Shot Through the Hearth

by Kate Carlisle

  He smiled and pressed his forehead to mine. “That doesn’t get old.”

  “I know, right?”

  He laughed. “I’ll see you soon. Meanwhile, behave. And be careful.”

  I laughed, too, and grabbed hold of his jacket. “Same goes.”

  * * *

  * * *

  I was surprised to see that the bleachers were over half filled with people still watching the barn being built. I had been sure that the crowds would disappear after the first day, when everyone would’ve grown tired of seeing all those men—and a few women—continuing to work on that big old barn. But apparently it still held plenty of interest to some.

  Or maybe the bleachers were simply the best place to eat a sandwich before heading off to some other event. And now I was hungry.

  Didn’t matter, I thought. I was just glad to see some of the attendees taking an interest in the activity.

  And honestly, that beautiful new barn was glorious.

  I stopped and stared at the clean shingled roof and the bright red siding, and felt a burst of pride. I knew I wore a silly grin, but I was so happy to see the work my crew had done, I wanted to shout about it. I wondered where that megaphone had disappeared to.

  Crowing about the barn would probably be considered sort of weird. But then, being weird would help me fit right in with this crowd. As I considered it, I thought that in this bunch, I was actually pretty normal. I stared up at the sky, watched as the puffy white clouds scudded on the breeze. And realized that despite the strange goings-on all week, I felt a sense of relief that some things were working out with the conference. Rafe was making things right and I felt a renewed determination to find out who had tried to derail things.

  I knew despite everything—the mice, the poisoning, the murders, the gunshots—the conference had been a huge success. And that was just about as weird as anything else that had happened this week.

  No matter what else happened, I was just glad to know that Rafe would make good on all the pain and worry that his ex-partner had caused so many people.

  I shook away those thoughts and walked over to the barn to find my guys.

  “Hey, Shannon,” Sean said when he saw me coming around the corner of the barn. “What do you think?”

  I grabbed him in a big hug. “I’m so proud of you and Wade and all the guys. It just looks fantastic. You did an incredible job, and you did it right, and fast, and . . . wow.”

  His grin was so wide, it almost split his face in two. “Thanks, boss. We’ve really been kicking butt out here and we couldn’t wait for you to see it.”

  “I’m just blown away,” I said, and recalled Rafe’s comment on the landscaping around his house. Was that only a week ago? Seemed like a year had passed since then.

  “Well, come and look inside,” Sean said. “We’ve really got things pretty well in hand, if I do say so myself.”

  “I can’t wait to see it all.” I followed him over to the big, wide opening—otherwise known as the barn door, ha ha—and walked inside. It was cool and spacious and bright from the natural light that streamed in through the many windows we’d installed on all four sides.

  “The guys are working on the electrical right now. The wires are being bundled up the walls and across the ceiling so we should have lights and fans working by tomorrow.”

  “Fantastic,” I murmured, circling around to take in every possible inch of the space. “I should leave you alone more often.”

  “No, you shouldn’t,” he said. “No. Really. We like having you around.”

  “Right. I know that sentiment came straight from your heart.”

  He laughed. “You bet it did, boss.”

  Wade walked up just then and overheard the last bit of conversation. “What’s this suck-up saying to you?”

  I smiled sweetly. “He said he likes me the best.”

  Wade rolled his eyes and smacked Sean’s arm. “Can’t leave you alone for a minute.”

  “Seriously,” I began, and circled around, looking at everything. “This is the most amazing, big, beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “Besides all the other big, beautiful projects we’ve been working on lately,” Wade said, his mouth twisted in a grin.

  “Well, yeah, of course,” I admitted. “But this is the first barn ever, so it’s extra special. You guys did a fabulous job. I couldn’t be prouder.”

  “I’m going to accept that one,” Wade said. “Thanks.”

  “Thank you.”

  He bowed grandly, and we all guffawed.

