With our backs to the sun we wended our way back through the forest, the trail stretching ahead like Hansel and Gretel’s, the oak trees standing tall and proud, festooned with Spanish moss that hung from branches like Rapunzel’s hair. I almost peered down to see if I could see the breadcrumbs.
As I veered around a stray branch that one of the wild old oaks had given up in the hurricane there was a loud bang, and an awful, jarring shudder ripped through my body. I immediately lost control of the trike, which leapt forward on altogether the wrong trajectory, tilting giddily on two wheels. I felt Martha lose her grip on me as I held on to the handlebars of a bike that was now airborne. I watched in fascination as the handlebars began to invert while gravity tore my body away from the bike. I landed on my back lengthwise in a ditch and watched helplessly as the trike turned over completely and then plummeted down on top of me. I held my breath and closed my eyes. There was a thud and then silence and a gentle pressure on my chest that felt like the weight of a wool blanket. I opened my eyes. The bike lay on top of me, straddling the ditch, its seat hung up on one side and the handlebars hung up on the other, with me underneath, pinned like an insect to a board. Couldn’t even move my arms.
“Cordi! Cordi!” Martha was shrieking my name.
“Get me out of here!” I said, sympathizing even more with Duncan and the corner cupboard. All of a sudden Martha was right at my head, her frowning face peering into mine. She was covered in mud.
“You okay?” I asked. She nodded, her eyes wide and really startled looking.
“What the hell happened?” I said.
“Someone hit us from behind,” said Martha, “but the sun was in my eyes so I couldn’t see anything. I just flew off.” She had a gnash over her left eye that was bleeding down her cheek.
“You sure you’re okay?” I asked again.
She just stood there and nodded.
“Can you pull me out?” But she didn’t seem to hear and I had to ask again. She pulled herself together and tried pulling me by my arms and then my legs but she wasn’t strong enough to budge me.
“I’ll be back, Cordi, with help,” and she left me there to contemplate the vinyl seat of the trike and breathe in the gas fumes. I don’t know how long I lay there before I heard the roar of an engine as it made its way toward me. I called out, thinking it might be someone other than Martha, and then wished I hadn’t as I remembered Wyatt’s last words to me. Was he out to get me? And if so was this him coming back? I held my breath and heard the engine die as someone called out. It didn’t sound like Wyatt, so I answered. And suddenly there was Darcy at my side, making all kinds of are-you-ok sounds as I told him what had happened. He too tried to pull me out but when he started to try and shift the bike I yelled at him. It was a good way to crush me completely. So he stood around and waited with me, which I thought was really nice of him.
“I really think you need to take me seriously,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Someone is trying to stop you from investigating this murder. This is the second time that you have had an inexplicable accident.”
I felt a little chill go down my spine at the sound of inexplicable accident. Could someone have been after me? After all, Jayne wasn’t a possible target this time.
Was I really a threat?
“I’m sure there is a logical explanation.”
He looked at me and shook his head in frustration.
“What do you know about Melanie?” I asked, to take him off topic.
“Mel? Why do you ask?”
“She told me that Stacey sought her out. That she didn’t apply herself for the job.”
“That’s right. Stacey’s prerogative.”
“Had she ever done that before?”
“Nope. Not that I know of.”
“Any idea why she chose Melanie?”
“I think she saw something in her that reminded her of herself when she was young. Stacey was a bit of a romantic despite all her hard knocks and may have been trying to recreate her own life with a happier ending.” I couldn’t see his face but I could tell he was hiding something or making everything up as he went along.
By way of conversation I said, “That was pretty chilling finding Stacey like that. I can’t get her out of my mind.”
“I know what you mean.”
“It’s the slip knot that really gnaws at me.”
“What do you mean?”
“You untied one hand. You must have seen how tight it was. She must have struggled something fierce trying to reach her mouth. What sort of sadist does that?”
“The chloroform would have taken care of that,” he said.
I hadn’t thought of that.
Darcy didn’t say anything more and I strained my neck to see him. He was perched on a small rock just to my left and the look on his face was stricken with sadness, shock, and, if I was seeing him correctly, surprise. He obviously hadn’t thought about it before and I was sorry for him that I had said anything.
I was never so glad to see Sam. He walked into my range of vision, looked down at me, and smiled. “Lucky lady,” was all that he said as he reached under my shoulders and in one long fluid motion pulled me out from under the trike. Martha immediately rushed over and threw a blanket over my head and Wyatt, being a vet, had been commandeered to make sure I was all right because no one could find Duncan. Trevor and Darcy made up the rest of the rescue party and once I had been extricated they all put their hands to getting the trike back on the road.
Wyatt put his vet skills to work by politely asking if I was all right. When I said I was he wandered off in the direction of the trike. I looked behind them all and saw Trevor’s truck. Martha saw me looking in its direction and said, “Do you think that’s it?”
We went over to take a look but there was no telltale paint or bits of plastic sticking to it. In fact, the mud plastered all over it in a fine film was unscathed.
I looked up toward the trike as it coughed to life and saw Darcy staring at me. When he saw that I had seen him he quickly looked away. Could Darcy have run us off the road? It seemed unlikely, but he was in the area. I looked around for his vehicle but all I saw was the truck and the trike. Besides, any of the others could have been in the area too. They were certainly all close by because Martha hadn’t been gone that long, even though it had felt as though she’d been gone a day.
