Jocelyn leaped over a cluster of exposed roots. “I saw you, too, when I was flipping myself onto the bank. You were on the trail on this side. I peeked out from behind a tree. You were tiptoeing away, down this trail. I was planning to come underneath the falls to warn you in case you hadn’t seen Philip Landsdowner and didn’t know he was prowling around out here.”
Her concern touched me. “That was dangerous.”
She reached out a hand to help me across the bumpy roots. “Not for me. But when I was about to go behind the falls, I looked across the empty space in front of the falls, and I saw Kelsey push you off that railing. It was horrible!”
“Were you the one who screamed?”
“I couldn’t stop myself. I thought you were going to fall all the way down, but you did this weird kind of flip and landed on your feet. And then you were clinging to the side of the cliff, and I came behind the falls to do what I could for you. But you didn’t need help.”
My laugh was a little shaky. “I’m not entirely sure about that.”
“I had no idea that Kelsey could be so nasty.”
“Me, neither.”
Would anyone believe that Kelsey had pushed me, even if we told them? For a second, a picture of Brent frowning in concern flashed through my mind. If he’d been with us at that very instant, I would have run the entire scenario past him. He trusted me, but our story was outlandish, and we could expect skepticism about whether Jocelyn could have witnessed, through the mist near the waterfall, what had happened across the river from her.
Besides, the first thing that Kelsey had done after Jocelyn and I helped her to safety was claim that she’d been trying to save me. No matter what either Jocelyn or I might say, Kelsey would probably stick to that story.
The path became less rocky. Jocelyn and I were nearly trotting. Could I tell anyone about my misadventure? Not Tom and Cindy. They would be horrified at the thought of possibly losing the daughter-in-law they treated as their own daughter, the woman their late son had loved.
My own parents were used to my youthful shenanigans, at least the ones they’d heard about. They probably wouldn’t want to know that I might be continuing similar activities now, over six months after my thirtieth birthday. They had expected me to stay out of trouble with minimal lectures about safety, responsibility, and respecting others. Most of the time, I had obeyed.
I wasn’t even sure I would tell Misty about Kelsey pushing me. I might have to, though, since I would probably tell Samantha, when and if I caught up to her and Hooligan.
Where were they? Could they keep themselves safe if Kelsey found them?
Maybe Kelsey wasn’t a threat to them. Kelsey must have had a reason for trying to push me off the cliff, and it very likely had nothing to do with my refusal to go back up the river with her to help rescue Philip Landsdowner.
After she saw me tiptoe away from her down the trail, she had removed her telltale red hoodie.
I had guessed, from questions Brent asked me, that the person Landsdowner claimed he’d seen near the donut skyrocket was about my size and dressed like I was, except that the potential killer might have worn jeans and a hood.
Had Kelsey also gleaned from the detectives’ questions that they were particularly interested in anyone who’d been wearing a red hoodie the night of the Fourth?
And then, because of my reputation for helping the police solve murders, she could have believed that the police told me more than they actually did, so she’d ditched the hoodie before she chased me down Noisy Cawing Crow Trail.
She hadn’t seen me at the fireworks and didn’t know that when I saw her I hadn’t paid attention to what she’d been wearing. I’d been surprised that her hair was long, that was all. She wouldn’t know that I hadn’t seen her when a hood was covering her hair.
But when she noticed what she called my trail of bread crumbs, she must have been certain that I’d left a secret message. She could have jumped to the conclusion that I’d made that arrow after I’d seen her in the hoodie and that I was directing someone, possibly police investigators, to her.
Knowing that she was guilty, she must have believed her guilt was obvious to everyone. An innocent person probably would not have jumped to so many conclusions. But if I was right, she had jumped to them. And she wasn’t innocent.
Assuming that I might have figured out that she’d killed Taylor, she had attempted to silence me.
That alone made me certain that she was guilty of killing Taylor. I wasn’t sure how I could prove it, though.
Maybe, like Kelsey’s, my thinking was too self-centered.
What else might Kelsey be planning?
