Murder Fir Christmas (16 page)

“About as weird as people who can talk to animals. Don’t worry. Your secret is safe with me. I can’t say as much about Matthew or Walt.”

“Too late to put that in the box, I guess.”

Stella covered Bonnie’s hand with hers and stared into her eyes. “Gossip is stupid, but it’s what people do. It can only hurt you if you let it. I like you. Don’t let it.”

The way she said it, Bonnie knew that Stella was aware of her past. She swallowed hard and resisted the urge to run out to the truck and drive away. If Stella knew, so did Walt and Matthew. She couldn’t put that back in the box either.

“Thanks. I’ll do the best I can.”

A warm feeling like standing in front of a heater blew around her. She could almost hear a whisper in one ear telling her that she would be okay.

“Eric is a big hugger now.” Stella smiled. “You’d think his hugs would be cold, but they’re warm, aren’t they?”

Chapter Seventeen

Tears stung Bonnie’s eyes and clogged her throat for a moment at the idea that the ghost of the old fire chief had hugged her. Walt was complaining about the price of coffee, and Matthew was putting on his jacket. It gave her time to gain some composure.

“Hey.” Matthew looked closely at her as they were leaving the cafe. “Are you okay? Did something happen between you and Stella?”

“Nothing bad. I’m fine. Let’s get out to the lake and see if we can find the pup’s family.”

“I can’t believe you haven’t named him,” he said as he swung his large body into the passenger seat of the truck. “He’s not going to leave you. He belongs to you now, and you belong to him. Even if you find his family, they won’t matter anymore. He won’t stay with them.”

“I’ve relocated gators, possums, and every other animal you can imagine,” she told him, starting the truck. “I can relocate this wolf too.”

He chuckled. “Not gonna happen.”

They drove to the lake, talking about Christmas tree issues that she was unfamiliar with but knew she needed to understand since her brother was gone. There were new types of fertilizer and improved ways to help trees grow faster and stronger. She might have known some of them when she was much younger and liked to hear her father talk about the subject at dinner each night.

But she had only been eighteen when she’d left the valley. Training with the Wildlife Agency had crammed her head full of animal habitats, following trails, and what was good for maintaining adequate feeding grounds. She knew how to get a possum out of a trash can for its best interest, as well as excitable humans’. She could catch a bat as it flew out of a chimney and keep rabbits from eating garden lettuce.

She hoped those things would help her find the pup’s family. They were going to have to go out to the island again to check where they could for wolf prints and habitat. She hoped the pup’s family wasn’t killed in the fire.

They’d reached the lake and left the truck behind on the shore.

“Any ideas where to look?” Matthew asked as he cast off from the dock.

“I remember people telling me what a great tracker you are,” she reminded him, starting the engine on the boat that belonged to the Wildlife Agency.

“Oh.” He raised his brows and grinned. “Are you offering me employment? I don’t track for free, Agent Tuttle. A man who raises Christmas trees has to make money where he can.”

“We’ll see. I’d have to start an account for you with the agency.”

“Done. I worked for Harvey many times. Look me up. I even have paper and electronic billing logos.” He was obviously very proud of himself.

She gave in. “Okay. Let’s see if we work well together.”

“Have you ever worked with a tracker before?”

“I have. It didn’t always work out, but sometimes it was useful.”

“Good. Let’s give it a whirl.” His deep brown eyes caught hers. “Because I think you and I could be very good together, Unega Awinita.”

Her heart skipped a beat, and then she broke eye contact with him. She focused on the ravaged island that was coming up quickly. “It looks worse than I thought.”

There were a few tall pines still standing, still reaching toward the bright blue, winter sky. They bore scars of what they’d endured, but they’d probably continue to grow. The rest of the undergrowth and shorter trees were charred and blackened. No smoke still rose from the burned earth. That was good news. Stella and her crew had done a fine job of clearing out the hot spots.

“Look!” Matthew pointed to an eagle that perched on one of the surviving trees. “A good sign.”

“It’s easy for them. They can just fly away. It’s the smaller animals that get trapped.”

