On the Run (19 page)

I knew what she was wishing right now. Nothing for herself. Just for a safe life and good things for the kids.

“You really believe in God?” she added reflectively.

“Oh yes, and that he sent his Son to make a way for us to spend eternity with him.”

“I’d like to believe in God and eternity and that he really cares about us and all that, but . . .”

“But?”

“But sometimes it all seems kind of like . . . tooth-fairy stuff.” She crossed her hands under her head as she looked up. “A feel-good fairy tale about this all-powerful being who loves and cares about us. I’ve never seen much real sign of that. And all that stuff about a miraculous virgin birth, and Jesus being crucified and then coming back to life. It’s hard to believe.”

“I thought you said you didn’t know anything about God,” I teased lightly. “And already you know these important truths.”

“You come across things when you read.” I heard a shrug in her voice. “Doesn’t mean I think any of it’s the
truth
. From everything I’ve seen personally, dead is . . . dead.”

“Sometimes I’ve had doubts too,” I admitted. Mosquitoes hummed around my head, but the repellent was working. “But I can always look up at the stars like this and go back to the beginning.”

“The beginning?”

“Do you think all this popped into existence by itself? That the orderly design of sun and planets and galaxies, and then us too, along with all the animals and plants on earth, just accidentally came into being?”

“That’s hard to believe too,” she admitted.

“Which is why the first words in Genesis make so much sense. ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.’ And if God could create all this, if everything started with him, surely he can do anything he wants with any of it. Virgin birth, resurrection, miracles . . . piece of cake!”

“You think he knows . . . right now . . . everything we’re saying and doing and thinking? That he’s in control of everything?”

“Oh yes. He’s had his hand in history all down through the ages. He has his hand in each of our lives today.”

“You think he controls every itsy-bitsy little thing that happens to us?” She sounded skeptical. “Like if someone gets a hangnail?”

“Well, I don’t know that every time I get a hangnail or a flat tire or have a bad hair day that it’s something he choreographed. Sometimes a hangnail is just a hangnail. But we never know how God may choose to work in our lives, and if he has a
purpose
for a hangnail or a flat tire, he can certainly provide one.”

I thought she was considering that, but suddenly she jerked upright. “What’s that?”

“What’s what?”

“I heard a noise out in the woods.”

“Probably just the emus.”

She sat there cross-legged in her new pajamas, head cocked as she listened. Me, I was worn out from lugging around piano, guns, and Navajo rugs. I tried to listen too. I heard frogs croaking, insects chirping, and Koop purring, once a scuffle from the emu pen. But somewhere along in there I just fell asleep.

I’d already decided to drive into Dulcy for church the next morning, but I didn’t mention it to Abilene until we were eating breakfast in the big house. Considering our encouraging discussion under the stars, I hoped she’d come along. But she said she was going for a hike.

“A hike?” I repeated, instantly alarmed. “Do you think that’s a good idea?”

“I never did hear anything more last night, but I still think I heard
something
—”

“All the more reason not to go prowling in the woods,” I said.

“I want to check it out. I could take a gun,” she added. “Mikki left a couple of them.”

I didn’t think toting a gun was any improvement on the hike idea itself, and, as it turned out, a gun wouldn’t have done much good anyway because we couldn’t find a bullet of any size or kind anywhere. Which made me think ammunition must have been what was in some of those heavy boxes we loaded into the trailer. A distinct relief, I decided. Bullets were what made guns dangerous.

“I’ll take a paintball gun, then,” Abilene decided. “They look pretty realistic.”

“Murderers tend to be able to tell real guns from phonies,” I pointed out. “And what do you do when he starts shooting bullets and all you have is paintballs?”

“According to the authorities, there hasn’t been any murder. Ergo . . . that’s a word I found in some books I read, and I kind of like it, don’t you? Ergo, ergo. Anyway, ergo, no murderer.”

Ergo or not, I wasn’t convinced hiking out in the woods was a good idea. Nor was I totally persuaded there wasn’t a murderer. “Somebody left that bare footprint,” I pointed out. “And we’ve seen movement out there in the woods and you heard something last night—”

“Probably just a deer.”

“I hit something with a paintball that I’m sure wasn’t a deer.”

But by then I was mostly talking to myself because Abilene was at a kitchen drawer picking up the shed keys Frank had left there.

“See you later,” she called from the door. “Don’t worry. Say a prayer for me if you want to.”

I did exactly that, both then and later in church. I was disappointed she didn’t come.
But these things take time, don’t
they, Lord?

It was a good service, with a strong message centered on Romans 8 and friendly people talking to me both before and afterwards, including a big welcoming hug from Margaret Rau. She was appalled by the Northcutts’ deaths and seemed concerned when I said I was staying on for a while as a caretaker.

“All alone?” Her tanned forehead creased into worry lines. “It’s so isolated out there.”

“There’s another caretaker. I won’t be there alone.” I didn’t elaborate. I doubted hearing that the other caretaker was a young stray I’d picked up would relieve Margaret’s concerns.

“Good. I’m glad to hear that. Has that strange Ute guy ever showed up out there again?”

“No. Why?”

“Someone said they saw him over in Horton a couple days ago.”

“I can’t think of any reason he’d come to the house. He’s surely heard about the Northcutts’ deaths. Maybe he’s working for someone over in Horton now.”

“Could be, I suppose.” Her face brightened. “Maybe you could come in on Wednesday evenings too? We have a potluck and then Bible study.”

“I’ll try.”

The gas was getting low in the motor home, but I didn’t stop at a station. I intended to take Frank up on his offer to let us use gasoline out of the big storage tank. We hadn’t discussed our using the Hummer, but it wasn’t anything I wanted to drive anyway.

