Comic Sans Murder

by Paige Shelton

  “Sure.” She punched a few keys. “I’m ready.”

  “Howard Craig, oil guy up in Wyoming. Can you find anything on him, specifically how his business is doing?”

  A few moments later her lightning fingers slowed.

  “Right, I think I found him,” she said as she pointed to a picture. “This look like him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Successful oil man strikes it rich again,” she quoted.

  “Okay. I was hoping for more dirt on him if there’s any to be had.”

  “That was from 2012, so it’s pretty dated. Give me a minute.”

  More typing ensued.

  “Ah, this is what you’re looking for,” she said almost a full minute later.

  “What’d you find?”

  “His business was, and I quote, sinking faster than oil into dirt, unquote. Terrible analogy, but they tried, I guess.”

  “Let me see.”

  In fact, Howard had been supremely successful at one time, an oil industry leader. He’d been described as a cowboy, a pioneer, an entrepreneur’s entrepreneur, among other such accolades. But then his wells ran dry. Literally. After that, he faked it for way too long and ended up in a lot of debt, with a number of enemies.

  “Seth would understand all the oil terminology, but the other stuff is loud and clear. Could you print that out for me, and one for Jodie too? I want to give her a hard copy, not put it in her e-mail yet.”

  “Sure, but how did you know?”

  “I didn’t. I guessed. Something felt off. Something still feels off. There’s more going on, but maybe this information will lead us to more. I’d like you to look up Donte Senot and Lloyd Gavin next. I mean, look for any bad stuff about them, particularly regarding their businesses.”

  “Will do.”

  I’d read the articles that Howard had sent me, and they had painted a much less flattering picture of Lloyd’s company than I’d gotten from either Dillon or Brenda. However, I hadn’t found anything that made me think the business was having financial difficulties. An earlier quick search found nothing more, but if there was something out there, I hoped Marion’s search would track it down.

  Turned out that Donte’s business was struggling too, at least according to an article from the middle of last year. It wasn’t quite the bust that Howard’s had become, but he would be closing the business’s doors if a few more book orders didn’t come in soon. True, he had created a new mathematical equation and formula, but it had been vastly improved upon since then, and he wasn’t going to get any credit for the improvements, meaning no money or royalties if that was how those things were measured. He was struggling and the new textbook writers didn’t find his publishing company nearly as appealing any longer.

  Lloyd, however much discontent might have been rumbling around with his employees, seemed to have been doing fine financially. Better than fine. He had genuinely become one of the most successful men in the country. I was enormously happy and deeply sad for him. I wished we’d kept in touch, if only so I could tell him how proud of him I was. I was sure he had been pleased with that success, but didn’t everyone enjoy it when that sort of recognition shone in their direction? And didn’t competitors dislike that sort of success and recognition? Professional jealousy must have been a part of his life.

  “Print them all out, please,” I said to Marion as I pulled out my phone.

  “You got it.”

  “Jodie, hi. Yes. Can I come see you? You’re where? Really? Okay, I’ll be right there.”

  I closed my phone, grabbed the copies, and hurried out of the shop.

  16

  “Stay up there, Clare. I’ll come up in a second,” Jodie said from the ditch.

  I pulled my coat tighter around my neck. The narrow canyon road wasn’t too snowy, but a strong wind blew through all the time and was bitingly frigid in the winter.

  “In fact, go to my Bronco. It’s too dangerous to have you standing out there on the road,” Jodie continued.

  I didn’t have to be told twice.

  From inside the cold but mostly wind-free cab of the Bronco, I could still observe Jodie, her partner, Omar, and one other officer I didn’t recognize working in the ditch.

  She plucked up a light green object that had been hidden by a small snow-covered boulder and put it in a plastic bag.

  Suddenly, the color set off recognition bells in me. Was that part of Nathan’s scarf? I put my hand on the door again, ready to leap out and run back to Jodie.

  But she, bag in hand, made her way toward the Bronco instead, seemingly giving orders for the other two officers to continue looking in the ditch, which was filled with snow, rocks, and dead weeds.

  By the time she got inside the truck, my panic had grown.

  “Is that . . ?” I said. I couldn’t finish the words. Saying them aloud would make them too real.

  “This is a part of a scarf,” Jodie said. “Does it look like Nathan’s scarf?”

  I clenched my teeth to keep the tears at bay. I nodded once. “It might be.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Jodie said, followed by a string of imaginative expletives. Just when I thought I’d heard her twist them all, she came up with something new.

  “Officer Marks was driving up the canyon when he saw the flutter of color over there. He called it in. We came out.”

  “Is there . . . anything else over there?”

  “No body, if that’s what you’re asking. No other personal effects either. Found a couple of old beer bottles, but that happens everywhere. This fabric is dirty but barely worn, making me think it landed out there fairly recently.”

  “This isn’t good,” I said.

  “Well, it’s not bad either, Clare. It’s a clue, though, and we needed one of those pretty badly. Without a body it’s difficult to predict what might have happened, and it’s important not to make any sort of rash assumptions.”

  I nodded once again and looked out the windshield, up the canyon.

