Everything To Prove. Nadia Nichols

looking for a grisly souvenir? Something with a little blood on it, maybe? If so, you’re out of luck. I already sold all that stuff off to help pay my medical bills.”

      Libby’s chin lifted in response to the hostile sarcasm in his voice. “I’m looking to hire a salvage outfit to find a plane that went down twenty-eight years ago in Evening Lake, just south of the Brooks Range.”

      Now that she’d announced her business for being there, he eyed her up and down as if trying to decide if she was worth talking to. “Evening Lake?”

      “Yes.”

      “Any idea where it crashed?”

      “Not exactly. I’m hoping to find out more after I speak with some people.”

      “Evening Lake is big. I’ve fished it. Spent a couple weeks camped up there a few years ago. Must be a good three, four hundred feet deep in some places.”

      “So I’ve been told,” Libby said, wishing he wouldn’t stare at her quite so brazenly. She decided that he was both crude and rude and any sympathy she’d initially felt for his battered condition evaporated as the heat came up in her cheeks.

      “When you’re talking remote salvage operations, you’re talking big bucks.”

      “How big?” Libby asked.

      “For a salvage operation on Evening Lake…that’d take a crew of at least three people, flying in all that gear and some pretty sophisticated equipment. Just finding the plane could take some time. Once it’s found, purchasing the salvage rights and getting the wreckage to the surface could run you maybe seventy-five, eighty grand. Possibly a lot more.”

      “I see.” Libby was staggered by the sum. “What if the plane crashed in shallow water?”

      “If it were in shallow water, the initial search party would have spotted it.” He rubbed the stubble on his jaw. “I’m assuming there was a search?”

      Libby nodded. “But they may have been looking in the wrong location, and if there was a lot of chop on the surface, wouldn’t that have made it difficult to spot anything?”

      “Maybe. But over the years a helluva lot of planes have flown in and out of there. If nobody’s reported seeing anything in all that time, I’d have to assume it’s way down there, and if you’re not sure the plane really crashed in the lake, you could be wasting a lot of time and money. Were there any eyewitnesses?”

      Libby shook her head. “Not to my knowledge. But the plane was taking off from a lodge, the only one on the lake at that time. They think it went down just after takeoff. The pontoons were found half a mile down the outlet of the lake.”

      “Must’ve crashed real close to the mouth of the river, then. The wind blows pretty strong through the pass there and would’ve pushed the pontoons clear to the opposite shore otherwise.”

      “That’s what the searchers figured. How do you base your salvage fees?”

      “Depends on the size of the plane.”

      “It was a de Havilland Beaver. Six-seater.”

      “We require a deposit of ten grand up front. You’d pay a straight hourly fee contingent upon the size of the crew and the equipment being used. When we find the wreckage, we’re willing to negotiate fair salvage trades toward payment if the plane is deemed restorable.”

      “What shape do you think the plane would be in after all that time?”

      “Pretty good, if it was down deep and wasn’t demolished when it hit the water. It’s the ice and salt water that plays hell with wrecks. The plane would probably be in close to the same shape as it was when it crashed.”

      “If you found the wreckage in just two hours and raised it the same day, would that be less than ten thousand?”

      “The minimum charge for any remote salvage operation is twenty-five grand. The retrieval cost of the last plane we dredged up out of a lake ran three times that amount. If you don’t mind my asking, why is salvaging this plane so important after twenty-eight years?”

      “It’s not the plane so much as what it was carrying,” Libby said. “Thank you for your information. It’s been helpful.”

      He gave her a keen look and rubbed the stubble on his jaw again. “My name’s Dodge. I own this business. Let me know if you want us to take a look.”

      “Thank you,” Libby said, accepting the business card he pulled out of the chest pocket of his coveralls and glancing down at it briefly. Carson Colman Dodge. Fancy name.

      She left the Quonset hut in a discouraged mood. Twenty-five thousand dollars was an impossible amount for her to come up with, never mind seventy-five. She had the sinking feeling that she’d made a terrible mistake in giving up the residency at Mass General. But she was here, so she might as well persevere for as long as she could. By 10:00 a.m. Libby was on a flight to Fairbanks, hoping to speak to Charlie Stuck’s son, Bob, about what Charlie might have told him about the incident.

      CHAPTER TWO

      “MY FATHER NEVER said nothin’ to me about anything,” an overweight and balding Bob Stuck said seven hours later, standing outside the door of his one-bay garage in Moose Creek in the watery spring sunshine. Six rusted trucks cluttered the small yard and another took up the garage. He sported a gold hoop in his left ear, a diamond stud in his right and his hands were black with grease. “He was never home. Always off chasing poachers and fish hogs and women. That was more important to him than raising a son.” He spat as if talking about his father put a bad taste in his mouth.

      “Did he have any close friends that you know of? Anyone he might have talked to about that plane crash?” Libby asked.

      “Most of ’em are dead now. But Lana’s still alive. She lives over on the Chena. She and Charlie shacked up together about ten years back. She took care of him better than he deserved, cooked for him, cleaned his cabin, washed his clothes and waited up nights till he came home from the bars. Then he had that stroke and the hospital put him in the old folks’ home. She wanted the doctors to let him come back home. She ranted and raved in the hospital, made a big scene, said she could take care of him better than any nursing home.” Bob shook his head. “Yeah, she might remember something. She don’t talk to me, but she might talk to you.” He gave her a baleful stare from red-veined eyes. “You’re Indian, ain’t you?”

      LANA PAUL LIVED IN an old cabin sitting on sill logs that had rotted into the riverbank over the years, giving the building a decided tilt toward the water. When Libby parked her rental car next to the dilapidated wreck of an old Ford truck, the cabin door opened and a stout older woman with a bright blue kerchief tied over her head peered out.

      “Lana?” Libby said, climbing out of the car. “I’m Libby Wilson. I’d like to talk to you about Charlie Stuck.”

      The black eyes glittered with suspicion. “Charlie’s dead. They locked him away in a place full of old people and bad smells and he died.”

      “I know that, and I’m sorry. But I want to talk to you about what he did, about his job as a warden. I think he might have known something about my father’s death. My father was Connor Libby. He lived in a lodge on Evening Lake.”

      “Charlie might have known something, maybe, but I don’t,” she said, and the door of the old cabin banged shut. Libby stood for a few moments in the drab detritus of mud season, listening to the Chena rush past and wondering why the cabin hadn’t been swept away by floodwaters years ago. She was turning to leave when the door opened and the woman leaned out, giving her a sharp look.

      “You got any tobacco?” she said. “I got papers but no tobacco.”

      “I can bring you some,” Libby replied.

      The woman nodded and the door closed again. Libby drove into Fairbanks and at the big grocery store she bought rolling papers and tobacco.