If she saw Lucy! She wanted to try.
Vicki found a drugstore, ordered a coke, and took her bid sheet out of her purse. The bid sheet showed her scheduled flying days and her days off.
She had three rest days—today, tomorrow, and Saturday. Her next assigned flight, with Jean Cox, was not until nine A.M. on Sunday. That was fine.
This afternoon she could arrange to rent a private plane and study maps. Tomorrow, and if necessary Saturday, she could search for Lucy. That should be enough time.
Vicki had one misgiving. Suppose Lucy and Mrs. Heath were no longer in the Placerville region, where Lucy had mailed the post card? Suppose Mrs. Heath had decided to move on, or—a fleeting suspicion occurred to Vicki—suppose Mrs. Heath had never intended to settle in that region? The whole story of the sudden job offer disturbed Vicki as much as it had the minister.
“There’s only one way to find out,” Vicki decided, “and that’s to go look for Lucy Rowe.”
CHAPTER VI
Vicki Searches
The next morning Vicki went to Novato airport, in Marin County, forty minutes from San Francisco. Having been out there late yesterday afternoon, she was briefed for her flight. Placerville, her first stop, was about a hundred and twenty-five miles away. Joe and Ed Foster, the men from whom she was renting a Cessna 150, had marked on her air map the routes, landmarks, and sites of small airports in and near Placerville and surrounding villages.
The trim little Cessna 150 was a single-engine, two-place airplane, with landing lights, wing lights for navigation, and a two-way radio. Vicki carefully went over the plane, making a line check. It was in A-1 condition and fully fueled. She climbed in, with a lift up from Joe Foster.