by Linda Lovely
“A spider’s crawling down my back,” I whined. “Get it off me. Now.” I turned my back and lifted my shirt. “Brush it off, pleeeese.”
Like a blind man, my cousin groped in the darkness. Holding my shoulder with one hand, he roughly flicked the palm of his other hand back and forth against my back like a stiff broom.
“You got him. Thank God. Wish I could see the hairy monster to squash him.”
“What a wimp,” Ross teased. “And you think women ought to be in combat.”
Had Ross been visible, I’d have slugged him. Debate about the potential combat role of women was a given when I visited the Carr household. I strongly suspected Ed and Woods, my Air Force alumni cousins, raised my hackles for pure sport.
“Don’t step on me,” Ross said. “I’m on my knees looking for the danged flashlight. Got it.” A series of clicks told me the flashlight had quit working.
“Well, fearless leader,” I replied. “Now you get to wear those nifty night goggles.”
I freed the goggles from around my neck and fumbled them to Ross. In return, he shoved the defunct flashlight into my hands.
“Still want to climb to the top?” Ross asked.
I shrugged, then realized he couldn’t see the gesture. “We’re halfway. No sense turning back. Once we get to the top, the exit is a no-tricks straightaway, right?”
“Right. Oooh, this is cool.” Ross said. “I really can see. Grab the back of my belt. I’ll tell you what’s ahead so you’re ready. Oh, boy. We’re at the start of the rolling floor section. Ready?”
“Go for it.” I hooked my fingers through his belt. “Your belt’s secure, right? I’d hate to de-pants you.”
Three steps on the heaving floorboards and I lurched left, throwing Ross off balance. “I need to let go. If I don’t, I’ll fall on my keister and pull you down with me. Just tell me if I should go straight or turn.”
“Straight,” Ross instructed.
My heart pitty-patted as I stumbled along in the rolling blackness. The beads of sweat on my forehead now felt like icicles. Once my feet returned to solid—though tilted—flooring, my whole body relaxed.
“Wow, is this cool,” Ross declared. “Amazing the detail these goggles pick up, even though the color’s leached out. Everything’s tinged a grayish green. I feel like I’m on a deep-sea dive.”
“Shhh.” I found Ross’s shirt and tugged ferociously. “I heard something.”
We stood stock-still. Creaks and groans, the protest of aged wood, echoed in the dark.
“Just the Tipsy House settling,” Ross said. “The building’s older than we are. It’s supposed to creak.”
An out-of-place noise sounded. A footfall. Was it behind us? It sounded close by.
“Did you hear that? Someone’s here,” I whispered. “Look behind us. Can you see anyone?”
“Not a soul,” Ross answered in a conversational voice. After my whisper, his volume boomed. “That spider spooked you. What did we say when we were kids? ‘There’s nobody here but Hazel, and she’s nuts.’”
Maybe my imagination had run wild. Not the first time. Guilt at work? The minute we entered the attraction, my conscience telegraphed second thoughts about recovering Jake’s package without Darlene’s permission.
I tilted my face up and sucked in cool air. Stars floated where the stairway opened to the roof. Moonlight filtered into the opening. Ross lowered his goggles. An invigorating lake breeze wicked away my sweat and paranoia.
Though a few structures intervened, our rooftop perch revealed dancing moonlight on a sliver of West Okoboji. In the foreground, the undulating roller coaster with its crisscrossed scaffolding supports looked like a giant Tinker toy.
I scanned the roof and saw the elbow where a gutter once emptied into the downspout. The actual gutter was gone. Probably being replaced. Had Jake’s package been hauled away with the trash?
I groped inside the elbow. “Do you see anything else that could be considered a gutter?”
Ross walked around the perimeter, stopped to admire the silhouette of his museum and remarked how landscape lights might jazz up its nighttime façade.
Eureka. My fingers closed on a slick piece of plastic. I yanked. A sealed sandwich bag with paper inside. I hoped it wasn’t some lazy worker’s lunch remains. Not enough light to scrutinize my Cracker Jacks prize. The appraisal would have to wait until we returned to electrified civilization.
“Any luck?” Ross’s question ended in a loud “ughh.”
