Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
“Mr. Barnes, are you completely clear on what this court order would mean for your wife?”
Rankin Barnes nodded. “Yes, Your Honor, I am.”
The courthouse was mostly deserted, and Rankin was grateful for the privacy due to the absence of any other cases waiting to be heard.
The judge reread the petition on his desk. His gaze lifted to Rankin once more.
Willard Templeton spoke up. “Your Honor, everything is in order, I assure you.”
“I cannot agree with you, Mr. Templeton.” The judge shot Willard a stern look.
“Since you have provided no history of previous mental illness to support this order, I will not be signing this petition. Unless, of course, Mr. Barnes can convince me of the immediate necessity of having his wife admitted to a sanatorium for treatment. I require a concrete rationale, gentlemen.”
Rankin opened his briefcase and held up a newspaper.
“What about this?” He read the headline: “‘Aviator Killed in Fiery Crash at Air Derby.’” He lifted another newspaper out of his briefcase.
“Or this one: ‘Rumors of Sabotage Surface in San Bernardino. Pilots Race to Planes in Early Morning Hours.’”
The judge leaned forward, his eyes narrowing.
Rankin continued, “This race Florence is flying in has barely begun, and already pilots are in danger of dying. I have to stop her before my son loses his mother.”
“It’s my understanding your wife has been flying airplanes for some time. Why have you suddenly decided to take issue with her behavior?”
“This race is different,” Rankin explained.
“They’re pitting themselves against one another at the sacrifice of any notion of safety.
When she flew in the past, Florence took precautions.
But this race is beyond reckless! I see it as proof positive that her mental facilities are degrading.
I’m obligated, as her husband, to intervene before she becomes a headline.
Every hour she remains in this derby might be her last.”
Willard added, “The race organizers are preying on these women’s weaker thinking abilities, encouraging them to risk their lives. Mrs. Barnes has been swept up in the whirlwind of it all. As a dutiful husband, Mr. Barnes seeks only to protect his wife from opportunistic men like Cliff Henderson.”
The judge pursed his lips and contemplated the paper on his desk. “I agree this Women’s Air Derby is a dangerous publicity stunt,” the judge said slowly, choosing his words carefully, “and that Mrs. Barnes’s life is at significant risk.”
Rankin held his breath.
“Motion granted.” The judge signed the petition and handed it to the bailiff, who handed it to Rankin. He looked down at it in satisfaction.
“I will get things in motion, Mr. Barnes,” Willard promised.
Willard stood, watching Rankin depart. Once the man was gone, the lawyer allowed his pleasure to show on his face.
Pancho Barnes’s fortune was about to be diverted, flowing into his hands.
With careful management, he would ensure that she never left the sanatorium.
Ensuring him a steady income from her estate.
THE SKIES OVER SOUTHERN ARIZONA
Marvel looked down at the featureless desert below.
Not a landmark to be seen anywhere from here to the horizon.
This was one of the riskiest legs of the whole trip to navigate.
After the flyover at Calexico, she’d turned to the heading that showed on her floating compass, praying that she’d chosen the exact right one, slightly north of due east, and attempted to hold it precisely for the entire sixty miles of the flight.
But it was hard to be precise with all the turbulence caused by heat rising from the desert.
If she was off by even a little, she would overshoot Yuma and fly out into the desert, or worse, aim too far to the south and end up in Mexico. The race’s route skimmed right along the border for a good chunk of the trip. A mistake of a few degrees could send her into the wrong country.
There would be no denying the pilots’ skill if they all managed to navigate almost three thousand miles across the country simply using road maps and looking down at the ground.
Marvel had no doubt that her plane was the fastest one in the race. As long as she navigated the race without any big mistakes, the trophy and prize money were hers for the taking. But first, you have some flying to do before getting your hands on that trophy, missy.
She studied her map again, looking for a way to shave a few minutes off her time to Yuma. After the flyover at Calexico, where all the planes had lined up behind one another to buzz the airfield, she’d lost visual contact with her fellow competitors.
