Coffee, Tea, or Murder? (20 page)

“All set to go home, Mrs. F.?” Mort asked, as he held a chair out for me.

“I think so.”

We were eight at the table: the Richardsons, the Metzgers, the Shevlins, Seth and I. They’d ordered smoked salmon, thinly sliced by a white-coated gentleman who looked as though he’d been doing it for decades, and I decided to join them.

Jed’s wife, Barbara, was dressed in a fashionable outfit, a lime green linen pantsuit, which I commented on.

“I found this amazing seamstress,” she said, glowing, “who made this for me in a couple of hours.”

Jed laughed. “I’d better alert the cockpit crew that we might have a weight-and-balance problem for the flight back.”

“I didn’t buy
that
much, Jed,” Barbara said, poking his arm.

Seth reported on his visit with his newfound physician friend. “They’ve got problems with their medical delivery system,” he said, “but so do we back home. Frankly, I don’t see why a country like ours can’t come up with a way for everyone to be covered.”

That sparked a debate between Seth and Jim about the pros and cons of universal health care, which the rest of us stayed out of. It was Susan who finally introduced the topic of the Silverton murder.

“I have this eerie feeling,” she said, “about flying home with a murderer.”

“Amen,” Maureen said. “Jessica, has George Sutherland made any headway in solving it?”

“These things take time,” I said. “It’s only been a couple of days. You know he’ll be traveling with us on the return flight.”

“Not especially comforting,” Seth grumbled.

“He’s not there to comfort us,” I said. “He’s going to use the flight as another opportunity to question people.”

“And what if he ends up identifying the murderer?” Seth asked. “Whoever did it is likely to raise a fuss, wouldn’t you say? Maybe put everyone on the plane in jeopardy.”

“I’m sure George wouldn’t allow that to happen,” I said.

Maureen gave me a knowing look. “And what about the other case he’s working on?” she asked.

“What other case?” Susan asked.

“The budding romance between Jessica and George.”

Seth turned to me. “Is that true, Jessica?” he asked. “Is there something I should know about?”

“If there were,” I said, “you’d be the first to know.”

“Hey, wait a minute,” Jim said. “I’m the mayor of Cabot Cove. I should be the first to know.”

They bantered back and forth about that subject until it was time to order our dinners. Had we been eating later, we would have enjoyed a dance band that performs each evening, a throwback to another era when such orchestras were standard fare in posh restaurants.

It was a shame that we had to rush through our meal. The ambiance of the River Restaurant is such that you want to linger forever. But we eventually ran out of time, left the table, went to our rooms to collect our luggage, and joined up again in front of the Savoy where a fleet of limousines waited to whisk us to Stansted Airport. The weather was still dreadful. The sky seemed to have ruptured, allowing rain to cascade down like a waterfall. In addition, a wind had kicked up, sending the rain horizontally and rendering the large umbrellas wielded by the limo drivers virtually useless. But they did their best to get us to their vehicles as dry as possible, and eventually everyone was settled in, happy to be out of the deluge. I had no idea how everyone was grouped in the other limousines. All I knew was that those of us from Cabot Cove were together, and I was happy about that.

It was a slow, tedious trip, but eventually the airport’s lights came into view and we pulled up as close as possible to the entrance. Again, with an assortment of black umbrellas providing some protection from the elements, we were escorted inside the terminal and asked to wait until further notice in an area roped off for us.

I saw Christine enter, accompanied by her attorney, Mr. Bellnap, and her stepson, Jason.
Is he going with us on the flight?
I wondered. They stood together, apart from the main group. Following them was a bevy of press who’d been on the flight to London, and some of the politicians from back home who’d also been invited. A few minutes later, Churlson Vicks and Salvatore Casale made their appearance. They ignored our staging area and walked by, heads down, men with weighty issues on their minds.

“Where’s the crew?” Mort asked. “Can’t go without
them
.”

“I’m sure they came to the airport earlier,” I offered. “There’s always a lot of preflight business to take care of.”

“I hope their first piece of business is this weather,” Seth said. “They’d have to be nuts to take off in this storm.”

