“The farm to the west is owned by the Landow brothers, and the farm to the east is owned by Ed Cofield.”
“I would think either would be willing to talk to us. Tell us what they know. Where do you want to start?” I asked.
“Let’s start with Ed.”
By the end of the day, Cass and I had spoken to seven property owners, but none had claimed to have seen or heard anything. There was no answer at four farms, so Cass made a note to check back later. None of the farms we’d checked had driveways covered with red and green stones. Of course, we really had no way of knowing if Bill had picked up the stones in his tires just before being forced off the road, which was Cass’s new theory as to what happened on that Thursday night a week ago, but the stones did provide us with some level of information, so we decided to keep an eye out as we made our rounds.
“Rafe and Trent are back at the station. Let’s head there too,” Cass suggested.
“Okay.”
Cass looked toward the sky as he started the truck. “It looks like the sky is going to open up at any minute. We’ll see what the guys have to say, and then we’ll head back to the boathouse. I’m sure Milo is ready to be let out by now.”
By the time we arrived at Cass’s office in town, both Rafe and Trent were more than ready to head home in order to dry off and warm up. Both men reported that they’d walked the woods closest to where the body had been found, but other than broken branches in the immediate area, they’d been unable to pick up the trail. If there had ever been blood or footprints, the heavy rain had washed them away.
The coroner had been notified about the body, but as Cass had already pointed out, it was the weekend, so it was unlikely he’d get an update until Monday. I asked Cass if the folks at the movie shoot had been notified of the death of one of their stars, and Cass reported that the phone lines were down in the area because of the storm, so he hadn’t been able to speak with anyone. After a bit of discussion, it was decided that if we still hadn’t been able to reach them by tomorrow, we’d drive up to the resort and inform them in person. Chances were that the film crew and cast had hunkered in to wait out the storm, and no one would be working until Monday anyway.
By the time we made it back to Cass’s, it was dark. The rain had begun to come down steadily again, and the low-lying areas along the way had been flooded, but we’d made it without incident. After Cass let Milo out to take care of business, he’d built a fire in the stone fireplace. We were both chilled to the bone after an entire day of being wet, so we took a very long and very hot shower together, and then Cass wrapped me in his huge thick robe while he slipped on a pair of sweatpants.
Dinner was soup from a can and grilled cheese sandwiches, but eating it while curled up in front of the fire with Cass, turned the simple meal into one of the best I’d ever had.
“You need lights,” I said.
He looked at me. “Lights?”
“Little orange lights on your mantle. It would add a Halloween feel to the place.”
“I see.” He smiled. “I’ll pick some up Monday.”
“And some of those little pumpkins they had at the market last week. Those would look festive on the mantle as well.”
“I can get some pumpkins.”
I pulled the thick comforter Cass had brought into the living room from the bedroom over my legs. “It really is cozy in here. Especially with the rain and all.” Alastair crawled into my lap and started purring. “But you’re also pretty isolated out here. Do you ever get lonely?”
“Sometimes,” he answered. “But I have Milo and a busy life. I really never felt lonely until you came back to town.”
I raised a brow. “I make you feel lonely?”
He shrugged. “Sometimes. When I’m here alone and missing you. Being alone isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In fact, I really treasure my alone time. It’s being alone when your heart yearns to be with someone who isn’t with you, that’s really a drag.”
I laid my head on his shoulder. “I guess I understand that.” Part of me wished this weekend would never end, but I knew it would, and at some point, I supposed we’d need to have a talk about what all of this meant for our future. I was still pretty sure marrying the man I loved would be a bad idea given the curse and all, but then I thought of Penelope, who hadn’t married but had died young anyway, and I wondered if denying my heart what it most wanted would really make a difference in the long run.
Chapter 13
Sunday
By the following morning, the rain had slowed to a drizzle. The sky was still dark, but not nearly as dark as it had been the previous day. I called Paisley just to check on her and was happy to find that she was having a wonderful time. I wondered how Aunt Gracie’s leaf tour had worked out with the rain that had been coming down in the area, but I suspected that even if she and Tom had been forced to hole up somewhere and wait it out, they’d most likely been having a wonderful time. Cass had finally been able to get through to the folks out at the movie site and inform them that one of their actors was dead. They assured Cass that they’d take care of informing others back in LA who might need to be notified of the development.
Cass still hadn’t heard from the coroner, but it seemed evident that the cause of death was a gunshot to the back. Trying to figure where Robert had been before his mad dash through the woods was proving to be a difficult task, but Cass and I had talked about it and decided that if the flooding receded enough to make passage along the lake road doable, we’d take a ride out and have another look around.
Cass and I went over the map we had and tried to figure out who made a likely candidate as the killer, but despite our efforts, we came up cold. Given the fact that two men who knew each other had been killed in the same general area only days apart, although admittedly by completely different means, it seemed as if the killer must be someone who’d lived in Foxtail Lake back when we were all in high school.
“Jamison Hanson has lived in the area for a long time,” I pointed out. “I can’t see why he would kill either man, and I’m not even sure Jamison knew either Bill or Robert, but his son, Everson, was a year ahead of us in school, so he would have known both men. Maybe Everson is home for a vacation, or maybe Jamison learned something from his son about the men and decided to retaliate for something that occurred in the past.”
“Seems like a longshot,” Cass said.
“I agree, but I don’t suppose it would hurt to try to talk to Jamison. I know he didn’t answer the door yesterday when we knocked, but he might be home today.”
Cass nodded. “Yeah. Okay. If the water recedes enough so we can get out, we’ll take a drive out there.”
I looked at the map again. It really didn’t seem likely that any of the men and women who lived off the old highway had killed either Bill or Robert, but I really didn’t have another theory.
The rain stopped by ten o’clock, and the road became passable by noon. I decided to drop Alastair and my bag of clothing off at the house on the way out to the Hanson place. I’d need to show up early at the movie shoot tomorrow, so it made sense that I’d spend the night at Gracie’s, which was twenty minutes closer to the highway. I invited Cass to stay with me, so he packed a bag and his dog, and we headed in that direction.
After we dropped the animals off at the house, we headed out of town. Luckily, Mr. Hanson was home today and answered the door when we knocked. We asked if he’d seen or heard anything on either of the Thursday nights in question. He reported that he hadn’t, but he did tell us that he’d noticed Bill’s car in the area a time or two during the week preceding his accident. Cass asked Jamison if he knew whether or not Bill had been visiting one of the other homeowners in the area, and Jamison replied that he wasn’t certain why he’d been out this way, but he did remember him driving south toward town on at least two occasions when he’d been driving north toward his ranch. Jamison said they hadn’t stopped to talk, but they had waved at each other as they passed.