Rocky Road (17 page)
They took Caro’s car to Lloyd Canyon, expecting a mountain road with cabins hidden in the trees. What they found instead was more like a neighborhood, though most of the houses were cabin designs. The lots weren’t large, and some of them had fenced yards. Numerous roads led off of Lloyd Canyon Road, but they didn’t go very far from town and looped back to the main street every time.
“If he’s hiding in a cabin, it would be one of those,” Sadie said as they passed a private driveway with a “No trespassing” sign and a winding driveway that disappeared into the trees before revealing the cabin it led to. “These other cabins are too close together for him to effectively hide—people would know right where he was.”
Caro agreed and then slowed down as they reached the top of Lloyd Canyon Road where a chain-link gate barred the road. A large and impossible to ignore “Private Property” sign was front and center on the gate. They both looked at it for a few seconds before Sadie suggested they drive through all the other streets and make note of the other private driveways. She pulled a notebook and pen from her purse so she could draw a rough map and indicate the roads that led to cabins that were not so easily seen from the roads.
They made a second pass of Lloyd Canyon Road and all the streets that looped off of it, noting the private drives and getting a feel for the differences between the cabins. Some of them had carefully tended flower gardens, cars parked in the driveways, and other details that seemed to say that the owners lived there at least in the summertime, or maybe all year-round. Others had limited landscaping, empty carports, and an overall vacant feel about them that communicated only occasional use.
“Maybe he is camping out,” Caro suggested after they discussed how impossible it would be for him to stay in one of these empty cabins without the neighbors noticing him. In a town like this, it seemed likely that if one person knew where this mystery man lived, the entire town would know by sundown. And yet, neither Robert nor Goth Girl knew where he was staying. Though they were both aware of him and interested in why he might be here, they hadn’t launched any kind of campaign to find out. Maybe people camped out in the mountains on a regular basis. Maybe this town was better than most about keeping out of people’s business.
“How would he be showered every time Goth Girl saw him if he were just camping out?” Caro asked. “Maybe Candace lets him shower at the motel. Maybe she’s sweet on him, and that’s why she wouldn’t tell us anything.”
“Maybe,” Sadie said, but that seemed unlikely. Why wouldn’t Goth Girl know if he were showering at the motel she cleaned every day?
They’d reached the top of Lloyd Canyon Road again and the gate that barred them from the road that continued on the other side.
“The forbidden is always more interesting,” Caro said, looking at the gate, then pointing. “It’s not locked.”
Sadie looked more closely and saw what Caro saw. Rather than a lock keeping the gate closed, there was only a chain wrapped around the gate and the fence on the other side of it. How forbidden could it be if there were no reason to bother with a lock?
They both got out of the car to inspect the chain and then looked through the gate to the road that extended beyond it. The road turned to dirt on the other side of the gate but they could see where it branched off in a few different directions.
“There must be cabins not used as full-time residences, don’t you think?” Sadie asked.
Caro nodded. “It would be a pain to undo the chain every time you came and went if you were here every day. We should check it out.”
“But of course,” Sadie said, with a smile at her friend, who smiled back.
Caro moved her car to the side so it wouldn’t be in the way of the road. Sadie glanced around, worried that a neighbor was going to come out and tell them to skedaddle, but no one did before Caro rejoined her. Sadie unwrapped the chain and swung the gate open just enough for them to step around it, then she rewrapped the chain and hoped they wouldn’t need a quick getaway.
The first road was on the left. They followed it a hundred feet or so before the trees cleared to show a huge log cabin with a green metal roof. Caro whistled under her breath. “How would it be to have this as your second home?”
“I can’t imagine,” Sadie said, though she’d always thought the idea of a second home sounded like a lot of work. People she knew who owned cabins spent most of their visits doing maintenance. Her friend Janet’s cabin had flooded once—they didn’t know until they visited months later and ended up having to gut the entire building due to mold. It had never smelled right after that.
They walked around the impressive building and peeked in the windows. From one of the windows on the main level they could see the blinking red light of an alarm system. It didn’t seem likely that he’d be staying in a cabin where the owners cared enough to have an alarm system to keep people out. Back on the road, they were heading toward the next private driveway when something farther ahead caught Sadie’s eye. “See that oil drum,” she said, pointing it out to Caro and squinting to try to read what was written on it. She could swear the word started with an E, and the idea made the hair on the back of her neck prickle. “Can you read it?” she asked even as she hurried toward it.
