“Not at all,” Sarah told Amanda, and rubbed her friend’s shoulder with her hand. “Someday soon,” she promised. “Now, we better go find Mr. Grayman.”
“I suppose we should,” Amanda agreed. She turned and focused back on the land and maneuvered around to the front of the cabin, unaware that two deadly eyes were watching her every step from behind a large tree in the distance.
“Mr. Grayman?” Amanda called out as she reached the front of the cabin. An old-fashioned hand pump well stood in front of the cabin, surrounded by a wooden flower box full of weeds instead of flowers. It was clear to anyone with any common sense that the owners of the resort had given up on it long ago. “Mr. Grayman?”
Sarah stepped up to the front of the cabin and studied the set of wooden steps leading up to the front porch. As her eyes studied the steps, she suddenly realized just how silent the property was. And then, the same feeling that had attacked her friend attacked her. “Amanda,” she said in a whisper, “stop calling out.”
Amanda turned in a rush and watched Sarah drop the backpack she was wearing to the ground. Before she could say a word, Sarah bent down and retrieved her gun. “I’m sure—I hope—” Amanda began to speak but stopped and kicked the ground with dismay and frustration. “Oh—I should have told you.”
“Told me what?” Sarah asked, her eyes darting around and searching the land for any signs of human life or spying eyes.
“When you pulled into the parking lot, this horrible feeling swept over me—I should have told you,” Amanda explained and grabbed Sarah’s left hand. “I thought it was just nerves—maybe I should have listened to my gut. I’m sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Sarah promised. “Now, drop your bag and let’s go inside and look around.”
“Okay,” Amanda replied, and quickly took off the backpack she was wearing and dropped it down to the ground. “I’m ready.”
Sarah pointed to the front porch and cautiously climbed the front steps. When she reached the top, she stepped onto a wooden porch lined with old rocking chairs that were weather-worn. The porch was clearly suffering from neglect and was in need of repair in many places. “Front door is closed,” she pointed out, ignoring the condition of the porch.
“What should we do?” Amanda asked in a worried voice.
Sarah threw her eyes down at the floor and began searching for footprints. “The landing is dry,” she said, in a disappointed voice. “No sign of anyone coming through here.”
“Should I try the front door?”
“Yes,” Sarah said in a careful voice. “I'll cover your back.”
Amanda squeezed her hands together, drew in a deep breath, and then walked up to the large, thick wooden door that a hungry grizzly bear couldn’t break down. Instead of trying to break down the door, Amanda simply tested the doorknob. “It’s unlocked,” she whispered.
“Stand back,” Sarah whispered back. She cautiously stepped in front of Amanda and, with her gun at the ready, she eased the front door open. The door let out a loud, agonizing groan as it opened, giving away Sarah’s secrecy—assuming she had any to begin with. “Stay close,” she whispered to Amanda.
“Like glue,” Amanda promised and followed Sarah into a large front room full of dusty furniture, creaking wooden floors, a cold stone fireplace, warped bookshelves full of old books, and a wooden desk shoved into the far right corner. A single hallway led away from the front room to the rest of the cabin. Weak trails of sunlight fell through two front windows caked with dust and cobwebs, breaking into a space that smelled of dust and danger. “Not very lovely, is it?” Amanda whispered as she followed Sarah deeper into the room. This was far different from the cabin she and her husband had stayed in.
“No,” Sarah whispered back. She stopped in the middle of the room, looked around, and then focused on the front door. “Go shut and lock the front door.” Amanda nodded her head and ran to complete her task. As Amanda closed and locked the front door, Sarah turned her attention to the hallway. “Where does the hallway lead to?” she asked, keeping her gun at the ready.
Amanda engaged a strong deadbolt lock and hurried back to Sarah. “From what Mr. Grayman told me, this cabin has four bedrooms, a main kitchen, dining room, two bathrooms and a finished basement. This cabin was once used as the main office to the research center that once stood here. I suppose what he called bedrooms were really offices.”
Sarah bit down on her lower lip. “What kind of research center was housed here?” she asked.
