by Meg Muldoon
The hair on the back of my neck stood up on end as the red thing came into focus.
It was lying there beneath a small pine tree.
The same tree, I realized, that I had slid into that night when I found Kent Utley building a fire out here.
In the last light of day, the red thing almost seemed to glow.
I stood there a long moment, gazing at it in disbelief.
The deputies hadn’t found it that night when they were searching the area.
Had Kent Utley hid it here, in the tree well? Or had I kicked it when I was running after him?
I wasn’t sure.
All I knew was that it was here now.
I took a deep breath.
Then I leaned down and picked up the red hardcover book.
A wave of chills slithered down my spine.
The book was damp and water-logged.
But still intact.
I unsnapped the elastic band, then carefully opened it to the first page.
A soggy piece of paper tumbled out.
I caught it and flattened it down against my knee. My eyes scanned over the bold words.
“Heavenly Hamlet! Panoramic ocean views to die for!”
It was a Hawaiian real estate listing.
I studied it for a long moment. Then, I opened the book to the first page.
And then to the next page.
And then to the next one.
I stood there reading as the last rays of the December sunset disappeared.
Then, I found it.
Chapter 65
I ran through the darkening woods, slipping and sliding on the slushy snow. I veered around the side of my pie shop and made a beeline for the Escape, not bothering to grab my jacket or purse.
My heart thundered like an old steel drum rolling down the side of Mt. Hood.
I jumped in, started the car, and peeled away in reverse. I fished my phone out of my jean pocket and hit her number.
I sped down Main Street and headed for the highway.
Ring… Ring… Ring…
“You’ve reached—”
I hung up, trying again.
A voicemail wouldn’t do.
Ring… Ring… Ring…
I got on the highway, going way too fast. But it was like my foot was a sinker log pressing against the gas pedal and I couldn’t lift it. Adrenaline was pumping through my veins like a busted oil well.
“Please pick up, please pick up, please pick up.”
Ring… Ring…
“Cin? Sorry, reception’s terrible up here.”
Her voice sounded distant and garbled.
“I need to see you,” I said quickly. “Right now. You’ve got to meet me.”
“Uh… I really can’t, Cin. I’m in the middle of something important.”
“Get out of there, Kara. As soon as you can.”
“I don’t—”
Just then, her voice cut out.
The line went dead.
It might have been bad reception.
But I had the feeling that it was something more than that.
“Dammit.”
I hung up and immediately called Daniel.
Chapter 66
“Just wait for me, Cin. Wait for me. I’ll only be a few seconds behind.”
My headlights bounced off the trees in the final grays of a bitter winter dusk. The studs on the tires cracked against the snowy road as I pushed harder on the gas pedal.
“Cin?”
“Okay,” I said, pressing the phone against my ear. “I won’t go in until you get here.”
“I need to hear you promise me,” he said.
I bit my lip and didn’t say anything.
“Cin—”
“I promise.”
I didn’t want to wait. But I knew I wasn’t thinking clearly. Panic was ripping through me like a runaway sleigh down an icy cliff.
The Escape suddenly fishtailed and I held in a breath as I started sliding over into the other lane. I gripped the wheel hard, my nails digging into the plastic as I tried desperately to correct the car.
After a long moment of terror, I found myself back in my own lane.
“What was that?” he said.
I let out a long breath and thought a silent prayer.
“Nothing. Just... get here fast, Daniel. As fast as you can.”
Chapter 67
I stopped several hundred yards away down the mountain road, throwing the car into park and killing the engine.
Through the trees, I could see warm light spilling from the grand windows of the lodge, and for a split second, I wondered if I had lost my mind and was freaking out over nothing.
After all, the fact that I had found Moira’s legendary book of gossip where Kent Utley had built his campfire was more evidence that he’d been at the scene of the crime the morning Moira was killed.
I didn’t have anything more to go on than a few words written down in the book that pointed toward somebody else having a motive to kill Moira.
It was nowhere near a signed confession.
But it was enough to have me worried.
Because next to the big secret was a big number with a dollar sign attached.
Circled in red.
Along with a list of “installment” payments.
It didn’t take a detective to figure out that it was another one of Moira’s blackmail schemes.
And this particular scheme was big enough to kill over.
I sat in the driver’s seat, squinting through the trees. Kara’s Audi was sitting in the driveway along with two other cars. Smoke drifted up out of the chimney, climbing high into the inky black sky.
I glanced in the rearview mirror, hoping to see the headlights of Daniel’s truck bouncing off the trees. But there was nothing but dark forest.
“C’mon,” I said. “C’mon.”
I grabbed the phone off of the passenger’s seat and hit her number again.
Just like the times before, I got nothing but a series of rings before running into her voicemail.
“Hi, you’ve reached Kara. Whether you’re looking for hand-crafted ornaments or…”
I hung up, tossing the phone on the dashboard. I shifted in my seat. I felt like I was sitting on a mound of fire ants and I wished I hadn’t promised Daniel to wait.
