The Four Corners of the Sky Read online

  “Malpy?!”

  Annie twisted around to see the opened tote bag in the tail of the aircraft. Out of it scooted the Maltese.

  “Oh, great! Malpy! How’d you get in here?”

  The little dog crawled toward her, flopping from side to side and made it finally into her lap, where he snuggled his head against her stomach, lifting his chin with a whimper. “Okay. Shh shh shh,” she told him.

  The plane shuddered with a buck and Malpy yipped in a plaintive fret.

  “We’re fine! Why, Claudette Colbert could do this, right?”

  She radioed D. K., asking him to tell Clark and Sam that Malpy was in the plane with her, that she’d set her course for Elizabethtown, Kentucky (her refueling destination) and that she would call air traffic there with her ETA. “So, whose private jet was that?” she asked.

  “That was Mr. Brad Hopper Jets, that guy I never liked and told you not to marry? New VLJ Mustang.”

  “What? Brad?”

  “How many husbands you got?”

  “None,” Annie said. “I don’t have any husbands. I’m getting a divorce. Over.”

  “Roger that.” D. K. growled, “Man just slammed into my office, madder’n Charlie at My Lai, ’cause you’d left. He even know you’re divorcing him? Over.”

  “Don’t tell him where I’m headed…It’s rough up here, D. K. Go ahead.”

  “You can do it, baby. Feel the wind and ride it. Wing and a prayer. You can do it. Roger that...Over.”

  “Go ahead…D. K.? I can’t hear you. Come in.”

  “Annie? Come on in, Annie…”

  “D. K., go ahead.”

  All D. K. heard was static.

  ***

  Back on the ground at Destin Airworks, Clark put his wet arm around Sam’s shivering back. “Malpy must have sneaked in the damn plane again.”

  “It was the chicken korma. I packed some with the coffee. She’ll call us. She’ll be fine…Clark, this is where you say, ‘She’ll be fine.’”

  They walked out of the hangar into the rain.

  Sam clutched his arm. “I don’t even know if I want her to find Jack. Could be he’ll just hurt her.”

  In his slow soft drawl, Clark tried to offer comfort. “If Jack loves anybody, he loves her.”

  Sam pointed out that terrible things were done out of love and that love was no excuse for them.

  “Let’s go get that cake out of the freezer,” Clark suggested.

  Just as they were getting into the Volvo, D. K.’s truck squealed to a stop beside them. “Annie’s got your dog with her,” he yelled from his window.

  “We figured.”

  D. K. yelled out the window again. “That was her cheatin’ husband Hopper in the VLJ.”

  “We saw him,” Clark said.

  Sam rose to the young man’s defense. “Brad flew up to propose to Annie. He really wants to patch things up.”

  “Too bad he dropped a nuke on their marriage bed,” D. K. shouted.

  “He’s following her to St. Louis,” Sam yelled.

  D. K. laughed. “Yeah?”

  Clark asked mildly what “Yeah?” meant.

  “Means I don’t give him any fuckin’ fuel till I fix my fuckin’ radio. I’m hearing nothing but duck-quack on it. It’s going to take ’least two hours, maybe three, for me to fix that radio. Brad can chill.”

  Sam jumped out of the Volvo to run to D. K.’s truck window. “Here, I forgot. Take this sushi and chicken korma.” She handed him a large plastic bag. “And you and Clark have never been fair to Brad.”

  “Love don’t come easy,” D. K. predicted, gunning his motor with his special hand-levers. “You know that, Sammy. Didn’t your girlfriend leave you and run off to Cancun?”

  “Belize! Jill went to Belize.”

  “Wherever.” He thanked her for the food, popped his clutch, and was gone.

  As Clark drove carefully away from the airport, his pager beeped. It took Sam a while to find his cell phone and call the number back.

  “My name is Dan Hart,” said a pleasant voice. “I’m trying to reach an Anne Peregrine Goode. She’s not answering her cell. Is she available? Or a Dr. Clark Goode?”

  “Clark’s right here. When you call our house, he gets the page.”

  “Is Annie there?” the man asked.

  “No. I’m her aunt. Are you a friend of Annie’s?”

  “I gotta tell you, I love the way she laughs. She’s funny as hell.”

  “Annie?” Sam was confused. “Funny?”

  “Will she be back home soon?”