“Oh, my gosh,” Caro said a few moments later, and then she broke into a run. Sadie jogged behind her, but Caro had come to a stop and turned to face her before she’d caught up. “It says Edger.”
“As in Kyle Edger?” Sadie asked as she finally got close enough to clearly see the name welded into the oil drum. The hair on the back of her neck stood up straight now. The attorney Lori had called yesterday just happened to have a cabin in Pine Valley?
“Either this cabin belongs to Kyle Edger,” Caro said, putting her hands on her hips, “or this is the most ridiculous coincidence ever.”
Sadie had stopped believing in coincidences a long time ago. Even with that thought, however, a shiver washed through her as she remembered Officer Nielson’s words about his belief that she was supposed to be a part of this case. And Caro had pointed out Sadie’s gifts. They all seemed to be indicating the same thing: Sadie being involved in this case wasn’t a coincidence, either.
Sadie looked down the private dirt road flanked by cedars and ponderosa pines and tried to absorb the implications of this discovery. She wished she’d taken the time to learn more about the attorney Lori Hendricks had contacted after receiving that phone call from the Pine Valley Motel.
“He must have let Dr. H stay here, right?” Caro suggested.
“Why would he do that?” Sadie said. “It’s got to be some kind of violation of his oaths or something.” She considered it further. “And why would he agree to let Dr. Hendricks stay here but not take into account the fact that he’d need food?”
“Excellent point.” Caro started moving down the road. Sadie hurried a few steps and caught her arm.
“Wait,” she said, thinking fast. “We can’t just walk in on him.”
“Why not?” Caro said with a questioning look. “We certainly can’t put this off—what if he finds out we’re asking about him? He used the motel’s phone and didn’t go to the store, which means he’s broken his routine. Who knows what he’s planning to do now? We can’t put it off.”
She was right, but to go in without a plan was impetuous. “We need to know what our goals are before we rush in.”
“To see if he’s there,” Caro said, sounding annoyed with Sadie’s delays. “Or verify that he has been—he might have already taken off.”
“Maybe we should call Officer Nielson first.”
Caro’s eyebrows went up in surprise, but she wasn’t the only one who hadn’t expected Sadie to say such a thing. It wasn’t like Sadie to miss an opportunity, but she knew Pete wouldn’t go barreling in like this. But would he give Dr. Hendricks a chance to get away?
Sadie pulled her phone out of her pocket, convinced that calling Officer Nielson was the right choice and that she’d better do it now before she talked herself out it. But there was no service. She held her phone up and turned in a circle, but couldn’t get even one bar to show up.
“Look,” Caro said as she took a few steps closer to Sadie. “If you’re nervous about us going up there on our own, you don’t need to be.” She patted her purse.
Sadie looked at the purse and then into Caro’s knowing smile. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that I have a paranoid husband who never lets me go on long road trips without having some protection.”
Sadie blinked and looked at Caro’s purse again. “A gun?”
“And a Taser.”
“A gun and a Taser?” Sadie repeated too loudly.
Caro shushed her, and Sadie nodded her understanding and lowered her voice. “Where did he think you were going?”
“He’s a safety guy,” Caro said with a slight shrug. “I think it’s kind of cute that he worries about me.”
“And sends you with a gun? He must not know how many people have their own guns turned on them?”
Caro gave Sadie an exasperated look. “I have a concealed carry, so I’d better stick with the gun. Why don’t you take the Taser?”
“As though I know how to use a Taser,” Sadie said. “Why am I just now learning that you’re a walking ballistics team?”
“Seriously, you need to calm down.” Caro reached into her purse and removed what looked like a small electric razor. “Here’s the ‘on’ button. You switch it to ‘on’ and then, to activate it, you just press this end against whoever you need to disable. It’s not hard.”
It didn’t seem like it would be hard to accidentally tase herself, either, but Sadie didn’t want to further annoy her partner, so she took the device and turned it in her hand. “I can’t believe you have a Taser,” she said under her breath as she put it in the front pocket of her capris, which now bulged most unattractively.
“I don’t have a Taser anymore—you do. I’ve got Penelope.” She patted her purse again and began walking toward the private driveway again.
“You named your gun Penelope,” Sadie said, hurrying to catch up.
