Page 16 of Unnatural Death

The news chopper slowly swoops around in a one-eighty, retreating to the north. Lorna radios the Dulles International Airport tower, reporting possible problems with her avionics. The aircraft is acting off-nominal. She’s unnerved and unable to keep it out of her tone as she asks permission to reenter the class B airspace.

“Hope you’re able to fix whatever it is, Seven-Charlie-Delta,” Lucy tells her over the air. “Have a good one.”

“You haven’t heard the end of this!” Lorna threatens.

Beneath her bravado she’s scared and embarrassed. That’s a bad combination. It often leads to revenge.

“Can she cause you a problem?” I ask Lucy.

“I’m sure she’ll try. She already bad-mouths me to anyone who will listen.”

“How long has she been flying Dana Diletti’s chopper?”

“About six months.”

“And before that?” I ask.

“Why the interrogation?”

“Because the two of you seem to have preexisting hostilities.” I look over at my niece’s strikingly pretty profile, the stubborn set of her jaw, her glasses tinted dark in the glare.

“Since she arrived on the scene, she’s made her presence known to me in various ways that I’d call antisocial.” Lucy has a hard time making friends, always has. But enemies come easily.

“Maybe her problem is that she likes you a little too much,” I offer, and that’s not uncommon when it comes to my niece.

“The feeling’s definitely not mutual,” Lucy says. “And the good news is we just bought ourselves some time. She’ll have to run diagnostics, making sure nothing’s wrong, and nothing will be. She won’t be back for an hour at least, if at all.”

We resume on course, flying over a tire store, a school, a library, the volunteer fire department, downtown Nokesville passing under us in the blink of an eye. Houses give way to fallow cornfields with rusting silos and decaying outbuildings. We pass a Christmas tree farm and greenhouses, then lush fields speckled with bright orange pumpkins.

As we cross Route 646, Lucy reduces power, slowing down. We’re getting close, and I recognize the pond surrounded by pastureland. I’m familiar with the long shiny silver sheds, the big brick house and outbuildings near a cemetery. The nameABEL DAIRYis painted on a rusting blue silo, and I tell Lucy about the man who overturned his tractor several months ago.

“It’s strange. I didn’t realize how close the dairy farm is to where we’re going. It’s an entirely different perspective from up here,” I say to her. “There’s never been a good explanation for the victim suddenly driving the tractor erratically. It’s one of those frustrating occasions when the autopsy told me what killed someone but not how it happened. I’ve not finalized his manner of death. It’s still pending investigation, which is sticky. You can imagine what the life insurance people are doing.”

“A big policy?”

“I can only assume.”

“They want it to be a suicide, let me guess,” Lucy says. “A lot of policies have special provisions that limit the claims or cancel them altogether if the insured commits suicide.”

“I don’t believe the victim in this case killed himself. That would be a bizarre way to do it and no guarantee it would work,” I reply.

“Unless he wanted it to look like an accident so his beneficiaries would get the payout. If he shot himself or took pills it would be more obvious. But flipping over his tractor?”

“I asked all sorts of questions about the victim’s mental health and habits,” I reply. “I’ve never had any reason to think he committed suicide.”

CHAPTER 7

FABIAN AND I RESPONDED to the scene at Abel Dairy. That’s why what we’re flying over looks familiar,” I explain.

“And it abuts the Mansons’ farm.” Lucy points out a patchwork quilt of fields.

Around it is the forestland of Buckingham Run, spreading out like a fiery autumn ocean with swaths of dark evergreens. The Mansons’ hundred-acre run-down property is on the same narrow dirt road as the dairy farm. Huck and Brittany might have known the man who was crushed in his cornfield under mysterious circumstances. Now the three of them are gone violently.

“You could see the crazy tire tracks as if he were trying to get away from something when he flipped over.” I describe what I found when I got to the scene.

“Get away from what?” Lucy asks.

“The first thought was he ran over a yellowjacket nest or something like that,” I reply. “Or maybe he was having a heart attack or a stroke. I found no evidence of any such thing, and police decided something must have startled him.”

---