WingMan
Book 7 Mosquito Creek Detective Club - Chapter 1...
CHAPTER 1
Gathering Clouds…
Email--America Online, April 2002
Patrick, congrats on passing your final exams. Hope you have a smooth flight tomorrow – can’t wait for you to meet my friends and them to meet you after all this time. There’s light snow flurries forecast for Calgary and southern Alberta, but not here – just overcast so far for western Montana. Good night, not sure I’ll be able to sleep.
………..
All that illuminated the lower half of the three men’s faces was a single flashlight.
Shadows cast in the center of the tight huddle showed only features from their noses down to their chins. Everything else merged into the predawn darkened forest around them.
“Say nothing of our discovery beyond the three of us right here.” The first man’s grey eyes narrowed. His voice was just above a whisper.
“Not even a hint to anyone. Zero!” He stressed again looking at the younger third man.
“And, definitely, be careful not to leave notes or papers of any kind at your desks or anywhere in your offices. As far as everyone else connected to this project knows, there is only uranium to extract from this mine.”
“What we discovered will make all three of us rich beyond measure. I waited my entire working life for a chance like this, so I’ll do whatever I need to do to protect this secret. I won’t let anyone interfere. Is that clear? Are both of you really with me?”
The other two men nodded.
………..
“Gordon’s being such a jerk!” Sonia leaned across Grandpa Molosky’s workbench at the far end of their garage.
She stood so close to the chair Grandpa sanded that dust as fine as icing sugar soon covered the right sleeve of her jacket. Some even drifted to settle on her shoulder and in the curls of her long, dark blonde hair.
Montana’s late April, Spring Break still held a chill. Repainting the patio Adirondack chairs would have been uncomfortable in the old garage if Grandpa hadn’t started the small electric heater right after breakfast. Despite that, grandfather and granddaughter needed to wear warm clothing.
He winked at his eldest granddaughter trying to lighten her mood. “I’ve already sanded those two chairs by the window. I just need them wiped down with this damp cloth before I can repaint them.”
Grandpa Molosky was devoted to all four of his grandchildren, but not thrilled Sonia managed to find him so early this Saturday morning. He preferred to concentrate on his task.
“Make sure the water’s at least still warm.” Grandpa replaced the pad he had been using with fresh sandpaper then ran the back of his hand across his brow pushing back his thick graying hair.
He wasn’t really in any mood to listen to Sonia’s latest lovesick complaint about Gordon McKenna whose affections had clearly not grown to match hers. But she and her mother couldn’t talk, nor could she share with her three younger siblings, so Grandpa gave in.
“All of you are growing up too fast for me. But Gordon’s always seemed like a true and loyal friend ever since you started elementary school.”
When Sonia blinked a single teardrop rolled down her right cheek. “I thought so too at one time, but this last year he changed. He changed a lot!”
………..
“Mia, do another touch-and-go then come in for a final landing.”
Flying instructor Miles Bain sat back in the seat beside Mia Cho. He pushed up his wire rimmed glasses, relaxed, as the second of his two teen students pulled back on the stick.
She set the tail rudder and pointed the nose of the Piper Warrior up slightly. With well practiced ease Mia brought the plane around in a wide bank, left toward the end of the runway then straightened out for her approach.
Mia cut back on the engine’s power swooped down just above the blacktop then increased power with the nose pointed up again, climbing, but staying beneath low hanging clouds.
From his seat behind Mia, Gordon McKenna watched Mia bring the plane in for a landing. The ground rose up to meet the two middle wheels then the front tire gently tipped down on the runway. “Nice Mia,” he grinned.
Then teasing with a glint in his dark hazel brown eyes, “Not as nice as my landing, but it was still nice you didn’t kill us.”
Mia reacted immediately to the handsome boy who was like a brother. She stomped on the ground brake. Gordon lurched forward and the plane swayed.
“Lucky for you, Gordon McKenna I don’t want kill Mr. Bain.”
The engine quit.
The propeller stopped spinning.
Miles Bain recovered from the abrupt halt. “Yeah? But you don’t want the pancakes Mr. Bain ate this morning at the Tumbleweed Café back in your lap either!”
“Sorry sir.” Mia’s long black hair hid most of her face as she hung her head. Then she took a deep breath and restarted the plane’s engine. She taxied to the front of the new hangar built to store the flying school’s four-seater plane.
