Dead Stick (A Lucas Hallam Mystery Book 2) Read online

  DEAD STICK

  A LUCAS HALLAM MYSTERY BOOK TWO

  L.J. WASHBURN

  Dead Stick

  Kindle Edition

  © Copyright 2022 (As Revised) L.J. Washburn

  Rough Edges Press

  An Imprint of Wolfpack Publishing

  5130 S. Fort Apache Rd. 215-380

  Las Vegas, NV 89148

  roughedgespress.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events, places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, other than brief quotes for reviews.

  eBook ISBN 978-1-68549-062-1

  Paperback ISBN 978-1-68549-063-8

  CONTENTS

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  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  A Look at: Dog Heavies

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  About the Author

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  To my parents Paul and Naomi Washburn,

  Harold and Jodie Reasoner, and

  John and Norma Kinchen,

  with my thanks

  DEAD STICK

  ONE

  Against a cloudless sky so blue and bright the eyes hurt to look at it, four airplanes swooped and twisted in a dance that was beautiful and deadly at the same time. Fragile constructions of wire, wood and canvas, they darted here and there, flames flickering from the machine guns mounted on them. It seemed that at any moment, the sheer strain of the maneuvers they were going through would tear them to pieces, dooming their luckless pilots to plunge earthward to their deaths.

  Lucas Hallam had never seen anything like it.

  He stood well back, away from the director's position. It was hard for anyone as tall and broad as he was to be unobtrusive, but Hallam was trying. He had worked for Danby Swan as an extra on a couple of pictures, and he knew that any interruption during shooting would send the man into a downright fit.

  Hallam wondered if Swan would remember him. Carl McGinley, the producer of Death to the Kaiser! and the man who had called him in the first place, knew that Hallam split his time between movie work and an occasional case as a private detective. Hallam doubted that Swan knew that, though.

  Swan crouched beside one of the cameras, urging the cameraman to stay with the planes. A tall, lean man with dark blond hair, Swan wore boots, jodhpurs, and a white shirt open at the throat. Hallam thought the outfit was a little ridiculous, but he had to admit that Swan wore it well. He had quite a reputation among the leading ladies of the film colony, and Hallam suspected a lot of it was deserved.

  Hallam heard a step behind him and turned his head to see Carl McGinley approaching. McGinley put a smile on his pudgy face and said, "Hello, Lucas. Glad you could come out."

  "Howdy." Hallam nodded. "Sounded like you were havin' a mite of trouble."

  McGinley nodded, his smile disappearing. "You could say that. So much trouble that I'm starting to wonder if this picture is ever going to get made."

  McGinley was a small, round man with brown hair and a perpetually worried expression. He had been producing pictures here in Hollywood almost from the first, and that was enough to make any man stay worried. Hallam had met him in 1915, not long after he had arrived in Hollywood himself, and had worked in a few of his pictures before McGinley made his way out of Poverty Row and quit grinding out two-reel Westerns. Now he did prestige pictures with well-known directors like Danby Swan, but evidently the headaches had just increased over the years.

  Hallam himself had never left Poverty Row, not where the movies were concerned. The little independent studios down on Gower Gulch were home to him now, and the men who made the Westerns were his family.

  A man had to eat, though, and Hallam's old aches and pains wouldn't let him be a riding extra all the time. His PI ticket let him take up the slack, and those jobs could send him anywhere.

  In this case, the studio's location ranch north of town was supposed to be France, and the planes looping around in the sky declared the time to be 1917 again. The Great War was still on, and the battle in the air was as fierce as ever.

  "Danby should be through with this scene pretty soon," McGinley said. "If you don't mind, Lucas, I'd rather wait until all three of us can speak together. Danby might remember some things that I don't."

  Hallam nodded. "Fine with me."

  "Danby wasn't crazy about the idea of hiring a private detective in the first place," McGinley went on. "He said that if there was anything going on that studio security couldn't handle, we should call in the police. I convinced him that wasn't the kind of publicity we needed."

  "If I take the job, I'll keep it as quiet as I can."

  "I know you will, Lucas. That's why I suggested that we call you. You understand how the movie business works."

  Hallam's wide mouth twitched in a suppressed grin. He wasn't sure he'd go so far as to say that. He'd been born in a little community in Texas called Flat Rock in 1870 and had seen a hell of a lot of strange things since then, but he wasn't sure he'd ever run across anything stranger than the moviemaking industry.

  This was the first time he'd been around an aviation picture; he'd worked on a couple of war films, playing German cavalry troopers, of all things. Like most of his breed, Hallam regarded a job you could do from horseback as a job worth doing. But until today, he had never been this close to an airplane.

