I asked, “Where did you receive them?”
“At my hotel, in California. Before we left for Honolulu, and the Pacific flight.”
“Did you go to the cops in L.A.?”
“No. I’ve had other crank mail, before. I think G. P.’s upset primarily because these are so…nasty…with the cut-out words and all, which make it…creepy.”
“Did the notes come in the mail?”
“Yes.” She pushed her pudding cup aside, half-eaten. Maybe this was bothering her, after all.
“Then you might be able to take this to the FBI or the postal inspectors.”
“Please understand,” Putnam said, his pudding finished long ago, “there’s a history of sabotage, where female fliers are concerned. During the first Women’s Air Derby, Thea Rasche got a note with cut-out words like the ones A. E.’s been receiving and got grounded with sand in her fuel tank…the rudder cables of Claire Fahy’s plane were weakened by acid, and Bobbi Trout was forced down with sand, or maybe dirt, poured in her fuel.”
Amelia made a face. “Jiminy crickets, Simpkin, that was 1929.”
“I would prefer to be safe than sorry,” he said crisply. Then he formed a businesslike smile and those unblinking eyes fixed upon me. “Nate, Amelia’s about to embark on a brief lecture tour…ten days, twelve appearances…on her way to California, where she’ll prepare for our next long-distance flight.”
“Going after another record?” I asked her. “So soon?”
But Amelia, who had brightened at her husband’s last words, ignored me and leaned toward Putnam, her voice breathless as she asked, “Then we’re on for Mexico City?”
He smiled and patted her hand. “We’re on.”
She was almost bouncing in her chair, an eager child. “Simpkin, how on earth did you manage it?”
He sipped his coffee and then, too casually, said, “Merely persuaded the President of Mexico, our new friend Lazaro Cardenas, to have the words ‘Amelia Earhart Good Will Flight’…in Spanish, of course…printed on a limited- edition Mexican twenty-cent airmail stamp. Of the less than eight hundred they’re printing, we get three hundred first-day covers to have you autograph and sell to collectors.”
“Well, naturally, I’m pleased….”
A mild frown creased his forehead. “What’s wrong, dear?”
Her childish glee was gone. “It just seems a little…undignified.”
“Flying around setting records is terribly expensive,” he said, and this was obviously not the first time he’d said this, or something close to it, “and we have to accept legitimate returns where we can get them.”
She nodded. Sipped her cocoa. Asked, “And…selling these stamps…this will cover our expenses?”
“It’s a start,” he said. He turned to me. “Nate, I can’t accompany A. E. on this lecture tour, nor can I join her, immediately thereafter, in California. I have preflight preparations to make, service and fuel to arrange, magazines and newspapers to contact, and several other sponsors I need to finalize before the flight…. I would like you to accompany A. E. on this lecture tour, and provide personal security for her, at the Burbank airfield, as she prepares for the Mexico City flight. Are you willing to do that?”
Amelia was staring straight ahead, sipping her cocoa.
I hadn’t anticipated a job of this scope. “Well, uh…when would we leave?”
“The day after tomorrow.”
I shrugged. “I would have to make some arrangements to cover my regular clients with other agencies…”
Now he shrugged, in a matter-of-fact, take-it-or-leave-it manner. “Twenty-five dollars a day and expenses. I’ll write you out a retainer check for five hundred dollars before the evening’s through.” He pushed away from the table and rose. “Give it some consideration…. Excuse me, for a moment. They’re holding something for me at the desk that I’d like to show you.” He was speaking to his wife and had a pixie smile going below the professorial glasses. “I think you’ll be very pleased.”
And he walked briskly from the dining room out into the lobby.
I sipped my coffee, then looked her way and asked, “Are you comfortable with this arrangement, ma’am?”
She laughed inaudibly. “Why don’t you stop calling me ‘ma’am,’ and I’ll stop calling you ‘Mr. Heller.’ If that’s all right with you…Nate?”
“It’s jake with me, Amelia. Do you really think you need a bodyguard?”
She frowned a little. “It’s difficult to say. It’s true there’s a lot of jealousy among the women in aviation.”
“Gets a little catty, does it?”
Her eyes flared at that. “Actually, there’s a great deal of camaraderie…. Have you heard of the Ninety Nines? That’s an organization of women pilots, and I’m a past president.”
“Presidents get assassinated, now and then.”
“Well…truth be told, there’s a lot of petty malarkey because of the attention I get. Or, I should say, the attention G. P. gets me.”
“You have mixed emotions about that, don’t you?”
“I do. But G. P.’s right—going for flying records is costly.”
“You did say you had an expensive obsession…. Listen, if I take this job, we won’t be…flying from one town to another, or anything, will we?”
