Authors: Kathy Warcup
“There’s a lot abou
t me that you don’t know yet,”
she told him
with a wink
. “Pick a spot and start scrubbing. It all needs cleaned and sanitized. Here, I found some gloves back there with the cleaning supplies.”
She tossed
Jesse a pair of rubber
gloves. “Too bad we didn’t have them to begin with.”
They spent the next couple of hours scrubbing everything clean.
When Katie thought it was clean, t
hey then went back over everything with bleach.
When everything in the entire kitchen was sparkling, t
hey stood back to admire their work.
Katie looked
around and saw
Jesse as
he
began to clean t
he dining room
.
Katie
joined in and
took off the old, dirty tablecloths and put them in a garbage bag. She wiped down the tables and chairs
with hot soap and water,
while Jesse swept the floor.
Katie went over every surface with bleach. Jesse found clean tablecloths and napkins
that he put on the tables. They were ready to start cooking dinner.
They gathered what they wanted from the pantry and Katie set about cooking. There were still clean pots and pans in the cupboard. Jesse found clean dinnerware. The silverware he thought was a little questionable, so he took some of the hot water to wash them. He dried them with some paper towels.
Jesse
managed to transform the drab dining room into a space that could rival a fine restaurant. He finished by
lighting the candles
he had found in the pantry
. He
surveyed the room
and said, “Katie was so on the money when
she said we could make this place
romantic.
Who would have thought?
”
As he lo
oked around, he sighed, imagining
how much he would enjoy this evening with the woman he seemed to be falling in love with.
Katie carried
their dinner
into the dining room
from the kitchen
on a tray
. She had created a
spaghetti
dinner for Jesse and herself
. She had
made cornbread muffins from a mix she had found in the pantry
. A
can of green beans
completed the simple meal. For de
s
sert she had made chocolate cupcakes with vanilla icing.
As Katie brought their meal to the dining room,
Jesse was impressed on how creative Katie had been making this meal for them, “E
verything looks wonderful, Babe
.”
Katie looked lovingly at Jesse. This was the first time he
had
used any other name for her beside Katie. “It’s the best I could do with the ingredients I had. But I’m pretty proud of it.
” She looked around the warm and inviting room. “
The dining room looks
breathtaking
, Jesse. I told you together we could make this a romantic evening.”
Jesse kissed Katie
on the neck as
he pulled out the chair for her.
They made small talk through dinner. Both of
them were fixed on the other while they ate, so they didn’t know if the dinner was spaghetti or filet mignon. It really didn’t matter.
When they had finished
the main meal
, Katie
went to the kitchen to get the cupcakes and coffee.
When she returned, she served Jesse and sat back down on her chair. Jesse looked at Katie and very seriously said, “I need to ask you something important, Katie.
I’ve been running this through my head all day
. I was afraid that you would say no, but I’m going to ask you no
w anyway. Jesse looked so serious
that
Katie wasn’t certain she wanted to hear whatever he was about to ask
. S
he softly said with a little apprehension, “What’s so important?”
He
reached across the table and
took her by the hands and asked, “Will you go to Asia with me?”
“Asia?” she questioned. It hadn’t registered what he meant
...
“I want you to go with me on tour. We’d be gone a month. I’m scheduled to perform in Japan, Ch
ina and India. I’d love for
you to come with me. Will you? Will you go on tour with me
?
” He waited for her answer.
“Jesse, I have a job to go to in a couple of weeks and Sadie, what would happen to Sadie?” She paused.
Jesse’s heart sank. Then, h
er eyes lit up.
“Of course I’ll go.
I’ll take a leave of absence; no,
hell,
I’ll just quit," she said excitedly.
“Jesse, I was so afraid that I would never see you agai
n after we leave
here. Of course, of course, I’ll go. I never want to be away from you.” She looked him in the eyes. “I think I might be falling in love with you.”
“I know I’m f
alling in love with you, Katie,”
Jesse told her as he leaned in and kissed her.
Katie remembered
Sadie. “What about Sadie? She’
s part of my life, you know. I just can’t leave her. Could we take her along? Would you want to take her with us?”
“Hold on, we’ll figure something out. We just won’t abandon her.
I’ve grown quit fond of that dog
of yours
.
” He reached down beside him to where Sadie was now sleeping and scratched her ear. “I don’t know if those countries will let her travel with us, but we’ll find out. If not, I’ll hire someone to take care of her while we are in the countries that she can’t visit. There will be no kennels for Sadie.”
Katie’s head was spinning. What would she need to do first? Call school? Call home?
All that could wait, r
ight this moment she wanted to
be with Jesse
. She looked
amorously
into Jesse’s eyes and suggested,
“
Let’s go back to the cabin.”
Jesse
gave her a wink and picked up
the flashlight he had found earlier. Katie put Sadie’s leash on the lab. They walked cautiously but directly back to the cabin. They both knew what was on the agenda for the rest of the night.
The next morning Jesse awoke first.
