To Darkness and to Death by Julia Spencer-Fleming Page A

ourselves here. The first assumption has to be the original one. That she got lost while walking last night and needs help finding her way back.” He nodded toward Clare. “The second assumption I’m going to work on is that she decided, for whatever reason, to meet up with this Michael McWhorter in the wee hours, and the car you heard in the drive was him picking her up.” He nodded toward van der Hoeven. “The search team will work on the first assumption. I’ll take care of the second.”
    Eugene was clearly worried now, his shoulders hunching, his hands clenching and unclenching. Russ gentled his voice. “Chances are, if she’s not out in the woods, she’s holed up with her boyfriend. Clare’s right, at twenty-six, you don’t always think about notifying other people before you dash off to do something stupid and romantic.” He glanced toward the dining room, where the other members of the search team were clearing away the dishes. “Why don’t you go talk to John Huggins and let him know the police will be following up on this possible boyfriend thing.”
    “Right. Of course. I…” Van der Hoeven scrubbed his hands across his shirt. “I just don’t ever want anything to happen to her.” He took a deep breath and straightened, his hands falling to his side, his shoulders squaring. Becoming—what was the old word? The patroon. The master of the estate. “Right,” he said, more confidently, and left to join Huggins, who was now spreading maps over the table again.
    “I have to join them, too,” Clare said. She lowered her voice. “What do you think?”
    “I think if I were trying to come up with a hard-to-verify name for someone, I’d pick Michael McWhorter. There are hundreds of McWhorters in Millers Kill, Fort Henry, and Cossayuharie. Thousands, if you include the area between Lake George and Saratoga. The business with the car—I don’t like that, either.”
    “You don’t think it could have been an assignation?”
    He looked at her skeptically. “Twenty-six-year-old women may do a lot for love, but in my experience, they want to look good while they’re doing it. Would you haul yourself out of bed to rendezvous with your lover at 4:00 A.M.?”
    “With messy hair and morning breath and my face all creased from my pillow?” She grinned. “Probably not.” Her smile faded away. “But I’d haul myself out of bed at 4:00 A.M. to do something I didn’t want anyone to know about.”
    “Maybe she was counting on getting home before her brother woke up.”
    “Eugene told us he had planned to go hunting. He would have been up and out before dawn.”
    “Even better. He’s out of the house until ten, eleven o’-clock. That gives her six hours or so to do what she needs to do and get back into the house undetected.”
    “If he hadn’t happened to peek in on her before he left this morning, he never would have known she was gone at all.”
    “What about the cleaning lady?”
    Clare glanced around. “I can’t imagine she’d go in Millie’s bedroom unless she was sure it was empty. And if Millie bumped into her walking in, so what? She says she got up and took a little stroll before breakfast. This house is so big, two people could spend all day in it and never see each other.”
    Over her head, Russ could see Huggins staring at them. “Unless the two are you and John Huggins. Better get back to business, darlin’.”
    He loved watching her cheeks go pink. Her voice was as steady as ever, though. “He’ll only keep us at it for another hour or two before we get relieved. I’ll be at home after. Give me a call. I want to know what you find out about Michael McWhorter.”
    “Ma’am, yes, ma’am.”
    Her mouth twitched in a half smile before she spun and walked away. He shook himself. He dug his hand into his pocket and pulled out the keys to his truck. He’d drive over to the department and assign this to someone and then hightail it out of there. It was his day off, after all.