Amanda shrugged her shoulders. “Mr. Grayman never told me that,” she spoke honestly. “He simply gave me a brief history of the area. He’s not much of a talker and neither was his wife, I’m afraid. They never seemed happy to talk. I never understood why. I assume it was because they were eager to retire to Florida.”
Sarah continued to bite down on her lower lip as her mind began to latch onto questions that would have to be brought to light at a later time. “We need to check the cabin,” she told Amanda. “Stay close.” Amanda grabbed the back of Sarah's jacket and followed her down the long hallway. “We’ll check the kitchen first and then work our way around.”
Amanda felt a cold chill run through her heart. In her mind she saw an old man lying dead on a dusty kitchen floor with a knife plunged into his back. Her nightmare quickly became a reality when she walked into the kitchen behind Sarah and saw Mr. Grayman lying face down on the floor. Only the poor man didn’t have a knife plunged into his back—he had been shot. In the back. “No,” Amanda cried and threw her hands over her mouth as tears began falling from her eyes. “No, no! It’s not supposed to be like this.”
Sarah ran to the body, knelt down, and checked for a pulse. “He’s dead,” she told Amanda and bolted to her feet. “We have to get back to my jeep. Come on!” Sarah grabbed Amanda’s hand and ran her back down the hallway and into the front room. She dashed to the front door, disengaged the lock, yanked the front door open, and ran out into bright daylight. “Don’t bother with the backpacks,” she ordered Amanda, making her way down the front porch steps.
“You can count on that,” Amanda promised. When her feet reached solid earth, she took off at a full sprint, keeping up with Sarah. Together they hit the trail at a high speed and managed to reach the parking lot. As Amanda ran, she felt like a dark shadow was chasing after her—reaching for her—hissing in her ear and laughing insanely. When she saw Sarah’s jeep, she put her feet into hyper-drive and ran for the passenger door but slid to a stop when she saw that all the tires on the jeep had been slashed. “No!” she yelled in an anguished voice.
Sarah quickly jogged around her jeep and then ran around the old truck. “All the tires have been slashed,” she said, making her way to Amanda. She took a second to catch her breath. “Someone doesn’t want us to leave.”
“Our legs aren’t broken,” Amanda cried. “We can run out on foot. Let’s go!”
Sarah gently grabbed Amanda’s arm. “We don’t know who is out there—who might be watching us this very second,” she said, slowly navigating her eyes around the land that had suddenly transformed into a deadly obstacle course. “If we try to run out on foot, we could easily be killed and no one would find us. Also, there’s that grizzly bear—and my gun is no match for that bear.”
Amanda looked around the land. She felt a pair of hideous, cruel eyes watching her. “We wouldn't make it out by dark anyway,” she said in a miserable voice.
“No, we wouldn’t,” Sarah agreed.
Amanda looked at Sarah with pleading eyes. “What do we do—please—what do we do?”
Sarah pulled Amanda into her arms. “I’m not sure,” she answered in an honest voice.
“It’s not supposed to be like this,” Amanda cried. “All of our troubles were supposed to be over.”
Sarah checked the tires on her jeep. “Whoever slashed these tires knew what he or she was doing. These tires weren't slashed by some common thug.”
“Great,” Amanda complain
ed, and hugged her own arms. She walked her eyes around the landscape. “The killer could be watching us right this second,” she said in a low whisper. The day had turned creepy and downright scary. The sun, even though sitting high in the sky, appeared cold instead of warm. The land now felt dangerous and unfriendly—the trees like giant prison bars keeping her locked inside a frightening cell.
Sarah leaned up from the back right tire and brushed at her pants. “Amanda, you said a man named Mr. Fields is—or was—Mr. Grayman’s attorney, right?”
Amanda nodded her head. “That’s what the poor guy told me.”
“Did Mr. Grayman mention a first name?”
“Afraid not,” Amanda told Sarah in a disappointed voice. “Los Angeles, are you thinking that this Mr. Fields is the killer?”
“I'm not sure,” Sarah replied, studying the landscape. “We're absent a third vehicle, which could mean Mr. Fields might not have shown up at all.”
“But Mr. Grayman assured me he was on the property when I called him from the gas station,” Amanda insisted.
“Could be that Mr. Fields managed to escape,” Sarah suggested, even though her gut told her otherwise. With no clues to go on, she felt desperate to latch onto a theory that would help her mind focus on a concrete suspect.
