The living room of the house had a high-beamed ceiling with a bedroom loft. The decor was an expensive conglomeration of art deco furnishings. Pitt felt as though he had stepped back into the nineteen thirties. Lee scurried into the kitchen and quickly returned with two opened beers. Pitt couldn’t help noticing there were no labels on the bottles.

“Hope you like home brew,” said Lee. “Took me four years to get just the right blend between too sweet and too bitter. Runs about eight percent alcohol by volume.”

Pitt savored the taste. It was different from what he expected. If he hadn’t detected a slight trace of yeast, he would have pronounced the taste fit for commercial sale.

Vixen 03

I 21

Maxine set the table and waved for them to come around. She set out a large bowl of potato salad, a pot of baked beans, and a platter of thinly sliced rounds of meat. Lee replaced the rapidly emptied beer bottles with two fresh ones and started passing the plates.

The potato salad was hearty with just the right amount of tartness. The baked beans were thick with honey. Pitt did not recognize the meat or its taste, but found it delicious. In spite of the fact that he had eaten with Loren only an hour before, the aroma of the home-cooked meal inspired him to put it away like a farmhand.

“You folks lived here long?” Pitt asked between mouthfuls.

“We used to vacation in the Sawatch as far back as the late fifties,” said Lee. “Moved here after I retired from the Navy. I was a deep-water diver. Got a bad case of the bends and took an early discharge. Let’s see, that must have been in the summer of seventy-one.”

“Seventy,” Maxine said, correcting him.

Lee Raferty winked at Pitt. “Max never forgets anything.”

“Know of any wrecked aircraft, say within a ten-mile radius?”

“I don’t recollect any.” Lee looked at his wife. “How ‘bout it, Max?”

“Honest to Pete, Lee, where’s your mind? Don’t you remember that poor doctor and his family that was all killed when their plane crashed behind Diamond? … How’s the beans, Mr. Pitt?”

“Excellent,” Pitt said. “Is Diamond a town near here?”

“Used to be. Now it’s only a crossroads and a dude ranch.”

“I recall now,” Lee said, reaching for seconds on the meat. “It was one of them little single-engine jobs. Burned to a crisp. Nothin’ left. Took the sheriff’s department over a week to identify the remains.”

“Happened in April of seventy-four,” Maxine said.

“I’m interested in a much larger plane,” Pitt explained patiently. “An airliner. Probably came down thirty or forty years ago.”

Maxine twisted her round face and stared unseeing at the ceiling. Finally she shook her head. “No, can’t say as I ever heard of any air disaster of that magnitude. At least not around these parts.”