“We are. Unless you want me to try and zap us up there?”
He gasped. “You can do that?”
“It was a joke, but yep, I can. Though, like I said last night, my magic is fluky sometimes. The last time I tried to zap myself somewhere, I ended up in Istanbul. I think it was Istanbul. I dunno. I just know it was somewhere really hot. I do remember that.”
Hobbs gasped again, and this time he wasn’t joking. I know that for sure, because his beautiful blue eyes grew round as saucers. “Really?”
“Yeah. Really.”
“You’ve been to Istanbul?” he asked, his voice going squeaky with disbelief, making me laugh.
I made a face. “You’d think the idea I zapped myself somewhere far, far away would hold more appeal than the actual location.”
“But it’s Istanbul,” he said, his voice ringing with excitement. “I mean, how cool is that?”
I made a face. “It’s not nearly as exciting as it sounds. It’s hot and sticky and what I’m really trying to stress here is, my magic can be unpredictable—especially when I’m tense. That should be your takeaway. You don’t want to end up in the outer regions of Nowhereland, do you?”
But he wasn’t listening. “Can you zap us to Aruba?”
“Are you listening to me? When we figure this out, we’re gonna have a long talk about what my magic can be used for. Until then, I’m going to zap you to Siberia with nothing but a pair of shorts and T-shirt if you don’t knock it off, buddy. Now, c’mon, it’s getting dark.”
Gosh, I sounded like Atti, lecturing Hobbs on the pitfalls of using my magic for personal gain.
I dragged Hobbs up the hill toward the huts, sitting among the white landscape of empty hills. I loved sunset when the snow was on the ground and the pine trees hugged you close with their ice-dipped limbs.
The sky, bruised purple and white, hung low over our heads. So low, it felt like you could reach up and poke a puffy cloud. The ocean crashed in the distance and seagulls flew overhead, and in this moment, I couldn’t imagine ever living anywhere else.
I loved New York and my time there, but nothing beat Marshmallow Hollow.
By the time we reached the top and counted out four huts from the left, the number of huts Marcelle said to count to get to Joey’s favorite one, we were both breathless.
Maybe breathless is the wrong word. Gasping for air is probably a better picture. Regardless, I couldn’t walk another inch, my legs felt like soft butter and, once more, I chastised myself for being in such bad shape. I flopped down on the snow. I didn’t even care that I was going to get my jeans all wet.
“Why did we walk this again instead of taking a lift?” Hobbs asked as he flopped down next to me.
“Good cardio, and the lifts aren’t running anyway,” I managed to huff, sitting up on my elbows, only to sink farther into the deep snow.
He blew out a breath, a puff of condensation coming from his lips. “It’s cold.”
“And the sun’s going down. What time is it anyway?”
It had to be close to four in the afternoon. Maine winter nights start early and get colder as they go.
He pulled his phone from his jacket pocket and sat up. “Almost four. Sun sets so early these days. We’d better get in and get out before it gets too dark.”
I pushed myself off the ground with great reluctance. “Let’s get ’er done so we can get you some hot chocolate and marshmallows, Cowboy.”
We finished the last couple of hundred feet to the hut with raspy gasps for air. Hobbs reached for the handle of the quaint hut, resembling a tiny one-room chalet with its A-frame roof, white cedar shingles, and red door with a bedraggled Christmas wreath tacked on its surface.
As he went to pull it open, the door swung wide with such force, taking us both by such surprise, it knocked him back into me with a dull thud.
We both crashed to the ground, the hard-packed snow doing anything but softening the blow.
“Hey!” I yelped, as Hobbs’s enormous body slammed on top of mine in a crunch of ski jackets and tangled limbs.
As we scrambled to pick ourselves up, I got a quick glimpse of someone running away, carrying something under their arm as though it was a football, sprinting into the thicket of trees surrounding the hill.
Hobbs was up and on his feet in surprisingly quick time, chasing after the person who’d just barreled into us. He thundered through the deep snow after whoever it was, yelling for them to stop.
