by Patti Larsen
I nodded, not sure what to say. And followed Dad out when he left.
He paused at the front door, scowling up at the two cameras. “I need to see what’s on those tapes.”
Tell me about it. But before I could ask him what he was planning, Dad strode off, climbing into his truck and driving away. At least he took a second to wave goodbye, though the whole “partner in investigation” thing seemed not to extend past his need to tweak the noses of those he deemed troublesome—like Robert.
Fine, then. Let Dad play his games. I was done for today. Petunia’s called and I had a real job to do. Now, if only I could get the stench of the dumpster off my hands, that would be just peachy.
***
Chapter Twenty Three
The rest of my day passed without incident, though I seemed to spend more time looking for Daisy who continued to avoid me than I did actually getting work done. And while I tried to corner Heather a time or two, she did a great disappearing act herself, vanishing either into her room or out the front door before I could pretend to find a reason to pin her down.
Without word from Crew, the smirking face of Rose lingering seemingly in every room I ventured into as she, on the other hand, followed me around as if looking for a reason to piss me off, and with Mom still upset over whatever Daisy said to her, I found myself wrapping up my day with knots across my shoulders and the kind of bubbling in my stomach that told me I should have a snack before bed or I’d be up with heartburn halfway through the night.
Morning broke, clear and lovely, my usual 6AM wakeup a whole hour early as my body, wound tight by continuing anxiety, drove me out of bed and into my sneakers. Ten minutes later I was running down the lakeside path, the first of the morning staff covering for me, Mom not yet arrived but due at any moment. I just couldn’t stand one more minute inside.
This was the time I really missed Crew, I realized, more so than I expected and I found myself fighting off tears that I dashed aside with annoyance and impatience. No, I would not cry over him. Not this girl, not ever. He might have thought running off to do whatever heroic or idiotic thing he was doing was the right choice, that failing to even send a text update was acceptable, but I disagreed wholeheartedly. It wasn’t so much the fact he disappeared, not really. I was a grown woman and, I at least told myself in no uncertain terms if Crew Turner wanted to live his life this way that was up to him. But have the freaking courtesy to tell someone, anyone, where he was going. While not abandoning the people who came to care about him and the job he left behind for some kind of covert whatever this was he’d gotten himself into.
So there.
I was so far gone into my pep talk of screw you, Crew that I failed to realize I’d passed the end of the trail again until I was almost as far as I’d gotten two days ago, the long grasses lashing at my legs, my sneakers slipping on the edge of the high bank. I paused, bending with my hands on my knees, realizing I was panting at full force, my chest heaving. That I’d pushed far harder than I usually did and was only noticing now.
Yeah, not worked up about this or anything. I took a second to crouch, to bow my head and catch my breath, to hug my knees and inhale, exhale while the morning sun washed over me, the soft breeze from the lake cooling the sweat beading my skin. I was almost back to normal, shaking my head at my own foolishness, red hair sticking to my cheeks that I pushed away with hands now tight from excessive blood flow when I caught my breath for a different reason, freezing in place.
I wasn’t alone. Damn it, I had to come out this far again, didn’t I? Knowing there were bears in the area? Seriously, Fee, what the hell was wrong with me? But before I could freak out and run off or utterly freeze in place while trying to figure out what a bear might want to snack on that wasn’t Fleming related when I realized it wasn’t a giant, hulking furred creature of the forest that crept past where I crouched, not twenty feet from me, but two dark figures in hoodies.
“I’m telling you,” one of them whispered, his voice carrying but too low for me to identify who he was past gender, “they’re going to find out.”
“Just shut up and move it.” The second, bigger figure’s gruff response was just as quiet, his identity as lost to me as the first. Damn it, I needed a closer peek, but the way the pair moved, how they slunk toward the hidden vessel, told me I’d stumbled on something that would likely get me in more trouble than I could handle alone if I confronted them.
“But what if they find out we were on his boat that night?” The first sounded anxious enough and guilty enough I had to wonder who I was letting get away.
