by Darci Hannah
And something, or someone, was most definitely following me.
Knowing that I was heading away from the inn and civilization wasn’t a comforting thought either. However, the fog was beginning to thin a bit. Oh, who was I kidding? That changed nothing! With the snap of that first twig the forest had turned menacing.
My heart was racing.
I should bail. I should just head for the bluff and bail!
The trouble was, I was still a bit disoriented. I knew that if I ever wanted to see my mom and dad again I should probably abandon the path I was heading down, take a sharp left, and work my way back to the lighthouse. But would I make it that far? Maybe not.
I spied the shadow of a large, prickly yew and decided to take cover there, just until the menacing presence passed. I was about to dart for it but made the mistake of looking down … again. Like a wolf’s eyes pulled to the full moon, my eyes were drawn to it—the shiny white porcelain of a diner plate and the deep red of cherries. Unbelievably, it was a slice of cherry pie.
“Oh, for the love of Pete!” I exclaimed, dropping to my knees to inspect the pie. I had the feeling that someone was just yanking my chain now, and it pissed me off. I grabbed the plate, inspecting the pie. From the dull, crumbly crust and the electric red of the cherries, I knew it was store-bought. That figured. The psychopathic killer who was plaguing me couldn’t even do me the curtesy of baking a pie. And to add insult to injury, those most definitely weren’t Bloom Orchard cherries!
Fuming at the absurd pastry in my hands, I now made the mistake of looking up. Just visible through the blanket of fog was a shadow—a shaggy, utterly horrific man-size shadow. It had no face, no definition, and it made no sound, yet I most definitely knew what it was.
The shadow took a step closer.
The piece of store-bought pie slipped off the plate and fell to the ground.
And then I screamed.
Thirty-Two
Correction. I tried to scream, but all that came out was a terror-constricted squawk. I was too paralyzed with fear to even move a muscle. Great. All I could do was stare at the shadowy face, thinking how I was about to become the first-ever victim of abduction by Sasquatch in Wisconsin. Then again, maybe I wasn’t. After all, every year a staggering amount of missing person cases went unsolved. It wasn’t a pleasant thought.
Encouraged by my paralytic fear, the Squatch took a step toward me and raised a shaggy arm. It was holding a rock. Dear God, it was going to knock me over the head! But before the fur-fringed arm could descend, the creature froze, drawn to a spot in the fog just behind me.
I heard it too. Something was moving through the forest with lightning speed. It was nearly upon us when it let out a frightful bark. A dog! Somewhere in the back of my mind I recalled hearing that Sasquatches didn’t like dogs. I’d thought this a suspicious fact at the time, since I’d heard it on one of those reality TV shows about Bigfoot. Apparently it was true, though, because this Bigfoot turned and disappeared into the fog.
I faced the oncoming dog and ducked as it leapt. It cleared my head and raced after the shaggy, two-legged creature. It was a hunting dog, a long-eared spaniel from the little I saw of it. The dog kept barking as it traveled farther away in pursuit of the creature. And then it grew quiet. I cowered on the ground beside the dirty slice of pie, fearful that something might have happen to the dog—that timely, brave dog.
A moment later my fears were allayed when the dog appeared beside me. I was still shaking as I stared into the soulful brown eyes of a large black-and-white Springer Spaniel. “Swingin’ dingles,” I breathed, “wherever did you come from?”
The dog, encouraged by my voice, attacked my face with gooey kisses, its little stub tail wiggling happily. Its enthusiasm was a balm to my nerves. Unable to resist, I threw my arms around it and buried my face in its silky fur. I’d been so scared.
“Who are you?” I asked, releasing him. “Who do you belong to?”
Of course, the dog didn’t answer. Instead it followed its nose to the slice of cherry pie and gobbled it down before I could stop it. A terrible thought occurred to me then. The pie had been placed between the tire tracks by the murderer. What if it had been poisoned? Oh God, I didn’t need this too! I quickly grabbed hold of the dog’s collar. Should I make it throw up? How would I make it throw up? I didn’t know, but I assumed making a dog vomit was probably like making a human vomit. I grabbed hold of the spaniel’s neck and attempted to pry open its jaws. The dog stubbornly resisted and clamped them shut, squirming away from my probing fingers like a trapped piglet.
