Everything To Prove

Old King Cole… His crew had long since picked up on his mother’s pet name for him and, knowing his dislike for it, used it when they wanted to get his goat.

His crew also called him “the old man.” Maybe he was, to them. They were all young kids, the oldest was Trig at twenty-seven. Was thirty-nine old? It was only one year away from forty, and forty was definitely old. He sure as hell felt old tonight. He never used to notice things like aches and pains and cuts and bruises, and sure as hell he never used to get caught napping at his desk by a pretty young woman. Damn. How humiliating was that?

He crammed the six-pack, less two, into the little propane refrigerator in the galley and then went up on deck, breathless again after climbing the ship’s ladder, and kicked back to enjoy the sunset. If he had the energy he’d take the cabin cruiser out and do a little fishing. Try for a halibut, maybe. Halibut was good eating, fit for a king…even an old and injured one. But he felt too run-down to cast off the lines and fire up the cruiser’s engines. Maybe after a beer or two he’d feel better. Younger. More like his old self.

Old? Whoa. Poor choice of words.

He took a long swallow and gazed out at the looming snowcapped Chugach Mountains, aglow with a clear yellow fire in the late-evening sunlight. He thought about the unexpected visitor he’d had, and the offer she’d made. Libby Wilson had beautiful eyes and was quiet spoken. Didn’t chatter. He liked that about her. Came right out and said what she wanted to say. He’d treated her a little rudely, but she was just too damned pretty. If she’d been ugly he’d have been nicer. Anyway, odds were he’d never see her again. A measly five grand wasn’t even worth gassing up the plane for.

On the other hand, Evening Lake was mighty good fishing at the right time of year, and the right time of year was coming up quick. Still, finding a wrecked plane when one didn’t know exactly where it went down would be time-consuming…not that he couldn’t do it. She had a helluva nerve intimating that he might not be up to the task and that his skills might only be worth five thousand dollars.

What was in the plane that she wanted to get her hands on? Obviously something of value that the pilot had been bringing to Libby Wilson’s mother on her wedding day. Something of great value, considering the girl’s keen interest in recovering the plane. Wedding day… His own experience with such events was shallow at best, a whirlwind courtship with a student he’d met while teaching a dive school in New York City nine years ago, followed by a marriage that began in Las Vegas with a cheap gold ring and ended barely a year later. A bitter year it had been, too, a year of disillusionment, betrayal and hurt that had plagued every moment of their doomed marriage. Brown-eyed Barbara McGee with the sweet, pretty smile that had lured him into such an ugly hell of emotional bondage. Barbara, who loved the nightlife, loved to party and didn’t know how to sit home at night alone when he was off working a salvage job.

Didn’t know how to be faithful.

Lesson learned the hard way. Love is blind, deaf and very, very dumb.

Anyhow, it was pointless to reopen old wounds thinking about his own brief and ill-fated marriage. The wedding scenario Libby Wilson had described was completely different. She was talking billionaire groom on his way to marry his beloved. Flying his own plane to his own wedding. And in that plane he was ferrying proof of his undying love. Jewelry. That had to be it. A big diamond, possibly huge. Maybe an enormous diamond ring and matching necklace, bracelet and, what the hell, a tiara. Daniel Frey’s rich godson could afford to go overboard on his bride. A veritable treasure trove could be sitting on the bottom of Evening Lake inside a de Havilland Beaver that crashed twenty-eight years ago.

Carson eased his bad leg out in front of him and took another swallow of beer. Finding the plane didn’t have to be a full-crew job. He’d need to call Trig after he found the wreckage, but he could search for the plane himself. The search itself wouldn’t be physically difficult, just tedious. He’d work the search pattern using the rubber boat with the side-scanning sonar and GPS and map out the bottom of the lake lane by lane, like mowing a giant lawn. He could do that alone, no sweat. He could pack up his tent, the rubber boat, some supplies and the sonar gear and fly up to Evening Lake. Worst-case scenario, he’d make five grand taking a working vacation and maybe get some good fishing in on the side. A big lake trout or two broiled over the coals would taste pretty good. And what the hell, it sure beat sitting around the office wishing he were out with the boys on the Pacific Explorer, that sleek, beautiful forty-eight-foot dive vessel that was the pride of his salvage operation.

Or wondering why Gracie hadn’t been by. Not since the accident had that sultry, sexy bartender from the pool hall paid him a visit. She, too, was probably convinced he’d never be a whole man again and had sought out greener pastures.

