“I don’t think we can say we know anything for sure.”
All three of us turned our attention back up to Candace.
“It’s okay,” she said loudly. “I get why you hate me. I hate me too.” She pounded her chest then wobbled on her heels.
“Nope, we have to do something,” I said. “It’s too dangerous for her to be up there.”
“Yeah and there are some train wrecks just too painful to watch,” Freddie added.
We again pushed our way through the thick crowd as Candace called out, “But I want you to know that I love all of—Stop right there, Grady Forrester!”
We froze and whipped our heads around to the opposite staircase from the one we were headed for. Grady stood halfway up the stairs, hand outreached to Candace.
I couldn’t quite hear what he was saying even though it seemed like the entire room had stopped breathing. If I had to guess it was something like, Let’s talk about this.
“Oh no,” Candace shouted, trying to plant a hand on her hip but missing. “Let’s just do it in front of everybody. Everybody knows everything about everyone anyway.” Her eyes swept the room. “Is Erica here? Erica should be here.”
Oh crap. Maybe if I stayed really still, I could just blink myself out of existence. I squeezed my eyes shut.
“Erica?” she called out again. Louder this time. “Where are you?”
I peeked one eye open. Well, there was no point in trying to hide with all these heads turning round to look at me.
I raised my hand in the air.
“Hey! There you are!” Candace let out a happy-sounding laugh. “You’re going to want to be here for this.”
I smiled in return, but I was pretty sure I looked like I might be sick. I certainly felt that way.
“Now,” she said, swinging her attention wildly back to Grady’s side of the room. It took a second for her gaze to land on him. “Where were we?”
“Please, Candace,” he said, holding his hand out again. “I am so sorry. Let’s just go find somewhere private to talk about this.”
“Nope. Nope. Nope,” she said, swinging her head side to side. “I’m tired of all the gossip. You know, this town has a real problem with gossip. And I’m in PR,” she said, whacking her chest. “I am the medium. I am the message.” She frowned. “Or something like that.”
Grady climbed another step.
“No!” Candace shouted, walking toward his staircase. “I’m doing this.”
Grady held his hands up in surrender. “Okay. Okay. You’re doing this. But could you step back from the top of the stair—”
Suddenly a phone rang. Loudly.
Grady reached into his pocket and pulled it out. By the look on his face, I was guessing it was his. The Arthurs must have slipped it back into his pocket when he was making his way through the crowd! Son of a … they were still trying to frame him!
He turned the phone off and looked back up at Candace. I could tell he was thinking the same thing. “Okay, I get you don’t want me up there, but can someone else…”
“No! I need to do this on my own.” She took another step toward Grady. “I’ve been so pathetic. Erica said I needed to take my power back.”
Lots of faces turned to look at me again.
Had I said that? Maybe … I couldn’t remember! Although it did sound like something that might be said in a girl-power type of conversation.
Candace took another shaky step toward the top of the stairs. The crowd gasped. Grady jumped another two steps up.
“I said stay back!”
Murmurs ran wild through the room.
“Okay, okay,” Grady said, taking a single step back down. “Just be careful.”
“Is he threatening her?” I heard someone ask.
“No,” I shouted back. “He’s trying to stop her from falling!” This was crazy. I knew that Grady would never hurt Candace. And Candace knew that too. But from an outside perspective this looked bad.
“Candace!” another voice suddenly shouted. “Candace, I’m coming!”
My eyes tracked the voice and landed on a man—a very big man—pushing his way through the partygoers.
Candace squinted and leaned forward on the balcony.
“It’s the werewolf!” Freddie shouted.
“Joey?” Candace asked.
The murmur in the crowd rose to something a little more panicked as Joey stormed his way to the foot of the stairs.
“Who are you?” Grady shouted.
Joey gripped the bannister, one foot on the bottom step. “The lady asked you to step away from her. You need to listen.”
“Joey!” Candace shouted. “What are you doing? Don’t you have parole?”
“Parole?” Grady yelled. “You’re the pen pal.”
“Get away from her,” Joey said. “I mean it, man.”
Grady dropped another step. “What are you doing here? What do you want with Candace?”
Joey didn’t answer, just climbed another step.
“Oh no,” I moaned. “This is—”
“Going to be the most beautiful man fight ever,” Freddie finished.
Just then Joey let out a shout and launched himself up the stairs.
Grady met him head-on.
Screams echoed throughout the towering foyer—my own included—as the two men grappled on the stairs.
Rhonda gripped my arm. “Oh no! They’re going to—”
Fall!
Chapter Thirty-eight
Grady and Joey somersaulted down the stairs in a violent tangle.
“No!”
I pushed my way around people, but I couldn’t get to the stairs. The crowd had splintered, people dodging in every direction. Thankfully, I saw a couple of big men headed over to the bottom of the steps. Coach Waters, Ted from the marina, and Cam White, a volunteer firefighter. I heard someone else shout, “That’s enough!”
“It’s okay,” Freddie yelled. “They’re splitting them up.”
He was right. I could see a bunch more men coming to hold Grady and Joey back from one another.
