The mechanic was wiping some grease off his right palm onto his coveralls. “Something nasty…. You gotta see this….”
I tagged along as Mantz followed Tisor to the Vega, where a small metal ladder up to the cockpit was in place. The other two mechanics, Jim and Tod, were standing around wearing spotless coveralls and dazed expressions.
“Take a look down by the rudder pedals,” Tisor was saying, gesturing to the ladder, which Mantz quickly scaled.
Mantz wasn’t up in the Vega cockpit long before his head popped out and his face was as white as powdered sugar, only his expression was anything but sweet.
“Who’s been around here?” he asked Tisor.
“Nobody,” Tisor said, shrugging. “I unlocked the place just a little before one…. Tod and Jim were waiting outside when I got here.”
Mantz was clambering down the ladder. “Nobody’s been around the Vega?”
“Not that I saw. Boys?”
The other two mechanics shook their heads, no.
“Shit,” Mantz said.
Tisor asked, “What do you make of it, Paul?”
“Drop or two of acid, maybe.” He placed a hand on Tisor’s shoulder. “God bless you, Ernie, for catching it. Can you repair those cables?”
“That shouldn’t be any big problem.”
“Fine. Get that done, then go over every rivet and nut and bolt on this baby. I want this patient to get a complete stem-to-stern physical, boys—look down her throat, and up her ass, understood?”
The three mechanics nodded, and quickly got to work.
Mantz turned to walk back to his office and I fell in step with him. “What’s going on, Paul?”
“Here’s Amelia and G. P.,” Mantz said, nodding to where Amy and her husband had just entered at the front of the hangar. “I’ll fill everybody in at the same time.”
They were walking toward us, Amy smiling, sporty in a plaid shirt and chinos, Putnam wearing his perpetual frown and an impeccably tailored blue twill suit.
Soon we were all seated in Mantz’s office with Mantz standing behind his desk. “I’m going to recommend we postpone,” he said, leaning his hands on the maps and charts before him.
“Why in hell would we do that?” Putnam demanded, seated but almost climbing out of his chair.
Next to him, between us, was Amy, who said quietly, “What’s happened?”
Mantz grimaced. “Your rudder cables—somebody left you a present, angel…a few well-placed drops of acid. The wires are almost eaten through.”
“What in God’s name…?” Putnam exploded.
“Acid?” Amy asked, as if she wasn’t sure of the meaning of the word.
“Probably nitric or sulfuric,” Mantz said. “You’d have flown a while, maybe a few hours, then they’d have given way…snapped like twigs.”
“Sending my plane out of control,” Amy said, hollowly.
Putnam thrust an accusatory finger in my direction. “This is just the kind of sabotage you were hired to prevent!”
“I wasn’t hired to sleep overnight in Paul’s hangar,” I said. “There’s nighttime security here at the airport, right, Paul?”
It was a question I knew the answer to, that having been one of the first things I asked Mantz about.
“Certainly,” Mantz said, “a full detail of highly competent night watchmen…but of course the airport is open well into the wee hours…and if someone who had a key to my hangar…”
“Like your wife Myrtle,” I said.
“Yes!” Putnam yelled. “We all saw her yesterday, yelling and screaming, and out of control!”
Mantz sighed and nodded. “Yeah. I’m afraid this may be Myrtle’s doing. She’d love to get back at me…and you, too, angel.”
I asked, “Is this something Myrtle would know how to do? I mean, I wouldn’t know a rubber cable from a bagpipe.”
“Myrtle was a student pilot of mine,” Mantz said. “She knows how to fly. She knows planes.”
I frowned. “You told me she hated flying.”
“She doesn’t like to fly unless she or I are at the controls…at least, that’s how it used to be. Kind of doubt I’m her favorite co-pilot, these days.”
“Paul,” Putnam said, suddenly calm and reasonable, “you may not be aware of this, but one of the main reasons Mr. Heller was hired was because Amelia had received threatening notes in the mail. They were postmarked California.”
Putnam had never mentioned the California postmarks before. Of course, I’d never actually seen any of the notes.
