Peete and Repeat (The Frannie Shoemaker Campground Mysteries Book 3) (16 page)

They were almost finished eating when Mary Louise and Jim showed up in the golf cart. Both came over to the table.

Mary Louise shook her head. “Man! Not what I expected to do today!”

Jim took an offered chair and a beer. “Makes you wonder what else has gone on over there that we don’t know about. I’ve heard of these squatting incidents but always scoffed—like, ‘there’d be some signs, right? Somebody’s not paying attention!’ But we live here year ‘round, and check that area all the time. Never saw a thing.”

“Did they walk in? Surely they weren’t there all the time?” Frannie asked.

“Cops found signs of a lot of traffic past the east end of the campground. There’s a little parking lot near the bridge where a lot of people park when they’re fishing. This outfit must have parked there and walked in. The cops don’t think they were there all of the time but no one knows for sure.”

“So, now what?” Ben said. “Have they removed all the apparatus?”

“Yup,” Mary Louise said, “Boxed everything up and carted it out. They’ll try and get fingerprints off it in the lab, I guess. Tomorrow a special crew will come in and clean it good. I had to try and contact the Sturms about what happened. It’s late over there so I sent a text for them to call me.
That
won’t be a fun conversation!” She tried to deny her words with laughter.

“I don’t envy you,” Nancy said.

“So, what’s next on your agenda? Do I have more excitement to look forward to tonight?” Mary Louise said.

“We’re going to the open house at the Nature Center,” Donna said.

“We want to try and lose Mickey on the night sensory course,” Larry added.

“Good!” Mary Louise laughed. “Sounds like fun, and should give us a quiet night here then.”

Monday Evening

A fair-sized crowd milled around the high-ropes course as Sara, the young woman they had met that morning, described the procedures and pointed out the various obstacles forty feet above their heads. Necks craned up at the tall poles, each with a small platform and connected to other poles by one or more cables, rope ladder-type bridges, or timbers. Three eighth-grade students who were currently staying at the center demonstrated the crossings. Each was hooked to the belay cable above his or her head with a safety strap.

Frannie’s palms grew sweaty just watching them. She couldn’t imagine that Ben and Nancy had done this the other day, not once but twice. Sara finished her presentation and asked for questions.

“Does anyone ever freeze up there?” Frannie said, knowing full well that she would. If someone forced her up there at gunpoint, because there would be no other way she would do it.

Sara rolled her eyes. “Oh, yeah. Not too often, but it happens.”

“What do you do then?”

“One of us has to go up and talk them down.”

Frannie shuddered. Her fear of heights was such that she couldn’t even envision standing on one of the relatively stable platforms forty feet in the air, let alone negotiating a swaying cable, safety strap or not.

A man asked about the type and size of cable required and Frannie tuned out at the numbers and specifications. She scanned the course and the surrounding woods. Daylight persisted in the open area of the course but the woods were falling into shadows as the sun descended. Down in a ravine to the left, she thought she saw movement. Glimpses of a dark figure, apparently all in black, between the trees were so brief that she couldn’t be sure she saw anything. Maybe just branches moving in the gentle breeze. It brought to mind movies with mercenaries or special ops troops. Why did she think that—was he carrying a gun?

She kept watching the direction she thought the figure was headed but couldn’t see anything else. The crowd started to move through the course, still looking up at the suspended figures. Frannie was afraid to look up while she walked, so she stopped to crane her neck up at the first station. And was promptly run into from behind.

“Oof!” said Donna. “Sorry, I was looking up. Did I hurt you?”

Frannie shook her head. “I’m fine. That’s why I stopped; I was afraid if I walked and looked up at the same time, I’d end up flat on my face.”

They stood by the pole and let the others surge around them. Donna also insisted she could never try the high ropes.

“Rob wants to. Does Larry?”

“He hasn’t mentioned it.” She glanced back at the woods.

“What are you looking for?” Donna said.

“Nothing. I think my imagination is getting the best of me. I thought I saw something.” She pointed in the general direction.

Donna scrutinized the area, none too subtly. Frannie nudged her. “We’re getting left behind.” They followed the crowd to the last platform, where participants descended to the ground via a zip line. Frannie could feel the exhilaration of the kids coming down the line and wished she wasn’t so squeamish about heights.

