Ghostrider
“Anyways, I wouldn’t entertain any…notions,” Maura said when she stopped at the front of Christopher’s Bed and Breakfast after dinner at Ruth’s Chris Steak House, where Maura bested a T-bone almost as thick as her. She kept her hands at ten and two on the steering wheel and studied the speedometer.
But Griff looked over at her and realized just such a notion—involuntarily—was already rattling around in his head. “The church thing, right?”
She gave him a sideways glance and smiled. “Mmmm…whatever works for you.”
Griff’s iPhone vibrated and glowed faintly through his front pants pocket. He took a deep breath.
Maura teased Griff by tapping on the phone. “Besides, someone really, really, really wants to have a conversation with you—Helena?”
“Likely.”
“Too bad.” She grabbed his thigh and squeezed.
“Yeah…too bad.” His phone went dark and quiet. “Well, tell Johnny I’ll be in touch.”
“Soon, I hope.”
Griff smiled and got out of the Rubicon. He retrieved his box and his spittoon from the back seat. He leaned over to look through the front door window. “Thank you.”
“We’ll catch another Reds game the next time you’re in town.”
Griff watched Maura drive off, then went up to his suite in the converted Christian church. He checked his phone. Helena had called four times and sent three text messages. He looked at the box full of her father’s journals, then decided to go for a stroll—without his iPhone.
Griff walked three blocks north on Ward Avenue to the river. The reflected lights of the “Queen City” on the water didn’t much distract Griff from competing thoughts of Helena and Maura. He walked the trail around Bellevue Beach Park. Even though it was pushing midnight, his Spidey sense nagged him with the tingle of not being alone; so, he left at the east end of the park, headed down O’Fallon Street to Poplar, then back to the B & B.
If it wasn’t for the wine and scotch at dinner with Maura, he would have checked out and headed home in the Cirrus right then. Instead, he opened the box of Cliff Nickolson’s journals. There were at least fifty or sixty medium-sized hardcover notebooks in the box, each one around two-hundred fifty pages. Griff picked up and flipped through the pages of a few at random, grateful the hybrid cursive-block print handwriting was neat and readable. He then realized Donald Wallace had packed them carefully in chronological order with the oldest on top.
He went back to the very first journal. The entry on page one, dated June 12, 1979, described Cliff Nickolson’s first flight as a student pilot at Van Nuys Airport when he was sixteen. The boy’s jumble of excitement, trepidation, wonder, and—once his feet were back on the ground walking to his car in the parking lot—elation, brought a smile to Griff’s face as he recalled his own first flight with an instructor. Such were the innocent beginnings for the Marine Corps Aviator, call sign “Ghostrider,” who rained death and destruction down from his F/A-18 over Iraq. But Griff was most interested in what Helena’s father wrote in his very last journal, so he carefully emptied the box, keeping the notebooks in order. At the bottom he found it along with a box within the box. The final entry in the notebook—dated forty-two years after Cliff Nickolson’s first flight—was written in Singapore seven months before his death. His last, unfinished journal no doubt perished with him in the helicopter crash.
Griff opened the second box. Inside were hinged jeweler’s boxes containing Cliff Nickolson’s lieutenant, captain, and major uniform pins; his golden Naval Aviator wings; Desert Storm campaign ribbons; a Silver Star; and a Navy Cross.
Griff stared at the Navy Cross, then snapped the box shut and set it aside. He knew what it took to get one as his was tucked away in the Liberty safe in his hideaway. The medal brought back ugly memories of a “bad day at work” as a Navy SEAL in Afghanistan. It gave Griff pause, then he shook it off.
Beneath all the medals was a small notepad-sized piece of paper with “From the Desk of Donald Wallace” preprinted at the top. A hand-written message said only, “HF = Highlands Forum.”
Griff Googled “Highlands Forum” on his iPad and read—ironically enough in an article via a link in a WikiLeaks tweet titled, “How the CIA Made Google”—about the secret network of Military-Industrial Complex elites; its connections to Booze Allen Hamilton, SAIC, DARPA, and In-Q-Tel; the Forum’s role in examining “the strategic and tactical offensive and defensive aspects of information operations by state and non-state actors to achieve political, military and economic goals”; and its meetings in the Carmel Highlands in California…
Griff set aside his iPad and flipped slowly through the pages of Cliff Nickolson’s most recent journals, scanning for “HF.” The code Donald Wallace provided was peppered liberally throughout the pages. He carefully repacked all the notebooks in order, except for the very last one. He set it and the box of medals on top.
Griff studied the representation of Jesus praying in Gethsemane rendered in his room’s stained-glass window, wondering if information about “HF” was really what Helena hired him to find.
Even though it was two o’clock in the morning, he returned Helena’s calls.
“Finally…” She answered on the first ring. Her voice betrayed no sign of being asleep.
“You weren't worried about me, were you?”
“Um…Not particularly. Just sitting out back on my deck, looking at the stars. Remembering…”
Griff heard her sip, wine he presumed.
“So, where have you been spending my money this evening?”
“Kentucky.”
“Do tell.”
“Well, I met some of your family this morning.”
“Aunt Willa? How is she? It’s been a month of Sundays since I’ve seen her.”
Griff looked up at the stained-glass window. “And cousin Angie.”
“Did you get the derby pie? An old family recipe. It’s to die for.”
“So I’ve heard.” Griff thought of Maura. “Sadly, no. It was too early.”
“It is never too early for pie.”
“Maybe you could bake me one someday.”
“Well, you’re just lucky all us girls had to memorize the recipe—family tradition. So, I just might do that the next time you come calling…” Another sip, then Helena asked softly, “And when might that be?”
“When might you be up for company?”
“Now…might be nice.”
“If I weren’t so far away…”
Helena sighed. “And if my Aunt Willa had balls, she’d be my uncle.”
“Helena…”
“What?”
“I’ve never asked. The accident—”
“Crushed my world. It’s as simple as that.”
Griff wished he had some of Helena’s scotch right then. “What do you know about it?”
“What is there to know? It wasn’t right. It doesn’t matter what some government report says. My father should not be dead.”
“And Junior?”
“JR…is, well, Junior. He’s all about him.”
Griff felt himself nodding in agreement.
“Sometimes you can hear them.”
“Hear who?” Griff asked.
“Sometimes far away. Sometimes close, like now. Wolves.”
“Wolves?”
“So, Mr. Crowe. Do I have any hope of finding my father’s things?”
“I believe so.”
“And when will you be returning from Kentucky?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow I have to go to a funeral.”
“In Los Angeles?”
“Donnie.”
Silence filled the gap between Kentucky and New Mexico.
“Can I come calling…after?” Griff asked.
“It’s damn good pie.”
“I’ll be there.”
“You better.” Helena hung up.
Griff stared for a long time at the box which held forty years of her father’s life and, likely, the reasons for its abrupt end.
He sent a text to Lance: “Got time for a dog tomorrow?”
Less than two minutes later, Griff got a reply: “Absolutely.”
He grabbed Cliff Nickolson’s last journal and began to read.
***~~~***