And I saw Jocelyn.
Chapter 32
Upstream from me, Jocelyn was crossing the river in a way that only she could, quickly and gracefully leaping from rock to rock. She was about halfway to the far shore.
Was she fleeing from Philip Landsdowner? Where was he?
I inched forward and peeked between pine branches.
Landsdowner had apparently given up, for the moment, on following Jocelyn. Still wearing his camera hanging from a strap around his neck, he sat hunched on a boulder in the river. Water dripped from the hems of his jeans onto the boulder.
Rescue could be at hand for him, however. Standing on the bank on my side of the river, a woman in black leggings and a red hoodie was shouting and waving at him. She took a couple of tentative steps down toward the river and held one hand out as if to beckon him close so she could pull him up the steep riverbank. “Philip!” she yelled.
I couldn’t tell if he didn’t hear her or was ignoring her. He stared unwaveringly in Jocelyn’s direction.
Flying from stone to stone, her unzipped jacket flapping, Jocelyn was almost all the way across the river. About a yard from the far bank, she performed a perfect backflip, landed on her feet, and dodged between trees. Within seconds, I lost sight of her.
I hadn’t explored the trails on that side of the river as much as I had the ones on this side, but I knew that she could make her way down to the comparative safety of the highway, the parking lot at the foot of the falls, or the campground.
I let out a breath of relief. I could start down toward the parking lot, also. I could intercept my friends, and we could find Jocelyn and escort her to the lovely Victorian home with the blue bike chained to the porch railing behind a floral-upholstered swing.
I was perfectly happy to leave Landsdowner marooned on that boulder while Jocelyn escaped him. The sun wouldn’t set for about a half hour. He would have plenty of time to work up the courage to slide off his rock and wade to whichever shore he preferred.
The woman on my side of the river continued urging him toward her. She pushed the hood off her head. Her long auburn hair gleamed in the sky’s orange glow.
She was Kelsey, the clerk from Freeze.
Landsdowner had claimed he’d seen me wearing a red hoodie and lighting the firework that killed Taylor. That night, I’d been wearing the red sweater I had on now. It didn’t have a hood.
Kelsey was about my size. On the night of the Fourth, seen from the rear, in blue pants and the hoodie she was wearing now with the hood hiding her long auburn hair, she could have been mistaken for me.
Or not. Maybe Landsdowner had known all along that Kelsey lit the firework. Maybe he’d been protecting her, not himself.
Kelsey could easily have been the one who picked up the bag of donuts that the teenage boy left in Freeze. She could have added a homemade skyrocket and a lighter to the bag and taken it all to the fireworks. I didn’t remember noticing Kelsey carrying any sort of bag when I saw her, but it was easy to imagine seeing straps like from a backpack across the fronts of her shoulders.
It was all conjecture. Kelsey had hinted that Taylor was often late for work, but would she have killed Taylor because of it? Kelsey had also griped about Jocelyn. Was Kelsey a threat to Jocelyn?
Still apparently paying no attention to Kelsey’s shouted pleas, Landsdowner was staring at the woods where Jocelyn had disappeared.
I did not want to stay near either Landsdowner or Kelsey. Besides, I needed to go back down Noisy Cawing Crow and look for Jocelyn. And Samantha and Hooligan, too.
I crept cautiously away until I’d gone around a curve and could no longer see Landsdowner and Kelsey, and then I hurried down Noisy Cawing Crow, skirting obstacles as quickly as I could.
Although I was fit from running around inside Deputy Donut, my heart was beating hard and my breath was coming out in ragged gasps.
If Jocelyn was on a trail leading downhill, finding her shouldn’t be difficult. Kelsey and Landsdowner would probably stay where they were until Landsdowner slithered off his rock. Even if Jocelyn and I didn’t encounter Samantha and Hooligan, I could take Jocelyn home and then go home myself. I would let Samantha know we were both safe, and then I would call Brent with my theories about Kelsey and Landsdowner and let him and his team sort it all out.
Panting, watching where I was placing my feet between roots and rocks, I passed the rock where I’d left the donut arrow. It was still there. Popcorn Trail went off to my left. I started down the steepest part of Noisy Cawing Crow Trail, where it was at its narrowest, running between a rock wall on one side and steep cliffs above the whirlpool underneath the falls on the other.