  “Annie Wilkes!” I exclaimed.

  “Pardon me?”

  I started speaking quickly, almost incoherently, but it was Jodie and she knew my verbal shorthand. “A character in a horror novel that steals an author away to her house in the woods and keeps him captive. I mean, well, that’s not what I mean here. What I’m trying to say is that Nathan mentioned to me that he’s been to Star City before, to a friend’s cabin where he could write. He didn’t say where it was, but there are cabins out this way, right? Right, yes. Maybe he came out to the cabin and maybe his friends kidnapped him or maybe he hurt himself. You know where this road leads? To cabins. Or maybe the scarf flew out of someone else’s car as his body was being taken to the woods to be hidden forever. Because he didn’t drive a car up to the shop, Jodie. He must have been kidnapped. He didn’t have a car.”

  “I think the first option might be the best.” She pushed the button on her microphone, and commanded that someone at the station try to figure out which cabin Nathan might have stayed in at one time. She asked for backup, telling the person on the other end that she and Omar were going to search the cabins up this particular canyon.

  “Go home, or go back to work, Clare,” Jodie said.

  “You’re joking, right?” I said. I buckled myself in to make the point that I wasn’t leaving.

  “You can’t come up there with me,” Jodie said.

  “I’m not leaving this Bronco,” I said.

  Jodie rolled down the window and told Omar she and I were traveling a little farther up the canyon and to direct the other officers who were on their way to join us.

  He waved us on and then turned his attention back to the gully to search for more clues. I hoped he didn’t find any.

  “All right,” Jodie said as she rolled up the window. “You will do as I command, okay?”

  “Of c
ourse,” I said as I searched ahead of us and then down off the side of the road, into the woods opposite where Jodie and Omar had found the piece of fabric.

  “Clare.”

  “I hear you.”

  “What do you remember about the cabin he mentioned?”

  “I don’t remember any more than that. Wait, he said the cabin was small and that he would have loved to spend some time there on this trip but he thought the owners might have been staying there. The monks! He could smell the wine production, and this would be the right area for that.”

  “Right, but this area is summer only,” Jodie said.

  “I know, but he might not have known that. We could also be on a wild-goose chase.”

  Jodie pushed the button on her microphone again. “Yeah, check Grimes’s cell phone records again. If you didn’t ask about any of the people he called having a cabin, call them back and ask. Tell me exactly where it is. I need this information right away. Got it?”

  They got it.

  We moved slowly around the narrow, winding road. We were lucky in that it was mostly clear of snow, which was unusual for this time of year. However, we’d both driven these sorts of roads enough to know about black ice that could send a car in the wrong direction quickly.

  “It gets cold enough up here at night for black ice,” I said.

  “Yeah, and it’s not getting warm enough during the day yet to melt it all,” Jodie said.

  “Oh jeez,” I said as I caught sight of a cabin not too far off the road. “Its roof still has a couple feet of snow, and getting to the doorway would be impossible.”

  “That’s a good sign. If Nathan came out here and saw the conditions, he knew he couldn’t try to get inside the cabin. Oh man, I hope that was the case. People who aren’t used to these conditions . . .”

  “Drive you crazy, I know.”

  “Right, well, let’s remain positive.”

  The road continued to wind and the cabins we spotted continued to be topped with snow, with no footsteps leading toward their front door.

  “Jodie!” I said as we came around another curve and passed a car going slowly the other direction. “What’s that?” I pointed.

  “Looks like some of the same fabric.” She slowed the Bronco and pulled it to the side of the road. “Be care—”

  But I was out of the truck and quick-stepping my way to the edge of the road before she could finish. She joined me in record time.

  “Oh no!” I said as we looked down a slope. Not as steep as some, this one was probably less than a hundred feet to the bottom. A car had gone off the road and was on its side below. “Nathan! Nathan!”

  Jodie grabbed the fabric that had become stuck on the bark of a tree that had fallen sometime over the last hundred years or so. “The ripped-off part looks like the other piece was attached.” She pushed the microphone button again and spoke emergency words and codes, ending with the command that they all hurry to get to the scene.

  “I’m going to get a rope. Stay here,” she said to me. “Do not try to go down there or I will have two people I have to rescue. I’m going to need your help, do you understand? Stay here a second and wait for me.”

  I nodded.

  “Clare?”

  “I will! Get the rope!”

  She jogged back to the Bronco and came back with the rope. She tied it around her waist and then wrapped the other end twice around a tree. “I’m going to climb down there, but you will have to be in charge of the rope. Put on your gloves. The rope is around the tree so you won’t have to deal with all my weight, but I really need you to stay focused and not let me fall. I can’t help Nathan if I fall, got it?”

  I nodded again and took hold of my end of the rope.

  “Please be careful,” I said to her.

  “I will. Watch the rope.”

  She maneuvered herself to the lip of the downward drop and, like the pro she was, backed over the edge and started rappelling down, though it wasn’t exactly like rappelling. The edge wasn’t straight—it was sloped and covered in snow. So it was more like she was trudging through the snow at a weird angle, but the rope kept her from rolling down the side.

