A Wee Dose of Death (23 page)

Hearts Carved on a Tree

F
airing pushed her chair back from her desk. “Come look at this map, Harper.” She walked to the far side of the room and he joined her. “You saw the guy in the face mask here, right?” She pointed.

He moved her finger up a quarter of an inch. “About there,” he said.

She stuck a small yellow adhesive dot to the spot. “He'd have to have come out here.” She indicated the bottom of the trail. “We combed the whole area. No sightings of anybody matching what little description you could give us.”

“Short guy unknown race on cross-country skis unknown make in a black ski mask with ice around the mouth hole; medium gray parka of unknown brand; maroon ski shoes ditto,” Harper recited. “You don't think that was enough?”

She snorted and pointed back to the map. “Motels here, here, here, and here. No overnight guests except for couples
the motel owners knew, two or three women, and one man—don't get excited. The guy was six and a half feet tall.”

“Couldn't be the one on skis.”

“I didn't think so.”

“Did you check the bed-and-breakfast places?”

She raised one expressive eyebrow. “You think we have the staff for that? Do you know how many there are?” She didn't expect an answer. “I didn't think somebody bent on murder would stay in a B and B. Too much chance of being identified. Motels are more anonymous.”

Harper nodded. “What about somebody who lives here in Hamelin?”

“A local,” Fairing said. “That should narrow it down. I doubt there's more than ninety or a hundred gray parkas in town. Maybe a hundred and fifty with maroon ski shoes.”

Harper raised his eyebrows.

“Dawson Mercantile had a sale on the things last summer, remember? He said he must have sold a hundred pairs. Maroon was the only color he'd put on sale.”

“That's a big help.”

*   *   *

It didn't take
Dirk and me long to get to the cabin. Well, almost an hour, but that was so much faster than the last time we'd been on this trail.

I had to drag one of the chairs over to the door so I could reach the ledge, but there it was, a little gray USB. Hard to believe such a minuscule thing had caused such a major uproar.

We made it down the trail in less than half an hour—that had to be some kind of a record.

As soon as I reached home, I rushed toward my office. “Come on, Dirk. We need to see what's on here.”

A minute or two later he asked, “What does the wee box mean?”

“Crapola on toast. It means this file is password protected.”

“
Pass word p'teckted
. What would that mean?”

I double-clicked on the other three files; two of them opened, but they didn't seem too promising. Just a bunch of jumble about protozoa and such. The final file needed a password, too. I was in no mood for either biology or a computer lesson. “It means we can't see what's on here. Dr. Wantstring locked the important files.”

“How do ye know 'tis important?”

“Because he wouldn't have locked them otherwise.”

Dirk craned to look behind my iMac where I'd inserted the thumb drive. “Where did he hide the wee key?”

I clicked on the little
eject
symbol. “Hopefully in Karaline's head. She might be able to figure this out.” I slid my laptop out of the deep drawer where I usually stowed it and checked the charge. 89 percent. Good enough.

*   *   *

Karaline was waiting
for lunch.

“Aren't they feeding you intravenously? I wouldn't think your intestines would work after being shot like that.”

She patted her abdomen. “I'm on liquids only. It's tender, but the doctors are amazed at my recovery so far. I should be out of here by Thursday or Friday.”

“You're kidding.”

“Nope.” She pointed at Dirk. “We have a built-in, invisible healer here. And he does a great job. Too bad we can't patent him.”

“What would be . . .”

She laughed. “Never mind, Dirk. It just means I'm eternally grateful to you for saving my life.”

“Enough syrup. Your breathing sounds a whole lot better, so if you're up to it”—I held up the USB and slung my laptop bag off my shoulder—“let's get busy. I tried to open it, but three of the five files need passwords.”

I positioned the computer and moved the adjustable table so she could reach it, but so it wouldn't press against her tummy. She studied the file listing, glanced through the two open files, and said, “Very interesting.”

“What?”

“The test results on this microbe—it's the one PD said he was working on—show a high degree of . . .”

“Speak English, please.”

“It killed his lab rats, and it looks like it would kill people, too.”

“He was going to kill people?”

“Don't be ridiculous, P. Anyway, he said it was easy to neutralize.” She clicked on one of the three locked files and got the warning box. “I know what Dr. W's password probably is.”

“You do?”

“Yep.” She smiled a crooked little grin. “He always used the same one.
EF&MW
, all capital letters.”

“What did it mean?”

She shrugged and winced just a little. I thought there might not be quite as much healing as she'd claimed. “It's like what he'd do for a girlfriend, or in this case, his wife. See—MW, his initials. And EF. I thought it was kind of like somebody carving his and his girl's initials on a tree trunk inside a great big heart.”

“Mistress Emily,” Dirk said.

Karaline nodded as she typed in the password. The file opened.

“Oh my God,” she said after reading for only a few seconds. “It's the third jungle book.”

“What?” I moved the laptop slightly so I could focus on the screen. “Jungle Passion,” I read, “by Denbi Marcas. Who's Denbi Marcas?”

“Denbi Marcas!” Why did Karaline sound excited?

“What,” Dirk asked, “would be a
jungle
?”

“You don't know about jungles?”

He shook his head.

“You know Latin and Greek, but you never heard of a jungle?”

“Leave him alone, P. He grew up in Scotland. They don't have jungles. Is the whole book there?”

I looked at the bar along the bottom of the document. “It says it has 79,254 words. Does that sound like a complete book?”