“I’m sorry!” I cried, “but it’s for your own good!”
“What’s for my own good?”
The voice startled me. I looked at the dog, confused. Did it talk? I had nearly been abducted by a Sasquatch, so why did that surprise me?
“Jesus, Whitney!”
I looked at the dog again. It knew my name? But its lips weren’t moving. Then, “What the hell are you doing to my dog?” I spun around and saw the form of Jack MacLaren emerging from the fog, dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt. In all my life, I’d never been so happy to see him. I could feel myself blush, then, not only from embarrassment but from the fact that I found him incredibly handsome.
“This … is your dog?” I asked, attempting to look unfazed at the sight of him. I released the spaniel and watched as it ran straight to Jack, its stubby tail wagging double time. “What … what are you doing here?”
Jack, after showering affection on his dog, straightened. “I could ask you the same question, but I think I already know.” He held up my abandoned coffee tumbler. “You were snooping around in the lighthouse, weren’t you? I went there myself to have a look around this morning and found the door already open. Then I found your mug on the floor. I went back into the light tower and saw that twig-face, Whit. The same as the ones you told me about. You’re right, it’s super creepy. The moment I saw it, alarm bells when off and I called your mom directly. She confirmed that you weren’t in bed. Then I saw your footprints by the lighthouse heading into the woods, and that other set of prints. MacDuff and I decided to follow. He tracks much faster than I do.”
“Thank God,” I said. “Your dog saved me. I was seconds away from being abducted by a Sasquatch.”
Jack’s head tilted as he stared at me. “Whitney, seriously, this is no time for joking around.”
“I’m not joking, Jack! I decided to check out the lighthouse this morning to see if I could find any clue pointing to the whereabouts of the missing wine. The door was already open when I got there. I thought you’d left it open, but realized when I saw that twig-face that you probably hadn’t. The killer was in there, Jack. Not with me, but I think he knew I would be snooping around in there. Then I saw the footprints leading into the woods and decided enough was enough.”
Jack’s face was anything but teasing. “You should have called me. Jesus, Whit,” he breathed, looking truly upset. “Whoever is making those creepy twig-faces is trying to frighten you. Don’t you get that? Why would you follow his footprints into the woods?”
“I told you, I want to find the killer.”
“Great. And let’s say that you found him. What were you going to do then?”
I hadn’t really thought that far ahead, but I didn’t want him to know it. Instead I held up my flashlight and gave the air a good whack.
Jack crossed his arms and shook his head.
“Okay, I didn’t find him. What I found, however, was a Sasquatch.” Even to my own ears it sounded a little crazy, but I was beyond trying to sugarcoat the truth. “It had been following me. I could hear something, only I could never see it until it stood in my path. See this plate? There was a slice of cherry pie on it. Someone had placed it in the middle of those tire tracks.” I pointed. “Yep, those are tire tracks—from a Gator, I believe. I was following the tire tracks until I came to t
he pie. I was so stunned by it that I bent down to take a closer look. When I looked up again, the Squatch was standing right there, about ten feet away. I recognized it because I’ve seen it before, last night in the processing shed. It was only a shadow, but I saw it right before the fire broke out—a big, shaggy, butt-ugly creature on two legs. Only I didn’t know then what it was.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about that?”
I raised a brow. “Well, because it sounds crazy, and also, I forgot about it. Last night was very traumatic.” It was then that I looked at the dog sitting at Jack’s feet. “Jack, your dog ate the pie. I thought it might be poisoned and was trying to make him throw it back up when you found me.”
