It was a relief when one-thirty rolled around. I gathered my files into my briefcase and headed for the door. And the phone rang.
“Dammit!” I looked over my shoulder at the instrument, tempted to let the call go on the machine. But it might be important …
“Sharon?” Gage Renshaw's voice.
“It's about time!”
“What d'you mean? I've left five, six messages on your machine.”
“When?”
“Yesterday, day before.”
Oh, hell, now she was erasing not only Hy's messages but Renshaw's as well! After the last incident, I'd changed the remote access code for the machine, but there were only a limited number of combinations, and someone with D’Silva's skills could easily figure out the new code.
“Sharon, I can't talk long, so listen carefully. Where're you going to be this afternoon and evening?”
“… I'm not sure. Probably away from home. Let me give you my cellphone number.” I repeated it twice for him. “Why—”
“No time for explanations. During the next, say, six hours you'll receive a call. Either from Ripinsky or me.” He hung up.
I stared at the receiver, then banged it down. God, how I hated his cryptic talk! What Gage meant was that the situation—probably a hostage negotiation or ransom delivery—was about to be resolved. If positively, Hy would phone. If negatively, I'd hear from Gage. And if I heard from Gage, it might mean—
My vision blurred and for a second I lost my equilibrium. I grasped the back of the armchair next to me, shook my head to clear it. Pushed aside the impulse to panic.
I
would
hear from Hy. Sometime during the next six hours. Believing that was the only way it was humanly possible to go on.
Greg said, “You don't have enough on her for us to take official action.”
“I was afraid of that.” I got up and began to pace around his cubicle off the Narcotics detail squad room, stopping to tap on the windowpane at a pigeon that was crapping on the ledge outside. It ignored me.
“Anything unofficial you can do?” I asked.
“I can request that our people keep an eye out for her, relay the information to you if she's spotted.”
“I'd appreciate it.” I continued to pace.
Greg made a phone call, passed on the details about D’Silva and her car. Then he said, “Shar, sit down. You've got to relax.”
I sat.
“I've never seen you so wound up—not even during cases where you had a large personal stake.”
“Well, it doesn't get more personal than this, does it?”
He frowned at the edge in my voice. “Something else is wrong. What?”
I shrugged, looking away from him.
“Come on, Shar. This is me you're talking to.”
After a moment I looked back, feeling a familiar rush of gratitude that we'd somehow been able to move from a smashed love affair to a friendship. His wry, answering smile cut through my defenses, and I bit my lip, afraid I'd cry. Then I poured out the whole story of Hy's silence from South America and Gage Renshaw's phone call. “And on top of all that,” I went on, “I'm trying to deal with this D’Silva situation. The hell of it is, I feel as if I'm ignoring something important.”
“Well, about Hy—you're just going to have to wait it out, like Renshaw said. I know that's poor comfort. About the other—why don't you give it a rest? Do something relaxing instead.”
I stared at him. “What, this woman is trashing my life, and I'm supposed to go to the movies? Or curl up with a book?”
He held up a hand. “Now, don't get testy on me. What I meant is do something mindless that'll free up your thoughts and allow whatever it is to percolate up from wherever it's lodged. You used to walk on the beach when you were thinking something through.”
“I already tried that. San Gregorio in the middle of the night. It's a lot like Touchstone's beach, and I thought—
Jesus Christ!”
“What?”
“That's it!” I yanked my cell phone from my bag and began punching in the Point Arena number of Ray Huddleston, the caretaker who periodically checked on our property. As it rang I said to Greg, “D’Silva told the manager of my old building that she was going to the beach.”
He frowned, then nodded, comprehension flooding his eyes.
“Come on, Ray,” I muttered. “Come
on!
”
Ray answered on the ninth ring, sounding out of breath. “Sharon! Sorry; I was outside getting some wood.”
“No problem. Will you do me a favor—right away?”
“Sure. What?”
“Take a drive down to our property and see if everything's okay there. Then call me at this number.” I read off the cellphone number to him.
“Half an hour,” he said. “I'll get back to you.”
