“A Bonanza B-36TC,” Ginny replied. “We just bought it.”
“It’s a good twelve hundred nautical miles, so you’re at least six or seven hours away; even with a tailwind by the time you’re airborne it will be mid-afternoon.”
“We’re coming,” Ham said.
“I want you to come, Ham, but please, at least spend the night at your fuel stop. There are trees at the southern end of the runway and a house at the other end. It’s a short strip, and you do not want to land there at night.”
“He’s right, Ham,” Ginny said. “We’ll take off this afternoon, spend the night along the way and take off again early tomorrow morning. We’ll be there around mid-morning.”
“All right,” Ham said, resignedly.
“Call me when you take off tomorrow morning, give me your ETA and I’ll meet you at the strip.”
“Okay,” Ginny said. She gave him her cell phone number. “Call us if there’s any news. I’ll get the message at the fuel stop.”
“All right,” Stone said, “and I’ll have a bed for you here.”
Ham spoke up again. “Stone, where’s Daisy?”
“Holly left her in a kennel in New York.”
“Goodbye,” Ham said, and hung up.
Stone hung up. Now he was going to have a distraught father on his hands, not that Ham was the sort to show his distress.
The phone rang. “Hello?”
“Stone, it’s Lance. I’m sorry to take so long to get back to you, but I’ve had something of an emergency here. I tried to call Holly on her cell phone, but I was sent straight to voice mail. What’s happened?”
Stone told him, as briefly as possible.
“What’s being done?”
“The state cops have organized a search party, and they’re walking every inch of land and searching every house on the island.”
“Good. I may be able to help with that.”
“I think they’ve got it covered, Lance.”
“I have other ways of covering it. I can’t get there before tomorrow morning, though. Will you meet me at the airport?”
“Of course. What time?”
“Let’s aim for eleven o’clock. I’ll call you if there’s any change in my ETA.”
“Lance, a favor. Will you bring Dino with you?”
“Of course.”
“And bring sidearms.”
“Of course. Is there anything else I can do for you?”
“One other thing: Bring Daisy.”
“She’s not with Holly?”
“No, she’s in a kennel. I don’t know which one.”
“I’ll find her. See you tomorrow.”
Stone hung up feeling a little better. Help was on the way.
Chapter 44
STONE STOOD AT THE Islesboro airstrip and scanned the skies. Seth Hotchkiss stood beside him.
“There,” Seth said, pointing.
Stone followed Seth’s finger to a black dot low in the sky. “You have an eagle eye, Seth.”
“So did my daddy. Runs in the family. Which lot is in this airplane?” Seth had brought his pickup truck to help.
Stone squinted. “This is the Bonanza, I think. Holly’s father, Ham, and his girlfriend, Ginny, who’s the pilot, will be in that. I’d like you to take them back to the house and get them settled in a guest room, while I wait for the other bunch. I’ll put Lance and Dino in the guest house.”
“Ayup,” Seth replied.
The Bonanza was straight in for runway one now, and he saw the landing gear come down and heard Ginny reducing power. She cleared the trees and dropped the airplane on the numbers, braking hard. Stone stood on the tarmac, his hands raised, to show her where to park.
Ham was out of the airplane immediately, even though Ginny had to let the engine idle for five minutes to allow the turbocharger to cool before shutting down.
“How are you, Ham?” Stone asked, shaking his hand.
“Not good. Any news?”
Stone shook his head. “Let’s hope no news is good news. Shall we get your gear into the truck?”
The two men opened the rear doors and transferred Ham’s and Ginny’s luggage to the pickup, then Ginny shut down the engine, stepped out onto the wing and locked the door behind her. She jumped down and gave Stone the keys.
“I’m going to send you back to the house with Seth Hotchkiss, here,” Stone said, introducing them. “I have to wait for Lance Cabot and Dino Bacchetti; they’ll be here any minute. Seth and his wife, Mabel, will get you settled. We should be there in time for lunch. I’ve asked the state policeman in charge, Sergeant Young, to come over early in the afternoon.”
Ham nodded and ushered Ginny into the pickup. They had been gone perhaps ten minutes when Stone heard, before he saw, another airplane. Five minutes later a Pilatus PC12, a big, Swiss, single-engine turboprop, had taxied to parking and cut its engine. Daisy was the first out, running to Stone and making a fuss over him. Lance and Dino followed, while the pilot put their luggage into the station wagon. Stone got it started and headed for the house.