“So what if they do,” his partner said, the splash of water the only other sound, followed by the swish of what had to be the ghillie net being pulled free. I risked a glance, but the high weeds blocked my view. “They can’t prove anything. Now, get in the damned boat already. We need to ditch this stuff before anyone finds us. Tonight’s our last run. Let’s make it count.”
I held my place, holding the air in my aching lungs, waiting for the chance to take a safe look in the hope of identifying who they were. I stretched out on my stomach, creeping to the edge of the dirt, looking down the bank, watching the smaller of the two jump in next to the bigger and push off. The pair crouched low in the boat while it coasted away, a small engine coming to coughing life a moment later. The low hum of the motor echoed back toward me as the two in the small craft puttered down the lake in the direction of the cottages dotting the other side of the bank.
Now, I wasn’t exactly suspicious by nature—ha! Just had to get that out of the way—and while there was likely a perfectly good explanation for two people to sneak around shortly after dawn, taking a well-hidden boat out for a spin, I couldn’t think of any. Didn’t help their little conversation brought to mind Lester’s death. They had to have been talking about the yacht club president, right? “His” boat? That put them right at the top of the suspect pool. But it was the recent reports of thefts from the cottages that got my hackles up enough I made note of my exact location, and, when the boat was out of sight, I crossed to retrace the path of the two the way they’d come, though there was no sign of a vehicle or a means of arrival when I reached the road, nor any tire tracks to follow.
Time to head for home and hand this particular mystery over to Jill. If these two were connected to the thefts, not to mention the death of Lester Patterson, it would give her a solid win and might grant her the leverage she needed to oust Robert. I swallowed hard as I ran back toward the main path, wondering when I stopped believing Crew was coming home.
***
Chapter Twenty Four
Back at Petunia’s I found Dad sitting at the counter in the kitchen, enjoying a plate of breakfast while Mom worked on feeding our guests. He looked up when I entered, bushy eyebrows raised, and didn’t move or eat another mouthful while I filled him in on what I’d seen.
To my surprise, he didn’t comment right away, and it wasn’t until I heard a familiarly irritating voice pipe up I realized we weren’t alone.
“You did inform Robert, I take it?” Rose sneered at me as she sashayed her nosy way into my private conversation with my father. Mom glared at her, the rigid way she clutched her spatula making me wonder if my normally reserved mother was planning something violent. Likely. “Or are you too busy poking your nose into other people’s business?”
Snarl. “If I wanted your opinion,” I snapped back, “I’d ask for it.” Yup, had it up to here. Time to take out the trash. “Don’t you think it’s time you headed home to Montpelier, Rose? And didn’t come back?” And there it was out in the open. Get lost in the nicest way possible. Okay, not so nice, but it was the best she was getting and all I had in me.
Leave it to Daisy to walk in on that little statement and miss the rest, naturally. My bestie’s big, gray eyes stared at me like I’d run over her puppy instead of telling her irritating step-sister to get the hell out.
“How dare you,” Rose said, turning to stomp to Daisy’s side, hooking h
er arm through my best friend’s like she owned her. “Are you going to let Fee talk to me like that, Day?”
Mom grunted, an uncommon sound from her, far more familiar from Dad. But she didn’t comment, glaring while her spatula still hovered, dripping oatmeal all over the floor, a fact that made Petunia infinitely happy. The pug snuffle snorted her way around the tile at Mom’s feet while Daisy looked back and forth between Rose and me before saying a word.
“Fee, Rose is welcome to stay for as long as she wants.” She sounded like she was trying to convince herself. “This is my business too.” Standing up for herself finally? I wished she’d done so against Rose, not for her, but at least her backbone was returning.
“Our business,” I said, nodding to Mom who stayed quiet. “The three of us. You seem to think because you want her to work with you we agreed to such an arrangement. We didn’t.” And we hadn’t. I’d kind of taken Daisy’s quiet request at face value initially, but the more I got to know her nasty ass little piece of trash step-sister, the less I wanted anything to do with her. Or to have her in my house, thanks. “We need to discuss this in a meeting, Daisy. Not out in the open.” There, I was being a proper businesswoman, all professional and whatnot.