“They won’t do anything that isn’t safe,” I said, hoping my words would ease his worries. I didn’t admit that I, too, was apprehensive about flying in such severe weather. Repeated slashes of lightning could be seen through huge floor-to-ceiling windows, and deafening thunder made sure that no one forgot Mother Nature’s power.

I’d become acutely aware of weather and its potential to damage planes, even the largest and most sophisticated of them, when taking flying lessons from Jed in Cabot Cove. As he often told me, many private plane fatalities could have been avoided if the pilots had respected the weather. Accidents labeled weather-related, he’d said, were most often caused by pilots ignoring weather conditions in which it was dangerous to fly. “Doctors,” he said, “are the worst culprits. They think they’re God and have to get back home for surgery that’s scheduled the next day. They take off regardless of the weather, and some never make it.”

The weather was causing a lot of apprehension in our group. One woman, a Boston city council member, stated that she wasn’t about to get on a plane in those conditions. A writer for an aviation business journal echoed her protestations. And Seth was, I judged, ready to join them. But before a mutiny fully developed, the flight attendant, Betsy Scherer, arrived and announced that we were ready to board.

We followed her through the terminal to SilverAir’s gate. The building was teeming with people; a number of outgoing flights had been canceled, according to the digital departure-and-arrival boards we passed, and incoming flights were seriously delayed, creating a domino effect. No planes arriving meant no planes available to depart.

I’d been looking for George ever since we entered the terminal. Surely, he wouldn’t miss the flight unless the weather had seriously delayed his drive to the airport. I considered not boarding and waiting for him in the departure lounge, but decided that it wouldn’t accomplish anything. I stood in line as a uniformed SilverAir ground employee checked off passengers from a clipboard as they reached the entrance to the Jetway.

“Fletcher,” I said when I reached him. “Jessica Fletcher.”

He made a mark next to my name and waved me through. I lingered just inside the Jetway for the rest of the Cabot Cove group to catch up. We walked together toward the open door to the 767 where Gina Molnari and First Officer Carl Scherer stood greeting passengers. A large, clear Plexiglas insert in the side of the Jetway gave me a view of a portion of the cockpit. Captain Bill Caine was in the customary captain’s left-hand seat, his hands going to various knobs and buttons as he ran through his preflight rituals.

“Good evening, Mrs. Fletcher,” Gina said.

“Good evening,” I replied. “Glad to see you’re looking so well.”

“Feeling fine,” she said. Her tight expression said she wasn’t at all happy to see me.

I stepped inside the aircraft and looked to my left through the open cockpit door. Caine turned and saw me, nodded, and went back to his chores. I chose a seat and looked in vain for George. Christine and Jason Silverton boarded. The icy look on Christine’s face when she saw me was evident even from where I sat. Jason was all smiles as he chatted with Betsy Scherer.

A clap of thunder seemed to shake the plane as it sat at the gate. I glanced at Seth, who’d already buckled himself into his seat, and whose expression was one of abject fear. Seth is a man who seems never to be intimidated by anything—except flying. I’ve been on many flights where his grip on the armrests was enough to dent them, and his knuckles were as white as freshly fallen snow. But it was obvious that his anxiety level on this evening was especially high.

I leaned over him and suggested, “Why don’t you try self-hypnosis? It worked for me when I couldn’t sleep.”

“Ayuh,”
he said. “I may do that.”

“Pretend you’re flying the plane,” I said, remembering what Jed had told me. When he was a captain with a major airline, he’d taken part in a company-sponsored series of seminars for people whose fear of flying was acute, and whose lives were negatively impacted by their fears. “People are afraid to fly,” he’d said, “because they lack control. We teach ’em to take an active part in the flying process, even rise up a little from their seats on takeoff to make the plane lighter.”

“I’ll be all right,” Seth said, not sounding as though he meant it. “Hypnosis won’t make this ugly weather any better.”

