Home Fires (A Butterscotch Jones Mystery Book 4) Read online

  “Wings, this is my father, Horace Goodhead.”

  “Say, that’s your name too, isn’t it, Chuck?”

  “I’m the senior Horace Goodhead. My son is the junior, though he refuses to acknowledge the fact through his name. He prefers to go by the catchy moniker Chuck.”

  The Wings and Horace shared a chuckle at that.

  “Well, I’m pleased to meet you, Mr. Goodhead.”

  “The same here,” Chuck’s father said, examining the airplane. “You know, I used to be the leader of a squadron of Mosquito bombers during the war.”

  Oh no, not the war stories already, Chuck moaned to himself.

  “You’re kidding. My father used to fly Mosquitos in the war,” the Wings replied. “Did you know Captain Skip Thomas?”

  Up until this point, Chuck had never heard the Wings’ real name.

  “Know him?” Horace replied. “He was the best wingman I ever had.”

  To Chuck’s amazement and irritation, the two of them had instantly hit it off. Chuck had to pry them apart to ask the Wings a very important question.

  “Are you going to be able to fly in this weather?” Chuck asked with deep concern and an emerging case of nerves etched into his voice.

  “If not, we’ll soon find out,” the Wings replied nonchalantly. “Now, Mr. Goodhead, I wonder if you could provide details on the Rhine River raid you and my father flew just before the end of the war.”

  The Wings and Mr. Goodhead continued to talk aviation, enthusiastically, while Chuck loaded the luggage onto the plane.

  Chapter 3

  Christmas Eve—9 a.m.

  It was snowing—big fat flakes that looked pretty against the mostly dark horizon but meant really big trouble for anyone who was traveling. Father White was aware of it, too, and blessed us quickly so that he could get on the road, metaphorically speaking. He would actually be going cross-country for part of the journey and needed his landmarks to be visible. At Seven Forks they had a snowplow and paved roads. He and his bingo winnings would be able to make reasonable time from there. The tricky part was making it out of the Gulch without bending a driveshaft.

  Things were probably fine for the minister. He had God and four-wheel drive on his side, but what about Chuck and Horace? Was God looking after them too? The Wings was already on his way to Winnipeg to pick them up. He had beaten the storm out. But would they be able to get back again? Danny was plenty crazy, but not actually suicidal. Sometimes the weather got so fierce even Santa refused to fly, and if that happened he would ground himself too.

  I forced myself to smile and accept hugs from my neighbors. Folks were feeling jolly and disinclined to leave the warm hall, even though services were over. The Bones had brought the gleanings from his still and Linda Brightwater, his common-law wife, was busy mixing what she called wassail punch. Fiddling Thomas was tuning up his violin and people were already singing carols a cappella around the Christmas tree. The celebration had begun.

  As soon as the door closed on Father White, people began bringing out their nativity offerings and setting up the altar. Our crèche is all hand carved, and since skills among carvers varied greatly, so, too, did the recognizability of the animals there to witness His birth. I just hoped that amid the new moose and raccoons and Sasquatch that someone had made a new baby Jesus. Ours had been lost last year and someone had replaced it with a plastic Charlie Brown figurine. You couldn’t tell because there was lots of swaddling, but still!

  Though I would have enjoyed a snort of Doc’s nail varnish and to sing a chorus or two from The Messiah, I decided that I had better keep a clear head and get over to the pub. The Flowers hadn’t shown up for services. That meant she was going crazy right, trying to get ready for tomorrow’s feast. We usually had between thirty and fifty Gulchers for dinner on Christmas Day, depending on the weather. Right then I was thinking we would be closer to the former number since the snow was getting thick and many would opt to stay home. That was still a lot of people and it meant a lot of cooking. And working would keep my mind off the fact that the weather might prevent Chuck—and his father—from making it to McIntyre’s Gulch.

  Whisky Jack cornered me before I got out the door. He loves being the bearer of news. Good news, bad news, it is all the same to him so long as he is the one telling it. This time the weather was the news. As if I couldn’t see from the pile of snow on his hat that it was still bad out there and worsening by the minute.

