Kiss the Moon. Carla Neggers
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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 for one thing. She knew where the wreckage was. No one else did, besides Bubba Johns, who presumably wasn’t about to talk.
Late yesterday, when she’d found reporters skulking around on her land discussing getting shots of her sap buckets and hunting up “that hermit,” Penelope had realized the extent of her folly. If she didn’t do something fast, dozens of reporters, the police and Brandon Sinclair’s investigator would descend on poor Bubba Johns. Even if by some miracle he had never noticed the plane wreckage, he was a colorful addition to the story. A wild-haired hermit living on Sinclair land. It was a nice contrast to the scandal and tragedy of the missing daredevil heir and his beautiful, intelligent, adventurous lover.
And then there was Harriet. Only humiliation and embarrassment waited for her.
So Penelope had made up her mind. The wreckage became a small, turn-of-the-century dump, and she couldn’t find it again. She pretended she’d made her way to it late yesterday and tried to thrash her way back first thing this morning. The light covering of snow gave her a touch more credibility, although apparently not enough for her father.
“Well,” she said to herself, “first things first. The heat’s off Bubba for now.”
She climbed into the cockpit and took a breath, focusing on the task at hand. She was transporting a time-sensitive package to Plattsburgh, New York, from a management consultant who worked out of his home on Lake Winnipesaukee. It had to be there this afternoon, not tomorrow morning. Her father had canceled her passenger charter yesterday. He didn’t like the way she was flying, hadn’t for weeks, and getting herself lost in the woods on Sunday proved she was distracted and bored. She’d had a few semi-close calls in a row, and he’d decided she wasn’t taking her job seriously enough. He couldn’t put his finger on what was wrong, but he wasn’t happy. And finding a forty-five-year-old plane wreck that turned out to be an old dump hadn’t done a damned thing to get her with the program.
She hoped by the time she returned, Brandon Sinclair’s investigator and the last of the reporters would all have turned around and gone home. Then she could take her time and figure out what, if anything, to do about the downed Piper Cub J-3 in the hills above town.
There were no bolts of lightning and no men with tar and feathers to greet Wyatt when he crossed into Cold Spring, New Hampshire. It was late afternoon, and the landscape was bleak. Pretty, but bleak. The White Mountains looming in the distance, rolling fields, winding roads, stark, leafless trees, lots of pine and fresh, clean, white snow clinging to everything. The snow was melting rapidly in the above-freezing temperatures, and the roads were clear. The only signs of spring he could see were the potholes and frost heaves.
The sun was out intermittently, and a persistent breeze made the temperature seem colder than it was. Wyatt had pulled over once to consult his map. Damned if he’d give the locals the satisfaction of seeing him get lost his first day in town. He had climbed the White Mountains, including the infamous Mount Washington, during his four years at Dartmouth, but at his father’s request, he’d avoided Lake Winnipesaukee. He’d had other things on his mind at twenty besides the fate of an uncle he’d never known. He’d never seen his family’s land in New Hampshire and couldn’t understand why they hadn’t sold it or donated it as a nature preserve.
A two-lane road led into the village of Cold Spring, a few picturesque streets nestled along the western shore of Lake Winnipesaukee. Twenty-seven miles long, Winnipesaukee was the largest lake in the state, formed by glaciers and famous for its crystal-clear water and three hundred islands. At this time of year, it was still an expanse of snow and ice, although only a few ice-fishing shanties dotted inlets close to shore. Winnipesaukee, Wyatt had learned from his map, was Abenaki for “beautiful water in high places.”
Like most of the other villages on the lake, Cold Spring was busiest in the summer and fall, but from the mix of shops on its maple-lined Main Street, Wyatt guessed it had a strong year-round population. Signs were discreet, storefronts neat and pretty even on a dreary March afternoon. Wyatt noticed shops that sold antiques, vintage clothing, quilts, gifts and the like, which the tourists would enjoy, but he also saw a pharmacy, a diner, a photo and print shop, a clothing store—the sort of shops one needed when a mall wasn’t close at hand.
He pulled into a parking space in front of the diner, fed the meter and went in for a very late lunch and whatever local gossip he could pick up about one Penelope Chestnut. So far, no sign of Jack Dunning, not that Jack would willingly share his findings with his boss’s son.
The diner was crowded for four o’clock on a bleak Tuesday afternoon. A plump waitress with perfect mauve nails was moving down the counter with a pot of coffee. Five booths lined the opposite wall, three of them filled. Reporters, Wyatt guessed. They’d be up from Boston and New York and God knew where else to check out the sighting of Frannie Beaudine and Colt Sinclair’s plane. The story had probably evaporated before they’d arrived, and now they were having a bite to eat in a country diner before heading back to the city.
Wyatt slid onto the one unoccupied stool at the counter and listened.
“Of