by Curry, Edna
She remembered how enthusiastically he’d told her of his book on the way to the restaurant the night of the accident. It must be very important to him. Yet he had cared enough to take time off from his own research to help her try to solve Uncle Henry’s murder. He had stayed close for several days to protect her when he thought she was in danger.
Suddenly it was all too much for her. Her stomach turned over and she laid her gun on a table and ran to the bathroom and vomited.
Feeling better without the dinner that had been churning in a lump since Dave’s upsetting announcement at the Ronning’s, she washed her face. Becoming aware of her surroundings, she noted the bathroom fixtures were also in tones of gold and brown, and the odors of his herbal soap and spicy aftershave hung in the air. She looked in the mirror and grimaced at her wet, disheveled reflection.
After rubbing her hair dry as best she could, she borrowed his hairbrush and returned her curls to some order, thankful they were cut in a short natural style.
She went back to the living room and stood surveying the mess. Suddenly she felt a surge of relief and began to laugh aloud as she realized that the fact that Mark’s cabin had been searched meant that Mark wasn’t involved. He had been at Mrs. Ronning’s with her. And he had been with her the night Henry was killed, too.
Suddenly she heard a car, doors slamming and a voice calling her name from over at her cabin.
Thank goodness someone had heard her distress signal.
“Lacey, are you here? Where are you, darling?” Mark’s voice called through the darkness.
Breathing a sigh of relief, Lacey left his cabin and started running back along the path to her own cabin. “I’m over here,” she called, cursing herself for not finding her flashlight, and trying to see her way.
Just then she stumbled on an uneven patch of ground and fell heavily. “Oh! Ouch!” she cried as a tree branch scraped her face and mud squished under her hands.
Footsteps pounded towards her and a beam of light from a flashlight fell on her as she struggled to her feet.
“Lacey! What happened? Are you all right?” Mark reached down to help her to her feet, then wrapped his arms around her, mud and all. Then he held her out at arm’s length and flashed his light over her top to bottom, and back to her face.
“I’m fine, Mark. I just went over to your cabin to see if your phone was still working, or if your keys might be in your car. Neither was, and your cabin was broken into, too.”
“Come on, let’s get back inside and clean you up.”
He took her arm and helped her up the steps into his cabin, then switched on the lights and whistled as he looked around. “What a mess! He did a good job of it.”
Lacey went to the bathroom and washed the mud from her hands.
Mark joined her, and gently put some antiseptic on the scrape on her cheek that was now red and hurting. She watched his large hands doing such a delicate task with ease. She swallowed, wondering how she could have believed he had anything but kindness in mind by protecting her from bad news. He met her eyes and leaned forward to kiss her.
“I’m so glad you heard my signal.”
“Signal? What signal?”
“Why, the sets of three gunshots I fired. You know, the traditional ‘help’ call.”
“I didn’t hear that. Why did you take off like that, without giving me any chance to explain anything? I had to talk Aunt Martha out of her car keys so I could follow you.”
“You have a car? Of course, you do, I’m not thinking straight. Mark, we have to get Ben. Someone was in my cabin when I arrived.” She glanced around, found where she’d dropped her gun and picked it up.
“You saw him? Do you know who it was?” Mark slipped her arms into her coat and they went back out into the rain. Mark flashed his light along the path, keeping a hand on her arm as they made their way through the trees.
“He was a heavyset man, and bald. I could see the reflection of the yard light on his head, but I wasn’t close enough to recognize him. His car was a blue Ford, fairly new, from its shape. It looked familiar, I’ve been trying to remember where I saw one like it before.”
“Sounds like Jake Garner,” Mark said.
“Jake?” Lacey frowned. She called up the memory of the man coming from her cabin, and the wide face under the yard light. “Yes, I think it could have been. But I can’t be positive. Why would Jake do this? Whoever it was killed Scamp, Mark.”
“I know, I saw him. I was just standing in your doorway looking at the mess inside your cabin when I heard you answer.”