“Holy crap,” Rhonda shouted.
“I know?” Freddie yelled. “Can you believe that just happened! I can’t—”
“Guys,” I said, grabbing both of them by the arm.
The two might have turned to look at me, but I wasn’t looking at them. I was too busy looking up at …
“What?” Rhonda asked.
… the empty landing on the second floor.
“Where’s Candace?”
Chapter Thirty-nine
The commotion of the men fighting had distracted us just long enough for Candace to disappear. Freddie, Rhonda, and I pushed our way to the opposite staircase—the crowd was thinner on that side of the room—and charged up the stairs.
Once we got to the top, Rhonda shouted, “I’ll go this way!” She pointed to the hall near the far staircase. “You guys go that way!”
We didn’t question her. There was no time for that. Besides, Rhonda was an ex-cop. She had training we didn’t.
We sprinted into the empty corridor of the upper wing. It was a long dark hallway with way too many doors.
“How many rooms does this freaking house have?” Freddie yelled, grabbing the closest door handle.
I took the other side of the hall. “I don’t know. Just look!” I shoved my head into the first room. Empty. No furniture, nothing. Just stripped floors and walls prepped for painting. I slammed the door shut and headed for the next one. “Candace?”
Freddie shouted her name, too, as he opened another door.
The next room on my side had a dresser, but was otherwise empty.
Suddenly Freddie shouted my name.
I pivoted hard in my tracks and ran.
“What?” I shouted, tumbling through the threshold.
“Look!” He stood by the window on the far side of the room near a four-poster bed. This must have been Mr. and Mrs. Masterson’s old bedroom. “Hurry!”
I ran to his
side.
When I looked out the window, I felt like I had been punched in the gut.
“Oh my God.”
Freddie turned his horrified eyes to mine. “What is she doing?”
“I don’t know.”
We both raced to pry the latches of the antique window open.
No, I had no idea what Candace was doing … because there wasn’t a single reasonable explanation I could think of for why she would be trying to step out a window from the opposite wing of the house onto an icy roof.
Chapter Forty
Candace stood in the oversized window, her hands clutched to either side of the casement. She was trying to step onto the slippery shingles, but she couldn’t find her footing.
Freddie and I yanked at the iron latches on our window till they gave, but snow and ice had the frame frozen in place.
My eyes flicked back over to Candace. She was lowering one knee onto the roof.
We slammed the heels of our hands against the old wood. It only took a few hits before the top of the old frame popped out of the casing. Glass shattered. We hit the bottom of the frame a few more times before the entire piece toppled and slid down the roof, tipping off the edge into nothingness.
“Candace!” I shouted. “What are you doing? Get back inside!”
Her eyes flicked to mine. She had been watching the window fall.
It was hard to tell in the dark, but I could have sworn I saw her mouth the words Help me.
“I’ll go around,” Freddie said quickly. “Find what room she’s in.”
“Go. Go.”
Candace now had one hand and one knee on the roof. It looked like she was trying to ease the other half of her body out.
“Stop! Don’t do it! You’ll fall!” But the look on her face told me she already knew that. She also looked like she was about to say something more, but something or someone caught her attention from inside. She looked back into the room and then back at me saying nothing. My guess was that it wasn’t Rhonda behind her. Someone was making her do this. Thoughts raced in my head. Candace was drunk. She was upset. And now she was about to fall off the roof. It might look like an accident, but more likely, it would look like suicide.
“Hang on! Help is coming!”
Candace’s head whipped around again. Oh God! The killer had heard me. I clutched the sides of my head. I had to do something! I looked frantically around the room. I needed a rope or—
Just then I heard Candace scream.
“No!”
She slid a foot or two before her feet caught the top of what looked like a wide dam of ice running across the bottom of the roof.
“Come this way,” I said, holding out my totally useless hand to her. I say totally useless because she had to make it a good twenty, thirty yards across the span of roof that bridged the two sides of the estate before I would even be close to reaching her.
“I don’t think I can make it!”
“Okay … just … just … hang on.” My hand dove into my jacket pocket for my phone. Fire truck. We needed a fire truck with a big ladd—
I heard a really disturbing crack.
“Erica!” Candace screamed. “The ice is breaking.”
Okay, no time for fire trucks.
“You need to move toward me. I’ll … I’ll find something to pull you in!”
I swung my head around. My eyes landed on the bed. A fully made bed. I yanked the heavy quilt down and starting tearing the sheets off the mattress. I tied two of them together into a knot that was not at all reassuring and ran back to the window. “Candace!”
I flung the sheet toward her.
My throw did nothing. Absolutely nothing. The sheet just flared out and went nowhere.
“Dammit!” I yanked the sheet back in and tied a knot in the bottom end to give it some weight. I tossed the makeshift rope out again. It went farther this time, but nowhere near far enough.
Suddenly I heard a new voice shout, “Oh crap!”
Freddie was leaning out from the window Candace had climbed out of.
“Hang on, Candace!” he shouted. “I’m coming!”
“No!” Candace and I shouted at the same time.
