All Roads Lead To Murder (Old Maids of Mercer Island Mystery Book 4)

by Lynn Bohart

  I snapped my arm back. The flaming, gooey marshmallow flew off the stick and sailed over my head just as I heard the RV screen door open behind me.

  There was a soft splat.

  Blair gasped and her hand flew to her mouth

  “God, don’t tell me.”

  I turned around slowly.

  Rudy stood on the bottom step, as Doe appeared from behind the motorhome. The remnants of the blackened, sticky marshmallow had begun to slide off Rudy’s chest and onto the ground. I watched it plop into the dirt with a sinking feeling, just as Tinker Bell swooped in to make it disappear.

  Rudy glanced down at the dog and then at me, the weathered lines in her face set in a picture of angered restraint.

  I got out of my chair. “Rudy, I’m so sor…”

  “Not a word,” she said, holding up a hand. She spun on her heel and returned inside the motorhome.

  As the door closed, Doe chuckled and said, “I think you might be on dishwashing duty for the remainder of the trip. Come here, you naughty dog. That’s not good for you,” she said to Tinker Bell.

  I slumped back into my chair as Doe came forward and sat down, putting Tinker Bell in her lap again.

  “Why is it always me?” I said, tossing the marshmallow stick onto the picnic table.

  “She’ll get over it,” Blair said.

  “So that’s it for marshmallows?” Doe inquired.

  “You can have one,” I said. “I don’t need the calories, anyway.”

  Rudy emerged a few minutes later wearing a clean long-sleeved denim blouse.

  “I don’t suppose you still want a marshmallow, do you?” I asked, as she approached the campfire. “I’ll roast it for you.”

  “No,” she said, holding up her wallet. “I’m going to walk up to the store to get a Hershey bar and some graham crackers.”

  I jumped up. “Oh, I never thought about making s’mores. I’ll go.” I hurried into the motorhome and grabbed my wallet.

  When I came back out, Rudy said, “Julia, don’t worry about it. I can get them.”

  “Don’t even think about it. I’ll be back in a jif. I can use the exercise.”

  Since the office and store were set off to the far side of the park entrance, the quickest route would be to circle around the outside of the wagon wheel, following a well-worn dirt path, then to cut through some trees near the restrooms.

  I turned around and slipped past the rear of the Hulk.

  I didn’t take a flashlight since there was a nearly full moon. I cleared our campsite through a couple of trees behind the RV and turned left onto the dirt path. The path wound in and out of the Quaking Aspens and came near to the creek gurgling in the background.

  Eventually, I left the path and crossed a patch of lawn and then entered a small grove of pines where it was pretty dark. Lights from the restrooms flickered about 500 feet ahead, but I was moving fast and focused on the store lights just beyond that.

  I made it to the store in record time, bought the chocolate and graham crackers and headed back to the Hulk.

  I passed the restrooms under the canopy of pine trees and stepped over a fallen log. My foot caught under something heavy on the other side, and I was thrown forward, landing on the ground with an “Umpf!”

  “Damn,” I said, spitting out dirt.

  I propped myself on my elbows, wondering if anyone had seen me. Story of my life! I thought.

  Fortunately, there wasn’t a campsite within close range. Perhaps just this once I’d be the only witness to my mishap.

  I pulled my legs forward to get my knees under me, but had to yank my left leg over whatever it was that had tripped me in the first place. And whatever it was was large. When I’d freed my leg, I rolled onto my side and glanced back.

  Something lay in front of the log behind me. I peered at it in the dark, trying to make out what it was. As my eyes focused, I realized that two half-lidded eyes were staring back at me!

  “Aaaargh!” I screamed, scrambling to my feet.

  A man lay on his back, his head turned in my direction. My heart thumped so wildly, I found it difficult to breathe. I inched forward and leaned in to get a better look at his face and then gasped.

  It was the skinny guy with the ponytail from across the road–the one who had come out for a smoke.

  Very little light penetrated the pine trees above, so I couldn’t tell if he was breathing or not. But a black splotch in the middle of his forehead made me curious. I reached out to touch it and came away with something wet on my finger.