Miraculously the trike was more or less undamaged, except that both the rear tires were flat. They lifted it into Trevor’s truck and I watched as Martha opened the door and waved for me to get in. I was too wound up to get into that truck so I waved her off and told her to meet me at Stacey’s cottage. What I needed was a brisk walk to vaporize all my demons. Darcy tried to get me to come with him but I said no and watched as they all left. I could hear the noise of their engines puttering through the trees, muffled like the pop of a cork. It was now a heavy, overcast day, the air practically molding its way around my body like a damp rag. I surveyed the trail in both directions and then struck out in the direction of the lighthouse and Stacey’s cottage. I was kicking myself for not going sooner and wondered how many others had visited the cottage and pilfered some of Stacey’s belongings. Had the murderer beaten me to a key piece of evidence? I cursed under my breath and quickened my pace.
Like all the cottages on the island, Stacey’s stood at the base of the dune line and was built on stilts with the ubiquitous tower of stairs snaking up to the front door. I paused in the clearing and took it all in, the neat little shack where her ATV was stored and a pile of lumber by the stairs waiting for some project that she had had in mind, now but a lost dream. I started up the stairs two at a time but halted as my left leg gave out. I sat down on the stairs nursing it. I must have twisted it in the accident. As I sat there I heard a footfall above me. I turned to see Jayne coming out of the cottage. She had turned away from me and was backing up slowly, but it was too late and she knew it. She turned back and hailed me as if she hadn’t tried to sneak away.
“Cordi. What are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same question.”
She laughed uncertainly and said, “Just looking for something I lent to Stacey.” She started walking down the stairs toward me.
“You sound like Melanie. She was here looking for something too.”
I stood up and turned to face her. “Seems she found what she was looking for,” I said in a faintly accusatory tone of voice.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you are talking about.” Jayne reached my stair and stopped.
I made a giant leap of faith and said, “Three file folders. One with your name on it that maybe you are looking for.” I wished to God I had read that third file folder but I wasn’t going to let this chance go by.
“And why would I want my own file folder?” she asked.
“For the same reason anyone would. To read what people say about you. To assuage your ego. To still some fears. Or, in your case, to hide evidence in a murder investigation.”
“Jesus, Cordi. Lighten up. What evidence could I possibly want to hide?” But her voice was wary.
When I didn’t say anything she laughed. “You’re just winging it, aren’t you? Hoping I’ll say something to incriminate myself. All I’ll say is that Stacey and I agreed to disagree on just about everything but sea turtles. We were not friends but that is a lousy reason for killing someone.” She passed me then on the stairs and I turned to watch her go. Without turning around she waved her hand and said, “Don’t quit your day job, Cordi.”
I was angry that I had boxed myself in. I shook the pain out of my leg and took the stairs two at a time, even though it still hurt. I pushed thoughts of Jayne out of my head and entered Stacey’s cottage. There was an impressively huge picture window at the front of the house overlooking the canopy of trees. The main room was open concept with a long mahogany bar and a lovely maple island. Everything was burnt orange or pale yellow, from the sofas to the chairs to the burnt sienna walls, making it quite dark even with the picture window. I walked over to a bookcase lined not with books but with pictures. I scanned them for a while, looking for anything recognizable. I picked up one of a boy and a younger girl and peered at the faces. David was unmistakable — a little replica of his older self. The girl’s face looked familiar but try as I might I couldn’t see much of the young woman in the older Stacey. There were family photos too, but they were all from her distant past — nothing from Stacey’s later life, as if she had just obliterated it. I wondered why and began to think about what Jayne had said: that something had happened to Stacey when she was young. What had happened to her that would wipe out her history from what must have been her late teens on?
There wasn’t much upstairs other than the somewhat surprising find that she slept on a thin cot. The downstairs two bedrooms were sparsely furnished but both had double beds. The office was another story. It was in a large room that overlooked the snaking stairs outside. It was a riotous jumble of papers, computers, printers, photocopiers, file cabinets, two oversized desks, and an upholstered swivel chair that screamed out luxury. It was a daunting display of an academic at work, knowing no interruptions would occur. Of course, someone might just have ransacked the place. My heart plummeted at the thought, but then I started poking about and there was order to the mess. For whatever reason, Jayne and Melanie had been circumspect in their searches. I flipped through the filing cabinets — mostly personnel files and research projects. I set aside a file of newspaper clippings that, at a quick glance, related to a murder in Austin, Texas, hoping that what she had clipped randomly from newspapers might give me a clue. Next I rifled through some folders lying loose on her desk. Two were related to some of her research but the third was a correspondence file, which I set aside. And that’s when I spied the yellow envelope, surely the one that I had seen David give to Stacey the day I arrived. Stacey’s name was handwritten on the envelope and I carefully extracted the single sheet of paper from inside. It was a letter to Stacey from her doctor, saying he had tried to get in touch with her by phone with no luck and so was sending it via her brother. It was a gentle letter confirming a horrific blow. All the tests that had been done had excluded other causes. Stacey had had Lou Gehrig’s disease.