“What—you don’t like it?” Caro said, giving Sadie a teasing smile.
Sadie shook her head and began scoping both sides of the road even though she didn’t know what she was looking for. “This road hasn’t been graded in a while,” Sadie pointed out, changing the subject away from Caro’s weaponry. The road leading to Sadie’s brother’s cabin was graded at least three times a year, which made her wonder when this road had last been attended to.
“Maybe the Edgers don’t use it very often,” Caro said.
“Maybe it’s one more way to keep people away.”
They walked almost half a mile before the trees parted to reveal a simple A-frame cabin set behind a roundabout driveway carved out of the natural brush and grasses that were green with summertime. A door was set in the center of the building, with a window on each side and another window near the top. A type of lean-to was built onto one side and covered with aluminum siding. There was nothing outside of the cabin but a hammock tied between two of the many trees surrounding the small clearing. The area looked completely deserted.
Sadie pulled Caro behind the tree line. “Let’s approach from the side,” she said. “We don’t want to make ourselves vulnerable.” Now that Caro had opened the subject of guns, Sadie wondered if Dr. Hendricks might have one. She put her hand over the Taser in her pocket, feeling better about having it than she had earlier.
“I’ll go left. You go right,” Caro said.
Sadie didn’t love the idea of splitting up, but they could cover more ground than they would if they stayed together, so she nodded. “We’ll meet at the cabin—don’t hide so well that I can’t see you.”
“Agreed.” Caro moved left while Sadie moved right, carefully scanning the area ahead of her as she did so. Other than the rustle of leaves in the aspens around them and the sound of birds, she didn’t hear anything. Sadie reached the cabin first and approached the front door carefully, watching the curtain-drawn windows and listening to the crunch of pea gravel beneath her feet.
The first of the front steps creaked eerily beneath her foot, causing her to pause before remembering she wasn’t trying to sneak up on anyone. The second step creaked as well, but she didn’t pause that time. She crossed the small porch and looked at the spider webs in the corner that testified to the fact that this door wasn’t used much. Still, she took a breath before she raised her hand and knocked three times. The sound echoed within the cabin, and though she anticipated the vibration of footsteps, there didn’t seem to be any movement inside.
She knocked again and waited, but the seemingly empty cabin swallowed her attempts to rouse an occupant. Sadie turned and headed back down the steps to where Caro was waiting. “Keep a look out here, okay? I’m going to check the back.”
Caro gave a thumbs-up sign while Sadie moved toward the lean-to portion of the building. There had to be a back door.
She rounded the corner and felt a creeping vulnerability about being out of Caro’s line of sight. There was a door in the lean-to section of the cabin. Sadie lifted her hand to knock, but because her other knock hadn’t been answered, she felt it was probably a waste of time. She tried the doorknob, but it didn’t turn beneath her hand. Locks no longer kept Sadie out of most places, but no sooner had she felt the arrogance of her lock-picking skill than she also remembered that she’d left her lock picks in Colorado. Perhaps she’d thought that if she left them home, she wouldn’t encounter a reason to need them on this “girls’ weekend” she’d planned with Caro, which was supposed to be full of theater performances, shopping, awesome food, and some good Samaritan work. Ha!
She walked around the back of the cabin and discovered a huge deck, twenty feet by twenty feet, covered with flattened piles of autumn leaves that hadn’t been cleaned up since fall and then had likely been snowed on. She climbed the few steps and came to a stop when she heard something that was out of place. It was not the sound of birds or wind in the trees like she’d heard before. Rather, what caught her attention was the lack of sound. When had it become so quiet?
A twig snapped, and she turned around quickly, scanning the trees for what had made the noise. “Hello?” she called and then listened quietly for an answer, either in words or in movement.
As a few more seconds passed, she heard nothing. Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw movement. She turned enough to see what at first glance looked like trees and brush. An instant later, she realized she was seeing camouflage pants and her gaze traveled upward until she saw a pair of blue eyes peering at her from behind a cluster of brush that almost hid him completely. Him. Wednesday Man.
“Dr. Hendricks?” she asked, her voice shaky with fear that she couldn’t choke down. What if it weren’t Dr. Hendricks? What if it were some crazy mountain man? Where was Caro?
The figure in the trees suddenly disappeared, crashing through the brush as he beat a quick retreat from the cabin. Despite the questions and the fear, it took Sadie .3 seconds to take pursuit.