“Any developments?” Lance asked.
“None at all. Dead silence. At least nobody has found a body, as in the other cases.”
Dino spoke up. “I don’t see how anybody could take Holly.”
“It’s not that hard,” Lance said. “Even a well-trained, aware person can be lulled into thinking he’s safe long enough to be captured or killed.”
“Thanks for bringing Daisy,” Stone said.
“It was harder getting her out of that kennel than getting an agent out of a foreign jail. Dino’s badge did the trick, finally. I had to sign a form, releasing them from all liability.”
“You said you had some other means of searching for Holly,” Stone said to Lance.
Lance glanced at his watch. “I do, but it will be another couple of hours before the materials will be in my hands.”
AT THE HOUSE, Lance went directly to Dick’s secret office and got on the computer. Stone watched as he loaded a stack of acetate sheets into the printer.
“Now we wait,” Lance said. “Is lunch ready?”
They sat down around the kitchen table, while Mabel served the food and Stone took everybody through every step of the past two days.
“Any questions?” Stone asked, finally.
Ham spoke up. “Is it true that after forty-eight hours the chances of getting a missing person back are about nil?”
“No, it’s not true,” Stone said. “Not in this situation, at least.”
“Why not this situation?”
“First, because it’s Holly, and she is much more capable of dealing with these circumstances than your average abductee. If she has even the slightest opportunity, she’ll kill her abductor and get out of wherever she is. It’s unlikely that he has any notion of how much danger he’s in.”
Ham nodded, seeming to take some comfort in that idea.
They were on coffee when Lance looked at his watch. “Excuse me, I want to see if I’ve had anything from Langley yet.” He got up and left the table.
Seth came in from outdoors. “Stone, can you come down to the dock for a minute? There’s something I want to show you.”
“We’re expecting Sergeant Young shortly, Seth. Can it wait?”
“I don’t think so,” Seth said.
Stone got up and followed, and everybody else followed Stone. Seth led them down to the dock where Dick’s yacht and the Hinckley picnic boat were docked.
“This is what caught my attention,” Seth said, pointing at a corner of the picnic boat’s stern. “Did you do that by any chance?”
The corner was damaged, as if it had been hit from above by something heavy.
“No, I didn’t,” Stone said. “This boat was pristine the last time I was aboard.”
“I didn’t think so,” Seth said. He produced a bucket with a Plexiglas bottom. “Come over here and take a look.” He put the bottom of the bucket in the water astern of the boat and held it while Stone looked into it. The six-foot-deep water, which was clear but dark, became even clearer. A cubical object about eighteen inches on each side came dimly into view, half sunk into the muddy bottom.
“It’s got to be the safe,” Stone said.
“What safe?” Dino asked.
“Dick’s safe from the study. Somebody got into the house and sawed it out of where it was bolted to a shelf in a cupboard.”
Seth said, “I reckon the feller muscled it down here to the dock to load it on a boat, and he slipped up and dropped it, hitting the boat’s transom. The safe went into the water, and nobody could get it out of there alone without some equipment.”
“Seth,” Stone said, “is there a wet suit among Dick’s stuff?”
“Yes, in the garage,” Seth said, “but it’s Dick’s size, and he was smaller than you or me.”
“Would it fit Dino?”
“Hey, wait a minute,” Dino said.
“I reckon it would,” Seth replied.
“Will you take Dino inside and get him into the wet suit? Hit him over the head, if you have to. Then find some rope and a shovel.”
DINO STOOD ON THE dock wearing the wet suit, a mask and a snorkel. “Now what?” he asked.
“It’s going to be just like that time you told me about in the Bahamas,” Stone said. “Remember how much you enjoyed the snorkeling?”
“This is Maine, not the Bahamas,” Dino said. “That water is fucking cold.”
“That’s why you’re wearing the wet suit,” Stone said. “See? We’ve thought of your every need.”
“But…”
Stone pushed him into the water.
Dino sputtered to the surface. “You’re going to pay for that, goddammit!”
“Now, here’s what you do,” Stone said, handing him a shovel and a length of rope.
