The Underground Lady Read Free Page A

She just vanished. I have an old newspaper clipping that tells about a search for the airplane. Nothing else."
    "Why now, after all these years?"
    "I have my reasons. Here is a check for five thousand dollars as a retainer. You can bill me at your usual aviation consultant rate. Here is the newspaper clipping." She handed me the check and a yellowed piece of paper. "I want you to find out what happened to that airplane and my mother."
    "You realize the odds are…"
    "I don't care about odds. I want to know what happened."
    "You'll have to give me some time to think about this."
    "Very well. I will be staying with Rose for the next two days. Let me know what you decide, and soon." She brushed B.W. off her lap like a piece of lint, stood, and headed for the door.
    "Would you like for me to drive you back to Rose's house?"
    "I want you to decide whether or not to find my mother." She walked out the door and disappeared into the fog.

 
    Chapter two
     
     
    Picking up the phone, I dialed Rose English's number. "I am not a lonely man."
    "Sunny made it to your cottage. Are you going to help her find out what happened to her mother?"
    "Do not be telling people, especially strangers, that I am lonely. I am not."
    "You've been mopping around them woods like an old bull with his testicles lopped off ever since that woman dumped you and ran off to the northwest with that loan shark. So don't tell me what you are or are not. I know you better than your own mother, who I assume was a wonderful woman except for that one terrible mistake she made forty-four years ago."
    This was Rose English, my neighbor, and for the last ten years, my trusted friend. There are few people in this world that I can truly depend on. She is one of them. The others, I can count on one hand. The second time I saw Rose, she was holding a bloody kitten that had been viciously attacked by a male cat. As she watched life ebb away from the small animal, she said, “I hate the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low and horribly cruel works of nature." Tears rolled down her face, and I knew then that we would be friends.
    Somewhere in her sixties, Rose has lived on her farm all of her life and, I suspect – though I have never asked – that she was born in the house she lives in. Highly intelligent, she is stocky built with no fat on her body. Never married, she claims not to have family in the area, and few friends, though friendly to all. She welcomed me as a neighbor, and I think the common thread that forged our friendship is that we are both loners by nature and prefer to be left alone. She is well read and has a vast and remarkable library in her home, of which I avail myself often. There is a collection of Zane Gray and Louis L'Amour, surpassed only by Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy. She prefers Faulkner to Hemingway, disdains Fitzgerald, and tolerates Steinbeck and Welty. She loves a contemporary writer named Jim Harrison, and thinks John Grisham should be shot at dawn, not because he is an evil man, but because he wasted a God-given talent for the almighty dollar. Who am I to argue with her literary suppositions?
    "So you felt it prudent not to tell me, of all people, that an airplane took off from my farm and may very well have crashed somewhere in my woods?"
    "It wasn't your farm then, and sometimes there are things that are simply none of your business. Besides it was a long time ago. Are you going to help Sunny?"
    "Maybe. The disappearance does intrigue me. I'll do some research today, make up my mind by tonight."
    "Good. Be at my house for dinner at seven o'clock. You can get to know Sunny a little better. It will be good for you."
    "How much do you know about this? Were you friends with her mother?"
    "In due time, Jay. Don't be late for dinner, and if you want some decent wine, I suggest you bring a bottle."
    "It's hard to pair fine wine with fried chicken and turnip greens."
    "There is a boneless leg of lamb marinating that I intend to grill over mesquite. Bring