Crime Rib (Food Lovers' Village) (16 page)

Thinking while walking is always treacherous, but hey, gotta live on the wild side sometimes. What was I hoping to find? Stacia’s copy of Amber’s recipe—identified by tiny staple holes in the upper left where it had been detached from the e-mail—and her copies of Drew’s e-mail and recipe. I was only guessing that she’d gotten them and printed them out. But us OCD types stick pretty close to our habits.

If we found Stacia’s copies, we might get a better idea why the duplication occurred, and why it had been so distressing.

Thinking without my spreadsheet was equally dangerous. But one question remained unanswered: Who benefited from Drew’s death, and how?

And where had each of those people been when he was killed?

Tara—that was obvious. Well, maybe not so obvious. She’d be able to leave Jewel Bay, but she’d be fully responsible for Emma, financially and otherwise. She’d lose Drew’s child support payments, but if he’d had assets and life insurance, those would go to Emma. Would she be the trustee or guardian or whatever it was called? How could I check?

Questions beget more questions. My spreadsheets might seem silly to some—organized guesswork. My version of the murder boards the homicide detectives use on TV. And in real life—like the large white board I’d glimpsed in Kim’s office earlier this summer. But my spreadsheet had worked just as well. Or better.

A car rolled up behind me and I stepped onto the grass, still thinking, to let it pass. Green, expensive looking. It turned left and disappeared.

A hundred feet farther, I crossed the lawn to Stacia’s cabin, glanced around to make sure the coast was clear, and peered in the front window. A black suitcase lay open on the luggage rack, a small green daypack on the floor. The closet door was closed. Two coffee cups sat on the table next to the butterscotch easy chair, flanking a copy of
Montana
magazine and a pair of reading glasses. I slid over to the bathroom window and spotted two small toiletry bags—his and hers in red and blue—and one hairbrush, a pair of toothbrushes, and a capped tube of paste. If cabins intuited the habits and personalities of their occupants, this one must be breathing sighs of relief over the current tenants’ tidy ways.

No stray papers in sight. I hadn’t expected to find them, but hope springs eternal for serious snoops.

I relaxed against the west wall, the logs a sort of massage therapy for my upper back. Gib’s cabin stood ten feet away. The maid had been working there last Friday. Gib and Pete were out on their field trip.

Fortune favors the bold
, goes the old proverb
.

Boldly, I walked across Gib’s porch and knocked on his door. No answer. Peered in the front window—fortune also favors those who risk being rude. Not a soul in sight. Gib was not as neat as his neighbors, but a far cry from the cyclone Stacia had been. On the bedside table, a small stack of magazines, a travel clock, and a pair of reading glasses. While the closet door stood ajar, the shirts and pants inside hung nice and straight. A denim jacket lay draped across the back of the reading chair, Gib’s black leather messenger bag slash briefcase open next to it.

A briefcase. A computer? Papers?

Answers to my questions?

I peeked in the bathroom—unoccupied—then hopped down and rounded the corner to the double window on the cabin’s long side wall.
Luck!
One window stood open a few inches. The screen was loose at the corner, as if the aluminum frame had sprung and wouldn’t quite settle back in place.

More luck—no one in sight out front, and a tall hedge behind the two cabins screened me from that direction. The only windows with a view of this wall were in Stacia’s cabin, the current occupants still away.

The screen creaked slightly as I pried it free. Thankful for my sturdy rubber-soled sandals, I stuck one toe in between two logs and swung up and over the sill.

Now what? The briefcase. No laptop or iPad—Gib must rely on his phone. And he didn’t share Stacia’s habit of printing everything for a shoot, either. The main compartment held three food and drink magazines and a week-old copy of the
Life
section from
USA Today
—no doubt picked up flying. I laid them back in the case and plucked a short stack of papers from the outside pocket. Fanned through them. Copies of Stacia’s lists of equipment to bring, vendors to visit, sites to see.

Were the recipes and transmittal e-mails here? I flipped back to the beginning and thumbed more carefully, one page at a time.

A heavy step outside.
Criminy.
The steps crossed the porch slowly, as if their owner was fumbling in his pockets for the key. I couldn’t scramble out the window in time.

Under the log bed? Too low.

The closet, my sole option. I darted inside as the cabin door opened, pulling the bifold doors shut with my fingertips, and made myself small. Rubbed my lucky stars and forced myself to breathe quietly.

Slow and deliberate, the footsteps entered the room. I peered out through the door slats. Gib was pushing buttons on his phone. Saved by Ma Bell.

I prayed I wouldn’t sneeze. Or that Gib wouldn’t decide on a fresh shirt for the evening.

He sat in the reading chair, twin to the one in Stacia’s cabin, and set the phone aside while he tugged off his boots. The left boot went flying and hit the closet door nearest me with a thud. My heart stopped ever so briefly. He leaned back in the chair and picked up the phone again. Frowned at a message. “Nitwit,” he said. “Your word against mine.”

