such circumstances.”
“Are you”-she looked back and forth between them-“here to help the search?”
“We’ve just found out about the missing girl.” Russ glanced at Eugene. “Ed and I were hunting on van der Hoeven land. We stopped in to pay our respects.”
“Mr. van der Hoeven,” Huggins called from the dining room table. “If I can have a minute of your time?”
Van der Hoeven ducked his head toward Clare, paused, as if he were about to make a remark, then slipped away.
“Poor guy,” Ed Castle said. “This must be real hard on him.”
“His sister missing?”
“Yep. But I was thinking more along the lines of him having to put up with all these people. He’s a real private guy. Likes to keep to himself.”
“How do you know him?” Clare said.
“I’ve had the license to harvest timber offa Haudenosaunee for twenty, thirty years now. Had it from old Jan van der Hoeven, and now from his kids. ’Course, it’ll all be smoked once the Adirondack Conservancy Corporation gets their hands on the property.”
“How’s that?”
Ed Castle told Clare the details of the impending land sale. She glanced back at Eugene van der Hoeven, bent over a topo map. “He’s going to stay in this house, right? I mean, he didn’t talk like a man whose home is being sold out from underneath him.”
“Dunno,” Castle said. “Alls I know is, no timbering licenses from the new owners. Buncha tree huggers. Don’t realize how important harvesting is to the health of the forest. Think it all happens naturally.”
“Fergusson!” Huggins’s head popped up from the huddle. “Bring that map of yours over here.”
Clare complied, squeezing in between Duane and a slim redheaded man, spreading her map next to the others. She pointed out the ground she had covered.
“We need to rethink our strategy,” Huggins began, only to be interrupted by a low rumbling from Duane’s midsection.
“Sorry.” He grinned. “No breakfast.”
“You all need some food,” Eugene said. He sounded embarrassed, as if he had invited them there for a cocktail party and had forgotten the drinks and nibbles. He stood up, looking around the room. “Lisa? Lisa!”
The dark-haired young woman appeared in a far doorway. “Let’s get these people breakfast. Can you rustle up eggs and bacon and toast, whatever we have?”
“Me?”
The entire male contingent stared at the housekeeper expectantly. Clare rolled her eyes. They looked like a pack of hounds with their ears pricked, waiting for the sound of the can opener. “I’ll help you,” she said loudly. No one else leaped in to volunteer.
Snorting, she strode toward the door. Lisa jumped out of her way and fell in behind her. “Thanks,” she whispered. “It’s not that I’m not willing. I’m just not much of a cook. Especially not for a gang like this.”
The doorway led though what had probably been called a butler’s pantry into the kitchen. It was roomy, meant for serious cooking for large numbers, but its vintage fifties decor had outlived the institutional look and was now funky. Clare prised open the refrigerator. “Let’s see what we’ve got.” She pulled out eggs, milk, and bread. “Let’s make French toast. It’ll go farther and fill people up more.” She emptied the vegetable bin of a few oranges, an apple, and a single bunch of grapes. “See if there’s any canned fruit in the pantry. We can mix up a big macedoine.”
Lisa scurried to the pantry. Clare laid the ingredients out on the pristine white counter and started opening up cupboards, looking for bowls and frying pans.
“I really appreciate this,” Lisa said, setting canned pineapple and pears and a jar of maraschino cherries on the other side of the sink.
“You do windows but you don’t do meals?” Clare straightened, a nest of mixing bowls in her hands.
Lisa smiled. “You got it.”
“Have you worked for the van der Hoevens long?”
“About four years now. What are we going to do with these?” She held up the cans.
“Let’s drain ’em, then empty them into a bowl. Then we can chop up the fresh fruit and add that.” Clare made a sound of satisfaction and emerged from a lower cupboard clutching two heavy-duty cast-iron skillets. “So you weren’t here last night when Millie and Eugene had dinner.”
Lisa shook her head. “I come in Wednesdays and Saturdays. Usually I don’t see much of Millie.”
Clare turned on the water to scrub her hands. “You don’t?”
“She doesn’t actually live here,” Lisa explained. “Her home is in Montana. But she’s been staying with Mr. van der Hoeven for the past few months. Working on this deal to sell the land and… stuff.”
There was a noticeable pause. “Stuff?” Clare said, drying her hands on a faded cotton towel.
Lisa kept her eyes on the apple she was peeling. “You know. Environmental stuff.”
Clare touched the younger woman’s arm. “Lisa. If there’s anything we should know that might help us find her…”
Lisa turned, apple in one hand, knife in the other. “I don’t want to get in trouble. I don’t want to get one of the van der Hoevens in trouble, either.”
“What is it?”
Lisa dropped her head, frowning furiously, as if weighing a series of pros and cons. Finally she looked up. “I’ll let you look. You can tell me what you think.” She crossed the kitchen, past the back door, to a built-in desk beneath a wall-mounted phone. She opened the desk drawer, scooped out several envelopes and papers, and laid them atop a stack of wooden crates waiting to be unpacked by the kitchen door. The boxes were stenciled VAN DER HOEVEN VINEYARDS. Having your own vineyard. Now that was one perk of wealth Clare actually envied. She picked up the papers. They were pamphlets, giving information on “extreme eco-activism” and “defending your mother earth against all enemies, domestic and foreign.” She looked for the organization name. She whistled.
“The Planetary Liberation Army.” She looked up at Lisa. “No wonder you were worried. This is the group that fire-bombed a research lab in California last year. Killed three people.”
Lisa nodded grimly. “I saw this special about them on MTV News. It said they also blew up an SUV dealership in Michigan.” She held up another pamphlet. “This one is all about the evils of big, gas-guzzling, four-wheel-drive trucks.”
“They’d have a field day with the search and rescue guys,” Clare said, picking up a typewritten letter. It was addressed to Millie van der Hoeven. It thanked her for her cash donation and her interest in aiding the PLA in its mission. It suggested any further discussions be held in person.
“These started showing up after Millie got here at the end of the summer. I found ’em in the drawer when I was looking for a piece of paper to write down a phone message. I didn’t say anything to Mr. van der Hoeven, ’cause I figure it’s nobody’s business.” At Clare’s look, she frowned. “I didn’t want to cause bad blood between the two of them. He thinks her environmental causes are crazy enough without this.”
“What do you think?” Clare asked.
Lisa shrugged. “Maybe she had some sort of secret meeting with them? It says meet in person.”
“But why wouldn’t she have returned already? You’d think the last thing she’d want to do would be to draw attention to herself.”
Lisa looked into the middle distance for a moment. “If I was going to do something illegal-like blow up a car dealership?-I’d think being lost in the woods was a great idea. Get someone to pick me up, do the dirty, then get dropped off at one of the access roads that lead onto the property. Come wandering out, tired and cold and hungry. Who’s to say she hasn’t been lost the whole time?”
“You don’t like her very much, do you?”
Lisa raised her eyebrows in surprise. “I don’t know her well enough to like her or not. But, you know, nowadays, you gotta be on the lookout for terrorists everywhere. There’s no reason they might not go after Millers Kill.”
Clare thought Millers Kill would fall pretty far down on the list of possible targets for an environmental terrorist group. But then again, she would have thought that about an SUV dealership in Michigan. And wasn’t one of the dealerships in Fort Henry selling Humvees now?