“We didn’t pass anybody driving up here,” Amanda pointed out. “The gas station we stopped at was only a mile or so from the turn-off. There’s no way Mr. Grayman’s attorney could have made it down that quick.”
Sarah nodded her head. Amanda was thinking like a cop, and that was a good thing. “Exactly,” she said.
“Maybe Mr. Grayman drove down and picked Mr. Fields up? I mean, he did say he had his plane ticket in hand, right? So that means he was packed and ready to go. Maybe he was going to drive the lawyer back down the mountain afterwards.”
“Then where is Mr. Grayman’s luggage?” Sarah asked. She walked over to the old truck and looked down into the bed. All her eyes saw were some old shovels, some worn-down work gloves, an axe, and some scattered dirt that was damp in a few places, like it had been freshly dug up from somewhere along a trail.
“Luggage?” Amanda asked. She hurried over to the bed of the truck and looked down. “This doesn't make any sense,” she said in a confused voice. There was nothing in the cab of the truck, either.
“Not yet it doesn’t,” Sarah agreed. She raised her eyes and studied Amanda's face.
Amanda thought and said, “I’m sure he didn’t mean he was literally holding a plane ticket. I bet Mr. Grayman was hinting that he was anxious to leave as soon as possible.”
“I wonder why?” Sarah asked.
“What do you mean?”
Sarah checked her gun and then turned her back to the bed of the truck. “Mr. Grayman and his wife lived here for many years, right?” Amanda nodded her head yes. “And before they arrived you said some type of research station stood on this property?” Amanda nodded her head again. “It doesn’t make sense to me that Mr. Grayman’s murder was random. It seems to me he was killed for a reason—by someone who considered him a threat. Maybe that’s why he sent his wife to Florida ahead of him?”
Amanda let her mind soak in Sarah’s words. She turned and studied the shovels and axe in the bed of the truck. “Why would he have shovels and a work axe in his truck?” she asked. “The trail leading to the hot springs is north of here.”
Sarah kept her back to the bed of the truck. “It appears that Mr. Grayman was doing some digging. The axe might be for cutting roots.”
“Digging?” Amanda asked. “What—do you mean for gold?” she struggled to joke.
“Or something else,” Sarah replied. “What seems right to me, in my mind—at least for now—is that if Mr. Grayman was digging for something, whatever he was digging for might have gotten him killed.” Sarah narrowed her eyes. “I wish I knew who this Mr. Fields was.”
“Me, too,” Amanda agreed.
Sarah walked her eyes back to her jeep. “We can try and crawl down on flat tires. The going will be slow, but we can try. I might tear up my jeep doing it, but I would prefer to keep moving rather than standing around in the open like this.”
“I’m with you on that,” Amanda said, in an enthusiastic voice. She ran to the jeep and began to jump into the passenger seat. But the sound of a distant chainsaw made her freeze. “Do you hear that?” she asked Sarah, as all the color in her face drained away.
Sarah locked her eyes on the exit road and listened. A couple of moments later, she heard a tree crashing down through the woods. From the sound of the crash, it seemed the tree that had been cut down was very large. “I think we’ve just been blocked in,” she said, in a worried voice. “Someone doesn’t want us leaving.”
Amanda felt panic grip her heart. “What do we do?” she begged.
“If the killer is down that way, we go this way!” Sarah said. She grabbed Amanda's hand and began running back for the main cabin. Her legs struggled up the steep hill to the clearing. Every muscle in her body cried out as she pushed her way up the hill. When the trail leveled off, she strengthened her grip on Amanda’s hand, drew in a second breath, and picked up speed. “We’ll use the main cabin as headquarters.”
“Just like the Alamo,” Amanda whined, barely keeping pace with Sarah. When she saw the main cabin come into view, she felt a sense of relief wash over her. At least the cabin offered shelter, she thought as she hauled butt to the front of the cabin and raced up onto the front porch. Sarah grabbed their backpacks from the overgrown grassy field on the way.
“Hurry!” Sarah yelled, throwing open the front door. Amanda ran through the front door and slid to a stop in the front room. Sarah slammed the door shut, locked it, and then bent forward to catch her breath. “You okay?”
