“They don’t think of you as one of the guys,” Harriet had told her. “They think of you more as a surrogate sister.”
And you didn’t date your sister.
Not that Penelope wanted to date any of them. She shuddered. They were her friends. She couldn’t envision sleeping with them any more than they could her.
Her social life had taken a sharp downward turn in recent months. For a while there’d been a man in Bangor she’d see whenever she flew in that direction. Another pilot. Then she realized he never made the effort to get to New Hampshire to see her, and if she knew anything about herself it was that she didn’t want a one-way relationship. So, exit the pilot. Enter no one to replace him.
Well, she wasn’t pitiful. She had her place on the lake, her flying, her friends, her family. If this was it, this was it. She liked to fantasize about tearing down her grandfather’s cabin and building her own place, with lots of wood and glass. She’d hire an architect to design a house especially for this piece of land.
But that all seemed a long way off. Right now, she was grounded, and she had a Sinclair out to prove she’d lied about Colt and Frannie’s plane.
Which, of course, she had.
She shrugged off a sudden wave of uneasiness. She could almost feel the smooth leather of Wyatt Sinclair’s jacket as he’d sat next to her in her truck. She’d never touched him, but she might as well have.
This was just the sort of effect Colt must have had on Frannie Beaudine. And look where that weakness had led her. Right into the side of a hill.
At least Wyatt wouldn’t be on the loose in Cold Spring, not if he was staying at the Sunrise Inn. Her cousin had been madly curious about Sinclairs for as long as Penelope could remember. The two of them had even wandered through the Sinclair Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on a trip to New York. Harriet would keep a close eye on the first Sinclair to step foot in Cold Spring in her lifetime.
Penelope went into the second bedroom, which she’d converted to a study, and turned on her computer. While it booted up, she stared at the framed front page of the Cold Spring Reporter from the first day of the search for Colt Sinclair and Frannie Beaudine. On her bookcase, she had scrapbooks of articles and cassettes of recordings she’d done of interviews with locals who remembered the crash and the ensuing search. She hadn’t developed such a hobby just because Colt and Frannie were pilots, because they’d disappeared in one of her favorite planes or because her father and grandfather and Aunt Mary had participated in the search. She’d come to it because of Harriet, because of the years she’d listened to her cousin fantasize—at first tentatively, then with more certainty—about being the daughter of the handsome, adventurous couple.
Wasn’t her cousin entitled to her fantasy? It was harmless enough. But Penelope pushed such thoughts aside and got on the Internet, going straight to one of the sites devoted to the missing Piper Cub. There was an amazing amount of information, gossip, speculation and junk about Frannie and Colt on the Internet, most of which was useless. Theories about their disappearance ranged from elopement to kidnapping by aliens with a thousand scenarios in between. They were alive and living in Canada, they were Communist spies, they were thieves, it was a suicide pact, it was murder-suicide. Colt was the foppish un-Sinclair, the impressionable college grad, the innocent. Then he was the quintessential Sinclair, the rake, the daredevil, the instigator. Frannie was the beautiful innocent, the bookish refugee from the wilds of New Hampshire, the vixen, the gold digger. Every possible theory from the nutty to the sublime was there.
News of Penelope’s false alarm had reached the enthusiasts. Debate was raging about why she’d changed her story. Had she been forced? Had she found something in the wreckage she wanted for herself? There were, of course, conspiracy theorists. But most believed she’d simply made a mistake, even if her turn-of-the-century dump was an awkward cover for that mistake. They didn’t want to give up their Frannie-Colt fantasies any more than Harriet would want to give up hers. Not every mystery begged for unraveling.
How had she ever thought finding their plane would help her cousin? Seeing her flush and stutter over Wyatt Sinclair this afternoon was unsettling, and now Penelope wished she’d never started down this path. She should have kept her big mouth shut about what she’d found in the woods.
But, as her grandfather would remind her, there was no point crying over spilled milk.
She decided she’d have supper by the fire and read until she fell asleep. The aftereffects of her mishap in the sky and tea with Wyatt Sinclair were taking their toll. She couldn’t think straight.
An instant message flashed on her screen. She jumped, startled, then was pleased for the diversion. She had plenty of friends in faraway places.
Frannie Beaudine was a sweet young thing not unlike you. Yet her bones lie bleached by the elements, her flesh no more, her body and spirit dead and gone. Do you want to share her fate? Behave yourself, Penelope. You know what you’ve done wrong.
She stared at the screen, paralyzed. She didn’t breathe. She didn’t blink. The words blurred, and her eyes stung until tears formed. Finally she hit the key to reply. But the person on the other end was no longer available. She jotted down the user ID. It would be useless, she knew—who would send such a message if it could be easily traced?
She typed a reply, deleted it. Maybe she should pretend she hadn’t received the message, hadn’t read it. Just ignore the thing. Don’t do anything to stir the pot.
Her hands shook, and suddenly her whole body was shaking. She gulped for air, felt the bile stinging her throat.
“Well, Aunt Mary,” she said, “you should have your front row seat.” Because she was scared. There was no other word for it.
She returned to the great room, where the warm fire of the wood stove helped to calm her. She could call the police. Andy McNally would roar out here. But what could he do?
It was a kook, she told herself. The Internet was full of kooks. No one took instant messages seriously. She’d once had one asking her if she liked to skinny-dip in Lake Winnipesaukee. The whole world knew she’d claimed she’d found Colt and Frannie’s plane. She should have anticipated such harassment. Andy McNally would tell her as much.
Her stomach ached, and she had to fight dizziness, a pulsing pain behind her eyes. She was Penelope the Fearless, the woman who could live on the lake in her grandfather’s cabin, who loved adventures and thrills and action and scoffed at things that went bump in the night.
Yet as the sky slowly went black and the fire crackled in the stove and she couldn’t even hear the caw of a crow, she couldn’t shake her fear. The reporters, Wyatt Sinclair, a Sinclair investigator, her mishap in the air, her own lie—and now a creepy message on the Internet. It was all too much.
She made herself go out to her woodpile and bring in wood, five trips, five full armloads, until her wood box was overflowing, because she had no intention of letting the fear get to her. She hadn’t this afternoon when she’d realized she was low on fuel. She wouldn’t now.
She dumped the last load into the box. A log rolled off and narrowly missed her toe. She jumped back, out of breath from exertion and too much adrenaline pumping through her system. There were more logs on the floor—five at least. She’d tossed in one load after another, not concerned about neatness, only about the need to force herself to keep moving.
Hearing a car negotiating the pits and ruts of her spring-ravaged dirt road, she prayed it would continue past her cabin.
It didn’t.
She groaned. “Now what?”
Picking sawdust off her fleece shirt, Penelope