  “Oh my God!” I uttered, rubbing my thumb and index finger together.

  I stumbled backwards in shock. He’d been shot. Nervous, I glanced around, wondering if whoever had done this was nearby, but it appeared that I was alone.

  The thought of help had me reaching for my phone to call the police, but then I realized I’d left it back at camp. A lightbulb went off in my head–I needed reinforcements.

  I grabbed my bag of treats and ran back to the Hulk. It was a miracle I arrived unharmed, given my history. But I stumbled back into the light of the campfire out of breath.

  “What happened to you?” Blair asked, noticing my dirty jeans. “No, let me guess, you…”

  “I found a dead body,” I blurted.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “A dead body?” Doe parroted me and then laughed. “Of course you did. You don’t have to make excuses, Julia. You fell, didn’t you?”

  “Yes…over a dead body.”

  I dropped the paper bag onto the table and reached out to grab the Daiquiri from Blair’s hand, tipping it up and finishing it in one gulp.

  She watched me in alarm. “Your hand is bleeding,” she said, getting out of her chair.

  Rudy stood up and came around the fire pit. “Are you okay, Julia? You don’t look so good.”

  “Is no one listening to me? I saw a dead body!” I was sucking air in like a vacuum.

  Blair grabbed a napkin and handed it to me. I used it to wipe the blood off my hand.

  Doe pushed Tinker Bell off her lap and got up. They all gathered around me.

  “Okay, what actually happened?” Rudy demanded.

  “I’m telling you. I tripped over a guy on the ground,” I said in a hoarse whisper. “In fact, I think it was one of the men from that motorhome across the street.” I pointed to the Jayco RV.

  The three of them turned in unison to look at the RV across the road.

  “He’s not there,” I snapped, getting their attention back. “He’s lying on the ground up by the restrooms. It looked like he’d been shot in the forehead.”

  “Come and sit down, Julia,” Doe said, trying to take my arm.

  “No!” I said too loudly. I lowered my voice. “We need to report it. I just came back to get you guys. I don’t want to do this alone.”

  “Why don’t we just go tell the other people he was traveling with?” Blair said, gesturing to the Jayco RV.

  “Are you kidding me?” I squealed. “They could be the ones who killed him.”

  Blair blanched. “Okay, maybe you should take us there?”

  I nodded, swallowing. “Okay. C’mon. But someone needs to call 911. And we need a flashlight.”

  As Blair went to the side compartment for a flashlight, Rudy pulled out her phone. “Are you sure about this, Julia? I don’t want to call the police…well, if there really isn’t a dead body back there.”

  “I saw what I saw,” I whispered obstinately. “He had a bullet hole in his head.”

  “Okay,” Rudy said, beginning to dial.

  Blair came back with the flashlight. “Let’s go.”

  Rudy reported the incident to the 911 dispatcher as everyone followed me back past our RV and through the trees. We turned onto the path and a minute later, veered off toward the small grove of trees.

  “Okay, right up here,” I said, heading for the big pine tree. “Here’s the log. He’s right here…uh…what?”

  The body was gone.

&n
bsp; “So, where is he?” Blair asked, flashing the beam of light on the ground.

  “He was right there,” I said, pointing to the spot next to the log.

  I glanced around the area, thinking that perhaps I had the wrong spot. I didn’t. The body just wasn’t there.

  “Maybe he wasn’t dead,” Doe offered.

  “No, he was. I saw a hole in his forehead, and his eyes were open, staring at me.”

  Rudy was still on the phone with the 911 operator. She put her hand over the phone. “Did you check if he was breathing?”

  “Um…no. I was too shocked.”

  Blair used the flashlight again to study the patch of dirt at our feet. “There’s no blood on the ground.”

  I followed her gaze. “He was lying on his back.”

  “If he’d been shot there’d be blood on the ground,” she said.

  We all stared at the area around our feet, using the flashlight to survey a six foot area. The ground looked undisturbed.

