Honeymoons Can Be Murder: The Sixth Charlie Parker Mystery (The Charlie Parker Mysteries)

  Honeymoons Can Be Murder

  The Sixth Charlie Parker Mystery

  By Connie Shelton

  Copyright © 2001 Connie Shelton

  All rights reserved

  Chapter 1

  “Engine failure!”

  The low-rotor horn’s continuous high-pitched whine screamed in my ears. My eyes automatically jerked toward the console where the rotor tachometer was passing through the bottom of the red arc.

  Immediately, my left hand reached for the collective, pushing down. Right pedal, cyclic back. Another glance at the instruments. Airspeed sixty. Okay. I took a deep breath and slowly let it out. Follow procedure and stay cool.

  My eyes scanned the ground, looking for a landing place. Great. A hell of a spot, rolling hills and pinon trees. There was one road and it was going to be our only chance. I judged the angle and the distance, hoping like hell that my training had sunk in. I forced myself to wait until we were just at 100 feet above the ground, then pulled the cyclic aft, flaring and slowing our rate of descent.

  Gradually, we ceased forward movement and I eased the cyclic forward again to level the JetRanger. We drifted the final twenty feet downward as I raised the collective to cushion the landing and gave it some left pedal. On the ground, I reduced the collective pitch again as my pent-up breath whooshed out.

  “Beautiful autorotation,” Drake grinned.

  “Well, I wanted to get it lined up perfectly with the road,” I said, wiping my sweaty palms on my jeans.

  “Hey, at least you’re on the road.”

  “No thanks to your choice of great locations to shut off my engine,” I teased.

  My husband winked and flashed me the gorgeous smile that had grabbed my heart the first time I met him.. “Just thought I’d give you a challenge. You’ve done bunches of perfect autos at the airport. Gotta find out what it’s like in real life.”

  “And I did okay?”

  “You’re ready for your check ride. Pull pitch and let’s head home.”

  Ten minutes later I set the helicopter down in front of the hangar at Double Eagle Airport on Albuquerque’s west side. We went through a short debriefing as Drake reviewed again what the FAA examiner would be likely to ask me tomorrow.

  By six o’clock we’d safely stowed the blue and white JetRanger, CharlDrake Helicopters, Inc.’s only aircraft, into its hangar slot for the night. With our big red mutt, Rusty, in the backseat of my Jeep we were on our way to Pedros for dinner. Practicing what to do in case of an engine failure had made me ravenous, and I was ready for the biggest plate of chicken enchiladas I could get my hands on.

  “Check in at the office to see how many times Tammy called for help today,” I suggested.

  Drake pulled his tiny new cell phone from his pocket and punched in the speed dial code for the office I share with my brother, Ron, at RJP Investigations. Since my marriage to Drake six weeks ago, we’d been training a new girl at the office. The hope was that she’d take over some of my duties and some of Sally’s, leaving me free to do more flying with Drake, and Sally free to be a mommy to the little girl she was expecting in February. So far, educating the new employee had not been smooth sailing. I’d been spoiled to Sally’s quiet efficiency, and Tammy just wasn’t picking it up quickly. We were down to only ten or twelve crises per day, something I wasn’t sure I could live with long-term. The fact that Drake, Rusty, and I were also temporarily living in my office didn’t help. It merely put me on call at all hours.

  I’d taken several afternoons off recently to work on my piloting skills, hoping that Tammy would learn to cope, if she couldn’t call on me any hour of the day or night.

  “Two messages from Tammy,” Drake relayed.

  I groaned.

  “Then another one saying she solved the first two.”

  At least I could eat my enchiladas with a clear conscience.

  “Oops—another—” Drake reached for paper and pen. He jotted a name and number before ending the call.

  “This one must have come in after Ron and Tammy left,” he said. “A charter job up in Taos.” Along with our living in the RJP offices, all calls for Drake’s helicopter business were being forwarded there too.

  “The guy didn’t give any information really,” Drake said. “I’ll call him when we get home.”