  “Sorry?” Sam was more confused. “You mean, in Maryland?”

  “Aren’t I reaching you in Emerald, North Carolina?”

  Sam said they had just this minute left Annie at Destin Airworks. “She’s taking off for St. Louis to see her father.”

  Hart’s attitude changed. “Give me her flight number. Where’s Destin Airworks?”

  “It’s her own plane.” Sam caught her breath. “Oh, wait, wait a minute, Hart. Sergeant Hart. You’re the Miami police detective!”

  “Yeah, I just flew in here. Can you confirm her father’s in St. Louis?” His tone was challenging.

  Clark whispered at Sam, “What’s the matter? What’s going on?”

  She waved the phone at Clark to be quiet. “Listen, Sergeant Hart. What kind of fraud are you accusing Jack of? Does he have a lawyer? If he doesn’t, I want to find one for him.”

  “You ask a lot of questions, ma’am.”

  “So do you, Sergeant.”

  He laughed but cut it off. “If you talk to your niece, have her phone me at Miami Police, Vice and Fraud.”

  “She knows nothing about any fraud. She’s just trying to get Jack medical help. My brother’s very ill.”

  Hart took on an even more official briskness. “Then the best thing his family can do is assist the law in finding him. Have her phone me. Nice to speak to you, Mrs. Goode.”

  “My brother is not a criminal and my name’s Peregrine. Sam Peregrine.”

  The pleasant voice returned. “Ah, Sam, like Grace Kelly, Tracy Samantha Lord.”

  “What?”

  “High Society. Philadelphia Story.”

  Sam gripped the phone. “You like old movies?”

  “Love ’em.”

  “Wait a minute. How old are you, Mr. Hart?”

  “Twenty-six.”

  “That’s a good age. Don’t waste it.”

  “‘Stuff that dreams are made of.’” He hung up.

  Sam recounted the conversation. “If I’d known he was a cop, I wouldn’t have told him about St. Louis.”

  “Sam, you’d tell Goldfinger where you kept Agamemnon’s mask.” Clark dimmed his lights at a fast-approaching car.

  “That young man knew his movies,” murmured Sam.

  The speeding car whooshed past them in the opposite direction, headed toward Destin Airworks so fast that Clark felt the pull of the wind tunnel buffeting the Volvo. The fast-moving car swerved onto the exit ramp to the airfield and slammed to a stop beside Destin’s “business office” in front of which sat D. K.’s pickup truck, decorated with caustic bumper stickers about the government and with a big medallion of his trademark black eagle spread across the hood.

  A young man jumped out of the car, ran through the rain, and exploded into the office. He was a good-looking young man, tawny-haired, wearing jeans and a blue T-shirt. “Excuse me, sorry to bother you. I’m looking for Lt. Annie Goode,” he said with a friendly smile. He began stretching his legs as if they’d been cramped.

  D. K. Destin sat perched in his wheelchair, smacking the side of a transmitter radio in the expectation that repeated blows would solve the problem. He yelled at the young man, “Who are you?” as he rolled out from behind the desk.

  “My name’s Dan Hart.” The tawny-haired man spoke affably. “Her aunt just told me she was here at the airfield. Is that her jet there on the runway?”

  D. K. shook his cornrows, bemused. “No. It’s he
r husband’s. She’s divorcing him. Thank the fuck God.”

  Hart pulled out an old photo of a handsome man seated in an elegant restaurant banquette with a little girl of six or seven. “That’s Annie, right?” D. K. took the picture and laughed at it. “I mean I know she’s a lot older now.”

  “Try twenty years,” advised D. K. “But that’s her. Where’d you get this?”

  “It’s got her phone number on it. She still got that smile?”

  “What’s it to you?” asked the grouchy vet in the wheelchair.

  “I need to talk to her. Are you the Destin of Destin Airworks?” Hart held out his hand to shake.

  “Damn right.” D. K. studied the young man for a moment. “What do you want Annie for? ’Cause it’s not just to shoot the breeze.”

  Hart met D. K.’s stare. “I’m with the Miami Police Department. I’ve got a warrant on Jack Peregrine. I was just told she was flying out of your place to go get him in St. Louis. She may think she’s helping her dad. But this is more complicated than she knows and she could get hurt. I mean bad hurt.”

