“That’s horrible.” I stared at the plane model with renewed fascination. “So this must be Edith’s attempt to re-create the scene.” Looking up at Deborah, I asked, “Did they ever determine the cause?”
She shook her head. “Not that I know of. For a couple of decades they printed anniversary articles in the local paper, but they stopped that in the nineties, I think. Even up until then there were always a lot of theories, but nothing conclusive. The final explanation that the experts seemed to agree with is that something sparked a fire in one of the gas tanks, which exploded just as the plane was flying over Beaufort. It was a hot summer—the hottest summer on record—and they think that might have played a part.” She thought for a moment. “I remember one of the newspaper articles mentioning that it was at its cruising altitude of twenty-two thousand feet at the time it exploded, which explains why so little of the wreckage was recovered, and why no definitive cause of the explosion could be determined. So much of the wreckage went into the river and the marshes and was then taken out to sea.”
She replaced her glasses on her face. “One of the things that struck me was that it wasn’t supposed to fly this far inland, but a little farther east, over the ocean. But there were some sort of military exercises going on offshore, so commercial traffic was rerouted. It added fifteen minutes to the projected flight time, on top of any delays they might have already had. I remembered wondering whether that would have made any difference, if that extra fifteen minutes could have been the trigger or something.” She shrugged. “I guess we’ll never know.”
I had the oddest feeling that I needed to warn these hapless passengers as I looked at them strapped in their seats. Like I could somehow play God and turn the clock backward. But I couldn’t, of course. I was like everybody else, forced to watch events unfold beyond our control.
Deborah continued. “One of the last articles about the crash mentioned that flight data recorders weren’t required until sometime in the sixties, so it was impossible to determine whether or not the pilots had any warning before the explosion. I’ve often wondered whether, if this had occurred just a decade later, we would have had enough technology to find out what really happened. It’s very difficult not having answers, isn’t it?”
I nodded absently as I squinted my eyes, seeing something I’d missed before. “All the seat and row numbers are painted in over the seats. I wonder if the dolls portray real people who were in those assigned seats.”
Deborah looked affronted. “If Edith made this, then of course they’re accurate. She never overlooked a single detail.”
I was barely listening, paying closer attention to the sightless people facing innocently forward. I noticed a woman with a pregnancy bulge under her dress, and a young boy wearing shorts and a jacket and tie sitting next to an older woman with gray curls and a neat hat. I jerked back, an unwilling witness.
Gibbes turned to me with sympathetic eyes. “I’m guessing my grandmother wanted to solve this mystery—that’s why the plane was put together in puzzle pieces and why some are still missing. Since she had an ‘in’ with the police department, she would have had knowledge of each plane part that was recovered and then made a copy of it. The pieces that weren’t found, she made of clear plastic.”
“Do you know where the plane was flying from or where it was going?” I wasn’t sure why it mattered so much to me. Maybe it was human nature to separate the strangers in a tragedy from yourself, to illuminate all that was different between their lives and yours, to convince yourself that such a thing couldn’t happen to you.
“It was going to Miami. From New York, I think.” Deborah frowned, her glasses dipping low on her nose as she bent closer to examine the jagged pieces on the plane’s right side. “This must have been the big secret project she was working on, then. It just doesn’t make sense why she wouldn’t have shared it with anybody. Her husband died that night; I do remember that—hit a tree with his car. Police think he might have been distracted by the explosion. Anyway, there was really no reason to be so hush-hush about her work, since she didn’t have to worry about his disapproval.” She tapped her chin, her eyes narrowed as she walked the length of the table to view the plane from as many angles as she could. Looking directly at me, she said, “Knowing Edith, I’d have to say she probably knew something that nobody else did.”
The silence in the room grew stifling as the hot air and the quieted voices of the forty-nine lost souls became almost a palpable presence, a growing shadow that threatened to overtake any light in the room. I headed toward the stairs, needing a deep breath of air, and walked down into the foyer and out onto the front porch, Deborah and Gibbes close behind me.
“Are you all right?” Gibbes asked.