As I stuffed the phone into my purse and stood, Greg asked, “You really think she's there?”
“There, or close by. It's the only part of my life she hasn't invaded—and the most precious.” I whirled and started for the door.
“Hey, wait! You don't know for sure.”
“I know—I should've known last night. She's demonstrated she can read my mind. Now, by God, I'm reading hers.”
Before I left town, I stopped by an outfit on Third Street where I often rented equipment that was too expensive and too infrequently used for the agency to own, and picked up a device I thought might come in handy at Touchstone. Then, from the car, I called the FBO at North Field and asked that they have someone fuel Two-eight-niner. Next I phoned the Oakland Automated Flight Service Station and listened to a taped weather briefing for the Mendocino County Airport at Little River. Hy and I had put in our own dirt strip on our property, but if conditions were bad at the airport, which lay inland, they'd be even worse at Touchstone.
The weather sounded good, with winds at three knots and unlimited visibility, but the tape was several hours old, so I stayed on the line to talk with a briefer. He said a front was forecast for midnight which would bring high-velocity winds and rain. To verify his information, I called the airport and spoke with a woman employee whom I knew personally; her visual take on the outlook was that the front would arrive earlier.
“If conditions start to look dicey,” she added, “you're better off landing here, rather than at that strip you guys've got down there on the cliffs.”
I'd just ended the call when the phone buzzed. Ray Huddleston. “Sharon, I checked the property over, and nobody's there, but the security system's been tampered with and it's not functioning. I went through the cottage and the sheds, and covered the grounds pretty good. Nothing's been damaged, nothing looks disturbed, but there's a strange car in the shed with your truck—blue Honda Civic.”
D’Silva's. Ray hadn't seen her but she was there—possibly hiding in one of the caves in the cliffs below. The driveway in from Route 1 was long, and she'd had plenty of time to get clear of the cottage after she saw him coming.
“Thanks for checking, Ray.”
“A pleasure. You want me to see about getting the system repaired?”
“Not necessary. I'm on my way up there.”
“I could stay here till you arrive, just in case.”
“No, thanks, you've done enough.”
It would be just D’Silva and me. Just the two of us, alone.
The Citabria was fueled and waiting. I took the time to do a more thorough preflight than usual, checking both the gas and oil for contaminants I couldn't see by actually feeling for them with my fingers. There were no granular particles that suggested they had been sugared or otherwise tampered with, and I felt a sense of relief as I climbed into the cockpit.
The finer points of detecting sabotage had been taught to me by a seventy-something pilot friend. Erlene didn't fly by herself anymore, but frequently she and I took spins around northern California, sampling the haute cuisine at airport diners, and occasionally she liberated the controls from me. It was on one of our jaunts that she told me about flying transport as a civilian for the military during World War II, ferrying aircraft to the locations where they were needed. Some of the male pilots felt so threatened by women in the cockpit that they sugared the planes’ fuel and oil—a little known and less than proud moment in our military history—but the women quickly caught on and learned lifesaving detecting techniques. I'd asked Erlene to pass them along to me, never imagining I'd have real need of them.
“Clear!” I turned the key. The engine caught and sent the prop spinning into a silvery blur. After switching on the beacon and radio equipment and adjusting my headset, I contacted Ground Control.
Here I come, D’Silva. Now we find out which of us is the better McCone.
L
ittle River unicorn, Citabria seven-seven-two-eight-niner, request area weather advisory.”
“Hey, McCone.” The voice belonged to Sonny West, the man who managed the terminal building; Hy and I used to catch rides up and down the coast with him when we tied at the airport and were without the truck we kept at Touchstone. “Wind's picking up, around fifteen, sixteen knots from the west, and there's a mean-looking fogbank offshore. Your destination your own strip?”
“Affirmative.”
“Mind the crosswind on the clifftop.”
“Will do. Two-eight-niner.”
It was after six-thirty and a very dark night. Below and to my right lay the scattered lights of the little town of Boonville in the Anderson Valley, roughly 15 miles southeast of Touchstone. I watched them recede, noted the position lights of another plane some 2000 feet above me, then pulled back on power to begin a gradual descent on a direct 45-degree angle to our strip.