He got ready for the day, and then he made coffee. Katie was still sleeping; so he went outside to drink his coffee.
Sadie went with him.
Katie woke a few minutes later.
When she saw that Jesse was outside she went to the window to see what he was doing. As she watched him sitting on the porch
steps,
drinking his coffee, she felt warm and safe. She smiled to herself.
She
quickly
showered and dressed
. As she went outside with her cup of coffee
, Jesse
stood up and kissed her, “Good morning,” he said cheerfully.
“And a good morning to you, too,” she responded just as cheerfully. They both sat down on the steps.
As they drank their coffee
,
a cow moose and her calf crossed the path just yards from where they were sitting. Sadie sat next to Jesse but made no
sounds as the pair disappeared into the pines.
“I thought we could go back to the lodge this morning for breakfast. We spent a lot of time cleaning, so we should take advantage of our hard work.
Besides, there’s more food
to choose from
there,”
Jesse suggested as he stood up and started down the steps.
He still wanted to search for a gun.
“Good idea,” Katie said as she motioned to Sadie to come.
She snapped the leash on her collar, and they all started down the path.
When they arrived at the lodge, the doors were open again. Jess
e
distinctly remembered closing them when they left the night before. He didn’t say anything to Katie, though.
Katie made breakfast while Jesse cleaned up from their dinner the night before. After eating
his breakfast
,
Jesse got up and headed toward the staircase.
“Let’s go explore upstairs,”
Jesse proposed. He patted Sadie on the head and they headed for the staircase. Katie followed behind them. At the top, they saw what looked like six bedrooms. There was a bathroom at each end of the hall. And another door was between the second and third bedrooms on each side of the hall. All of the doors were either open or half open, except the ones between the bedrooms
. There was a distinct
odor
that
they assumed was
coming from the bathroom at the top of the stairs.
“Oh, nasty!” Katie said as she fanned her hand across her nose.
“That will have to be taken care of.”
Jesse went into the first bedroom. It was actually
quite
nice for a fishing camp. The walls were covered with cheap wooden paneling. There was a large double bed, a decen
t dresser with a mirror, and
a very old looking suitcase stand. There was a single window with curtains proba
bly dating from the sixties
.
T
here were several nails protruding from the wall slightly above eye level. No doubt to hang any clothes a fisherma
n might want to actually keep from wrinkling
.
All in all
,
the room was well kept.
Katie walked out of the bedroom and
headed toward
the closed door on the left side of the hall. “Any guesses on what’s behind door number one?” She turned
, gave a “Vanna” pose,
and grinned at Jesse.
For some reason this place was making him very
anxious
. Jesse ignored Katie’s funny
remark
and reached past her to open the door. Not much of a mystery here. The closet was filled with
clean
linens, towels and cleaning supplies. He closed that door. Then he went to the door on the other side of the hall.
That was when he noticed the obnoxious
stench
that they thought was the bathroom, was
actually
coming from behind this door.
Jesse
reached for the door handle. Katie grabbed his hand to make him stop. “We don’t have to open this door, Jesse. Come on, let’s go.”
Jesse
ignored Katie’s request and
slowly opened the closet door. Something
heavy
was pushing from the other side. Jesse looked around the edge of the door and saw nothing, so he opened it the entire way. Out fell a partially decomposed body. The smell hit them at the same time. Both screamed and jumped back away from the body now lying in front of them.
“Katie, take Sadie and go downstairs
now
! “
Jesse ordered as he covered his nose and mouth
“Not without you,”
Katie said emphatically.
“Ok, we’ll all
go.” Katie grabbed Sadie by the collar and they all ran downstairs.
“What do we do? What do we do? Who is
that? Jesse
, who
is that?” Katie had become
hysterical as they reached the lobby.
Jesse tried to calm her by wrapping his arms around her. But he needed comforted almost as much as Katie did. “Just cal
m down. We’ll figure this out,”
Jesse told her as he was trying not to become hysterical too.
“Right now we need to use the radio
in the store
to call the authorities. This has to be reported, now.”
The body that was found in the
closet was that of the elderly
owner
of the camp
. His name had been Dan Colby. He had
owned and managed
this fishing camp for more than 30 years.
The day Colby had died, he was making beds upstairs. Smith had found him lying on the floor outside the linen closet.
H
e saw
Colby’s death as another money-
making scheme. He decided to just stuff the
old man’s
body in the closet. He didn’t want to take the time to bury him.
And, he figured the officials would have to be called. Smith just didn’t want the bother.
Smith announced to
th
e staff that the old man
had taken ill
. The next morning Smith left a message saying that he was flying Colby to the doctor. Upon his return, he
regretfully told the remaining staff
and the three visiting fishermen
that
the old man had
suffered a heart attack and had
died
. He told them
it was Colby’s
d
ying wish
for him
to close up the camp.
Smith said that he
would take care of everything. He flew everyone from camp late
r
that
same
afternoon.