by Jessica Beck
“We’re considering that,” I said, not realizing that I was giving too much away.
Marty grinned. “I’m minoring in psych. So, you and your twin sister are trying to solve Bones’s murder, aren’t you?”
“I don’t suppose there’s any use asking you to keep that to yourself,” I said.
“Sure. Why not? It should be fun to watch you two at work tonight.”
If I hadn’t been certain before, I knew now that I wouldn’t be sleeping for quite some time. This man was as unpredictable and potentially deadly as anyone I’d ever met.
We were nearly back to the fire pit when my cellphone rang. I put my wood down on the ground and saw that it was Darrel. Had he heard from Carter Hayes after all? “Sorry, but I’ve got to take this. Do you mind going back alone?”
“Got it,” Marty said. “Thanks for the chat.”
“You’re welcome,” I said. “Hey, Darrel, what’s up?”
“Carter’s here, but you can’t tell anyone,” he said softly.
“Does he know you’re calling me?”
“No, of course not. If he did, he’d just run again. He’s been ranting and raving about someone trying to kill him, and he asked me for a loan on top of what I just paid him, too.”
“Why does he need so much money?” I asked him. “You made it sound as though he had a fair amount of cash.”
“He does, but he still doesn’t think it’s going to be enough. I think he knows something, but he’s too scared to tell me about it. Pat, he didn’t kill that college student. I’d bet my life on it.”
“In a way, you are. If Carter is a murderer, you could be putting yourself in danger right now.”
“That should tell you just how sure I am,” Darrel said. “He kept saying that there was no amount of money in the world worth the trouble he was in. He saw that young man get murdered from the trees, and when he ran away, he was pretty sure that the killer saw him, too.”
“Did he say who did it?” I asked, trying my best not to glance over at the group, each member of which was currently closely watching me.
“No, he said that he couldn’t make out the face,” Darrel said.
“Was it a man or a woman at least?”
“I’m pretty sure that he knows, but he won’t tell me,” Darrel said. “All I could get out of him was that it was one of those four students. I’ll keep working on him, but I wanted you to at least know that he was here.”
“Thanks. Call me back, any time day or night, if you get anything else out of him.”
“Will do,” he said. “Pat, you and Annie need to watch your backs.”
“We are,” I said, and then I hung up.
“Who was that?” Annie asked me after I picked up the firewood and returned to the group.
“It was Jenna. She’s going to be out of town a little longer,” I lied.
“Who’s Jenna?” Henry asked.
“She’s my girlfriend,” I said.
“I wish they’d come up with a better name than girlfriend when you’ve reached a certain age,” Gretchen said. “It all sounds like grade school.”
“They have other terms for adults,” Peggy said.
“I know, but I don’t like any of them, either.”
“Maybe you should come up with something yourself,” Marty suggested.
“How about paramour?” she asked. “I always thought that had a nice ring to it.”
“Too French,” Marty said. “Lover?”
“No. Just no,” Peggy said.
“SO?” Gretchen asked.
“So what?” Marty asked.
“No. Significant Other. SO.”
“It’s too confusing,” Henry said. “It will never catch on.”
How had we gotten so far off topic? I interrupted by saying, “I’m just happy to have someone in my life I care about. The term ‘girlfriend’ is just fine with me.”
Annie breathed in deeply, and then she said, “I think dinner’s ready. Who’s hungry?”
Everyone admitted that they were starving, so she lifted the lid of her Dutch oven and stuck a temperature probe into one of the chunks of beef. “It’s perfect,” Annie said as she grabbed a heavy fireproof glove and dumped the coals off the top of the pot before replacing it. Picking the pot up by its wire handle, she moved it to the picnic table and placed it in the center. “Let’s eat.”
CHAPTER 23: ANNIE
“That stew was delicious,” Gretchen said as she finished eating. “How do you make it all taste so good?”
“I like to think that the outdoors makes it special,” I said.
“Don’t kid yourself. It’s a lot harder than she makes it look. It’s one thing to set the temperature on an oven but quite another to manage coals for so long to get the perfect outcome,” Pat said.
“Thanks for the compliment,” I said.
“Any chance for seconds?” Marty asked as he offered his cleaned plate.
“Absolutely,” I answered, pleased that they all enjoyed my cooking. I knew in my heart that one of them was a killer, but that didn’t stop me from taking everyone’s compliments at face value. If that made me shallow, then so be it.
Henry and Gretchen each had a little more, while Peggy passed. I didn’t hold it against her, though. After all, she hadn’t been out of the hospital that long.
“Do you need any help cleaning up, Annie?” Pat asked me after we’d all had our fill of stew.
“Thanks, but I just need to save what’s left, and then I’ll clean up my Dutch oven. The rest can wait until later.”
“I can at least help carry in the dirty dishes,” Henry offered.
“We’ll help, too,” Gretchen volunteered.
“Why not? Everybody who wants to help should grab something, and we’ll all head off to the cabin kitchen.”