“That’s what you were doing?” Jack smiled for the first time. “Risky if you value your fingers, but thanks. However, I think the MacDuffster will be just fine, won’t ya, boy. Because that piece of pie in the middle of the woods is the killer’s way of toying with you. He’s mocking you, Whitney—using cherry pits for cyanide, using cherries as the eyes in the twig-face, and now pie. Why? I don’t know, but I doubt he thought you’d actually eat it. There’s no use wasting poison on something the target is not going to eat, so I don’t think it was poisoned. But we’ll keep an eye on Duffy all the same. I didn’t notice the tire tracks before,” he said, and walked over to them to take a closer look. “Damn,” he uttered, running his fingers over the tracks printed in the soft dirt and leaf mold.
“And right there, that’s where the Sasquatch was.”
Jack’s eyes narrowed in disbelief.
“You know, Bigfoot? Yeti? Don’t look at me like that. I’m just telling you what I saw.”
“And you think it was following you?”
“I know it was following me,” I told him, recalling the unsettling feeling I’d had.
“And you got a good look at this thing?”
“Not a good look, but enough to know what I saw.”
“How tall was it?” Jack probed.
“I don’t know? Taller than me but shorter than you, I suppose.”
A troubled look crossed his face. “Whit, even if I believed in Bigfoot, we can both agree that they don’t wear hiking boots, right?”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that whatever it was you saw standing here, it was wearing hiking boots, and it was a heck of a lot closer to you than ten feet. Christ, Whit, it was standing right here.” Jack pointed to the boot prints in the dirt between the tire tracks, uncomfortably close to the abandoned diner plate. Somehow, I’d missed them. But he was right. They were the same prints I’d seen in the lighthouse—the ones heading into the woods—and they’d gotten too close for comfort. The thought made me nauseous.
Jack reached into his pocket and pulled out his keys. “I’m parked at the lighthouse. The red hard-top Jeep. It’s the only vehicle there. I want you to go back to the lighthouse and get into my Jeep. Lock the doors and wait for me there. There’s a bag of Danish on the front seat. Help yourself. I was going to stop by the inn after Duffy and I were done here, but … Look, Whit, if I’m not back in half an hour call the station in Sturgeon Bay. Okay?”
“What? You’re going to track down … this Bigfoot alone?” Although it was clearly wearing boots I was nonetheless having a hard time reconciling what I had seen. “Not a chance, Jack. You need backup. I’m coming with you.”
“Whitney. Jesus! This guy’s dangerous.”
“He is,” I agreed, reminded of the truth of this statement by the little shiver that ran up my spine. “But you’re not in uniform. Do you even have your gun?”
“Always,” he replied, and patted a mysterious bulge on the side of his sweatshirt.
“Wow. Okay.” Why did I find that a total turn-on? What the heck was wrong with me? I didn’t know but fought hard to regain my train of thought. “Here’s the thing, Jack. I don’t want to hike back up to the lighthouse. I’d rather take my chances with you, MacDuff, and your gun.” He was about to argue. I held up my hand. “Don’t bother. You know how stubborn I can be, just as you know there’s nothing you could say that would make me change my mind. These are Gator tracks. They shouldn’t be here, and you and I both know what we’re going to find at the end of them.”
“I have a hunch,” he acknowledged. “And the man you saw, Whitney—if he is our killer, he’s not going to want us getting too close to the truth. That changes things.”
“I’m still not convinced that what I saw even was a man.”
Jack, exasperated, closed his eyes as he shook his head.
“Look, I understand your concern,” I told him. “But I think we’ll be okay.” Without awaiting his reply, I turned and started walking along the tire tracks into the fog, my new buddy MacDuff bounding beside me.
“You think? YOU THINK?” he cried. “I prefer to be sure,” he added, and ran to join us.
Thirty-Three
Although I really should have been thinking about the killer as we followed the tire tracks through the woods, all I could really think about was Jack and the fact that he had a dog. I found it relevant insofar as it seemed a pretty important clue in another little mystery I was working on, namely the identity of C-Bomb. After all, it had been just last night that C-Bomb revealed he had a dog. He’d also been the one to suggest I search the old lighthouse at dawn. Was it mere coincidence that Jack and his dog had showed up as well? I already knew Jack liked cherries. He might like me as well, possibly even more than I realized. How did I feel about that? Truthfully, I didn’t hate it. In fact, if anything I was intrigued by the prospect. My old buddy Jack MacLaren, I mused, staring at his lean, muscular back. He had a nice back. My eyes scanned a bit lower. Very nice, I thought, and dared to entertain the thought that Jack was my secret admirer C-Bomb.
