No.

Then give it a rest.

She watched Ulanie and Vern disappear into the admin building, before facing forward again and readjusting her headset. Jim, Lyda Blue did not kill herself. How many times did you see her, Kate?

Once. Well, twice, if I include on the airstrip yesterday.

How long ago was the first time?

A month.

When you spent how much time with her?

A couple of hours.

The Cessna rolled forward, jolting over the gravel. Sitting as far forward as she could get without actually occupying one of the two front seats, Mutt‘s head bumped Kate‘s shoulder. A lot can happen in a month, Kate. And her self-acknowledged best friend was a guy who was by all accounts unconditionally suicidal.

Jim—

We‘ve got a preexisting allergic condition, crumbs from cookies that I‘m betting aggravated the condition, and a note. Notice I‘m not even mentioning the empty holster. If it matches the gun I found, what was Lyda Blue‘s gun doing out in that clearing? Was Lyda involved somehow in Gammons‘s disappearance? And did that involvement lead her to take her own life?

When I was talking to the people who knew Lyda Blue, Kate said, I asked them if anyone else hadn‘t come back to work at the same time Dewayne Gammons didn‘t come back. Three of them said this guy Rick Allen.

You think he might be our DB?

Jim! We got a guy eaten by a bear, only it turns out the bear ate somebody else, and the guy who we thought got eaten is alive. Now we got the live guy‘s girlfriend dead, only she‘s got a holster that is probably going to match the pistol you found by the dead guy. Kate shook her head. At this point I‘m willing to swear in court that the dead guy is Jimmy Hoffa, just so I can get off this merry-go-round before I throw up.

The Cessna rose into the air. Jim put the nose on Niniltna and pulled the throttle out. George‘s last flight for Anchorage on the new schedule left in forty-five minutes. The day had gone cloudy, with the tallest peaks in the back range obscured and the nearer mountains muted to a dull olive by lack of sunshine. It looked cold. It felt cold. Kate shivered.

She was still unhappy at the thought of Lyda‘s suicide, and Jim was not unsympathetic. You liked her, Kate, I get that. But if you‘re convinced it wasn‘t an accident, and I admit there is enough circumstantial evidence to at least support the possibility that no way did she eat a peanut butter cookie by mistake, then it was suicide, or it was murder.

Their tailwind caught them a good jolt and Kate was thrown up against her seat belt. Another lumpity bump and she pressed her hand flat against the ceiling to keep her butt in her seat.

Jim corrected for drift and said, Either way, we‘ll have to wait on the autopsy. In the meantime, nobody‘s going anywhere, and we‘ve got a pile of evidence to sift through.