nothing more, Wyatt. If you can, come down this weekend. Ann and I would love to have you, and you know the girls would be thrilled to see you.” Ann was his third wife; they had two daughters together, Ellen, nine, and Beatrix, eleven. “March isn’t my favorite month in New York.”
“Thanks for the invitation. I’ll let you know if I can wiggle loose.”
“It’s best I sent Jack up to Cold Spring, Wyatt. The people there tend to blame Colt for what happened. Frannie Beaudine was one of their own.”
“No problem.”
When they disconnected, Wyatt didn’t hesitate. He told his secretary he needed to go out of town and asked her to keep her finger in the dike for a few days, possibly longer. He caught an elevator to the lobby of the 1920s building and hailed a cab to take him to his apartment. He fed the cat and called Madge. “I’m going to be out of town for a few days. Can you tend to Pill?”
“You know I’m allergic.”
“Wear gloves and a mask.”
“You’re a heartless bastard, Wyatt. Just because you can climb a rock wall with your bare hands doesn’t mean the rest of us are weaklings. My allergies are serious.”
“If you can’t take care of Pill, say so and I’ll get someone else.”
“Can I stay at your place while you’re gone?”
His apartment was bigger and in a better location than hers. “Sure.”
“I’ll take medication for my allergies,” she added quickly.
Within the hour, he was on the Major Deegan Express-way heading toward New England.
No Sinclair had ventured to Cold Spring, New Hampshire, since Colt and Frannie had disappeared—unless his father had lied about that, too. Because something—maybe a lot, maybe not a lot—was missing in Brandon Sinclair’s rendition of the events of forty-five years ago. Wyatt had believed that for years, but hadn’t pushed, hadn’t confronted his father out of respect for the loss he’d suffered. Some things, he’d decided, just weren’t a son’s business.
But as he drove north against a hard wind, he wondered if he and his father could ever make their peace if he didn’t learn, finally, the truth about the night Colt Sinclair and Frannie Beaudine took off into the darkness.
Two
Penelope tried to ignore the clicking of a camera three yards behind her. Another reporter. Most of the swarm of reporters—print, television, radio, tabloid, mainstream—that had flocked to Cold Spring had gone home after hearing the discovery of Colt Sinclair and Frannie Beaudine’s plane was a mistake. A few lingered, angling for whatever news and gossip they could find while they were there. Penelope didn’t know what good a picture of her preflighting her Beechcraft would do anyone.
It was a breezy, chilly morning, and she couldn’t wait to get into the air. She’d pulled her hair into a sort of braid, put on a functional flight suit that always, rather ridiculously, made her feel like the Red Baron and packed herself some cheddar cheese a friend had made on her own farm, an apple and a bit of this season’s maple sugar. Decadent. In twenty minutes she was saved. No more questions, no more doubting eyes.
“You know, Penelope,” the reporter called, using her first name as if they were pals, “I drove all the way up here from New York to cover this story. Colt and Frannie are, like, icons on the upper east side. Rich, good-looking, adventurous, intellectual, fucking doomed. Now, here I am, and what do I have? A dump. A fucking dump.”
Penelope ignored him. A turn-of-the-century dump was the best she could do. It was lame, and it wasn’t sexy at all, but it explained the metal. She had decided pegging the whole thing on a mirage was just too much to swallow.
The reporter didn’t quit. He was lanky, bearded and obnoxious. “You should get your facts straight before you go to the media.”
She turned from her plane. She was at the tail, trying to concentrate on her checklist. “I didn’t go to the media. They came to me. Look, stop at Jeannie’s Diner on Main Street for pie, or if you want to hang around until three o’clock, wait and stop at the Sunrise Inn for tea and scones. My mother and my cousin Harriet make the best scones in New Hampshire. The inn’s on the lake. Just take a left off Main.”
“I didn’t come to fucking New Hampshire for pie and scones. Jesus. This weather. You know, we have daffodils in New York.”
“Send me some when you get back.”
He let go of his camera and let it hang from his neck. It was a small, cheap camera on a thin black cord. He was probably freelance. He certainly wasn’t from Newsday or the Times. “You’re not very contrite,” he said.
“I made a mistake. You guys jumped all over this thing before anyone could verify what I’d found. It’s not my fault you got the cart before the horse.”
The guy went red. Penelope thought he might throw his camera at her, but then she saw her father marching toward them. He had on his work pants and wool work shirt, and he didn’t look as if he knew as much about airplanes and flying as he did. People underestimated Lyman Chestnut all the time. He was the quintessential hardheaded Yankee, a gray-haired, craggy-faced man of sixty who was the law at Cold Spring Airport. It was a small, uncontrolled airport with three hangars, one runway and three full-time year-round employees: Lyman, his sister Mary and Penelope. What they couldn’t do they hired part-time help to do or contracted out. Winter and early spring were their slow seasons. Come summer and autumn, the place hummed.
Lyman jerked a thumb toward the parking lot. “Out. Let Penelope do her job.”
“I was just—”
“You’re compromising safety.”
The reporter sputtered, then gave up and retreated.
Penelope grinned at her father. “Why didn’t I think of that?”
“You’ve done enough thinking for this week, I expect.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. Finish your walk around.”
He about-faced and returned to the office in a corner of one of the hangars. Penelope watched him in frustration, then resumed her preflight. She knew what he meant. He meant he didn’t believe her dump story, either. No one believed her dump story.
But this morning when she woke before dawn, she realized she had no choice. She had to undo what she’d done. Brandon Sinclair, contacted in St. Croix, was sending his own investigator to represent his family’s interests. It was a Sinclair plane found on Sinclair land, and it had been a Sinclair in the cockpit. As Penelope had said yesterday afternoon to Andy McNally, the local police chief, “Who’s looking after Frannie’s interests? What if Colt killed her before the plane crashed? Then we have an unsolved murder. There’s no statute of limitations on murder, you know.”
Andy had calmly told her, yes, he knew, and she should mind her own business. The story was out, reporters were on the way. That was when Penelope realized she had no control. She’d been booted to the back of the raft, and someone else was negotiating the rapids.
Except
