Killer Takes All

CHAPTER 41

Thursday, March 17, 2005

9:00 a.m.

Stacy and Billie quickly put together a travel itinerary. They found nonstop flights to San Francisco for the next day. Billie insisted that they should rent a car there and drive to the Monterey Coast. Waiting for a connection to the tiny regional airport would have taken longer than the two-hour drive. And besides, to miss such a beautiful drive would be a sin.

Especially made in a convertible. Something sleek and European. Or, so said Billie.

Billie believed in traveling in style.

Stacy had decided to make the trip, with or without Leo’s blessing. However, when she’d presented him with her plan, he had not only given her his blessing, he had agreed to pay for the trip.

A good thing, since booking at the last minute had sent the airfare from exorbitant to utterly ridiculous.

Which Billie could easily afford. And Stacy could not.

An exploding credit card was not a pretty sight.

Stacy zipped her carry-on, into which she had stuffed enough for a two-day stay. She quickly scanned the bedroom, then bath to make certain she hadn’t forgotten anything.

That done, she hoisted her bag. As she stepped into the hallway, Stacy glanced left, toward Alice’s room. She thought of her crying the night before. The girl was most likely in class. Acting on instinct, she crossed to the closed door and tapped on it. Clark answered.

“I’m sorry for interrupting,” she said, “but could I speak with Alice? It’ll just take a moment.”

He lowered his eyes to her bag, then returned them to hers. “Sure.”

A moment later Alice appeared. “Hey,” she said, not quite meeting Stacy’s eyes.

“I have to go out of town for a couple days. If you need me for anything, call me.” She scrawled her cell phone number on a piece of paper and handed it to her. “If you need anything, Alice. I mean that.”

The girl stared at the paper and its scrawled number, throat working. When she lifted her gaze to Stacy’s, her eyes were bright with tears. Without a word, she turned and went back into the schoolroom. As the door swung shut, Clark looked at Stacy.

She met his eyes just before the door closed.

She stood rooted to the spot as the hair on the back of her neck prickled.

The doorbell sounded.

Billie. Stacy paused a moment more, then readjusted the bag and headed down to meet her friend.

Traffic proved to be on their side, and the trip to Louis Armstrong International Airport took just under twenty minutes. A good thing, because unlike her single carry-on, Billie had two bags to check. Big bags.

“What,” Stacy asked, “could you possibly have in there that you’ll need in the next forty-eight hours?”

“My essentials,” the woman answered breezily, smiling at the skycap. The man, ignoring several people in line in front of them, asked if he could help her.

Amazingly, no one complained.

Not so amazingly, the skycap totally ignored Stacy, leaving her to schlep her own bag.

As they proceeded to the gate, her cell phone rang. Stacy saw from the display that it was Malone.

“You going to answer that?” Billie asked.

Was she? If she told him what she was up to, he could skewer her meeting with Chief Battard, Billie or no Billie. All he had to do was claim she was interfering with an active investigation, and the file the chief had offered would be sealed shut.

Besides, this was the first time she had heard from Spencer since Saturday. Clearly, he had cut her out. She was cutting him out, as well.

She smiled to herself. “Nope,” she said, hitting the device’s power button.