Gib dropped the phone on the table, stood, and stepped into the bathroom. I strained my ears. Could I make a getaway? The water started in the shower.
Yes!

No.
He came out of the bathroom, unbuttoning his blue checked shirt, and tossed it on the bed. Off came the socks, then the jeans and skivvies. Not that I pined for a sight of Gib Knox in the altogether, but I didn’t dare look away—I only needed a minute or two to escape.

Gib turned toward the closet. I held my breath as the other door opened and he reached inside for one of the Lodge’s white terry cloth bathrobes. He pulled it off roughly and the wooden hanger rocked, then fell as he closed the door. It hit my bruised arm and I bit my tongue.

He tossed the robe onto the bed and sauntered back into the bathroom.
Ears, don’t fail me now.
The shower door opened, the sound of the water changed—no doubt as he stepped into the stream—and the door closed.

Still crouching, still quiet, I pushed the closet door. Dang. The boot he’d thrown was wedged against it, and I couldn’t easily get out the other side. I reached out, dislodged the boot, and pushed again. A piece of paper—a ticket or a business card—snagged on the bottom. I snatched it up and crept out. Stole a glance at Gib’s phone—no time to check it. Slipped out the cabin door, closing it ever so gently behind me. I stepped lightly across the porch and down the steps to the grassy lawn.

And ran like the wind.

I
sat in the driver’s seat, breathless, rubbing the new bruise on my arm. My grimy fingers still clutched the small, stiff paper that had caught in the door mechanism. I’d grabbed it instinctively, not wanting to drop something that would give me away.

But the pale gold stub with red numbers hadn’t come from me. I turned it over. Pondera Auto Rental. One of those paper tickets rental agencies and service departments attach to keys with the thin metal rings I can never open. Happily, Gib wouldn’t need it. I tossed it on the passenger seat. I itched for a long, tall iced tea or lemonade, but the smarter plan was to get out of Dodge pronto, before I did anything stupid.

Too late for that.

I was too hot, and too bothered, to show my face at the sheriff’s office right now, despite the summons. Better to cool down first, so I didn’t accidentally give myself away.

I love to drive. Love the feel of the road beneath my tires, the car responding to the slightest touch of my foot on the pedals. Love the sound of the engine and the gears shifting, the wheel sliding through my fingers on the curves. Love the sense of the miles slipping behind me, taking my worries with them.

In Seattle, driving had been a hassle—all those people and stoplights, all that rain—and I’d switched to walking for stress relief. Long walks are great, sure, but there is nothing like a drive to sooth the inner beast.

A Subaru may not be a Porsche, but mine hugged the curves as I sped south. A few miles from Jewel Bay, the highway breaks out of the woods and skims above the shoreline. Today on Eagle Lake, the water danced like a crystal bride and groom, swinging to the music of the celestial spheres underneath their lucky, shining stars.

And completely unaware of the monster lurking in the cold, dark depths. Every big lake has one. The story of ours goes like this: It’s long—twenty or thirty feet—eel-like, with humps that echo the surrounding hills and mountains. Its head is large and round, its eyes dark and piercing. Most sightings occur in summer, when more people ply the waters and the small fish the monster eats are plentiful. The year I was twelve, more sightings were reported in a single season than in the twenty years before or since. One sunny afternoon in August, on a day much like today, my father and brother went fishing in a friend’s boat. Halfway down the lake, near Blue Bay, Nick saw something large and dark dip in and out of the water. Too big to be a fish—one theory is that the monster is a giant lake sturgeon, explaining its primitive appearance. Too bumpy to be an ancient submerged log, dark and heavy with creosote from the old tie plant on the west shore—another theory—that surfaces when heavy winds roil the waters and toss tree roots ten feet wide onto lawns and docks as easily as a ten-year-old tosses a soccer ball.

Too weird to be anything but a figment of the imagination—the most popular theory. Like its cousin, the Loch Ness Monster. But even at sixteen, my brother had the mind of a scientist. (He’s a wolf biologist, putting him smack in the crosshairs of a hugely contentious debate. Which he hates.) Like the astronauts who see UFOs, he’s not the kind of guy to mistake a trick of the light for a living, breathing creature. Or to speak up unless he’s sure of what he’s seen.

I craned my neck for a glimpse of the lake, but driving and monster watching are not compatible.

Technically, Nick would point out, the monster is classified as a cryptid—meaning a creature whose existence has not been proven.

Cryptid, schmyptid. Unproven doesn’t mean untrue. It’s out there somewhere.

Like the truth about Drew’s killer and Stacia’s fatal accident.

Ah, perfect timing. I swung the Subaru into the Eagle Lake Brewery’s nearly empty parking lot.