“I'm okay,” Amanda said, breathing hard. “Out of breath—is all.”
Sarah squeezed her gun and forced her back to straighten out. “There are two doors—a back and a front. We can secure the doors. It’s the windows I’m worried about.”
“At least—we’re—inside—where it's safe,” Amanda replied, trying to catch her breath. “We can’t be—taken off guard if we’re inside.”
Sarah wasn’t so sure of that, but she didn’t voice her thoughts on the matter. Instead, she began walking back toward the kitchen. “I need to check the body again.”
“What for?” Amanda begged.
“Plane ticket—identity—wallet—anything,” Sarah explained.
“Oh,” Amanda fretted, and chased after Sarah as her friend hurried back down the long hallway toward the kitchen. When she reached the kitchen, she saw poor Mr. Grayman still lying dead on the floor. “Poor guy,” she whispered.
“Amanda, honey, check the kitchen. We need weapons. Like knives—ice picks—anything you can find.”
“Los Angeles—I—” Amanda bit down on her lip. “Okay,” she finally caved in.
Sarah understood her friend’s reluctance to locate items that could be used as deadly assault weapons, but the situation was dire and called for drastic protective measures. “I’ll check Mr. Grayman.” Sarah sat her gun down on the floor and began searching Mr. Grayman’s body. After ten minutes of searching, she picked up her gun and stood up. “He’s clean. Not even a piece of pocket lint on him.”
Amanda walked over to Sarah holding a butcher knife. “I found a few kitchen knives. I put them on the counter—no ice pick.”
Sarah nodded her head. “The killer obviously knows this land, Amanda,” she explained. “Unfortunately, the killer knows the land better than we do.”
“How do you know that?” Amanda asked. She glanced down at the butcher knife she was holding and shivered. “Awful little creature, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is,” Sarah told her friend and continued. “Since the moment we arrived—about an hour ago—the tires on every vehicle have been slashed and a tree has been cut down. That tells me the killer knows his—or her—way around this land and can navigate the land with ease. I co
uld be wrong—I don’t have any hard facts to back up my statement—I’m simply telling you what my gut is feeling.”
“Your gut is very smart,” Amanda said, in a worried voice. “I wish your gut—and mine—we’re both wrong—because my gut is telling me the same exact thing.”
“I thought that might be the case,” Sarah said, and let out a deep breath. “I—I’m wondering why the killer is trying to trap us in? I’m sure he—or she—could have shot us dead at any second. Why trap us?” Sarah walked over to an old wooden table, pulled out a dusty chair, and sat down. “It’s very dusty,” she pointed out. “Didn’t the Grayman’s keep this place up at all?”
“Mrs. Grayman didn’t seem like a very happy woman when my hubby and I met her.”
Sarah placed her gun down on the table. “June Bug, honey, how did you come across this place, anyway? Did you find it on the internet?”
Amanda walked over to the table and sat down next to Sarah. Her legs were aching, and she decided it would be wise to rest them while she could. “I was searching for hot springs on the internet. The Snow Creek Hot Springs and Resort was listed on a tourism site—though the website was outdated.” Amanda tossed down the butcher knife and removed her coat, feeling sweaty and overheated. “The resort sounded romantic—secluded—even a bit mysterious. So I called and spoke to Mrs. Grayman. I made a reservation, got directions, and well—the rest is history.”
Sarah’s mind struggled to make sense of the situation. “I guess the Grayman’s needed some form of an income, and didn’t care if the guests never came back because the place looked dusty,” she said. “How much did you pay to stay here?”
“For a three-night stay, my hubby and I paid a little over a thousand dollars.”
“That’s steep—especially for a place so remote,” Sarah said.
“Don’t worry, my dear hubby let me know that every single night,” Amanda sighed. “I thought the resort was—well—a real resort.” Amanda stopped rubbing her legs. “So what if I was overcharged? The land alone was worth more than the measly amount of money I paid. So what if my hubby fussed—I enjoyed every second. The hot springs were simply delightful—the land breathtaking—and we even made a campfire on our last night. During those three days, I fell in love with this place.”
Hot Springs Murder Page 3