Chapter 4
CHAPTER 4
B ESIDES THE CORONER’S REPORT, Hanna also had a preliminary report from the NTSB. It confirmed what Terry had learned the day of the crash. All the plane’s mechanical parts were sound and working within normal limits.
It didn’t surprise Hanna. She’d read up on small planes and found that it was nearly impossible to sabotage one. Pilots, good pilots, did a preflight check of all their systems. Any sabotage was likely to be discovered there. By all accounts, Scott was a careful pilot. And if the engine did fail because of tampering, odds were good that a pilot could make an emergency landing. Scott could have landed in the field where he crashed—there had been room—but he never made the attempt.
The cyanide was the big surprise.
“Who had motive and opportunity to poison Scott’s coffee?” Investigator Holmes asked as he and Hanna left the coroner’s office.
“It’s a method of murder that indicates planning. And historically, poison is a woman’s weapon. At least that was what they taught us in the academy.” Hanna knew there were few women in Scott Buckley’s inner circle, other than his fiancée, Valerie Fox. She had not been in Dry Oaks the day of the crash. In fact, she rarely stayed in town. She lived on the coast in Corte Madera. Ms. Fox was wealthy and privileged—murder didn’t seem a likely fit.
As if reading her mind, Terry said, “Fox could have paid someone.”
Hanna shook her head. “I don’t see it. Calling off the wedding would make more sense than murder. And everyone we talked to said they were crazy about one another. She’ll be here for the memorial. We’ll get a better sense after talking to her then.”
From there they drove up to the airfield and collected Scott’s coffee maker and coffee supply. On the drive back to Dry Oaks, they returned to the Buckley home and retrieved Scott’s laptop in the hopes it would shed some light on the incident. E-mails, online communications could possibly give them leads. They also had a warrant to search the house and outbuildings for cyanide. Hanna dealt with Timmons. Neither Everett nor Chase was on the premises.
“They’re in Corte Madera with Scott’s girlfriend,” Timmons told her. “You won’t find any cyanide here; we have no use for it.”
He was right. Scott’s room was neat and organized. There were no diaries, only the laptop. Hanna was sorry they’d missed Everett and Chase.
“I need to talk to both of them when they get home,” she told Timmons.
“I’ll tell ’em.”
Hanna followed up on leads as soon as she got them. The laptop was no help. There was no indication that Scott had been threatened, worried, or anything but happy about his engagement.
Friday she and Terry caught up with Jeff Smith in Sonora. He was the airplane mechanic Scott had fired two weeks prior to the crash for sloppy maintenance work. He now worked at a small garage called Abel’s Automotive. He was underneath a beat-up Toyota Camry when Hanna and Terry walked up.
“Jeff Smith?”
“Yeah?” He slid out to look up at them. Surprise, then annoyance flashed across his face. “Let me guess why you’re here.” He sat up, then stood, wiping his hands on a greasy rag. “I had nothing to do with that crash.”
“Scott wasn’t a fan of yours. Want to tell me why he fired you?” Hanna asked.
“That snooty girlfriend of his. The last time he took her for a flight, she got grease on her dress, blamed me.”
“Seriously?” Terry asked.
“Yeah.” Smith spit on the ground and leveled a disgusted look at her. “I haven’t been back to the airfield since I got canned.”
“I need you to account for your whereabouts for the past two weeks.” Hanna’s gut said he was telling the truth, but she had to have something concrete to prove it.
“Here, mostly.” He pointed down at the dirty floor. “I make half of what I made as a plane mechanic. And thanks to Saint Scott, I got no references. I work seven days a week. I didn’t like Scott, but that don’t mean I killed him.”
“I can vouch for him.”
Hanna turned to see an older man leaning on a cane had exited the office. “You are?”
“Abel Martinez. I own the place. I had a stroke, can’t work much. Jeff’s been here every day, mostly all day, helping me keep up with the work.”
“What about at night? You keep track of him then?” Terry asked.
Martinez shook his head. “He’s been a big help to me.”
Smith shrugged. “I live alone. But I have neighbors. Look, there are cameras all over that airfield. If you’d seen me on one of them, I’d probably already be in cuffs.”
Hanna had viewed hours of video from the airfield. The security system where Scott kept his plane was state of the art. Jeff hadn’t shown up on any of the video feeds since he was fired. Still, he would know how to avoid them.
