Samantha shot me a mischievous grin. “Save him from her, and then dump him if you have to.” She grabbed her towel. “We should probably get ready for dinner.”
Misty sprang to her feet without touching the chair’s armrests with her hands. “Thanks for finding us a cottage with a bathroom for each of us, Samantha. We can get ready quickly.”
“You two always can,” I said.
Misty twisted her hair into a ponytail. “Only when we’re heading to work. Getting ready for dinner in a restaurant at a resort might take more time. And we don’t have wash-and-wear curls like you do, Emily. We have only about forty-five minutes until it’s time to walk over to the restaurant.”
We gathered the rest of our things and returned to our cottage. I carefully shut the door to keep Dep inside.
The shower in my bathroom was one of those easy-to-adjust ones that quickly reached and maintained a comfy temperature. Shutting it off, I heard voices and footsteps as if Misty and Samantha were in the main room. A door slammed, shaking the cottage. Car doors closed, engines started, tires rolled on gravel, and then everything was quiet.
Chapter 27
Wondering if it was later than I thought, I wrapped my towel around myself and padded out into the main room.
A note was propped against the jar of wildflowers on the table runner.
Called to a collision between here and Fallingbrook. Go to dinner without us. We’ll join you as soon as we can. Misty
Muttering, I set the note on the table. Misty and Samantha were on call only until ten, and then Misty had the next two days off. Samantha and Hooligan would be able to enjoy two whole weeks away from work. They loved their professions and handled it all with grace, and I was probably more upset than Samantha and Misty were about their being called out during what was supposed to be our relaxing girls’ night out. They always rushed off to do whatever they could. Alec had been the same way. Scott, Hooligan, and Brent were, too. They served people in need of help.
I served people in need of donuts, coffee, and tea. “But that’s not bad, right?” I asked Dep.
She didn’t answer or move from her perch on the arm of the love seat.
I returned to my room and put on a yellow sundress sprinkled with tiny blue flowers and strapped on a pair of pretty flat-heeled sandals.
In the main room, Dep hadn’t moved. I told her, “You and I might as well explore the resort during the fifteen minutes before I need to claim our table in the restaurant.” She paid me no attention. I picked up her harness. She leaped off the love seat and rubbed against my ankles. I leashed her, followed her out onto the porch, and locked the door.
I wasn’t keen on collecting sand in my open shoes, so we walked around to the back of the cabin. My car was the only one there. At the end of the driveway, Dep and I turned left, toward the part of the resort I hadn’t driven through on my way to the cabin. Tall pines, oaks, and maples shaded the gravel road. Oak leaves pattered in that recognizable pre-autumn, slightly leathery sound. My sandals hardly made any noise. Dep walked silently.
Farther on, newer cabins were close to the lane winding through the woods and not as secluded as in the older section of the resort. The cabins on the lake side of the road were almost on the shore and faced the lake. The cabins across the road faced the road and the backs of the shorefront cabins. Like Birch, they were constructed of large logs with their cut ends painted deep green. The porches I could see were broad, with homey rocking chairs beside tables where canning jars held fresh bouquets.
This time, I recognized the jingling rapidly approaching from behind, now accompanied by the thumping of teacup-sized paws. I turned around. Tongue hanging from his grinning mouth, the big fluffy puppy galloped toward us. He must have forgotten that Dep did not want to join his games.
She reminded him.
He leaped straight up, landed on all four of those fuzzy paws, and veered toward the porch of the nearest cottage. At the last second, he avoided a bulging black briefcase on the bottom step by scrambling up to the second step. His back legs tangled with each other and knocked the briefcase down. It fell on its side on the ground. The zipper across its top wasn’t zipped. Papers spilled out.
One of the sheets of paper fluttered in the puppy’s mini-whirlwind. The puppy regained his footing, whipped around, grabbed that sheet of paper in his mouth, and dashed toward us as if presenting Dep with a treasure that would make her want to play with him. The paper hanging from his mouth appeared to be the printout of a family tree. Reading upside down, I made out the name Seaster at the top of the page. I’d heard of only one Seaster family, the founders and owners of Seaster Enterprises.