  There was only one other car in Pedro’s parking lot when we arrived and two people just walking out the door headed toward it. Once they’d backed out we let Rusty, our big reddish retriever, out of the car and he went inside with us.

  “How’s everyone tonight?” Concha greeted, as we made our way to our usual corner table.

  From the bar, Pedro held up two fingers and I nodded. He began to salt the rims of two margarita glasses.

  Rusty took his customary place in the dark corner behind our table, eying the basket of tortilla chips Concha set before us. I flipped a chip his direction before scooping one into the bowl of hot salsa for myself. He’s probably the only dog in Albuquerque who has regular restaurant privileges but I have the feeling he’s unaware that Pedro breaks the health code regs only for him.

  Drake and I rehashed the just-completed flight, as pilots always do, sipping at our tangy margaritas until Concha appeared with steaming plates of enchiladas. After that it got quiet as we both attacked the delicious heaps of chicken, cheese, tortilla and green chile with vigor.

  Another couple came in while we were eating, followed by Manny, another of Pedro’s regulars. The couple gave Rusty a surprised look when we started to leave.

  A wintry chill gusted through the ancient bare tree branches around the Old Town plaza. We drove up Central Avenue about a mile and turned into the quiet neighborhood of older homes where the RJP Investigations office is. The area is still about half residential, half commercial, and has been this way for years. Several windows glowed with warm yellow light in our temporary home, the gray and white Victorian where Ron and I run his private investigation business. Luckily, downstairs showed only the night lights, indicating that Tammy had gone home. I was eager to spend the evening reviewing questions for my checkride, then get a good night’s sleep.

  We parked behind the old house and Rusty raced to beat us to the back door, then promptly zoomed in to make his customary check of the perimeter before he could settle down for the night. Drake started a pot of coffee and I scanned my desk, which had been moved to our former conference room when we started living in my office, checking to be sure Tammy hadn’t merely dumped her emergencies there for me to fix. While I flipped through the new mail, I heard Drake’s voice returning the phone call from the customer in Taos.

  “How would you like to finally have a honeymoon?” he asked fifteen minutes later when he pulled me into his arms in our upstairs bedroom. “A nice romantic getaway in the mountains, where we could have an old-fashioned Christmas, go skiing if we pleased, build cozy fires in our own private rock fireplace in our own private mountain cabin . . .”

  I scanned his handsome face and ran my index finger over the touch of gray that trimmed his dark hair at the temples.

  “And?” I asked. “Why do I get the feeling there’s more?”

  “And, I’d operate heli-skiing tours at the Taos Ski Valley.”

  “Isn’t that dangerous, flying into those remote areas?” My eyes narrowed.

  “Sweetheart, everything’s dangerous to some degree. But you know me—I’m not taking any extraordinary chances in a helicopter.”

  He had a point. Drake is one of
the most cautious pilots I’ve ever seen and it wouldn’t be like him to take any unnecessary risk.

  “And somehow, spending Christmas here in your old office doesn’t quite have the same appeal, now does it?”

  Another good point. And we’d never gone on a honeymoon after our hasty marriage in October.

  “But what about the remodeling at home? I really need to be available for the contractor.”

  “True. But Taos is only a couple of hours away, and the ski area doesn’t really want to start the heli-skiing program until the week before Christmas anyway. You know good and well that no contractor is going to be working full-tilt around the holidays, hon. So it wouldn’t harm anything for you to be gone for a couple of weeks. Then, after the first, you can always drive back down here once a week or whenever you need to.”

  I thought of spending Christmas in our presently crowded living conditions, the stacks of year-end paperwork that would soon arrive, and the chaos of working with Tammy. The idea of spending the winter in Taos gained immediate appeal. But if I’d had a crystal ball to the future I might have decided to opt for the cozy warmth of my office.

  Chapter 2

  “Charlie, this is Eloy Romero,” Drake said, introducing his slim, dark-haired companion. Eloy’s face was deeply tanned with squint wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. He wore a one-piece red ski suit with black and white accents and a matching knit cap. “He’s gonna take us up to his cabin and show us around.”