My cousin sank to his knees. A man in a dark ski mask stood over Ross, preparing to deliver another blow. I screamed to distract him.
“Hey, you don’t want him.” I brandished my sandwich baggie on high. “You want this!”
His bludgeoning arm dropped to his side. Ross teetered on his knees.
What now? Tae Bo skills or no, the guy outweighed me by seventy pounds or more, had at least one weapon and sported his own night-vision goggles.
If I survived, I’d tell my friend Steve the night-vision market looks profitable.
The guy could definitely out-see me, and the breeze would carry the pepper spray in my pocket right back into my face. I’d given Ross my stun gun. The defunct flashlight in my hand wasn’t much of a weapon.
Fight or flee? No choice. I had to run so the thug would follow and let Ross be. But where? The hulking ape stood between me and the rooftop exit. The downspout dangling from rusty rivets would never support my weight.
Shit, one choice left—not an appealing one to a person who wants a safety harness to climb on a stepstool. If I had to choose between spiders and heights, spiders would win fuzzy feet down.
Quit stalling. If you don’t go, he’ll kill Ross.
Shadow man stomped my way. I glanced toward the roller coaster, calculated the distance to the vee of the nearest crisscrossed support. No more than four feet. Maybe less. I’d jumped farther in basic training. In sunny daytime. Without a stalker.
I tried to pocket the baggie. No dice. I’d turned my pocket inside out when I’d yanked it free. I shoved the plastic between my teeth and clamped down. Okay, two hands free.
While a quick prayer seemed apropos, all that came to mind was “now I lay me down to sleep…” I settled for “Lord help me,” threw the flashlight at the Darth Vader look-alike, and took a running leap.
Womp. My stomach hit the beams full-force. My lungs emptied at impact. I’d almost overshot my target. My butt hung over the vee on the Tipsy House side of the structure, my chest and arms dangled on the opposite side. Stunned I lay bent in half like a rag doll. Move.
I hugged a section of the beam with both hands, pulled my behind through the opening. I’m no scrawny Barbie doll, and every ounce of my frame exerted a pull toward the too-distant earth.
Calm…down…breathe…deep.
Panic subsided as survival instincts kicked in. I wrapped my legs around a support beam like a wrestler determined to squeeze his opponent senseless. A desire to avoid the two-story drop provided a strong incentive. Secure for the moment I spared a look at the Tipsy House.
The night sky outlined my bullyboy pursuer. He stood near the edge of the roof, rocking to and fro. He seemed undecided about making the leap. Maybe he wouldn’t follow. His arm straightened. A bright light exploded. Splinters grazed my cheek.
I screamed, and the baggie fell. Damn.
Not my immediate worry. My problem was the bad guy’s decision to shoot now and chase later. Thank God, the heavy beams offered some protection. I wiggled to put as much of my flesh as possible behind solid wood.
Another gunshot pinged. A sparkler-like display bloomed beside my head. The bullet had hit one of the metal bolts holding the roller coaster supports together. Holy crap. My adrenaline zoomed into overdrive. I grunted and kicked. My body channeled decades-old obstacle-course training.
I shinnied monkey-like down the rough beams and dropped to the ground. My sides ached from breathing like an overworked bellows.
The man’
s feet pounded down the Tipsy House stairs. Fee, fi, fo, fum. What now? Maybe I could outrun the guy, but I couldn’t outrun a bullet. I needed a weapon or a place to hide. I wanted to find the blasted dropped baggie, too, but searching was hopeless in the inky darkness. Later—if there was a later.
I spotted a construction dumpster, grabbed its lip and levered myself inside. I gritted my teeth waiting for a bevy of rusty nails to puncture my body. I settled intact. If he looked in, I was dead. He had to be outside by now. On the prowl.
I held my breath as long as I could stand it. Then took a shallow, measured breath. A flashlight roved the space above my head.
“Captain Ross, is that you? Are you okay?”
The security guard. Jerry? I had to warn him, even if it gave away my location.
“Jerry, get down. There’s a nut out there with a gun. He whacked Ross on the head. He’s close by.”
“Whoever he was, he’s gone. He snatched something off the ground and hightailed it toward the exit when he saw me. When I heard gunshots, I came lickity-split.”
