White stopped writing and looked up at me. His expression screamed “What?” without saying a word. I felt compelled to explain. “I don’t think the truck they were driving had an automatic, so they couldn’t be the people who hiked to a nearby mine.”
“Someone parked a vehicle and then hiked over to a mine? I thought you said you hadn’t seen anyone?”
Bonnie walked in before I could answer. “You all right, Jake?” She was as white as one of my printer papers, and her face was just as blank.
I tried to ease the situation by joking. “Officer White, this is Bonnie, my partner in crime.” Dracula couldn’t have done a better job in draining what little blood that was left in her face.
White rose from his chair, and walked over to shake her hand. “Ah, the third member of the Three Musketeers. Glad to meet you, ma’am. Jake was just telling me about the trip the three of you took yesterday.”
She accepted his hand cautiously, as though she was afraid he’d snap handcuffs on her. “I thought Jake might be in trouble or something when I saw your truck drive by. He had a burglary a couple days ago so one can’t be too careful.”
White turned back toward me. “Burglary?”
“Yeah, someone broke down my lower door and stole a bunch of stuff. I reported it to the Jefferson County sheriff, but they never found the guy.”
“He even told them who it was, and they did nothing,” Bonnie said.
White wrote a couple more notes in his book while answering Bonnie. “I’m sure they haven’t forgotten. Jeffco has a huge area to cover and a lot more crime. The most exciting thing we’ve had lately is a break-in after the owner of the house committed suicide.”
Her jaw literally dropped. I always thought the expression was nothing more than an idiom for unimaginative writers, but she was on the verge of losing her dentures. I jumped in before she could confess. “I think I heard about that. Wasn’t it over by Bailey?”
“Not even close. He lived right over the county line in Pine Junction,” Bob answered before Bonnie could pass out. “But tell me about the hikers you didn’t see. The ones you think had a leaky transmission, and why you don’t think they’re our missing persons.” He was like a bulldog --or is that an elephant?-- he hadn’t forgotten about my hypothesis.
“Those Datsuns didn’t have automatics,” Bonnie answered for me. Evidently she had recovered from the thought of spending the night in jail.
“Datsuns?” White asked.
It was my turn to interrupt. “Your brother-in-law, Rick, told us the kids were driving a Datsun.”
“And Jake used to have one of them, so he figured out all by himself it wasn’t the kids.” Bonnie finished for me.
White looked like he was getting upset. “Okay, maybe I will have that cup of coffee after all, and then we’ll start over but I only need one of you to tell me the story.”
“Do you mind Bon? You make better coffee than me anyway,” I said while leading Officer White back to my kitchen table.
Bonnie busied herself with making fresh coffee and cleaning my dirty dishes while I explained how Fred had found the transmission fluid and tracks leading to the mine. I also added my two cents about why the footprints couldn’t belong to the kids with a brief history of early Datsun pickup trucks. But for the life of me, I couldn’t think of a way to ask about Appleton without incriminating myself or Bonnie. I suppose Fred was just as guilty, but I didn’t think they’d arrest him.
***
“Do you think they’re on to us, Jake?” Bonnie asked while lighting a cigarette. The three of us were sitting on my front porch watching White drive away.
I didn’t bother acting annoyed over the smoke, for I knew she needed the nicotine to calm her nerves. “Not yet. I was surprised Bobwhite didn’t say something about my Jeep breaking down by Appleton’s. Unless that deputy never called in my plates, they must have a record of me being in the vicinity of the break in.”
“Bobwhite? Why did you call him that?”
“It’s his name,” I answered with a short laugh. “Officer Robert White, or as he prefers to be called, Bob.”
The irony of his name made her smile, but only for a moment.
“I only hope the burglary was discovered before the other deputy saw me there. Then there would be no reason to suspect me, unless the CBI finds some prints we missed when we tried to wipe the place down.”
“CBI?”
“Colorado’s version of the FBI. I doubt that Park County can afford a modern forensics lab, so I assume they outsource it to the state.”
Bonnie tapped cigarette ashes into her hand, and seemed to be considering my explanation. “What about the blood on the deck, Jake? What if the CBI finds it and our prints? Won’t they think we killed him?”
Fred had been sitting and listening to every word, so I tried to lighten things up a bit. “What do you think about Mexico, Freddie? Would you like to meet a cute Chihuahua?”
Bonnie wasn’t amused. “Seriously, Jake. How can you joke at a time like this? I nearly died when they thought I killed Shelia. Now I’m a suspect again!”
“I’m sorry, Bon. Even if they do connect me as the one who wiped the place clean, they have nothing on you. I promise I won’t say a word about you being there.”
Her eyes began to swell with tears, and she spoke without looking at me. “I’m sorry I was so self-centered, Jake. You remind me so much of my Diane. She didn’t have a selfish bone in her body either.”
***
Fred and I finally made it to the lake after Bonnie recovered and went home for something stronger than coffee. By the looks of the overflowing parking lot, it wasn’t going to be easy finding a place away from the weekend crowd where he could swim. And to make matters worse, someone had posted a new sign with a list of don’ts. Halfway down the list, right after ‘no power boats’ was ‘no swimming’. It looked like civilization was finally catching up with me.
I kept Fred on his leash until we were once again on the backside of the lake. ‘Dogs must be on a leash’ was also on the list, but I knew it was more for the parks protection from lawsuits than anything else, for half the dogs there were Labs or Goldens, running free or swimming. Now all I had to do was trick Fred into a bath by pretending to play fetch with a stick. Maybe I’d forget about our little adventure from the day before once his oily fur was clean again. I had better things to think about than the lost kids who were probably in Vegas or somewhere far away by now.
I’d convinced myself they either made it down the trail to Leadville or had gone on to Breckenridge. Deputy White had said that none of the search teams found a trace of their Datsun, so I concluded they had probably run away, and left the state by now. I had to concentrate on finding Appleton’s killer before the CBI found Fred’s prints and came after me. Now I wished I’d taken the time to clean his tracks in the kitchen.
A young couple stopped to watch Fred swim after the stick I had been throwing for him. They reminded me of Craig and Shelia the last time I saw them together. Unlike Craig, this guy didn’t seem bothered by Fred being loose. He and his girlfriend were laughing and holding hands when Fred jumped in the water.
Thinking of Craig brought me back to the murders. I was sure he had killed Shelia and Appleton, but how could I prove it? I would look really foolish if I called Deputy White and told him that he should arrest Craig Renfield. Without motive and some proof that he did it, White would have me locked up, not for murder but for insanity.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized I was grasping at straws. But who else could have killed Appleton, and why? That’s when I realized I’d been playing detective all wrong. I needed to start with the why instead of the who.
Appleton stole my copy of Tom Sawyer so he could decode Drake’s enigma. It only followed that whoever killed him knew he had found the answer to the riddle. Bingo. That was why the punk kids were on the pass; they hadn’t solved the riddle, they took the answer from Appleton. Damn, I really wanted to see Renfield hang, and it wasn’t going to happen. Now I had the why and the who, but I still had no proof it was the kids.