  D. K. thought this information over and made a snap judgment—as was his nature. “She left fifteen minutes ago. Took off in her Warrior.” He pointed out the office door at the runway. “The guy who owns the jet’s in the john. Her soon-to-be ex, I hope to Jesus, Brad Hopper.” D. K. pointed at the toilet door. “He’s going to St. Lou to get her back. He’ll make it in half her time and be there waiting for her. She’s just trying to get her fuckup of a dad into a hospital, so he can die there, I guess.”

  Hart asked quickly, “Is there some way you can get me a ride on this guy’s jet but not tell him I’m a cop looking for Annie? I swear to God, I’m really trying to help her. Jack Peregrine’s got some major-league crooks after him, and he’s got the U.S. fucking government after him, which as we all know…”—he gestured at the political stickers on D. K.’s wheelchair—“…makes organized crime look like babies in a playpen.”

  D. K. stared at the detective a moment. Then abruptly he spun his wheelchair toward the restroom door just as Brad was slamming out of it. The crippled pilot looked at Brad and then at Daniel Hart. He made another of his snap judgments. He growled, “Dan, this is Brad Hopper. That’s his jet. Brad, Dan’s a friend of mine, local businessman, needs a quick ride to St. Louis. He paid me two-hundred bucks and I’ll give it to you.” (Dan looked at him alarmed.) “That’s all he’s got. It’s about a woman he’s in love with. Ain’t it always? Give him a lift and you’re cleared for takeoff.”

  Brad made a derisive noise. “I get it. Your radio’s working fine. You just been holding me up so I could give a lift to your lovesick bud here.”

  D. K. nodded cheerfully. “We’re all standing in the shadows of love, Brad, don’t you know that?” He wheeled himself backward to his desk and opened a metal cashbox, from which he took two hundred-dollar bills. “Better use Runway Two-Seven. Only one we got.”

  When Brad took the money, D. K. made sure their fingers didn’t touch.

  “Thanks for the loan. I’ll pay you back,” Dan told D. K. after Brad had left the room.

  “That guy loves money.” The cranky vet had never forgiven Brad for breaking Annie’s heart. “I lost my legs and that was nothing compared to losing Dina. My wife. Money don’t mean shit and only shits don’t know that.”

  Chapter 21

  Imitation of Life

  On the slow drive home to Pilgrim’s Rest, Clark and Sam talked as they always did, slowly, easily. They talked about Annie’s risky flight—it distressed them—and about Brad’s reconciliation prospects, which Clark considered nil.

  They speculated about what Jack really wanted from Annie, and why he wanted it. Was he trying to cut some deal with the law to reduce a sentence, or with criminals to stop them from beating him to death for unpaid debts? What was he trading—the plane, the emerald?

  “That was a very real emerald in his jacket,” Sam mused. “That emerald was big enough to be in the Smithsonian.”

  “Oh, Sam, come on.”

  “Clark, you don’t know your jewelry. Remember the summer Jack showed up like North by Northwest, right after Annie graduated, when the highway patrol almost got him, that little ruby he gave me for Annie; it’s worth thousands now. You know what? Maybe Kim was never crazy. Maybe there were Peregrine jewels buried at Pilgrim’s Rest.”

  Clark snorted his skepticism. “Sam, you’ll believe anything. That ruby came out of a bucket at some ruby farm in the Smokies. And if that emerald’s real, then Jack stole it. Maybe he stole it from the Smithsonian.”

  Sam nudged him impatiently. “Just listen. Say Kim was right and there was a stash of precious stones. What if Jack found them? He always said he was going to be a millionaire.”

  Clark drove slowly, approaching the turnoff for River Hill Road. “You just listen! One, practically all that Peregrine land is gone. You sold it. That land is now sitting under a hundred acres of sweet potatoes and Christmas trees.”

  “That doesn’t mean there’re not gems buried in it.”

  “Two, you’d never find them. A hundred acres of clay and muddy river? You couldn’t even find your motorcycle when it flew out from under Annie and crashed down in that gully and she broke her collarbone, so you’re not going to find a couple of little rubies and emeralds.”

  Sam frowned at the memory. “What an awful day. Thank God you were there to get her to the hospital.”