  “Your Mountie may not make it. Sad, eh?”

  I wanted to call him a liar, but a look out the window showed me that those individual flakes were falling so thickly now that they might be a curtain. There was nothing for it but to agree that the storm had gotten worse and that it might go on for hours. I would not concede that it would keep Chuck away.

  * * *

  The Flowers looked at my unhappy frozen face and poured me a glass of wine as soon as I walked in the kitchen door. I don’t usually indulge, especially during the day, but I was feeling morose after my slog in the snow, and joining her in polishing off the bottle seemed the companionable thing to do.

  A timer dinged and the Flowers pulled a pecan pie out of the oven. It joined two others just like it. Usually I like the smell of pie but I had kind of overdosed on pies and cookies the last couple of days and the scent just made me grumpy. In fact, the whole thought of cooking a big dinner for people who weren’t Chuck was depressing. Why should the Flowers and I work our tails off, making food we didn’t really like, when the very important people in our lives weren’t there to share it?

  “You know, I don’t mind the pies, but I’m tired of making goose every year,” the Flowers said, echoing my thoughts. “I think people are tired of eating it too. If Dad wants a goose, he can just break out the fryer and make one for himself. I want to do something different. Maybe lasagna or goulash.”

  I tried not to stare.

  “Can you deep fry a goose?” I asked, not sure if she was serious.

  “You can if you use a fryer,” she said, logically enough.

  “But should you? I mean, is that advisable?” She laughed recklessly and I could see her eyes were glittering. Too late, I noticed that there was already an empty wine bottle on the counter. “And you have a fryer on hand?”

  “Sure. I got it for Dad on his birthday. He hasn’t used it yet.”

  I was beginning to feel giddy as the wine rushed from my empty stomach to my head. Maybe one could deep fry a goose. Maybe it was delicious. And the rest of us could eat pasta.

  “Well, okay then, I guess. Do you have any other kinds of kitchen toys I haven’t seen?” We Gulchers don’t usually go for exotic things that need electricity. My wildest kitchen tool is a hand-crank can opener.

  “Oh sure. My favorite are the snow-cone machine and the cotton candy maker.”

  “You have a cotton candy machine? I love cotton candy!” My grandparents would get me cotton candy every year when the circus came to town.

  “Wanna make some? I think we have enough pies for tomorrow and I already did fruitcakes.”

  “Hell yes!” I began to feel more cheerful. “I’ve never made cotton candy before. Is it hard?”

  “Nah. At least, I don’t think so.” The Flowers opened one of the lower cupboard doors and began rummaging among the pots. Soon the only parts visible were her lower legs.

  “Look in the spice cupboard,” she ordered, her voice a bit muffled. “Let’s add some flavorings.”

  “Like vanilla?”

  “Sure, and almond. And look for the food coloring. We should have red and green.”

  The Flowers emerged a minute later, looking triumphant. She had a round barrel in her arms and dust on her face. The metal tub said BUBBLES UNIFLOSSER in scratched red paint and had a clown and a carousel horse on the side.

  “I guess I need to clean that cupboard.”

  “Wow. That must be an antique.” I eyed the dusty cord which had been patched with duct tape.

  “Yeah, but it shou
ld still work just fine. My mom used it all the time for my birthday parties.” She sounded wistful. The Flower’s mom is dead too. It’s one of the things we have in common.

  The Flowers began clearing a space on the counter with her elbows and I went to help before the pies ended up on the floor.

  “You know what I need before we get started?” she said once she had located an outlet behind a jar of pickles.

  I hoped she wouldn’t say more wine because I was feeling just wild enough to join her, and a part of me knew that would probably be a mistake. One of us needed to keep a level head.

  “What?”

  “Chocolate. I’m tired of apples and nuts and raisins.”

  “Do you have any chocolate—besides baking chocolate?” I added hastily. I had made that mistake as a kid and wasn’t anxious to try it again.