But there were already signs that other animals had returned as well. Bonnie pointed to dozens of mouse tracks on the shore. A few possums stared at them from a sawed-off log at the edge of the woods.

“This is where we docked when we got here.” Bonnie pointed to the old pier that showed no signs of having been touched by the fire. “A few yards from here is where I found the pup and Harvey.”

“So the boat was moored here when Ray Hoy was shot out of it, right?” he asked, glancing out at the lake.

“But there were dozens of boats out here. The
Tennessee Teardrop
coordinated everything, but it was like any other response from a volunteer rescue group. Even people off duty show up. I don’t know if anyone can tell us exactly who was out here.”

“And who shot Ray,” he concluded. “I get it.” He jumped into the water and pulled the boat in so it could be tied to the old dock.

Bonnie jumped in too after cutting the engine as the boat came near shore. She could still see a few footsteps on the shore that might belong to her, Harvey, or Ray Hoy. Or any number of people who were here that day.

They waded ashore and began looking for any clues that could lead them to information about other wolves living on the island.

“He’s too young to have been living on his own,” Matthew said. “His parents probably were here, but they probably swam away and accidentally left him behind, especially if there was more than one pup.”

Even though so much snow had fallen, the island was nearly free of it, either from the heat of the fire during the snowfall or the high winds after it. Bonnie easily found the spot where she’d encountered Harvey’s body and a few yards away, the wounded pup.

“I wonder if the coroner has been out here,” he said. “There might still be some valuable evidence.”

“I’ll suggest that,” she replied. “I don’t think he’s been out here. He was pretty disgusted that the body had been moved so much.”

“Yeah. That sounds like him.”

They continued walking away from the two spots of blood on the rocky-sandy ground. Matthew pointed out places where animals had escaped across the shore during the fire. Bonnie saw them too—paw prints from a beaver, a raccoon, and more mice.

“Was there more blood where you found Harvey?” he asked. “It didn’t look like much.”

“No, I don’t think he was shot out here. I don’t know why the pup followed since he was shot at the same time. But I think Harvey was closer to the woods.”

“Like this?” He pointed to a larger amount of dried blood on stones and leaves right next to the tree line.

“I think so.” She stopped to take several pictures. “There was no time to look around that day.”

“I guess not. You didn’t know if you were going to burn with it.”

“What’s that?” Bonnie got closer to the bloody site Matthew was carefully examining without touching. She put on latex gloves and handed him her phone to document what she was doing.

“Looks like a red jeweler’s bag.” He snapped a picture every few seconds. “Maybe the ruby is in there and he just dropped it trying to get away from the fire. If I had something like that, I’d keep it on me all the time.”

She examined the velvet bag that was crusted with Harvey’s blood. “It’s flat. There’s nothing in it now.”

“Shake it out to be sure. We don’t know how big a million-dollar ruby is, do we?”

Bonnie did as he suggested, but nothing came out of the bag. “Maybe whoever killed him already took the ruby.”

“Then he’s long gone—unless it was Ray Hoy.”

“No. He was by the boat when we pulled up. Harvey was still with me.”

Matthew crouched close to the area they were studying. “Unless the ruby just fell out and it’s red so we can’t see it in all this.”

“Give Chief Rogers a call, would you? I think we need the coroner out here right now.”

They didn’t go near the site again, just stayed on the island to make sure no one else bothered it either.

Matthew picked out the wolf pup’s paw prints as he emerged from the tree line. His footsteps were tinged with his blood. They followed them backwards and managed to find the den. It appeared that there could have been more than one pup. But even though they fanned out from the den, the fire had been too hot here to track the animals.

“We won’t find them this way unless we see their prints headed to the water on the shore,” Bonnie said. “The ash is too deep.”

“I don’t see anything to suggest that they didn’t escape,” he said. “They’ll probably come back at some point, but it may be a while. I guess they swam to the mainland to get away from the fire. Your pup was caught in what happened to Harvey, and the mother left him to save the other pup.”

“I’m pretty sure there’s a healthy wolf population around here. They’ll take him in once he’s healed.” She stared past the water to Sweet Pepper, where the trees still had some snow on them. It was a stark difference between that shore and the island.