“It’s too icy on that side of the roof! Where are the Arthurs?”
“Gone. Not here. I don’t know!”
“Fire truck!” I shouted, throwing my sheet rope again, but I knew it was useless. She had shimmied her way closer to my side of the roof, but she was still too far. “We need a fire truck!”
“There’s no time for that!” But a moment later I heard Freddie shouting into his phone.
Another deep crack sounded on the roof.
“Erica?” Candace’s trembling voice called out.
“Just keep moving this way. I can almost reach you.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think I can.”
“Yes you can! You’re almost there!”
“No I can’t.” Her voice had gone shaky like she might be crying or hyperventilating. “I think I might be sick.”
“Candace! Look at me!”
Her too wide eyes met mine.
“You can do this. Keep moving.”
“She’s right. You can do it!” Freddie shouted.
She eased her way along the edge of ice.
It was working.
She was going to make it. She was—
Just then the loudest crack yet tore into the night.
Candace screamed.
Frick! That sheet of ice, her foothold, was going to slide right off the roof any second.
“The vent!” I shouted. It was one of those old, rusted-out-looking things with the spinning tops. “Grab it! It’s by your left knee!”
Candace tilted her head down to see what I was talking about. It looked like she was trying to lift her foot up to step on it, but just then the dam that had been supporting her weight gave out. The enormous field of ice slid off the roof with the roar of an avalanche and crashed below. Candace scrabbled against the shingles but slid after it spread-eagled. Thankfully, the vent caught her under the arm.
“Candace?”
She didn’t answer.
“Candace, you need to stay with me, okay?”
“I … I don’t think this can hold me. The metal’s bending.”
“Hang on.” I grabbed the sheet for another throw.
Please let it reach. Please.
I hefted the rope of sheets down the roof.
“Dammit!”
It was still a couple of feet short.
“Erica? This isn’t going to hold! I can feel it going.”
I quickly wrapped one of the bedsheets around my waist and tied it in a knot. I tied the other end to an antique radiator by the window. It looked more decorative than anything else, but it felt solidly anchored to the wall. I did not like this idea. In fact, I was pretty sure this was a terrible idea. I’d had a really bad experience with heights not that long ago. In fact, I was pretty certain I was developing a solid phobia.
But I didn’t have time to come up with anything better.
“I’m coming!”
I propped my knee up on the sill of the window, grasping the middle divider of the casement that was still intact.
“Erica?” Freddie shouted. “What are you doing?”
I slowly angled my body out onto the roof. Gritty dirt and shingle scraped at my knees, but, on the bright side, soon I’d be too cold to feel it—and after that I’d probably be dead. So there was that.
I shuffled down the sloped roof, my toes bending in my boots at crazy angles to keep me from sliding.
“Hurry!” Candace shouted.
The slope of the roof felt much steeper than it had looked from the ground.
Why … why was the roof so steep?
Then it happened.
I knew what would happen as soon as my toe touched the spot, but it was too late to rebalance my weight. Ice. I had stepped on an ice patch.
Once my momentum got going, there was no stopping
the slide.
Oh God, please let the knot on the radiator hold. Please let it hold.
I gripped the bedsheet in my hands to lessen the impact on my waist.
Oof!
Okay, that hurt. But I was not dead.
I looked over my shoulder.
And Candace was a lot closer.
“Oh my God! Erica!” Freddie shouted. “Would you be careful!”
“I’m trying!” I yelled back through my clenched teeth.
“I’m coming back around! Don’t move!” Freddie ordered. “If you die, so help me…”
His voice trailed away as he disappeared from the window.
“Grab my ankle!” I shouted down at Candace.
“What?”
“Grab my ankle! Climb up my body!”
“I don’t think I can.”
“You don’t think you can? You don’t think you c—” Huh, okay, she didn’t think she could. I kind of wished she had told me that before I came out here! But whatever. “Candace, you have to try!”
I suddenly felt something smack against the heel of my boot. I tilted my head down to see. “That’s it! Grab my ankle.”
Candace did grab my ankle, but I knew right away it wasn’t going to work. The boot was too thick and too heavy. It was going to come right off. “Wait! Stop!”
The boot gave. I heard it bounce down the roof and over the edge.
Thankfully, Candace had enough of a hold on the vent that she didn’t go with it.
“I can’t do this, Erica.”
Oh boy, I did not like the sound of her voice at all. It sounded an awful lot like the voice of someone who was giving up.
Gah! I rotated my body around on the roof in my best Spider-Man impression so that I could face Candace. “Look at me.”
Candace turned her tear-filled eyes up to mine. Smeared makeup and hair covered her face.
She was so at her end.
“You are not alone.” I stretched my hand out to her as far as it would go. “We are going to do this together.”
She opened her eyes and nodded. I think she even might have moaned something like okay.
It was a good thing, too, because next I was going to tell her how I was going to throw her off this roof myself if she didn’t listen … and I wouldn’t have wanted those to be my last words. We were friends.
Ring In the Year with Murder--An Otter Lake Mystery Page 20