I couldn’t explain it.
But I had a bad, bad feeling.
I drummed the wheel nervously, feeling the temperature in the car plunge.
“C’mon, Daniel. C’mon.”
A loud knock on the window exploded in my ear.
I jumped up in my seat.
She had come out of nowhere.
The tall woman, who I recognized as being Pam Dallas’s assistant, stood outside the driver’s window, smiling brightly at me in the darkness.
With a gloved hand, she made a motion for me to unroll the window.
I hesitated, but then realized that if I didn’t, she’d know something was wrong.
I reluctantly did as she said.
“Hi,” she said, her breath coming out in a foggy plume. “It’s Cinnamon, right?”
“Uh… yeah. Hi.”
“I’m Syd – Ms. Dallas’s assistant. You came here with Kara before.”
I nodded, smiling a tight, phony smile.
“Good memory,” I said. “I, uh, I just came by to pick her up.”
She furrowed her brow, looking up and down the road.
“Oh – I thought Kara was staying for dinner. She’s still talking with Ms. Dallas about her chapters, so you might be waiting here a while. Why don’t you come in? I’m just fixing supper. We’d love to have you.”
I bit my lip.
“Promise to wait for me.”
Daniel’s words echoed in my head.
“That’s very kind of you, but I’m not… I’m not hungry.”
“Oh, c’mon,” Syd said. “It’s not like we’ve poisoned dinner.”
She smiled a big, toothy grin. That was fol
lowed by a throaty laugh.
I shook my head.
“Actually, I have a couple of business calls to make out here.”
I started reaching for the phone that I’d tossed on the dashboard.
“Besides, I wouldn’t want to put you out. I know that you guys weren’t expecting me and—”
I turned back.
Then I saw what she was pointing at me.
The cold metal barrel shone in the faint light coming from the lodge windows.
Pam’s assistant wasn’t smiling anymore.
“Actually, Cinnamon, we have been expecting you.”
Chapter 68
Kara was doing her best to keep the horror out of her face, trying to be strong for little Laila.
But when I walked into the living room of the lodge and saw her sitting stiffly on one of the leather couches, I could see right through her.
My best friend was terrified.
I knew a little something about that feeling.
“Oh good, Syd. You found her.”
Pam Dallas sat in a large ivory-colored leather chair by the fire, wearing a thick knit scarf, jeans, and snow boots. An oversized pair of glasses sat on the ridge of her nose, giving her a mousy, unassuming look.
But I now knew that there was nothing mousy or unassuming about Pam Dallas.
Laila was sitting on her lap, playing with a rag doll, the tot oblivious to what was happening around her.
“She tried to hide by parking down the road a ways,” Syd, who was still pointing the gun at me, said. “But I found her quite easily.”
“Well done,” Pam said. “I knew I could count on you, Syd.”
The look of delusional pride on the tall woman’s face was sickening.
“Why don’t you have a seat, Cinnamon?” Pam continued. “Is there anything we can get you? Anything you’d like?”
“I’d like to take Kara and Laila and leave right now. That’s what I’d like.”
Pam smiled coyly and didn’t answer.
I swallowed hard.
“This is kidnapping,” I said, my voice coming out hoarse and shaky. “It’s a felony, Pam. And if you don’t let us leave right now, I will see to it that you and Syd face the—”
“That’s dependent on you getting out of here in the first place, sweetie.”
She looked up from behind her glasses with sharp, piercing eyes. The slight smile that had been on her face as she played with Laila faded.
Daniel would be here any minute, I reminded myself. Any minute. We’d just have to hold on.
“I found Moira’s notebook,” I said, sharply. “I know all about you.”
I thought Pam might be surprised after I said that, but it was as if she already knew.
As if she’d been expecting all of this to happen for a long time.
“Tell me, Cinnamon. Will our venerable Sheriff be coming for dinner, too?”
I didn’t answer.
But she knew it was a rhetorical question anyway.
“Hmm. I thought so. He’s a heroic type. Countless books have been written about people like him. In fiction, they usually survive. Readers demand happy endings. But do you know what happens to heroic people in real life, Cinnamon?”
I stared into her soulless eyes.
“They die,” she said. “They get shot. They fall off of cliffs. They drown trying to save others. They perish in plane crashes, putting the oxygen mask on the person next to them before putting one on themselves. They end up breaking their spines trying to be heroic. The world doesn’t tolerate heroes very well, I’m afraid.”
Laila muttered something indecipherable and Pam looked down at her. She touched the tip of the tot’s nose, and Laila started giggling.
I saw a look of abject horror cross Kara’s face.
“I guess the world tolerates murderers a lot better, huh?” I said. “Like people who kill their spouses.”
“Yes,” Pam said, with no feeling in her voice. “I’m living proof of that, as you well know. My husband was the heroic one. I wasn’t. And I’m the one who walked away from that snow cave.”
“You killed him,” I said.