  “Good to meet you, Charlie,” Eloy said. “I hear you’re New Mexico’s newest commercial helicopter pilot.”

  I blushed, but was secretly tempted to flash the new license in my wallet.

  “You got four-wheel drive, right?” Eloy asked.

  I nodded.

  “Good, you’ll need it to get in and out of this place.”

  “I can’t believe how much snow you’ve got here,” I said. “And I can already see that I’m going to have to find a store that sells boots.”

  He chuckled, a pleasant sound that lit up his good-looking tan face. “Yep, you city folks are never quite ready for the mountains, are you?” he said, looking at my ankle-high hikers. “And if you don’t have a really warm parka, you’ll want to look for one of those too.”

  “This is the guy who’s just back from the tropics.” I nodded toward Drake. “He may need to be completely outfitted.” Drake had only moved to New Mexico from Hawaii a couple of months ago.

  Eloy gave me the name of an outdoor clothing shop in town that could supply us.

  “Well, I guess we’re ready to settle into the cabin,” Drake said. “The ship’s already parked so she’s safe for the night.” We were using a large metal maintenance building, owned by the ski area, as a temporary hangar for our aircraft during the next few months. It was located on the only road leading to the ski lifts, and Eloy had made a large sign announcing our services, which he’d mounted on posts facing the well-traveled road.

  Drake had flown up to the ski valley, while I drove my Jeep with Rusty, our warmest clothing, and several bags of groceries inside. His trip had taken a little over an hour, while mine had taken nearly three.

  We climbed back into the Jeep and pulled out of the parking area, following Eloy’s dented white pickup truck.

  The road leading into the Taos Ski Valley is a winding paved two-lane, passing through a forest that begins, north of the town of Taos, in piñon and sagebrush that are soon replaced by tall ponderosa pines at the bottom of a deep canyon flanked by steep rocky walls. The snow in town had been minimal—two or three inches—but as Rusty and I ascended into the Valley, the plowed snow walls beside the road had steadily grown until they reached almost to the height of my side windows. Now, as we followed Eloy, we took a well-plowed dirt road even farther into the hills.

  We traveled about three miles, while the road became narrower although still plowed, past occasional driveways, most of which were gated and uncleared. The sky was low and white, heavy with the promise of more snow and the temperature had dropped to the low 30s. I shifted into four-wheel drive to get the speed I needed to keep up with Eloy’s hard-to-see white truck.

  He turned eventually into a much narrower lane, one with an open metal gate and a freshly cleared path. The terrain rose steadily as he climbed over uneven places that would no doubt be fairly huge potholes after a thaw. I followed as closely in his tracks as I could.

  Around the second curve in the lane we came to a clearing that served as a parking area for a log cabin. Built of smooth-peeled pine logs, the house was two stories tall, about two rooms wide, a charming little box whose squareness was broken by a covered porch the width of the cabin’s front and wrapping around the west side. Wooden boxes below the second story windows would contain flowers in summer—now they sat heaped with over a foot of snow. On the east side of the cabin an old International Scout sat parked, facing outward, with a snowplow attached to its front. We followed Eloy, parking beside his truck in front of the small house.

  As soon as Drake opened his door, Rusty leaped out of the Jeep and bounded through the snow pile bordering the driveway, where he sank up to his back. He pushed off with his back legs and cleared the berm, landing in snow that was a couple of feet deep.

  “Well,” Drake chuckled, “he’s certainly having a good time already.”

  “Don’t worry,” Eloy assured us. “He can’t get too far. The property is fenced, but I doubt he’ll travel the whole ten acres in this much snow.”

  “Not as long as he knows we have the food here,” I told him.

  “Let me show you around,” Eloy said.

  He pulled a small key ring from his pocket. “Here’s the key to the front door.” He held one up. “And this little one is the padlock on the pumphouse. You’ve got your own well back there,” he said indicating a small wooden structure behind the house. And this one is for the Scout. The county plows the road, but you’ve gotta do your own driveway.”

