When Twink returned with a cigarette already clenched between her lips, I told her that’s where we were going.
“Do you think the manager will be there on Saturday afternoon?” Twink wanted to know.
We drove straight to Firestone. Surprisingly, Alex Walker was at work. When I introduced myself, the man was pleasant enough, but it turned out he remembered nothing about Chris Danielson.
“We might’ve had a class or two together,” Alex said, “but nothing stands out. From what I remember, he was kind of a loner. He lived with his grandparents for some reason and didn’t have many friends. Why are you asking about him?”
“He went missing a dozen years ago, and nobody seemed to notice.”
“I guess I heard about that at the time, but that’s pretty much all,” he said. “Wish I could help.”
In the course of the next two hours, Twink and I tracked down the other two Homer guys—Ron Wolf and Phil Bonham. Like Alex, they, too, had vague recollections of Chris, but neither had had any close connections with our missing person. Phil’s place was a long way out in the boonies. As we headed back into town, Twink asked, “Where to now?”
“Back to the barn, I guess,” I told her, “although I’m not all that sure where the barn is.”
“I believe that Chad, my brother, knows Shelley Loveday,” Twink said, apropos of nothing a mile or so later.
Obviously she’d been listening in on my conversation with Todd. Even so, I was flabbergasted. By now I was beginning to think that the state of Alaska was very much like an oversize version of the small town where, as the old joke used to say, even if you dial a wrong number, you end up chatting anyway.
“Really?” I asked.
“At one time everyone in Alaska knew of Shelley Hollander even if they didn’t know her in person,” Twink said. “She was a looker, all right. Shortly after she got her pilot’s license and went to work for Jack Loveday, she entered the Miss Alaska beauty pageant and walked away the winner. Everybody was so surprised that a bush pilot could end up being Miss Alaska. I thought that was a crock. As far as I’m concerned, women can do any damned thing they want.”
Twink paused as if giving me a chance to respond to that. When I wisely declined to take the bait, she continued.
“Anyway, Jack was a big gun in the bush-pilot world, and once Shelley got her claws into him, she didn’t let go. He ended up divorcing his first wife and marrying Shelley. She probably thought she’d made herself a pretty good deal, except for one thing. In airplane circles everyone knew that Jack Loveday made money, all right, but they also knew he was so tight his farts squeaked. According to Chad, when it came to spending money, he kept Shelley on a very tight leash.”
“Wait,” I said. “I heard he gifted her with a Piper for a wedding present.”
Twink laughed. “Jack wanted that Piper for himself. He only said he bought it for her. Anyway, Jack ended up biting it big time. He was doing a volunteer Flight for Life trip and carrying blood products from Homer to Fairbanks when his plane crashed. He was trapped inside and terribly injured but still managed to radio for help. Rescuers found him in time and airlifted him to the trauma center at Anchorage General, but he ended up losing both legs. From what I understand, he committed suicide a short time after he was released from the hospital.”
That was the same trauma center where Danitza worked now, but this would have happened long before she completed her nurses’ training.
“So your brother knew Jack. Is that how he met Shelley?”
“As I said earlier, Chad’s in the airplane-resale business. After Jack’s death Shelley decided to unload his inventory of aircraft. That’s when she came to Chad looking for help.”
“When did all this happen?” I asked.
In the illumination of a passing streetlight, I saw Twink shrug. “Beats me,” she said, “maybe ten years or so ago, but the whole thing turned out to be a good deal for Chad. Shelley was worried that people would try to take advantage of her, and she was happy to pay Chad a commission on each of the sales. By the time everything was signed, sealed, and delivered, he was sitting in tall cotton.”
Moments later we pulled up at the front entrance of the Driftwood Inn and parked on the street. It was a humble clapboard-covered place, a long way from the far more upscale Hotel Captain Cook. Since Twink wasn’t staying there, I opened the back passenger door and retrieved my luggage.
“Breakfasts here are usually pretty good—at least they used to be,” Twink told me. “Once you know what the schedule is for tomorrow, give me a call.”