“Thank God,” I said.
Jerry helped me clamber out of a nest of painters’ debris. I felt woozy and lightheaded and smelled of mineral spirits.
“Glad he ran,” I added. “He must have figured you were armed. Let’s get Ross.”
SIXTEEN
Ross shambled out of The Tipsy House, holding a hand to the back of his head.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“I think so. But I’m going to have one heck of a knot.”
I turned to Jerry. “Could you loan me your flashlight and stay with Ross a second? I’ll be right back.”
A quick search of the area where the baggie fell to the ground turned up nada. I’d lost it. Dammit. At least Ross and I were alive to fight another day.
As I returned, I heard Jerry talking into his radio phone. “Yes, Sheriff.”
Uh-oh. I hadn’t thought ahead to cops. Nobody—Darlene, Weaver or the general—would want me blabbing to the local constabulary about messages from the beyond.
Jerry clipped his radio back on his belt. “Told the sheriff we’d wait for him down by the pier where we can sit a spell,” he said.
“Not a good idea. I need to drive Ross to the emergency room and get him checked out.”
“Sheriff Delaney won’t be happy if you leave,” Jerry said.
“He’ll understand,” I lied. “Tell him what happened. We surprised a park intruder who thwonked Ross upside the head and took a couple of pot shots at me before he fled on foot.” I seized Ross’s arm and gently propelled him toward the car. “Oh, tell Delaney the guy was dressed in black and had a husky build. I’d put him at six-three, six-four. Didn’t get a look at his face.”
A tightly-edited version of the truth. It simply left out the good parts—The Tipsy House, the guy’s ski mask and night goggles, the missing sandwich baggie with its note from the grave, and the fact that the thug had surprised us, not the reverse.
It’s hard to surprise a stalker. But I could swear no one had followed us. How did he find us?
Jerry grumbled that we were leaving him in the lurch, but his fondness for Ross won out. He didn’t want to be responsible for any delay in getting Ross a medical once-over. While I squabbled with Jerry, Ross tenderly fingered the base of his skull. He didn’t utter a word.
“Tell the sheriff we’ll call in the morning,” I added, “if we think of anything to add.”
Ross kept his silence until I started the car and pointed it toward Dickinson County Memorial Hospital.
“Guess I should thank you for jumping off a building to distract my tormentor. I saw you wave something at him. Worked like a red cape with a bull. So was it Jake’s package? Do you have it?”
I shook my head. Sheepishly, I admitted dropping the sandwich bag in my freefall. “Jerry saw the thug pick something up before he ran off,” I finished. “Whatever was in that baggie is gone.”
“Well that sucks.” Ross moaned. “My head feels like it’s going to explode. Delaney will be madder than a pissed-off hornet when he finds out what happened. And I have to live here.”
At the hospital, the ER doctor, who knew the captain well, pronounced him fit. “Just a nasty bump on the noggin’—no need to give you a free bunk tonight.” After eyeballing the cuts and scrapes I’d sustained communing with life-size Tinker toys, he engaged in a little torture by iodine.
“You two play nice now,” the doc joked. We’d given him a lame stepped-on-a-shoelace account of our injuries.
As we walked down the hospital corridor, Ross unclipped the cell phone on his belt. “I have to phone Eunice. Let her know we’re en route. She’s sure to be fretting.”
I grabbed his wrist. “Let me make one call first. You may need to tell Eunice we’ll be a bit longer.”
I pawed through my purse for the card with Weaver’s cell phone number. Ross rolled his eyes, but lent me his phone. Though I’d promised Darlene I wouldn’t talk to Weaver until she’d retrieved Jake’s package, that ship had sailed. Now more than ever, Darlene needed help, and I planned to get it for her whether she liked it or not. I didn’t care if she told me to go to hell.
The FBI agent answered with a groggy, “Hello.” Before I finished my spiel, her voice became celery crisp. “I want to talk to you and Darlene—now. I mean this minute. I can’t believe you did something so stupid. Head over to Darlene’s and bring your cousin. Don’t call Darlene. We have FBI agents on the gate. I’ll tell them to expect you. I’ll probably beat you there.”
