To Die For (30 page)

It didn't take long for Tom Gray to find out that Dana was in the area. An ultra-light aircraft pilot, Tom was lucky to have a hobby that generated income. Local businesses and car dealers would pay him to pull advertising banners in the air above weekend festivals and over freeways during rush hour. When he heard through mutual friends that Dana was living in the area, he would look for her car whenever he was up in the air. It took him a while, but he spotted it, parked at a house in Canyon Lake. He found out that she was living with her father and wasn't dating anyone, but he didn't know how to approach her.

Starting as a drummer in grade school, Tom had been in rock bands during his entire adolescence and into adulthood; he had his share of groupies, but they didn't appeal to him as serious girlfriend material. His band, Longshot, played at Disneyland, Magic Mountain, Gazzari's, the Starwood and other kingmaker venues that were popular during the hard-rock glory days of Los Angeles in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The band hadn't had a big gig for a while—they were doing midnight shows at local bars—but they were OK with that. No one in the band had ever wanted a record deal—they were just in it to have fun.

Tom's passions for music and flying came together by way of informal weekend picnics in the local foothills off Ortega Highway, the windy, hilly road that links the Inland Empire to Orange County. The word-of-mouth get-togethers had no corporate sponsors and no admission fees and consisted of people drinking beer, firing up the barbecue and riding dirt bikes. At night, they'd build a big bonfire and everyone would dance and party with Longshot. One weekend, some sport flyers who flew battery-operated remote-control toy airplanes decided to get their group together to check out the ultra-light scene. News of the mega-gathering grew and by the time the weekend rolled around, Tom heard that both ultra-light pilots and sport flyers were driving in from around the state. Someone pulled together a banner saying “Welcome to the Fly-In” and Tom agreed to pull the banner over the festival as people were arriving in the afternoon.

Although it was still springtime, the temperatures had climbed to the 90s. Tom was up in the air and he was looking for Dana. He'd heard she was coming with friends and possibly a date. As he scanned the crowd, he saw another pilot take to the air in his ultralight, so Tom flew higher to give him lots of airspace. The daredevil pilot started to wow the crowd by buzzing them at low altitude at high speed, then shooting upward and doing other tricks. On his next fly-by, he soared upward to execute a risky maneuver and took a turn, but his wings folded up like a big butterfly. He went into a death spiral and the crowd roared its approval, thinking it was a wonderful trick. It wasn't. He hit the ground at high velocity and was killed on impact.

Dana's nursing instinct kicked into gear and she ran over to help, but she was a long way from the site of the accident. By the time she got there, she was suffering from a slight case of heat stroke. In the meantime, Tom was still up in the air with the “Welcome to the Fly-In” banner behind him, thinking, “Oh, this is just great.” He began his descent right after the crash. He thought the accident must have been fatal, but didn't know for certain until after he landed. Tom didn't get to talk to Dana that day, but Dana later joked that his banner should have read, “Welcome to the Die-In.”

A few weeks later, Tom spotted Dana at the grocery store. She took his breath away. He thought his heart had stopped. Blonde and athletic with a cute little sunburnt nose, as sassy and wise-cracking as he remembered from junior high. They exchanged numbers and Dana told him she was working at the hospital in Corona. Tom started driving out there to leave little notes on her car. She dismissed them, but Tom didn't give up.

Tom was on the quiet side and had never before been aggressive about having a girlfriend. Sometimes he went for months without dating, and that was fine with him. He found that women usually approached him most of the time anyway, but he shrugged off contacts from women who only knew him onstage. He wanted to get married someday, but not to anyone he'd met in a bar.

One night, he decided to surprise Dana by showing up in the emergency room of the hospital where she worked. Tom drew a few looks with long, wiry blonde hair to his hips, black leather jacket, shredded Levi's and snakeskin boots. Dana took one look at him and hurried him off to a waiting room. Tom thought it was funny that she needed to hide him from her professional colleagues, but he didn't care. He wanted to ask her to go to his high school reunion and she agreed. He picked her up in a limo.

