Nothing to Lose (J.P. Beaumont #25)(40)
“Chad managed to turn himself into the go-to guy doing maintenance for bush pilots and family planes alike. Occasionally a pilot will keel over dead, leaving behind a plane in need of offloading. That’s especially true when some expensive FAA-required maintenance overhaul is in the offing. Chad keeps his ear to the ground. When he hears about some orphaned aircraft, he buys it up at bargain-basement rates, does the necessary maintenance work, and then resells it.”
“Sounds like an interesting guy.”
“More ornery than interesting, if you ask me,” Twink supplied. “He makes good money. Never married, lives out in the boonies all by himself. He has a condo in Hawaii and one in Palm Springs. It’s winter, so he’s probably at one or the other at the moment. I couldn’t tell you for sure—we’re not exactly close.”
This was way more Winkleman family history than I had anticipated hearing or knowing. I suspected that when it came to being “ornery,” Twink would have given her brother a run for his money, and there could be little doubt that both had come by that trait by way of their father’s side of the family tree.
The food was wonderful and more than either Twink or I could eat. We both passed on ordering dessert. At the end of the meal, when our waitress brought the check, Twink asked for a box and then loaded my remaining fries into the container right along with her own.
“No sense in letting good food go to waste,” she said. “Next stop the Anchor Bar and Grill.”
In better weather it would have been an easy walk from the restaurant to the bar, but we drove instead. As we approached the place, a pickup of some kind pulled out of a parking place in front of the army-surplus store next door. That told me pretty much all I needed to know about the neighborhood and what I could expect to find inside. Twink declined my invitation to come along.
“I’ll wait here,” she said, picking up her book. “Take your time.”
The Anchor Bar and Grill lived up to its advance notices. It might have been a piece of Alaska’s colorful history, but it was all too familiar to me. I had spent decades of my life hanging out in joints just like it—ones that came complete with acres of scarred but polished wooden bars, damaged pool tables, and worn-out dartboards. The single bright spot in the otherwise gloom-filled room was a well-lit oil painting hanging on the far wall. It featured a generously endowed young woman, reclining seminude to better display her impressive wares. Her presence hinted that at sometime in the distant past, booze hadn’t been the only temptation for sale on the premises.
It was now verging on 3:00 p.m., and the place was crowded with a motley assortment of barflies I recognized all too well—the Friday-afternoon regulars, otherwise known as serious drinkers, who show up early and stay for the duration. I found an empty stool and bellied up to the bar.
Todd had sent me a photocopy of John Borman’s driver’s license, so even though the bartender was at the far end of the bar, I knew he was the guy I wanted to see. Bartenders need to be reasonably gregarious, but they’re generally not wild about talking to detectives of any kind—sworn officers and private investigators alike. It’s usually considered bad for business. They do, however, engage in conversations with paying customers, so when the barkeep came my way, I ordered a ginger ale.
“Not a drinker?” he asked as he delivered my alcohol-free beverage.
“Turns out it was bad for my health,” I replied. “You’re John Borman, right?”
“Depends on who’s asking,” he said. “Who are you?”
I slid one of my cards across the bar. He picked it up and studied it for a moment.
“A private detective?” he asked with a frown. “What’s this all about?”
“I’m looking into the disappearance of Christopher Danielson.”
The frown deepened into a scowl. “From Homer, you mean? That’s yesterday’s news,” he said. “Chris disappeared years ago, while we were all still in high school. You thinking maybe I had something to do with it?”
“I’m just trying to talk to people who possibly knew him back in the day and might have an idea about what became of him.”
That was a giveaway. Had Chris and Borman been close, he would have been aware that Chris had already dropped out of school before he disappeared.
“I’m not going to be of much use to you,” Borman said, confirming my initial assumption. “I mean, I knew who he was, but I didn’t really know him. We weren’t friends or anything. We were maybe in a couple of classes together, but that’s it. He was sort of a sad sack. I think something bad happened in his family when he was little, but I don’t know much about it.”
I nodded. “Domestic violence. His dad killed his mother and then committed suicide.” Sometimes you have to give a little information in order to get some.
“I never knew that part,” Borman conceded.
“What did you know?”
“Just that Chris was mostly an odd duck, a perpetual outsider, so it surprised the hell out of me when I heard he was hanging around with one of the most popular girls at Homer High. How does that happen? Then, a while after that, he was just gone. Word was that his girlfriend was pregnant and they ran off to get married. That’s the last thing I remember hearing.”
A customer down the bar caught Borman's eye and summoned him with a wave of his finger. As he walked away, I could tell that although my “unaffiliated boy” theory had come up winners with Bill Farmdale, it was a dud here. Chris had regarded Bill as a friend—someone Chris had turned to in his time of need. John Borman had been Chris’s sometime classmate, but that was it.