“Right so you can talk about me behind my back.” Rose’s hands clutched at Daisy’s arm. “You know they’re going to turn you against me.” Her wheedling, whining tone made my best friend—former? Still? Hard to tell at the moment—flinch.
“We can talk about it right now,” Daisy said, firm and flat.
I kept expecting Mom to speak up, but my mother held her tongue, though it was apparent she wanted to say something. Was she worried she’d fly off the handle? What, did she think I was about to do much better? Great, leave it to me, then.
“Fine,” I said. “Two against one, Daisy. Rose is out. Now.”
Daisy glanced at Mom who just nodded. That seemed to set her off like my rejection hadn’t, her normally lovely face settling into something I didn’t recognize, something much closer to Rose’s pinched and judging expression, far too close for comfort.
“If you’re going to ask Rose to leave,” Daisy said—where exactly did she get “asking” out of “get the hell out”?—“then I’m going with her.”
The two spun and left as a unit while I stared after them, not sure what to do or say from here. This changeover in the woman I’d come to adore all over again was so abrupt, so painfully uncomfortable and shocking I could barely breathe. Mom sagged into the counter, dropping her threatening utensil at last while Dad sighed and shook his head.
“That girl needs a serious reality check.” Whether he referred to Daisy or Rose I wasn’t sure, but he was right. And maybe I did, too. Was Daisy not the woman I’d thought? Was I underestimating everyone in my life these days, from Crew running off without notice to Robert’s deeply hidden rage now coming to the surface and even my own father’s willingness to use me as a tool to get what he wanted when it came to our town’s officials? I didn’t like where my thoughts were going, nor the tight, angry expression on Mom’s face as she finally met my eyes.
“You have to do something, Fee,” she said, like I had any kind of recourse.
“Thanks, Mom,” I shot back at her. “For all the support and everything.”
“Would you rather I turned her over my knee and spanked her? Because that’s the direction that child is heading.” Mom’s sharp tone made Petunia whine softly. And kind of shocked me, since I knew for a fact Mom had never in her life even threatened to strike anyone. She didn’t believe in it.
Rather than argue with my mother, because we were heading for a fight, that much was clear, I stormed out of the kitchen and to my apartment to clean myself up for the day. Ten minutes later, a fast shower and quick change under my belt and a list of things to do a mile long to distract me in my grasp and I was climbing the steps to the third floor and my day’s work.
I was passing the far door when I heard someone crying, pulling me to a halt and tugging me out of the lingering anger that seemed to hover over me these days whenever I thought about Daisy and Rose. I paused at Heather’s door and listened, looking for a distraction if nothing else and getting exactly what I was hoping for.
“Please, you have to listen.” She was obviously on the phone because she paused to no audible response. “I just need a few days. I know I can make this right. Please, give me a chance to get the money.”
Hmmm. Money, was it? A great motive for many things. Including murder? My mind went to the string of burned out lights, the night of Lester’s death. Was Heather linked to the dead Patterson somehow through financial problems? Who did she owe money to and why? And was she somehow connected to the two men I’d encountered this morning? If they were the thieves Dad was hunting, could they be tied to Heather’s money troubles?
So many questions, so little information. My favorite. Sigh.
As I stood there, listening to her beg and cry, I missed the fact the sound of her voice was closer to the door and, as she promised whoever it was she spoke to she was close to an answer, I found myself face-to-face with her as she tried to storm out of her room.
She squeaked as she confronted me, her face wet with tears, eyes huge, anger flashing over her expression when she realized I’d been listening in.
“Did you kill Lester Patterson?” Yeah, that was subtle. “Over money?”