  “Okay, you knuckleheads,” I said. “I’m going to go get a sandwich. Can I get you anything?”

  “No thanks, boss,” Sean said. “We’ll take a break in about a half hour. Maybe we’ll see you over at the catering table.”

  “I hope so,” I said. “See you later.” And I waved as I walked out of the big, beautiful barn.

  Chapter Eleven

  I stood in line at the catering tables and my mouth began to water just staring at all the delicious sandwiches available. Emily’s Tea Shoppe made just about the best sandwiches in the world.

  I was trying to decide between roast beef and chicken salad when I realized I was standing behind Hallie, Rafe’s assistant. She wore a sleeveless canary- yellow jumpsuit so I wasn’t sure how I had missed her until this moment.

  “Hi, Hallie,” I said.

  She whipped around nervously, then relaxed. “Oh. Shannon. Hi. How are you doing?”

  For a moment, I wondered who she had been expecting. “Good. How about you?”

  “I’m fine,” she said quickly, straightening her shoulders. The sleeveless jumpsuit suited her perfectly tanned, well-toned arms as well as her perky style. “Busy. And hungry.”

  “Yeah, me, too.” I felt a little bland standing next to her in my blue jeans, work boots, and sage Henley. But then, I was also wearing my tool belt. That counted for chic, right?

  The line moved forward and Hallie turned away from me to place her order. And I wondered all over again if she could have killed her boss. She was really jumpy for some reason. She had a strong motive, lest I forgot that scene the first night. Now I stared at Hallie’s shoulders and arm muscles and wondered if she had enough upper-body strength to tote a high-powered rifle across the field and up three steep ramps to the roof of the Ecosphere.

  But of course she could do it, I realized, remembering the time I went shooting with my uncle Pete and I used his hunting rifle. That big old thing didn’t weigh more than seven pounds or so. Today, with all the latest materials, they probably weighed even less.

  And if she had killed Dillon, then it followed that she had also tried to kill my friend Marigold. And Sherman, as well. I tried to picture Hallie running into him, randomly grabbing a thick green vine, and wrapping it around his neck so tightly that it cut off all the oxygen to his brain. The killer had run out, leaving Sherman dead and the Stephanie vine a tattered and shredded shadow of her formerly healthy self.

  I flinched when Hallie suddenly whined, “What do you mean it won’t take my card?”

  “I’m sorry,” the counter clerk said, “but it says that you’ve exceeded your credit limit. You need to call your card company.”

  The clerk looked beyond Hallie and smiled at me. “May I help you?”

  I held up my finger. “Just a second.” Feeling sorry for Hallie, I said, “Do you want to try it again? Maybe it didn’t read the number right.”

  “This is impossible,” she insisted. “I just paid my bill.”

  “Here,” I said. “I’ll pay for your lunch so we don’t hold up the line.”

  “I don’t have much cash to pay you back. I always carry my credit card.”

  “Do you have a debit card?”

  She gave me a blank look. “I do, but it’s not with me. I left everything in my hotel safe. I don’t
like carrying too much stuff with me while I’m here.”

  “I see,” I said, although I didn’t really. “Well, then, whenever you get around to it, you can pay me back. Or not. It’s only a few bucks.”

  Her lower lip poofed out and quivered. Oh boy. Was she going to cry? The sandwich with chips and a soda was only eight dollars, nothing to cry about.

  “I’m just going to call and make sure it’s not a mistake.”

  I turned to the clerk. “I’ll take a roast beef sandwich with chips and a bottle of water. And I’ll take whatever she ordered, too.”

  I slipped my card into the reader, and a few seconds later, it beeped. I took the card and the receipt and two bags of food and grabbed Hallie’s arm as I walked away from the counter. “Come over here.”

  She was a little disoriented until she saw that I was holding her lunch. I pointed to a group of tables nearby.

  “Let’s sit here.”

  “Okay,” she said in a daze, and sat down, then abruptly jumped up when her phone beeped. “It’s a text from my credit card company.”

