt is here with me in body, but his mind is elsewhere. He’s researching something online.”

“No problem. I want all hands on deck to find Nick. Tell Kurt I love him,” Julie said.

“I will.”

“Bye, Mommy,” Taylor said, and slithered out of his high chair. He had learned how to unbuckle his own strap recently, but he still liked to sit in the chair to compete with the twins at eye level for attention. Well, I’d had him for fifteen seconds. I couldn’t expect much more from the little steam engine.

“Bye, sweetie pie,” I said. A knock sounded. Room service. “Hold on, Julie, I have to grab our food.”

I realized too late that I shouldn’t be opening the door to strangers with two men looking for me. But I got lucky; it was only the porter. He swiped my Visa and I locked the door. I deposited Kurt’s lunch in front of him. He hadn’t registered the knock or my response to it, nor did he acknowledge the plate now.

I returned to my laptop and motioned for Julie to continue while I ate.

“We’ve had an interesting morning,” she said. “I know you guys will need to hurry to the airport to get Collin, so I’ll make this fast.”

“We’re doing good on time. What’s up?”

“We had visitors today. Detective Tutein showed up with some of his minions and a representative from DPNR. Katie, they had a warrant for your arrest for disturbing human remains and failing to report their discovery.”

I nearly choked on my fish taco. “That fast? Oh my God!”

“I know. They scared Ruth and me, although she chuptzed them. You would have loved that, at least. She’s resting right now, or I’m sure she’d tell you this story herself.”

“Go, Ruth.”

“Yes, that’s what I said. Sort of. And then there was the magnificent Annalise.”

“What did she do?” I asked.

“You know that hive of bees on the library window upstairs, above the door to the kitchen? She dropped it. It nearly landed on them, too. They ran to their car screaming like little children.”

I hooted. “That’s my girl.”

“Before then, though, when they were still hassling us, I told them you had left St. Marcos on a trip, and that I didn’t know when you’d return. Tutein said to tell you he would be the first person you saw when you got off the plane. The DPNR rep then told me that he would come back with an injunction ordering us out of the house and requiring us to excavate the property at our expense.”

“They’re playing hardball.” This ranked as a small problem compared to a lost husband, but it was still huge. And poor Annalise. What a violation this would be.

Julie rubbed the back of her neck with one hand. “Yes, they are. I asked him when, and he said soon. But I have no idea what that means.”

“I guess it means if they come back, you guys may have to visit Aunt Ava. Well, we need a local attorney to help us fight this.”

“Rashidi is helping me find one. He’s on his way here to stay with us, anyway. His guys are still out searching the island, but they haven’t turned anything up.”

“Good, I’m glad he will stay with you. Thank you, Julie. I’m so sorry this is happening.”

“Just find Nick.”

“We’re trying. I emailed you the developments last night.”

“I got it. Sorry I didn’t see your texts. I left you a voicemail. The girls were fussy and took all my attention.”

At that moment, Kurt jumped to his feet and shook my water glass with his yell. “Damn right!”

“What is it?” I asked, turning to him.

“What is it?” Julie asked me.

Kurt scrubbed his hand through his gray hair, which was standing up like a platoon of soldiers at attention. His glazed eyes focused on the screen, and he dropped back onto the couch, saying, “I knew I had read something about what alcohol can do to an engine. And I found it.”

“What’s he talking about?” Julie asked. She had moved so close to the screen that her nose looked like the nose of our airplane, but without the blue paint.

I tied it together the best I could, considering that Kurt had cut me out of the pertinents until just now. “A janitor at the airport thinks she saw a man pour something into Nick’s fuel tanks. She also found Cruzan Rum bottles in the trash. Kurt appears to have researched alcohol and engines.”

“That could be important information, right?”

I nodded. I thought about the locals looking for Elena at the St. Marcos airport. The two black men that had roughed up the busboy for talking to us, the same two that said they had fixed Nick’s plane. The ones that might be looking for me.

Kurt typed again, fast for him, but not so very fast. His thick fingers got in his way. He cursed under his breath. My heart swelled.
Thank you God for Kurt.

“Well?” Julie asked.

“I think we’ve lost him to his research again. But he believes he found information on the effect of alcohol on engines. Stay tuned. This is our big find of the day, by the way. We interviewed every employee at the hangar. We didn’t get zip from anyone else, including the FAA or Coast Guard. No word there, other than the search is starting nearest St. Marcos.”

“How is the alcohol significant?”

“Well, if it went into Nick’s gas tanks, it could be the reason he’s not home now,” I said. I saw the time. Shit, it was later than I thought. “Kurt, we have to leave,” I said. “Julie, I love you guys.”

“We love you both, too. Oh, and Katie, one last thing. Ava called right before lunch. She and her friends found something, a slave graveyard near Annalise. They’re coming out this afternoon to search.”

“That’s excellent news, but it sounds like if they aren’t blazingly fast, your government visitors will beat them out there. I hope not. All right, bye, Julie.” I blew kisses to the girls, but they were more interested in their Cheerios than in me.

We ended the connection.

“Kurt, we have to go,” I repeated.

“Huh? Go? OK,” he said. He heaved a long sigh. “I think I’ll leave this machine going to speed things up when we get home.”

I wrapped Kurt’s food in a napkin and placed it in his hand. His eyebrows went up and he grabbed it. “Thanks,” he said. He wolfed it down as we made our way back through the hotel to the car. I fought down my impatience while he chewed.
Time to clue me in, Gramps.

Finally—
finally
—Kurt swallowed his last mega-bite. I said, “What do you think’s going on?”

“Dunno for sure, but if those bottles of rum were poured into Nick’s tanks, they could shut down the engines. The alcohol would overheat the engine, and the sugar would caramelize on the pistons. If that’s what happened, I need to find someone or something to tell me how long that would take.”

He was acting like this was good news, but to me it just meant that Nick’s plane had crashed, which was bad news. “But why is this important, Kurt? Why are you so excited about it?”

“Because if we know what happened to his plane in Punta Cana, we can zero in on where he went down. If he went down.”

“And then we can find him!” I shouted.

“Yes. Then we can find him.”