He finished the first beer and cracked open the second. Halfway through it he went below to snag his cell phone. Back on deck, after he’d caught his breath, he called the Airport Hotel and asked to be connected to Libby Wilson’s room.

“Dodge here,” he said when she answered. “I’ve been thinking about your proposal and I have a counter proposal of my own.”

“Go ahead,” she said, cool voiced and calm, as if she’d been expecting his call.

“I’m teaching a deep-diving rescue-and-recovery course at the university this weekend. I can fly up and look the situation over on—” he glanced at his wrist watch “—June 15. That’s a Monday, five days from now.”

“All right.”

“If I like what I see I’ll take the job and play by your terms if we don’t find the plane.”

“And if we do find it?”

“You shell out one hundred and fifty grand minimum, and it could shake out to be more if the salvage costs run high. Odds are I’m going to end up with a huge loss I can’t particularly afford right now. I’ll want the five grand up front, and I’ll want the salvage contract in legalese, signed, sealed and delivered into my hand upon arrival at the lake.”

On her part there was no hesitation whatsoever, which reinforced his theory of huge diamonds. Millions of dollars’ worth of rare and priceless jewels. “Fine,” she said. “Will you be bringing your crew?”

“Until the plane is located, I won’t be needing any crew.”

There was a pause. “No offense intended, Mr. Dodge, but are you sure you’re up to doing this by yourself?”

“I’m up to anything you can throw at me,” Carson responded, inwardly bristling. “Where should I hook up with you?”

“There’s a new fishing lodge almost directly across the lake from Daniel Frey’s place. I believe it’s called the Lodge on Evening Lake. That’s where I’ll be staying. I’ll see you on Monday the fifteenth, Mr. Dodge.”

She hung up before he could, and he stuffed the cell phone into his pocket with a silent curse and finished off his second beer while nursing his twice-bruised ego.

LIBBY REPLACED THE PHONE in its cradle and then sat up in her bed with a surge of panic that centered around a horrible thought. What if Dodge found the wreckage, but her father’s remains couldn’t be found? What if she couldn’t prove her paternity? She’d never be able to come up with the money to pay him off. It would take years. She reached for the phone to call him back and tell him the truth, then paused. She’d led him to believe that the plane held great treasures, and to her it did. But if she told Dodge he was looking for bones, what were the odds he’d take the job? She drew a deep breath and slowly exhaled. She had nothing to fear. Her father’s bones wouldn’t have dissolved, and they’d be with the plane.

Wouldn’t they?

She glanced over at her mother. Marie was sleeping. It had been a long day for her, and while the medicine she’d received at the hospital had begun the process of making her feel better, in the interim she was far better off sleeping. Chronic lymphocytic leukemia. Marie Wilson deserved a whole lot better than that. She deserved to live the way she should have been living for the past twenty-eight years, and would have been if Daniel Frey hadn’t sent her away, denouncing her claim that Connor was the father of her child when he knew Connor loved her and was on his way to marry her.

“I’m going to nail the bastard for what he did, Dad,” Libby said. “I swear to you, I will.”

Dad.

She’d lived with the idea of him all her life, but it had been an elusive idea. Nothing more than a picture on her mother’s bureau. Not one he’d given Marie, but one an employee at Frey’s lodge had stolen and passed to her after his death. That picture had been all Libby had to call Dad, and it was a military picture at that, one he’d sent his own father shortly after getting his wings. A picture of him standing beside his plane at some air base. The plane was a wicked-looking thing. Her father was grinning at the camera. Handsome, dashing. A boy, really, so young and sure of life.

Libby thought it ironic that Connor Libby had survived Vietnam only to die on his wedding day, but she was determined to prove that Frey had something to do with it. Tomorrow she’d fly with her mother back to the village and fill her empty cupboards with food. Then she’d pay a little visit to the eccentric billionaire Daniel Frey, as a guest of the Lodge at Evening Lake, who’d read the wonderful article about him in Forbes magazine. She’d gush. She’d flatter. She’d use all of her feminine wiles to draw him out, to get him to talk about Ben Libby. About Connor. And about the plane crash that had killed her father.