  “Look, Julia,” Rudy began. “Maybe I should call off the police.”

  “No, I know he was here.”

  “But you have been through a lot lately,” she said in a patronizing tone.

  “And you have had a Daiquiri,” Doe added.

  I stared at each of them in turn. “I didn’t imagine this.”

  “But there’s no one here,” Blair said. “What are we supposed to do?”

  “I don’t know,” I replied with a raised voice. I felt frustrated and a little bit panicked that I’d made a mistake.

  The wail of a distant siren sounded, making everyone snap around in the direction of the store.

  “Oh, great,” Blair said. “How are we going to explain this to the police?”

  I gave a deep, defeated sigh. “I’ll talk to them. It’s my mistake–if it is a mistake. I’ll go up to the entrance to meet them.”

  “We’ll go with you,” Doe said.

  “Thanks. They’re here,” Rudy said into the phone. She flicked off her phone. “Let’s check around as we go. Maybe we’re just in the wrong spot.”

  We spread out and moved in the direction of the campground entrance. By the time we made it to the store, a squad car had just arrived. Fortunately, the officers had turned off their siren and lights as they rolled past the information booth.

  When they pulled up to the store, I stepped forward. Two dark-haired officers emerged from the squad car. The driver was probably in his thirties. The other was balding and looked to be in his early forties.

  “We’re the ones who called you,” I said to the driver. “I thought I saw a dead body.”

  He had heavy features and a cocky swagger to his step. His thick eyebrows lifted, revealing piercing blue eyes.

  “You thought you saw a dead body?” he asked, not even trying to hide his skepticism. “And your name is?”

  “Julia…Julia Applegate.”

  The other officer had come around the car and was eyeing each one of us in turn–probably attempting to size up our truthfulness, or sanity. He had a dark complexion and large brown eyes. His eyes lingered on Blair, who seemed almost comical in her pajamas. When the store clerk pushed open the door behind us, he waved her back inside.

  “I’m Officer Ranch,” the younger officer said. “This is Officer Romero. Tell us what happened.”

  I took a deep breath before beginning. “I came up to the store by the back path and cut through the trees. On my return trip, I stepped over a log and tripped over something on the other side. When I turned around, there was a man lying on the ground.”

  “You tripped over the log or the body?” he asked.

  “The body,” I said with emphasis.

  “Where exactly was this?” Officer Romero asked.

  I pointed behind the store. “Back there. Past the restrooms.”

  “Let’s go see what you found,” Officer Ranch said, beginning to step past me.

  “Um…he’s not there anymore.”

  He stopped, turned and furrowed his brow. “What do you mean?”

  “The body is gone. I didn’t have my phone with me, so I went back to our campsite to get my friends.”

  “I’m actually the one who called 911,” Rudy said, stepping forward.

  The officers glanced at her and then back at me.

  “And?” Officer Ranch asked without trying to hide his sarcasm.

  “I brought them back to the exact spot where I tripped.”

  “And he wasn’t there,” Officer Ranch said, finishing the story.

  “Right.”

  “Why did you think he was dead in the first place?” Officer Romero asked with more compassion in his voice.

  I shifted my gaze to the girls and then back again. “Um…because it looked like he’d been shot in the forehead. I touched it and my finger came away with blood.” I held out my index finger. “See?”

  Neither of the officers blinked or laughed, which I guess was a good thing, but they didn’t look at my finger, either.

  “Tell you what,” Officer Romero said. “Let’s get your names and contact information first. Then, we’ll go back to look for ourselves.”

  “There’s really no one there, officer,” Rudy spoke up.

  “We’ll take a look, anyway,” Officer Ranch said, barely looking at her.

  We gave them all the information they needed, which Officer Ranch noted in a small notebook. Then, I led them back the way we’d come, stopping at the big tree. The officers used their own flashlights to survey the area, spreading out for several feet beyond the log.

  “There’s a broken branch up here,” Officer Romero said, pointing to the stub of a tree branch right above the log. “Could the man you saw have run into this and passed out?”

  “Maybe,” I said, looking up at the branch.

