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They grabbed the last booth and settled in, only to have Dottie bellow from behind the bar, “You want something, get your butts up here and get it! Not you,” she said to Molly Shuravaloff.
“But Dottie-”
“Don’t you ‘but Dottie’ me, girl, you’re lucky I let you step inside the door. You ought to be home being a comfort to your mother in her old age.”
“She’s forty-seven, Dottie!”
“Whatever.”
Molly sulked back to her booth, where Mac McCormick put an arm around her waist and offered her a surreptitious sip from his beer.
They conferred, and Luke and Bridget went up to the bar to order, returning with hot buttered rums all around. Luke sipped and closed his eyes. “God, what’s in this?”
Jo tasted and choked at the resultant wave of heat that seemed to envelop her sinuses. “Besides a fifth of rum?”
“Brown sugar,” Jim said.
“And powdered sugar,” Bridget said.
“Ice cream?” Luke said.
Jo, still gasping for air, croaked, “Butter. And rum. A whole lot of rum.”
The second sip went down better and faster than the first, and when Dottie shouted that their burgers were ready, it was time for a refill. By then everyone had a pleasant glow, marred only somewhat when a burly man came in the door and saw them. He whipped off gold-framed aviator sunglasses to reveal dark, frowning eyes in a blunt-featured face. Tiny blood vessels turned his nose and his cheeks a deep, angry red. His hands were big-knuckled and scarred, dangling at the end of arms too bulky with muscle to hang straight. He shouldered his way across the floor with an impatient, slightly bowlegged stride, taking no notice of the lesser mortals in his path. He looked, on approach, like a cross between George Patton and King Kong, with a luxuriant mustache that sported evidence of past meals.
Jo saw him first. “Fi
He looked at Jim from beneath the brim of a cap advertising the Reno Air Show. “Your people still up?”
“And you are?” Jim said.
“Fi
“Storm coming in,” he said to Jim. “I don’t want to have to run no patrol out after pilots who don’t know how to come in out of the rain.”
“Fi
Fi
Jim looked at Jo. “My, my, you just endear yourself to everyone who comes down the pike, don’t you? What did you do, break the story that his girlfriend is sleeping with his uncle?”
Jo fluttered her eyelashes. “You do say the sweetest things, Mr. Wiley, suh.”
The aroma wafting up from the cheeseburgers became too much to resist and they tucked in. Plates polished clean down to the shine, a third toddy seemed like something even Jim and Jo could agree on, and Luke went to fetch them. Bridget said, “What was Mr. Fi
Jo, in that state of well-being that always follows the ingestion of equal amounts of alcohol, salt and deep-fryer fat, said with an expansive wave, “Fi
Jim had to grin. Luke returned with the drinks and Bridget demanded further explanation. Jo fortified herself with a sip, burning her tongue in the process, and launched into what was one of her favorite stories. “Dagfi
“Anyway, he makes his living flying people in and out of the Bush. He takes them into the Four Lakes for fishing and the foothills of the Alaska Range for hunting. He flies them up to the Togiak Peaks for that roughneck climbing people do, you know, the ones who actually enjoy hanging from a ridge by their fingernails while they dangle over a one-thousand-foot abyss.”
“Or say they do,” Luke said, gri
“Or say they do,” Jo agreed, gri
“What?” Luke said.
“Don’t encourage her,” Jim said.
Bridget looked from Jo to Jim and back again.
“One day,” Jo said, “not long ago, Fi
“Nobody else to blame, we got it,” Jim said.
“Hush up,” Bridget told him. “Go on, Jo.”
“The phone rang. It was one Eric Silverthorne, who was calling on behalf of himself and his brother Rodney, and their wives Stella and A
Jo drank some more of that lovely toddy. She had a full stomach from the burger, a warm glow from the rum, Wy was safe and on her way home, the threat of Jim Wiley’s disclosures were on hold, Luke’s face was becoming increasingly beautiful across the table, and she was truly on vacation for the first time in three years, no story to research and write, no crime scenes to inspect, no politicians pulling in illegal campaign contributions, nothing at all to do, in fact, except enjoy herself. She was practically dizzy with delight, and she was definitely off the chain.
“As I said, Mr. Dagfi
“So he takes them up to the Togiak Peaks, and manages to wedge the Skywagon into that little gravel strip west of Weary River, unloads passengers and crew, and leaves them, with the understanding that he’s supposed to pick them up in ten days.”
The toddy had developed a fine, heady bouquet and she inhaled it with abandon.
“What happened?”
She opened her eyes and smiled across at Luke. “He forgot them,” she said simply.
He stared at her.
“What are you meaning, he forgot them?” Bridget said.
“I mean just that, the tenth day rolled around and he forgot to go get them.”
Luke and Bridget stared at her, mouths open. Jim, having read this story on the front page of theNews, stared into his mug. Better than looking at Jo, whose green eyes were bright with unabashed glee, whose dark blond hair seemed to be curling into tighter knots, whose face was glowing with the joy of storytelling. That’s who she was, really, he thought, just somebody sitting around a fire late at night, hoping to get a few coins in her bowl before everyone fell asleep.
And, he had to admit, albeit reluctantly, that she was damn good at it.
“Well?” Luke demanded. “When did he remember?”
“He didn’t,” Jo said, and the glow faded a little. “Eight days after he was supposed to pick them up, old Julie Baldessario, a homesteader on Weary River, looked up from salting his silver catch to see Eric, Rodney and A