CHAPTER THREE

EARLY SUNDAY MORNING, Libby packed her bag in preparation for the trip to Evening Lake. In the past few days she had done much to improve her mother’s living situation. She’d stocked up on food, had the propane tanks filled, dragged all the rugs out and hung them on the line to beat them clean and let them air. She’d arranged for a home health-care visitor daily who would make sure her mother had a good lunch and took her medications. This would happen on the days Libby was absent. The home health-care worker was a government employee trained as a nurse’s assistant, who lived in the village and looked after the needs of the elderly. Marie, of course, wanted no part of this.

“I can fix my own meals and swallow my own pills. I don’t need any help.”

“Mom, you’re still very weak. Soon, you’ll start to feel much better but I’m going to be gone for a few days. I don’t want to worry about you.”

“You’ve been gone for years to those fancy schools back East and I was just fine. I’ll be fine for a few days more.”

“Please, Mom. You told me you liked Susan. She won’t stay long. Just long enough to make sure you eat at least one good meal a day. You’re too thin. That dress will look a whole lot better on you when you fill out. Besides, if we’re going to fish camp, you have to be strong.”

Marie remained unconvinced. “Where are you going, Libby? You tell me you’re going away for a few days but you don’t tell me where.”

Libby had already resolved to keep as much as possible from her mother. Marie would only get upset, and now was not the time to open Pandora’s box. “I’m going to visit friends. I’ve been away so long and there are so many people I want to see.”

“You’re going to Evening Lake, aren’t you? After all this time you still can’t let it go.” Marie may have been weak from her anemia and sick from the anticancer medication, but her eyes were as piercing as ever and she knew her daughter well.

“Mom, please. Just promise me you’ll let Susan check in on you while I’m gone. I’ll be back as soon as I can. Promise me.”

“I promise I will let Susan in the house if you stay away from Daniel Frey.”

Libby gave her mother an impulsive hug. “Eat your food, take your medicines and don’t worry about me.”

As she climbed aboard the float plane she knew her mother wouldn’t let Susan in the house. Out of sheer stubbornness Marie would make life hell for that poor woman, who had promised Libby to watch her mother closely. “Don’t worry, Marie will be fine,” she assured Libby. “Your mother is one of the toughest ladies I know. Besides, she should start feeling much better soon.” Libby hadn’t a doubt about that, but now she was worried about Susan, who took her job very seriously and hadn’t a clue how ornery Marie could be.

THE FLIGHT TO EVENING LAKE took less than an hour. In all her years of living in the village, of knowing that her father had drowned there, Libby had never been to see it. Had never wanted to see it. Never wanted to put her hand in the water and know that her father’s bones were hidden in the dark cold depths. Even now a part of her dreaded seeing the lake, and as the plane headed north and west she stared out the window with a heart that beat a painful rhythm. Then suddenly the plane skimmed over a ridge and she was looking at a huge body of water shaped like a giant horseshoe, the deep curve on the southernmost end and two parallel arms, divided by perhaps a mile of timbered forest, stretching north. Several small rivers fed the lake along both of the upper arms, and a big river flowed out of it in the curve of the southern shore, the same river where they’d found the plane’s pontoons. She could see it snaking through the spruce and she could just make out the rapids where the pontoons had gotten hung up.

She studied the surface of the lake, but it gave up no secrets. The water looked black and cold near the outlet, while the west arm that stretched toward the glaciers was streaked a thick milky blue in places with glacial silt. There was still some ice in the deeper coves, but most of the lake was open. The plane lost altitude quickly, and soon she could see the buildings. Both lodges were on the southernmost end of the lake, near the outlet but on opposite shores and about half a mile apart. Which was Frey’s? She didn’t know. One lodge appeared much larger than the other, and she supposed this would be the place she was staying.

But she was wrong. The plane landed and taxied to the dock fronting the smaller property. She was greeted by the owner of the lodge, a stout friendly woman in her early forties. “I’m Karen Whitten.” She smiled and extended her hand. “Welcome to the lodge. My husband, Mike, is guiding, but you’ll meet him tonight. I’ll have your bags brought to your cabin. Come on up. You’re just in time for lunch, though most of the guests won’t show up until supper time. Fishing. I swear, you’d think the world turned around fly rods and lake trout.”

Libby followed Karen up the ramp. The main lodge was cozy and small, with four guest rooms, a big kitchen, a vaulted living room with a handsome fieldstone fireplace and a friendly dining room. There were three small guest cabins to one side of the main lodge, and two employee cabins to the other. Karen showed her to her little cabin, complete with a tiny bath and a woodstove for heat. “This is just perfect,” Libby said.