Hot Point (18 page)

Denise went through huffing out a breath of relief and then blushing bright red. Oh, he really had to find out the story behind that particular look.

“Might be a few.” Dale's laugh was as soft as his daughter's.

Denise stared at her father's back in clear shock. She was a step behind him, so only Vern noticed. Apparently her father's laugh was as rare and elusive as her own.

Dale led them forward into the main hall.

Vern hadn't been here in a decade and wished he had a month instead of an afternoon to explore. He'd spent a couple of days in his teens over in the World War I and II Galleries. He'd imagined flying with aces, sliding a Sopwith Camel or Curtiss Jenny biplane out of the sun to stoop on a Fokker triplane. Or taking a Messerschmitt 109 aloft to see what one of the last great prop-driven fighters could really do. Even if he'd never been much of a fixed-wing guy.

But the main gallery was the heart and soul of the museum. Over the lobby were reproductions of da Vinci's rotorcraft, the Montgolfier balloon that made the first flight and first manned flight, and the Wright Brothers
Flyer
. Beyond that stood the early airmail planes—the need to move the mail had been the major driving force behind the beginning of flight innovation.

For contrast, up and to the left was a collection of drones including one like Steve's that he flew for MHA. They progressed to the balcony edge and from there the room was dominated by the M-21 Blackbird, the fastest production aircraft ever built.

Three times the speed of sound. It made his palms sweat just to look at it; it was a dozen times faster than his beautiful Firehawk. It was a hundred feet of pitch-black, evil reconnaissance plane.

“There's one story for you.” Dale was pointing up at a DC-3. The same plane MHA still used for its smokejumpers. It might be a museum piece, but it was an immensely reliable museum piece particularly well suited to smokejumping.

“The bunny rabbit.” Denise was standing at the handrail between them.

“The bunny rabbit,” Dale confirmed.

It was odd. Their words were close, companionable sounds as he'd expect from family. But their greeting at the front door had been stiff, a sideways one-armed hug so brief that he'd have missed it if he blinked. Dale was nearly Vern's height, but there'd been no gentle kiss atop his daughter's head.

“When we first hung the DC-3, it was a standard cargo paint job, blah-gray. As part of an acknowledgment for some major financial assistance, we wanted to repaint her in Alaska Airlines colors. So, we lowered her to a few feet off the floor and built a plastic tent over her to catch the fumes. You were what, six?”

“Seven,” Denise said quietly.

What had she been like at seven? Vern wondered if he could ask, but there was a reserve to her father that made him suspect it would not be a welcome inquiry.

“Then we vented the tent out that door over there with a big tube.”

“A bunny got in through the vent.”

“So there we were, running around the museum trying to catch the rabbit.”

“And I was begging them not to hurt it.”

“And I was telling her not to go near it because it was wild and who knew what contagions it carried.”

“It was so cute. I wanted to adopt it.”

Their words were overlapping. How could they be so close yet stand a foot apart as if they weren't related? Vern liked picturing the little girl—he imagined her with long, blond hair even then, floating along behind her—as they chased the rabbit under this plane and around that one. A pound of scampering furball creating complete mayhem for a dozen adults and one child.

“We finally herded it back to the door.”

“And it was free.” Denise sighed happily as if somehow a part of her had gone free with it to romp over—what? Were there fields around the museum twenty years ago? One of the thirty busiest airports in the country to one side and a congested six-lane thoroughfare to the other. Where had the rabbit come from and gone to? Or had it somehow been manifested in that place and moment of time so that the child Denise could dream of it running free through meadow grass and wildflowers?

Oddly, the story did tell him something of the woman beside him. Behind that careful exterior was a dreamer.
What
dreams
do
you
have, Wrench?
He expected that they'd been so long buried that to even ask would send them skittering aside as fast as the legendary rabbit.

They strolled through the museum. Except when nudged, Dale spoke of the planes, not the girl standing beside him. Date of acquisition of this one, why that one was of special historical interest.

“What's with the dog?”

