“She needs a reason?”
“Doesn’t seem that way, does it? But she’s fallen for a man.”
“A man? Who’s going to fall for Alex?”
“That’s what I thought—she says he’s teaching her line dancing, for heaven’s sake.”
He chuckled into her ear. “Maybe if she’s not so frustrated, she’ll let up on you guys.”
“Don’t count on it. Besides, when he’s had enough of her, I’m afraid we’ll pay.” Her neck was beginning to ache from peering up at the platform at such a steep angle. She’d have to lean against something next time, if she wanted to carry on a conversation with him. “I’d better go before I get a crick in my neck.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
“Sure.” Then she heard a car. Turning, she couldn’t see beyond the clearing. “Andrew, can you see who that is?”
“It’s Fred,” he said, just before the Chevy pulled into the clearing and stopped beside hers. “Did he know you were coming?”
“No, but he does now.”
Fred strode across the clearing and into the woods. Giving her scarcely a glance, he reached for her cell phone. “Andrew, you’ve got to come down.”
Joan couldn’t hear Andrew’s answer, but Fred’s face gave her the general idea.
“Because we’ve had another one, that’s why.”
“Another what?” she said.
“Another murder out here trying to look like an accident. An SUV ran off the road into a tree.”
Overhead, Andrew waved his free arm.
“Because we found another Petoskey stone, the kind of stone your mom found near the tree.”
Andrew was gesticulating again.
“This stone was inside the car. Looks as if someone shot it at him, made him crash into the tree.”
“Oh, Fred, no!” Joan said.
“That’s not for public consumption, though,” Fred said into the phone. He nodded. “Right. We don’t want this guy to know what we have on him. And the victim is Herschel Vint. Yes, the DNR man. You heard him, too?” He was looking up at Andrew. “Whoever did it, or why, we can’t overlook the connection to these woods, and maybe, even probably, to Sylvia’s death. You’re at terrible risk up there, son.”
All Joan’s worries flooded back. Until now she’d tried to tell herself that the motive for shooting Sylvia must have been personal. Something to do with her, not with the woods or with Andrew. But whoever went after Vint, who had practically endorsed the tree sitters, had to have reasons connected to the woods or to the construction project that would destroy them.
Andrew had said he didn’t want to die, but this was a cause worth dying for. Was it a cause worth giving her son for? How could he be so brave when she felt so wimpy? Or was he? Had he, too, been in denial? Would he welcome Fred’s authority now? Should she beg him to come down?
“If we have to haul you down, it may kill the tree, and the trees around it, sooner than the construction crew would,” Fred was saying. “You’ve made your point. Can’t you see how much you’re worrying your mother?”
Below the belt, Fred, Joan thought, but if it works, I’m glad you said it.
“I can’t stay and argue.” Thrusting the phone at Joan, Fred looked up one more time. Then he turned his back on them both and made his way back across the rutted clearing.
Was it her imagination, or were his shoulders sagging? She put the phone to her ear.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” Andrew said, and broke the connection.
Joan called his number back, but after several rings, she gave up. Churning inside, she carried her empty basket back to the car. On the road home, she expected to come across the wrecked SUV, but she didn’t see so much as broken glass. It must have happened past the turnoff to the woods. No point in going to gawk. She’d only be in the way.
All the way home, she tried to persuade herself that Fred was wrong. The only connections between Herschel Vint’s death and Sylvia’s were the Petoskey stones and where they happened. If someone out there with a stash of Petoskey stones was using them to aim at people, didn’t it suggest a kid messing around in the woods, as the man at the center said he had done as a child? Who knew how many people this young woodsman had used for target practice or how often he had missed?
If there was such a kid, she wondered how he must be feeling now. Guilty? Proud? Both, she thought, all mixed up together.
Would two deaths convince him that it was time to stop? Or would the thrill of it all tempt him to take potshots at Andrew next, if he hadn’t already? If he’d hit Sylvia, he was bound to connect with Andrew eventually. Once had been enough for Sylvia.
