What could I say? More important, what was Sam going to say?
We went out onto the back porch. I put my hand out and touched Sam"s arm. I took a deep breath. "Sam. Listen. I like you as a friend. I really do. But Robert and I are serious."
Sam looked surprised. "I know," he said.
"I know you and your girlfriend broke up, and I, well, I can"t really see us getting back together," I continued.
"Us? Us who?" asked Sam, looking even more surprised.
I felt like a big dope. Had I misinterpreted Sam"s actions?
"Us, as in you and me ..." My voice trailed off.
Sam stared at me. Then to my surprise he blushed.
"Stacey!" he said. His voice was reproachful. "I still like you. A lot. But I think of you as a friend, someone who is fun to goof with. Someone I can be myself with. Sort of a, uh," he ducked his head, "best girl friend, but not girlfriend, you know?"
"Oh," I said stupidly. I was relieved. And humiliated. How conceited of me.
Then Sam made me feel better. "But I do like to flirt with you," he said. "It keeps me in practice for my next girlfriend."
"Oh, you," I said, swatting him on the arm.
Then I linked my arm through his and we trudged down the back steps.
The snow seemed to be slacking off for a moment. But the sky was darker than ever. I was amazed at how quickly the drifts around the door had piled up.
Sam and I waded off the steps toward the wood under the porch.
Then I stopped. I opened my mouth but no sound came out. I pointed.
Sam looked in the direction I was pointing.
The swirling, shifting snow was already covering it, but there was no mistaking what it was.
Blood in the snow.
I shrieked.
When I shrieked, Sam jumped and made a strangled sound.
It was enough to bring everybody running out onto the porch.
"What"s wrong?" asked Kristy.
We both pointed. "Blood!" I managed to say.
Charlie walked along the edge of the porch and so did Claud. They bent over the railing of the porch and peered down at the gruesome spot in the snow.
Charlie shook his head. "Looks like some poor bird bought it," he said. "A fox probably got it, although they are usually pretty shy and don"t come out until later in the day or evening."
"A f-fox?" I asked, through stiff lips.
"Yup. You can see a couple of footprints under the edge of the porch here. And some feathers. Take a look."
"Thanks," I said, "but I"ll take your word for it."
Everybody else hustled back inside. I helped Sam fill his arms with logs. Then I walked around the porch and stared out at the woods. I could barely see the nearby trees in the blinding whiteness. The snow had started coming down again, heavier than ever. The wind and snow were already erasing our footprints by the back steps.
And the blood in the snow.
I reached the front of the house, and stopped. The skis that we"d carefully set back against the wall of the porch the day before were still there. Everything looked as it should.
Except for the ski poles that stood upright in the snow on either side of the front steps.
Kristy"s ski poles. The ones with the monograms on them that we"d teased her about.
There they stood. They hadn"t been there when Watson and Elizabeth had left. We would have seen them.
I stared, and I felt very cold. Colder than the snow that swirled around me.
The ski poles had been snapped neatly in half.
And there were no footprints leading to them, or away.
I turned to go inside, trying to act calm, as if it were no big deal. We had heard somebody outside the house. It hadn"t just been the sound of a fox killing a small animal.
Something moved in the trees.
I made a mad dash for the door, flung myself inside, and slammed the door behind me.
Everyone looked up.
"Stacey?" said Claudia.
"What is it?" asked Abby.
I motioned for my friends to follow me into the girls" bedroom.
"Lock the doors," I panted. "Close the windows. Your ski poles . . . somebody . . . outside..."
I took a deep breath. "Your ski poles are outside in the snow, Kristy," I said. "Someone has been here and broken them. I thought Mary Anne said something about Karl Tate before the lines went dead. But it"s not him. It"s her. Kris Renn. I just saw Kris Renn sneaking around in the trees. And I"m pretty sure she has a gun."
Chapter 18.
Shannon.
Mal"s mother arrived in one of the Pike-mobiles (the Pikes own two station wagons) to take Mal and Jessi back to the Pikes" to finish up their weekend baby-sitting a.s.signment. The mystery seemed to have driven away Mal"s grudge against insulation. She only groaned slightly when Mrs. Pike started talking about how much warmer the house was already.
Then she looked sideways at Jessi and they both started to giggle.
That left me with Logan and Mary Anne, who were not, I could tell, getting along. They kept looking at each other, then looking away, starting sentences and interrupting each other. It was very uncomfortable.
"Let"s take Astrid for a walk," I said, just to get out of the house. Astrid is our Bernese mountain dog.