They were looking up at an HH-52 SeaGuard Coast Guard helicopter, one of the few choppers in the collection. The SeaGuard had predated his own service, but it was a classic—the mainstay of the fleet for decades. With its shallow, boat-hull bottom, it could make water landings if conditions allowed. This one hung twenty feet above them. And in the pilot's lower right window, the curved pane that would be down by his feet and offer a view of the sea as he hovered to a rescue, sat a large stuffed dog. He was brown and white and grinned down at them.

“He's mine.”

Vern checked. Still no blush. He hadn't hit the blushing story yet. It had to be around here somewhere.

“When we were hanging it”—Dale had stuffed his hands in his pockets as if he didn't know what to do with them—“Denise asked what happened when they rescued people. Were they scared? When I said they probably were, but they would also be glad to be rescued, she asked if they ever rescued kids.”

Dale appeared to become less comfortable with him, rather than more, as they went. It puzzled Vern. Most people liked him. Of course the fact that he was sleeping with Dale's daughter probably had something to do with it.

“She disappeared for a few minutes, apparently up to my office. When she came back, we had the chopper halfway up into position. She insisted that we lower it back down, then she put her favorite stuffed animal there. Said any pilot who was a good one would have a stuffed animal to give to a scared child.”

Denise eyed Vern speculatively.

He couldn't help himself. Right in front of her father, he pulled her into a hug and kissed her on the head. She had the best heart. “Yes,” he told her. “I was usually too busy flying, but I made sure that the crew chief always had a couple of stuffers tucked away somewhere. Nothing as magnificent as your dog up there, but it is an old Coast Guard tradition.”

She stayed in his arms a moment longer.

Dale's face held an odd expression. He wasn't glaring at Vern. Instead he was looking at his daughter and appeared to be terribly sad. With a shock, Vern realized that it wasn't him that Dale was uncomfortable around; it was his own daughter.

Solving that mystery suddenly felt far more important than finding whatever story had made Denise blush.

* * *

Denise was glad when Dad joined them for lunch down the street at Randy's. She knew that it was hard for him, but she could tell that he was glad to see her.

“It's tradition,” she explained to Vern. “The café at the museum opened only shortly before Mom died. Our place to eat together was always Randy's. The owner is ex-Air Force, and his wife is Italian.”

The restaurant was far cozier than the museum's utilitarian café. It had deep, red-leather seats and more flight memorabilia per square foot than anywhere else she'd ever been. From postcards to pitot tubes to airplanes hanging from the ceiling. Even as a young girl, she'd always had permission to come here alone. Lucia would keep an eye on her and slip her the occasional piece of pie. She'd spent endless hours studying each piece of memorabilia…and occasionally doing her homework as well.

She'd been on pins and needles throughout morning. At first because she'd arrived in front of her dad in complete disarray from Vern's earnest attentions to her body. But more so because of the conversations. The past was always there, but rarely spoken of. Vern's questions had brought back so many good memories, but she knew from long experience that you couldn't have the good without soon remembering the bad. Dad was doing his best, but it hurt watching how hard it was for him.

He'd suggested that they visit the Restoration Center together. It would take an hour, maybe two with traffic to drive there. The Boeing museum's restoration hangar was up at Paine Field in Everett.

Vern had solved that by loading them into Yuri's Bell chopper. Denise had squeezed into the middle of the bench seat, trying not to be too obvious about leaning against Vern so that she didn't have to lean against her dad. Physical contact had never been comfortable with him, but the cockpit was so small that it was hard to give him the space he always seemed to need.

Thankfully, the flight was no more than thirty minutes. A special request to the tower and they were able to land on the grass close beside the center's two hangars. Outside she showed Vern one of the first Learjets and the very first Boeing 727, and he poked around an old Air Force Piasecki CH-21 Shawnee helicopter.

