* * *
At the crash site, Sherri had no trouble recognizing the driver of the car that had slammed into a telephone pole. Edgar Arbuthnot, aka Eliot Underhill, sat on a boulder at the side of the road. From the look of things, he had suffered only bumps and bruises in the accident.
Unfortunately, the man with him was not Martin Eldridge.
“He picked up a hitchhiker,” Mike Jennings said, indicating a scruffy-looking fellow with a backpack.
“He know anything?”
Mike shook his head. “Said they’d barely got up to speed when a deer leapt in front of the car and the driver lost control.”
“Let him go.” She turned her attention to Arbuthnot
He frowned when he saw a second uniformed officer approaching him.
Officially, the police were only looking for him to question him about what he might have seen at the Highland Games. Given Liss’s suspicions, however, Sherri had no intention of letting this man out of her sight. She stopped a foot away from him to study his face. He had a long scratch across his forehead, but it wasn’t deep and had already stopped bleeding.
“How are you feeling, Mr. Arbuthnot? Ready to answer some questions?”
His eyes widened at her use of his real name. “Hey, what’s going on here?”
Mike Jennings came up behind him to catch hold of his arm and haul him to his feet. “Just a few routine—”
“Like hell!” Jerking free, he tried to flee.
Big mistake, Sherri thought.
Mike brought Arbuthnot down with a flying tackle. Arbuthnot reacted by trying to punch the officer in the face. Within seconds, he was in handcuffs and being read his rights.
“Assaulting a police officer is a serious offense,” Sherri informed him. “Let’s go back to the police station and talk about it.”
During the short drive to the municipal building, she indulged in a pleasant fantasy wherein Underhill/Arbuthnot realized it was to his advantage to tell her everything he knew about Eldridge and Angie before Gordon Tandy showed up to take over the interrogation.
* * *
There was still plenty of daylight left as Liss drove out along Owl Road toward the turnoff to Patsy’s camp on Ledge Lake. The sun wouldn’t set until nearly a quarter past eight. Evenings in late July were long and pleasant. This one would be even better than most if she found what she hoped to at the end of her journey.
Her destination was about eight miles from the center of town. Another turn, at the seven-mile mark, put her on a camp road. The shocks on her car didn’t appreciate the rut-filled dirt surface, but the condition of the access road provided an extra layer of privacy for residents.
A small, hand-painted sign containing only Patsy’s last name identified the property. Her driveway plunged toward the lakeshore at a precipitous grade and ended at the closed door of a single-car garage. Rather than attempt that slope or have to back out again, Liss parked on a flat section of grass at the top of the drive and walked down.
She couldn’t help but think how quiet it was when it was still relatively early on a Sunday evening in summer. Weren’t there any people at nearby camps? This was prime swimming, boating, and cookout weather. Kids should still be splashing around in the lake. Families might have to head back to their real homes for the workweek ahead, but surely they’d stretch out the weekend as long as humanly possible. She knew she would.
The distant hum of a boat motor reached her, but other than that she heard only the faint stirrings of leaves above her head and the soft crunch of gravel as she walked down the driveway. No voices. No windows opening or doors slamming. No crying babies or children shouting.
Eerie, she thought, before deciding that the silence had a simple and obvious explanation. Patsy’s neighbors probably rented their camps to people from far away. In that case, it made sense that those folks would leave early on Sunday evening to make the drive back to Boston or New York or wherever.
She reached the detached garage and peered through the small windows in the door. She was so certain she’d see Angie’s car inside that it took her a moment to accept that the bay was empty. No car. No vehicle at all. She spotted shelving at the back and a few boxes piled up to one side, but nothing that would indicate anyone had recently left a vehicle there.
