The Burning Day by Timothy C. Phillips Read Free Book Online Page A

husband, or someone who gave a damn.
    I decided to find the Bessemer airport, and be there when Mary showed up at nine o’clock that evening. Maybe then I would have something to report back to the broken-hearted Henry. Something told me that I was in for an unexpected surprise. I could feel a tension growing that confused me, since I had too few details to really piece anything together. But when men and women spend their waking hours skulking around plotting clandestine meetings, there are usually dark deeds in the offing.  
    I had the feeling that I was going to learn a lot about Mary Wiggins’ secret life when night fell over Bessemer.  
    ~
    I drove out to Bessemer and took a side road off Highway 459 that took me to Morgan Road, where there were signs that directed me to Bessemer Regional Airport. The low-flying planes that roared overhead confirmed I was in the right area. The airfield sat at the end of its own access road. It was a tidy, medium-sized airport with a white control tower and an orange windsock on a pole, and two neat lines of airplanes awaiting their owners. I parked in a lot marked for customers, and walked over to the small concourse and went inside. A couple of pleasant-looking women in blue blazers greeted me from behind a desk.
    “Can I help you, sir?” One woman asked as I approached.
    “I hope so. I think a friend of mine took the wrong flight trying to get into Birmingham. I think he might be flying into Bessemer. Could you tell me what flights are coming in, say, around 8:45 tonight?”
    “Sure. Just a moment.” She rattled off a quick staccato burst of typing on her computer keyboard, and turned her monitor around so that I could see the schedule she’d brought up. There were just three flights coming in from 8:30 to 8:45 p.m. Not exactly ATL, but that made it easier.
    “Where’s your friend flying in from?” The other girl asked. I smiled without taking my eyes off the screen and pretended to be absorbed in thought while I composed a likely story. One of the flights on the screen was a puddle-jumper, coming in from ATL. One was a personal flight, due in from Memphis, and the third was a charter jet, point of origin Chicago.
    “I think my friend’s probably on that Atlanta flight,” I said finally. “Could I get a printout of that?”
    Without any questions, the first young lady printed out the screen for me, as I’d hoped. I thanked them and walked casually outside while looking it over. Whoever Mary was planning on meeting could be on any of those flights, of course. Maybe he wasn’t on any of them, though. It was equally possible that she was meeting someone in Bessemer, and they had chosen the smaller airport to leave from, just in case someone like me was snooping around at Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International. Either way, I should see Mary, coming or going.
    I had plenty of time until 9:00 p.m., so I drove to downtown Bessemer, where I found a restaurant called the Bright Star. It was a nice, upscale place with a horseshoe-shaped bar and a Turn of the Century look, back from when that phrase still meant the turn of the Nineteenth Century into the Twentieth. Time flies. I sat down in a rear booth and had myself some Red Snapper and salad, both of which were excellent. While I sat and savored the great food, my mind kept going back to Mary Wiggins, and her appointment with whatever fate she had planned for herself.
    I loitered around Bessemer for a while, visited the public library, read the newspapers, had some coffee, and walked around a local mall. Then I sat in my car and thought some more.  
    Finally, eight o’clock rolled around, and I headed back out to the airport, just in case Mary had decided to show up early. She hadn’t.
    I settled into a seat in the main hallway and watched a couple of planes come in and taxi up to the terminal. It wasn’t a very busy airport, only a few smaller passenger jets and lots of private traffic. I watched a couple of Lear jets