Chapter 45
STONE LET THE water drain off the safe, then dried it carefully, before he and Seth carried it into the house.
“What do you think it weighs?” Stone asked Seth.
“Fifty, sixty pounds,” Seth replied.
“Could one man handle it?”
“You want to try?”
“Nope.”
“I reckon a pretty strong fella could handle it. ”Course, he might drop it trying to get it into a boat.“
They got the safe into the study, laid some newspapers on the desk and rested the steel box on top of it, lying on its back. Lance was working away at the computer in Dick’s office.
“The dial is gone,” Stone said.
Lance spoke up. “That means they tried to open it, failed, then sawed it out of the cabinet.”
Stone peered at the safe closely. He could see the bolt that locked it through the crack between the door and the jamb. “I don’t have a clue how to handle this,” he said.
“Send Dino back in the water to look for the dial,” Lance said. “It’ll simplify things.”
Dino was out on the deck, half out of the wet suit. Stone went out and broke the news to him.
“Your turn,” Dino said.
“Put it back on, Dino; you’re the only one the suit fits.”
Dino sighed and began struggling back into the wet suit. “What am I looking for again?”
“The dial from the front of the safe. It’s got to be…” Stone stopped. “Wait a minute.” He went back into the study and opened the cabinet where the safe had been. He rummaged through some papers on the shelf below, and his hand found something of solid metal. He held up the dial. “Never mind, Dino; I found it.”
“Great!” Dino yelled from the deck and started getting out of the wet suit again.
“Got it, Lance,” Stone called.
“In a minute,” Lance replied. He made more key-tapping noises in the little office.
Dino came into the study in a towel. “I’m going to get a shower,” he said. “Anything else that has to be retrieved from the bottom is gonna be retrieved by somebody else.”
“All right, all right,” Stone said.
“And remember, I have a gun.” Dino went through the kitchen out to the guest house, where he and Lance each had a room.
Lance came out of the little office. “Okay, let me have the dial,” he said.
Stone handed it to him.
Lance inspected the safe closely, then fitted the dial back onto the stem protruding from the front of the safe. “Now we find out whether it’s on right, or whether I have to take it off again and rotate it a hundred and eighty degrees. I don’t suppose any of you has a stethoscope on you?”
They all looked at him blankly.
“That’s what I thought.” He pressed an ear to the safe and began slowly rotating the dial.
“I didn’t know you were a safecracker, Lance,” Stone said.
“Jack of all trades, definitely master of none.”
“Holly opened it, now that I recall.”
“We attended the same safecracking academy. Now be quiet; I can’t listen to you and the safe at the same time.”
Stone walked over to an easy chair and took a seat.
Lance stood up straight, turned the handle on the safe door, opened it and peered inside. “It’s a mess,” he said.
Stone walked back to the desk and looked inside the safe. The estate papers he had stored in it were a sodden mass. He lifted them out in a big lump and deposited them on the newspaper. Then he reached inside and brought out Esme’s diary. It was heavier than before, being soaking wet. He opened the cover and found the pages stuck together, the ink running.
“Have you got a hair dryer?” Lance asked.
“In my bathroom upstairs,” Ginny replied.
“Ginny,” Lance said, “would you like to help?”
“Of course,” she replied, running over to the desk.
“Will you take the diary upstairs, put it on a table and start drying it?”
“Sure.”
Lance reached into a desk drawer and found a letter opener. “Use this to separate the pages as they dry, but don’t force them.”
“Okay.” Ginny took the diary and went upstairs.
A bell sounded in Dick’s little office almost simultaneously with the front doorbell.
Lance disappeared into the office, and Seth went to the front door and came back with Sergeant Young, who looked tired.
Stone introduced him to Ham; he’d already met everybody else.
“Anything new?” Stone asked.
“I’m afraid not. We’ve pretty much started the search over again, and this time we’re concentrating on the beaches and shoreline.”
“Why?” Ham asked.
Sergeant Young looked away.
Stone spoke up. “Because the bodies of the missing women were all found in the water.”
Ham nodded.
Lance came out of the office. “Afternoon, Sergeant,” he said, placing several sheets of acetate on the desk. “I have something that might be of use to you in your search. Do you have a current map of the island?”