Maybe Kelsey was also a threat to Philip Landsdowner. He could have seen her light that firework and thought she was me, and then he had tried to prove that I was the culprit by giving the police that doctored photo and claiming that he’d seen me throw out a bag that I hadn’t touched since earlier that afternoon. Maybe his only motive had been to collect a reward for giving the police information leading to the arrest of a killer.
That didn’t explain why he’d begun taking pictures of me early that morning.
The police would have had no reason to show Kelsey the doctored picture of me with the stack of donuts behind Taylor. Unless Landsdowner had shown the picture to Kelsey and told her about his attempts to finger me as the killer, she might suspect that Landsdowner knew she’d lit the firework. She could have seen him hanging around that night with his camera. She could have feared he’d taken incriminating photos of her.
Maybe she had removed the hoodie because she didn’t want Landsdowner to see her in it. When I first saw her calling to him from the riverbank, she was wearing the hoodie, but he’d obviously been focused on Jocelyn. Maybe Kelsey had been certain that he had not seen her wearing the hoodie when she was near the river, so she had tossed it to prevent him from seeing her in it, either when she was leaving him to chase me down the trail or when, as she’d seemed to want to, she took me back to help rescue him.
Later she’d asked Jocelyn and me both to help.
Did Kelsey really intend to rescue Landsdowner?
Maybe she had planned to “accidentally” make Landsdowner, Jocelyn, and me fall into the river during the attempted rescue and she had hoped that the current would be strong enough to carry all three of us downstream and over the falls.
It didn’t sound like a workable plan, but that didn’t mean that she wouldn’t have tried.
Or that she wouldn’t try something similar with Samantha and Hooligan.
The trail narrowed and the riverbank beside it steepened. I wanted to walk faster, but the setting sun cast long shadows that alternately exaggerated and disguised dips and bumps in the trail.
I asked Jocelyn, “Do you know what sort of relationship Kelsey and Landsdowner have? She wanted to take me with her to rescue him in person. I refused, and she pushed me over the railing.”
Jocelyn swung herself around the slanted trunk of a cedar. “I should have told you about him when you first asked. He spent hours at Freeze, just sitting by himself at a table and not saying anything, like he could never decide what flavor to order. When I was behind the counter, he stared at me in this icky way, so I tried to avoid him, but I couldn’t hide in the kitchen all the time, so I quit and went to work at Deputy Donut. I thought he was completely creepy, but Kelsey said he was mysterious and romantic.” Helping me around another tree trunk, Jocelyn shuddered, probably only partly due to her wet clothing. “She developed this huge crush on him. She must have told him where I was working. He showed up at Deputy Donut and at our table at the picnic. And then, Tuesday night, I was home alone, and I saw him outside our house on the sidewalk. He was pointing his camera at the window where I was.”
Horrified, I stopped walking. “Is that why you didn’t come to work the past two days?”
She kicked a pinecone. “Yeah. My parents live in their trailer in the campground all summer and commute to work. I was staying in
our house so I could bike to work and gymnastics. After I saw Philip Landsdowner spying on our house, I got my dad to come get me. I didn’t tell him why. I said I had time off from my new job. I’m sorry I worried you.”
“As long as you’re okay,” I said. “I kept leaving messages on your phone.”
“It’s at home. I was afraid that Kelsey had given him my number. What if he had some way of tracing my phone’s location? It wouldn’t be where I was.”
“And you turned off the ringtone.”
She jumped over a short outcropping. “I didn’t want him standing outside and calling me and hearing my phone ring. My parents wouldn’t have liked it if he broke in, even if I wasn’t there.”
I walked around the outcropping. “Your parents wouldn’t like someone stalking you, period.”
She strode ahead. “Which is why I didn’t tell them.”
“Jocelyn . . .”
She said over her shoulder, “I know. I should have.” She stopped, turned toward me, and tilted her head in question. “How did you know I turned off my ringtone?”
I gave her an apologetic smile. “You might think I’m as bad as Philip Landsdowner.”
“I doubt it.”
