The screen filled with pictures of rental homes, many of them lakefront properties, all of them either backed by or nestled into the forest. I saw lots of log cabins with cozy front porches, expansive back decks, or wraparound porches, some with hammocks. As Betsy scrolled through the pictures, I almost found myself wishing I was in the market. On paper they looked like little slices of cozy paradise.
"These are adorable," Dana said, echoing my thoughts. She pointed. "Can I see the interior of this one?" I felt her nudge my shin with the pointy toe of her suede boots.
"Hmm?" I turned to her.
But her full attention was still on the computer screen. "That kitchen is so quaint! Is that an actual wood burning stove?" Another boot nudge.
"Why, yes, it is," Betsy answered. "Vintage chic, isn't it?"
"Do any of these have a microwave—ow!" I leaned down to rub my shin, which had just been not-so-gently nudged. I looked up to find Dana giving me a meaningful glare.
"Are you okay?" Betsy asked me.
"Uh, yeah." I watched Dana subtly nod toward the back. "I, um, just need to use the restroom."
"Oh, sure. It's down the hall," Betsy said, hiking a thumb over her shoulder. "Can't miss it."
"Thanks," I mumbled, watching Dana give me silent direction, her eyes darting to the closed storeroom door.
I gave a deep internal sigh as I stood up and edged down the hallway. This was one of those accessory-after-the-fact moments, wasn't it? Only, I had a feeling she was seeing herself in the role of lookout and I was supposed to be the breaker and enterer. I pursed my lips, telling myself this was for a good cause. It wasn't like I was going to break into Betsy's storeroom and steal anything. I was just going to take one teeny tiny peek at J.R. Ravensberg's rental agreement, just to find his address.
I went down the hallway, past a couple of framed mountainscapes and a Rental Agent of the Year certificate. Then with a backward glance toward Dana—still cooing at how cute the cabins were—I slipped into the storage room. Only slightly larger than a broom closet, it held a small pockmarked wooden desk heaped high with loose papers, manila files, newspapers, and receipts, a spindly-legged wooden chair, and a metal filing cabinet. I crossed to the cabinet first and found that the drawers were neatly labeled by the alphabetical range contained within each, with the Rs in the third.
Quietly, I slid it open to riffle through the folders within. They weren't exactly jam-packed. Betsy might be the only game in town when it came to rental properties, but it wasn't a large market. I found the Ravensberg file almost immediately and flipped to the agreement. Quickly, I pulled out my phone and snapped a picture of it, making sure the address was clearly legible, before returning the agreement to the file, and the file to the drawer, and the drawer to its closed position. I paused a moment, listening to make sure I was still undercover.
I could hear Dana asking if the bathrooms had been recently upgraded in a cabin. Betsy let out a laugh as she responded.
I noiselessly opened the storeroom door again and peeked out toward Dana and Betsy—both pairs of eyes firmly on the computer monitor, both of their backs turned to me. I slid out, closed the door behind me, and tip toed the few steps back down the hall to the bathroom door, slipping inside. I flushed the toilet for show, washed my hands, and crumpled a paper towel and dropped it in the wastebasket before returning to the front office.
"Find anything?" I asked as I sat down again.
Dana glanced up at me, a questioning look in her eyes.
I gave a small nod.
Her shoulders relaxed as she turned back to the screen. "These places are really cute, Mads. Check out this one. It's got granite countertops and stainless steel appliances, plus it's right on the lake for the summer, and it has a gorgeous stone fireplace for the wintertime."
If I didn't know better, I'd say she was actually contemplating a vacation home.
"So you're interested?" Betsy asked, her eyes shining with excitement. "Shall I grab a rental agreement?"
"Oh, uh, well, I probably have to think about it a little."
Her face fell.
"Sorry," Dana said, and I could tell she really did feel sorry for Betsy. "I'm going to have to get back to you on this after I talk to my husband. You understand."
Betsy nodded bravely. "Yes. Of course. That's perfectly fine," she said graciously. "Call me anytime. Early morning, late at night—I'm always here!"