Abilene wasn’t around when I got home. I fussed with moving things from the motor home to the house, putting towels in the shared bathroom, and watching Koop prowl the new surroundings. I turned on the computer but, like Frank, couldn’t get past the password block. I even walked as far back into the woods as the bare footprint, although deer tracks obscured it now.

But mostly I worried. Worried about everything from Abilene getting lost to being stalked by some vicious wild animal to encountering some long-haired, wild-eyed owner of the barefoot print.

However, when she dropped the paintball gun on the deck and walked into the kitchen at the big house about 2:30, it appeared that the worst that had happened to her was that she was tired, sweaty, and had a backside covered with enough mud to plant petunias. Also a powerful scent of muddy swamp. Which I can guarantee is never going to be up there with White Diamonds as a best-selling perfume.

“How’d that happen?” I inquired.

She brushed at the mud blotch. “I spotted a big yellow and black butterfly. I guess I . . . forgot to watch where I was going.”

I laughed. Leave it to Abilene to be so entranced by a butterfly that she tumbled into a muddy swamp.

But she also had news, and her expression turned sober when she announced it. “I found something else back there.”

20

“Like . . . what?”

“Somebody’s been camping way back there in the woods.”

“You saw someone?”

“No, but there’s a flattened place in the grass where a tent’s been pitched. And there are empty tin cans and Styrofoam plates. He’s a big chili and sardines and ramen noodles eater, and he swigs a lot of Dr Pepper. Plus an occasional beer.”

“Not exactly your neighborhood gourmet, then.”

“He does like Oreo cookies.”

“Maybe it isn’t just a ‘he,’” I suggested. My first jumpy thought, of course, was that this could be a Braxton, but I didn’t want to overreact to something that could be quite innocent. “Maybe it’s a family that hiked into the wilderness to vacation on the cheap.”

“I saw only one set of footprints.”

“Barefoot?”

“No. He has shoes. Big, heavy boots, actually. And there were heavy tire tracks where he’d been parked.”

“Tire tracks?” I repeated, startled. “How could anyone get a vehicle way back in there?”

“There’s an old road coming in from the other side. I don’t know where the property lines are, so I don’t know if the campsite is on this property or someone else’s or maybe government land.” She went to the little closet at the far end of the kitchen and yanked out a broom. “Could you sweep me off? I feel like I have swamp creatures crawling on me.”

We went outside to the grass, and I briskly whopped the broom across her backside. The mud was mostly dry now. I didn’t see any swamp creatures, but smelly dust and chunks flew as I swept.

“I’ll go shower and put on something clean.”

I had iced lemonade—courtesy of about fifty cans of the stuff in one of the freezers—ready when she returned dressed in a pair of Jessie’s old shorts and a blue T-shirt. She climbed onto a tall stool at the counter separating kitchen and dining room and took a thirsty gulp of lemonade.

“So, do you think this guy’s been sneaking over here? That he’s who we’ve seen and heard, maybe even the ‘deer’ I paintballed?”

“I found enough trampled grass and bushes with broken branches and footprints . . . footprints going both directions . . . to know he’s definitely been over here. That’s how I found the campsite, in fact, following the trail he left.”

Not Ute then. My second uneasy suspicion, linking Abilene’s news of a camper with Margaret Rau’s comment that Ute had been seen in the area, was that he might be sneaking around out here with something nefarious in mind. But Ute was too much of an expert at survival-style living to leave a trail that could be so easily followed. He’d survived six weeks in the wilds with only a pocketknife and matches, and this camper/skulker sounded as if he’d starve without a can opener.

“Generic weirdo?” I suggested. “Peeping Tom?”

Abilene twisted hula-hoop rings on the tiled surface of the counter with her icy glass. “Maybe.”

She sounded skeptical, and I couldn’t give my suggestion much credence either. There must be easier ways to peep than sneaking through miles of brush and swamp.

“Maybe he didn’t camp there specifically because it gave him access to this place. Maybe he just wandered over here in his spare time, out of curiosity.”

“It’s a long way to wander.”

“How far?”

“Probably three or four miles. Though it feels like about ten, going up and down hills and around the swampy places and brush that’s too thick to get through.”

“Maybe he’s out for the exercise, then.”

“If he wants exercise, it would make more sense to hike on that old road than to thrash around in the brush.”

Okay, both of those more-or-less innocent possibilities shot down. “Was he using a campfire?”

“No. I found a couple of empty books of matches near a stump, so he probably had one of those propane or Coleman stoves set up on it. At least he’s conscientious about fire danger.”

Okay, conscientious about fire or not, this was worrisome. What was the guy doing? I’ve been known to be overly suspicious, but this guy obviously wasn’t making neighborly jaunts to borrow a cup of sugar or deliver welcoming brownies.

“Maybe he’s a transient looking for something to steal,” I suggested, still hoping for something generic, something not connected to
us
to explain his presence.

“Or maybe he had something to do with the Northcutts’ deaths.”

“Or maybe,” I suggested slowly, “both.”

“Both?”

“Maybe he wants to steal something he didn’t get when he killed them.”

Which could mean
we
were standing between him and his goal.

About as secure a position as standing between a bull and a red flag.

“But, officially, there isn’t any murder,” Abilene reminded me.

“Right. But we might notify the sheriff’s office about someone illegally camping or trespassing, and see what they come up with. That Deputy Hamilton seemed nice. We could talk to him.”

“They’re in the middle of their big murder and drug investigation. I doubt they’re going to be too concerned about some guy dumping sardine cans.”

True. Then I brightened. There was an important point we were ignoring here, no matter who our camper/skulker was.

“But the tent wasn’t there, you say. Just a flattened place where it had been. So maybe it’s been days, even weeks since he’s been there, and we’re worrying about something that’s long over.”