“I can’t believe it was Jake. Why would he do this?”
Mark said grimly. “If it was Jake, I’m sure he knew about the Ronning’s party, everyone in town did. So he was sure we wouldn’t be back from the party for a long time, to give him hours to go through your cabin.”
“And yours. Then he hadn’t found what he’s looking for yet, unless he found it tonight.”
“Right. He must want it very badly to go to such lengths,” Lacey said with a shiver.
“You’re cold!” Mark said, suddenly noticing her shiver.
“I’m not dressed for this, but we’re almost there.”
The beams of headlights flashed through the evergreens, moving nearer along the road around the lake.
“Here comes a car, now. Let’s go inside and wait to see who it is.”
It was warm inside her cabin. Lacey reached out to snap on the light, but Mark stopped her.
“Wait until we’re sure who it is.”
He cuddled her under his arm as they watched first Ben, then Kate drive up and come running towards them. Lacey laid her gun aside, feeling safe at last.
“It’s okay.” Mark snapped on the light and held the door open for them.
“What’s going on?” Ben asked.
“Are you all right, Lacey?” Kate came inside and gave her a hug. For once Kate seemed oblivious to the rain on her hair and clothes, paying attention only to Lacey. “You’re hurt! What happened? Did someone hit you?”
“It’s just a scrape, Mom. I ran into a tree branch in the dark.”
Ben closed the door and growled a “damn” as he looked around the room. “We heard your signal and came right over.”
“Sit down,” Lacey said, “if you can find a spot.” She moved to the couch and Mark sat beside her, sliding his arm protectively around her shoulders. Lacey didn’t object, she wanted that warm, comforting presence close to her. She put up her hand to cover his, stroking his long warm fingers with her own.
“Now,” Kate said, perching on a chair, “tell us what happened.”
Lacey explained it all again for them, including their suspicion that the intruder might have been Jake Garner.
“But what could he want?”
“I can’t be sure it was him, but the man was his approximate size and shape, had a bald head like Jake’s, and a blue Ford car. It’s impossible to know if anything is missing in this mess.”
“My cabin looks just as bad,” Mark commented, looking for an ashtray to tap out his pipe, as he prepared to refill and light it.
Lacey noticed and reached for the ashtray beside her on the end table. She picked it up to hand it to him, then stopped in surprise.
“What is it, Lacey?” Ben said, seeing her stare at the ashtray in her hand.
“The cigarette stub,” Lacey said, pointing to the slim, brown item. “He was obviously in no hurry with his search if he took time to smoke. There was one just like it in the ashtray at Mark’s house tonight, too.”
“Hmm, those are ‘Mores’,” Ben said. “I know only one person in the area who smokes these. Jake Garner. It looks like we do have something besides your guess as to whom he looked like. Those cigarette stubs will have DNA. I called in for backup on my way over here. My deputy should be here any minute, then he can look for fingerprints, too.”
“But I can’t believe it was Jake,” Kate said. “He’s almost family. Why would he want to do these thing
s, what would he have to gain by murdering Henry?”
The door burst open and Ben jumped to his feet. His deputy came in, pulling a handcuffed Jake after him.
“I saw this guy coming lickety-split from this side of the lake, Ben, when I was coming to answer your call. I figured he was up to no good, in a hurry like that. He won’t answer no questions, so I brought him along with me. He resisted arrest and assaulted an officer for starters, in case there aren’t any other charges,” he said, tossing Jake an angry look and rubbing his reddening jaw. “But from the looks of this room, I’d say this mess was what he was running from.”
Jake glowered at them all, then looked at his feet, his lips clamped shut.
“Explain yourself, Jake,” Ben growled, lowering his bushy eyebrows belligerently.
“I was just driving a little fast. You can’t prove that had anything to do with this. Anybody could have done this.”
“Humph.” Ben reached into Jake’s shirt pocket and pulled out the red package of slim brown cigarettes. “Still like your ‘Mores’ I see. Is Janet at the grocery store still special-ordering you a carton a week of these like she always does?”