Either she’d pulled ahead of them . . . or else she was headed in the wrong direction.
Below her was nothing but sand and rocky outcroppings.
The wind swirled, picked up clouds of dust, and blew them around, making it impossible to pick out any land formations that would tell her she was getting closer to Yuma.
She had only her compass and watch to rely on.
And her watch said she was about ten minutes out from the next airport.
Truthfully, flying over sand wasn’t so different from flying over snow in Alaska.
It hid landmarks and blended into a featureless landscape, hopelessly turning around many a pilot.
She was squinting at the sand, determined to spot one of the particularly large rock formations marked on her map, when her engine coughed.
She jerked her attention back to the cockpit.
Her engine temperature was fine. Oil pressure was normal.
There was another sputter and then a bang. Easy, baby.
She throttled back slightly. The engine seemed to have finished clearing its throat and was running normally again. Gently, she eased the throttle back up to full power, angling her head to one side to listen intently to it. Yup, purring away.
She looked over the edge of the aircraft, startled to see a trail of dust just ahead. It looked like an almost identical dust cloud to the one that had enveloped San Bernardino yesterday.
When had she gotten so close to Yuma?
Or so low?
Marvel blinked and tried to figure out where her timing had gone off. She’d passed over Calexico at seventeen past the hour. It was now . . . She squinted at her watch, struggling to make out exactly where the minute hand was pointing.
Ah well, no matter. She was at Yuma now. Time to land. She glanced outside as the airport approached and was alarmed to see how low she was, no more than two hundred feet or so above the ground. But then, it wasn’t as if the desert had given her any good references for how high or low she was.
A pounding headache throbbed in her skull, making it hard for her to think clearly. She was drifting south of the runway centerline. She licked her lips and lifted her chin to check the wind direction. Her mouth dried instantly as soon as she turned her face northwest. A strong crosswind then.
She started to power back to land but then stopped abruptly as she recalled she was supposed to fly over the main airport office from west to east first to be officially timed.
Dropping the right wing, she cut across the Yuma Airport.
The landing strip was a huge, 160-acre square that allowed pilots to approach from any direction so they could face directly into the wind when they landed.
Even better, the crowds had finally been properly controlled, and the entire landing square was free of spectators.
It was completely ringed by yet another huge crowd, but they were a safe distance from the runway for once.
Looking over the side of her plane to line herself up with the airport office before it went out of sight under her nose, she spied a new trail of dust being kicked up by another plane’s landing.
She scanned the airfield to make sure the plane was out of her way and was startled to see the tail of the aircraft sticking straight up in the air.
Whoever the pilot was, she’d botched the landing and nosed over onto her propeller.
Marvel winced and said a quick prayer that the pilot and plane were unharmed.
She turned after making the timing pass to head back around the traffic pattern and come in for a landing headed back to the northwest. As she rolled out of the turn beyond the edge of the landing field, she saw people swarming out around the nosed-over plane.
The plane was light enough that a dozen folks could easily tip it back onto its wheels if it was intact.
Even if the plane wasn’t out of the way by the time she was ready to land, the large square field meant she could comfortably land alongside whoever had busted her beak.
She lined up with the wind sock standing straight out from its pole beside the field . . . and barely blinked before she’d touched down, the bounce of the plane hitting the ground rousing her.
When had she powered back and descended?
She must’ve flared because it was a decent landing.
Weird. She must be more exhausted than she’d realized.
Her tail started to rise off the ground, and she realized with a start that she hadn’t pulled the throttle all the way back to idle.
“Down, down!” she yelled at her plane, yanking the throttle all the way back.
The Yuma landing square was composed of soft, powdery clay that had been plowed very recently.
It was way too deep for airplanes to land on, which explained why the plane in front of her had ended up on its nose.
Her own wheels started to sink into the dirt, too, and she felt her tail start to lift off the ground as the front tires bogged down.