I grabbed the lid and pot, while Henry, Gretchen, and Peggy gathered up everything else. Henry got to the door first, but he had a difficult time with it. “It’s locked.”
“Try pulling it instead of pushing,” I said.
“The door opens outward? Why?”
“I know it’s pretty unconventional, but it saves on floor space inside, something I have a definite lack of.”
Henry pulled the door open, and the rest of us went inside.
The sink was loaded with the dirty dishes after I cleaned out the pot. Grabbing the olive oil and a few paper towels, I took the oven back outside, and soon enough, I had it dried and seasoned and ready to be put away until the next time I needed it.
Now it was time for the fun part.
“That’s a really nice fire,” I said as I took a seat.
“I thought it might be nice to have a little bonfire after that meal,” Pat replied. “Is that okay with you?”
“I think it’s a spectacular idea,” I said.
Once we were all seated, I decided it was time to stir things up a little. “So you’re all going back to school tomorrow. It’s going to be hard, isn’t it?”
“What do you mean?” Gretchen asked me.
“Well, chances are good that one of you killed Bones,” I said as lightly as I could manage. “Once you’re all away from here, I’m guessing that someone is going to get away with murder.”
“What a terrible thing to say,” Peggy said.
“It’s true, though, isn’t it?” Pat asked. “How are you going to deal with always being a suspect in Bones’s murder for the rest of your life? That’s a cloud that you’ll never escape.”
“No one thinks I did it!” Gretchen snapped.
“Come on, Gretchen,” Peggy said. “You were furious when Bones made a pass at you, and you know it.”
“He made a pass at you?” Marty asked her.
“Of course he did, and don’t pretend that you didn’t know it,” Henry said.
“I didn’t!”
“So you say,” Henry added.
“He made a pass at you, too, Peggy,” Gretchen said. “Don’t bother denying it.”
Peggy glanced at Henry, who was shaking his head. She couldn’t just let it go, though. “I didn’t kill him for doing it, though.”
“You keep claiming that you found Bones dead in the pit. How can we be sure that you didn’t kill him and then just claim to find the body to divert suspicion from yourself?” Gretchen asked, an ugly side coming to light in the campfire flames.
“If I killed him, then why would I tell anybody about it, let alone move the body to make myself look like a liar when I brought everyone out to see?”
“It’s simple, and a little more clever than I ever gave you credit for. You wanted to muddy the waters and confuse things,” Gretchen said.
“You mean like you’re doing right now?” Henry asked her softly.
“What do you mean by that?”
“It just seems to me as though you’re protesting an awful lot,” he said.
“Henry, you had a reason to kill him yourself, so don’t go getting all high and mighty on the rest of us. I heard that you were in more debt that anyone else and that you might have to drop out of school, so if Bones did find some of that money, you might have killed him for it yourself.”
“I don’t know where you’re getting your information, but it’s wrong nonetheless,” Henry said.
“Even if Bones didn’t find a dime, you still might kill him in anger for making a pass at Peggy. Everyone knows you’ve got a massive crush on her,” Marty snapped.
“Whether he does or not, that doesn’t make him a killer,” Peggy said as she looked sympathetically at Henry, “any more than the fact that you’ve got a crush on Gretchen, which could have easily given you a motive for murder yourself.”
“It’s just a passing infatuation,” Gretchen said, doing her best to discount his feelings for her.
“Actually, I’m pretty sure that it’s the real deal,” Marty admitted softly.
“You just think that you’re feeling something for me,” Gretchen said equally softly. “But you never pursued it. If you truly fancied me, you would have done something about it. So why didn’t you?”
“Because I’ve seen the way you’ve been looking at Henry since we got here. There was no way I was going to put myself out there like that.”
“That’s not true!” she said.
“Come on. It’s a fact, and you know it,” Marty said as he looked at Peggy and then at Henry. “You guys have seen it, too, haven’t you?”
At the exact time that Henry said no, Peggy answered yes.
“You knew?” he asked Peggy.
“You didn’t?” Peggy asked Henry.
We were getting a little sidetracked, and I was about to rein us all back in when I heard the distinct sound of a branch cracking just outside the light of our fire.
“What was that?” I asked Pat.
“I don’t know,” he said as he stood, “but I’m going to find out.”
As he started in the direction where the noise had come from, everyone else jumped up, too. Whoever had been spying on us understood that they’d lost the element of surprise. As they ran away from us into the woods, we could hear branches and twigs snapping furiously.
In the darkness, we lost whoever it was, and by the time we all made it back to the campfire, it was ebbing to mostly just embers.
“We’re all here, so who could that have been out there spying on us, and more importantly, why?” Henry asked me.
“I don’t have a clue,” I admitted.
“It was your sister, wasn’t it?” he asked again.
“If Kathleen was there, it’s a surprise to us both,” Pat replied.
Henry didn’t look as though he believed it, and I couldn’t say that I blamed him. He might even have been right. Had our big sister been spying on us? If she had been, I hoped that she didn’t come back. Everyone was on edge now, and I had a feeling that the session of campfire confessions was over.