I began to get nervous when things suddenly went quiet and I couldn’t hear Hobbs’s boots pounding the snow anymore.
“Hobbs? Hobbs, you okay?” I yelled out, my heart racing.
He burst out of the trees with a grunt and something in his hand.
I did the best I could to get to him as fast as my legs would let me, cursing the lack of exercise in my life as my thigh muscles burned and begged for me to stop.
When I managed to make it to him, his breaths came raggedly. “You okay?”
“I’m fine. It just knocked the wind out of me. How ’bout you? You okay?”
“Need—to—exercise—more—” he gasped, holding out an item to me.
I squinted at it in the waning daylight. “What is this…?”
Hobbs put his hands on his knees as I took the item from him. Panting and wheezing for air, he said, “He dropped it.”
I held it up. It was an ornament.
A purple Christmas ornament.
Chapter 9
“Did you get a look at him?”
Hobbs shook his head as we headed back down the hill after he’d caught his breath. “I got a look at the back of him just as he dropped the ornament and shot off into the woods. He was in a dark hoodie—average height, average size, black ski boots—and it looked like he was carrying a box of some kind. But that’s it. He was like a lightning bolt. I, on the other hand, was not. Too much butt in chair these days.”
I paused for a second. Where had I heard that phrase about butts before? I was sure it referred to something other than exercise, but I couldn’t remember what.
“What’s wrong?”
I decided now wasn’t the time to complicate things. I had to stick to the task at hand. “Nothing. Back to the guy who just knocked us down. You do think it was a man, don’t you?”
“I do. Not a weak man, either. He burst out of that door like he was the Hulk. Knocked me over like I don’t weigh two hundred and twenty-eight pounds.”
I patted his flat belly. “Of solid muscle, Big Boy.”
He laughed. “Of too many marshmallows and Christmas goodies. Anyway, he knocked me over like I was some lightweight, and we both know I’m not. Strong. Whoever he was, he was very strong.”
“I put in a call to Stiles. Maybe they can get footprints or something from the impressions of his boots in the snow?”
“But what would they match them to? There were no footprints last night. Just a hacked-up tree and a torn, bloody shirt.”
As we reached the bottom of the hill, I remembered the shirt. “Speaking of shirts, I wonder if they’ve gotten DNA or something from it yet? Surely the killer left something behind. Hair, skin, maybe? And off the trunk of the tree. There was hair there, too.”
Hobbs nodded. “Maybe. I wanna know what he was looking for in the hut. Why was whatever he had so important? Why would he want to get his hands on the ornament?”
I held it up, trying not to touch it too much in case any fingerprints could be pulled from it, and looked at it in the rapidly deteriorating daylight. It wasn’t anything special. A round, thread-wrapped ball in deep purple with a white glittery bow. I didn’t doubt it was for whoever Sabrina was, but who was she, where was she…and what did she want Joey to erase?
“I think the bigger question is, why was Joey keeping things in the hut? It’s obvious he used it as a hiding place, judging by the floorboards the thug pulled up to get to that box.”
We’d done a quick search of the hut and it wasn’t anything special. There was
a small table with a battery-operated Santa who danced in the center, a small fridge with water and a chair.
But the floorboards in the corner had clearly been pried upward. Yet, there was nothing under them but a hole where the box had obviously been wedged.
Hobbs rubbed his hands together as we hit the front of the lodge. “Maybe he was afraid to keep it in his room? It’s tight quarters in the bunkhouse. Maybe he was worried someone would find it.”
“But what’s in that box? What didn’t he want anyone to find? Was it even Joey’s box to begin with? Maybe it’s just a box with a purple ornament.”
“Which just happens to be the woman in your vision’s favorite color. Not to mention, Joey promised Sabrina a purple ornament. And lastly, who runs away like that if they’re not doing something suspish?” Hobbs pointed out.
My little town was falling apart at the seams these days and it made me stop and wonder. “What the heck is going on in Marshmallow Hollow?”