15
Fred’s thoughts were running in a different direction as he drove to meet Sheriff Newt Inman, who’d finally called him. Although the call from the woman who thought she’d seen lights in the woods hadn’t inspired the sheriff to give up his day of rest, the coroner’s request to investigate a possible homicide near those very woods had. He’d leave the Vint case long enough to join Fred in checking out the woman’s story, he said, but he doubted that it would come to anything. If it did, Fred could do the follow-up. The woods were, after all, inside the city.
Fred couldn’t help suspecting a connection to Vint and to Sylvia. Tenuous, maybe, but it made sense to him.
Andrew had seen the lights from his perch. Had Sylvia? And had something, maybe the glint of her binoculars, given away her location to what Fred suspected were people manufacturing methamphetamine in one of the underground limestone caves dotted around this karst land? A perfect hiding place for a meth lab. Or it soon would be, when the trees were leafed out. Already, a green haze suggested they wouldn’t wait much longer.
If not a meth lab, then some other illegal activity, Fred was sure. And when Herschel Vint, working for the state, had come too close, he, too, had been eliminated. Would Andrew be next? When would the risk to him in forcing him down be less than the risk of leaving him where he was?
But Fred hadn’t told the sheriff all his concerns, much less floated any theories he couldn’t back up. Persuading him to bring his experience with meth labs to bear on whatever was going on in Yocum’s Woods would do for the moment.
When Fred pulled up, Sheriff Inman was waiting in Patricia Nikirk’s long driveway, his car facing the road, motor running. Driver’s side to driver’s side, they rolled down their windows.
“Newt.”
“Fred.”
“You talk to her yet?”
“Thought I’d wait for you. Give her a good look at me.” Inman removed his hat and sunglasses. As dark as Fred was blond, Inman still had a full head of wavy hair at forty-something, a trim waistline, and a sharp jawline.
A curtain flicked in the window of the small cinder block house. “She sees us,” Fred said. “Let’s go.”
The door opened before they could knock.
“You took your time coming.” Wearing jeans and lace-up boots, the wiry little woman in the doorway looked ready to lead them into the woods. She also looked to be about seventy-five. She didn’t invite them in.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Inman said. “We had a fatality on the road.”
She sniffed. “Damn drunk drivers. Carry on all hours of the night. Saturday night’s always the worst.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Inman was letting her assume that he’d meant last night.
“No witnesses? That would surprise me. People on this road are too damn nosy, if you ask me.”
“We haven’t found anyone yet. You didn’t hear the crash?”
“All the other racket they make, I don’t know how I could.”
Fred doubted there had been much other racket on a quiet Sunday afternoon.
“I take it you know your neighbors farther down this road?” Inman said.
“Aren’t many past me. That Jim Chandler won’t be much help.”
“Oh?”
“Man’s a womanizer. Always in and out with some woman, usually on the pudgy side, like the one he had last night.�
�� She shook her head. “No accounting for taste.”
Right, Fred thought. Alex wouldn’t be mine. And if Patricia Nikirk is right about Chandler’s womanizing, Alex is in for a disappointment.
Mrs. Nikirk eyed Inman’s lean physique and ran her hands down her own trim jeans. “But that’s not what you come about.”
“No, ma’am. I’m Sheriff Inman, and—”
“I know who you are. I didn’t vote for you.” Crossing her arms across her flat chest, she dared him to make something of it.
“And this is Lieutenant Lundquist, of the Oliver Police,” he went on in the same bland voice. “He says you’ve been seeing lights in the woods. Can you tell me about them?”
“Not much more to tell than I told the police last night.” She nodded in Fred’s direction. “These lanterns or flashlights or whatever they are, they meander through the woods toward that old cave we used to play in. Then they disappear. Directly, they come back out. I don’t know what they’ve got stashed in the cave, but whatever it is, they don’t want people to see ’em going in and out. I figure that’s why they do it of a night.”
