Page 49 of Red Boar's Baby

“Her?” Costa asked, visibly alarmed.

“Yeah, her. Women do this too, you know.” He turned to Diana, addressing her directly. “You look like the type who’d be a natural. Capable and physical?—”

“No,” Costa said.

Diana had been gearing up for a no herself, but that brought her head around in a hurry. “What do you meanno, Quinn?”

“I mean no. Absolutely not.”

“Cesar Quinn Costa, can I talk to you inprivate?”

She hustled him off to the porch.

“I didn’t realize we were having a negotiation,” Costa said.

“You can’t shut me out of this investigation. I know I’m not one of your agents, but that also means you can’t tell me what to do.”

“You really want to go poke around in the shifter fighting underground by yourself?”

“No,” Diana said sharply, “but I’m not going to sit here on the ranch, feeding chickens and riding horses while you and your agents investigate without me. They burned my house down, Quinn!”

“I know.” Costa put a hand on her arm. “How does this sound? We’ll let Vic ask questions, and you and I will drive out to the aviation charter company that owns the plane and see what they know. We can do it this afternoon. What do you think?”

Diana turned it over in her head, trying to feel out if it was a sop or a bribe, but it didn’t seem to be. It felt like a genuine peace offering. “All right,” she said. “Let’s do that.”

CHAPTER17

After the serenepeace of the ranch, Costa found himself unexpectedly bothered by the hustle, noise, and urgency of Tucson traffic.

Diana was once again in his passenger seat, quiet and pensive, though he didn’t think she was actually still mad at him. Vic and Delgado had headed out at about the same time, leaving Molly in the care of Costa’s relatives along with Emmeline. Vic would start nosing about in search of the local branch of the shifter fighting underground, while Delgado planned to head back to work and touch base with Agent Caine.

“So the place is called Desert Tours Aviation,” Costa said, glancing at his GPS. They navigated around the outskirts of Tucson and went on heading west, away from the city. “According to Caine, they do flightseeing tours, carry cargo and passengers, just general all-around small aviation stuff. They work with resource development companies doing site surveys or ferrying cargo to mines and facilities in remote locations, do custom passenger charters, that kind of thing.”

Diana nodded, and he realized belatedly that she probably knew most of this already from her earlier search and rescue. “Have they ever been involved with anything criminal?”

“Not that we know of.”

The company was based out of a small airport, little more than a cluster of buildings and hangars, a windsock, and a fence around a single small runway. Following his GPS, Costa pulled in behind a white and red painted building adjacent to a pair of hangars. There was a narrow parking area next to a large fuel tank labeled AVIATION FUEL ONLY. A small, bright yellow plane was pulled in next to it, and there was a man in coveralls standing with one foot in the door and leaning over the wing, fiddling with the fuel cap on top.

“Help you folks?” he called.

“Are you with Desert Tours?” Costa asked. “We’re investigators here to talk to the owners about the crash.” He briefly flipped open his ID, giving an impression of what was inside without really showing the contents.

“Another crash investigator? Well, sure, come this way.”

They walked towards the buildings. The coverall-clad man wiped his hands on a rag and shook hands with them, introducing himself as Benny. Costa simply introduced the two of them as Costa and Reid, leaving their actual titles vague.

“Really a hell of a thing about poor Morty, huh?” Benny said. “I mean, you always know it’s a possibility, but having it happen to someone you know—whoof, it really gets you in the gut.”

“Did you know the deceased—er, Morty very well?” Diana asked.

Costa wondered if it was just his imagination that Benny seemed to look a little evasive at this. “I mean, everyone knows everybody around here. We weren’t really buddies, if that’s what you mean. I’m ground crew, refueling and cargo handling, so I don’t really know the pilots all that well. The guy who died, he was one of—” He paused.

“One of what?” Diana asked.

“Oh, there’s a couple of pilots who get choice jobs, you know? The boss asks for them personally. I know there’s some resentment among the other pilots about it.”

“How much resentment?” Costa asked. “Enough to hurt someone over it?”

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