“I stood outside, called your number, and listened. And just now, you told me you’d left your phone at home.” I passed her as the trail widened. “I wish you had called the police when you saw him outside your house.” Peering into windows with his telephoto lens . . .
She caught up and walked beside me. “It’s one of those things, you know? Like happens to lots of women. It would be my word against his, and no one might believe me.”
I skirted around an eroded hole in the riverbank. “I do.”
I stumbled over the end of a log and went down headfirst into ferns.
My hand touched cloth.
Chapter 35
Jocelyn helped me stand. The garment I was clutching came up with me.
If I’d been deeper in the darkening woods, I might not have been certain what the garment was or what color it was, but the still-milky sky reflected on the river, brightening everything nearby.
The garment was a hoodie.
A red one.
Farther down the sloping riverbank, close to the water, something rustled in underbrush behind a juniper. I caught a glimpse of something more solidly black than nearby tree trunks.
Startled, I asked, “Who’s there?”
No answer.
My hand tightened on the hoodie. Could someone be lying injured on the riverbank?
Jocelyn and I traded concerned glances.
I called out, “Are you okay?”
Silence.
Jocelyn whispered, “A bear?”
The black I’d seen had not resembled fur. I asked in a tone that could be heard on the embankment below me, “Aren’t we supposed to make lots of noise if a bear’s around, to scare it?”
Turning the corners of her mouth down, Jocelyn glanced up toward the pine beside her as if wondering if she could climb higher than a bear could.
I clapped my hands, and shouted, “Shoo!” No bear, or anything else, went splashing into the river.
Okay, whoever or whatever it was knew I was coming. Still carrying the hoodie, which I would fling at any ferocious wildlife I might encounter, I climbed over the log and sidestepped down the slope toward the river. I heard Jocelyn right behind me. Teetering on stones that were partly submerged in an eddy at the edge of the river, I clutched at a prickly branch of the juniper and peeked around it.
In her black tank top and leggings, Kelsey was crouching among the juniper’s exposed roots next to the river. She jumped up. “Bear?” she asked.
“I heard something, but maybe it was you.” I backed a step away from her. “Where’s Philip Landsdowner? Does he still need our help?”
She pointed up the river. “Up there, past some trees, but you can’t see him from here.”
I wasn’t about to take my eyes off her to turn around and check.
She looked at the hoodie in my hand. “What are you doing with that?”
“Is it yours? It’s getting cold out here. Maybe you’d like to put it on.” I tossed it to her.
She swatted it as if it were a pesky bug. It landed in the eddy and circled lazily, a red blob among floating bits of vegetation.
I stepped away from Kelsey again. My backpack bumped into Jocelyn. I pushed gently, hoping she’d take the hint and run up the bank.
I’d be right behind her.
Kelsey had other ideas. As if her knees were springs, she leaped over roots and gave my shoulders a hard shove. Again.
I lost my balance and staggered into the shallows. Cold water flowed into my sneakers and resoaked the ankles of my jeans. I slipped on algae-covered rocks. My arms flailing, I managed to stay upright and steady myself enough to remove my backpack and hold it in front of me where I might have a chance of keeping it dry. “Run farther up the trail,” I told Jocelyn in a voice that was, considering my emotions, surprisingly calm. “One of our regular customers should be up there somewhere. Find him.” And bring him and Samantha back here. I didn’t say it.
Jocelyn shook her head. Obviously, she wasn’t leaving me alone with Kelsey. And I wasn’t sure I wanted her venturing up there alone. Samantha and Hooligan might not be anywhere around. And if Landsdowner was still on that rock and saw Jocelyn, he might suddenly discover that he could wade back to shore.
As I’d hoped she might, Kelsey jumped to the wrong conclusion about the regular customer. She snarled at Jocelyn, “Philip’s my boyfriend, not yours!”
Jocelyn retorted, “You’re welcome to him.”
I sloshed toward the bank and Jocelyn.
Kelsey blocked me, obviously not about to let me climb out of the river.
I asked her, “Why aren’t you rescuing him like you said you would?”