  In addition to the four in the air, there were two more parked on the flatland a couple of hundred yards away. They were brightly painted, and one was decorated with the Iron Cross of Germany while the other bore the concentric circles that signified it was British. Two men and a woman were standing near the planes, but Hallam couldn't tell much about them at this distance.

  Much closer was the little knot of people around the camera, including Danby Swan. Besides the director and the camera operator, an AD, a script girl, and one of the screenwriters were hovering nearby. The assistant director and the script girl were conferring in low voices, being careful not to distract Swan. The writer, like most of the rest of the cast and crew scattered around the location, had his head tilted back and was watching the planes, his gaze drawn by their daring acrobatics.

  There were two other cameras set up to either side of the principal one where Swan was. The fact that the studio was willing to commit that much equipment to this production told what high hopes they had for it. Hallam had been on plenty of locations where only one camera was used. Battle films had suffered a slump following the end of the Great War, but if what he read in the industry papers was correct, they were making a comeback.

  From the looks of things, Death to the Kaiser! was going to be a box-office success. It had plenty of action, and though Hallam wasn't overly fond of Danby Swan, he had to admit that the man could handle action sequences. Swan's touch wa
s just as good with love scenes, too, which was somewhat unusual. And this picture had beautiful young Vesta Quist as the female lead and handsome Rodger Kane as its male star. Their presence certainly wouldn't hurt ticket sales.

  Kane was standing near Danby Swan, costumed in high boots, whipcord pants, and a leather flying jacket that had to be hot and uncomfortable. He held a flying helmet and goggles in one hand. One of the pilots now circling above was portraying Kane's character in these flying sequences, but evidently there were some close-up scenes on the shooting schedule, as well. Those would require Kane's presence in costume.

  There was no sign of Vesta Quist. She probably hadn't been called for today's shooting.

  Behind Hallam were several large, barnlike buildings. At one time, they had in fact been barns, but now they had been converted into an Allied aerodrome in wartime France. They were only used in exterior shots, though. All the interiors would be shot at the studio back in town.

  "How about something to drink?" McGinley asked from beside Hallam.

  "Reckon I wouldn't mind. That sun makes a man thirsty."

  "Let's go over here to the trailer."

  Hallam turned and followed McGinley toward one of the little trailers parked nearby. Not much drinking went on during the shooting of a picture, regardless of what the public might think about what degenerates movie people were. The "work" was just too hard to put up with that. But it wasn't unusual to find a keg of bootlegged beer around a location, either.

  Hallam knew that he and McGinley made a pretty unlikely pair, the little roly-poly producer and the tall, rawboned man who somehow looked like a cowboy even in street clothes. Hallam's shaggy gray hair and thick moustache made him look even more out of place anywhere but on the set of a Western picture.

  They were only halfway to the trailer when a shout made them stop suddenly. Hallam looked back over his shoulder as Danby Swan cried in alarm, "What's happened?"

  Hallam lifted his eyes to the planes, sensing that if there was trouble, that was where it would be. He had been listening to the roar of the engines ever since arriving on the location and had ignored it for the most part, but now it sounded different. And one of the aircraft was listing to one side, seeming to spin more than it had been.

  Its engine had died. Hallam realized that with a little shock of horror. He had faced down a lot of dangerous situations over the years, but the thought of being several thousand feet in the air in some sort of gimcrack contraption that had suddenly gone balky…

  Hallam loped forward, his stiff right leg slowing him down. He knew there wasn't a damn thing he could do to help, but he couldn't just stand still and watch, either.

  The plane continued to lose altitude in a wide spiral. By the time Hallam reached Danby Swan, the three people who had been standing near the parked planes had also arrived at a run. Swan gripped the arm of one of the men and said, "Mackey, what's wrong? Has he lost power?"

  The man nodded grimly. "His engine's failed for some reason."

  "Can he pull out of it?"

  "I don't know, Mr. Swan. Lord, I just don't know."

  The man was wearing an aviator's costume much like Rodger Kane's, but he was no actor. Just under medium height, he was stocky, dark-haired, and had a pleasant ugly face. One of the stunt flyers, probably, Hallam thought.

  The other man could have been an actor, but Hallam had a feeling that he wasn't. His face was a little too lean, his profile a touch too hawklike. He wore the same type of outfit, though, and that marked him as another of the pilots.

  Standing close by his side was the woman. Hallam hadn't gotten a good look at her until now, but he could see a resemblance between her and the second aviator. Her features were fuller, lacking the harshness of the man's. In fact, she was downright beautiful, Hallam thought, though this sure wasn't the right time or place to appreciate that beauty. Her raven hair and flashing dark eyes gave her something of a mysterious look.

  Now, however, as she stared up at the disabled plane, she looked like a horrified spectator.

  Just like everybody else on the location.

