Staying Home Is A Killer. Sara Rosett
wants to be on the road.” Mitch tossed the schedule in the recycling bin and sat back down. “No matter how much he’s flown, he always wants on another flight.”
“But doesn’t everyone? You always want to fly. There’s not enough hours to go around, is there?”
“Well, no. We’d all rather be flying. But Willy takes it to an extreme. He never has any conflicts. Most people have some time they don’t want to fly, you know, a kid’s basketball game or family reunions or something. I can’t remember Willy ever blocking out any of his schedule. He even requested a trip during the weekend of that Frost thing. Penny put up flyers around the base, so I asked him if he wanted to be off and he said, ‘No, it’s not a problem. Penny won’t mind.’”
I tossed down my pen. “And all this time Penny thought it was the schedulers who were working him to death, but he was requesting it.” I picked my pen up again and scribbled Will’s name, but anger distorted my handwriting so that I could hardly read it. “How could he do that to Penny?”
“There’s three reasons to go TDY,” he said, referring to the acronym for Temporary Duty. I’d never understood the acronym. Why not just TD? Too easily confused with a touchdown in football? Did some committee tack on the y to baffle spouses and friends of military members? Mitch ticked the reasons off on his fingers, “To travel. You know, ‘join the military, see the world.’ Of course, the only problem with that idea is that military bases are the only part of ‘the world’ we usually get to see. Number two, to party. That’s Willy. For him, a few beers and everything’s a party. And number three, to make money, the per diem. That’s me, by the way, I go for the per diem.”
“You’d better either be in the money category or the travel category,” I said and refocused on the list. “Okay. After the crew passed us, we talked about the exhibit and she mentioned Clarissa Bedford was in her art appreciation class.” I summarized those two items.
I skipped down a few lines and wrote AM meeting at the Mansion. Bedford—10:30? Under that question I listed 11:00—Conversation at the squadron. 12:00—Called Marsali. Around noon—Mabel saw Penny on my porch. 12:34—Called and left a message for me. 1:00—Will finds Penny. A fresh wave of grief washed over me as I read over the list, a picture of the end of a life.
Mitch glanced at the clock. “Wow. Seven already. I’ve got to read. I’m flying tomorrow with Tommy.”
“Oh, Hetty Sullivan!” I tossed the pen down. “I forgot. I’ve got to meet her at Penny and Will’s house at seven-thirty.”
“Who?” Mitch asked. He pulled a three-inch-thick notebook from his pubs case and sat down at the table.
“She’s working on the exhibit and needs to pick up some drawings and photographs from Penny’s house. I said I’d let her in. I’d better run down there and make sure I can find everything. And that reminds me. Victor Roth never returned my call.” I shifted through the papers in the cubbyholes on my small secretary until I found the note with Hetty’s and Victor’s numbers. I dialed Victor’s number as I walked to the closet. He answered and I explained I was following up on Penny’s messages.
“That issue is taken care of,” he said and hung up.
“Well, you’re welcome,” I said as I stabbed the OFF button. “Not even a thank-you!” Victor Roth’s accent sounded a lot less appealing when he snapped at you.
Mitch hadn’t heard me. He hunched over the tiny text titled Engine Ground Operation.
I pulled on my coat and gloves. “Don’t fall asleep!” I called on my way out the door. If I had to read those monotonous pages of technical data, I’d be out in a few seconds.
Mitch looked up, waggled his eyebrows, and said, “Not without you.”
I clutched the collar of my coat together and scurried down the deserted street. With darkness descending around five-thirty, most people hurried home from work and holed up in their warm houses, a mini-hibernation until dawn and work forced them outside to unplug the extension cord transferring heat to their engine block and scrape the ice off their car windows. Besides the weak streetlights, the only light came from gold squares radiating out from the edges of closed curtains. There was no wind tonight, and my steps crunching through snowmelt crystals seemed to echo in the still street.
I turned where I estimated the Follettes’ narrow sidewalk would be and sank into the snow. Will hadn’t shoveled snow for a while. In the darkness on the porch, I fumbled with the keys and tried several times before I got the right one in the lock. I needed to leave the porch light on when I left.
After I clicked on a table lamp, I locked the front door and swished the curtains closed. I stood in the living room, shivering, reluctant to go into the rest of the house. The living room opened to the dining room and kitchen behind it. To the right of the dining room, a tiny hall connected two bedrooms with a bathroom between them. The house was cold and I wondered if Will had turned the thermostat down too low before he left. It was probably in the narrow hall. I took a tentative step.
A wheeze rattled through the house. I jumped as the floor vent jangled and the furnace heaved out a spurt of warm air. I paused to click on the dining room light, then worked my way around the house with floorboards screeching under my feet, turning on the rest of the lights. The bare white walls and stark lighting put an end to my uneasy feeling. In the hall, I cranked the red line on the thermostat from sixty-two degrees up to seventy-five.
I reached into the bath to turn off the light. There was no need to leave it on. I’d flicked it on during my quick circuit of the house when I turned all the lights. Now I stopped. This was where Penny was found.
My wet boots squished on the small one-inch pink tiles that covered the floor and lower two-thirds of the walls. I took in the white muslin curtain at the window and the sink with exposed leg supports. Then I sucked in a gulp of air as I looked past the clear plastic shower curtain into the pink bathtub and saw a dark red, almost brown, color in the tub. I pushed the curtain back. My stomach seemed to clench and roll at the same time. I let out a breath. It was rust. A line of it trailed from the overflow cover down to the drain.
I glanced in the bedroom and then turned the light off in there, too. A mattress and box spring covered with a mustard blanket pushed up against a wall. A pressboard nightstand and dresser crowded the room.
I turned to the second bedroom that Will had described as their study. A computer and portable CD player sat on a pressboard desk combo that dominated most of the room. A sleek swivel office chair with rollers rested on a grid of plastic over a Turkish rug. In contrast to the rest of the house, which had all the charm of a storage unit, the study felt lived in. Stacks of books covered the desk and teetered in a pile beside a soft brown leather chair. A battered floor lamp angled over the shoulder of the chair. I examined the books and magazines. Flight manuals in black binders intermingled with books on archaeology, a catalogue from Harris Museum, a book about hand-woven rugs, and American Archaeology magazines.
A yellow sticky note on the monitor read Call Oscar. Marsali? My gaze swept over the rest of the room. The far wall dominated the room. Three rows of shelves held a variety of dolls dressed in brilliant colors. They were displayed with the same precision that Penny would have used in a museum display. Evenly spaced, a card in front of each doll noted names and either purchase dates or who had given the doll to Penny. Their bright clothes gave the room a cheerful air, but their sparkling, fixed eyes and perfectly arranged shiny hair seemed a little creepy in the empty house.
The doorbell rang and I went to let Hetty inside. She stamped her high-heeled boots on the Astroturf mat and stepped inside. “Hetty Sullivan,” she said as she gave me a firm, quick handshake. She had a long nose and thin lips bright with red lipstick that matched her nail polish.
“Ellie Avery.” I shut the door.
“It’s freezing out there. Thanks for doing this.” She tossed her purse down by the door and ran her fingers through the dark cap of hair threaded with gray and said, “I don’t want to take up any more of your time, so show me where everything is