Peggy confirmed it by yawning as she stretched. “I’m beat. Is there any chance I can go ahead and hit the hay?”
“We’ll all go in,” Henry said. “It’s getting late, and we have to get an early start tomorrow morning.”
“I’ve got marshmallows, if anyone would like s’mores,” I offered lamely.
“Thanks, but I couldn’t eat another bite,” Marty said as he slapped his stomach.
“I’m tired, too,” Gretchen added.
“Okay. Pat, would you take care of putting out the fire? I’ll take everyone else and get started inside.”
“I’ll lend him a hand,” Henry volunteered.
“Thanks, but I can handle it myself,” Pat offered.
“No offense, but what if whoever was out there decides to come back? I don’t think any of us should be alone right now.”
“That’s a good point. Okay. Sure. You can help,” Pat said.
I led the others inside the cabin as Pat and Henry worked at making sure the fire was completely extinguished, and I’d just gotten them all set up when I heard something loud bang against the outside door.
Someone had taken a chair and had wedged it against the door handle. No matter how hard I pushed, it wouldn’t budge.
Had that same someone already done something to Pat and Henry?
And were they about to come after the rest of us now?
I was about to bolt out the back way when I saw a face looming in the window, wearing an expression that sent terror shooting through me.
We were in trouble, and lots of it.
“Henry, what’s going on?” I asked the historian.
“Do you mean to tell me that you haven’t figured it out by now?” he asked me with a wicked grin.
“Where’s Pat?” I asked, doing my best to keep the terror out of my voice.
“No worries. He’s close by,” Henry said, “and before any of you get the smart idea of sneaking out the back door, I took care of that earlier. There’s no way out.”
“Or in, either,” I said. “Pat? Pat!”
There was no answer.
“What did you do to my brother?” I was in full panic mode now, and I didn’t care who knew it.
“He’s taking a little nap, unless I hit him too hard with that piece of firewood and it’s a little more permanent,” Henry said casually. “I was going to take one of the coins I got off Bones’s body and use it to frame one of the others, but I couldn’t pass up the perfect opportunity to get rid of you all at once.”
“Why would you want to hurt us?” Peggy asked, crying as she spoke. “You like me.”
“Sure I do, but with what Bones found, I don’t need you anymore. I have a feeling that I won’t have any shortage of girlfriends once I cash the treasure in.”
“Is that why you killed him?” I asked, hoping to stall long enough for either Pat to wake up or Kathleen to come check on us. It wasn’t much, but it was the best I could do.
“If he’d just handed the coins over to me, I wouldn’t have had to do anything to him,” Henry said. “If you look at it one way, it was his fault, not mine.”
This kid had clearly gone around the bend. “But why do anything now? We didn’t know you killed Bones. You could have just walked out of here tomorrow and gotten away with it.”
“And have that cloud of guilt hanging over me for the rest of my life? No thank you. This way is better. By the time I’m finished telling my story, I’m going to be the hero who tried to save you all. It’s going to be perfect.”
“Not for us, you jerk,” Marty snapped.
“Careful there, Marty,” Henry said. “You don’t want to make me angry.”
“Why not? You’re out there, and we’re in here.” He grabbed a lamp and gestured menacingly with it. “Come on in and find out what we’ll do to you if you try anything.”
“That’s the beauty of it. I don’t have to,” Henry said, and then he showed us something that terrified me yet again.
It was my gasoline can, and I knew for a fact that it was nearly full.
“Open the window and throw your phones out.
”
“No way,” Marty said. “I’m calling the cops.”
“That’s fine, but ask yourself a question first. Do you want to die fast or slow?” Henry asked. There was no doubt in my mind that he was capable of killing us all.
“Do as he says,” I said, dialing Kathleen’s number as I opened the window and threw my phone out, hoping that she’d pick up and hear what was going on.
The others grumbled, but they followed suit. Kathleen was close by. At least she had been before we’d caught her spying on us.
I just hoped she’d get to us in time.
“Don’t do it, Henry,” I begged. I had no desire to burn to death.
“It’s for the best,” he said as he motioned for me to close the window I’d just opened. “And don’t try to break a window and get out. I’ve got a gun, so you’re not going to make it out alive either way. Trust me, you don’t want to die by gunshot.”
“Do you think burning alive is any better?” Gretchen asked defiantly.
“I don’t know. I’ll ask you in a few minutes,” he said as he started to slosh gasoline around on the porch.
“Why move the body?” I asked him loudly, trying to get him to stop what he was doing.
“Like I said before, it was to muddy the waters,” he replied, still sloshing gasoline everywhere. “It worked, too. I’m not going to stand here chatting with you while you wait for someone to come to your rescue. It’s time to die.”
It appeared that we had run out of time.
I only hoped our demise was as painless as Pat’s had been, if he was indeed dead.
But I doubted it.
He most likely hadn’t known what hit him, but I had a feeling that we’d feel every second of it ourselves.
CHAPTER 24: PAT
When I came to, I heard voices, and for a second, I thought it was all in my mind.