Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Pancho glared at the hangar she and the other women had just been thrown out of.
The officials were going to smear Marvel’s good name and blame her for whatever had happened.
It was obvious they were going to say she’d suffered carbon monoxide poisoning and there was no need to look further for a reason for the accident.
Thing was, Marvel had been fully aware that carbon monoxide might be a problem.
She’d told Pancho specifically that she would make sure to stick her face out into the wind and get fresh air frequently.
Marvel was far too experienced and too good a pilot to have failed to do so once she knew carbon monoxide fumes might be a problem in her new plane.
All pilots who flew Travel Airs knew to stick their heads over the side of the cockpit every few minutes.
They all did it as a matter of habit. Marvel had been flying Travel Airs for several years, and the habit would have been completely ingrained in her.
No way had she forgotten to clear her head when she left Yuma.
No. Way.
Pancho was too mad to be around anyone right now without blowing her stack, so she paced by herself away from where the other women milled around, talking quietly among themselves.
A cluster of reporters had gathered over by the open hangar door, where several police officers were keeping them outside.
They were probably trying to get in a little more eavesdropping on the board of inquiry.
She shouldn’t have lost her cool in there and got the women kicked out. Not that it would’ve made a bit of difference in the outcome of the inquiry. The board members had obviously made up their minds already as to what they were going to rule, regardless of what any of the pilots had to say.
“Curse it all to hell and back!” she muttered to herself.
The storm had caught up with them, although there was less sand to blow around here in Texas. The wind howled eerily around the hangar, as if even Mother Nature were offended by the events taking place inside.
Marvel had been too young, too full of life to die. Pancho railed under her breath, “If they’d provided the promised security, none of this would have happened—”
A voice quietly interrupted, “It still might have.”
She spun around furiously to face Pullman.
“Don’t you dare say that! You’re not a pilot.
You don’t know squat about aviation. You and all those so-called officials in there should keep your mouths shut and let the real pilots tell you what happened—” Her voice cracked.
Grief broke over her in a giant crushing wave, and words failed her as her insides became a churning mess of emotions.
Composing insults was beyond her while her heart felt as if it were being shredded into tiny bleeding ribbons.
Pullman looked left and right cautiously, then said quietly, “I saw the accident scene. There was evidence present contrary to carbon monoxide poisoning.”
“Did you tell those clowns in the hangar that?”
“I did.” His voice dropped even lower. “I also asked them why nobody ordered a test on Marvel’s remains to measure the carboxyhemoglobin levels in her blood.”
Pancho frowned. “Would that tell us if she had carbon monoxide poisoning?”
“It would.”
Pancho said eagerly, “I’ll pay to have the test done if you can arrange it.”
He shook his head. “No autopsy was ordered. Her remains have already been released to her brother. Joe is already on his way back to Alaska.”
Pancho swore long and hard at that news. Pullman stood patiently beside her, his demeanor calm and unflapped by her outburst. Eventually she wound down, her anger spent.
“Are we pilots crazy, Agent Pullman? Are we being paranoid and seeing sabotage where there is none?”
“As a law enforcement officer, I shouldn’t answer that without an—”
She cut him off. “As a human being—as Marvel’s friend—what’s your opinion? I swear I won’t hold you to it or tell anyone else what you really think.”
“You ladies are not crazy. Not in the least.”
Relief rolled through her, a soothing balm to her frayed nerves, knowing she and the others were seeing the situation clearly. Even if no one else listened to them or believed them, they were right.
“Who do you think is behind it all?” she asked him.
“I don’t know. But whoever it is, they have chosen their venue well.
Planes are notoriously fickle, and—no offense—women are also seen as being flighty and unreliable.
Nefarious malfunctions can blend in with the normal, expected problems of aviation, with no one the wiser.
” He hesitated, then added, “While I cannot prove it, my hunch is mobsters are involved in some way.”
She opened her mouth, but he cut her off, correctly anticipating her next question.
“Yes, I think Ayers and Aldridge are in cahoots and involved with whoever’s trying to ruin this race. And no, I have no proof of that. I can make no formal charges. It’s just a gut feeling.”
