PW01 - Died On The Vine (2 page)

Fortunately, Jack came in behind me then and slipped his arm around my waist. “Hi, Cis, what’s up?” My big sweet calm man!

I gestured to Winslow and waved the photo wildly. “This man claims Jimmy is still alive!”

Jack plucked the photo from my fingers and stepped forward with his right hand out. “Jack Rayburn.”

Winslow replied with a bone-crushing grip. “Obie Winslow.”

“Heard of you,” Jack admitted. He looked at the photograph in his hand, then peered closely at it.

“Jack?” I asked.

“No scars.”

Of course! I turned back to Winslow. “Chuck Graham told me that Jimmy’s plane exploded and burned when it hit the ground.” I gulped, hesitated, and then plowed on. “Even if he could have survived that, surely there would have been burns.”

Winslow shrugged enigmatically. “Mrs. Rayburn, all I can say is that this man may be James Hooper. Maybe not. But my sources – “ He broke off. “Anyway, I’m going to be looking into this and I would like to do so as your representative.”

Jack cut to the chase. “How much?”

Winslow seemed hurt by the suggestion. “I never accept money from MIA families.” (Possibly true. I seem to recall reading something about an impressive fundraising apparatus.)

Jack moved behind the bar and pulled out the Cabernet Sauvignon. The occasion became uneasily social, reminding me of my days as a young Navy wife paying duty calls on my husband’s commanding officer.

Winslow expressed interest in the winery. On this topic, my strong silent man becomes positively garrulous. He described his foresighted purchase two decades ago of the two hundred acres of “worthless scrub land”. The hilly, gravelly land had frustrated the efforts of every farmer who had ever tried to make it produce. In this century, the land had been the occasional home of cows, but more often had been left to the deer and wild turkeys.

But Jack, newly returned from a posting in Europe, saw the meager soil as the ideal setting for Vitis Vinifera. He kept quoting “Where no plow will go, the vine will grow” till I was ready to strangle him.

“I thought you were crazy,” I reminded him.

“Just ahead of my time,” he replied smugly. “Come see my setup,” he invited Winslow, and we left the shop.

Jack pointed out the four acres of mature Cabernet Sauvignon and four of Chardonnay, all planted in the late seventies. Four more acres of Cabernet and two of Sauvignon Blanc were just beginning to produce, and further away were the four acres of baby Merlot. A miniature holding by California standards, but respectable for the infant Eastern wine industry.

Jack always likes to compare the soil to that of Bordeaux and predictably did so now. In front of a guest, even an uninvited one, I omitted my usual caveat about Virginia’s heat and humidity, which I’m sure would cause the hardiest Bordelais vinegron to wilt like a tender lettuce.

Jack led us into the winery, formerly the barn. He pointed with pride to the stainless steel tanks, the American oak barrels (expensive) and the French oak barrels (even more expensive), and his small lab where he ran various tests on his precious product. The concrete floor was spotless, as usual. Jack is a finicky housekeeper in his own domain.

Winslow took it all in with keen-eyed interest. Finally he left, spinning away in (what else?) a black Jaguar.

Jack and I returned to the shop. Jack vacuum-pumped the air from the open bottle of Cabernet while I locked up. He finally spoke as we walked back to the house. “Odd,” was his succinct comment.

“Wasn’t it?” I answered. “Do you suppose he’s on the level?”

Jack shrugged. While not particularly tall, Jack is quite broad-shouldered, giving his shrug a bearlike quality. In fact, Jack is generally bearlike, one of the slow-moving easygoing types, not the fierce growly types. I sometimes call him my honey-bear, though never in public.

I speculated further. “I mean, he didn’t get anything out of us, but didn’t seem to mind.”

We settled into the room which builders and realtors like to call the ‘great room’, and which we had approximated by knocking down the walls between the parlor and the dining room. Jack took the recliner while I opted for the sofa. Polly joined me and plopped her head in my lap. I stroked her silky ears and continued to chew the topic. “Winslow seemed pretty interested in the place.”