  “Well.…” Her eyes went to a tin on top of the small refrigerator. She began to smile. “I have some brownies. I baked them up yesterday when Sasha decided to go visit Anatoli in Seven Forks and left me to peel twenty pounds of apples all by myself.”

  “So bring ’em on,” I said, not realizing what her grin meant. Yes, I was drunk on one measly glass of wine and not thinking about all the things that the Flowers grew in her summer garden. And so I ate the brownies without guessing what was in them—and she was drunk enough to let me do it and even be amused by what happened!

  “Ugh!” I said, spitting into a napkin. “The paprika and chili didn’t work at all. It’s like a pepper pooed in my mouth.”

  “You’re right,” the Flowers agreed. “I thought some heat with the sweet would be good, but it just didn’t work.”

  The rust-colored floss was pushed into the trash. I’m ashamed to say that we had eaten all the other experiments, even the not so good ones like clove and anise.

  I was beginning to come down off my high. The first sign of deflation was noticing that the kitchen looked like it had been invaded by giant orb-weaver spiders. The BUBBLES UNIFLOSSER kind of threw off floss in every direction and we had been a bit heavy handed with the food coloring in the early batches.

  In fact, the Flowers was looking a bit like Marie Antoinette on a bad wig day. I looked at my reflection in the toaster and saw I looked as if I had lost a fight with some mutant pink and green Spanish moss.

  “I have a headache. And I’m thirsty.” And a little sick to my stomach, though I didn’t mention it.

  “Me too.” The Flowers looked a bit green and I wondered if it was indigestion or just the webbing that veiled her face. “I’ll make some tea and find the aspirin. What the hell was I thinking? Look at this mess. We’ll never get the floss off the ceiling.”

  And then the phone in Big John’s office began to ring. I braced myself for bad news. There is only one phone in town and it never rings for anything unimportant.

  Chapter 4

  Christmas Eve—1 p.m.

  Even worse than the incessant droning of the aircraft engines, the incessant droning of the Wings and his father discussing aviation drove itself into Chuck’s skull like a red-hot iron poker, giving him an instant four-alarm migraine. No matter how much he called for quiet or tried to change the subject they would not shut up. And his father’s stories were told such that one story led naturally into another to produce a nonstop litany of noxious blather. Of course, he’d heard all the stories before, during long car trips and dinners spent round the table, but this only proved to heighten each story’s effect, making them even more irritating. At one point, Chuck drove his fingers into his ears and tried producing his own droning blather in an attempt to drown them out, but this did nothing to relieve his headache. Meanwhile, the Wings couldn’t get enough of his father’s stories. Horace had him eating out of the palm of his hand, begging for more, the moment they were in the air.

  “Of course, the lift to drag ratio of your little Beech aircraft here is nothing to sneeze at,” Horace said, thus concluding a lengthy dissertation on airfoil design.

  “You know, Chuck. Your father possesses a wealth of knowledge regarding tensile strength analysis and fluid dynamics,” the Wings said in admiration.

  “Doesn’t he though?” Chuck grudgingly conceded from the backseat.

  “So, Mr. Goodhead, tell me more about your wind tunnel experience,” the Wings prompted.

  “Before we get into that,” Chuck interrupted, “do you have anything for a headache?”

  “Sure, take one of these,” the Wings offered, handing a small white bottle back over his shoulder.

  Chuck opened the bottle and found that it was half-full of aspirin. Instead of taking just one, he tried to dry swallow two of the chalky pills. They stuck in his throat.

  “Do you have something to wash these down with?”

  “Try this,” the Wings said, exchanging his pill bottle for a hip flask.

  Chuck unscrewed the cap that hung from the flask by a chain and downed a large slug of its contents. He almost coughed the burning liquid back up.

  “Wings, this is straight whisky,” Chuck croaked.

  “Nothing but the best,” the Wings agreed.

  “Thanks for the warning.”

  Chuck screwed the cap back onto the flask and handed it back.

  “Want a swig, Mr. Goodhead?”

  “I never drink when I’m flying.”

  “Me, I only drink when I am flying. It helps to keep the seizures in check.”