The fog was out there, all right—big gray billows sitting menacingly at sea. It could come in fast here on the coast, but not fast enough to prevent me from reaching my destination.
Familiar landmarks now: the lights of three ranches lying in a triangle—
My God! That dream I had the night after I first talked with Russ Auerbach! I was flying through a storm amid out-of-control high-tension wires, looking for a landmark. A triangulation of lights.
I believe in the usefulness of dreams. They often carry messages from the subconscious that, if properly interpreted, can serve us well. But I'd paid scant attention to that important message, hadn't realized my subconscious was trying to tell me what I'd forgotten.
D’Silva, according to Glenna Stanleigh, had known about our stone cottage by the sea. Had even known that we called it Touchstone. Shouldn't I have realized that it would all end on this remote stretch of coastline?
But how had she known about it?
I thought back to the day she had come to the pier for her job interview. Pictured her sitting tense and eager to please across the desk from me. It was a Thursday, and I'd promised the use of the cottage to Mick and Charlotte so they could get away for a long romantic weekend. Keim had stuck her head through my office doorway, seen I was busy, and started to withdraw. I excused myself to D’Silva, asked, “Charlotte, what is it?”
“Mick and I are ready to leave for Touchstone.”
“Keys're in my bag on the coatrack—the ring with the seagull medallion.”
“Appropriate, for your beach cottage.”
“Maybe, but you know what? I hate seagulls. They're nasty, voracious birds; I once saw one eat a dollar left as a tip in an outdoor restaurant.”
“So why d'you have the ring?”
“Same reason Hy has a gull painted on his plane—it's the emblem of the Friends of Tufa Lake, his environmental foundation.”
D’Silva had sat through the conversation looking out the window at the bay, politely pretending a lack of interest. But in reality she'd been making mental notes of our every word. And from there it was a short step to the public records that gave her the address of the property.
I adjusted my course a few degrees to the north of the ranch on the coastline. Pulled back some more on power and began looking for the security lights that marked the perimeter of our property. They were operational; D’Silva hadn't disabled them, and I knew why: she
wanted
me to arrive here.
Our runway lighting was a simple and relatively inexpensive one; I activated it by keying the radio's mike, and the strip's outline appeared in white. I turned downwind, noting the strong crosswind, pulled on the carburetor heat, slowed the plane some more.
She's heard the engine by now. She's waiting for me.
As I turned base, I slipped the plane with aileron and opposite rudder to lose altitude.
Somewhere down there she's watching.
On final now, the crosswind from the west very strong. The Citabria drifted slightly off its flight path, but I slipped into the wind and corrected it.
She's—
You can't think about her now. Concentrate on making the strip.
Airspeed good. Altitude good. At around 300 feet I switched off the landing lights so they wouldn't make the ground seem to rush up at me.
Ten feet, level off. Feel the sink as the plane starts to settle. Use your feet, keep it centered. Feel where the wheels are, only inches off the ground. Hold it off now …
Well, what do you know! A perfect three-point. Good omen.
I taxied along, braked, turned off toward the tie-down chains that were embedded in the concrete pad to the side of the strip. Shut the plane down and, before I got out, took the .357 from my bag and turned my cell phone back on. It had pained me to have to leave it off during flight, in case the promised call came from either Hy or Renshaw, but cellular phones can't be used in planes because they interfere with the radios.
For a moment I sat in the cockpit, staring into the darkness and seeing nothing. Then, before the runway lights could automatically shut off, I got out and chained the Citabria tightly. The wind was blowing more strongly than the 15 or 16 knots Sonny West had estimated. The fogbank held stationary, but stray wisps drifted high against the sky. Down below, the sea crashed on the rocks.
The runway lights switched off, leaving me in total darkness.
So where is she?
The phone buzzed.
I snatched it from my bag, flipped it open. Before I could speak, a familiar voice said, “Guess where I'm calling from.”