She pushed past me, scowling back over her shoulder, stuffing her phone into her purse and wiping at her cheeks with her free hand. “So much for your pretense at friendship,” she snapped. Why did that make me think of Daisy and the fight we’d had? Guilt smacked me harder than it should have, considering none of this was my fault. But it kept me from trying to stop Heather as she pushed past me. “I’ll be out of your establishment before nightfall,” she said. “And I’ll never be back. Just be grateful I don’t call the sheriff’s department and report you for eavesdropping.” Pretty sure listening in to private conversations wasn’t illegal, but whatever, Heather.
I let her go, my own mood sour and grumpier than ever. Absolutely the worst time to call Crew and leave him a choice message about just how I felt about his absence and why it was I hoped he survived whatever it was he was up to so I could kill him myself.
Grand day. Just grand.
Another lovely one spent snarling at the staff, fighting off a mix of crankiness and a vague despair that everything that was supposed to be going right was actually going wrong while the world spun on around me.
For a brief instant of worry I caught myself frozen at the top of the steps just as the dinner rush started, the thought that Daisy was intimately tied into the pirate treasure mystery and, now that Rose had her ear, likely told her step-sister everything. Not that I really believed in the Reading hoard, but the hurt that my former best friend—yes, I was thinking of her in those terms, shame on me—might have spilled our secret to that hideous creature gave me a long instant of wanting to sit on the step and cry my eyes out.
Wow, talk about an emotional train wreck. I had to shake this funk somehow, move on from it. Yes, Crew was MIA. Yes, Daisy was acting like a psychopath. Okay, so Robert was a scary freak and I had too many mysteries floating around for my own comfort. So what? Not like life hadn’t handed me lemons in the past.
Big girl panties firmly in place, Mom handling the meal for the evening with her staff in full force and Daisy—to my shock—hustling to help, I slipped away from Petunia’s and out of their way, heading instead for my other place of business, even if it wasn’t by choice.
I arrived at Dad’s office with a million questions tucked neatly away for the expected interrogation, only to find his door locked. But despite his absence, it appeared I wasn’t the only one looking for him. When I stopped outside his door, it was to the watchful, angry double gaze of Wanda Beaman and Chris Noltz, both of whom seemed more than willing to turn their irritation on me as a surrogate.
Except, as I inhaled to protest I wasn’t Dad, Wanda’s ha
nd came up, a small something in her grasp held out to me like an offering. And, as she spoke, qualifying her gift, I realized it was a thumb drive in the shape of a trout.
“We have something you need to see.”
***
Chapter Twenty Five
The key Dad gave me worked, at least. I let the pair into his office (ours, I guess) and down to the end of the long, narrow space, inviting them to sit while I carefully perched on the edge of my father’s chair feeling like a little girl invading a grownup’s private lair but not sure what else to do. A call to him ended in voicemail, so I left him a quick message while the impatient Wanda and Chris watched me with narrowed eyes and the kind of insistence that told me I wasn’t necessarily their second choice.
Okay, breathe, Fee. If they had no problem bringing me their evidence I shouldn’t feel guilty looking at it without Dad present.
“What we have to tell you, well, it’s not exactly legal.” She glanced at Chris who looked angrier than before. So was that the source of their unhappiness? They were working on something together and fighting over how to deal with the consequences? I waited for her to go on and, when Chris finally nodded and looked away, arms crossed over his chest, Wanda met my eyes again. “We set up our own cameras,” she said. “At the yacht club and at different points on the lake.” On their own property? Perfectly legal. On someone else’s? Yeah, I didn’t need to go to the police academy to know that was illegal surveillance and couldn’t be used in any kind of court. But it might give valuable information, right? And since I hadn’t gathered it, I was all eyes and ears. “I’ve been missing a few things along the way, small things. I didn’t really put two and two together until Chris came to me a week ago and mentioned the thefts at the cottages.” She handed over the thumb drive which I plugged into Dad’s laptop and booted up to have a peek. Wouldn’t you know his computer was password protected? Only took one try—Mom’s birthday—to get in, though.