yet to pan out. “I’m capable of flying low, but I wouldn’t try it in those hills. Besides, this plane is a lot faster and way more maneuverable than my glider. I can get out in a hurry at the first sign of trouble.”
Cutch seemed to accept her response and stayed quiet as she finished checking the plane and climbed aboard. She reached behind his seat for the extra headset and noticed her camera still in the backseat of the four-seat plane. A thought occurred to her.
“Do you know much about taking pictures?” she asked.
He grinned back slyly. “Don’t you recall my 4-H entries?”
Elise almost smiled back, but then she remembered the year he’d swept the purple ribbon right out from under her. She’d been nine years old, he eleven, and though she now realized the composition of his scenic Loess Hills landscape had been precociously perfect, at the time, she’d been devastated. Her father had chalked up the incident to just another example of how she couldn’t trust a McCutcheon. “Can you still use a camera?”
“Maybe not as well as you can, but well enough.”
She handed him the digital camera and explained. “It’s all set for aerial photographs, so all you’ll have to do is point and shoot. Oh, and don’t erase the stuff on my memory card—I was out with Rodney yesterday taking pictures of the Mitchum’s corn maze. I haven’t had a chance to download the pictures yet.”
Cutch accepted the camera from her. “How’s the aerial photography business going?”
Her mind focused on the preflight check, Elise murmured a distracted response. “It keeps me busy, but it doesn’t pay the bills. I have to pay a pilot to take me up since it’s impossible to fly and take pictures at the same time. That takes a big chunk out of my profit.” She toggled a switch. “So I still do crop dusting for Leroy on the side.”
“That’s too bad. You’re such a talented photographer.”
Cutch’s comment surprised Elise, and she looked up from her checklist to find him leaning across his seat toward her, his face much nearer to hers than she’d have liked inside the close quarters of the cockpit. She felt her cheeks turn red and looked nervously back down at the laminated booklet in her hands. “As I recall, you’re the one who won the purple ribbon.”
“Only once. You won it every other year.”
“But that’s the year I remember.” When she dared to glance back up at him, she found him still leaning her way, still looking at her in that unsettling way that made her heart leap inside her more violently than it did during a bad landing.
“Funny what we choose to remember,” he said, chuckling softly and turning away to adjust the headset over his ears.
Elise pulled her attention back to her preflight checklist. She had to focus. Though she’d been flying for years and knew the drill backward and forward, having Cutch in her plane was just the kind of distraction that could cause her to miss something, and today was the last day she wanted that to happen.
“Sky Belle to Big Bird, Sky Belle to Big Bird.” She radioed Uncle Leroy in the office.
“Sky Belle, this is Big Bird. What are you up to this morning?”
Elise relayed their flight plan to her uncle, who okayed her for takeoff. Fortunately, he didn’t ask any questions about why she was headed out. If she’d talked to him in person first, he certainly would have done so then, but she knew he liked to keep their radio conversations strictly professional, which was why she’d waited until she was in the plane to talk to him. Hopefully, he wouldn’t suspect anything strange was up.
With Cutch safely buckled in, Elise taxied out and lifted off, feeling more in control with her plane in the air than she had since she’d heard the first shot that morning. She was at home in the sky. It was her peaceful retreat where none of the pain in her life—not her absent mother or her struggling business or the ongoing feud with the McCutcheons—could trouble her. The invasion of her peace was just another reason why the attack that morning had disturbed her so deeply.
The airspace of southwestern Iowa was empty as usual, and the clear skies and gentle breeze made for perfect flying conditions. They quickly and uneventfully found themselves closing in on Cutch’s pecan grove. Elise aligned the plane with what she could recall of her flight path that morning.
“We’re right above where I was flying earlier,” she explained to Cutch. “We’re coming up on the spot where I heard the first shot.”
“When we get to that area, can you try to get a little closer and maybe circle around? I haven’t had the opportunity to fly over the property in years, not since my Grandpa McCutcheon used to give me flying lessons, but I’d like to think if there was something out of place I’d be able to spot it from the air.”
“Sure,” Elise agreed. “There’s a pretty wide valley about there where it’s almost level for a good stretch. I shouldn’t have any trouble coming around.” She eased the plane a little lower in the sky. “Seems like I was right around here when I heard the first shot.”
Cutch had his face nearly plastered to the window. “Right there,” he said with excitement. “I see something below us. Can you come around again?”
“Go ahead and open that window,” Elise instructed as she swung the plane in a wide arc. “I’ve taken the screw out so you can remove the pane and stick your head out. You can even use the camera outside the window. Just make sure you don’t drop it.”
Elise kept her eyes on where she was headed, focusing on maneuvering between the tree-covered hills, but she heard the air rush in as Cutch successfully removed the Plexiglas window.
“Does that give you a better view?”
“Much better.” He started clicking away with the camera before asking, “Is this close to where they started shooting at you?”
“We just passed over the spot. Why?”
Cutch pulled his head in and lowered the camera. “I know why they were shooting at you. And you’re probably right—they weren’t just trying to spook you. I think they wanted you dead.”
THREE
“What?” Elise startled at the controls and had to force herself to pay attention to what she was doing. Her pulse rate kicked up. Though the nature of the attack had indicated malicious intent, she’d been trying to convince herself ever since that the cause was more innocent. She didn’t like what the alternative implied. “Are you serious?”
“I wish I could say I was joking. And I really wish I hadn’t seen what I just saw.” His words sounded somber, strained.
“What was it?” Elise nearly screeched in her fear and impatience.
“I’m almost certain that was an anhydrous ammonia tank down there.”
“Anhydrous ammonia? What’s so sinister about that?” The white tanks, their sides and ends brightly painted with warnings identifying the volatile contents, were a common site in agrarian Holyoake County. “Farmers use anhydrous all the time on their crops. I see those tanks every day.”
“Not in a pecan grove, you don’t.” Cutch
