The Underground Lady Read Free

sweater and designer jeans with a pair of tennis shoes that probably cost as much as my first car. She worried her fingernails as if they were some hard inflexible part of her psyche that people could cut into and she would not feel pain.
    "Miss or Mrs.?"
    "Miss."
    "Ever been?"
    "No, you?"
    "No."
    She looked into my eyes and I had an uneasy feeling that she knew things about me, things so deep inside that even I had not figured them out, and every time I blinked she knew more.
    "How did you get here?"
    "I walked from Rose's house."
    "That's over two miles."
"It's beautiful country, even in the cold and fog. The hills and valleys remind me of scenes from the Deer Hunter, the one with Robert DeNiro. I would have loved to live in this country before it was invented."
    "I'm not much into movies."
    "Too bad."
    B.W. watched me and flicked the tip of his tail every so often as a display of implied irritation. He and the woman wore identical expressions, and one could almost believe that they were related by blood. Out the window behind where the woman sat two crows as big and sleek as black cats were strutting and cawing under the bird feeder attached to the post oak.
    "Well, Miss Sunny Pfeiffer, what is it that you and Rose English think I can do for you?"
    "I want you to help me find my mother."
    "Then there has been a huge mistake. I'm an aviation consultant, not a private investigator. I don't do people searches."
    "I know what you are, Mr. Leicester. I have researched your background thoroughly. When you hear me out, I think you will be more than willing to help."
    She was an intelligent lady. I could imagine men being afflicted by her very presence; not by what she said, but what she seemed to be thinking behind her smile. Then there was the way she spoke, slowly pronouncing each syllable, her green eyes fixed on yours, as if she fathomed all your secrets.
    "I'm listening."
    "You know, Mr. Leicester. You remind me of a man I knew in Alaska who hunted grizzly bear with a spear."
    "Yeah. What happened to him? He get eaten by a bear?"
    "No, he just got to looking like he'd seen too many of 'em."
    "Tell me why I would help you look for your mother."
    "This land where you have built this lovely little cabin once belonged to my mother, along with eight hundred acres of land. I inherited it after she disappeared."
    "I only have two hundred acres, and there was no Pfeiffer on the deed."
    "No, I divested myself of the farm many years ago. I was only six years old when my mother went missing. My grandparents lived in Arkansas. I was spending the summer with them when it happened."
    "You want me to help you find someone who's been missing over what – twenty something years?"
    "Twenty-five to be exact."
    "Look, even if I…"
    "You know that level piece of land along that fence row just to the south of this cabin?"
    "What about it?"
    "Did you know it was used as a landing strip for my mother's airplane?"
    "I did not."
"My mother took off from that grass runway one morning twenty-five years ago and was never heard from again. She and her little Piper Cub vanished into thin air as if they never existed."
    At least now she had my attention. I had never heard this story. Rose never mentioned any of this, even though she knew all about my business. We will have to have a talk, Rose and I. It has always amazed me how time makes people forget history. My great grandparents owned a ten thousand-acre plantation with a three-story mansion in south Mississippi near the town of Osyka. They died; the land was divided between ten children. Eventually the house burned, the kids sold off the land, and they themselves died. When I drive by that location today it is as if nothing was ever there. The place is fenced for cattle grazing and the only thing left to say that the land belonged to my family is the mineral rights to five hundred acres that I own. Though virtually worthless, I vowed never to sell them.
    "No crash site? No body recovered?"
    "Nothing.