  The stocky pilot called Mackey was watching the plane intently, muttering something. Hallam edged a step closer and heard him saying, "That's it, Hank. Jockey that baby in easy!"

  Hallam glanced back up at the aircraft. "He goin' to be able to land that thing?" he asked.

  The pilot never took his eyes off the plane. "Maybe," he replied, though his tone of voice said that he didn't hold out much hope. "A dead-stick landing's not that hard under good conditions. Those old Spads glide pretty well. But it's windy today, and the struts and the canvas have already had to take a lot of strain…"

  The other three planes had turned and flown off to the north, and they were now circling a couple of miles away. Hallam figured they were just getting out of the way, giving the pilot of the disabled plane plenty of room to try anything he wanted to try. There was nothing else they could do to help him.

  With the sound of their engines being carried away by the wind, that left an eerie silence to settle down on the fields that were supposed to pass for France. No one on the ground was talking now. There was nothing left to say.

  Suddenly, the little biplane seemed to straighten somewhat and level off. A whoop went up from the pilot standing next to Hallam, and as he thrust a fist into the air, he shouted, "That's it, Hank! Don't let her nose come up too much now!"

  Hallam was sure the pilot in the Spad couldn't hear his comrade over the rush of the wind, but he could have seen the upthrust fist. The plane wasn't far off the ground now, settling closer and closer to the surface of a field two hundred yards away. The ground didn't look too rough from this distance, but Hallam knew how deceiving that could be.

  And all it could take was one bad bump to wreck the plane and turn this day's shooting into a fiery catastrophe.

  Just like this picture had been fouled up several times before…

  Hallam supposed that was just instinct, thinking like a detective at the very instant the pilot was fighting for his life. But the fact remained that he had been summoned by Carl McGinley and Danby Swan because they were afraid someone was trying to sabotage their picture. What more effective way to slow down or ruin an aviation film than to wreck a plane and kill a pilot?

  A gasp went up from the watching crowd when the wheels of the landing gear touched down for the first time and bounced back up slightly. The pilot rode the plane on down with an easy, expert touch. The tail slewed to one side as the front wheels encountered some obstruction, but somehow the craft held together. Dust billowed up, hiding all sight of it for a moment, but then as the wind caught the dust and shredded it, the plane came back into view, on the ground, stopped, all in one piece.

  Cheers went up, ragged at first, then stronger, fueled by relief. Several of the crew started running toward the plane, including the flyer who had been calling encouragement to the pilot.

  Danby Swan blew out a long breath and said softly, "Damn." He looked over and noticed Hallam for the first time, standing nearby with Carl McGinley. He strode over, extending his hand. "Mr. Hallam, isn't it?" he asked. "Glad you could make it."

  Hallam returned the grip. "Looks like you're havin' some trouble, all right." He nodded toward the downed plane.

  Swan glanced at it and then shook his head emphatically. "Let's not jump to any conclusions," he said. "There are a great many things that can cause a plane's engine to go haywire."

  "Yeah, and one of 'em's sabotage, and you know it, Danby," McGinley said. "We can't keep denying it. Somebody wants to put us out of business."

  "Keep your voice down, Carl," Swan hissed. "We don't want to panic the cast and crew any more than they already are. What say we find a quiet spot and discuss this like gentlemen?"

  Hallam had never considered himself a gentleman, but he thought Swan's suggestion was a good idea. He glanced past the director and saw that the pilot was climbing out of the disabled plane. As Hallam watched, the man leaped to the
ground and held out his arms in a grandiose flourish, as if taking a bow for bringing the kite in on a dead stick. Judging from the way the other men crowded around him and pounded him on the back, it was something to be proud of, all right.

  Swan and McGinley headed for the trailer, and Hallam fell in beside them. The three men were silent until they got inside, out of the sun. The trailer was rather spartanly appointed with a threadbare sofa, several chairs, and a table. There was a miniature bar at one end of the single room, with the keg of beer sitting behind it.

  McGinley drew mugs of beer for Hallam and himself, then looked inquiringly at Swan. The director shook his head sharply.

  "Danby thinks he's too good for beer," McGinley said with a hollow laugh. "He's strictly a champagne man."

  "And if this ungodly Prohibition ever ends, perhaps we'll be able to get some champagne worth drinking again." Swan gestured for Hallam to sit down.

  Hallam took the mug from McGinley, swung one of the chairs at the table around backward, and straddled it. The beer was warm and not particularly good to start with, but Hallam sipped it and then licked a fleck of foam from his moustache. "Things like that happen often?" he asked, a nod of his head indicating the open door and the downed plane several hundred yards away.

  "Too often," McGinley grunted, sitting down across the table from Hallam. Swan had taken the chair at the head of the table. "How many little accidents have we had since we started this picture, Danby?"