Kat sat up in bed, adrenaline pumping. “What was that?”
“Not again,” groaned Harper. “Kat, this is an old log cabin. Loose tiles are going to bang, floorboards will creak even when no one’s walking on them, and the wind’s going to keep whining like an unhappy ghost. Put some earplugs in and close your eyes.”
“It wasn’t the wind,” Kat said stubbornly. “It was a living creature, howling in the forest. Possibly more than one. The howls were different.”
“I’ll be the one howling if I don’t get some sleep,” complained Harper. She put a pillow over her head.
Moments later, a bone-chilling keening penetrated the memory foam. She flung aside the pillow. “What was that?”
“Told you so,” said Kat, who hadn’t moved. “There’s something out there.”
“Nobody told us there’d be wolves,” said Harper in alarm.
Kat lifted the blinds and stared hard into the darkness, but the night held tight to its secrets. “What’s weird is that the survival book I bought claimed there hadn’t been a wolf pack in the Adirondacks since the 1890s. And no lone wolves have been seen in over a decade.”
Yet she was as certain as Harper that they hadn’t imagined the eerie sound. What was it? A bear in a snare? A loon in peril? Feral dogs out hunting?
The girls strained their ears. Whatever it was had gone quiet.
Kat’s eyelids drooped and she burrowed beneath her moose-patterned duvet. “Wish there were wolves in the Adirondacks. I love them so much. They sing, you know, like we do, for the pure joy of it.”
“Sing? Wolves?”
“They croon to their loved ones. It’s a bonding ritual called social gluing. People see wolves as vicious killers, but they’re the opposite. Their families are their whole world. They’re so affectionate and protective of one another.”
She murmured drowsily, “Per’aps there are wolves in our forest. They’ve sensed that there’s a new Wolfe in the town and they’re singing to welcome me…”
On that cheerful note, she fell asleep.
Harper smiled and lay down but found it impossible to drift off. The threat of wolves brought home the reality of lonely cabins in the wilderness. Every screech, thud, or rustle set her nerves jangling. She shot up in bed. “What was that?”
Kat didn’t stir.
“Kat, something smashed in the kitchen. What if it’s a burglar breaking in? Oh, please wake up. I’m worried.”
But jet lag had caught up with Kat. She was unconscious.
Harper did her best to stay calm and rational. Before turning in, she and Kat had made certain that every door and window was secured. Even if they’d missed one, the fury of the gale would surely have been enough to put off any intruder without a hankering to be crushed by a falling tree or trampled by a frightened wild animal.
The noise came again—a distinct clinking.
Harper swung out of bed. She’d have to investigate. Alone.
“I’m a detective,” Harper told herself. “If I’m to fight international criminals in real life as well as online, I can’t let a petty thief faze me.”
Arming herself with a wooden squirrel carving, she crept down the stairs. The clinking and clanking grew louder. Twice, Harper nearly ran screaming back to Kat. She forced herself on, muttering under her breath, “Detective Lamb, you are fearless, fit, and fifty times cleverer than any burglar. You can do this.”
Halfway down the stairs, she heard slurping. Someone or something was eating in their kitchen. That raised a fresh possibility for which Harper was utterly unprepared. What if she came face-to-face with a bear? Her father had told her a story about a bear breaking into a cabin in Canada, raiding the fridge, and then playing the piano—only not very well.
With no piano or rifle to distract it, this bear might claw her to pieces.
Would a wooden squirrel work as a bear-spray substitute? Harper suspected not. She had visions of flinging the carving behind her as a six-hundred-pound bear pounded after her.
An animated chittering suddenly echoed down the stairwell. Harper stifled a giggle. It was years since she’d heard that chittering, but she’d have recognized it anywhere.
Tiptoeing down the remaining steps, she caught the masked bandit red-pawed.
A raccoon was on the breakfast bar, licking peach nectar out of a can. Its nose and fur were sticky with juice and the remnants of the three-bean chili. Its eyelids fluttered with bliss.
The kitchen was a disaster zone. With no one to supervise, Harper and Kat had gone to bed without clearing up. The raccoon had taken full advantage of their laziness and of their leftovers. The chili pot was upended, dribbling sauce down the side of the stove. Ice-cream footprints traced an erratic journey around the living room. Taco crumbs and rice were strewn from one end of the kitchen to the other. A mug and a plate were in pieces.
The fridge was wide-open. On the tiles below, gnawed veggies swam in a pool of ketchup, maple syrup, and chips of china.
As Harper looked on in fascinated horror, the raccoon took an apple from the fruit bowl and washed it in a glass of water. When it caught sight of her, its expression was priceless. Abandoning the apple, it twisted off the countertop, adding a shattered glass to the ghastly stew on the tiles. It dived behind a cabinet and was gone.
Despite the mess, the relief of finding a raccoon in the cabin rather than a knife-wielding burglar left Harper elated. She’d faced her fears and won. She was practically a superhero.
Cleaning the kitchen took ages. After stoking the fire until it crackled and popped, Harper poured herself a glass of milk and opened a packet of Oreo cookies. Then she stretched out on the sofa with the TV remote.
The shutters were still banging, the wind still whining, and there were still unexplained creaks and groans, but Harper was no longer afraid. Not at all. Isolated cabins in the wilderness agreed with her, she decided. She couldn’t wait for morning when she and Kat could explore the forest.