“Sure. What’s that got to do with anything?”
Ben nodded to the butt in the ashtray. “Smoked while you was trying to think where else to look, eh, Jake? There’s one in Mark’s cabin, too, I hear.”
“There was one like that in Henry’s office, too,” Lacey exclaimed.
“We found fingerprints in Henry’s office, too,” Ben said. “We just didn’t have any idea whose to check them against. Also in Lacey’s apartment in Minneapolis, and I think Fred should be able to find some fingerprints here, too. Will they match yours, Jake?”
Jake looked down at his feet. His face was no longer belligerent, it was very pale.
“Why, Jake?” Lacey asked. “Why did you kill Henry?”
“He changed his mind on selling me the Lone Wolf picture. We had a deal. Then after he went to Mankato and found out it had come from Helen’s house auction, he said I couldn’t have it for any amount.”
Kate jumped up from her chair. “You killed my brother for that stupid old picture?” she screamed at Jake.
“I didn’t really mean to, I just lost my head and hit him. I guess I hit him harder than I thought. And it was the wrong picture, anyway.”
“There are hundreds of those pictures around. What did you want it for?”
“Not the picture, Mom. Something hidden behind the picture. What was it, Jake? Rare coins? Stamps?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Jake smirked at her.
“Jake!” Ben warned. “Whatever it was, we’ll find it. It has to be still in his car, or on him.”
“Lots a-luck!” Jake growled. “I didn’t find the deed—I never even found the right picture.”
“Deed?” Ben asked.
“What deed?” Kate said, frowning.
“So that was it,” Lacey said.
“What?”
“The missing quit-claim deed to Grampa Bill’s farm, of course.” Lacey said. “How did you know where it was?”
“Bill’s diary told me,” Jake said.
“Bill’s diary? Where did you get his diary?”
“From you, Kate. You had the diary all the time,” Jake smirked at Kate. “I laughed until my sides ached when I found it. It was in that stuff Jerry brought to the first church auction a couple of weeks ago—from Jerry’s attic. I recognized Bill’s name on the diary, and bought it. Jerry said Helen had sent all that stuff home with you right after Bill and Minnie’s funeral.”
Lacey stared at her mother.
“I just put it all in the attic,” Kate said faintly. “I didn’t think it was anything important. We did look through his papers for the deed when Bill had said he had one. But I never thought there might be anything else important.”
“So Helen was right, you did know about the deed’s existence all along,” Mark said.
“Helen was a fool. I told her so when she said she sent everything back to Kate after Ma died. Lucky for me that you never found it anyway.”
“But what did the diary say? Where is the deed?”
“Bill said he hid it behind the Lone Wolf picture he’d bought that afternoon.”
“So Bill was afraid of you even then, wasn’t he? Helen said you had a fight about that deed,” Mark commented. “Did you fix Bill’s car so they would have an accident, too, like you fixed Lacey’s?”
“No way! I wouldn’t have hurt Ma. I didn’t fix Lacey’s car, either, Jerry did that. I’m not taking the rap for everything.”
“Jerry!” Kate said, appalled. “He wouldn’t!”
“Oh yes, he would. He agrees with me that you and Lacey are gold-diggers.”
“Oh!” Kate blanched and sank back.
“Why did you have to kill Scamp? Henry and I loved that wonderful dog.”
“Huh. That damn dog always growled at me when I came over here. And he bit me tonight, too. See?” He raised a pant leg to reveal bloody teeth marks.
“Good,” Lacey said. “I hope it hurts you for a long time.”
“Stick to the point, Jake. If you didn’t find that deed, it must still be behind that picture. We’ll just have to keep looking for the right one,” Ben said. “We’ll have to trace the picture.”
“If we can. That’s what Henry must have been trying to do with those lists on his computer,” Lacey said. “When Jake told him he wanted the one he’d bought in Mankato from Mr. Highman, Henry first tried to find out why Jake wanted that particular picture. He must have thought it might be the original painting instead of a lithograph copy like the others.”
