The next day started out rainy and windy. I tried to see out the kitchen window but couldn’t see anything except rivulets of rain running down the glass.
“What happened to that perfect mushrooming weather?” I asked.
Rafe laughed. “This is perfect weather for mushrooms. I thought you knew.”
Maybe it was good for mushrooms, but not for the hunters. Or for anyone at a track meet. “You’re taking your rain gear, right?”
He kissed me and hefted his backpack. “Already packed. Text me, okay? Before, during, and after.”
His voice held a tone that was extremely unusual for him: that of worry. And so, instead of making a joke, I nodded. “Promise,” I said, kissed him again, and waved as he drove off.
It was now decision time. The bookmobile was headed out for an all-day run, and, once again, Hunter and I were doing the morning route and Hunter and Julia were taking the afternoon shift. “To Eddie or not to Eddie,” I murmured.
Last night, Rafe and I had posted a time of eight o’clock to meet anyone who was interested in our Conti-like sculpture. There’d been no response, but we hadn’t expected one, either. And there should be plenty of time to get Eddie back home and me out to the park well before eight. Before seven, even. Still, I hesitated.
I was standing there, dithering, when I felt a furry thump on my leg. “Mrr?” the thump asked.
It sure sounded like he’d said please, but with Eddie it was hard to be sure. “Did you really say please?”
“Mrr!”
Which was the same thing he said to Hunter when we got on the bookmobile and the same thing he said to Julia when she climbed aboard in the afternoon. I assumed he’d say it again at six o’clock when they came rolling back, but when I went out to the parking lot at the end of the day, there wasn’t a sign or sound of any of them.
I rubbed my upper arms against the brisk wind in a vain attempt to stay warm. Where were they? I walked around in a small circle to keep my blood flowing and pulled out my cell phone.
No calls. No texts.
Which could mean something, or it could mean nothing. There were many areas of Tonedagana County that didn’t have cell phone coverage. Maybe the bookmobile had broken down in one of those areas. Or maybe they’d hit a deer. Or maybe . . .
“Don’t worry,” I said out loud, and immediately ignored my own advice. At a quarter past, I started texting Julia and Hunter.
Nothing.
At half past, I started calling them.
Still nothing.
At an hour late I called the central dispatch line at the sheriff’s office. Both fortunately and unfortunately, the dispatchers hadn’t heard a thing. They kindly said they’d keep an ear out and would let me know if a call about the bookmobile came in.
“Thanks,” I said, “much appreciated.”
I called Graydon, and just as we were planning the route of our search and rescue, I heard the unmistakable noise of the vehicle I’d been driving for years. “They’re back,” I said, trying to see through its windshield. “And it looks like . . . yes, I see both Julia and Hunter. They’re smiling and waving, so everything must be okay.”
“All’s well that ends well,” Graydon said. “Let me know what happened.”
“Will do.” Then, before I lost my courage, I added, “Say, I know you can’t talk about a closed board meeting, but is there anything you can tell me?”
“Uh, sorry? What was that?” he asked. “You’re cutting out on me. I’ll talk to you later, okay?”
Huh. So my boss was a worse liar than I was. Good to know.
I slid my phone back into my coat pocket after glancing at the time, which was ticking away.
“Minnie, I am so sorry!” Julia piled out of the bookmobile. “We should have let you know how late we were going to be, but you know there’s no cell reception in the valley. This family who’s up at their summer cabin because their power is out downstate hiked to the bookmobile stop, and it started raining buckets just as they were leaving.”
“It’s my fault,” Hunter said. “I told them we’d be happy to drive them to their house.”
Julia nodded. “But it didn’t have a landline. And they were so thankful they made us stay and eat cookies, and fed Eddie special treats, and then the kids wanted to put on a thank-you puppet show and both our phones were out of power and I couldn’t find the cable to charge them and—”
I threw up my hands in the classic referee’s T position. “Stop,” I said, laughing. “If even half of that is true, you’re forgiven. You can tell me the whole story later, but right now I have to get going.”
“Sorry again,” Hunter said, handing over the cat carrier.
I told him I’d come up with a suitable punishment and wished them both a happy weekend.
“You have to come with me,” I said to Eddie as I clicked my car’s seat belt around his carrier. “There isn’t time to take you back to the house.” As it was, I barely had time to pick up Ryan and get settled into the far parking lot. I drove to the road where we’d decided to meet. I gave the prearranged signal—a quick double honk—and waited.
No Ryan.
That was odd. I was late. He should have been waiting.
I tapped the steering wheel, thinking, then turned and drove down the narrow road until the track petered out to nothing. I jumped out of the car and ran all the way to the clearing, legs pumping, lungs burning.