“We’ll follow up with your neighbors, Jeff.” Hanna turned to leave, then stopped. “If you didn’t do it, who do you think did? You worked for Scott for two years, and you didn’t like him. Who else felt that way?”
Smith leaned against the car and sighed. “Look, Scott was hard to work for. He was demanding, a perfectionist. Especially when he took his girlfriend up in the plane. I was too unorganized for him. My mind doesn’t go to murder. I’d like to have punched him out, though...” He gave another half shrug. “The only person I seen him really argue with was that blogger.”
“What blogger?”
“You know, Marcus the Muckraker. They got into it really good a few weeks ago at the airfield.”
“What about?”
“I don’t know. Couldn’t hear. There was just a lot of arm waving and Scott poked the guy’s chest.” Smith held his index finger up and jabbed the air by way of example.
“What do you make of that?” Terry asked Hanna as they drove back to Dry Oaks. They’d followed up with Smith’s neighbors and found his alibi solid.
“No one else at the airfield mentioned that fight?”
“Not a word.”
“Go back, talk to them again.”
“Will do. You ever heard the nickname Marcus the Muckraker?”
Hanna nodded. “He got that nickname years ago. My mom gave it to him after he published his first book. It died out for a bit but was revived a couple of years ago when Bobby Fairchild overdosed.”
“Right! I remember that. Marshall posted a list of all the burglaries he thought Bobby was responsible for, then declared Dry Oaks safe again because Bobby OD’d.”
“Yeah. Marcus can be a jerk.”
“How about a murderer?” Terry asked.
“Marcus has always struck me as a talker not a doer, though. A keyboard warrior I’d call him now. We still need to find out about the argument and check the camera footage again. Make sure we didn’t miss anything.”
Terry nodded. “I’d also like to talk to Chase. Do you know if the brothers were close?”
“I think they were.” Hanna considered the question. Scott’s younger brother had been seriously injured thirty-five years ago in an incident that had changed Dry Oaks forever. It had changed Hanna’s life as well.
Her father murdered two people and maimed Chase for life. Time had not numbed her to that reality. The knowledge about what Joe Keyes had done still made her sick to her stomach.
“I’ve always heard that when Chase was injured, Scott became his caretaker. The first time I saw Chase I think I was fifteen years old,” she told Terry. “I hiked up to the murder scene with a friend.”
“Beecher’s Mine cabin?”
“Yeah. It was kind of a thing kids did back then. There was nothing to see there. What didn’t burn down the night of the murders had been bulldozed by the Buckleys.”
“Still, it was a draw?”
“Yeah. While I was there, Chase came roaring up on an ATV. My friend and I hid from him, then watched. He didn’t have a prosthetic leg back then. He was on crutches, drunk, and yelling something I couldn’t understand. Scott came and got him. I didn’t see anger between the brothers; I saw the older taking care of the younger.”
“Seems as if he’ll want to talk to us then, find out who killed his brother.”
“It’s odd that he hasn’t made himself available.” Hanna considered Chase and all that she knew about him. Was it possible he had poisoned his own brother? She hoped not, for Everett’s sake.
When Hanna and Terry arrived at the station, Marcus was there, obviously filming something for his blog. Hanna had to suppress the smile that threatened when the name Marcus the Muckraker came to mind. He’d hated it, and it brought her mother no small joy to have been the one who hung it on him.
He pointed his camera at her as she and Terry walked toward the station. “Chief, can we have a statement on the deadly plane crash of Scott Buckley?”
“Sure, after we get a statement from you.”
“From me? About what?”
“We have witnesses who saw you and Scott arguing. Do you want to be interviewed on your podcast?”
Marcus lowered the camera and sputtered, “W-w-what are you talking about?”
She pointed to the station. “We can talk in there.”
Marcus glanced from her to Terry. “You’re serious?”
“Yes. You were seen arguing with Scott, rather heatedly, a couple of weeks ago. What was the fight about?”
His face reddened. “Who’s your witness?”
“What was the fight about?”
His eyes narrowed and he waved a hand in irritation. “It was a misunderstanding.”
“About what?”
He tossed his head back and huffed. “Personal stuff. Look, he was mad at me. I had no beef with Scott. Your witness can probably testify that Scott was the aggressor.” Shoving one hand in his pocket, Marcus looked Hanna in the eye.
“Everyone thinks Chase was the hothead. But Scott had a temper too.”