* * *
"Those houses were really cute," Dana said when we got into her rental car, Moose Haven Realty being just beyond walking distance from the hotel.
I looked over at her. "Are you seriously considering leasing a vacation house in Moose Haven, Saskatchewan?"
"Why not? There are worse places."
"Name one."
She grinned. "I know it's not exactly St. Tropez, but it has its charm. So did you get it?"
I nodded, pulling up the photo on my phone and punching the address into a GPS app. "Ravensberg's got a place on Crossbow Trail."
"Where's that?" Dana asked, leaning in to see my screen.
"North of town. Take Arrowhead Road to just past Broken Arrow Circle."
"I'm sensing a theme here," Dana said, grinning as she put the car into gear and pulled onto the main road.
I looked out the window as we rolled through town. The morning sunlight stretched long pale fingers down the block. Few cars were on the road, and the air was laced with the bracing scent of pine and dewy leaves. If you didn't know a murder had just been committed here, it would have been a very serene scene.
"Are we going in the right direction?" Dana asked.
"We must be," I said. "Look, there's Quiver Lane."
"Okay, what is it with all the arrow names?" she asked. "It feels like we're driving into psycho hunter territory."
Didn't need that imagery in my head, especially when the town proper faded in the rearview mirror and trees closed in around us. Every few hundred feet, a post was planted into the soil with the name of each alleged street hand-painted vertically. Dana leaned forward to read one. "Nock Lane. What does that even mean?"
"I think a nock is part of an arrow," I said.
"Of course it is." She grimaced. "I should've known."
We drove on.
"Broken Arrow Circle," she said as we passed.
"There it is!" I pointed to the Crossbow Trail sign.
Dana slowed and turned onto a wide dirt road, tamped down into a smooth driving surface. "I bet it's quiet out here at night," she said.
"And dark," I added. "There are no streetlights."
"Why would they need streetlights? It's not exactly the 405."
"True. I can see why J.R. Ravensberg thought he'd get more work done here."
"Maybe he could, but I couldn't," she said. "All the isolation would give me insomnia for sure. I'd sit at the window half the night looking for zombies to come out of the woods."
I laughed. "I don't think it's quite that bad."
"That's because you don't believe in zombies." She slowed to a stop. "Would you look at this. What happened to the road?"
Crossbow Trail was gone, vanishing abruptly in a four-foot mound of dirt piled across the width of the road. Apparently this was as far as anyone expected drivers to go.
"We'll just have to go the rest of the way on foot," I said, opening my door.
"This is so not good," Dana muttered. She set the car lock with a beep of the remote, then gingerly followed me around the dirt mound, high stepping over the soft earth in her boots. Which, even though they were suede and had two-inch heels on them, seemed a lot more appropriate for the situation than the pink pumps I'd gone with that morning. I could feel my heels sinking in the soft mud.
"I feel really vulnerable out here," she said, coming up beside me.
"To what?" I asked. "Owls?"
"Owls can be very nasty," she said. "But no, I was thinking of human predators."
"Or zombie ones?" I grinned. "We'll be fine. In fact, it kind of fee
ls like we're the only people left in the universe."
She shivered. "Not helpful, Mads."
I spotted something through the trees. "Look over there. I think it's a cabin."
"That's got to be it," she said. "It seems really quiet. You think he's there?"
"There's one way to find out."
We made our way through the underbrush, on the lookout for anything that crept, crawled, or coiled underfoot, and eventually emerged into a clearing. A small log cabin sat in the center, a stone chimney standing sentry on its right wall. Two slightly crooked steps led from the porch down to a carpet of pine needles. Dark curtains hung at the two front windows, faded and dingy, and a pile of chopped wood leaned up against the side, looking like home to all manner of insects. No sign of life from inside.
"You think Betsy Photoshops her pictures?" Dana asked. "This place sure isn't as quaint as the other ones she showed me."
"It's…simple. Understated," I said, trying to be positive. Even though the pessimistic side of me was beginning to think Dana was right—it looked exactly like the kind of cabin zombies would live in.