They had a great time. She wore a Hawaiian print dress with a mid-summer tan—but it wasn't just her good looks that attracted Tom. He loved her adventurous spirit and prowess in sports. He loved the fact that she was a great windsurfer and was into riding bikes and sky-diving. They started dating just as Dana was preparing to leave the country. She had been planning to hit Hawaii in early January, travel through New Zealand, then zip through Australia to catch the last week of the America's Cup yacht race, and possibly relocate. She had been scouting nursing jobs there. Tom helped her sell everything she had for her trip as she made plans to live there. He didn't think she was coming back, but he didn't discourage her from going—he didn't want to feel like he was stifling her. As it turned out, one of Tom's brothers lived in Australia and he offered to put her up for a few weeks. Tom drove her to the airport and she called him periodically with reports about the dismal job hunt. Employers didn't want to hire a foreigner, and even if she found a job, she would start at the lowest level of the pay scale. Dana had a good work history and didn't like that. But she had fun playing sports there.

*   *   *

Tom picked her up from the airport and, having nowhere to live, she temporarily moved in with him. About a week after she got back, he surprised himself by proposing to her, and she surprised herself by accepting. Tom was overjoyed. His mother was a nurse and his father worked in construction. They got married young and were still married and had a fantastic relationship. Tom wanted the same dynamic team with Dana. In August 1987, the couple bought a house in Canyon Lake for $108,000 and moved in right after the deal closed. They had an elaborate wedding in October 1987 with 200 guests and five stunt sky-divers. Tom's parents fell in love with Dana too after she and Tom had invited them over for dinner and served them wine brought back from Australia. She and Tom delayed their honeymoon for six months because they were both working so hard, and Dana wanted to take some time to plan it. They decided on Maui.

Shortly after they were married, they bought bikes, but Tom, more of a musician than an athlete, had trouble keeping up with Dana, mentally and physically. She had the hard-driving temperament of a competitive athlete and that clashed with Tom's easygoing attitude when it came to sports and exercise. They drove down to Ensenada, Mexico, for a 50-kilometer bike ride and Tom suffered mightily keeping up with Dana. She didn't stop or slow down and always rode just a little ahead of him. He jokingly complained later that she just about killed him on that ride. Both of them were certified scuba divers, and Tom surfed occasionally, but Dana was a much stronger swimmer than Tom. There didn't seem to be any sport in which she didn't excel. On a ski trip to Utah with Tom's brother, she skied circles around them both, even though the brothers had been skiing longer.

Tom considered that part of Dana's charm—she was a hardcore athlete. After a bike ride, she would cook dinner for him, and make jokes over a glass of wine at dinner. He was head-over-heels in love. He was so much in love, he didn't even care about music any longer. She had been bugging him about playing in the band and he agreed to give up the band scene for married life. He was tired of playing the same songs every night year after year with only two weekends off. Now, the band was just for fun. They performed at weddings and messed around at parties. Tom taught Dana how to play some instruments and she had a natural gift for singing. Their partnership was electric. Together, Tom thought, we can do anything. Dana, the little blonde spitfire he had fantasized about since he was in junior high, was everything he ever wanted.

*   *   *

“Dana!”

Tom's head was bobbing up and down in the waves. He was getting tired.

“Dana!”

Tom was trying to get her attention. But it looked like she was already looking straight at him.

“Dana!”

Tom was hanging onto the windsurfboard, but it was hard because the wind was whipping the waves. The Maui sea was rough and the wind was blowing hard. Tom was tired after taking windsurfing lessons all day. That was part of their pact: Tom wanted Dana to learn some of the things he liked, like music and flying ultra-lights and remote-control model airplanes. For Tom, it meant learning how to golf and water ski and windsurf. He'd had windsurfing lessons earlier that day and he was tired. He didn't have any floatation—no lifejacket, no wetsuit. He was very tired.

“DANA!”

