I climb into the Saab, then check my cell phone. Quinn turned it off while I was inside. Switching it on, I drive toward the gatehouse. As soon as the phone locates a tower, it begins ringing, and also signaling missed calls. The LCD screen reads,
The Minnesotan is probably calling me from three thousand feet above the river, but as I glance back toward Louisiana, I see only a solitary balloon in the sky, scudding southward like a fast-moving cloud.
?Hello??
?Penn! Hans Necker! Is your family all right??
?Ah?yeah. I'm really sorry I had to miss the race. Everything?s fine now.?
?Good! Because we got delayed by wind. A couple of cowboys took off, but they were going the wrong way sixty seconds out. How far are you from the football field behind the prep school south of town??
?St. Stephen?s??
Necker speaks away from the phone, then says, ?Yeah, yeah, Buck Stadium, they call it. Big hole in the ground.?
?Um?five minutes??
?Perfect! Get down here. We?re waiting for you. But don'?t mess around. We?ll be one of the last to launch as it is.?
As I near the gatehouse, I slow the car and look back at the stucco boxes on the bluff. When the Natchez Indians looked at the dwellings of the French interlopers who?d appeared on their land in the early 1700s, they probably asked the same questions I'm asking now:
The gate guard looks puzzled by my apparent reluctance to leave. I?'ve missed something here. Slowly I pan my gaze across the still-green landscape, past the alien mansion, to the rim of the bluff.
In the shade of a scarlet oak, silhouetted against the blue-white sky, sits the white dog that pinned me to my front door while Sands prodded me with his knife. The animal is too far away for me to see its eyes, but he?s not looking out over the river, as I?d first thought. He?s looking at me. He seems a sculpture of alertness, his big head held high, his cropped ears erect.
As I stare, the dog raises his hindquarters until his huge body is aimed at me like a torpedo. Nearly two hundred yards separate us, but that dog could cover the distance in twenty seconds. Emboldened by the car around me, I raise my hand as though in greeting, then, irrationally, give the dog the finger. He instantly lowers his head and begins to trot toward me. After one last look, I drive through the gate.
A hundred yards down the road, a rolled newspaper lies at the foot of an asphalt driveway. I stop my car, get out, and take the rubber band off the paper. The front page carries the usual fluff about the Balloon Festival, but below the fold, I see a small story with the headline DEATH MARS POST RACE CELEBRATIONS. The byline reads
A quick scan of the story reveals a surprising number of facts, or perhaps not so surprising, considering the network of sources, including cops, that Caitlin developed while she lived here. But in the sixth paragraph I discover something I knew nothing about.
?Sources close to the investigation say that over a pound of crystal methamphetamine was discovered at the victim?s residence by officers sent there to inform the widow of her husband?s death. The widow had vanished, and the house was open. As of this writing, she remains missing. Anyone with knowledge of the whereabouts of Julia Stanton Jessup is urged to contact police immediately.?
Caitlin quotes the lead detective: ?With this amount of drugs involved, we?re almost certainly looking at a drug murder. We need to find this woman and her child before anybody else does.?
Consumed by rage, I calmly roll the newspaper back into a tight cylinder and fit the rubber band around it. A pound of crystal meth? I searched Tim?s house myself, and I didn't find any drugs. And I beat the police there. If the two cops who drove up on me ?found? the meth, either they planted it or they found drugs carefully planted by whoever tore up the house before I got there.
?Hey!? shouts a man in a bathrobe, from far up the driveway. ?You work for the
??
?No, sorry,? I call, tossing the paper up the driveway.
?Well, who the hell are you??
?Nobody,? I tell him, getting back into my car.
?Hey, you?re the mayor, aren'?t you?? he shouts.
?I'm supposed to be,? I mutter, leaving a foot of stinking rubber on the pavement as I fishtail onto the road.
CHAPTER
19
Two dozen balloons pass over my car in a stately if hurried procession as I drive from Sands?s house to St. Stephen?s Preparatory School, this morning?s new launch site. As I turn into the school?s driveway?painted with royal blue deer tracks the size of a brontosaur?s footprints?a huge yellow sphere rises swiftly from behind the building and sails over my head breathing fire from its gas jets.
Pulling around the elementary building, I turn onto the access road of Buck Stadium, a massive oval hole in the ground lined with modern bleachers. The stadium makes an ideal launch site, not only because it?s shielded from the wind, but also because its light poles are fed by underground electrical cables, which removes one of the primary risks for balloon flight.
More than a dozen pickup trucks are parked on the football field, but only two deflated balloons lie stretched on the grass like empty tube socks. The Athens Point sheriff?s department helicopter is parked on the fifty-yard line, its rotors slowly turning. Beyond the chopper, several crew members hold open the mouth of a partly inflated balloon while a large fan blasts cool air into it. They?ll continue until the balloon is round enough to light the burners without risk to the canopy. At the far end of the field, behind the goalposts, a single red balloon sways above the field, a half dozen people clinging
to its basket, their weight just sufficient to hold it to the earth. This is the balloon Paul Labry told me to find.
Descending the hill to the floor of the stadium, I drive along the asphalt track that surrounds the gridiron. Labry?s gold Avalon is parked behind a brightly painted trailer, but it?s the car parked next to Paul?s that brings heat to my face. Caitlin?s rented Malibu. Sure enough, I see her black hair and aquiline form silhouetted against the white T-shirt of one of the big-bellied men holding down the basket of the red balloon. She appears to be badgering Labry about something. When Paul catches sight of me, he abandons the basket and starts jogging in my direction. The balloon lifts from the earth, leaving Caitlin no choice but to take Labry?s place. Sighting me, Hans Necker yells and waves from inside the basket. I wave back, then focus on Paul.
?Christ, man, you gotta hurry,? he says. ?Necker?s about to lose it.?
?What?s Caitlin doing here??
?Asking about Tim?s death. She?s worried she got the story wrong, and she also seems to think you?re mixed up in it some way.?
Caitlin leaves the balloon and starts trotting toward us. She?s wearing dark jeans and a light sweater. I wave her off and step closer to Labry. ?I need you to do me a favor, Paul.?
?What??
?I need the names of all the partners in Golden Parachute. I checked the paperwork I have, and I don'?t have the names of the five percenters. The Golden Flower LLC guys. didn't you have copies of most everything??