I didn’t have a chance to find out if this was the same family.
Dep again reminded the big fluffy puppy that he was not allowed near her.
The puppy spun around. Waving his banner of a tail and proudly shaking the piece of paper, he bounded away.
Somewhere behind us, a whistle blew. With his plunder in his mouth, the puppy galumphed away from us and farther from the whistle.
Still enormous, Dep shook one paw as if to show off her dainty grace and remind me that when she knocked things off steps or shelves, it was never an accident.
No one came out of the cottage.
Feeling at least partially responsible for the mess and afraid that the puppy would return to complete his job, whatever it was, I picked up my temporarily supersized cat and plunked her down next to the briefcase.
I told myself that lots of briefcases resembled the one that Marvin Oarhill had carried at the carnival.
I set the briefcase on the step and shoved papers into it. How had they all originally fit?
Inside the cottage, a man spoke. I jumped almost as high as the puppy had when he encountered the force of Dep’s disdain. “Sweetheart,” the man cooed. “I can’t wait to get home to you so we can go on with the plans for our wedding.”
Obviously, he wasn’t talking to me, and Sweetheart wasn’t in the cabin with him. He must have been on a phone. I ducked my head and picked up another piece of paper.
“This business trip has lasted longer than I expected.” His voice was so syrupy that I wouldn’t have been surprised if Sweetheart told him not to return unless he learned to talk like a normal person. However, he went on in the same coaxing voice, “I’ve had to recycle some of my dirty clothes.”
Ewwww.
Sweetheart didn’t have time to reply. He informed her in more of those sugary tones, “But your ironing is so perfect that my shirts aren’t very wrinkled.”
Double ewwww.
I almost expected that when she heard that, his fiancée would dump him in the middle of their conversation, and he would come storming out of his cottage to confront the woman stuffing papers back into his briefcase. He didn’t. He added, “I changed hotels. Out here in the wilderness, hotels don’t launder shirts.” His tone was still fake-romantic, but it was also patronizing. And possibly familiar? I couldn’t connect it to anyone.
I glanced down at the sheet of paper in my hand. It was a list of addresses. I did a double take and focused.
Nina’s address was the first one.
Deputy Donut was next.
The Craft Croft was the third.
The fourth one was for the Arthur C. Arthurs Gallery in Madison.
Those addresses were all typed. Below them, someone had scrawled my home address, which just happened to be the address that Nina and I had been approaching when the gray car nearly hit us.
As if flames were engulfing the paper, I shoved it into the briefcase.
I grabbed Dep, held her against me, and hurried off in the direction the puppy had gone.
A black windowless van was parked on the far side of the cabin, between it and the next one.
I didn’t remember Marvin Oarhill’s license number, but I was almost certain that this one was different, which wasn’t too surprising. Brent had told me that Oarhill had varied his vehicle descriptions and license
numbers when he registered at carnivals. Hurrying to get myself and Dep out of sight, I didn’t take a good look at the number.
Misty had told me that Marvin Oarhill had been released, but she hadn’t said when. If it had been before four that afternoon, he could have already driven, with the black briefcase he’d carried at the Faker’s Dozen Carnival, to Lake Cares Away.
I had never heard Oarhill’s voice. He had removed four-leaf clovers from people’s ears and had stolen cash from our till, but he’d done it all as silently as Zippy Melwyn had performed her miming acts.
I had definitely heard Rodeo Rod’s voice, both at the carnival and in Deputy Donut. According to Jocelyn, he also drove a van. Could Rod be the man on the phone? I chided myself for not checking the back of the van for a white silhouette of a galloping horse. Maybe Rod’s drawl was only for a folksy effect, and he tried for a different—and to me, yucky—effect when talking to his fiancée.
Behind us, that whistle blew again. I walked faster. Before the puppy returned to his owner, I was going to gently remind him to give me the piece of paper, and then . . . well, I probably wouldn’t return it. I suspected I was going to fold it and keep it hidden in my palm until I was back in our cottage and could read it in privacy. Maybe I could figure out possible connections between the man in the cabin and Nina, our donut shop, Arthur C. Arthurs, The Craft Croft, and me.