“This was always my favorite place,” she told Vern as they headed inside. Somewhere along the way, she'd taken his hand to lead him ahead. She'd never been with a man who wanted to hold her hand in public. Every man she'd ever been with was like her father—no PDA. Public displays of affection were for other women, not her. As if she wasn't worth it, something she now understood to be an evil lie that she'd completely bought into. Vern was practically attached to her, and she was discovering how much she could enjoy that.

“We came here every Saturday. You have to start up here on the mezzanine level.” She led him up the steel-grate stairs to the small group of weary Formica tables where most of the staff and volunteers ate and took breaks.

In a space that would normally hold four or five small jets or other working craft, there were crammed more than thirty planes—each in various stages of restoration. They were spread out down the hangar in either direction. The massive de Havilland Comet 4 jet had become a fixture. They'd cut out a section of the hangar's wall, made a large circular opening, and stuck the plane's entire nose section inside the hangar. From the outside, it looked as if the plane had crashed into the building.

There was a Russian fighter and a Japanese Zero. A couple of gliders and even a Boeing Apache attack helicopter hanging from the ceiling in the crowded space. The cavernous area was a massive jumble of airframes in varying stages of repair that took even the practiced eye a while to sort out.

The huge space echoed with numerous discussions among the forty workers on the floor, covered by the punch of air hammers knocking loose rust, the high whine of drills cutting out old rivets, and even the sharp snap-and-hiss of welding torches.

She breathed it in as Vern admired the view. Denise let the smell of old planes and new paint wash over her. This was as close to home as she had. More than the echoingly quiet house at Fauntleroy, more than the museum. This was where she belonged.

Denise shared a look with her dad and they both glanced down, as they always did, at a space currently filled with a WWII Grumman FM-2 Wildcat carrier-based fighter plane. Mom and Dad had met right there, working on restoring a Lockheed Model 10-E Electra. She'd been a friend of Linda Finch who had restored it to look exactly like Amelia Earhart's final, fatal plane. Dad had been doing some volunteer work, trying to get on as a docent at the time.

He'd proposed in the finished cockpit. Denise had never before wondered if they'd made love there, but after this morning's experience in Vern's helicopter, she rather suspected they had. She could feel the heat rising to her cheeks. Parents didn't do things like that. Though she half hoped for her dad's sake that he had.

Vern inspected her curiously, and Denise did her best to ignore him, but it wasn't working. Standing here, looking down at the shop floor of her favorite place on the planet, she felt far more naked than stripped to the skin but for one sock.

“Denise!” The shout from the floor could only come from one man. Sure enough, Huey Kemble heaved his powerful bulk out of the belly of a Vought Cutlass jet and headed in their direction. He was puffing as he reached the top of the stairs, his long, gray ponytail even longer now.

She returned his bear hug, wrapping her arms as far around him as she could. He thumped her on the back several times before letting her go.

“And who is this young man come sniffing around my girl?”

“Am I that obvious?” Vern grimaced in that friendly way of his. “Vern Taylor.” And he extended his hand.

Denise had to smile. How like him to play none of the cards that would automatically get him in good here. So she did it for him. “Chopper pilot. Ex-Coast Guard and now he flies one of the Firehawks I service for MHA.”

“MHA? That's solid.” Huey, typically, had forgotten that he hadn't yet introduced himself.

“This is Huey, uh, only I get to call him that. Hubert”—she gave it the proper French roll—“Kemble. He's the curator here at the Restoration Center.”

“Curator, chief mechanic, and I can fix a toilet when it's plugged. When Denise was even shorter than she is now, she couldn't pronounce my name, so I told her to call me Huey. She said that if I was named for a duck—Huey, Dewey, and Louie—then where was my ducktail? So”—he pulled on his gray ponytail for show—“I grew one.”

“That was because of me?” She hadn't remembered that.

“Of course, sweetheart. Anything for our Denise.”

She felt suddenly smaller, even more so than normal. Vern's height, her father's massive silence, and Huey's equally massive frame and personality were all shrinking her by comparison.

“I remember many things.” Huey winked at her as he waved for them to sit at a small table overlooking the floor. “I remember the day that you—”