I gingerly climbed the steps and peered into a window around the curtains, seeing just what you'd expect to see in a log cabin in the woods: heavy furniture, wide plank wood flooring, the stone hearth of the fireplace with logs laid for a fire or maybe just as rustic décor. It might have been cozy, if not for the half dozen stuffed animals littered throughout the room. And I didn't mean the FAO Schwartz variety. A bear skin rug lay on the ground, complete with a large head, mouth frozen in a silent snarl. A squirrel was on the mantle standing on its hind legs, and several heads were mounted on the walls.
Dana peered into the other front window. "Creepy."
"Ditto," I said, thinking we'd stumbled on a vegan's worst nightmare.
"Think this place even has electricity?"
"Probably uses a generator." I glanced around. "I don't think he's home."
"Let's see." She pounded on the door with a fist. The sound seemed to bounce between the trees like a ball in a pinball machine.
Nothing.
She turned to me. "I think we should go in."
"What?" I shook my head. "No way. That's breaking and entering, and it's illegal." And I'd already done enough of that at Betsy's. Okay, so I hadn't broken anything, but I had entered.
"Who's going to catch us?" she asked. "You said it yourself—it's like we're the only two people left in the universe."
"Sure, I said that, but it's not like it's actually true. Besides, what do you expect to find?"
"Who knows? Maybe a written confession. He is a writer, after all."
I shook my head. "I don't think so, Dana."
"Yeah. You're right. People don't write letters anymore." She bit her lip, thinking. "How about this. He moved out here to write, didn't he? That means his latest manuscript is sitting right in there, just waiting to be read."
The thought was tempting, and she knew it. "We can't just walk into some guy's house. We can't break the law," I repeated. "You don't need to draw any more attention from the police right now."
"I guess not." She sighed.
We turned to leave.
But before we got more than a step, a loud crack echoed through the clearing, the sound making us both jump. Dana screamed and grabbed my hand.
"Don't move!" a voice yelled.
We both spun toward the sound of it, my heart beating a mile a minute.
Though, it might have actually stopped as I spied the source of the crack—a long, sleek shotgun.
Aimed right at us.
CHAPTER TWELVE
"Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod, he's got a gun!" Dana shrieked beside me.
I managed to tear my eyes from the barrel long enough to see exactly who he was. Gray, unkempt hair sticking up at all angles from his head, unshaven chin full of scraggly whiskers, slim frame draped in what looked like a chain mail muumuu without sleeves. And beady little eyes, focused squarely on us.
Ravensberg.
"Don't move," I whispered to Dana.
"I'm not sure I can," Dana whimpered.
"Put your hands up where I can see them!" Ravensberg demanded of us. While he stood at the edge of the clearing, a good dozen feet away from us, I knew a bullet could traverse that distance in no time.
So we put our hands up.
"W-we're unarmed!" I shouted back, hoping that appealed to him.
"You're trespassing is what you are," he shot back.
Well, he had us there. "Sorry?" I said.
"Believe you me, you will be sorry." He leveled the shotgun again. "Trespass not on his solitude, for he who trespasses shall be turned to stone—"
"Wait!" Dana said. "We, uh, just came for an autograph. She's a huge fan." She gestured toward me with her head.
I nodded vigorously, feeling my hair flop up and down around my shoulders. "Yes. Huge fan. Huge!"
He didn't exactly lower the gun, but his stance softened some.
I made a move to reach into my handbag.
Immediately he swung the shotgun over to me. "Be still, heathen! What're you reaching for? A pernach hidden within that bag?"
Probably not, since I didn't know what a pernach was. Instead, I pulled out his book, nice and easy like. "No weapon. Just my copy of The Final Throne." I held it up.
He lowered the gun a smidge. "You buy that in hardcover?" he asked.
I nodded.
"Full retail price?"
More nodding on my part.
The gun lowered more. "Not many people pay full retail. I appreciate that." He ran a gloved hand down his scraggly gray beard. Without that, he would have been a decent-looking fifty-something. With it, he was a scruffy eighty-something.