“You’ve seen them before last night?” Inman asked.
“Sure. Thought it wasn’t none of my business. But when the mayor asked people to call last night if they knew anything about Yocum’s Woods and said it might have to do with that poor girl killed sitting up in the tree, I decided it was my bounden duty.”
“We appreciate that,” Fred said. “Last night I gathered you might be able to lead us to the cave you’re talking about.”
“No might about it. I know these woods like the back of my hand. Let me get my stick.” She disappeared into the house, shutting the door behind her and leaving them on the front step.
When she came back, the stick in her hand was not a fragile old lady’s cane but a hiker’s gnarled staff. A sheltie bounded out with her.
“Heel!” she commanded, and the dog obeyed without losing any of its bounce.
Fred didn’t hear the latch click when she shut the door, and she didn’t turn to lock it. He could feel his eyebrows rise.
She looked up at him. “You think I’m foolish not to lock it? Nobody out here locks up. But there’s a German shepherd in my house twice the size of this dog that’ll make anybody breaks in sorry he tried it.”
Fred hoped so.
The stick and the sheltie led the way briskly along a ridge, down into a gully, and up another ridge. Yocum’s Woods didn’t look all that big on a map, but the ups and downs added considerably to the distance a person on foot traveled, not to mention the energy expended climbing and negotiating the rough ground. Limestone outcroppings revealed the nature of the land beneath the trees and brush. When they reached the gully after the third ridge, Patricia Nikirk paused. Fred, wishing for a stout staff of his own, welcomed the respite, but she wasn’t even puffing.
“You can see it from here,” she said, pointing her stick at the side of the next hill.
Fred couldn’t. The sheriff also looked baffled.
She chuckled. “That’s what makes it a good hidey-hole. Come on; I’ll show you.”
They followed her along the gully and started up the hill.
“This is about where I see the lights disappear,” she said.
And suddenly, in a tangle of rocks and tree roots, Fred saw an opening large enough to admit a full-grown man if he bent over. It was mostly hidden by brush that didn’t look altogether natural. A little too convenient. The smell was powerful, as if a herd of cats had been using the woods for a litter box. That was enough for Fred. A different kind of herd had been cooking meth here, he was sure, with anhydrous ammonia one of the main ingredients. If they moved the brush away, they’d probably be able to see into the cave, but he didn’t disturb it. Foot traffic had already worn enough of a path to make the entrance obvious, now that he knew to look for it.
“Well, I’ll be,” Inman said. “I thought I knew this area pretty well, but I didn’t know this was going on.”
“Surprised you, didn’t I?” Mrs. Nikirk was enjoying herself.
“You smell it, too?” Fred asked Inman.
“Oh, yeah,” Inman said. “This is where we back off. Nobody’s going in there without protective gear. The fumes alone can be toxic.”
“One of us should stay here,” Fred said. “Anyone who heard us coming will take off the minute we leave.”
“Or come out shooting,” Inman said. “We need more backup.”
Fred knew he was right.
Mrs. Nikirk had been waiting quietly, the dog lying at her feet showing no interest in the cave, in spite of the odor. “I never see anyone going in and out of a daytime,” she said. “Only at night. Besides, if they heard us, they’re long gone. This cave has a back door, you know. I can show you that one, too.”
Now she tells us, Fred thought. But we didn’t ask. Serves us right for not taking her seriously.
“Yes, ma’am,” Inman said. “We’d appreciate that. Just one back door?”
“Far as I remember. Of course, I don’t remember the way I used to.” Her eyes sparkled.
Uh-huh, Fred thought. More likely you didn’t want to show us everything you know right up front. Maybe you still don’t. Some limestone caves went off in several directions, he knew.
“If they heard us, it’s too late. Best we’ll do is shut this one down,” Inman said as they followed her and the dog up the hill. “But if nobody was home just now, we might just get lucky tonight.”
