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Ruffling Feathers Chapter 13 - Week Two
"Paul, did your parents keep a diary or day timer or record of what they did?" Amy asked. She had met him for lunch and they had walked from his office to their favorite picnic spot—the white flower garden, now thriving with an abundance of water, fertilizer, and care. They sat on the park bench and ate sandwiches and fruit and talked about what to do next. "I assume they did. They were both busy people. My dad's secretary, I'm sure, archived all his daily doings. And my mother wrote everything down. Lists for everything. What are you thinking?" "Did you clean out the condo after the crash?" Amy still felt a little tentative probing like this, but she didn't know how else to help Paul find answers without being direct. "I know it's macabre, but no, I left the condo in tact. Couldn't bear to go in there again." "Did the FBI?" "The FBI?" Paul repeated the question as if it wasn't logical. "I don't think so. No one's asked me for a key or permission to enter the condo." Amy could feel herself growing frustrated again. "Paul, you let them set up this elaborate project to quote-unquote smoke out the killers, and you don't even know whether they searched your parents' condo for clues?" "Look Amy," Paul responded tightly, "I told you, I had no reason to question the FAA's original ruling. Then, eight years later I had no reason to question the FBI's theory and plan." He got up and tossed his lunch remains into a trash can. For awhile he stood and gazed west at the jagged mountains, hands in pockets, chin cocked defiantly, mouth drawn tight. Amy waited. Finally Paul admitted, "I didn't want to go in there. I didn't want to face the inevitable. I had a sister to comfort, a will to execute, a newly inherited business to run, and all my own hopes and dreams and ambitions and life to put on the shelf. I was so mad at them for dying. I guess I believed I'd really go crazy if I cleaned out their condo. Besides, it was their special place. They loved Colorado—I didn't, at least not since I was a kid. And Gina certainly didn't—she was wrapped up in school and friends and horses, and Colorado was just a place her parents went to be by themselves. And then Colorado went and took her parents forever and left her to be raised by Richard's parents." Amy wrapped her arms around Paul and laid her head on his
chest. "Come on, Paul. Let's go up to Vail and snoop around." "I'm not going up there and you can't make me!" Gina said quietly. Paul had never heard his sister yell or seen her angry. Like their mother, Gina knew how to keep her ballerina body under control. Like their mother, she could be stubborn. "I can't leave you here in this house by yourself," he argued back. "Why not? I'm nineteen. I'm hardly wild. And Annie needs me. She's baking this week and starting canning, and I don't want to miss either. Plus, we've got a wedding in Denver this weekend." Paul smiled at his young sister, with her preppy looks and sorority manners, excited about baking and canning. She'd be quilting next. "Will you promise you'll wear a beeper?" Paul asked indulgently. "Yes." Gina rolled her eyes. "I'll have Dennis Brown and Carol checking up on you." Paul promised. "They do anyway, all the time, and I'm getting sick of it..." "Gina, how can I make you understand that you are a wealthy young lady, and some people around here are having a problem with Donovan Industries right now. I'm just asking that you take sensible precautions." "Yeah, yeah, yeah." Then Gina stopped. "I'm sorry, Paul. I know you're just trying to look after things. But honestly, I'm fine. I'll be sensible. Now go pack so you can pick up Amy and have fun up in the mountains." He smiled at Gina, happy that she liked Amy, happy that
she was finding something interesting to do with her summer, happy that she
didn't seem so distant to him anymore. "Love you, angel." He kissed
her forehead and did as she bid. And so it was that the middle of week two found Paul and Amy hiking in the Collegiate Range. Though a Colorado native, Amy had never climbed a fourteener. Paul, when he was a teenager, had bagged seven of Colorado's fifty-four mountains that peaked at over fourteen thousand feet above sea level. They decided that the unequal situation couldn't continue and so instead of heading directly west up I-70 to Vail, they veered southwest for a couple of days of camping and hiking. They chose Mount Harvard, in honor of Paul's alma mater. "Columbia, of course, is easier. But then, I've always said that," Paul quipped. They camped at Frenchman Creek, seven miles up a jeep trail from the town of Buena Vista, or Buenie, as Amy affectionately called the pretty little town nestled comfortably between ranges. Before dawn on Wednesday, they started the ascent. Up a glacial moraine, past beaver ponds and rocky meadows where alpine flowers bravely showed their colors during the short mountain summer, over fields of scree that required careful footing, and then the summit. Thin, breathless air with little atmosphere to shield UV rays, and the world at their feet, cascading out to where the curve of the earth met the curve of heaven. For the first time in ten years, Paul felt peace. He
closed his eyes and let the cool summer breeze caress his face. He opened them
on a blue world trimmed with white clouds and golden light. Paul toasted Amy's
first ascent with a water bottle and a handful of gorp. She saluted him with a
kiss. She remembered Annie's story of her own love affair. This is sacred ground. Paul dialed Gina's beeper and waited for her to get back to him. Good girl. She did—happy, busy, focused, she was quickly becoming Annie's protege. It was late Thursday afternoon and he another hour to kill before Amy would be ready for him. They had broke camp mid-morning and arrived in Vail in time for lunch. After a hot shower and a cold beer Amy insisted that she had to do some work that afternoon on her column—she hadn't yet pulled out the old "Best of Amy Hutchins" rerun trick and wasn't about to start now. With the geek meter pegged out on the right, she fired up
her portable PC, tied her hair in a ponytail, logged on, and sent Paul out to
find out who was in town. They had spent the last two nights under the stars
working out a strategy for getting information once they arrived in Vail. The
key was getting people to talk—finding out their stories and then letting them
