Fear of Frying (16 page)

“And Marge seems more content, too," Jane said.

“Content?" Eileen laughed. "Maybe not the word I'd have used. Hot to trot, I'd have said. When I stopped by there a minute ago, she was in her bathrobe. In the middle of the day! This is not the Marge I know. I think it's sort of cute. A middle-aged woman going all googly-eyed over her own husband."

“What do you suppose made the difference?" Jane asked.

Shelley nudged her under the table with her foot. It wasn't quite a kick.

Eileen shrugged. "No idea. Just wish it would happen to me.”

There was a sudden commotion at the door. Liz was using her professional-educator voice, with which she managed, without actually shouting, tc penetrate the farthest reaches of the lodge.

“Where is the sheriff! Where is Benson Titus? I want to make an official complaint.”

A deputy approached her. He tried to take her arm, but she shook him off. But he kept talking quietly while he led her into the dining room. As they got closer, the deputy could be heard saying, "Just sit down and relax for a moment while I find them.”

Liz flung herself down on the bench next to Eileen. "I'm
so
furious!"

“What on earth's happened?" Jane asked.

Liz drew a long, deep breath. "Bob Rycraft and I went out to look over some of the grounds while the rain had stopped. I wanted to check out that area back behind the Conference Center. He would
not
listen to me about following the path to the right, so we went left and got lost. Male chauvinist pig that he is, he insisted I stay where I was while he tried another path. He never came back, naturally."

“Bob Rycraft is missing, too?" Eileen asked.

“What do you mean, 'too'?" Liz asked, but without waiting for an answer, she steamed ahead. "So I stood there for a minute, thinking the sun would come out again and I could get my bearings, and all of a sudden one of those dreadful costumed idiots came crashing through, knocked me down, and ran on. Just pushed past me like I was a bush! I fell backward and thought I'd broken my wrist.”

She held out her right hand, shoving her sleeve up. Her wrist was swollen.

“You should get it X-rayed," Eileen said.

“No, I can move it. It's fine. But that's not all. I tried to follow this person and give her a piece of my mind—”

"It was a woman?" Shelley asked.

“I didn't know it then, but yes, I think so. I went stumbling through the brush and found her sitting on a stump, crying. Crying! It was that tall, gangly one with the stringy red hair."

“What was she crying about?" Jane asked.

“She claimed somebody had knocked her down, put a blindfold and gag on her, and taken her stupid costume. Stupidest excuse for an apology I've ever heard."

“You're sure it wasn't true?" Shelley asked.

“Oh, of course it wasn't," Liz snapped. "She'd gotten rid of the costume, of course. Probably threw it in the undergrowth when she heard me following her."

“And was there a blindfold?" Shelley persisted.

This took a little wind out of Liz's sails. "There was a long scarf that I guess
could
have been wound around somebody's face, but who would believe a story like that? I told her, you just come back to the lodge and try telling the sheriff this ridiculous story, and then I'll decide if I want to press assault charges against her. Stupid woman!"

“So she might have been telling the truth," Shelley said.

Liz gave her a first-class glare. "I'll tell you this right now. I'm voting against this harebrained scheme of sending our schoolchildren up here. This place is horrible. Just horrible."

“I agree," Shelley said.

“So do I," Jane and Eileen said in unison.

Liz was taken aback at last. "You do? All of you?”

They nodded.

“Then let's get out of here now," Liz said.

“Well, there's a bit of a problem with that," Shelley said. She tried to make it sound like she regretted giving Liz bad news, although Jane suspected Shelley was reveling in being the bearer of bad tidings. "The bridge has gone out. Didn't you see all the cars in front?"

“Surely there's another way out?" Liz exclaimed.

“There's a logging road that's probably flooded," Jane said. "Or you could wait in what probably is a very long line for a neighbor with a boat to take you across where you'd have to get a ride to town, then take tomorrow's bus to Chicago.”

Liz muttered something that sounded suspiciously like "Oh, shit!" but wasn't quite distinguishable. Then she stood and beckoned imperiously to Bob Rycraft, who had come into the lodge looking discouraged and disheveled. His jeans were soaking wet halfway up his thighs. There was a swipe of mud across his forehead.

He hurried over to them. "Thank God you're here, Ms. Flowers! I found the way out, after I fell in the creek, and you were gone. I came back here to try to find a search party to go looking for you." His lips were a bit bluish and his teeth were chattering.

Liz was suddenly maternal. "Go to your cabin and put on dry clothes. You're going to catch your death. But let me ask you one question first. Do you still favor bringing the kids up here?”

Bob looked down, shuffled his feet. His sneakers squished. "Well. . no, not like I did before all this. If adults can't even find their way around. .”

"That's all I needed to know. By the way, how did you fall in the creek? It's on the opposite side of the lodge from where we were.”

Bob's fair face flushed. "I got lost. I have no idea how I got there. I was following a path and had to dodge under a fallen branch and the next thing I knew, I slid into the creek and a black thing was wrapped around me. It was one of those black cloaks the protestors were wearing. Scared me out of my wits!”

All three women were staring at him intently. "Did it still have the mask attached?" Liz asked.

“Yeah, it was that falcon-looking one. It was stuck on a bush and the cloak was dragging in the water."

“And this took place on the other side of the lodge? Near the road where the cabins are?"

“Right," Bob replied, obviously perplexed.

“Then I've made a real fool of myself," Liz said.

Bob and Shelley both looked downright cheered by this unusual admission. Eileen looked at Liz as if she couldn't believe her ears.