Puzzled, she headed for the steps to the porch, alert for any sign of habitation. If Angie was hiding out because she was afraid of Martin Eldridge, then she wouldn’t dare leave herself without a means of escape. She’d want to keep her car handy in case he found them again and they had to make a quick getaway. So where was it? She supposed it was possible to hide a vehicle in the nearby woods. The trees were thick enough to conceal a Sherman tank, but access would be tricky.
Doubts began to creep in. Had she guessed wrong? Had they never been here at all?
Maybe they’d been here and gone away again. If so, they might have left some clue behind. Liss was not about to leave without checking things out. If she was wrong, she’d apologize to Patsy later.
The rustic building was built of logs, but it was far from being a cabin. It was a generously proportioned house. From the porch, Liss looked through a large, square window into the dining area. Beyond that, she could see the kitchen and on into the living room. The floor plan was open . . . and the camp appeared to be completely uninhabited. Discouraged but not yet ready to give up, she hopped back off the porch and circled the house, heading for the side that faced the lake.
Getting there required her to clamber down a steep set of stone steps. Given the lay of the land, the basement was below ground at the front of the house but above at the back. That level had no windows. Liss presumed it was used for storage. Her guess seemed confirmed by the heavy padlock on the basement door.
A freshly mown lawn ran down to a dock. Beyond, the still, blue water glistened invitingly as the sun sank closer to the horizon. What a great place to take the kids, Liss thought. And how cruel to bring them here and not let them enjoy themselves. If they had been hiding out at Patsy’s camp, Angie would not have been so foolish as to let Beth and Bradley out of the house. She’d have been too afraid that someone would recognize them.
Turning her head to the right and then to the left, Liss considered what she could see of Patsy’s neighbors, and what they could see of her property. Not a darned thing, she concluded. Trees grew thick on both sides of the camp, so densely packed together that she didn’t catch so much as a glimpse of another building.
Squinting, she spotted what appeared to be a narrow path through the trees to her left, but it wound in among them in such a way that anyone approaching Patsy’s place would have to be right on top of the house before it was visible.
All in all, Patsy’s camp was a fine and private place. By rights, Angie and her kids should be staying here. So where were they?
Turning to study the building once more, Liss contemplated the flight of stairs that ran up the outside of the building and ended at a small covered deck. From the ground, she could see that it was equipped with a grill and several chairs.
Might as well be thorough, she decided, and went up. She had no great hope of success when she grasped the handle of the sliding glass door that led into the house. The front door had been locked when she’d tried it.
To her astonishment, this one silently slid open.
For a moment, Liss just stood there, unable to believe her luck. It took a few more seconds to convince herself that she wouldn’t really be doing anything wrong if she went inside and took a look around. It wasn’t as if she was planning to steal anything, and she’d do Patsy a favor by making sure no one else had burgled the place, either.
A stickler for the rules could easily demolish this logic. Liss freely admitted to being a flawed human being, although in this instance she preferred to think of her behavior as “flexible.”
Inside, she found herself standing at the point where the kitchen turned into the living area. What she had not been able to see through the wi
ndow on the porch was that the living area continued on around a corner and took up the entire back of the camp. Comfortable-looking sofas and chairs were grouped so that some faced the large windows with their spectacular view of Ledge Lake and others were aimed toward a flat-screen TV.
Liss’s spirits plummeted. The room was impossibly neat—much too pristine for anyone to have been living at the camp. Despite that, she continued to explore. Halfway across the living area, a door opened into what appeared to be the master bedroom. There were clothes in the closet, but Liss could tell at a glance that they belonged to Patsy. None of them would come close to fitting Angie.
Another door, on the far side of the bedroom, took her through to a bathroom. Again, Liss saw no signs of recent use. Toiletries were all neatly put away. The sink, bathtub, and shower were bone dry, as were the towels.