They heard the sound of the engine powering the boat as it headed toward them. Matthew pointed to the mid-sized craft that was coming across the still lake. Chief Rogers was bringing the coroner to the island in the police boat.

“I’ll bet that’s one unhappy man,” Bonnie suggested. “I don’t think he planned to come out here at all.”

“He’s okay once you get to know him.” Matthew grinned. “If you don’t expect too much.”

Chief Rogers threw Matthew the mooring line to the boat so he could pull the craft to shore. There was no point in the newcomers wading away from the boat since the two of them already had wet pants legs.

“I don’t see how we’re supposed to find much here after there was a fire,” Judd Streeter complained after he was off the boat.

“Don’t get all worked up,” Chief Rogers said. “No one is asking you to go into the interior of the island. Agent Tuttle said the crime scene is at the edge of the forest.”

The coroner hefted his leather bag and shrugged. “So where’s my crime scene?”

Bonnie took him to the spot they’d found. She gave him the red velvet jewelry bag. “We think this is where Harvey was killed. You can see the spot over there where the pup was shot too. His den was just beyond that spot, and this is where he would’ve tried to run to the water.”

“An assumption that might be aided if I’d examined the animal,” Streeter complained. “Without that, it’s all hearsay.”

But he sat down in the sand and was eventually on his knees gathering evidence from the rocks, sand, and flora around the bloody area.

“Are you thinking someone dragged Harvey from that spot?” Chief Rogers asked Bonnie.

“No, sir. I think he probably crawled, though it’s hard to tell since the shore is such a mess from animals running through to the lake.”

He nodded. “Let’s hope Judd can get a good print from that velvet bag. It might be all we have to go on.”

“We would’ve heard rumors if someone had stolen the ruby from Harvey and tried to sell it,” Matthew pointed out. “Something of that worth wouldn’t be ignored.”

“Unless the weather has kept the killer from getting out to make the sale,” Chief Rogers suggested. “Let’s face it. The killer isn’t gonna get top dollar for a gemstone here in Sweet Pepper.”

“Good point,” Bonnie agreed. “So where would they go?”

“In Tennessee, I’d think Nashville or across into North Carolina. I’m not really sure,” the chief admitted. “I’ve put out some feelers to gemstone dealers that I know. Like everything else right now, we’re just waiting for some answers.”

Judd was on his feet with a triumphant smile on his face. “I managed to locate a few rifle casings. Probably from the gun that shot Ray Hoy. Our killer may have been the same person with two different guns. I guess the trip out here was worthwhile. I’ll have to take this jewelry bag to the lab for testing. Maybe we’ll get a fingerprint too. Can we go back now?”

Bonnie and Matthew helped get the police boat back into the water before they left the island. She brought the smaller Wildlife boat close to the edge of the shore along the mainland as they searched for wolf prints that might show them the direction the wolves had gone to seek shelter from the fire and the snow.

Matthew finally pointed and drew her attention. “There they went. We can track them from there.”

“Let’s take the boat back to the dock and head this way on foot. If they’re still close by, I don’t want to scare them off.”

They took their backpacks when they moored the boat and headed along the shore until they picked up the tracks again.

“Looks like they’re headed east further into the mountains,” Bonnie said.

“I think so. There are plenty of caves up there to shelter in,” he replied. “Or they may just have run until they weren’t afraid anymore.”

They walked together, mindful of the tracks they followed. The wolves weren’t the only animals fleeing from the fire and the storm. Hundreds of smaller animals—foxes, raccoons, rabbits—ran alongside them, looking for a safe place.

There was one track that was larger and particularly troubling amid the hundreds of others.

“What was a bear doing out here?” Matthew stopped to outline the big paw print with his finger. “They should be all tucked in for the winter by now.”

Bonnie agreed. “Maybe there’s a cave out there or it was sleeping in a big stump until the fire.” She looked at the direction the bear prints took at one noticeable fork in the track. “I don’t think it’s looking for a cave now. I think it’s headed toward food.”

Chapter Eighteen