He rubbed his temples. “The million-dollar question of the day. Look, I’m going to go grab the Jeep. It’s almost dinnertime and we need to refuel. I need to refuel. Let’s grab something to eat and go over what we have.”
I nodded in agreement. I’d only had soup for lunch and it wasn’t sticking with me very well. I was hungry, too. “Okay, but look,” I said, pointing to the window, “there’s Saul. While you grab the car, I’m going to hit him up with a couple of questions.”
Hobbs planted a kiss on my lips. “Don’t learn anything too interesting without me.”
I saluted him. “Aye-aye, Cowboy. See you in a minute.”
Making my way inside the lodge, letting the warmth of the big fireplace seep into my chilled bones, I waved to Saul, who looked harried and upset.
A fit, really good-looking man in brown slacks and a red polo shirt paced back and forth in front of the desk, and he looked pretty mad.
Approaching Saul, I put a hand on his arm. “What’s going on, Saul?”
He held up what looked like a tiny nanny cam. “This!” he bellowed, his normally red face now cherry red. “My guest, Mr. Talbot here, found it in his bathroom!”
My mouth fell open. “Where exactly did he find it?”
“In the arrangement of fake poinsettias on the bathroom sink. His wife accidentally knocked it over and this fell out,” Saul spat.
“I want my money back, Sanderson, and you’d better believe whoever’s on the other end of that camera’s going to pay—big time. Count on it!” Mr. Talbot virtually growled, his lean, handsome face red with anger.
So now, on top of everything else, the lodge had a peeping Tom?
What was happening?
Saul immediately began apologizing to Mr. Talbot, his Maine accent growing thicker. “My deepest apologies, Mr. Talbot, and to Mrs. Talbot, too. Of course I’ll comp you the room and all your meals.”
Poor Saul. He looked beside himself, and who wouldn’t? First his employee is murdered during one of the busiest times of the year, and then a nanny cam is found in one of his rooms? Bad for business.
“You’d better, and I want another room, right now! I can’t get a flight out of this godforsaken fairytale town until the end of the week, but I’m not staying in a room that reminds my wife she’s been spied on!” Mr. Talbot shouted, the veins in his lean neck sticking out before he stomped off, his wide feet encased in shiny black shoes, his face a mask of fury.
“Oh, Saul,” I sympathized. “How can I help?”
Leaning forward on the counter, he put his head in his hands. “I don’t understand what’s happening around here. First that poor kid Joey and now this. I gotta call the police and report it.”
Saul was a great guy, he worked hard to make everyone’s experience at the lodge a good one. My heart hurt for him. “Let’s call Stiles and report this, yes? I’ll do it.”
“Thanks, kiddo. That’d be a big help. As you can see, I got my hands full today.” He spread his hands to show me the chaos of the lobby.
As I called Stiles, I asked, “Has anything like this ever happened before, Saul?”
He lifted his burly shoulders as he pulled off his Santa hat, letting it drop to the shiny countertop. “Not that I know of. Meaning, if someone put a camera in a room, no one’s ever found one. It was just lucky that Mrs. Talbot accidentally knocked over that arrangement and we found it. Now I’m gonna have to sweep all the rooms.”
His statement made me wonder a multitude of things. First, lots of mini-cams had WiFi these days, along with apps. Could we locate the mini-cam owner if we connected it to a WiFi user? Could that even be done?
Second, if the cam didn’t have WiFi, didn’t someone have to collect the camera to watch the footage? I didn’t understand the logistics of something like that at all.
I had someone who dealt with the security of our website and cameras at Just Claus for that reason—because tech wasn’t my specialty. It wasn’t even a little something I understood. But I was going to research it and find out.
A chill raced up my spine at the thought that someone was getting their kicks watching unsuspecting people bathe.
I left a message for Stiles, but it wasn’t necessary. He came strolling into the lobby just as I was hanging up.
“Never a dull moment, huh, Kitten?” Stiles said, his face grim.
“I was just leaving you a message. It’s like you read my mind.”
“He read mine,” Hobbs said, coming up behind Stiles. “I called to tell him about the incident at the ski hut.”