“Maybe he wants to start a winery,” Jack offered. Jack thinks everyone wants to start a winery. I tried to picture Winslow driving an old pickup truck loaded with lugs of grapes. I didn’t think so.

“Jack, is it possible that Jimmy is still alive?”

“I sure don’t see how. But call Admiral Graham if it will make you feel better.”

“I think I will call him tomorrow.”

I threw together a bunch of various foods and called it dinner, and we spent the rest of the evening just puttering around.

Just before bedtime, I went into my study and turned on my computer. I love my computer. The kids say it’s a dinosaur. But I was there when the real dinosaurs roaming the earth! My first job after Jimmy’s death was as a GS-3 computer operator in Washington. Mag tape reels and card readers – don’t try to tell me about dinosaurs!

I logged onto the Internet and connected with my Usenet group, a group of writers from all over the country. Although I’m a technical writer and primarily write manuals for a set fee, I love all the yakking about criminal editors, brain-dead agents, and slave wage royalties.

Tonight I just skimmed my e-mail and then posted a note for the group.

“I’m looking for any information the group might have on Colonel Obadiah ‘Obie’ Winslow,” I wrote. “What’s the story on this guy?”

Then I logged off, having put powerful wheels in motion. Colonel Winslow isn’t the only one with “sources”!

TWO

The next morning, I called Nancy Graham to get Chuck’s office number. I felt rather self-conscious calling Nancy out of the blue. Once we had been best friends, living in base housing, having babies in diapers together, driving our husbands home from the Officers Club when they’d had too much to drink. But Jimmy’s death had removed me from that close-knit community. The Grahams had been ordered overseas and our friendship was now memorialized by an annual Christmas card.

Nancy was predictably surprised to hear from me. “Why, Cissy! For heaven’s sake, how are you, hon?” I couldn’t just ask for Chuck’s number and hang up. We wound up chatting for over half an hour, covering Jack’s retirement and Chuck’s job at the Pentagon and his chances for promotion.

I described Winslow’s visit and Nancy was scandalized. “That vulture! Just wait until Chuck hears about this!”

“Actually, Nancy, I wanted to talk to Chuck about it myself. May I have his office number?”

Nancy gave me the number and we rounded off the conversation with mutual resolutions to
“get together real soon”.

At Chuck’s office, a protective aide was unwilling to disturb the Admiral who was reported to be “in conference”, but in the quarter-century since I’d left the Navy family, I had lost my awe of rank. Within minutes, I had Chuck on the phone. Even after all these years, I recognized his booming voice immediately.

“Conference? Hell, Cissy, I was in the can. What can I do for you today?”

“Chuck, this may sound crazy, but is it possible that Jimmy could have survived that crash?”

“Survived? Only if Scotty had beamed him out about a microsecond before the plane hit the dirt.”

That took me back. Every Friday night the Hoopers used to go over to the Grahams to watch Star Trek on their 19-inch color TV. (Yes, children, we had a 12-inch black-and-white in those days.)

Chuck went on. “Look, Cissy, we had this conversation back in ’69. Jimmy was my best friend and I would have given anything to see him survive that crash, but I saw it with my own eyes and it just isn’t possible. Now, what’s happened to make you start wondering again?”

I told him about Winslow’s visit. Chuck sighed. “I wish there was something we could do to stop that man, but it’s a free country. Cis, this guy has made a living feeding the impossible hopes of widows and orphans. Every few months, he shows up with some new photo or old bone and starts howling about high-level cover-ups. The conspiracy theorists love him. I don’t know why he’s picking on you, though. Maybe he’s run out of MIA families to con and is moving on the KIAs. Honey, you go on down to the Wall and have a good cry, and then give that husband of yours a big hug. Jimmy’s dead. It’s sad, but true. And I’m going to talk to some folks I know and try to find out why you’ve been targeted by this jerk.”

Getting off the phone, I grabbed a cup of coffee and went to the office. Time to see how my other sources were coming through for me.

Signing on to the internet, I found a number of very different answers to the question I posted the night before. The responses were addressed to “Cecil” or “Serpent”. My nom de plume for Usenet is based on an old cartoon about a boy named Beanie and his friend “Cecil The Sea-Sick Sea Serpent” – if you remember it, your age is showing.