Fred was glad the sheriff seemed to have forgotten about city–county boundaries. They were both following up ongoing investigations, and cooperating could only improve their chances of success. Inman was talking as if he’d be taking part in the next step.
The back door, on the far side of the ridge, turned out to be small enough that a man escaping through it would have to crawl out. Good, especially if Mrs. Nikirk wasn’t holding out on them about still another opening.
They began the trek back to the road in her wake.
“I didn’t mention it before,” Fred told Inman, “but our tree sitter saw those lights, too.”
“The woman who got shot down?”
“No. The one who took her place. My wife’s son.”
Inman shot him a glance. “That’s rough.”
“We’ve had some tense moments about it. He’s basically a good kid.”
“But?”
“I can’t talk him down. Hope I don’t have to haul him down. And I don’t think he really knows the people he’s mixed up with. He’s full of high ideals, and the devil take the consequences.”
16
Joan was glad Fred took time out for supper, but he seemed preoccupied and said almost nothing. He left again as soon as he’d eaten. “Late night,” he threw over his shoulder as he walked out the door. “Gotta check out some lights Andrew’s been seeing.”
She turned on the porch light for the other members of the quartet, who would soon arrive to rehearse the music for Sylvia’s funeral. She put four chairs in the middle of the living room under a good light and set up her folding music stand. She hoped the others would remember to bring their own. In a pinch, two players could share one. Certainly two of them could play out of one hymnal, but the Handel parts would be squeezed if more than one player used one of those little stands. Telling herself not to borrow trouble, she went to brew coffee.
Birdie Eads arrived first. “I’m glad you’re doing this,” she told Joan. “I’ve been feeling so helpless. I don’t know her sister, really, don’t know what to say to her.”
“It’s hard, isn’t it?” Joan said. “But she seems to feel better since she’s been able to make plans. The coroner says she can hold the service after tomorrow.” He had vetoed cremation, though, Linda had said. Probably better not even mention that to Birdie. “She was in a hurry at first, but now she’s decided to wait till Thursday, so that her husband and children can come.”
“If this means something to her sister, then maybe
it would to Sylvia, too.” Birdie’s eyes looked misty, but she kept it under control as she unpacked her violin and set up her stand. “Where do you want me?”
“Over here.” Joan pointed to the second violin spot. “Nicholas agreed to play.” She held her breath.
“I’m surprised. He and Sylvia never got along.” Birdie took the second chair without objection.
“No, they didn’t.” But it was you who fell apart about sitting with him, Joan wanted to say. Not that I’d blame you.
Nicholas blew in next on a gust of wind and dumped his violin case on the sofa. He gave Birdie the merest nod. “Where’s the cello?”
You’re not in charge here, Joan thought. “I’m sure she’ll be here any minute. I hope you remembered a stand.”
Looking insulted, he pulled it from the zipper compartment of his case and set it up by the first violin chair. He started to tune.
Joan offered him her tuning fork, but he shook his head.
“I have perfect pitch. I’ll show you.” He tuned his A string and then hit the tines of her tuning fork on his knee and held its foot against his violin. The resulting clear tone exactly matched the sound coming from his A string.
“I’m impressed.” Joan meant it. She often could come close by ear but was often a hair off. She was about to check her own strings when the doorbell shrilled again.
“Sorry I’m late.” Charlotte Hodden looked frazzled by more than just the wind. “I couldn’t get the kids calmed down for their dad. Finally had to leave the baby crying. I felt like a mean mother.”
“God, I don’t know how you put up with kids,” Nicholas said. “They’d drive me crazy.”
The way you act, I don’t think it’s ever going to be a problem, Joan thought. But who knows? Some women like men who push them around.
While Charlotte unpacked her cello and stand and found a spot in the rug for the cello’s peg, Joan passed out the Messiah parts and the hymnals she had borrowed. They might as well warm up on the hymns. How hard could they be?
She found out on “Abide with Me” when she automatically began playing the alto part she usually sang.
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