She nodded. “That's about right.”

I scrolled down a page and read aloud. “
Chapter 1. July 23rd, 1782. I honestly don't think I would have fallen for him so hard if he'd kept his shirt on. Those abs of his, sweat-drenched as they were in the steamy rainforest, shone in the light of the full moon.
What on earth is this drivel?”

“Drivel? It isn't drivel,” Karaline said. “Do you have any idea who Denbi Marcas is?”

I looked at her blankly.

“You don't read romance novels, right? Otherwise you'd know. Denbi Marcas is only the best-selling author of dozens of romances. She's a prolific writer. She turns out maybe three books a year.”

“You read romance? I didn't know that. You never told me.”

“You never asked me.”

“What would be
romance
,” Dirk asked, and then corrected himself. “That is to say, I ken weel enow what r-r-romance
is”—the
r
's fairly rolled off his tongue—“but I didna think it was something to read. Read
about
, mayhap.”

I stopped scrolling to answer him. “It's a type of novel. Book. Story.”

Karaline turned my laptop back and kept reading. “She writes historical romance,” she said.

“Like that makes it better?”

“Quit being such a snob. You can learn a lot about history reading these. Denbi Marcas always researches her books.”

I looked over her shoulder. “How would you know?”

“I've read her interviews. And book jackets.”

“What would be—”

“She writes history? In a steamy jungle?”

Karaline scrolled back to the top. “It's set in the 1700s.”

“I don't think ‘abs' was a term they used in the 1700s, K.”

“What would be—”

“And why would Marcus Wantstring have a file with a Denbi Marcas book in it?”

I reached across her as a flash of color on the screen caught my eye. A comment. I let the cursor hover over it.
Abs?
it said.
In 1782? Where on earth did you come up with that one, Denby? Can we change it to shoulders?
The author of the comment was listed as
MW.

“Denby? What kind of name would that be?”

“Good question, Dirk. Wish I knew the answer.”

“The only Denby I know of—with a
Y
at the end,” Karaline said, “is Denby Harper, that other UVM professor I mentioned. Dr. H, but he died recently. I read about it in an alumni bulletin.”

I looked at Karaline. She looked at me. “Pen name,” we said at the same time.

Dirk looked blank. “What,” he asked, “would be a
pin name
, and what is in the ither wee boxes with a lock?”

“Good question. I'll tell you in a second.” She fiddled with a few keys, and a second file popped open. The lurid book cover featured DENBI MARCAS in caps and the title in bright red letters.

“Where do you suppose they came up with a model with pecs like that?”

“What would be
pec
—”

“It's photoshopped,” Karaline assured me.

“What would be
foto
—”

I had to agree. The polish on the red-lacquered nails on the hand that clung to his biceps never would have lasted in any jungle I'd ever heard about. “Did they even have nail polish in the 1700s?”

Karaline ignored my question. “It's a very good pen name.”

“Yeah, but what do you think they do if they have to sign books at a bookstore? Two middle-aged men show up?”

“No wonder they were keeping it a secret,” Karaline said.

But then we both seemed to remember at the same time that neither of these men would ever sign another book.

“What,” Dirk sounded aggrieved, “would be in the ither box?”

But the password wouldn't work on this one.

“Wait,” I said. “What on earth could this novel have to do with that other file about the lab rats?”

“Maybe it was research. Some sort of jungle parasite that takes over the world.”

“In a romance novel?”

“Yeah. You're right. They're not connected.”

Dirk made one of those growly sounds deep in his throat. “Ye twa have caprine minds.”

“Kapreenuh? What's that?”

He muttered something. It sounded like “goat brain.”

*   *   *

Harper picked up
on the first ring. All this time and he still had no leads. Gray parka, black ski mask, short guy with maroon ski shoes. That was it.

The voice on the other end, female and no-nonsense, identified herself. “Tolly Smith, lieutenant, Burlington Police. You the one who called our station about the murder of Marcus Wantstring?”

“Right. I did.”

“His house in Burlington was broken into sometime late last Saturday or early Sunday.” She gave the dates. “A neighbor found it when she went in to water the plants. She finally got around to reporting it this morning. Said she thought we ought to know about it. Name's unusual—I recognized it and put it together with the homicide. The neighbor said the windowpane on the back door was broken. With this being glove weather, I doubt there'll be any fingerprints, particularly since the neighbor's husband nailed a plywood panel over the door.”

“Why?”

“Good Samaritan, I guess. Didn't want anybody else walking in.”

“You think it's connected to the murder.” Harper wasn't asking a question. That was the way any cop worth his—her—badge would think.

Smith didn't even bother to answer. “Could you connect with the wife on that end? If she needs to come up here—and that's your call—your job is to convince her.”

“Convince her? Why would I need to do that?” Harper
pulled out the combined Hamelin and Arkane phone book, all 126 pages of it, including the business listings at the back, and thumbed to the Ws.

“Get this. The neighbor said Mrs. Wantstring hadn't washed her dishes before she left. Didn't want us seeing the mess, so she told the neighbor not to call us.”

“So why did the neighbor call today?” He dropped the phone book back in the drawer. He could get the number from the police report.

“Neighbor said she got to thinking about it and wondered if it had anything to do with Mark Wantstring's death. You think? So she called. It's only been a week since she discovered something had happened.”

“Does Mrs. Wantstring know she called you?”