The news bellowed out at her. The polar vortex hurtling in from the Arctic had turned into a winter storm, now named Storm Mindy, after reaching wind speeds of close to ninety miles per hour on the northeast coast. There was footage of cars and houses buried under snow and a lighthouse beaming through a blizzard.
Harper lowered the volume and hopped up to get more cookies. Returning to the sofa, she was about to switch channels when an image of Gerry Meeks popped up, captioned: VILLAIN OR VICTIM?
A newscaster in an orange tie said, “On Monday, Gerry Thomas Meeks, a retired insurance salesman and the alleged leader of the Wish List gang, was charged with stealing a fifty-million-dollar diamond necklace from heiress Cynthia Hollinghurst.
“The ninety-one-year-old and his unknown accomplices are the prime suspects in nine high-profile heists across the United States. At the scene of each robbery, they left a wish list written with colored Sharpies. The wish list was simple, their alleged crimes not so much.”
A graphic flashed up: Harper took a screengrab on her phone.
IS THIS THE REAL WISH LIST?
1. 1964 Fender Stratocaster Guitar Played by Bob Dylan
2. Green-Enameled Ming “Dragon” Vase
3. 1913 Liberty Head Nickel
4. Lost Eighteenth-Century Masterpiece by Sofia Rossi
5. Autographed First Edition of Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
6. Fifth-Century Bronze Sculpture of a Horse and Hare
7. 1918 Inverted Jenny Stamp
8. Dress Worn by Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady
9. $50,000,000 Hollinghurst Diamond Necklace
An earnest reporter took up the story outside Shady Oaks Nursing Home. “Fresh doubts have been raised over the innocence of accused criminal mastermind Gerry Meeks after it emerged that at least three women, all calling themselves Mrs. A. Relative, signed him out of Shady Oaks Nursing Home for weekend breaks. Were they con artists or accomplices? Detectives are investigating.”
Three grainy black-and-white CCTV images filled the screen. One woman was petite; one long-limbed and elegant; and one had thick, curly hair. All wore hats, and none of their faces were visible.
“Earlier, I spoke with the Shady Oaks director, Sylvia Jarman,” said the reporter. “Ms. Jarman, does Mr. Meeks have any relatives?”
“No, he does not. He was devoted to his granddaughter, but she passed away many years ago.”
“Yet your staff allowed a man with no family to disappear for weekends with three women bearing no resemblance to one another, each called Mrs. A. Relative?”
Sylvia Jarman eyed him severely over the top of her glasses. “Mike, our residents are grown-ups, not children, and we treat them as such. The visitors were courteous, and Gerry greatly looked forward to these outings. When he returned, he seemed … normal. Nothing aroused our suspicions. After his arrest, we found nothing incriminating in his room.”
The reporter was like a dog with a chew toy. “You’re telling me that you had no problem with one of your most fragile residents going partying till the wee hours at the Royal Manhattan?”
Standing before the Shady Oaks sign, Sylvia shuffled in her gel-soled shoes. “We were under the impression that he was having root-canal surgery under a general anesthetic, due to his advanced years, and would be in the hospital overnight.”
“Being taken care of by a relative, no doubt,” the reporter said nastily. “So every time Gerry left Shady Oaks with one of these accomplices or con artists, he might have been on his way to steal a priceless sculpture or Bob Dylan’s guitar?”
“Absolutely not.” Sylvia Jarman was indignant. “According to our records, he was absent on only one other date that coincides with the crimes of the so-called Wish List gang: a weekend when a stamp was stolen in Key West. I’m certain that police will find Gerry has a cast-iron alibi for that time too. On all other occasions, he was here at Shady Oaks, sitting in a quiet corner reading Trouble Is My Business or some such mystery.”
She adjusted her glasses. “Mike, the Gerry Meeks we know is boringly ordinary. This is all a dreadful misunderstanding. When he’s found innocent, as he will be, we’ll welcome him home to Shady Oaks with open arms.”
Harper switched off the TV. If only her dad had allowed her to bring her laptop. The Wish List case intrigued her. She itched to be able to investigate it. Even if she’d had her usual smartphone rather than the Stone Age Nokia her father had insisted she bring, hacking into the Shady Oaks server would have been as easy for her as counting to ten in French. If Gerry Meeks had emailed anyone ever, chances were Harper would have found it.
Then she remembered that there was no Wi-Fi at the cabin. They’d come to the Adirondacks to get away from their phones and back to nature.
Harper grimaced. With no internet or data and only a pitiful signal on her non-smartphone, Detectives Wolfe and Lamb would not be solving cases any time soon.
It was her last thought before she fell asleep. When next she opened her eyes, it was nearly 8:00 A.M. Extricating herself from the deep folds of the sofa, she stood, stretched, and did a double take. Snowflakes were whirling past the window.
Overnight, Mirror Lake and the mountain had been transformed. Delicate snowflakes clung to the glass like butterflies. Others melted into the lake or formed frosting on outstretched branches.
A warm feeling filled Harper’s chest. Living in the U.K., she’d forgotten how much she missed proper snow. Great, billowing piles of it. Snowball fights! Massive grinning snowmen!
Unexpectedly, she and Kat were going to be treated to a bonus winter holiday. What fun they’d have outside. They could make snow angels or pelt each other with snowballs to their heart’s content.
The best part? There wasn’t an adult in miles to tell them not to.