“For what it’s worth, my gut agrees with yours,” she replied.
The reporters over by the main hangar shouted abruptly, “They’ve made a ruling!”
The rest of the journalists ran back toward the hangar, and Pancho and Pullman hurried over to stand with the other women pilots who’d gathered at the hangar door. The sheriff emerged, and the head judge stepped out to stand beside him.
Pancho was already sick to her stomach. The way the official kept his gaze glued to the sheet of paper in his hands told her everything she needed to know.
“It is our collective opinion that the charges of sabotage are not well-founded,” he read.
“We find that Miss Crosson most likely crashed her airplane and perished as a result of carbon monoxide poisoning. Furthermore, we believe that the handling of and security for the aircraft participating in this derby has been inadequate.”
Pullman snorted quietly beside her, and she shot him a loaded glance.
If not for him, there would have been no security at all.
He’d tried to get them more protection, and his boss had turned him down.
Heck yeah, there hadn’t been adequate security.
Same as there hadn’t been an adequate investigation into the cause of Marvel’s crash.
And now there never would be.
That evening, the race organizers towed the women’s planes into the same hangar the inquiry had been held in, locking the doors and posting guards to watch over the planes.
Too little, too late, Pancho thought as she walked toward the hangar. The banquet tonight had been canceled, and the women had eaten a quiet supper early and headed for their beds in the hotel. But she was too upset to sleep.
She hated how defeated she felt. Maybe she could’ve done more. Made a bigger stink. What was the point of having the reputation of a champion stink-raiser if she didn’t do it when it mattered?
If the race officials had taken the women’s complaints seriously sooner, Marvel would still be alive . . . No use thinking like that. Marvel is gone, and nothing will bring her back.
Pancho walked up to one of the guards and asked to go to her plane.
He recognized her and let her in. The cavernous hangar’s interior was filled with violet shadows as the last vestiges of the sunset faded.
The rows of planes were a majestic sight, drawing her toward them.
They stood as a testament to humankind’s determination to keep learning and growing, bettering the human condition, pushing boundaries, and reaching for more—reaching for the skies.
This was where she found her faith. She wasn’t satisfied to live in the world as it was. No, she wanted to transform it. Create new things that had never been seen before. Do things that had never been done. For her, that was what it meant to be created in the image of her Creator.
Flight for humans had been impossible since the dawn of human history. But it was no longer just for birds. And she was one of the first lucky few to leave the ground and look down on earth from the heavens, one of the pioneers advancing the understanding of flight.
So was Marvel. She’d given her life to the great endeavor to break free of the earth. Many men and women had already given their lives to the cause as humans figured out the dangers of flight and overcame them. Pancho supposed more would die in the same endeavor.
In her mind, it was a worthy way to live . . . and to die. What could be more honorable than giving one’s life for a cause greater than oneself?
She heard steps behind her and whirled, fists up, ready to defend the planes if the newcomer was here to harm them.
Phoebe stood there, holding an unlit candle, her gaze silently asking for permission to join her. Pancho nodded, moving over to stand beside Phoebe as she placed the candle holder on the ground and lit the candle. A warm bubble of light grew, driving back the darkness as the wind howled outside.
“What are we going to do, Pancho?” Phoebe asked. “Are we really going to let that ruling be the end of it?”
“We don’t need them to tell us what really happened,” Pancho replied.
“Even if those sour-faced geezers had agreed that Marvel’s plane was sabotaged, it wouldn’t change what we know to be true.
Let ’em be pigheaded and refuse to see what’s right under their noses.
I know what I know, and you know what you know. ”
“That’s right,” Amelia agreed as she joined them. “No one is going to convince me my plane wasn’t sabotaged.”
Pancho was surprised to see Amelia carrying a candle as well. Amelia knelt and touched the wick of her candle to Phoebe’s and set it down beside the first one.
Amelia stood up. “I thought I’d find you out here, Pancho.”
“I couldn’t face going to some hotel room and staring at the walls all night,” she confessed.
“Me neither,” Louise said as she walked out of the darkness. “I need to be close to the planes tonight. To remind me why I fly. Why I’m willing to suffer through the loss of loved ones.”