A woman above me on Noisy Cawing Crow called, “Emily!” I could barely hear her over the roaring water.
Samantha and Hooligan could be up here on one of the nearby trails.
I turned around.
In a tank top that matched her black leggings, Kelsey was on the trail near the top of the falls. Her hands were empty. What had she done with the red hoodie? It was a strange time of evening to be shedding long sleeves. Among the trees, the night would soon become cooler and might also become buggier.
My instinct was to run away, down toward where Samantha and Hooligan should be, but no matter how many times in the past I had raced up and down Noisy Cawing Crow, I didn’t know all of its pitfalls. Hoping I could reach Popcorn Trail and hurry down it faster than Kelsey could, I jogged up toward Popcorn Trail.
It was possible that Kelsey hadn’t harmed Taylor, and it was also possible that she had called out to me because she knew Jocelyn and was concerned about the girl’s safety.
Kelsey glanced down toward the boulder where I’d left the donut halves and the line of grape jelly. “Leaving a trail of bread crumbs, Emily?” she yelled.
Roaring, the Fallingbrook River continued plunging into the abyss.
I sort of shook my head, sort of smiled, and sort of shrugged, all at the same time.
“Why did you run away from Philip?” she hollered.
I put as much enthusiasm into my shout as I could. “To get help for him!”
She held an encouraging hand toward me. “You and I can rescue him.”
I shook my head.
She charged.
I wasn’t going to beat her to Popcorn. And I wouldn’t be able to go very far down the more treacherous Noisy Cawing Crow Trail before she caught up to me.
My best option was a dangerous route that Misty, Samantha, and I had never found terribly difficult in our teen years, one that Kelsey might not even consider attempting. I jumped up and sat facing the trail on the peeled-log guardrail. To brace myself, I cupped my hands behind and underneath the rough log.
Kelsey appeared to slip on loose stones. She grimaced and threw her hands above her head as if to catch her balance.
Her hands landed on my shoulders. To anyone watching, the gesture might have appeared to be an accident.
She glared into my eyes and gave both of my shoulders a good, hard shove.
That shove was definitely not an accident.
Chapter 33
Was I the one who let out that high, thin scream?
Kelsey’s push sent my upper body backward.
Thanks to the ninja cop tricks that Samantha, Misty, and I used to perform, I was more or less prepared. Holding on to the back of the splintery guardrail as well as I could, I managed to fling one leg over the railing in a fairly controlled manner. My momentum shot my other foot up. It struck Kelsey’s chin.
After a strange sort of scissor-legged flip, I ended up on the other side of the railing, facing it with my body bent forward and my stance wide. My feet slipped toward the precipice. I shifted them, grasped the railing more tightly, and regained some of my balance.
Her hand to her chin, Kelsey stared at me with a dazed expression on her face. I hadn’t intended to kick her and could not have avoided it. Maybe, considering that her shove had seemed deliberate, it had been a good move.
/> Kelsey’s stunned look turned to anger. Her lips thinned with determination. She put her hands on the guardrail.
Before she could pry my hands away from it, I let go.
Obviously, Kelsey wasn’t about to let me return to Noisy Cawing Crow Trail. Feeling for handholds and footholds, I started crawling backward down the cliff. It wasn’t as easy as it had been when Misty, Samantha, and I were teens. I had to stop watching Kelsey and focus on where I was going. The cliff was slippery with spray.
Despite railings and parental warnings, kids apparently still explored this cliff. Plants that had managed to take root in tiny cracks in the rock had obviously been stunted by sneakered feet.
I crept down to a narrow ledge that slanted only slightly toward the empty space in front of the constantly falling water. Crouching, hanging on to rocky protuberances, I looked up toward Noisy Cawing Crow.
Kelsey leaned over the railing and met my gaze for an instant. She put one leg over the guardrail.
She couldn’t be contemplating coming after me down the side of the almost vertical cliff. Even if she made it safely to this algae-slimed ledge, wrestling with me here could result in both of us falling to our deaths.
I wriggled my shoulders until my backpack came to rest in a more comfortable position. I didn’t dare let go of the rock above me to straighten up and fish my phone out of my pocket.