With the engine off Mr. Bain turned to face his youngest students. “You’re both ready to solo.”
Mia and Gordon looked at each other excited and surprised.
“Over the past seven months since last October you’ve done extremely well. I haven’t instructed such naturally talented pilots for at least three years.”
“However - safety is always a pilot’s first responsibility, even on the ground. Until your plane is brought to a complete stop well off the runway, do not ever distract a pilot.” He looked at Gordon.
“Nor should a pilot be distracted,” he looked at Mia. “I thought I taught the two of you better than that in our ground-school classes.”
Mia nodded feeling more ashamed. She knew better.
“Sorry Mr. Bain, of course.” Gordon was embarrassed too.
………..
Philip Peters slumped, over one corner of Park Sullivan’s desk. “The pictures I took of that Butte professor and the Dutch guy aren’t turning out. When’s Gordon getting back?”
The newspaper editor looked up from the email he was writing. “Really? When I looked at your negatives, they seemed fine. The contrast looked good.”
Gordon’s grandfather checked the wall clock beside his office door. “He should be here any minute, he thought he’d be finished his flying lesson around ten. He still hasn’t finished writing the article about that new uranium mine. It’s got to go on this Friday’s front page with your photos.”
Philip raised up then from Grandfather Sullivan’s office he headed out into the main newsroom shaking his brown curly head. “Maybe I’m having a Down Syndrome moment. I think I need a chocolate chip cookie…” Philip’s voice faded.
“None of that Mister.” He called after Philip. “Your dad said you weren’t to use your condition as an excuse for anything.”
Shaking his head, the editor returned to finish writing his email, smiling. “I’ll have a cookie too Philip.” He called out again.
………..
Sheriff Howard handed a file of permits back to Paul McKenna. “I don’t know why our state’s Department of Natural Resources sent copies of those to my office. You’d think they’d have your address, at least on a sticky-note somewhere.”
He chuckled, rubbing his new mustache that caught tiny bits of icing from his morning doughnut. “Your name with my office address, hmm, should I make you a deputy?”
Gordon’s father was Chief Park Ranger supervising staff monitoring state and National Parks in Montana’s Powel County. “Oh, you’d think so.” He accepted the folder with one hand, rubbing the back of his neck with the other.
He shook a head of dark auburn hair, so like his son’s but Mr. McKenna’s was slightly gray at the temples. “There’s been a wave of retirements in many departments that required more hiring. And it seems where there’s new staff, they seem to get lost just finding their own desk.” He opened the file.
“Well, what I know of mining, or rocks or geology at all I could write on the palm of one hand.” The sheriff walked from behind his desk to add more coffee to his mug.
Paul McKenna looked up from the open file. “You may know more than you think. Speaking of new staff, this guy,” he waved a memo in the air. “Martin Axel will be at the Hinterland mine Monday for an inspection. He’s requested that I meet him there.”
Sheriff Howard leaned against the table where a stack of wanted posters and outstanding speeding tickets shared space with his very old, very stained-glass coffee pot. “You’re getting company tomorrow for Spring Break. Aren’t you on vacation?”
Mr. McKenna closed the file. “Technically I’m on vacation, but generally with this job I’m always available. I’ll show up with my cousin Shane, his son Patrick and Gordon then make the day part of a back-to-nature-tour for our Dublin side of the McKenna clan.”
………..
“I don’t know how I’m going to tell my dad.” Mia Cho sat by the stone fireplace handing Hanna Gakis smaller pieces of split firewood.
The main area of Hanna’s log house was really one large room divided almost in half by a river-rock fireplace. The kitchen and dining area was on one side of the fireplace with the great room, sitting area on the other.
The bedroom Hanna slept in was off the kitchen and her mother’s bedroom was off the great room side with a small bathroom between. Both of their bedrooms had once been part of a wide-open porch that was closed in. Now, what was left of the original front porch ran just across the east side and part way around the south side.
Hanna struck a long match and held it low to ignite the crumpled newspaper. “Two weeks! Mr. Bain really banned you and Gordon from the airport for two full weeks?”
Mia nodded close to tears. “I wasn’t thinking at all this morning. Learning to fly a plane isn’t the same as learning to drive a car, but that’s how I acted, right there on the runway! I can’t believe I was that foolish.”
