Despite her friendly offer, we had to wait until morning to check out Frieda’s campsite. I tossed and turned, wishing I was at Crew’s having spaghetti, Sunday coming and going as early Monday dawned clear and cold. With the bridge still under repair and enough flotsam clogging the water way from the continuing degradation of the dam, we were stuck on the mountain anyway, so I made the best of it.
I could have stayed at the retreat and let Jill take care of this, but it really was a make work project as far as I was concerned. She seemed to agree, though she did insist I wasn’t to go alone. Which led to Bill trailing along behind me, Moose snuffling his way through the brush, while Frieda led the way, quiet on her feet. I felt like a bumbling gargantuan invader, snapping and crackling my way through the morning quiet woods as the massive man and dog and the bulky older woman drifted like smoke through the underbrush.
I stumbled over a root and swore softly as I caught at a tree trunk to break my fall. “I hate the woods.”
Bill chuckled behind me, Moose nudging me with his big nose like he knew I wasn’t happy.
“Almost there,” Frieda said, grinning over her shoulder. Yeah, okay, laugh at the kind of city girl but mostly small town sidewalk and coffee shop girl who really had no place wandering around the back end of a mountain looking for evidence.
Jill had agreed to let me go with such haste, Bill offering to join me, I wondered at first. Now I understood. She didn’t want to come out here herself, did she? Grumbling over the sneaky ways of deputies and my own lack of foresight, I tromped a bit more loudly than necessary, shoving at the tugging braches around me, positive I’d end up with poison ivy or a tick infestation or something equally distasteful for my efforts.
Good mood? Check.
At least it wasn’t a marathon hike or anything. Honestly, if we went half a mile I’d give up Mom’s cake for a year. But I was sweating under my jacket despite the chill of the air by the time I stumbled through well-shielding boughs and into the small clearing Frieda had created to hide her tent and campsite.
At least this much of her story was true. I turned in a slow circle, wishing I’d taken her at her word, not relishing the return slog, as Bill spoke up.
“Frieda’s no murderer, Fee,” he said. Moose stuck his big head inside the woman’s tent and snuffled around, long, heavy tail wagging with delight as he uncovered something he probably shouldn’t have. But, he was already licking his lips, the whatever it was down his throat, by the time he backed out and grinned up at me in his lolling tongue dog way like he’d just won the jackpot.
Frieda scratched the top of his shining black head and the dog let her, another good sign in my books. Moose was an excellent judge of character.
“Thanks for being so forthright,” I said to the woman who nodded. “You’re not a suspect in my eyes, Frieda, but Jill might have more questions. Still, I’ll speak up for you.” No motive, and while she didn’t have an alibi, she honestly was about as far down my list of suspects as Moose.
I turned and headed back with a heavy sigh, keeping pace with Bill while Frieda followed without comment. “What do you think?” I hadn’t asked him yet, talked to him about the crime. “Any guesses? You were out there with them yesterday, Bill. Did you overhear anything that sounded like it might be motive?”
He didn’t comment right away, whistling for Moose who wandered a bit, giant head lifting, ears cocked. The big dog rejoined us a moment later, Bill tugging a few stray leaves from his companion’s heavy fur coat as he spoke. “I hate to speak out of turn, Fee,” he said, sounding uncomfortable.
“A man was murdered,” I said, keeping my voice down. “There’s no such thing as out of turn.”
Bill opened his mouth, paused. Sighed. Nodded. Just as a familiar sound I didn’t have time to identify preceded Moose letting out the most horrifically terrifying growl I’d ever heard.
“Get down!” Something struck me in the middle of my back, sending me tumbling to the ground, Bill dropping like a rock beside me. I looked over my shoulder, heart pounding, at the sight of Frieda pressed between my shoulder blades, her face tight with anger. Only then did I register the echoing report of a gunshot, bouncing through the trees in response to the release of a bullet.
The familiar sound? That of a rifle being locked and loaded.
Moose was off, barking and snarling, Bill scrambling after him, while Frieda cursed softly, letting me up. I crouched next to her, heart hammering in my chest while she spun and looked up. I followed her sightline, spotting the hole in the tree behind us a moment later, a thin trail of smoke escaping it. Frieda’s hand on my arm held me down. Not like I was going anywhere, not with a gunman out there.
It seemed to take forever, the older woman and me hovering in near silence, only the panting sound of my breath punctuating the stillness around us, while the sound of Bill and Moose giving chase to the shooter grew more distant. Frieda finally exhaled, eyes intent on mine, and let me go, though it took me a moment to trust my wobbling knees, to pull myself shakily upright while she went to the tree and the hole. A small pocket knife she’d stowed somewhere on her person—Jill did a great job disarming her, apparently—appeared in her hand and she quickly and efficiently dug out the slug, examining it before dropping it in my hand.
It weighed a lot for something so very tiny. Or maybe it was just my perception.
I followed Frieda in a daze, not even noticing the slog of the walk back to the lodge. I’d been in tight places before, under threat. Had almost drowned, dangled from a tall tree, been attacked twice by a mad man, even been at gunpoint, if in a group situation. But being shot at from a distance by an unknown foe?
Shudder times one million.
Bill was already filling Jill in when we entered the foyer, the itching sensation between my shoulder blades and my need to keep looking back over my shoulder only going away with the doors of the retreat safely closed behind me. The horrified look on Jill’s face helped calm me down while I dropped the slug Frieda had liberated into the deputy’s hand. Her fear turned to anger and back again. Was she thinking about Crew and the fact he’d kill her if anything happened to me?
Dan looked sick, though Jill was quick to admit he was with her the last half hour, being questioned. So it wasn’t him. But what about the rest of them?
Ryan. Eddie. Caleb. Adrian. All unaccounted for.
I stayed near Bill and Moose as we went looking for the suspects, wishing I could hold the big man’s hand and have a good excuse for it. No, wishing Crew was there, damn it. I was still shaken and likely shaking when we entered the kitchen and found Mom and Ryan arguing in tense, quiet voices.
Mom took one look at me and abandoned her argument, hurrying to me to hug me while Jill confronted my ex with the kind of furiously contained insistence that got answers even from the most hardened criminals. And Ryan was anything but.
“I was here.” He spluttered and gestured at Mom who grudgingly nodded. “Talking to Mrs. Fleming.” Talking, yeah, right. He better not have been mean to my mother. Now that I was safe and had a Mom hug under my belt? You better believe I was rip roaring mad to have been almost shot.
Except, of course, I wasn’t the target. Frieda was. Right?
Jill rounded up my ex and my mother, dragging them off to the foyer. We found Caleb in the study, tending the fire, the hearths the only source of heat for the building. He seemed startled by our appearance, then horrified by the accusation.
“I was out getting wood from the shed,” he said, gesturing at the pile by the fireplace.
“I saw him come in,” Barry said from where he huddled on the sofa. “Five minutes ago.”
Was that time for him to shoot at us then run back and fetch wood? Maybe.
We found Adrian in his room, reading, equally as shocked by the attempt on Frieda’s life. Or mine. Or Bill’s? Who knew?
Jill corralled everyone in the study, Grayson’s body long moved to the walk-in freezer for storage, her gaze counting us even as I realized one was missing. At the same moment the front doors opened and Eddie walked in.
Carrying a rifle over one arm.
***