  “There’s no blood on it,” he said, flashing his light at it.

  “Did you recognize the man on the ground?” Officer Ranch asked, snapping off his flashlight.

  “Yes,” I said, brightening up. “I was sure it was a man from the campsite across the road from us.”

  “Let’s go see if we can talk to him,” he said. “We’ll follow you.”

  The six of us traipsed back through the trees onto the dirt path along the creek. As we emerged from behind the Hulk into our campsite, I pointed across the road. “He came from the campsite over th…what?”

  The Jayco motorhome was gone!

  “It appears that campsite is empty,” Officer Ranch said, stepping past me and slipping his thumbs through the heavy belt around his waist.

  “There really was an RV there,” Doe said in her measured CEO voice.

  “It’s not there now, however,” the officer replied with a less than an encouraging expression.

  Blair walked toward the road and looked both ways. “They’re long gone. They left a cooler behind, though,” she said, pointing to the blue cooler sitting under the picnic table.

  “Don’t you find that weird?” I asked the officers. “I mean, they were there half an hour ago. Who leaves in the middle of the night like that? And leaves stuff behind?”

  Officer Romero shrugged. “Maybe they just stopped here for dinner. Or, maybe they’d been here a couple of days. Did you just get here today?”

  “Yes,” I replied. “This afternoon,”

  “Were they here when you pulled in?”

  “Well, yes,” I said.

  Officer Ranch glanced around our campsite. His gaze stopped when he saw the Daiquiri bottles.

  I followed his gaze. “No, I wasn’t drunk.”

  “But you had been drinking,” he said.

  I felt my defenses rise, and I stepped toward him with a raised finger. “Look, I know a thing or two about dead bodies.” My foot got caught under the leg of the picnic table, catapulting me into the arms of Officer Ranch. He grunted, lost his footing and stumbled backwards into his partner. All three of us went down like a set of dominoes, one on top of the other.

  “Oh, dear,” I
exclaimed, while lying chest to chest with him.

  I rolled off as quickly as I could, feeling my face burn. Officer Ranch leapt to his feet as if it had never happened. Officer Romero was a little slower to get up.

  “I’m so sorry,” I mumbled as Rudy reached out a hand to help me off the ground.

  My face had to be a deep shade of red, although it was dark enough I doubted anyone would notice. But who cared? The damage was done. I’d just taken down two police officers.

  There was silence as both officers readjusted their shoulder radios and belt equipment and then shook their legs out to readjust, well, their other equipment.

  Finally, Officer Ranch said, “How much have you had to drink?”

  “She’s just a little accident prone,” Blair said, stepping in to give me support.

  “Look, I tripped over a log and now a table leg, but not because I was drunk,” I snapped at the young officer.

  “Except that now I smell like alcohol,” he said, sniffing the front of his shirt.

  Damn!

  “I spilled a little earlier,” I said, gesturing to my blouse.

  “Mrs. Applegate, what did you mean when you said you know a thing or two about dead bodies?” Officer Romero asked.

  “Nothing,” Blair said, this time stepping in front of me. “She’s dating a cop and her ex-husband happens to be the gov…”

  “A politician,” I said, slapping her arm. “Look, I saw a man lying on the ground. I don’t know where he went, just like I don’t know where that motorhome went. But I am not crazy, and I am not drunk.”

  The officers and I had a bit of a standoff until a whirlwind appeared behind them. My eyes shifted to the whirlwind with suspicion. It came up from the road and then whipped through the campsite, blowing Blair’s plate of crackers to the ground and swirling its way toward us.

  “Chloe, no!” I said between clenched teeth.

  “What?” Officer Ranch asked.

  Chloe ignored me. The whirlwind enveloped us, blowing everyone’s hair askew. A heartbeat later, it was gone.

  “What the heck was that?” Officer Ranch asked, brushing dirt off his shirt and smoothing down his hair.

  I exhaled in relief as I straightened the collar on my blouse. “Probably just Chloe,” I replied without thinking.

  “Who the heck is Chloe?”