Stiles’s eyes were bleary with dark shadows under them. “Man, what the heck is happening in Marshmallow Hollow?” he asked me wearily.
I patted his arm. “I was just wondering the same thing. Listen, are you here to look into the thing that happened out on the hill?”
“Yep.”
I hated to do it, because I felt as though I was piling on, but it had to be done. “Well, there’s something else now, too.”
I explained to both he and Hobbs about the camera in the Talbots’ room.
With a ragged sigh, Stiles radioed back to the station to send more people out to help him so he could investigate the Talbots’ room.
“Do you mind if I shadow you?” I asked in a whisper. “Maybe I can pick something up?”
He took hold of my arm and pulled me to a corner of the lobby. “Are you thinking Joey’s murder is related to this?”
I shrugged, pulling off my jacket and draping it over my arm. “I don’t know, but even if it isn’t, maybe I can catch at least one jerkface. That’s something, right?”
“Right. Just keep a low profile. I don’t know where Ansel is, and I don’t need him on my back when I can’t give him the real explanation.”
“Lead the way.”
“I’ll be lookout,” Hobbs offered. “If Ansel shows up, I’ll text a 9-1-1.”
I smiled at this handsome man who’d mostly accepted all the nutty things happening around him that had to do with my life without so much as a crossed eye.
I felt awful for thinking so many horrible things about whoever that woman was, having coffee with him. I was glad I hadn’t rushed to judgement in the heat of the moment.
I gave him a kiss and patted his hard chest. “I like you, Tubbs. You’re the best sidekick a girl could ever have.”
“Sidekick, huh? Does that make you lead investigator?” he teased.
“Just for the moment. I’ll hand off the magnifying glass and notepad when I come back. We’ll take turns being the big dog.”
He laughed. “Go get ’em, tiger.”
I wagged my fingers over my shoulder and ran after Stiles, who was getting the key card from Saul.
We headed upstairs via the long staircase, following the swirling greenery with red bows tacked on it and twinkling lights draped along the walnut bannister.
We made our way down the hallway that led to the rooms, our footsteps hushed on the patterned carpet. Stopping at the wood-stained door where Mr. Talbot’s wife had f
ound the camera, my stomach began to revolt.
I’m not sure why, but nausea assaulted my gut and my throat clogged with bile. The visceral reaction was odd enough that even Stiles noticed.
“You okay, Kitten? You look kinda green around the gills.”
Swallowing back the acrid taste in my throat, I nodded. “I’m good. Let’s do this.”
Before I hurl my insides on the floor.
But when he swung the door open, revealing the warmly decorated room with a four-poster bed, a cheerful red ticking quilt and a fluffy white marabou throw blanket at the end, my cheeks went hot.
I had to grab at the wall to keep from falling over on my face.
An overwhelming sense of doom, of despair, of complete humiliation crept into my heart, prickling along my skin until the emotions felt like entities crawling along my arms.
“Kitten?”
Taking deep breaths, I ignored Stiles without meaning to and forced myself to walk fully into the room, until I was at the end of the king-size bed.
My fingers reached out to touch the marabou throw, the soft, fuzzy material soothing me as I stroked it and stared at the headboard.
A vision of the burgundy-haired woman flashed before my eyes. I heard her laughter. I was consumed with the remembered sound of her cries, now embedded in my ears.
Stiles put his hands on my shoulders. “Hal? Honey? You okay? What’s happening?”
I blinked, realizing tears were falling down my face. Swiping at them, I shook my head. “Nothing’s okay,” I mumbled.
He physically turned me around. “What?”
I couldn’t explain the sense of helplessness I felt, the notion that it was too much effort to take another breath, but the words, “Bad things happened in this room,” fell out of my mouth before I could stop them.
Chapter 10
Stiles’s face came into my line of vision as I came back from wherever I’d been.
“Kitten? You okay? Did you have a vision?”
I shook free of the image in my head, pressing a hand to my temple as though it would wipe away the picture of the woman with the burgundy hair.
Carnage in a Pear Tree Page 8