lead you to what you needed to know. Thursday evening Paul and Amy went to the Donovan condo. Condo? Amy thought, this place is bigger than any house I've ever lived in. That afternoon, Paul had found the building manager and explained that he was going to be opening up the condo, so no cause for alarm if he saw lights on. Amy held back while Paul tentatively walked through the rooms. He opened curtains, letting early twilight gingerly illuminate ten-year old dust. One at a time, he picked up the frames on the baby grand that held pictures of his family, frozen in time. Gina on her first horse. His father playing with him in the surf . His mother and father skiing the bowls. Their last family portrait, taken shortly after his Harvard commencement and before his Grand Tour commenced. He opened closets and drawers, fingered his mother's flashy ski outfits and flashier apre ski clothes, his father's Tyrolian sweaters and fly tying gear and fishing rods and creel. His mother's Christmas shopping list, left behind on the kitchen counter. Then, there were the presents Anne and George had already bought and wrapped. Paul picked up one addressed to him from his mother and carefully unwrapped the red and gold paper. It was a book. He turned it over and stroked it and then opened it, leafing through pages that crinkled like gossamer. He quietly buried his face in his hands and wept for his parents. Amy sat next to him. She rubbed his back until he finally turned to her and let her comfort him in her arms. He showed her the present—a 1941 first edition of the collected sonnets of Edna St. Vincent Millay. "Mother never thought any of the schools I attended required enough literature classes, especially those featuring poets from Maine." Paul explained. That night, Paul and Amy began piecing together details of his parents' last visit to Vail. George Donovan had been in Chicago at Donovan headquarters for much of November. He came out in his Lear jet to meet up with Anne and Gina in Vail on Monday of Thanksgiving week. Paul was in Europe. It was the first Thanksgiving they had not spent all together at the family home in Maine. Paul remembered talking with his mother on the phone—she hadn't been happy about him being away from home, and so decided that a quick vacation to Colorado would take the edge off his absence. The Donovan family had shared Thanksgiving dinner with then-Congressman Gil Brannon and his family up the highway in Glenwood Springs. Saturday, Gina returned to Maine for school on Monday, while Anne stayed on with George for another week. "My parents had more second honeymoons..." Paul admitted. Amy found an invoice from a Vail caterer. The Donovan's had hosted a dinner party the Wednesday after Thanksgiving. A little more digging and they found the guest list—the Brannons, Liz and Frank Delisle, Jim and Nancy Limon, Roland and Isabel Wolfe, and General and Mrs. Archie Gordon. As she read the guest list and recognized the names, Amy intuitively knew why they had all gathered for dinner. She filled in the gaps for Paul. Gil Brannon—up and coming politician just elected to Colorado's huge third congressional district. Liz Delisle—"queen of mean" land developer out of California. Amy gave Paul a glare for good measure to acknowledge Delisle's past and current entanglements with Donovan Industries and Colorado. Her husband Frank was film producer whose fantastic footage enticed the world's beautiful people to spend their money at Colorado ski resorts. Roland Wolfe—head of the Vail ski school. Jim Limon—career man with the department of agriculture and responsible for overseeing the conversion of national forest to recreational use. General Archie Gordon—U.S. army retiree, proud member of Colorado's Tenth Mountain Division, and a controlling interest in the Vail Ski Company. "Clearly your parents, or at least your father, were looking to develop another ski area. They had all the right players right here at this dinner party to make it happen. Though the idea must have died with your father." She bit her lip at how harsh the statement sounded, but Paul didn't flinch so she continued, "Eagle Creek was the last ski resort developed and that was started before 1990." Amy was really rolling now. "Paul, are you sure that your father's plane was sabotaged because of Two Forks? Couldn't the trigger have been a plan to develop a new ski area?" And then suddenly Amy saw it, "...in a pristine, no-roads part of the national forest? If that was the idea and it got out, I can believe that your father would have been a big target for the crazies? I mean, Two Forks was defeated by the EPA. Why would any group do something so heinous over what was essentially a dead issue?" Paul argued back, "I can believe that easier than I can believe that someone would murder my parents over a plan that was just at the dinner party stage." They sat on Paul's parents' couch in their condo and stared at each other as the last rays of twilight faded to black. Finally Paul got up and closed the curtains and switched on lights. "Amy, we need Dennis' help on this." "I don't trust him, Paul." Amy inwardly groaned as she saw Paul's lips tighten again as they once again found themselves at cross purposes. " Why didn't he come up with this scenario himself. This isn't rocket science. It's barely even detective work. It's just covering the bases, and he didn't do it and that's fishy." "Look, all these people who were at this dinner party have to be interviewed. We don't know the first thing about doing that. Dennis and his agents do. They're on our side, Amy, let's let them help." "I don't know." And then Amy stopped talking, scared at where her mind was taking her. "Yes, I do." She got up and got a drink of water. "I think Dennis is using you to get to the eco-terrorists who lit fires up here in Vail two years ago and are torching new developments all over Colorado and the west, including your building in Pińon." She finished her water and rinsed the glass. "I don't even know if I believe that the plane was sabotaged." "You think I'm that much of a rube?" "Paul, it doesn't make any sense. I'm sorry, but you just buried yourself in your grief and your duty to the company and you let this condo sit here unopened with all this information about this dinner party that could have led to a whole other scenario, if indeed the plane was sabotaged. Dennis saw an opportunity to entrap the people he's after now and led you to believe that they're the same ones responsible for your parent's plane crash." "So you do think I'm that much of a rube?" Paul repeated stonily. "You just think that Dennis Brown is a rogue agent out to lie and cheat his way into getting an indictment on the Vail fires case? Now, that doesn't make sense." Paul unfolded his cell phone. "I'm going to ask Dennis to interview the people at the dinner party." "I'm going to get to them first."
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