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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 course she’s lying,” a middle-aged man at the other end of the counter said. “The question is why.”
    A skinny woman yawned. “No one gives a shit, ace. The people don’t care about Penelope Chestnut. The people care about the fate of Frannie and Colt.”
    “One of these days I want to meet ‘the people,’” an older woman grumbled, “because I don’t give a rat’s ass about Frannie and Colt, either. I just care about that last piece of coconut pie sitting over in that case.” She raised her voice. “Miss, you earmark that pie for me, okay?”
    Wyatt managed to get in an order of grilled ham and cheese on rye and coffee while listening to the reporters grouse and catching the locals—two men in flannel shirts at one of the booths—grinning at the wild-goose chase Penelope Chestnut had put them on. From what he gathered, she’d done this sort of thing before. Maybe not this precise thing—crying wolf about a famous long-missing plane—but stirring up trouble in her small lakeside village.
    Then he got it. A scrap of conversation, a link between what was being said on one end of the diner and the other.
    Miss Penelope was a pilot.
    Wyatt smiled. Pilots he understood. He wasn’t one himself, but he’d hung out with them, used their services and appealed to their sense of adventure for most of his twenties and the first two years of his thirties. Now he was thirty-four, a suit behind a desk. He grimaced and drank his coffee and ate his sandwich. When he paid his tab, he got directions to the airport from the waitress.
    “Penelope won’t be there,” she said. “She’s flying today. And she’s not talking to reporters.”
    Wyatt didn’t disabuse her of her notion that he was a reporter. As instructed, he followed the main road the way he’d come, turned left at a flower shop, followed that road—its massive potholes and frost heaves required bright orange warning signs—until he came to a perfunctory green sign that said Airport. Bingo. He turned onto a barely paved country road, bounced over it until he came to a precious stretch of flat land. The Cold Spring Airport. It wasn’t much of an