“So that’s why he asked you and me to do the research on it,” Mark said.
“Then, after he talked to Mr. Highman on Friday, Henry realized Jake probably wanted it because it was Helen’s, and guessed that there might be another reason for his wanting it, right, Jake?” Mark asked.
“So then he was trying to remember what happened to the particular picture he’d gotten a couple of years ago from Mr. Highman. Trying to sort out which Lone Wolf picture had gone to whom.”
Lacey shuddered, realizing that Jake must have been the one who sat with Henry’s bloody body, printing out the material from Henry’s computer and erasing the CD he had been working from. “How did you know how to run Henry’s computer? Ben said you have a different kind.”
“I used to have one just like it. We both bought one at the same auction a couple years ago. But I didn’t like the old thing, so I traded mine in a few months afterward.”
Ben frowned at Jake. “But if you didn’t know which Lone Wolf picture it was, or who had it, why did you search Lacey’s apartment and cabin?” Ben frowned.
“Because she knows where it is,” he said, glaring at Lacey. “She must have found it and hid it. I’ve checked every picture on Henry’s list except hers.”
“Mine? But the one in my apartment was stolen—by you?”
“Yes, by me. But the deed wasn’t behind that one. So it has to be behind your other one.”
“What other one?” Ben frowned.
Jake gave Lacey a nasty glance. “Kate’s name was on Henry’s list twice. She had two copies of The Lone Wolf. I got one from the second church bazaar, and Jerry said Kate gave the other one to Lacey. So what did you do with it, Lacey?”
“Cool it, Jake,” Ben growled. “You’re not going to get it when we do find it. You’re only going to jail.”
Lacey stared at him, then said slowly, “He must mean the miniature copy that Henry gave me for my birthday. I had forgotten about it. I’m sure it’s still right here at the cabin if Jake didn’t find it. I’ll go upstairs and get it.”
“See, I told you she knew where it was.”
Lacey went upstairs to her bedroom, with Kate on her heels. Lacey rummaged in the mess of stuff from her closet that was now strewn all over the pink shag carpet. She found the jewelry box, and opened the bottom drawer. “It’s st
ill here.”
“Thank goodness,” Kate said. “Now maybe we can clear up this whole thing, once and for all.”
Lacey carried it downstairs, enjoying the surprise on Jake’s face upon seeing the small jewelry box. When she opened it and drew out the miniature and handed it to Ben, everyone gasped in surprise.
Ben slit the taped backing of the picture and drew out the signed form which had caused so much grief. “It looks official enough,” he said after a moment. “I’ll just take it back to my office for safekeeping for now. Evidence, you know.” He looked around at them all apologetically.
“To think you killed Henry for that stupid piece of paper, just to get your hands on a piece of Bill’s farm,” Kate said sadly. “That whole farm isn’t worth a hill of beans, Jake.”
“That’s what you think, Kate. Helen’s about to die anyway, so I’d get half. Mr. Hammerton said a big contractor made a hefty offer to split it up for a housing development.”
“Mr. Hammerton? But he didn’t say a word to me about that. Was he in on this, too?”
“Well, I just happened to be there when he told Henry to try to get in touch with Kate about it. It seems he hates answering machines, and refuses to leave messages on them.”
Kate looked crestfallen. “Oh, my. If only I hadn’t...”
“Mom, don’t start. You can’t change anything by wishful thinking, or ‘what might have beens’.”
“Strange that Mr. Hammerton didn’t say anything when we saw him the other day.”
“Enough of this,” Ben said. “I think everyone needs some sleep. You got enough fingerprints, Fred?”
***
Hours later, Mark and Lacey were at last relaxing alone in her living room.
“Warm enough now?” Mark asked, putting down his cup.
“Mm, thanks. That cocoa hit the spot.” Lacey tucked her feet under her, and put her head on his shoulder. “I still can’t believe Jake was behind all that. It gives me the creeps.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll stay here to protect you.”