Facing the trail as she cautiously climbed over the railing, Kelsey was no longer watching me.
Jocelyn had said that Kelsey went to Fallingbrook High. I hoped that Kelsey was one of the locals who didn’t know it was possible to cross the river behind the falls. Maybe if I disappeared from her view, she would think that I’d tumbled off the ledge, and she’d stop following me.
I couldn’t stay where I was, beneath her. If she fell, she’d knock me off the cliff.
Grasping at sharp, rocky fingerholds and pelted by water droplets, I edged toward the cascade of water. The pathway into the cave behind the falls had not eroded away completely, but it seemed narrower.
Kelsey was lower on the cliff. Like an experienced rock-climber, she was facing the rocky wall and feeling her way downward the way I had.
Panic-fueled adrenaline and muscle memory helped me slip into the tall but narrow cavern that Misty, Samantha, and I had nicknamed Shower Curtain Grotto. I stood trembling behind the wall of water where no one could see me.
I wouldn’t be able to see anyone else, either, and I certainly would not hear them.
Could I make it to the side of the river that, last I knew, Jocelyn was on? I hadn’t crossed all the way behind the falls since I was about a year younger than Jocelyn was now. I wasn’t sure I could still do it. I wasn’t even sure how I’d made it this far.
I can do it.
My feet refused to move.
I was wet and cold and rapidly becoming wetter and colder.
Kelsey didn’t show up in the opening behind the noisy and constantly moving curtain of water. If she believed I had fallen, she probably wouldn’t risk being seen nearby in case investigators asked difficult questions. Maybe she had scrambled up the cliff and had sensibly left the area.
By now, if Jocelyn went down the trails on the far side of the river as quickly as she’d danced across the river, she could have made it to the parking lot. Maybe Samantha and Hooligan had found her there and were giving her a ride home.
Or they’d arrived too soon to encounter Jocelyn. Maybe they hadn’t seen Kelsey and didn’t know she was in these woods. Maybe they were waiting for me right now where I’d asked them to, on Noisy Cawing Crow Trail near the top of the falls.
I began to hope that Samantha would not see my jelly-filled donut arrow. What if she and Hooligan followed the arrow’s direction? Landsdowner might have come off his rock, and Kelsey could be upriver, too. What would either of them do if surprised or cornered by Samantha and Hooligan?
If I got colder, I might lose what little grip I had and plunge to the rocks below. I was going to have to choose between the side of the river that Kelsey might be on or the even more treacherous pathway behind the falls to the other side.
A shadow darkened the far side of Shower Curtain Grotto.
Philip Landsdowner?
Fear tightened my windpipe until I recognized Jocelyn. I would have gone limp with relief if I’d dared.
She edged close to me. Water streamed from her jacket. She pointed toward Noisy Cawing Crow and shouted, “She pushed you!”
Nodding, I held my palms up in a What can I do about it? gesture. Water splashed my hands.
Jocelyn pointed toward the route I’d taken and then pointed behind her and tilted her head in a question. “Which way?”
Still unsure I could navigate the frighteningly narrow pathway that Jocelyn had taken, and hoping that Samantha and Hooligan, but not Kelsey, were nearby, I pointed toward Noisy Cawing Crow.
My courage returned. I was determined not to take a false step. If I did, Jocelyn might make a hasty move and we both might plummet off the ledge. Slowly, facing the tumbling water, I sidestepped back across the narrow stone catwalk behind the falls. Jocelyn stayed beside me.
Compared to the passage behind Shower Curtain Grotto, the sloping algae-covered ledge where I’d been crouching when Kelsey started climbing over the railing looked almost flat and dry.
But not safe. Kelsey was on it, kneeling and staring up toward the guardrail as if waiting for someone to come along and help her.
Jocelyn touched my sleeve and pointed at the section of the cliff closest to the top of the falls. The route up that part of the cliff was a steep one that I’d avoided as a teen. Other kids must have avoided it, too. Saplings grew out of crevices.
Keeping my distance from Kelsey’s perch, stretching, and grabbing at small trees, I crawled upward. My wet jeans pulled at my legs.