  Clark carefully turned onto the gravel road at the top of the hill. “This St. Louis thing is not about real emeralds. It’s a wild goose chase. Jack’s up to some scam, whether he’s working with the law or against it, and he needs Annie to pull it off. She’ll figure that out and she’ll come home.”

  “I hope so,” said Sam sadly, sinking back into her seat. She was quiet for a while, looking out at the black Aquene River hurrying along below them.

  Clark reached over for her hand. “I know why you want those Peregrine jewels to be real.”

  She smiled wanly. “How about, ‘It was a toss-up whether I go in for diamonds or sing in the choir. The choir lost’?”

  “Don’t give me Mae West.” He squeezed her hand. “It’s about Jack. It’s about hoping that if your little brother’s after some real jewels, then he isn’t dying. Am I right?”

  Sam hugged herself. “Possible.”

  Clark clicked the turn signal before the gates of Pilgrim’s Rest, although there was no one else anywhere behind them. “And Jack’s not dying. You’ll see. It’s a big con.”

  Sam kept running her fingers along the ridge of an old scar on her forearm, “What I remember most is how he was always trying to make me laugh. He’d jump up and down on my bed and make faces. ‘Come on, Sam, don’t cry, don’t cry.’”

  Clark nodded. “I know.”

  She stared out the car window at the flat, empty night. “It took a lot to get Jack down. But that goddamn closet, that’s what got to him. Otherwise he could blow off even the tough stuff. Poof, like a dandelion. Dad would take away his allowance, his dinner, Jack would laugh. Dad would lock him in his room, Jack would sneak out the window and crawl along the roof into my room and we’d splice into the TV antenna and watch late night movies together. He would stick his face in front of the screen and act like a hyped-up announcer: ‘Get more out of life, go to the movies!’”

  Pulling into the driveway to the house, Clark gave Sam’s hand another slow pat. “You and your movies.”

  Sam said she was not to be teased out of her faith that movies showed people how to live their lives with a great score and the boring parts cut out. In movies you could be braver and luckier than in your real life. And better looking. Sam herself, who had watched a movie a day since her adolescence, suspected that without their comfort she might have taken to drink, or worse. Given their Peregrine genes, Sam sighed, Jack and she had really needed Hollywood.

  It was true that despite their blessings, the Peregrines had always been a sad family. Most of them were Am
erican enough to believe they had a right not to be sad, an inalienable right not only to the pursuit of happiness, but to its capture. So, while a few had skidded down the shale of life without digging in their heels, most Peregrines had died scrabbling at every outcropping they passed along the way—a new job, a new marriage, a drink or a sport or a church or a chance—determined to grab the American dream before they landed at the bottom. Wasn’t it the national story that failure was the fault of those who failed? That if people only got themselves to the right place at the right time, they could find a fortune in emeralds and rubies? That not believing the dream was not to believe in their country?

  So for hundreds of years the Peregrine family had lived unhappily on a hundred-plus acres of rich farm land (their slaves did the farming) that had once been the home of the Algonquin ancestors of D. K. Destin, who was always saying that the Peregrines should give the “native As” their land back.

  Sam was the first Peregrine to sell off any of the family land. She sold all but ten acres and used the profits to build Clark’s pediatric clinic at Emerald Hospital.

  “Best thing I ever did,” she always told the town, who found it hard to believe it could be a happy thing to give away over $3 million worth of land to a hospital and to try instead to rent out movies for a living.

  But Sam was absolutely sincere. “That land was cursed,” she told the town. “And now the curse is lifted.”

  It was true that war and weather, bad luck and their own dissatisfactions had plagued her family since 1795 when the first Peregrine house washed away in a flood. They’d built another one on the hill above the fast red river that the Algonquins had named Aquene, which meant “Peace”—not that Algonquins had gotten much peace after the first pockmarked Europeans showed up in their yard.

  A third Peregrine home rose out of the rubble of the second. Nestled just below the hill’s crest, it was a large two-story white frame house with eight chimneys and a wide, columned porch and two copper-roofed wings that had their own small porches in back. This house was named Pilgrim’s Rest. But it was never very restful. During the Civil War, Federal troops had commandeered it and the family had been forced to move to a boarding house; a few had even hid in a makeshift tent in the woods and sneaked over at night to steal their own chickens. During Reconstruction, they’d moved back to the house and for the next seventy-five years felt sorry for themselves because they were no longer well-to-do.