"It"s snowing again," said Mary Anne, staring at her shoe.
"Astrid won"t mind the snow," Logan said, looking at a point over the top of Mary Anne"s head.
"She loves it," I said. "It makes her act like a puppy, and we can walk over to the Tates" house. It isn"t far from here."
Mary Anne and Logan came along without Shannon further argument - with me or with each other. Astrid was delighted, and although she is very well behaved on a leash, she kept making wuffling noises of delight, burying her nose in the snow and snorting.
The Tates" house, surveillance wise, was kind of a disappointment from the outside. It was a mansion (we are definitely the mansion neighborhood) and it was set back from the road. A "FOR SALE" sign was stuck in the front yard, crooked and half hidden by the snow. The paint on the gates at the foot of the driveway was chipped and peeling. The hedges on either side of the gate were overgrown. The curtains at the windows were drawn.
The house sat on a corner lot. We circled around to the other street. From the side, we could see the garage door standing open, and the garage was empty. No red Mercedes, no anything else.
"Maybe neither of them is home," I said.
"Looks that way," said Logan.
The only thing moving in the whole landscape was a cat, walking in that disgusted-cat way through the wet snow toward the back of the house.
Astrid hadn"t been out all day. That"s my excuse for her. One minute she was being a Good Dog. The next minute she"d jerked the leash from my hand, crashed through a thin place in the hedge, and was tearing across the backyard.
The cat took one look at her and abandoned its injured dignity to go into cat hyperspeed. It disappeared through the back door of the house. I realized a pet door must be there.
Astrid realized it, too.
"Astrid!" I shouted. She didn"t even look back. She just squeezed herself through the pet door and into the house.
"We shouldn"t be doing this," said Mary Anne nervously.
"No one"s around," I said. "The neighbors can"t see us. And it"s not like we"re breaking in."
"This door is open!" said Logan in surprise. "Look."
"Someone could be waiting on the other side," Mary Anne said.
"I hope Astrid is." I could envision the damage Astrid was doing, racing around someone"s house, chasing a cat. I"d already tried calling her through the pet door, but to no avail. And none of us was quite small enough to fit through it. It must have been a tight squeeze for Astrid.
The door opened directly into a kitchen, big Shannon and shiny and spotless, and unused looking. We went from there into a hall.
"Astrid," I called softly, in case someone was home and had managed somehow not to hear the commotion of a dog chasing a cat into their house.
One door opened into an office, or what was left of an office. Dusty cherrywood file cabinets lined one wall. A huge, worn leather chair was pushed tightly against a ma.s.sive cherrywood desk. Gla.s.s front bookshelves were filled with books. On one wall was a surveyor"s map of Stoneybrook, with various colored push pins stuck into it.
Everything was dusty, and half-opened boxes filled with files were stacked around the room in no particular order. A bunch of framed pictures were propped against one wall. The wallpaper showed lighter patches, where the pictures had hung. The skeleton of a dead ficus tree stood at rigid attention in one corner.
"Karl Tate"s office?" said Logan, walking to the desk. He picked a card from a little bra.s.s card holder. "Yeah. Look. Karl Tate, real estate. It rhymes."
"Thank you, Logan. Now, can we get out of here?" Mary Anne walked into the room behind Logan.
Shannon "Aren"t we supposed to be investigating?" asked Logan.
"Not by breaking into somebody else"s house."
"The door was open," said Logan. "So technically we"re not even breaking in."
"Now you"re a lawyer?" asked Mary Anne crossly, putting her hands on her hips, her voice rising. "Quick. Let me make a note."
I stepped inside. "Guys! Shhh!"
Just then Astrid came careening out of nowhere. The cat streaked by, shot under the desk, banked off one of the walls, and streaked out again.
"Grab her!" I cried.
Logan and Mary Anne lunged for Astrid, and I slammed the door shut quickly so she couldn"t take off again.
"Ha! Gotcha," I said.
I took Astrid"s leash and she sat down demurely, her expression saying, "Me? Chase a cat? Never!"
"You"re in trouble, you big furball," I told her. She wagged her tail and I laughed. "Oh, well. I guess all"s well that end"s well." I glanced up at Mary Anne and Logan (who looked like cats faced off against one another). "Let"s get out of here."
I turned to open the door.
Shannon Only it wouldn"t open.
I twisted the k.n.o.b. I gave it a jerk. I checked to make sure I hadn"t somehow locked it. It held fast.
Logan, who had rushed to me, said, "Let me try."
But he didn"t have any better luck.