  I lost sight of her.

  “You okay?” I yelled.

  “Almost there.”

  The rope suddenly slipped. I grabbed it, but the force of her weight mixed with gravity and I lost hold. For the longest second of my life, I watched the rope come uncoiled from around the tree, the end of it flying through the air and then disappearing over the edge.

  I ran to the edge and stopped myself just in time to keep from falling over.

  “Jodie!”

  Another long second later she answered, “I’m okay, Clare. I was down before you let go. I’m on the other side of the car. Look for my hand.”

  I saw her hand come up over the car as she waved.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to let go.” I wanted to cry. Fear for Jodie and Nathan had only multiplied.

  “It’s okay. I’m okay. The guys will get me out when they get here.”

  I couldn’t see her, but I could hear her.

  “Nathan?” I said.

  The seconds had turned into things that took longer than they should, minutes, hours. Though it felt like forever before she answered again, it was probably only a couple of beats later.

  “He’s here, Clare. He’s alive, but maybe barely. We need an ambulance.”

  “Don’t you die, Nathan. Don’t die!” I yelled.

  The tears fell down my cheeks. I wanted to figure out a way to go help them, but I knew the best thing was for me was to wait for help up here.

  “His eyelids are fluttering, Clare. He’ll be okay,” Jodie said again, probably because she heard my sobs.

  I was without words by then, and the time that it took for help to come seemed like a millennium. Later I would figure out the timing and realize that it took only about five minutes for the many rescuers to arrive. I waved them down even though they couldn’t have missed the Bronco and the hysterical blonde by the side of the road.

  It was all I could do not to chastise them for taking so long.

  17

  “He’s going to be okay,” Jodie said as she put her hand on my shoulder. “It was only about twenty-four hours. It was cold, but he had the shelter of the car and his coat.”

  The wave of relief that washed over me with her assurance was welcomed.

  Nathan and Jodie had both been rescued quickly. All it took was a few guys and a stretcher attached to a rope attached to a fire engine pulley. Nathan had been conscious but barely, and the EMTs hadn’t let me talk to him. They whisked him away and Jodie got in her Bronco, drenched up to her armpits from the deep snow and not allowing any EMTs to evaluate her condition, and followed behind. Another officer had brought me back to the shop, leaving me still frantic with concern. Chester, Adal, Marion, and I had all been on edge as we waited. Fortunately, Jodie knew I’d be waiting and had called to say that everyone was okay but she’d have to give me the details later. I was relieved to see her walk through the front doors a couple of hours later.

  I nodded as Baskerville jumped up to the counter and rammed his head into my arm. I responded by scratching behind his ears.

  “He’d just gone out to explore the cabin?” Chester asked.

  “Well, yes, kind of. He wanted to stop by the bookstore, Starry Night. He had some books he wanted to give the shop to sell. They were some of his books, first editions with his signatures, and he wanted them to have the books as a gift. He claims to love every part of Star City,” Jodie said.

  “That’s very generous,” Adal said.

  “It is,” Jodie said. “He was awake and out of the hotel early. He got up to Starry Night and it was closed. He realized he was too early to come in here, so he decided to see if he could go find the cabin, mayb
e say hello to his friends if they were there. He said he didn’t realize it was a summer-only cabin. He was turning around when he hit some black ice and went over.”

  “It’s amazing that he wasn’t killed,” Chester said.

  “Not only was he not killed, but his only real injury is a scratch on his forehead. He was dehydrated, so they’re filling him up with fluids and then sending him on his way. No sign of frostbite or hypothermia. He was well covered up by his clothes and a couple blankets in the car. He was just stuck and couldn’t get out. He threw the scarf out last night when the wind was whipping down the canyon. It was a smart move. He’s absolutely fine, eternally grateful to have been found.”

  “I bet,” Chester said.

  “Whose car was he driving?” I asked.

  “He had rented a car when he got to Utah.” She paused. “We should have checked that, but we didn’t.”

  “I told you he didn’t have a car,” I said.

  “I still should have checked that. Anyway. He just preferred to walk up here. He likes the exercise,” Jodie said. “The stack of books made him decide to use the car.”

  “I can’t believe he’s okay,” I said.

  “Right. Me either. Now I have to get back to the business of trying to find Lloyd’s killer, but at least we don’t have another victim on our hands.”

  “Actually,” I said as I looked at Adal and Chester, “I have a couple of things I want to tell you. We got interrupted earlier.”

  “I’m listening.”

  So were Chester and Adal, but that was probably okay.

  I’d thrown my bag behind the counter. Still with noodle legs from the drop of adrenaline, I walked around everyone, grabbed the bag, and lifted it up to the counter.

  “These are some more articles. I asked Marion to help me find them.” I handed Jodie the copies. “Howard and Donte weren’t as successful as they seemed at first glance. Both of their businesses are struggling.”

  “Right.” She took the papers and looked at each one, skimming quickly.

  “You know this stuff?”

  “Well, we’ve looked, but I’m going to take these in case we’ve missed anything.”