The road through the resort twisted. I hoped it would double back past another row of cabins, but it ended in a turnaround. Maybe the puppy had run back to its owner through the woods or along the beach. Even if he hadn’t, by now the family tree I’d hoped to study was probably a soggy, chewed-up, unreadable mess. I didn’t have time to continue searching for the puppy. I needed to claim our table at the restaurant.
Dep and I started back toward our cabin. Between other cabins, I caught glimpses of the lake. It now reflected the brilliant orange sunset.
The black van hadn’t moved. Behind it, a pine branch hid where the right rear window would be if it had rear windows, and I couldn’t tell if the galloping horse was there. The left side was plain black. Glancing at the license plate, I noticed a trailer hitch. I didn’t remember seeing one on Oarhill’s van or in the picture I’d taken of his rear license plate.
I walked faster.
The overfilled briefcase was still upright on the cottage’s bottom step. I was about to avert my face in hopes of not being recognized despite the leashed cat prancing ahead of me when I heard the door of the next cottage open.
I couldn’t help looking toward it.
With a swish of a long purple skirt, Kassandra Pyerson glanced toward me and then turned on the heels of her clunky black boots, slipped inside, and closed the door. I heard it lock.
My first thought was relief that Kassandra seemed to be okay. My second thought was that she was apparently hiding, and I was one of the people she feared might spot her. Was she afraid of being caught by a murderer, or was she a murderer, afraid of being seen and reported to the police?
Was it a coincidence that she was staying in the cottage next to the one where the man had been sweet-talking a woman who ironed so well that wrinkles didn’t show on the shirts he was forced to wear more than once between washings?
A gray sedan was tucked between the two cottages, so far up the driveway that I didn’t see it until one of the day’s last sunbeams angled between trees and spotlit it. I couldn’t tell if that driveway belonged to the cottage where Kassandra was staying or the one where the dirty-shirt man was staying.
Marvin Oarhill had carried a black briefcase and had driven a black windowless van. Rod had driven a black windowless van. I had never seen Rod carrying a briefcase, but the van and the briefcase probably belonged to one of those two men.
That meant that the gray sedan probably belonged to Kassandra. The trunk was open, and a suitcase was inside it. The license number was shining in that beam of sunlight. It was a Wisconsin plate and ended in the numbers that Nina and I had remembered from the car that had almost hit her. I’d seen the two fives. Nina had seen one of the fives and a four. Leaf shadows blotted out the sunbeam, leaving the car in the gloom of the forest again.
Chapter 28
On Saturday, had Kassandra nearly rammed that car into Nina? And had Kassandra done it on purpose because she had mistakenly attacked Zippy when she’d meant to kill Nina? And why would she have wanted to kill Nina? Not to create a job vacancy, surely, and she’d told me about the man in Suds for Buds supposedly to help me prove Nina’s innocence. But as Misty had said, it could have been a coincidence that the man left Suds for Buds and headed across the street toward Nina’s apartment around the time that Zippy was attacked.
Kassandra had also been in the vicinity at the time.
I needed to rush away from Kassandra’s cabin, and not at the pace that Dep might choose. I swept her up into my arms. I desperately wanted to run but didn’t want to call more attention to myself in case Kassandra was watching me from inside.
She and the man who had to recycle his dirty shirts were staying in adjacent cabins. Did they know each other? Had they been working together to harm Nina? Was either one of them a threat to the other? And who was the dirty-shirt man—Marvin Oarhill, who had me to thank for his recent arrest, or Rodeo Rod?
Any of them could have been a threat to me. Carrying my warm and wriggling kitty, I rounded a curve and ducked between two of the shorefront cabins. I immediately regretted my decision. There was no packed-down pathway in front of these cabins, and the soft sand slowed me. Besides, I was making footprints. If Rod, Marvin Oarhill, or Kassandra wanted to follow me, I had just made it easier.