I patted his hand and walked toward the rear of the plane. I’d learned years ago that when Seth is dealing with a problem, it’s usually best to leave him alone. I could have cited statistics to him: Your chances of being involved in an aircraft accident are about one in eleven million; chances of being killed in an auto accident are one in five thousand. Driving to the airport poses a far greater risk than getting on a plane, as evidenced by more than fifty thousand people killed in auto accidents each year. But none of that would have helped Seth at that moment. Unless the rain and wind suddenly stopped, and a rainbow appeared, there was little anyone could say, or do, to alleviate his concerns.

I’d stopped to chat with one of the reporters when Jason Silverton approached from where he and Christine had taken seats at the front of the passenger cabin.

“Hello, Mrs. Fletcher,” he said.

“Hello, Jason.”

He said through a toothy grin, “You look surprised that I’m on the flight.”

“Not at all. It appears you’ve made up with your stepmother.”

He glanced back at Christine. “Yeah. I’m irresistible.” He smiled at me, but it wasn’t a pleasant smile. “Makes sense for me to be on this flight,” he said. “A shame Dad couldn’t make it. Of course, he wouldn’t be occupying a seat. He’d be down below in the cargo hold. But the police wouldn’t release his body. So he stays back in jolly old England.”

How sad for Wayne, I thought, that his only child had nothing but callous comments to make about his father.

“Now that I own a piece of this airline,” Jason said, “I’ll be on lots of SilverAir flights.”

“Has the ownership question been settled?” I asked.

“Not yet, but it will be.” He looked past me to where Vicks and Casale sat huddled in adjacent seats poring over a sheaf of papers. “Those two clowns think they can bully me out of the picture, but I don’t scare easy. Between Christine and me, we’ll show them who’s really the boss.”

“If you say so, Jason,” I said, eager to escape his gloating. “I wish you well.”

“Maybe you’d like to write a book about me,” he said. “I’ll bet I’m the youngest airline owner in the world.”

“That may be,” I said. “Excuse me.”

I joined Jed and Barbara Richardson where they’d just accepted coffee from the young male flight attendant, John Slater.

“Think we’ll go?” I asked Jed.

“It’s a toss-up,” he said. “Depends on what the captain up front decides. It’s his call.”

“What would you do?” I asked.

He smiled and sipped. “Me? I always went with the most conservative approach, Jess. But I don’t want to second-guess Captain Caine. It’s his ship, like the captain of an ocean liner. The only difference is he can’t conduct marriages.”

“Speaking of that,” Barbara said, winking at me and pointing to the front of the aircraft where George Sutherland had just come aboard.

I gave Barbara my best disapproving look and headed up the aisle. George looked frazzled. His tan trench coat was rain-darkened, and his hair was wet, too. He carried a small, leather overnight bag along with a well-worn leather briefcase with a shoulder strap.

“I was getting worried,” I said. “I was afraid you wouldn’t make it.”

“I had my doubts, too,” he said. “Last-minute snafus at the office, and slow going on the roads. But here I am. Anything new?”

“Always something new, it seems, but I’ll fill you in later.”

First Officer Scherer passed us, entered the cockpit, and closed the door behind him.

“Any talk of scuttling the flight?” George asked.

“No. As far as I know, we’re going.”

Mort joined us. “Evening, Inspector,” he said.

“Good evening to you, Sheriff.”

“Any progress?” Mort asked.

“Bits and pieces, that’s all,” George said.

Mort leaned close to George’s ear and whispered just loud enough for me to hear, too, “I’ve got my weapon with me in case there’s trouble.”

“That’s good to hear,” George said. “I’m glad you’re with us.”

Until Mort mentioned carrying his revolver with him, I hadn’t given a thought to weapons aboard. I knew that Mort was allowed to carry his weapon whenever he flew because of his status as a law enforcement officer, and it was likely that Captain Caine and First Officer Scherer carried guns, too, under the new FAA regulations allowing, even encouraging, cockpit crews to be armed. But what about other passengers? Because we were a non-scheduled flight, security had been handled by SilverAir ground personnel, not government-sanctioned and trained officers.

I looked around the cabin. Anyone could be carrying a weapon of some sort, a realization that didn’t sit well with me.

I accepted a club soda from Gina Molnari. George asked for a Coke.

“Excuse me, Inspector,” Churlson Vicks said.