“I can’t!”
Russ looked at Noble Entwhistle and nodded. The uniformed officer crept closer to the Volvo’s trunk as Russ sidled closer toward the driver’s door. Clare wanted to scream,
She still couldn’t see the interior of the car, but from where he stood, Russ must have had a bead directly on Malcolm. He stood there, gun pointed at the car, while Noble slid into the ditch and opened the back door. It wasn’t until he had hauled Malcolm out, literally by the collar, that Clare realized she had been holding her breath.
They got him down on the ground and then Duane and Kevin came running. Clare could hear a rumble of male voices, but she couldn’t make out anything. Russ squatted down and spoke directly to Malcolm. She wasn’t sure, but it looked as if the younger man was crying. She looked away, not wanting to see any more, and so it wasn’t until she heard the crunch of his hiking boots on the road grit that she realized Russ was coming back to the truck.
She glanced up. Noble was ushering Malcolm into the backseat of his cruiser, and as she watched, the red lights whirled atop the other police car and Kevin and Duane were off, headed toward town. She looked at Russ as he opened his door.
“He says his aunt didn’t drive away, because he had her car.” He got in, pinching the bridge of his nose. “He doesn’t know where she’s gone. The only people he knows she might get in touch with are his mother or her other sister. Both of whom live more than halfway across the state. She must have called a friend to come pick her up.”
He crawled in behind the wheel and leaned back against the headrest. “We’ve got an APB out on her, but it’s not going to do us a damn bit of good if we don’t know what the hell car she’s in. ’Scuse my French.”
“Could she have rented a car?”
“That was my first thought. The nearest car-rental place is at the Fort Henry Ford dealership. I sent Duane and Kevin off to check it out.”
Officer Entwhistle’s car came to life. He pulled away from the side of the road and headed toward town, waving through the window at Russ.
“We need to get someone to secure that Volvo,” Russ said, sounding weary. “We’re so damned overextended at this point that I’m going to have to call the staties in. God, I hate that.” He reached for his keys and started the truck. “We’d better get back to the house and start calling names in Peggy’s Rolodex. Maybe we’ll find a girlfriend who just happened to have plans to drive out of town today.”
Clare’s mind returned to the party the night before. Sitting in the window seat of the Landry house while the guests swirled around her. The expression of disbelief on Hugh Parteger’s face. The smell of black currants and Thai chicken. Peggy saying, “John Opperman’s flying to Baltimore tomorrow afternoon, and he won’t be back until Tuesday.”
“I know where she is.”
He looked at her.
“No, really. I know where she is. John Opperman’s supposed to fly out of town this afternoon. I bet she called him and asked to come along. I bet he’d pick her up, no questions asked.”
He shoved his hand into his hair, spiking his sweat-stiff locks in every direction. “He would, wouldn’t he? A little freebie business trip.” He slammed the heel of his hand into his steering wheel. “Damn, that woman thinks fast on her feet. We’re not going to find her with an APB because she’s not going to be on the road. Or buying a ticket anywhere.” He threw the truck into gear and pulled onto the road. “Do you know when Opperman’s supposed to leave?”
“She just said he was leaving this afternoon. And that he was headed for Baltimore.”
He heeled the truck hard to the left and stomped on the gas pedal. “If I take the back roads, I can be at the Glens Falls Airport in twenty minutes.” He glanced at her for a split second. “I don’t suppose you have your cell phone with you?”
“In my car. Sorry.”
“Never mind. If they’re still there, we can stop them before he takes off. And if they’ve left, they would have had to tell the airport-control people where they’re going, right?”
“He would have to have filed a flight plan, yeah. And if he’s flying on instruments, he’ll be passed from one flight-control center to another. You’ll be able to call ahead and have someone waiting for her at their destination.” She grabbed the door handle as he took another hard turn onto an unmarked road. They jounced in and out of potholes as they flew through thickets of sumac and ancient overgrown apple orchards. “You know, I like to speed, but isn’t this—”
“Hang on.” He turned onto a one-lane bridge. Steel plates
“Are you sure you know where you’re going?”
He grinned at her. “Do you trust me?”
She groaned.
At one point, she was sure they’d passed under the Northway, but other than that, she had no bearing on where they were until they emerged from a tree-shaded road and saw the airport in front of them, its four runways stretched like a top-heavy X past a handful of hangars and a tiny tower. They drove through a gate marked EMPIRE EAST AVIATION.
“Where do you think he’d be?” Russ asked.
She glanced around as he slowed the truck to a crawl. There were twenty or twenty-five small planes at tie- downs and another two on the tarmac. As she watched, a Beech King took off from runway 12.
“Could that have been it?”
“No,” she said, still scanning the area. “That’s a single-engine. If he’s actually using it for long-range transport,
