Emily Locke 01 - Final Approach

asked me to develop doubles and send her a copy.
    I called Richard on my cell and we made plans for the film hand-off. I drove north to a Super Wal-Mart he described and dropped the camera at its one-hour photo counter, using Richard’s name and number on the deposit envelope. He’d pick up the photos and take them to Karen.
    I returned to the DZ and set up camp. For the next several hours, I loafed at bonfires and nursed beers. I listened to campers schmooze and bullshit, and worked on telling the regulars apart from the visitors.
    Shortly after nine, my cell phone rang.
    “She recognizes one of the women,” Richard said. “She knows the face, but not the name.”
    I couldn’t believe something had come of my first roll of film. Even more surprising, I realized, was that it implicated a woman.
    “What now?”
    “Meet me at the Wal-Mart,” he said. “You have to tell me who she is.”

Chapter Twelve
    Wal-Mart. One place I did not foresee a sleuthing rendezvous, but there I was.
    At ten o’clock on a Thursday night, the parking lot was as busy as noon on Saturday. A mammoth SUV hogged the center of a lane, laying claim to a spot when another was vacant three spaces behind it.
    I made my way inside, where I was greeted by a middle-aged man in a blue vest and dopey octopus hat. A small McDonald’s occupied a front corner of the store, and when I walked inside, Richard was leaning against the restaurant’s wall waiting for me.
    “Let’s sit.” He steered me toward a table. The photo envelope was in his hand.
    “Hi, Richard. Good to see you too.”
    He shot me a look of flat irritation as I slid into my side of a booth.
    He removed the photos from their envelope. The picture on top of the stack included the group I’d jumped with right after my dive with Vince. Scud and Marie had jumped into the shot for fun, but I didn’t remember the names of the others. I reached for my handbag. My logbook was there, and I’d written down all the names earlier. I flipped to the entry, ready to match forgotten names with faces, when Richard surprised me.
    “This one, right here,” he said, tapping the glossy print. “Karen recognizes this woman. Who is she?”
    I frowned. The name wasn’t in my book, and I’d never even thought to ask it. In the background of the shot, between Scud and Marie’s heads, a woman was walking across the landing field. Richard must have read my confusion.
    “What is it?” He leaned in close, hungry for information I didn’t have.
    “I don’t know her name,” I said, shaking my head. “She was our pilot.”
    An obese woman in a muumuu and flip-flops lumbered past us with a loaded tray, and two chunky school-agers followed several paces behind her. Richard slumped backward into the hard plastic booth. At first I thought he was reeling from disappointment. Then he bit his lower lip and started nodding.
    “That actually makes sense,” he said, mostly to himself. “Here’s the thing. Eric worked for a local petrochemical plant. Sometimes the job took him away from home for extended periods.”
    I kept my mouth shut and let him go on.
    “Karen was a stay-at-home mom, so sometimes she and Casey traveled with him.” He did his salesman nod. I nodded back to show I was following.
    “They traveled on the company jet.” He looked hard at me. “Who flies the company jet?”
    How the hell should I know? I wondered. And then, mercifully, the light came on. I grabbed the photo off the table and pointed to the woman in question.
    “
She
does?” I said. “She flies for Eric’s company?”
    “Karen recognized this woman from the airstrip Eric’s company uses.”
    I digested that.
    “If this woman flew the Lyons family around, she’d know about Casey,” I said.
    Richard pulled a pen from his shirt pocket and grabbed a napkin from the tabletop dispenser. He scribbled a note.
    “Easy enough for her to get their address,” he said.
    One of the kids with Muumuu Woman shuffled past us on untied sneakers to get a few paper cups full of ketchup.
    I lowered my voice. “What would she want with their child? Nobody asked for ransom money.”
    He clicked his pen shut and shook his head.
    “Oh my God!” I whispered. “Do you think this woman had something to do with Eric’s murder?”
    Richard shrugged. Questions were coming too fast for both of us.
    He rubbed the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes, concentrating.
    A moment later, they snapped open. “I need her name. Some