  The passenger compartment went blissfully silent while the Wings took several large drafts from his flask before putting it away.

  “So, Mr. Goodhead, you were going to tell me about your landing gear redesign.”

  “Why yes, I was.”

  “Yeah, tell him that one, Pop. That’s a real good one,” Chuck announced mockingly. “You told me that one as a bedtime story. I especially liked the part where the hero arrives just in time to save the damsel in distress.”

  “Just because you don’t possess the knowledge and experience to appreciate my stories doesn’t mean that I can’t share them with others.”

  “Yeah sure, just forget that I’m here.”

  His father ignored him and launched into a lengthy explanation of the pins and levers involved in the construction of modern day landing gear, followed by how he would change everything through a clever redesign. Halfway through the lecture, Chuck began to notice that the tiny windshield wipers on the plane were having a tough time keeping up with the accumulation of snow.

  “It’s getting thick out there,” Chuck observed.

  “Thick as mashed potatoes,” the Wings agreed.

  “Are we going to be able to continue to fly in this?” Chuck asked.

  “As long as the engines don’t cut out on me.”

  As if in acknowledgement of his words, one of the engines began to sputter. The Wings fiddled with his control panel. After several moments spent sweet-talking The Ol’ Girl, the troubled engine died completely. The flight of the wounded plane became decidedly less steady as the Wings wrestled with the steering yoke.

  “What just happened?” Chuck asked in excited concern while leaning between the front seats.

  “Yes, what just happened?” Horace echoed with equal concern in his own voice.

  “We just bought ourselves a Christmas Eve in Seven Forks,” the Wings replied. “That is if we make it that far.”

  “You mean we won’t be landing in McIntyre’s Gulch this evening?” Chuck asked.

  “Chuck, this weather doesn’t look to be letting up anytime soon. If I were you, I wouldn’t plan on seeing the Gulch or anyplace else other than the Forks on Christmas Day either.”

  Chuck dropped back into his seat in frustration.

  “Of course, that’s only if we get lucky.”

  “What does that mean?” Horace barked.

  “First I have to land the plane.”

  Chuck shuddered at the thought of crashing into a grove of pines. But while Chuck only shuddered, Horace’s reaction to the news was a good deal more dramatic.<
br />
  “You mean we’re all going to die!” he burst out, turning in his seat to address the Wings with terror etched into his features.

  “Calm down, Pop. You must have been through plenty of tough situations during the war and you’re still alive.”

  “That’s right, I must have,” Horace said, settling down somewhat.

  Chuck found his father’s response odd and his overreaction to the loss of the engine even odder. Still, his father was an odd man, so he brushed these things aside like so many of his other annoying eccentricities.

  The Wings took little notice of Horace’s mini meltdown, having to direct all of his attention to fighting with the plane’s controls. Through a series of gut-wrenching free falls, the plane lost great swaths of altitude.

  “Horace, could you dial me into frequency 109.5,” the Wings requested calmly.

  When Horace didn’t respond, Chuck leaned between the seats to find that his father’s white fingers were digging into the armrests.

  “Is this the radio dial here?” Chuck asked, pointing to a likely suspect.

  “That’s the one.”

  While Horace remained silent, adhered to his seat by panic, Chuck adjusted the radio dial.

  “Could you slip my headphones onto my head,” the Wings asked. “They’re hanging there on the hook.”

  Chuck did as he was requested, adjusting the small microphone attached to the headphones so that it was directly in front of the Wings’ mouth.

  “Now, let’s hope someone is listening in on the radio,” the Wings said. “Hello, Nancy or Ray? Is anyone listening? If so, this is the Wings calling to inform you that I’ll need to be making an emergency landing in town real soon. Could I get someone to hit the lights?”

  The Wings sat in silence awaiting a response. Chuck found it hard to breathe during the long pause in conversation.

  “Hello, Nancy or Ray, please pick up.”

  Again there was a pause.

  “Come on, guys. I’m really hurtin’ here.”

  Though Chuck could not hear the half of the conversation coming through the headphones, he released a sigh of relief when he heard the Wings begin to talk with someone.