Discouraged, she very nearly left without checking the remaining rooms, but she was nothing if not thorough. She climbed up a steep staircase and there, under the eaves, discovered two more bedrooms, one on each side. Passing through the right-hand room, she entered a third. It was much smaller, more walk-in closet than extra bedroom, and it appeared to be used for storage. Several stacks of cardboard boxes were piled on the floor. The flaps were tucked in to keep them closed, but none of them were sealed, and there were no labels on any of them. All the while telling herself she shouldn’t snoop, Liss opened the nearest carton.
What she saw made her gasp in surprise. Fumbling, she reached inside. Her fingers touched soft mohair as she lifted a teddy bear free of its wrappings.
Liss couldn’t swear the bear belonged to Angie Hogencamp, but Angie was the only person she knew who collected designer teddy bears. The odds that Patsy shared the same hobby, without ever mentioning it to anyone, were slim to none.
A quick check of nearby boxes confirmed that several of them also contained teddy bears. Her mind whirling, Liss carefully repacked them. This discovery made no sense. All of Angie’s bears were supposed to have been destroyed in the fire.
There was only one way they could have ended up at Patsy’s camp—if Angie had brought them to this location before the fire. But if she’d done that, why weren’t she and her children hidden here, too?
Still pondering this new wrinkle, Liss headed back downstairs. She had reached the bottom step before she simultaneously realized two things. One was that the sun was sinking fast, leaving the once-bright room in twilight shadow. The other was that she was no longer alone in the house.
Someone stood just inside the door to the deck. His back was to her as he closed it. The latch engaged with an ominous click.
Her heart in her throat, one hand fumbling for the cell phone in her pocket, Liss held her breath. She nearly collapsed with relief when the intruder turned to face her. “Boxer! What are you doing here?”
“Is she here? Did you find Beth?”
“No sign of her. And we both need to leave. Now.”
Liss was painfully aware that she’d set a very bad example for her young cousin. It had been wrong of her to waltz into Patsy’s camp and snoop around without permission. That was not behavior she wanted Boxer to imitate.
But Boxer wasn’t moving. “Nothing? You sounded so sure on the phone.”
It took a moment for the penny to drop. “Ah,” she said. “I take it you listened to the message I left for Margaret?”
“I was in her apartment when you called. I agreed to feed and walk the dogs this afternoon. I got outside as fast as I could, but I was too late to catch you before you drove away.” Sounding aggrieved, he added, “I had to go all the way home to get my car before I could follow you out here.”
Liss knew that Boxer’s fears for Beth’s safety were as great as, if not greater than, hers for Angie’s. He’d probably run the whole way home, at least a mile, and then he’d have had to coax that old clunker of his into starting.
“How did you know how to find this place?” she asked, remembering that although she’d said where she was going, she hadn’t bothered to leave directions. She’d assumed that Margaret would already know where Patsy’s camp was located.
“Beth pointed it out to me once. She said she’d come along a time or two when her mother was visiting Patsy. I’d forgotten all about it until you left word that this was where you were headed and that you thought Angie was here.”
While they talked, they made their way back to the grassy area where Liss had parked. Boxer had pulled in right next to her. Liss looked around, noting that here, too, the trees formed a nearly impenetrable barrier. They weren’t all that far from civilization. In fact, she was pretty sure they were still in the town, if not the village, of Moosetookalook. But their surroundings made the location seem far more remote than it really was. It would be easy to believe that there wasn’t another human being within the sound of their voices.
She was about to say something to that effect to Boxer when she caught sight of the look of astonishment on his face. He was staring at something behind her. Liss closed her mouth with an audible snap as her cousin pushed past her. She turned to find him running full tilt toward a slender figure standing at the tree line.
“Beth,” Liss whispered.
Then she was running, too.
Chapter Seventeen
“We’ve been staying at the camp next door, just in case someone came looking for us at Patsy’s place,” Beth explained. “Her neighbor isn’t using his camp until mid-August and asked Patsy to look after it for him until then.”
Liss followed the two young people along another of the winding, narrow paths through the trees. This one led to Angie’s real hiding place. Scarcely able to believe that her hunch had been right—well, almost right—Liss murmured, “You had time to plan.”