"It's my favorite in the series," I said, hoping a little flattery might calm him into letting us put our hands down.
"That's true," Dana agreed. "She's always said that's her favorite. She takes it everywhere."
"I'd come to town hoping to ask for your autograph," I said.
"That's true," Dana said. "It's all she talked about for weeks. She's obsessed with you."
I gave her a little take it easy frown. Now she was making me look like the nutcase.
"Well, you have good taste in literature," he conceded. Then he added, "For a murderer, anyway."
"Murderer?" I said. "I'm not a murderer!"
"No? But she is." He pointed his gun toward Dana. "I saw it on Instagram."
"I told you everyone saw that," Dana said, smacking her forehand with one hand before she remembered it was supposed to be up in a surrender motion.
I was still trying to reconcile the image of the Renaissance Faire reject in front of me with an Instagram account.
"Dana did not kill anyone," I told him. "It's a nasty rumor."
He smirked. "That is exactly what a murderer would say if they had committed the devious deed."
"But she didn't kill him," I said.
"Uh-huh." He was clearly unconvinced.
"Maybe you could put the gun down, and we could discuss this civilly?" Dana suggested.
"I am the picture of civility!" he protested, his chain mail jingling around his ankles. "I am exercising my God given right to defend my person from trespassers and murderers!" His previous calm at my flattery was slipping. He planted his feet wide in a combative stance. The effect would have been comical if he hadn't been pointing a gun at us. Besides the chain mail vest, he had on long gloves that looked a size too big for his bony arms and pointy-toed shoes that looked like they'd been stolen off an elf…and not the Pixnetta variety, but the kind who assisted Santa at the mall, all curled up at the toes.
I cleared my throat, trying a different tactic. "Look, we really only came out here to ask you about Frost."
"Frost? Is this the Jasper Frost you speak of?"
I nodded.
"What about that lying, cheating, snake-hearted, lily-livered, smarmy, no-soul blackheart of a rotten piece of Hollywood trash did you want
to know about?"
Wow. I wondered what he really thought of him.
"I take it you two did not get along?" I surmised. I know, my powers of deduction were envious.
Ravensberg spit on the ground. "He was a scourge on the face of humanity. An oozing, pussing pimple on the face of literature."
"You don't seem too upset he's gone."
More spitting. "I'd dance an Irish jig on his grave given the chance."
"I heard you weren't happy with his rendition of the Lord of the Throne world."
"His rendition?" he shouted. "There are no renditions! It's my world! I created it. With my own mind." He pointed to his gray head, hair standing up like Einstein. "I own that world."
"Only, you signed over the film rights to Frost, correct?" I asked.
He narrowed his eyes, and the gun came back up.
Dana and I both shot our hands back up in the air.
"Don't you dare to talk of rights to me, you Hollywood hooligan!" he warned. "You know what rights I have? The right to defend my creations. To preserve my legacy!"
"Yes. True. Very correct," I agreed, nodding like a bobble doll again. Not that I really agreed with anything the loon was shouting, but I had a strict policy never to argue with a man with a gun.
"Frost should not have thrown you off the set," Dana chimed in. "That was uncalled for."
"Darn right it was!" Ravensberg narrowed his eyes. "Jasper Frost. What a joke. And now thanks to him, an entire generation will associate his dumbed-down drivel with the name J.R. Ravensberg. Fast and Dangerous." He did more spitting, making me glad there was some distance between us. "Pure garbage. Low budget, low class garbage. Do you know what that man did?"
I knew he'd died, and I was starting to wonder if Ravensberg'd had something to do with that. He obviously felt nothing but pure disdain for Frost. And clearly he wasn't above defending himself with the force of a deadly weapon.
But I just shook my head and stayed silent.
"He ruined the integrity of my life's work!" he shouted, startling us. His face reddened, his hand trembling on the shotgun. "Jasper Frost ruined my legacy! I'll become a joke to millions of people because of him!"
Peril in High Heels (High Heels Mysteries Book 11) Page 10