Ross phoned Eunice and told her we were fine but had to attend an impromptu FBI meeting. My cousin counseled his wife not to worry—fat chance—and promised full details once he got home. He also prepped Eunice to fabricate a wholesome tale should May phone looking for me. I didn’t want to wake Aunt May just to tell her not to worry. A call like that was sure to backfire, setting off two-alarm anxiety. If my aunt did happen to discover me missing, we reasoned she’d dial Ross’s cell or his home phone first.
Our telethon complete, we drove to the Olsen estate with Ross keeping a lookout for any suspicious vehicles following us. Nighttime traffic proved nonexistent. Spirit Lake’s a family resort with little in the way of titillating wee hours entertainment. The streets tend to remain deserted until four or five a.m. when early-rising fishermen limber up their rusty pick-ups and rattle to the nearest piers.
Weaver waited at the gate. Her scowl communicated an extra foul mood. She motioned to the guards, then climbed in the back seat of our car. The gates creaked open.
Neither of the men on duty wore the spiffy Thrasos International uniform—a loden green jacket with a gold key embroidered on the breast pocket. “Are all the Thrasos security guards gone?” I asked.
“Darlene fired Thrasos,” Weaver answered. “When Hamilton told her she didn’t have the authority, she called the sheriff. Said she wanted everyone off her property, including Kyle and his family, and she expected the sheriff’s department to back her up.”
“Bet that went over well.”
Weaver’s lips curved up in a brief smile. “Five minutes later, Sheriff Delaney got a call from Kyle. Guess Hamilton thought Jake’s son could run interference. Kyle gave the sheriff an earful about his right to protect his house and family from his murdering stepmother. The sheriff decided the law was on Darlene’s side. The only entrance to the compound runs through land owned solely by Jake. The sheriff said he figured it belonged to the widow until he was notified otherwise.”
“So it’s a Mexican standoff?”
“Delaney told Kyle he had three options. Move to a hotel. Head back to Omaha. Or build an access road on his slice of property. Heaven knows there may be a road-building crew here before sun-up. Delaney also asked the FBI for help. Said he didn’t have more men to spare and he refused to bear the responsibility if someone else was murdered. I can justify security here, at least until the funeral.”
Realizing my questions had sidetracked her, We
aver stared daggers at me. “I’m almost as thrilled with you as Kyle is with his stepmother. What the hell were you thinking? You were a colonel. Army Intelligence, my ass. I thought you had more sense.”
“Think again,” my cousin muttered sotto voice.
It would take a while to return to Ross’s good graces. With Weaver, it could take a century.
Weaver knocked repeatedly before Darlene ushered the three of us in. She’d thrown a robe over silk pajamas and hadn’t bothered with slippers. Despite her dress, she looked wide-awake and hyper. “What the hell is going on? It’s two in the morning.”
Darlene led us to the kitchen where she set coffee mugs on the butcher-block table. She uncorked a bottle of brandy and offered chasers for the hot brew. “Julie’s still asleep. Does she need to be here? Lord knows she can use some rest.”
“Let her sleep,” Weaver replied. “From the gist of Marley’s tale, I only need to scream at you two.”
I recounted the evening’s escapades. When I explained how my go-it-alone search-and-seizure idiocy had lost information that might have identified the killer, Darlene’s face turned crimson.
“How could you?” she demanded.
Weaver ignored the outburst. Her scorn encompassed Darlene as well as me. “Why didn’t one of you call when you found Jake’s note? That’s evidence. Following Jake’s clue was my job, not yours. We may have lost our only chance to nail the killer thanks to your paranoia.”
Weaver glared at Darlene. “The note’s disappearance sucks you into deeper quicksand. Lord help me, but I’m inclined to believe you and Julie are innocent. However, my boss will say the rich bitch hired someone to steal evidence that would have incriminated her.”
“What a crock.” Darlene snorted. “Jake never would have left a note for me if he thought Julie or I were involved.”
“True.” Weaver’s voice was ice. “That doesn’t mean he was right. He’s dead. Could be his evidence merely pointed at your accomplice. That’s how my boss will explain it. You arranged for the proof to vanish so the trail wouldn’t boomerang in your direction.”
“Oh, for cripes sakes,” Darlene shouted.