Tom could swear she was looking straight at him. That was weird. They were on their honeymoon. He wanted to come back in, soak his aching muscles in a hot bath and take his sunkissed, newlywed wife to dinner on their honeymoon. Bobbing around in wind-whipped surf wasn't what he'd planned. After the lesson, Dana had taken him to a remote part of the island where the waves were bigger and rougher to practice in more challenging waters, but it had been too much for him. He was about a half-mile from shore when he tried taking a turn, and the windsurfboard tipped over, and he couldn't get it back up. He'd struggled with it for the better part of an hour and he was exhausted. He wasn't a strong swimmer. Now it was all he could do to hold onto the board. He knew that Dana could hop on her board and get out there to help him in a heartbeat.

“DANA!”

He was getting tired of yelling. She was just sitting there on the beach, looking at him. Finally, he saw her get up and get her board. She didn't look concerned at all. Well, maybe she couldn't hear him over the wind and the pounding surf. The waves were getting high.

He watched gratefully as Dana hopped on her board, jumped in the surf and came out to get him within a minute. Finally! he thought. He thought he was gonna drown out there. But when she got closer, she leaned over, grabbed the haul rope of his board, tied it to her board and took off. Tom held on, thinking she was going to pull him out of the surf, but she hadn't said a word. She just tied up his board and sailed back to the beach. Tom, already exhausted, could not hold on, with the wind gusting her sails powerfully. He yelled at her to come back, but if she heard him, his cries were ignored. When she got to the shore, she sat down again on the sand with both boards and continued to watch him.

Tom was as bewildered as he was panicked. He couldn't understand what she was doing and why she didn't help him. She knew he was a poor swimmer. She'd been looking at him when he fell off the board. Tom knew that Dana knew what was going on. If he had thought he was going to drown with the board to hang onto, he knew he was doomed without it. He could feel the cross-currents tug at him and knew that trying to swim was futile, but he had no other choice. Already exhausted, he tried to get back to shore, but the current kept driving him back. He continued fighting, his tired arms slapping at the choppy waters, knowing that he couldn't last much longer. An occasional wave slapped him in the face and he swallowed a lot of water, which was making him feel sick. He tried resting by floating on his back, but the water was too choppy. Fear set in as he struggled. He tried not to panic. Tom wondered if he was going to die. He was so exhausted, his muscles were aching and he didn't think he was going to make it to shore. He could see Dana; he knew she could see him. She was just staring into space, not moving, not saying a word.

Finally, Tom saw that he was making some progress. He spotted a buoy and thought it was his only chance. He channeled all of his energy into reaching it. He finally got to it and was so taxed, he lay over it. After he rested for a while and got some energy back, he started yelling at Dana. She was still just sitting there watching him. Tom finally worked his way to shore by pulling himself along the buoy line and literally crawled up onto the beach. He was drained and his muscles were so tight, he just lay there a while. Finally, he walked unsteadily over to where she was sitting.

“Couldn't you see me? Why did you leave me out there? What the hell were you doing? Why didn't you help me?”

Tom, standing over Dana, was so angry, he shook his fist at her. Dana flinched slightly, but didn't answer him. She never said a word. She just sat there with a distant, blank stare. Tom was angry enough to hit her, but he was too tired and he wasn't the kind of guy to hit women anyway. He didn't know what to do, so he just lay back down on the beach to rest and stayed there for about an hour without talking. Finally, he said, “Let's get out of here,” and they left.

At dinner that night, Tom never brought it up and they never talked about it. They both acted like it had never happened. Tom wondered if she'd been hit before, given the way she'd winced when he raised his fist. He wondered if she'd been in some kind of a blackout, but neither of them had been drinking that day. Tom couldn't explain her behavior, but he began to watch his back around Dana.

Married life with Dana soon became a contest of wills. After spending thousands of dollars on their wedding and thousands more on the Hawaiian honeymoon, Tom wanted to cut back a little on their spending. Dana didn't. Each of them was making around $45,000 a year, Dana as a nurse and Tom as a heavy equipment operator driving a backhoe for a construction company. Even though the economy was booming, they soon found themselves in debt. Fortunately, the couple's choice in real estate had been a wise one. Their $108,000 Canyon Lake home spiked in value to $170,000. Tom and Dana decided to exploit their good fortune and get a one-time, $40,000 equity loan to get themselves out of debt. But the money didn't last long. In May 1988, eight months after their marriage, they were still drowning in debt and took out a $27,000 second mortgage.