“The storm killed him, Cinnamon. It was him or me up there on the mountain. And if I hadn’t taken his jacket and his gear from him and used it for myself, we would have both died anyway. I chose me. I wanted to live. And I have no guilt about what I did anymore.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that Kara had placed a hand up to her mouth and was looking at Pam with wide eyes.
It was a shocking revelation. And when I had read it in Moira’s book of gossip earlier, I could scarcely believe it myself.
According to Moira, instead of holding her husband’s hand as he died in that snow cave up on the mountain, the way she had told everyone in all those countless interviews about her bestselling book, Pam had instead taken his jacket when he fell ill and used it for herself.
Maybe it couldn’t exactly be called murder.
But it wasn’t far from it.
Moira knew what a land mine of a secret it was.
And she’d charged Pam accordingly.
“How did Moira find out?” I asked, stealing a glance at the gun in Syd’s hand.
Pam looked down at Laila again, ignoring the question for the time being.
“That dolly’s very pretty,” Pam said, tilting her head. “Does she have a name?”
“Wo-sanna,” Laila mouthed.
“Rosanna? Oh, what a lovely—”
“How did she find out?” I said, raising my voice.
Syd jabbed the gun in my direction.
That’s when I saw something on her wrist.
A tattoo.
It was a feather quill in an ink well. The feather was intricately detailed and hard not to notice once you saw it.
It took me a minute to put it together.
The bird lady.
That was something Daniel said that Kent Utley had mentioned during questioning. Something that, at the time, had just sounded like part of his incoherent ranting.
But now, maybe it made sense.
Jeez.
He’d seen Syd that morning at Moira’s house.
“My mother told Moira,” Pam said. “After the ordeal up at K2, I was… in a fragile place. My mother came to stay with me. I was taking a lot of medication in those days. It slipped out one night what really happened up on the mountain. I made her promise to keep it a secret. But then last year she had her stroke and I moved her into a retirement facility down the road. She wasn’t happy about that. She wanted to be put in a fancy retirement home – the kind that would have cost me this lodge just to pay for. She’s spiteful that I put her in Alpenglow instead. Spoiled brat.”
Her face darkened noticeably.
“All along, my mother has been jealous of my success. She couldn’t stand to see her daughter do so much better than she ever had. I’m sure she’s been just waiting all these years to tattle on me. To ruin my career. When she met Moira through some quilting club, they got to having tea together and well… the rest is history.”
“So Moira started blackmailing you?” I said.
“When she heard that they were turning my book into a movie, she knew she’d hit a big fat pay day,” Pam said. “She started demanding enormous installment payments to keep quiet. She showed up to the writing workshop, trying to squeeze even more money out of me. She threatened to tell all of my students about me unless I gave her a percentage of my movie profits. Can you believe that? That greedy old hag.”
She looked down at Laila again.
“Vewwy vewwy gweedy,” she said, echoing the toddler’s lisp.
Laila giggled.
Kara stood up and lunged across the living room, reaching out for her daughter.
“Stop right there!”
Syd swung the gun in Kara’s direction and she froze in the middle of the floor.
“Don’t you dare go near Ms. Dallas. Don’t you dare!”
Kara nodded.
<
br /> “Sit down.”
The large woman’s voice boomed throughout the lodge.
Kara nodded more severely and backed away.
There were tears dripping down her red cheeks.
I shot a look in her direction, trying to reassure her.
But it didn’t seem to help much.
Because Kara knew the score just as well as I did.
Pam might not have had the guts to kill us. But her assistant Syd certainly did. There was a crazy look in the tall woman’s eyes – something that told me she’d have no trouble crossing that line.
“You couldn’t take a scandal, Pam,” I said, trying to ignore the shiny metal barrel. “So you killed Moira before she could tell anyone.”
“You make it sound as if that wasn’t a good enough reason, Cinnamon,” she said. “You don’t seem to understand – that movie’s my meal ticket for life. They’re already talking Oscars. Do you know the kind of money I’ll see from that? The kind of fame? The kind of future book and movie deals? I wasn’t about to let any small town gossip with a nose too big for her own good ruin all of that.”
She looked over at Syd with a twisted look of admiration.
“Syd understood everything that was at stake. I didn’t even have to ask – she did what needed to be done that morning. She took care of the whole problem with just a few swings of that snow shovel.”
Syd gave her employer a prideful, lopsided smile that sent shivers down my spine.
Pam’s face darkened again as she met her assistant’s gaze.
“Syd did, however, mess up a thing or two,” Pam said sharply. “Like not grabbing Moira’s purse after killing her. That was a big one, Syd. It led to this whole unpleasant mess.”
Syd’s face flushed a shame-tinged shade of crimson.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Dallas. I didn’t… I didn’t think it mattered.”
“Well it did, Syd,” Pam snapped back. “It most certainly did.”
Pam looked from Kara to me.
“Look, ladies, I tried to prevent this from happening. I put you onto the crazy man in the Subaru. I did everything in my power so that it wouldn’t come to this.”