“Hey, Bun. How ’bout an ice-cold Eagle Lake Monster Root Beer?”

“As cold as the lake itself.” Bunny Burns—née Bernadette Easter, twin to Polly Easter Paulson, both classmates of mine from K through 12—reached into the cooler behind her for a frosty bottle of nectar, popped the top, and slid it across the shiny wooden bar cut from a single ponderosa pine. Mom, Landon, and I had stopped here once, and he and I counted the rings: one hundred thirty-seven, give or take.

“Glass?” she said, and I shook my head.

The Brewery had been on the list of must-stops that Stacia and I had drawn up. Besides Monster Root Beer, Bunny and her hunny, Rob, brewed up a tasty amber, a spritely IPA, and a killer stout. They also served juicy burgers, spicy wings, and deliciously messy ribs. I wasn’t hungry enough for my personal favorite, the 4B Burger—bacon, bleu cheese, and brie on beef or buffalo. So I chose my second favorite, beer-battered onion rings. The perfect accompaniment to a round of questioning.

“You heard about the hit-and-run that killed the TV producer? And about Drew Baker?” I said. Bunny nodded solemnly. “So I ended up filling in for the producer, shepherding Gib Knox and the cameraman, Pete Lloyd, when they were filming over the weekend. They were on their own today. They make it in here?”

She rolled her eyes.

“What?” I took a long swig of root beer. As kids, Bunny had left most of the talking to Polly, but she had very expressive eyes.

“Point is to film us making beer and serving lunch, right? So the camera guy—that’s Pete, right?—gets here first and he films Rob fiddling with the tanks and stuff, and it’s all fine. Then that Gib drives up in his fancy car and stands out front admiring it. Sticks his head in and demands a bar towel. No ‘hello’ or ‘could I please?’ Just ‘bar towel’ like I’m only here to heed some stranger’s beck and call. Then he skulks around the thing, squinting, swiping at motes of dust that dared settle on his chrome. ’Course, it’s a rental, right? It isn’t actually his car or chrome. So he polishes it all shiny-like, comes inside, flings the towel at me, asks Pete if he’s got what he needs, and they leave. Never even says ‘boo’ to me.”

“Whoa.” That might have been the longest speech I’d ever heard Bunny Easter Burns make. And the most peevish. Both sisters were patient and even-tempered—a useful trait against the grade school name teasing, as well as in their occupations.

My onion rings appeared in the kitchen window and she set them in front of me. “Help yourself,” I said.

“Don’t mind if I do.” She untangled a fat golden ring from the heaping pile and bit in with an audible crunch. “Love that ale in the batter.”

“They didn’t even taste your beer?” I didn’t blame her for being irked. On his show, Gib raved about local, local, local. Touted the
Food Preneurs
motto—“Taste What’s Cooking Across the Country.” And he’d genuinely seemed to love the local discoveries over the weekend.

Her eyes flashed. “That Pete ordered a mushroom and Swiss burger, fries, and a glass of stout. Went outside when that Gib character got here. They got into it, snarling and gesturing, then they both took off. Pete didn’t even wait for his order. Or pay for it. Coupla young guys came in from kayaking right when the food came off the grill, so I gave them the burger and beer on the house.”

“Their lucky day,” I said. “Wonder what was going on. Between Pete and Gib, I mean.”

“Couldn’t hear, but they were steaming. I’d say, and this is funny”—she cocked her head—“but it’s like when one of my boys is scared he’s going to get in trouble, so he yells at his brother. Who yells back, right? And well, they’re boys. Before we know it, fists are flying.”

The mere mention of fists reminded me of my sore parts. “What was up with that?”

She threw up her hands. “Heck, I don’t know. They’re grown men, not my nine- and ten-year-olds. ’Course, there’s not always a lot of difference.”

Bunny hopped off to greet a pair of newcomers. I sucked on an onion ring, drawing the onion out of the batter shell with my tongue. It slipped and slid like the Lake Monster, but I nabbed it with my teeth and let the flavors zing around my mouth before swallowing.

If Pete was afraid, he wouldn’t have gone outside after Gib. But the Easter sisters were pretty astute judges of character. Had Gib feared Pete? Why? Pete was the one begging for a job.

Not physical fear, I suspected—Gib had a few years on Pete, but was bigger and stronger. I’d seen for myself that he spent a lot of time at the gym. And I’d seen on Sunday that he had a fighter’s instincts, while Pete had a flailer’s fists.

What had Gib said to the phone in his cabin? “Your word against mine”?

Unfortunately, the threat of discovery had chased the words right out of my memory. But the gist had been that they were on equal footing. And he had not sounded frightened. Not in the least.

Who had he been talking to?
If I hadn’t been such a chicken, I’d have checked his phone.

