The Four Corners of the Sky_ A Novel - Michael Malone [65]
“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