Liz explained briefly to Bob about her encounter in the woods with the person in the falcon mask, although she left out the part about telling off the stringy-haired woman. "But it was only a few minutes between the person who ran me down and the woman I found. There's no way she could have gotten to where you found the costume and back in the interval. I guess I was wrong. Her crazy story must have been true. Go change into dry clothes, Bob."

“I'm going to go look for John," Eileen said when Bob had squelched off to his cabin.

Liz got a cup of coffee and rejoined them. "Why would someone actually blindfold and gag one of those demonstrators just to get one of those stupid costumes?”

Jane and Shelley were silent. It was what they were both wondering, too, but they were unwilling to chat with Liz about their speculation.

Liz suddenly remembered that she had threat to file a complaint with the sheriff, which she now wanted desperately to withdraw, and rushed off to find the deputy she'd been ordering around.

Jane and Shelley were left alone in the dining room, except for a single waiter who was starting to set up for dinner. He put a tablecloth on the large table closest to the fireplace. The rest of the staff presumably was roaming the woods, rounding up stragglers and putting them on boats.

Jane refilled her coffee and said, "There's too much weird stuff going on."

“I'll say there is!"

“Completely apart from the business of Sam One and Sam Two, there's this mysterious person running around in a falcon costume, and there were all those strange things gone missing this morning. The aerobics tapes, life-jacket straps, and all that. But are they different mysteries or part of the same one?”

Shelley thought for a bit. "The only way I can see for them to be part of a whole is if the point is to ruin Benson's chances of getting the contract with the school board for the summer camp. And if that's the case, it's succeeded, I'm afraid. When even Bob Rycraft has lost his enthusiasm, I don't think there's a chance of it being approved.”

Jane nodded. "And I feel bad about that because Benson is a nice guy who's gone to a huge amount of trouble to impress us. Even apart from the sabotage, it's too remote. The bridge going out is the final straw. It's bad enough that we're stranded here. But imagine if that happened when the kids were here and there was an emergency."

“I'm not sure," Shelley mused. "That discouraging us was the real point, I mean. Of course, it's what the protestors want, but the missing stuff and locked doors and all that were really trivial. Not nearly enough to make us vote against sending the kids. But I simply can't imagine the same mind that came up with those silly stunts thinking it would be a good idea to just murder someone at random to make the same impression."

“I agree. Especially since Sam Two and Marge are the ones most apt to be involved in the murder of Sam One. They have nothing against Benson."

“We don't know that," Shelley said.

“I guess not. But if we're right about the twin business — and I can't see how anything else can explain the dead Sam coming back to life — how could it have anything to do with Benson? Eileen has made it pretty clear that none of the Claypools are really the least bit interested in whether the school sends kids to camp. It was meant as a vacation for all of them, nothing more."

“But didn't you say that Allison told you Benson worked for the Claypools? Then he invented the whatsisthing? Maybe that has something to do with it.”

Jane looked doubtful. "It might, I guess. Maybe the Claypool brothers thought since Benson invented the thing while he was working for them, that they ought to have had some rights to the patent. It must have been pretty profitable if selling the patent gave him enough money to buy this place. But if that were true, why would anybody kill Sam to get back at Benson? That doesn't compute. Benson obviously wants this contract, but it's not a life-or-death thing for him. It's not as if his whole family is going to be reduced to begging on the streets if we decide against it.”

Shelley ran her hands through her hair in a gesture of frustration. "I'm so confused!"

“I'm confused and frightened," Jane said. "Liz was just angry about getting run down by the person in the falcon costume. I think it's far more ominous than she realized. A person who would assault someone to get a costume away from them is definitely up to no good. I think somebody was frantic to conceal his or her identity, and that's scary.”

Shelley glanced toward the lobby. "I don't like the fact that a bunch of us are unaccounted for. Sam and John are missing. And I haven't seen Al for hours."

“Shelley, let's go visit Marge."

“To what purpose? To ask her if she killed her husband, then passed off his twin as the same person?”

"Not outright," Jane said. "But if the subject comes up. .?" she added with a grin.

“If Marge is involved, I'd just as soon she didn't think we knew. A person who could bump off her husband probably wouldn't mind doing in a couple of near strangers."

“True. Okay, so we don't get near the subject. But I've never spoken to her except in a big group. I'd like to get more of a feel for what she's like."

“That's what's most wrong here," Shelley said. "Marge is a mouse. A very nice mouse. She's a mild, hardworking woman with no—"

“Personality?" Jane suggested.

Shelley nodded. "I just cannot imagine her involved in anything violent or illegal."

“Then let's go talk to her. Who knows? She might inadvertently say something revealing.”

Shelley looked doubtful. "Okay, but don't say anything that will make her wary of us. She probably is already. We're the ones who shot off our mouths about finding Sam's body."

“Shelley, much as I hate pointing out the obvious, nobody believes us."

“But the actual murderer knows we're right — to point out the even more obvious.”

Marge was no longer in her bathrobe. She was fully dressed, down to her boots. She seemed slightly alarmed to see them, or perhaps that was just Jane's imagination. She gave them a nervous smile and said, "Oh, hello," but stood her ground at the doorway.

“May we come in?" Jane asked bluntly.

“Well, I was just getting ready to go out and see where Sam is," Marge said.

“Oh, he's probably helping get people on boats," Shelley said.

“Boats?" Marge asked.

“Haven't you heard?" Jane said. "The rain washed the bridge out and the local people can't get home except by boat. Apparently all the neighbors on the lakefront have pitched in to evacuate them."