So much for Gib’s claim that they’d let stress boil over on Sunday when I got between Gib’s fist and Pete’s face. Something else was going on between them.

How could I find out what it was? Did any of it even matter, if my goal was to solve Drew’s murder?

The rings were gone and so was my root beer. Better get moving if I intended to stop at the sheriff’s office today.

Cryptids everywhere.

*   *   *

D
eep breaths
, I told myself as I parked outside the sheriff’s office. They don’t know you just broke into Gib Knox’s cabin, and they won’t find out unless you give them reason to suspect something.

Or maybe they did already know. The door opened and Gib Knox stalked out. The set of his shoulders in his crisp blue button-down—one that had hung above my head just an hour ago—screamed tension.

He didn’t seem to notice me as he turned the corner, heading away from the sheriff’s parking lot. Where was his car? I followed cautiously, keeping my distance, as Gib walked rapidly toward the front of the long metal building. The sheriff’s Jewel Bay satellite office occupied the back corner of the volunteer fire station. Gib must have parked out front, not knowing where the door was.

I peeked out from behind the building just in time to see him slide into his green Porsche and peel away, never looking up.

Whew. I pride myself on my planning and careful observations, but when the green car passed me at the Lodge, I’d barely given it a glance, let alone a second thought.

I leaned back against the building to catch my breath. Something else about the car bugged me. But what?

Breathe, Erin.
Acting rattled before the law never pays off.

Had Gib come here to rat on me? Or had he been summoned, as I had? Maybe Ike really was taking him seriously as a suspect.

Or as a witness—but against who? Or whom?

A few deep breaths later, I headed inside. Kim sat at the gunmetal gray desk in the outer office, a desk old in the last century. The place looked like it had been furnished from the county’s annual auction of surplus goods and unclaimed items seized from criminals. They’d do better setting Tracy, the queen of bargain shopping, loose at the thrift shop.

Kim, on the other hand, had obviously acquired today’s outfit—an olive green jacket with a notched collar, matching pants, and a cream silk T-shirt—at one of Pondera’s finer establishments, or online. Love Jewel Bay to pieces, but shopping here is, well, limited. You got your long swirly skirts, pointy-toed boots, and cowgirl hats for the Hoedown at the Lodge. You got your Blackfeet beaded purses and your Montana sapphire earrings, but if you need new jeans or socks, or basic business apparel, take a drive or click the keys.

But Kim’s cool suit contrasted with her obviously foul mood. Barely glancing up when I entered, she frowned at her computer screen, a binder full of photographs open on the desk. Hard to tell upside down, but they looked like close-ups of the road where Stacia’d been killed—tire tread, marks on the road, forest debris, a fragment of clear glass. On the wall hung a large drawing of the scene, measured and labeled to the nth degree. “Rough day?”

She grunted. “Four days and no serious leads. Why’d you invite so many people to the Lodge Thursday night? I had to interview them all. Between that and traipsing around every body shop and junk yard in the county, wore out a good pair of boots.”

“Sorry. Hate to see a good pair of boots ruined for no reason.” No point hiding my sarcasm.

Didn’t need to—she wasn’t listening. “Autopsy report came in. Just spent half an hour on the phone with the Highway Patrol reconstructionist. Sines, cosines, angles, friction. Shoulda paid more attention in math class.”

“What about the tip line you were counting on?”

“Zip.” She bit off the word, staring at her screen.

“Erin,” Ike said from the doorway to the inner office. “Come on in.”

But I had something else to say first. “Kim, I know you don’t like being shut out of the murder investigation because your family owns the Lodge.” And because her cousin was in competition with Drew—although a friendly competition—and had once had a wild affair with Drew’s wife. “But Stacia deserves justice, too.”

A slow flush rose up Kim’s throat. “You don’t have to tell me that, Erin.”

But I did. When my father died, she’d had almost as hard a time as I had. I’d felt like I lost my father and my best friend the same night. I’d only recently realized that his death hadn’t been the reason for the breach in our friendship. Chalk that up to teenage jealousy and bravado. The old, deep wound still stung.

I followed Ike and he closed the door behind us. The murder board dominated one wall. He indicated a chair that would put my back to the wall. But I didn’t sit just yet.

In the center of the board, a picture of Drew, surrounded by photos of other people. Lines led between pictures, labeled to identify the relationships. One reason I love living in a small town is the feeling that you’ve got a connection to everyone. I’d never tried to sketch it out. I’d never given Sandburg a ball of yarn, either, but the results would be about the same.

“You might try a spreadsheet,” I said.

He suppressed a smile. I sat and took the statement he handed me. Rereading my description of what I’d seen and heard on Saturday night brought all the sensations crashing back. My breath went shallow, and anxiety raced through my veins, headed for my heart. I did not want to feel this. I wanted to walk away.