“You never told me you had a dog,” I said to his swiftly moving backside.
“You never asked,” he replied without breaking stride. He was like a hunter, treading silently, his senses on high alert, all the while keeping one eye on the ground and the other on MacDuff in the vanguard, sniffing and just visible through the fog. “You might also be surprised to know that I have two kids.”
I stopped walking. What? Two kids? Holy cobbler! I didn’t think he was married. Matter of fact, I was pretty certain that he wasn’t. Jack MacLaren, you dog.
“Whit,” he said, pausing to look at me, “don’t worry. I’m not talking about little humans. I’m talking about little goats—little stub-horned hellions. I don’t love ’em. I don’t even want ’em, but I kind of inherited them. They live at my station.” He grinned and continued walking. “The tourists get a kick out of ’em. I keep them on the roof during the day, mostly to keep them out of MacDuff’s and my hair. They eat everything—grass, dog food, paper. Mostly paper.”
“Oh yes,” I said, utterly charmed by the notion of Jack keeping goats. “I saw them yesterday on the grass roof. They’re really noisy.”
“They are. They don’t bleat like normal goats. They yell, hence the reason they’re on the roof. Better than guard dogs, present spaniel excluded.”
“Your dog is my hero.”
“Because he saved you from a booted Yeti?” Jack turned just long enough to flash an ironic grin. He didn’t believe I’d seen a Sasquatch, and the presence of boot prints on the ground was pretty damning evidence. Still, I knew what I’d seen, and in both encounters it hadn’t appeared entirely human. To be fair, it probably didn’t resemble a true Sasquatch either. And if I was being totally honest with myself, I should be more than a little disturbed that my mind had made the leap so willingly. I needed to think more like a real detective and not a sleep-deprived, over-caffeinated baker with an addiction to weird reality TV. Yet I had to wonder. If it wasn’t a Sasquatch or a man, what the devil had I seen? That was the question that troubled me most, the question that made my heart thump as I stared at the man-sized boot p
rints.
I was so busy staring at the ground and the tire tracks that I didn’t notice that Jack had stopped walking.
I ran into his unmoving back. “What?” I hiss-whispered.
“MacDuff,” he answered softly, still facing forward. “He’s heading for the shore.”
I looked in the direction of Cherry Cove Bay. “Well, that makes no sense. The Gator obviously continues this way.”
“But your booted Yeti went that way.”
That was when MacDuff started barking. The moment he did, an outboard motor fired up, the sound penetrating the fog like a jack-hammer. Jack drew his gun and bolted into the fog. I ran after him.
The chase ended at the water’s edge. I found Jack standing on the smooth, damp rocks peering at something beyond the wall of gray mist. A gust of wind fell from the bluffs behind us and rippled the water, parting a cottony swath of fog. And then I too caught sight of the sleek spaniel head forty yards out, sticking just above the water. MacDuff had given chase and was still paddling like a champ into the fog. The boat was far out of view, but the motor could still be heard.
“Damn it,” Jack breathed, and then he turned to me. “I think I just saw what you saw—just a brief glimpse—far out in the fog, in the boat—but … damn, it did look kind of Squatchy. Duffy! Here boy!” His attention grabbed, MacDuff circled around and began paddling back to shore. “I apologize,” Jack said. “I can see where you might have been confused. But, Whit, that thing is no Squatch.”
“How can you tell?”
“Seriously?” He cast me a grown-up echo of his best condescending high school look. “It’s driving a fishing boat. A fishing boat! Why would Bigfoot need a fishing boat when he’s got two giant hands”—Jack thrust up his hands to illustrate— “and the animal cunning to catch fish? Besides, I doubt he’s got a fishing license, or passed his boater safety course. I could be wrong, but I doubt it.” A smile was attempting to break through but he fought it.