Lights were on inside the first two cabins I passed, and people were laughing, talking, and clinking glassware. At the third cabin, a woman was sitting on the front porch in the sunset’s glow. She called out, “Are you okay, honey?”
I squeaked out, “Yes.”
“Is that a cat you’re carrying?”
“Yes.”
“Is the cat okay?”
“She’s fine. I like hugging her.”
The woman laughed softly. “I can understand that.”
I hurried past the next cabin and plowed between young spruces to the driveway beside it. I couldn’t hear anyone on the road, either on foot or in a vehicle.
Dep squirmed. I was afraid she was about to start yowling.
“Just a few more minutes,” I whispered before I eased out onto the shoulder of the road. Jogging along the weedy and pebbly shoulder in sandals wasn’t easy, but it was better than trying to move quickly in soft sand.
Dep’s complaints about being held tightly and jounced became louder. I kept running. Finally, I saw the driveway for Birch cabin. My breath in jagged gasps, I ran to my car. I stopped and turned around. The driveway wasn’t completely straight, and from the back of my car, I could see only a tiny bit of the road.
Struggling to keep Dep from jumping out of my arms, I hurried to the front of Birch cabin, unlocked the door, and took Dep inside. As soon as I unlatched her harness, she jumped up to the arm of the love seat, apparently ready to resume her self-appointed job of staring at the view beyond that side of the cottage. Dusk crept from the woods toward the still-pale lake.
Shivering, I threw a cornflower-blue cardigan over my dress, and then I speed-dialed Brent’s personal number.
He answered right away.
I blurted, “Kassandra Pyerson is here, at the Cares Away Resort.” I hadn’t noticed a name on the cottage where I’d seen her, so I described how to find it. “A gray car is between her cabin and the next one. Based on some of the numbers on its license plate, I think it’s the car that almost hit Nina. The trunk was open as if Kassandra has just arrived and is unpacking or she’s about to leave.”
“It’s a strange time of evening for someone to check out.”
“Not if she’s hiding from someone and about to change locations. Which she might be doing. I think that Marvin Oarhill or Rodeo Rod is stayi
ng in the cabin next to hers. Could Oarhill have gotten back here by now?”
He didn’t ask how I knew of Oarhill’s whereabouts. He acknowledged, “He could have.” Brent sounded like he was talking through clenched teeth.
“A van and a briefcase like his are beside the cabin next to Kassandra’s. The van has a different license plate than the one I photographed at the carnival.”
“What is the number?”
“Sorry, I didn’t have a good look, but there was an S or a five and an F. Could that be Rodeo Rod’s license number?”
“I’ll check with the rodeo organizers again. They were going to try to dig up his real name.”
Afraid that Brent might disconnect before I told him everything I should, I spoke quickly. “I heard the man in the cottage between the gray car and the black van tell someone, over the phone, I guess, that he was about to be home from what he called a ‘business trip.’ I didn’t see the man I heard talking, so I could be wrong about him being either Marvin Oarhill or Rodeo Rod.”
“I don’t know that any of the people you mentioned could be a danger to you, but I’m concerned about the coincidence of them being where you are.”
“It might not be a coincidence.” I described the list of addresses and told him how I’d gotten hold of it. “I also caught a glimpse of the name at the top of a family tree that had also been in the briefcase. It was Seaster, as in Seaster Enterprises.”
He repeated, “Someone has been carrying your address around.” His voice became urgent. “Where exactly at Cares Away are you, Em?”
“I’m in the cabin I’m sharing with Misty and Samantha. It’s called Birch. Misty and Samantha were called away to a collision. We have dinner reservations, so I’m heading for the restaurant.”
“Driving? The person who added your address to that list has probably seen your car, and your car is recognizable, especially if your kayak is still on it.”
“It is, but my car is mostly hidden from the road, so I think it should stay where it is. The restaurant is a short walk, and I won’t have to pass the cabins where those three people might be staying. I think the dirty-shirt man might have been packing to leave, also, or his briefcase wouldn’t have been on the porch step. Maybe he’s already left. I’ll feel safer in the restaurant among other people than I’d feel alone in this cabin.”
Beyond a Reasonable Donut Page 22