  I looked at him skeptically.

  “It’s not hard,” he assured me. “I’ll give you guys a quick lesson. It’s actually kinda fun.

  “Meanwhile,” he continued, “I turned the heat on early this morning. The propane tank is full, the water system has been checked out and serviced, so I think everything’s ready for you.”

  We grabbed a couple of bags from the car and followed him to the front door. Rusty busied himself trying to unearth mysterious scents in the snow.

  Inside, the cabin was indeed toasty warm. The front door opened into a shallow ski porch, with a bench along one wall and wooden pegs for hanging skis and coats along the opposite wall. A second door brought us into the main living area, with kitchen and dining to our left, the entire first floor being one greatroom. Stairs along the west wall to our right led up to a balcony, two bedrooms and a bath, Eloy explained.

  I carried our grocery bags to the kitchen, a cozy nook with butcher block countertops, a modern gas range, and refrigerator.

  “This freezer isn’t very big,” Eloy said, “but there’s a small service porch through the back door. If you need to keep anything frozen, just put it out there. Extra firewood is also out there.”

  Drake spent a few minutes checking out the fireplace, the propane heating system, and the instructions for the well, while I carried our duffles up to the larger of the two bedrooms and put the food away in the kitchen. I was pleased to see that the kitchen was fully stocked with utensils and a set of dishes with delicate mountain wildflowers on them. When Eloy drove away a bit later, I snaked my arms around Drake’s neck and kissed him, long and lingering.

  “This is a wonderful place for a honeymoon,” I murmured.

  “Why don’t I put a match to those logs in the fireplace, you slip out of a few layers of those heavy winter clothes, and let’s find that bottle of wine,” he suggested.

  “Mmmm . . .” I headed upstairs to look for the pair of burgundy nothing-left-to-the-imagination leggings and lacy tunic sweater I’d brought with me. “The wine
is out on the back service porch. I thought it might chill faster out there.”

  By the time I came back downstairs, a nice fire was blazing in the fireplace and Drake was lounging in one corner of the blue and green tartan sofa with two glasses of wine on the small coffee table. I snuggled into the curve of his arm and our eyes met in our own silent toast to each other.

  An hour later, I peeked out from under the thick comforter we’d pulled down to cover ourselves on the lush faux-fur rug before the fire to discover that it was now pitch dark outside and our roaring fire had subsided to glowing coals. One more lingering snuggle under the blanket, then we decided to stoke up the fire and find something to eat. At the kitchen window I glanced out to see thick silver-dollar snowflakes falling.

  By daylight the next morning, I could see that the cabin could use a good dusting. It obviously hadn’t been occupied for months. Plus, I wanted to get my computer system set up soon, as it was still one of my duties to do Ron’s client billing and stay in touch with his office.

  Drake was already on his way back to the hangar to check on his helicopter and work out the logistics for the heli-skiing operation. We’d awakened to three inches of new snow, and he cautioned me that if there was more than about another six inches accumulation through the day, I should go out and plow the drive so he could get back. I watched the sky with some trepidation, but the clouds appeared to be moving out.

  After a second cup of coffee I set out to make myself a work space. I found a folding table stashed in one of the closets and set it up in the corner and put my storage box of file folders under it, my notebook computer and small printer on top. A relatively comfortable chair came from the kitchen table, although it was nowhere near as good as my ergonomic beauty at the office. Well, I didn’t intend to be spending hours sitting at my new temporary desk, either. I was here to have some fun.

  I tested the phone by calling the Albuquerque office to be sure everything was still all right. Sally, still working partial days to train her replacement, sounded a bit stressed but didn’t go into detail. I assumed Tammy was sitting at her side. Sally put Ron on the line and I told him which clients I had billing records for. We spent a few minutes discussing office business and I told him I’d send an e-mail in the next few minutes to make sure all systems were go. Ah, modern technology.