Flames of tangerine and lemon shot up and around the wood stacked on a metal grate. Hanna tossed in the match then slid the fire screen closed. “Did you tell Joey?”
“No just you. I haven’t even called Joey, but with everyone coming to the inn tomorrow to meet the McKenna cousins from Ireland, I should tell him. I feel sick.”
“Someone is sure to ask how my flying lessons are going. And until this morning I was proud of how well they were going.” She dropped her head into her hands. “I’m such an idiot!”
Hanna tucked a section of her thick curly brown hair behind one ear. She leaned forward to give her friend a hug. “Unfortunately, I’m sure someone will ask, like my mom for one.”
“Guess you need to be ready with some kind of story. If everyone shows up – like your Aunt Yin, all of Philip’s family, both his older brothers are in town for Spring Break, Sheriff Howard and his wife and Mr. Bain – over forty people will be there.”
“Perfect, then no one will notice I’m missing.” Mia lifted her head.
“Except for Joey, who officially asked you to be his girl. And Gordon who’ll be left to explain your adventures in flying – alone. He’ll miss you.”
Hanna tried to distract Mia. “Your mom brought the most amazing bouquets from her shop. She helped my mom and me get the Gathering Room ready. It looks like spring - at least in there.”
She glanced out the front great room window of the one-hundred-year-old log cabin originally built for the Grant Ranch cattle foreman. “We may never get a spring. It’s been overcast for over a week!”
………..
“Philip! Leif! Joey! I can’t move my hand it’s glued to my kite!” Eric Molosky panicked.
Leif Anderlund clamped the stretched fabric over his kite frame then rushed to Eric’s end of the barn’s twenty-foot work bench. “How’d you do that?”
“The cloth slipped when I reached for my clamp.” Eric’s sandy brown hair fell across his forehead. “So, I grabbed it and squirted more glue to hold the fabric to this part of my frame.”
“But I squeezed too hard, and some shot all over then down these fingers,” he pointed to his left hand, “and they got attached too.”
Leif had no idea how to get Eric’s fingers unstuck from each other or the kite. Just like the advertisement claimed PowerGlue dried in seconds and held anything together.
Curious Philip Peters had followed Leif. “Yup, ya used too much.” Philip looked over Eric’s right shoulder. “Gosh ya gotta be really careful with that stuff.”
“That’s because you already learned the hard way, remember your bike handlebars?” Leif rolled his eyes.
“Oh yeah.” Philip returned to were Joey Salas helped him assemble his kite. They worked at the shorter eight-foot workbench by the barn’s stairs to the upper loft.
Leif headed for the double barn doors. “Joey watch’em I’ll get my dad.”
Carefully Leif weaved his way between sawhorses that supported half a dozen canoes the kids were getting ready for the annual spring canoe race.
Joey helped Philip spread his cloth out then trimmed the edges. “I hate ta tell ya Eric, but Philip smelled like my granddad’s fishing boat motor for days, cause I think gasoline is the only stuff that works on PowerGlue.”
Outside, Leif reclosed the right double door of the barn that had once stabled horses, harnessed to pull the water wagon for the town fire department. When Mr. Anderlund bought the abandoned 1909 log and river rock train station for his general store, the barn was included behind it on the one-acre site.
The majority of Anderlund’s Market was groceries including local produce and bake goods. A smaller section in the back had been taken over by Mr. Anderlund’s second wife Laura, for her gallery. Leif’s stepmom displayed local prison art for sale as well as crafts, and weavings by Powel County residents.
Inside the rear loading dock door, Leif followed the sound of his father’s voice talking to customers at the front of the store.
Carl Anderlund was behind the old ticket counter bagging fresh bread and produce for the mayor’s wife, who was Philip’s mom, and Dr. Howes’ wife.
Mrs. Peters smiled, and Mrs. Howes nodded to Leif as they walked by him. Mrs. Howes flicked the bell outside a six-foot metal birdcage to the right side of their front door. Inside their parakeets Penny and Nickel chattered, squawked, and dropped more small feathers and seed husks on the floor around their cage.
“There’s been a glue accident Dad.”
Mr. Anderlund scowled. “Philip again?”
“No, this time it’s Eric.”
“Okay. I’ll need you to watch the store. Heather and your stepmom left to shop in Helena for tomorrow night. Stephen headed over to the ranch to help Hanna’s mom set out tables and chairs.”
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