Jocelyn scooted to the safe side of the railing right after I did. No one was in sight in either direction on Noisy Cawing Crow Trail. No Landsdowner, but also no Samantha or Hooligan. No Misty, either. I didn’t know if she had received my message or if Samantha had told her that I wanted her to meet me at this spot.
Jocelyn and I went down the trail until we were where I’d flipped over the railing. Together, we looked down at Kelsey. We needed to get help for her, but I didn’t want either of us to be within her reach, especially on the side of a slippery cliff. We were all safest if she didn’t move until professional rescuers arrived. I shouted down at her, “Stay there!”
Glaring at me, Kelsey shook her head and pointed toward the route that Jocelyn and I had taken up the cliff. She eased toward it.
The way she’d crawled down was much safer. I shouted, “This way’s better!”
Kelsey must have realized that I was right. She started up the route she’d taken down. Pointing, Jocelyn and I shouted directions. I wanted to phone for help, but I had a feeling that if I took my eyes off Kelsey and stopped encouraging her, I might witness a terrifying fall.
Whatever she was, whatever she might have done to Taylor and attempted to do to me, Kelsey didn’t deserve that.
She made it to the railing. Jocelyn and I helped her over. Staying together, Jocelyn and I quickly backed away from Kelsey and from the cliff below us.
“Why did you do that?” Kelsey yelled at me. “I nearly killed myself trying to save you!” She glanced toward Jocelyn as if assessing whether Jocelyn believed her.
Jocelyn stayed next to me, out of Kelsey’s reach.
I pointed down Noisy Cawing Crow Trail toward the parking lot and shouted, “Let’s go where we can get dry and warm!”
Kelsey ran her fingers through her long, wavy auburn hair, now splattered and damp. “No! We have to save Philip!” She started up the trail toward where I’d last seen Landsdowner.
Chapter 34
Kelsey clambered up the trail and out of our sight. I beckoned to Jocelyn and then ran up Noisy Cawing Crow to the flat rock where I’d left what Kelsey had called my trail of bread crumbs.
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The two halves of donut were now almost together in their original circle, closing in on the line of jelly I’d squeezed out on the rock.
When we were teens, if Samantha, Misty, or I came upon an arrow that one of the others had made, we sometimes moved the wings of the arrow closer to the shaft. To us, a more streamlined arrow meant speed. It would signal to the girl who had created the arrow that we had seen her message and were hurrying in the direction she’d shown us.
I’d seen Kelsey near that rock. She hadn’t touched the arrow. Unless someone else had moved the donut halves, Samantha or Misty had spotted my arrow while Kelsey, Jocelyn, and I had been out of sight. And then Samantha or Misty had streamlined the arrow to tell me she was speeding in the arrow’s direction.
My friends knew that Landsdowner might be up here. They would be wary around him.
They didn’t know that Kelsey was dangerous. I wasn’t positive that she was a murderer, but I knew what she had attempted to do to me.
I reached into my damp jeans pocket and eased my phone out. It was wet. It also wouldn’t turn on. Hoping Jocelyn could hear me over the falls, I shouted, “Does yours work?”
“I don’t have it!”
I pointed at myself and then up the trail and yelled, “I have to go up there!” I pointed at her and then toward Popcorn Trail. “Go back to the campground.”
Shaking her head, she wagged a finger between us. “Let’s stay together.”
She was right. I didn’t know for sure that Kelsey was returning to Landsdowner and, even if she was, whether or not the two of them would stay where I’d last seen him. I didn’t want to lead Jocelyn into more danger, but I couldn’t let the nineteen-year-old roam alone in the woods while I searched for Samantha and Hooligan. Misty, too, if she was up here. Besides, two sets of eyes and ears were better than one.
Nobody, with the possible exception of Jocelyn or other athletes, could actually sprint up that trail. I moved as quickly as I dared, jumping over potholes, stepping around rocks, and dodging low branches. Jocelyn stayed with me. Gradually, the roar of the falls became distant. When the river beside us merely rushed past, babbling where it was shallowest near the shore, I was able to tell Jocelyn in a normal tone, “I saw you crossing the river up there. I was coming to warn you that Philip Landsdowner was following you, but he got stuck on a rock, and I saw Kelsey.” I didn’t explain why seeing Kelsey in a red hoodie had made me flee.
Jealousy Filled Donuts Page 20