“I had other priorities.” Ambushing Jocelyn and me, perhaps. “And a couple of other people are up there staring at him. Hey, I got it! Is one of them the customer you told Jocelyn to go find?”
Oops. I tried looking neutral.
Hands on hips, Kelsey sneered at me. “I’ve heard that police officers like donuts. Is that the customer you want Jocelyn to run to? A cop?”
My ankles and feet were getting used to the chilly river water. “I don’t know who’s up there.” It was true. I didn’t know who the people staring at Landsdowner were. They could be tourists, but I hoped they were Hooligan and Samantha. Trying not to let my tentative relief show on my face, I asked a question of my own. “Why were you following Philip Landsdowner earlier today?”
“I wasn’t following him, not at first, anyway. Mama Freeze told me you were asking about a bag of donuts and planning to come out to the campground to look for your parents, so I told Mama Freeze I wasn’t feeling well. I left work and came to the campground and drove around until I saw your car. Maybe you thought you hid it, but you didn’t, not completely. Then I saw you on a trail and followed you.”
“Why?”
“Because you were too interested in who might have picked up a certain bag of donuts. I lost track of you on that trail, but I found Philip and followed him in case he would lead me to you. Only, he was mistakenly going after Jocelyn and ended up stuck on a rock. I tried to get him to come back and help me search for you, but then I lucked out and saw you. By then, you had seen me in my red hoodie. I shouldn’t have worn that to work today, and I should have taken it off before I followed you up that trail, but I was in a hurry. I should have thrown that hoodie out sooner, on the night of the Fourth.”
Looking baffled wasn’t difficult. Again, I asked, “Why?”
“You said you saw me leaving the fireworks. You could have seen me in that hoodie that night.” Now almost completely waterlogged, the hoodie had partially sunk. The eddy held it against a stone, though, preventing the river from carrying it downstream. The end of one sleeve waved feebly in the current.
I said, “I saw you that night
, but I didn’t see a hoodie, and even if I did, I don’t understand what it has to do with . . .” I gestured at the water all around me. “Anything.”
“Maybe this will help.” Again, she flung herself at me. Her body-checking stunts were becoming tiresome.
Still clutching my backpack, I stumbled backward into deeper water. It pulled at the knees of my jeans and felt almost freezing on my lower legs.
This time, Kelsey’s plan backfired. She lost her grip on the slippery stones and fell face-first into the river. She was closer to shore than I was, but farther downstream.
Jocelyn threw her jacket onto the bank and waded in.
Kelsey’s arms and legs splashed. Her face surfaced. She gasped, “I can’t swim!”
I shouted, “You don’t have to. You can touch bottom. Put your feet down!” Trying to rescue Kelsey was also becoming tiresome. I yelled at Jocelyn, “Don’t go near her!”
I glanced up the river. Moments ago, trees on the bank had prevented me from seeing Landsdowner, but now that I was out in the river, he was in plain view. He was still sitting on that boulder. It was closer than I’d realized.
He was pointing his camera down the river, toward us.
I might have known.
Following my shouted instructions, Kelsey managed to get her feet underneath her, but although she was closer to the bank than I was, she’d found a hole and was in water up to her hips. The current forced her to hop sideways.
I shouted at her, “Wade back to shore!”
“So you can ruin everything else?” she yelled back. “All my life, Taylor got everything. The best grades. The boy I wanted. Head cheerleader. Awards. And then she was going to be promoted at Freeze and boss me around. For once, I hadn’t tried to compete. I didn’t enter the Fabulous Fourth royalty competition. For once, I didn’t lose to her. No one was going to suspect me of hurting her. They were going to suspect Gabrielle, who also spent all of her life losing to Taylor and who was livid at coming in only second and had to settle for duchess instead of queen. Then you asked about that bag of donuts I found in Freeze and I knew I had to find some way of stopping you from telling the police what you think I did with those donuts. Plus, Mama Freeze said you were planning to come out to the falls, where you could be seriously hurt in all sorts of apparent accidents.”
Jealousy Filled Donuts Page 21