Unlike other cyberspace groups, the writers don’t use aliases as a cloak for their identities. Try finding a writer who can keep from bragging about a sale or a byline! Even I am unable to keep from identifying myself as the Cecilia Rayburn who authored the players manuals for the “Kingdom of Qu’aot” fantasy adventure series. When Dan, my youngest, was in high school, it was my one claim to fame. Our aliases are more a matter of nicknames, so I’m familiar with the background and real names of the chattiest of the net users.

I printed all the responses to show to Jack later. There seemed to be two opinions about Colonel Obie Winslow, which were best expressed by Cincinnatus and Wizard.

Cincinnatus is a right-wing gun nut and Tom Clancy wannabe. Based in Colorado, he writes techno-thrillers. I’ve checked him out of the library and discovered that his mediocre success is the logical outcome of mediocre talent.

Remembering what Chuck said about conspiracy theorists, I wasn’t surprised to find Cincinnatus firmly in Winslow’s corner. “Obie Winslow is an AMERICAN HERO,” he wrote, “who will take on anyone, whether it be the North Vietnamese or the US Government, to bring OUR BOYS BACK! He is a man of DEEP FAITH and COMMITMENT who has never wavered from his task and deserves more support from the INDIFFERENT AMERICAN PUBLIC!” On the internet, capital letters are considered rude, a form of shouting. But the group has given up trying to teach manners to Cincinnatus.

The opposing view was articulated by Wizard. Wizard is a fourteen year old boy from California who gained admittance to the group by virtue of being “the first freshman newspaper editor in the history of Westlake High.” He’s also president of the Science Club and was just awarded the position of editor of the yearbook.

Wizard labeled Winslow “either a nut or a con man, maybe both. He talks a lot about evidence, but have we seen any MIAs returned through his efforts? I think not! His latest ‘rescue mission’ was a total fiasco, with a bunch of nutty Soldier of Fortune types winding up in a Laotian jail. He was profiled a few months ago in USN≀ you should look it up.”

You’ve got to like a kid who reads US News & World Report.

And Steve, a food columnist from D.C. who has so far been too diffident to coin a flamboyant alias, advised me to “look up Mary Nguyen. She’s done a lot of research on Winslow. I think she’s freelance, but I’ve seen her stuff in the Post, so they probably know how to contact her.”

I logged off and wandered out to the kitchen. Professionally, I’m in the middle of a lull. I’d long finished my least favorite annual project, writing the user’s manual for a tax preparation software package that’s updated annually. I know a lot more about taxes than I really want to know as a result, and don’t ever let me get on the subject of the inequities of the tax code on the self-employed.

In a month or so, if the kids at EveryWare would ever finish the coding, I would start on the manual for Qu’aot VIII (The Archbishop’s Revenge).

For now I could do projects that I have been putting off, such as landscaping, building shelves, or trying that crocheted sweater pattern than my friend Julia swears is not as hard as it looks.

Or not. I decided on not. Calling Polly, I decided to go down by the river and see if the bald eagles had yet returned to the loblolly pines and then go to Julia’s for a chat.

It was a chilly day, but definitely spring. Polly thundered through the underbrush, glad for a run.

Polly is my dog. I first met her several years ago when I went to the vet’s office to get shots for McCavity, our old tabby. I found the vet and the receptionist cooing over a tiny pup which was being fed from a baby’s bottle. The puppy was just days old, her eyes were barely open. Doc Harding told me she’d been found in the dumpster.

She didn’t sound surprised. I guess vets are used to finding unwanted animals dumped somewhere on the property. But I was outraged. And such a sweet little puppy! Doc Harding knew a patsy when she saw one, and immediately began talking mournfully about how hard it was going to be to find a good home for this wonderful little dog. “She’s going to be a big one – look at those feet. Most people who want big dogs want purebreds, and whatever this little love is, she certainly isn’t purebred.” She handed me the fuzzy bundle, who emitted a high-pitched bark and licked my chin.