“I want you to come stay with me,” she said immediately.
“Why?”
“Someone’s out to get you. Maybe he won’t stop at torching your floor next time. Maybe he’ll come after you with a hatchet or a chain saw.”
“I told you not to go see Saw 53 with Coop,” I sighed.
“They haven’t made that many,” she said, “although with a constantly replenishing population of ghoulish teenage boys, they may get there.”
“I’m going on a road trip today,” I said. “Wanna play hooky from work and come with me?”
“Where are you going?”
“West Virginia.”
“West Virginia!”
From her tone, you’d’ve thought I’d said Antarctica, not a state fifty minutes away. The idea had popped into my head and I’d latched on to it with the desperation of a drowning person grasping for a piece of driftwood. “I’m going to visit Rafe’s cabin.”
“Why?”
Not an unreasonable question. “To see if maybe Victoria went back there. To see if Rafe left anything there that would explain what’s going on, why someone murdered him. To just effing get away from here for a day.”
Danielle must have heard the stress in my voice. “I’m in,” she said. “Give me half an hour to call in sick and change.”
I sped to her apartment forty minutes later, where she was waiting outside, dressed in cargo shorts, a beige camp shirt, hiking boots, and a hat that looked suitable for a Botswanan safari. “We’re driving to West Virginia,” I greeted her as she buckled her seat belt, “not doing a death march across the Gobi.”
“You said the cabin was remote,” she said, “so I’m prepared.” She patted a fanny pack. “Compass, map, water bottle, matches, mosquito repellent.”
I laughed, feeling better than I had since spotting the flames in my ballroom. “What, no food?”
Her eyes widened with dismay.
“Don’t worry,” I said, putting the car in gear before she could get out and make sandwiches. “I’m pretty sure they have convenience stores, and maybe even fast-food joints, in West Virginia.”
Two hours, three wrong turns, and a couple of Big Macs later, we were headed up a deeply rutted drive to what I hoped would be Rafe’s cabin. I’d downloaded directions before meeting Danielle, but the roads were mostly marked with numbers instead of names and we’d had to backtrack a couple of times since leaving Capon Bridge and ending up on gravel and then dirt roads. Forest crowded in on both sides of the narrow road, pine trees or fir trees-I never could remember the difference-scraping the car’s windows. It was cooler here than in Old Town and I rolled down the windows an inch or two to breathe the nature-scented air. The piney, loamy, sunwarmed scent of the woods beat the heck out of the charbroiled polyurethane stink of my house and the smoggy, warm asphalt smell of Old Town.
“Are you sure we’re on the right road?” Danielle asked just as we popped out into a small clearing.
“Yup,” I said, more relieved than I wanted to admit to see the small log cabin centered in the clearing. I was afraid we’d been headed for parts of the country that even Daniel Boone and his buddies hadn’t explored. “This must be it.”
I opened the door and climbed out, stretching my arms over my head. The cabin, not unexpectedly, was unprepossessing, being not much larger than the average suburban garage and made of splintery looking logs. Firewood was stacked beneath a tree a few feet from the front door, and a rickety wood building I assumed was the outhouse listed near the tree line behind the cabin. A faint trail led off into the woods behind the outhouse, beaten down by… what? Rafe on his hunting trips? Deer? A bear? Skittering sounds spoke to the presence of squirrels or other rodents and a crow cawed loudly from somewhere to our left. I wasn’t much of a nature girl and either the vastness of the woods or the empty cabin was making me nervous.
“Let’s check it out,” I said before I could lose my nerve. I fumbled what I hoped was the key-it had been on the key ring Rafe gave me-from my purse and advanced toward the cabin, my feet scuffing through layers of dried pine needles and crackly leaves. Reaching the door with Danielle just behind me, I discovered the key wouldn’t be necessary: Someone had cut through the shank of the padlock that secured the cabin.
“That’s not good,” Danielle observed, peering over my shoulder.
I poked a finger at the door and it swung inward. Something rustled inside the cabin. I jumped back, bumping into Danielle. “What was that?” I whispered.
“A squirrel?” Danielle suggested, her voice thinner than usual.
“It sounded bigger than a squirrel.” I eyed the crack between the door and the rough jamb. Nothing bounded, slithered, or hopped out. Hmm. “Stand back.” Danielle complied with alacrity. Inching forward, I stiff-armed the door and jumped back as it smacked against the interior wall. Light illuminated the whole of the one-room cabin and I watched as a ringed, black-tipped tail disappeared out a shattered pane in the window at the back. “A raccoon,” I said with a nervous giggle. “That’s all it was. A raccoon.”
Danielle giggled, too, and said, “I had a plush raccoon when I was little. Mr. Mufty.”
“I remember. Whatever happened to him?”
She shrugged and nudged me over the threshold. My gaze swept a card table with two folding chairs pushed neatly underneath it, a double bed with rumpled sheets, a camp stove, a cupboard, and a pair of jeans hanging on one of three pegs above the bed. Rafe had brought a cooler with him as a fridge when he came to hunt and, I presumed, bed linens and such. A scrap of something shiny green caught my eye and I bent to pick up a granola bar wrapper. “This must be what attracted our Mr. Mufty,” I said, showing it to Danielle.
“The appeal of this place escapes me,” Danielle said, wrinkling her nose at a slightly musty smell. Raccoon scat, perhaps? I crossed to the window and glass shards sparkled at me from the floor. Had the raccoon punched out a pane to gain access? It didn’t seem likely.
“Why would someone break a window and then cut the lock?” I asked. “Or vice versa?”
“Maybe it was two different someones,” Danielle said. “And Someone Number Two came better prepared than Someone Number One. He brought a bolt cutter,” she clarified when I looked confused.
“Or maybe it was high winds or a bear that broke the window,” I said, finding it hard to believe there was a raft of people lining up to break into this primitive cabin. I could see there was nothing here-not so much as a notepad or receipt to hint at who had been here when or what they’d been doing. Maybe I could find a trash bag out back that would be full of clues.
“What, you think they have trash pickups here at 111 Back-of-Beyond Court every Tuesday?” Danielle said when I floated my great idea by her. “I’m sure Rafe packed out his trash and tossed it in some Dumpster in Capon Bridge, like at that seedy motel we passed.”
“Maybe Victoria was less responsible,” I countered. Danielle rolled her eyes but dutifully traipsed after me as I went back outside and circled the cabin. Lots of vehicle tracks, but no trash bag. We studied the tracks and I thought it would be useful if a CSI team would come by with their plaster of paris, or whatever they used, and make casts so we could identify the cars and trucks that had been here since the last rain, which couldn’t have been much more than four or five days ago, judging by the softness of the dirt and the mud lurking in shady spots. Danielle and I agreed there were at least three separate sets of tracks; two looked like they were from pickups or SUVs and one was smaller and narrower, more like the tracks my Beetle made.
“Hunting buddies?” Danielle suggested.
“Not a bad thought. Is anything in season at this time of year?”