  “That was fast,” I said. “Did they rectify it?”

  “No,” she said, her voice quavering. “They’re asking if I just paid twelve thousand dollars for a first-class ticket to Bali.”

  “Bali,” I said. “That sounds like quite a vacation.”

  “It’s not my vacation,” she cried. “Someone stole my card.”

  I could see hysteria beginning to mount again and did what I could to cut it off at the pass. “You won’t have to pay for it. Credit card companies are very good about this stuff. Right now you need to answer the text. Let them know you didn’t make that purchase.”

  She shook out her hands and stretched her fingers, as though she were about to play a piano concerto or something. She nodded rapidly as she texted. “Okay. Okay. Done.”

  “Okay,” I said cheerfully. “Now their fraud department is on the case. You don’t have to worry anymore.”

  “Thanks.” She smiled sheepishly. “I’m not very good in a crisis.”

  No kidding, I thought, but just smiled. “It’s a traumatic thing when that happens. Did to me once. Someone charged three new computers on my card. But the card company took care of it and they’ll take care of this, too. You handled it just fine.”

  I unwrapped her sandwich for her and set it down on one of the napkins. “Here you go.”

  She took a bite and chewed listlessly.

  I wanted to get her talking. Maybe because she was so upset, she’d spill some information. “It’s too bad you don’t have that special encryption feature,” I said. “The one that Wesley invented.”

  “Wesley?” She cocked her head and gave me a puzzled look. “I don’t know about Wesley,” she said, “but Dillon invented an amazing type of encryption software. He helped me apply it to my credit card.”

  “Oh,” I said. “It doesn’t seem to be working.” And maybe the reason it didn’t work was because it wasn’t really his idea. Had he stolen the encryption idea from Wesley, too? I wondered if he knew he could use it to communicate with aliens. Or maybe that was just Wesley dreaming the big dreams.

  She bared her teeth angrily. “Yeah. Big surprise. You can chalk up one more disaster for Dillon’s column.”

  “Are there a lot of disasters in his column?” I asked quietly.

  “A gazillion.”

  Probably an exaggeration, I thought. But she didn’t sound like a happy employee.

  Hallie stared at her sandwich and muttered, “I’m so glad he’s dead. I mean, I didn’t kill him or anything, but you know. Anyway.”

  My eyes widened at her words. I’d been looking for information and I guess she gave it to me. It wasn’t quite a confession of murder, though. Unfortunately.

  Hallie must have realized she had said that out loud and clamped her lips together. Finally, she said lamely, “Sorry. You must think I’m awful.”

  “No. I think you’re normal. Dillon wasn’t well liked by anyone as far as I can tell.”

  She gave a quick, bad-tempered shrug. “Still shouldn’t say stuff like that. Not to someone outside of the company.”

  “Did anyone like him?” I asked.

  “Nobody I know.”

  I suddenly remembered what Tommy had said about Dillon’s multiple stab wounds. Maybe everyone who hated Dillon had taken part in his murder. Sort of a Murder on the Orient Express thing.

  So maybe Hallie had joined in the fun? I shook my head. I was letting my imagination go a little wild, but it was still an intriguing idea. And because I couldn’t quite push it out of my mind, I no longer felt comfortable sharing a table with her. I checked my watch. “Oh, gosh. Look at the time.”

  I gathered up my lunch and stuffed it back into the bag, then flashed her a big happy smile. “I just realized I’ve got to meet someone over by the air dome in about five minutes. So, I’ll see you around.”

  I took off at a brisk pace, then couldn’t help but glance back at her. She was squinting in the bright sunlight, but I could tell she was watching me. Did she know that I thought she might be a cold-blooded killer?

  I had to laugh. I really was seeing killers behind every bush. But why was Hallie watching me? Or was she?

  Seriously, I needed to get some rest.

  Whether or not Hallie had killed her boss, she had obviously hated him. I was practically a stranger to her, and she had admitted that she was glad he was dead.