They chattered on about the course while walking up the hill to the archery range. Frannie had always wanted to try archery but knew her side would not take it at this time. The rest of the group lined up to take their turns, so Frannie found a bench to the side where she could watch. Unfortunately, Deborah McCabe already occupied one end. Frannie sat at the other end and focused on the shooters to offset the chilly silence.

Finally, she steeled herself, turned, and said, “How long have you worked here, Ms. McCabe?”

Deborah looked at her in surprise. “Uh, six years, I guess.” She narrowed her eyes. “Why?”

“Just wondering. Seems like it would be a fascinating place to work.”

Deborah lowered her shoulders slightly and sat back. “It is. I especially like working with the corporate clients.”

Fewer riffraff like us, Frannie thought. But she said, “How long do those programs usually last?”

“From a few days to a week. We focus on team building skills; they’re very popular.”

Silence again. Frannie watched Larry and Nancy try their hand with the bow; then was amazed at Mickey’s obvious skill at the sport.

“Wow. Mickey never fails to surprise us, even after all these years,” she commented, half to herself.

Deborah just looked at her with raised eyebrows.

“He’s my brother-in-law,” Frannie explained. “In the forty years I’ve known him, I had no idea he did archery.”

“You aren’t going to try it?”

Frannie then had to explain her fall in the canoe, no doubt confirming Deborah’s view of her as an incompetent, meddling klutz.

“That’s too bad,” Deborah said, but not convincingly. “You might be able to do the night sensory course, but I wouldn’t try the obstacle course if I were you.”

“Right.” Then Frannie had a thought. “Are there any activities where people dress all in black and, like maybe, track each other through the woods?”

Now she knew Deborah definitely thought she had lost her marbles. “Why would we have that?”

“I don’t know. When we were watching the high ropes course, I thought I saw someone in the trees. But it was hard to see so I wasn’t sure…I almost had the impression that he—or she—was carrying some kind of military weapon.” Now I’ve done it, she thought. She’ll slip out her phone and call the funny farm.

But Deborah’s reaction was unexpected. She paled, opened her mouth once and closed it, and finally stammered, “I’m sure…it was no such thing. It might have been…a staff member cutting through who just happened to be dressed in dark clothes…um…maybe carrying equipment needed somewhere…”

“You’re probably right. The eyes can play tricks on you when you get to be my age.”

Instead of agreeing, as Frannie expected, Deborah looked her watch and jumped up. “I need to help at one of the other sites. Better run.” She took off at a fast walk down a path through the trees.

Frannie sat dumbfounded. That woman was strung so tight, she ought to hum like one of the bow strings. She was still mulling it over, when her group approached.

“Did you see Mickey shoot? He’s been holding out on us,” Nancy said.

“I was Robin Hood in an earlier life,” Mickey said.

“You were more likely the court jester,” Larry said.

“Not to interrupt this scintillating conversation, but it’s about time for the night sensory course to start,” Ben reminded them.

After consulting the map, they decided the best way was the trail that Deborah McCabe had taken a short time before. Larry had a flashlight to guide Frannie down the shadowy path.

The night sensory course started at the bottom of a ravine. A small three-sided shed with a bench provided an area where participants could wait without being able to see the course.

Since Frannie hadn’t been able to participate in any of the other activities, the group urged her to go first. Larry would be her partner. A middle-aged man, balding but fit, organized the participants and gave them directions. Larry tied the blindfold on Frannie and guided her hand to the rope at the start of the course.

“You won’t let me grab any snakes or anything, will you?” She raised her face to the trees, and when Larry’s promise came from behind her, turned and said, “Oops. There you are.”

He turned her around and headed her up the slope. Feeling her way along the rope, she came to a tree trunk.

“What kind is it?” Larry asked.

“Well, how would I—oh!” She felt pieces of curling bark lifting away from the trunk. “Is it a birch?”

“Correct. Stand still a minute and listen.” She did.

“I think I hear a tree frog.”

“You do. Okay, the rope goes down here.”

She felt it inclining toward the ground. Following it down, she could feel a log. The rope ran along the top of the log.

“Do I have to crawl?”

“Either that, or duck-walk.”

She tried that but decided crawling was her only option. She got down on all fours and picked her way along the log.

