Eight Miles High

Detective-in-training Cat Caliban meets her latest client when a pilot crash-lands in the middle of a family picnic. Toots Magruder confesses her suspicions that the plane was sabotaged, and tells Cat and her partner, retired cop Moses Fogg, a story that begins during World War II, when young women with a passion for flying traveled from all over the country to Avenger Field in Sweetwater, Texas, for the chance at the best flight training available and a coveted place in the Women Airforce Service Pilots. Those who succeeded, like Toots, flew some of the most dangerous missions of the war in every plane the Army owned, from single-engine trainers to sophisticated bombers like the Fortress and the Superfortress. Toots herself had been one of eight WASP who trained anti-aircraft gunners at Harlingen Air Base. In the final weeks before the WASP was disbanded, however, one of those eight, returning for the final graduation at Avenger, disappeared into the Texas sky and was never heard from again. Now, forty years after the women of WASP were sent home without jobs, severance pay, or veterans' benefits, two of the Harlingen Eight have died in similar accidents within days of each other, and Toots fears that a killer is at work. Protected only by an antique parachute and handicapped by a fear of flying, Cat must unravel the forty-year-old mystery before the remaining Harlingen WASP converge at the Dayton Air Show and provide the killer with a perfect opportunity to reduce their numbers to zero.