Fool's Flight (Digger) by Warren Murphy Read Free Book Online

Digger said.
    "A little too churchy-preachy for my taste. But a nice man."
    "Can I reach you here?" Digger asked.
    "Yes. I’m in the book, too. My home number. Where are you staying?"
    Digger thought of Koko and said, "I haven’t gotten moved in yet. Suppose I call you when I’m settled?"

    Back at the motel, there were still no messages in his box. Koko was not in the room and there was no note.

Chapter Eight

    DIGGER’S LOG:
    Tape recording number two, 6 P.M., Tuesday, Julian Burroughs in the matter of Interworld Airways.
    Where the hell is Koko?
    I bring her and her seven bikinis to beautiful Fort Lauderdale and plop her down in the lap of luxury and she’s not even around to untie my shoes after my busy day. What the hell happened to gratitude in this world?
    Maybe I’m just too old for her. The generational divide. How old is she anyway? I keep forgetting. I think she’s twenty-six. The last birthday I forgot, I think was twenty-six. That’s a dozen years younger than me. I don’t know if I can deal with somebody that young and that inconsiderate.
    To hell with it. Post time.
    I didn’t tape the sermon by Damien Wardell yesterday morning. I wish I had; he’s good. His wife sings all right, too, but she moves funny. I’d like to hear Mother Candace let loose once and sing right. The Reverend Wardell’s taste in blondes is not bad, even though I don’t do blondes myself.
    In the master file are two tapes. First we have an interview with Mrs. Trini Donnelly, wife of our late-lamented skipper. That home could not exactly have been Captain’s Paradise for Donnelly. He was a retired drunk turned religious zealot. Trini is a drunk but unretired. The two kids, Spazz and Tard, are typical examples of how, given latter twentieth-century American environment, bad kids can go worse. They know a little too much about fornication for me to believe that Trini has been any rival to Ulysses’ wife in the fidelity department. She seems, though, to keep faithful track of money.
    I don’t think she’s got any reason to sue. If her husband wants to leave money to Reverend Wardell, that’s his business.
    She was a stewardess. She’s got to be forty now, her oldest kid is maybe nine or ten. Make her married at thirty. I think all stewardesses get married by thirty. California’s contribution to American life: another Great Divide. Thirty is it and if a woman hasn’t done it by then, she’s not going to do it. Toss her out and try again with two fifteen-year-olds.
    Trini says that Donnelly was a top pilot. So does everybody. Probably he was. Then what happened to the plane? Maybe somebody packed him a linguini lunch with an exploding clam in it. Do wives kill for fifty thousand? Mine would. The real desperate ones would.
    Donnelly had a lot of drinking and gambling debts to pay off, and Trini was suspicious of Mrs. Wardell and her husband. What is all that about? I’ve got to ask Kwash to find out if the F.A.A. discovered anything. Although what the F.A.A. can know without wreckage or bodies is beyond me.
    Next is a recording with Lieutenant Michael Mannion, who doesn’t like me because he thinks I’m part of the giant international fender conspiracy, but that’s all right. Detective Dave Coley might help if the price is right. I think I’m going to have him run the passenger list through the police files and see if anybody comes up a Mad Bomber.
    Second tape is Timothy Baker, president and chief executive officer and coffee maker at Interworld Airways. His sense of loss is restricted to one of his planes going down and when does he get his insurance money. He wants four million for the tub he lost and maybe that is its replacement value. How much could you get nowadays for Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis ? I think a four-million-dollar transfusion might be just what the doctor ordered up for Inter-world.
    Baker said that the co-pilot and the stewardess missed the flight. Donnelly took off without them. That’s