“They wouldn’t put this where there was poison ivy, would they?”

“No, they wouldn’t,” came her husband’s disembodied voice above her. At the end of the log, the rope inclined up again, so she got to her feet with Larry’s help. The rope turned around a large stump.

“Stump,” she said.

“Good one. How’d you figure that out?”

“Shut up and don’t make fun.”

The course continued uphill from tree to tree. She found herself listening more and more carefully for clues to her surroundings.

“Mr. Shoemaker?” A voice came from behind them—the man running the course. “There’s someone here with a message from the sheriff.”

Larry hesitated. “Okay. Can you wait here with my wife while I go see what it is?”

“I should go back in case others come…”

“That’s fine, Larry. I’ll just stay right here and not move. I can practice listening,” Frannie said.

“You’re sure? You could take your blindfold off…”

“No, that would spoil it. If the sheriff wants you to go somewhere, have someone come tell me and I’ll take my blindfold off then and quit.”

She heard them go back down the trail and clung to the rope with her right hand. At first she held her body rigid until she realized that she would be more comfortable if she shifted her feet and relaxed. There was a little soughing wind in the trees and the tree frogs, but no song birds at this time of day. An owl hooted, startling her, and then a flutter somewhere above her head—the owl? Or, her worst fear, a bat? She shifted again to keep from locking her knees and scuffed some sticks. Footsteps again—good, Larry coming back, so silly to allow this fear to grow, and she opened her mouth to call to him when a hard gloved hand clamped over it and another hand grabbed lower at her throat pulling her back against her attacker. Her tender ribs screamed in pain and she grabbed at the hand around her throat with her left hand, urgently clinging to the rope with her right as if it were a lifeline. In desperation, she clamped down with her teeth on the hand covering her open mouth, getting just a couple of fingers, and bit as hard as she could.

A yelp in her ear and a slight release, enough that she could turn her head and scream. “Larry!”

Her assailant tried to drag her off the path but still she clung to the rope. Now there were footsteps running back up the path toward her. It encouraged her to hang on even tighter. The attacker grunted and dropped her, crashing off through the brush on the side of the trail. She had been pulling so hard on the rope that when he let go of her, her body careened sideways over the rope, starting to somersault. Not again. But Larry was there, catching her, and helping her get upright.

Still blindfolded, she pointed to the left. Her voice squeaked. “He went…”

“Don’t say ‘thataway,’ please.” He let her go and removed the blindfold. She heard a great deal of thrashing ‘thataway’ and looked up at her husband, relieved but perplexed.

“Ben and the guide went after him,” Larry explained. “Let’s get back down to the others. That can’t have been good for your side.”

She tried to take a deep breath but thought better of it. “I’m jinxed,” was all she could say.

More careful baby steps down the path. This was getting old. They reached the level area near the beginning.

She said to Larry, “What was the message?”

“It was a set-up. As soon as the guide left to come get me, the ‘messenger’ took off. Nancy and Donna got glimpses of him but can’t describe him very well.”

She stopped in the path and turned around to face him. “You mean, they were after
me
?
Why
?”

“Well, Frannie, people notice when you become involved in these things. You’re making yourself a target…”

She held up her hands. “Okay, okay. Did they call the sheriff?”

“Couldn’t get a signal down here. Nancy went up the hill to call. Was this guy armed?”

“I didn’t see anything—” and realized that was a stupid thing to say since she was blindfolded. “I mean, he had one hand on my mouth and one on my throat, so he couldn’t have been holding a gun.”

They had just reached the others when more crashing off to their right signaled the emergence of Ben and the guide from the woods with Frannie’s attacker struggling between them. When she got a look at his face, there was no recognition. A young man, late teens or early twenties, with freckles and a nest of reddish-blonde hair projecting at all angles, a perfect candidate for a Disney movie except for his surly expression.

The guide looked a little winded but none the worse for wear. “Did somebody call the sheriff?”

“Nancy went back to the archery range to try and get a signal. About ten minutes ago,” Mickey said.

“Do you know this kid?” Larry asked the guide.

“I’ve seen him around but don’t know his name. He won’t say anything.”

“Don’t have to say anything,” the kid muttered. His voice was rather high and thin.