Beth looked over her shoulder, not an easy trick when Boxer had his arm slung over them both and didn’t seem inclined to loosen his grip. “Mom spotted Martin Eldridge the minute he set foot in Moosetookalook.” She sounded proud of that fact.
That explained, Liss supposed, how they’d been able to take along a few prized personal possessions when they went into hiding. She wondered what else Angie had stored at Patsy’s besides the teddy bear collection. Photo albums, she supposed. Things that were irreplaceable. Had she expected Eldridge to destroy her home?
A sudden thought stopped her in her tracks. She was almost afraid to ask. “Uh, Beth?”
Both Beth and Boxer turned to face her.
“Do you know . . . that is . . . did someone tell you about the fire?”
There was still enough daylight to see the expectant look on Beth’s face morph into a mask of sadness. “I know. It’s all gone.” Her grip on Boxer’s arm tightened enough to make him wince. “I know about Kent, too.” She looked up into Boxer’s face, her eyes pleading with him to give her some good news. “Is he doing better?”
“I guess so,” Boxer mumbled. “I can call Amie.”
“No,” Liss cautioned him. “Not yet.”
He glared at her. “I’m not going to give anything away.”
“Not intentionally, but it’s best you don’t take any chances. Wait until you’ve settled a bit.”
Acknowledging her point, he gave her a curt nod, oddly mature for a young man who was only seventeen. He and Beth started walking again, their feet making soft shushing noises on the pine needles and mulch that carpeted the path.
“Has Patsy been here?” Liss asked.
Beth shook her head but didn’t look behind her again. “Too dangerous, she said. She made sure we had enough groceries for a couple of weeks and then left us on our own. If we have to stay longer, she’ll bring stuff to her place for us to pick up.”
“Then how is it you’re up on the news from town?”
“We have Wi-Fi. Plus Patsy’s been phoning with regular updates. She bought one of those cheap cell phones, the ones where you buy as many minutes as you need in advance, and gave it to Mom so we could stay in touch.”
The path ended abruptly i
n a clearing that contained a camp that was very nearly the twin of Patsy’s place. The biggest difference was the worried-looking woman standing on the deck, her eyes fixed on the three people who had just emerged from the trees.
Angie’s troubled expression remained in place even after she recognized Liss and Boxer. “Come inside,” she called, gesturing for them to hurry. She stared past them at the trees, as if she expected Martin Eldridge to pop up at any moment.
Liss understood her concern. If they could find her, she must fear that someone else might, too.
“It’s all right,” Liss reassured her friend, giving her an impulsive hug. “We’d never have known where you were if Beth hadn’t come out of hiding. Boxer and I would have left, convinced that you were long gone.”
“Oh, Beth,” Angie whispered, sending her daughter an exasperated look.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” Beth said, “but you know we can trust Boxer and Liss to keep our secret.” She was still wrapped tight in Boxer’s arms.
Angie sighed. “It’s been hard on you, sweetheart. I know.”
“I’m the one who insisted on looking for her,” Boxer said. “I’m sorry if that upsets you.”
Angie sent a rueful glance in Liss’s direction. “I doubt you deserve all the blame.”
“Let’s call it credit,” Liss said in a dry voice. “Anyway, I came to bring you good news. When I talked to Sherri a little while ago, she was on her way to arrest Martin Eldridge and the PI he hired to find you.”
The elation Liss had expected to see was conspicuously absent. Angie said only, “You’d better come in and sit down.”
The living area was almost identical to the one in Patsy’s camp. Young Bradley Hogencamp sat on the floor in front of the TV, so engrossed in a video game that he didn’t even look up when they entered.
“Scenic vista,” Angie said, gesturing toward the windows. “At least it is by daylight. If we were renting this place, we’d be paying a premium for the lakefront property and the view.”
Kilt at the Highland Games Page 21