“Ryan?” I called out as I crossed to the cabin. “Ryan!” The door was shut and I banged it open.
Inside, the dim light showed a dirt floor empty except for a slight Ryan-shaped hollow that marked the spot where he’d slept. But there was no sleeping bag, no tidy stack of food, no small set of dishes, no lantern. And no bicycle.
He was gone.
I pelted back to the car and flung myself behind the wheel. Heaving out great panting breaths, I started the car, dropped it into reverse, and made a three-point turn. In days gone past, I would have taken a turn like that in fits and starts, but time spent driving a bookmobile was useful in a myriad of ways.
“Hang on,” I told Eddie, and roared down the two-track, back the way we’d come, only twice as fast, which was hard on the car, hard on me, and hard on my poor cat.
“Mrr!” he protested at each bump. “Mrr!”
“Sorry, buddy. I really am, but—ow!—we’re almost there, okay? Almost—”
And then the car’s front tires reached asphalt. With a screech of rubber, we pulled all the way onto the road. I slammed the gas pedal to the floor, pushing my little car’s acceleration to the limit.
“Hope that seat belt is tight,” I said as calmly as I could, which wasn’t very calm, but at least I was trying. “We have to hurry. I don’t know where Ryan is, and I have a horrible feeling that he’s riding his bike out to the park.” All by himself, which was really, really not a good idea.
I posed a question to myself. “Maybe he left just a few minutes ago?” But if so, I’d be able to catch up to him, and the closer we got to the park, the less likely that was, because there was no sign of him. Not on the county highway with its wide paved shoulders and not on the side road with its potholes and dirt shoulders. Hills, trees, curving roads, and small lakes. No sign of another human as far as the eye could see.
My concern for Ryan grew. Ballooned. And there was the added element of guilt. “Did he leave because I was late?” I asked Eddie. “Or had he planned to do this from the beginning, and left hours ago?”
“Mrr!”
I sent my furry friend a quick glance. “That sounded like you knew what you were talking about.” Once again, I wished I could talk cat. Talk Eddie, anyway, because he was so unlike all other cats I’d met, I was half convinced he was his own species.
“Mrr,” he said, pushing his nose through the gaps in the wire door.
“Sorry, but no matter what, you have to stay in the car.” I flicked the turn signal and made a right onto the gravel road that led to the park’s entrance. “Sorry about these bumps, too,” I said, my molars rattling against each other. “Guess the road commission hasn’t made it over here yet.”
When I saw the park’s sign, I slowed to a more sedate speed, mostly because I didn’t want the noise of the car to reach anyone who might already be here. My car’s dashboard clock said it was three minutes past eight, three minutes past the time our blog post had said for anyone interested in the sculpture to show up.
I mentally chewed on the limited possibilities.
What if no one came? Or . . . what if someone was already here, waiting, and Ryan was down there meeting him alone?
The car’s tires bounced on a series of washboard bumps. I winced at the noise and came to a sudden decision. “Time to stop,” I told Eddie. “The upper lot isn’t far. I bet that trail over there goes down to the lake. I’ll take that and see what I can see.”
“Mrr!”
“Thank you for your vote of confidence,” I said as I parked on the road’s shoulder. “See you soon. I need to make sure Ryan’s okay.” And to see if we could identify a killer.
“Mrr!”
I put my finger to my lips and, concerned about noises reaching anyone with ears to hear, shut the door as softly as I could, while also shutting my own ears to Eddie’s protests. He must have resigned himself to his fate, because as I walked away, I didn’t hear any further cat noises.
“It’ll be okay,” I sort of said to him and sort of said to myself as I hopped into a slow jog. Because what could go wrong? All we wanted to do was see who showed up. If it was one of the two people we suspected of killing Pug, we’d tell the police. We weren’t going to confront anyone, weren’t going to capture anyone. Pure identification, that’s all.
That was my internal monologue as I trotted down the forested path. Only the closer I got to the lake, my inner tone grew more and more anxious.
“It’ll be okay,” I murmured. But what if it wasn’t? What if no one showed up? What would we do about finding Ryan a new place to stay? Because he certainly couldn’t stay at the cabin any longer.
My thoughts grew even more dire as I started seeing bits of lake through the tree branches. What if Ryan wasn’t here? What if he’d gone on the run, dooming himself to a lifetime of hiding? How would we ever find him again?
“Please let him be here,” I whispered. “Please let him be safe. Please let this work. Please . . .”
I rounded a final curve in the trail and came to an abrupt halt, blinking at the scene taking place not twenty yards from me.
The trap had worked.
But too well. There were two cars in the parking lot, not one. And there, facing each other across the parking lot, were two men. One with long dark hair in a ponytail. The other with bright ginger hair.
Ian Breece.
And Skyler Ellison.