  I was clearly driving myself crazy. I glanced over my shoulder once more—and Hallie was gone. Disappeared. I stopped and turned around to scan the entire wide-open conference area. Where did she go? It would be hard to miss her in her canary-yellow jumpsuit, and yet she was nowhere to be seen. I couldn’t spot even a blur of canary-yellow anywhere. I waited and watched, thinking maybe she was standing behind someone, but no. She was gone. I stood where I was and turned all the way around and finally had to admit that the woman had completely vanished.

  The closest building was the old barn so maybe she had decided to check out the missing mice or the solar-powered farm tractor.

  I started to walk. I needed to give myself a chance to breathe and think. I wanted to be somewhere quiet where there weren’t too many people. I took another turn, glanced around in every direction, looking at Rafe’s beautiful property. And that was when I saw the blades of the wind turbines moving.

  I had seen them working the first time Mac and I had driven out to visit Rafe, but somewhere over the last eight months he had turned them off, saying he wanted to wait until he could operate them without making so much noise and without killing any birds.

  Had he accomplished those goals? Was this some kind of new technology he was displaying for the first time at the conference?

  I had always been fascinated by the wind farms of Altamont and Palm Springs, where hundreds of windmills and wind turbines were scattered over the hills for miles and miles. Rafe only had three of the wind turbines, but they were massive, standing on a rise beyond the barns and the Ecosphere tower.

  I strolled in that direction and began to climb the hill, watching the blades circling quietly, catching the warm breeze that wafted over the rise.

  Quietly?

  I stopped and stared at the propeller blades spinning in the breeze. The last time I was out here, those turbines engines were loud. But now they were quiet. It was amazing to stand so close and not hear the noise. It was practically a miracle. A technological breakthrough, for sure.

  So Rafe had done it. He had discovered a way to lessen the noise. But what about the danger to the birds? I wondered. But then I realized that Rafe would never turn the machines back on unless he had found a surefire way to make them safe for the birds.

  I would have to ask him later, but for now I was proud of him. Maybe he was waiting to announce his success at the awards ceremony tomorrow
night.

  I stopped again and stared out at the view from the rise. I could see why Rafe had bought this property after so many years of living and working in Silicon Valley. It was just so peaceful and pretty here. Since it was so eerily quiet, I turned and kept walking toward the wind turbines, keeping my gaze on those huge, mesmerizing blades.

  Stopping again, I whirled around to check out the beautiful new barn glistening red in the sunlight. Off to my right, the Ecosphere tower jutted up to the sky, momentarily blocking my view of Rafe’s pretty house and all the landscaping we had added recently.

  Rafe had done well for himself here, I thought. And I was proud to have been a part of it. I walked a few more yards and the hill grew steeper. Now I could see the house beyond the tower as well as a large part of the massive property of five hundred acres. There was pastureland and softly rolling hills that meandered up into the redwood forest. This time of year the woods lining the creek were beautiful with the trees starting to lose their leaves and the creek slowing down as the runoff became a trickle before winter. Next spring, the snow melt from the mountains to the east would make this creek run wide and fast.

  And off to the north I could see the tip-top of the lighthouse three miles up the coast. It was lovely.

  It was nice to take in all of the beauty and just breathe the clean air. I scanned the property from the woods over toward the new house.

  And that was when I saw it.

  I blinked rapidly to clear my vision and make sure I wasn’t imagining things.

  No, it wasn’t my imagination.

  “Oh no. Oh no,” I whispered as I stared at the skinny barrel of a high-powered rifle peeking over the ledge of the roof of the Ecosphere tower.

  I took off running toward the conference area a few hundred yards away. I had never been much of a runner, but I was moving pretty fast, even with the tool belt around my waist. After all, someone was up on that tower with a gun and they could pick off almost anyone in the conference area or beyond.

  Halfway down the hill, I stopped. What was I thinking? The shooter could pick off me.