Кэти Дэйли - The Curse Of Hollister House

Cass laughed. “Not a tree, but the silly dog does have a habit of eating sticks if I’m not watching him every minute.” Cass headed to the kitchen for paper towels and floor cleaner. At least the floor was wood and not carpet. It should clean right up.

“Well, at least he seems to be feeling better,” I said.

“He usually does once he gets whatever he’s eaten out of his system.” Cass bent down to clean up the mess. “I’ll take him with us when we go. Now that he’s feeling better, he won’t want to stay home.”

“Are you worried he’ll eat the wrong thing and really make himself sick?” I asked.

“I am. But he is a dog, and I let him run around the property when I’m home. I can’t watch him every minute of every day. I hoped he’d grow out of it at some point, but so far, he hasn’t. Remember that lab I had when we were kids?”

“Sure.”

“He liked grass. We struggled through an ongoing cycle of him eating grass and then puking it up from the day I brought him home until the day he died. I tried to train it out of him, but that dog liked grass. Short of keeping him indoors or on a leash at all times, there was no way I was going to keep him from eating it.”

“Yeah, I get that.” I looked around. “There is grass everywhere. Except in winter.”

“Winter and snow gave us both a break.”

I stepped farther into the room. Cass had a small living area that looked out at the lake, an even smaller kitchen, a bath off the kitchen, and a loft where he slept. In a way, his home reminded me of Naomi’s cabin, only this was even smaller than hers, and of course, this was literally right on the water.

“I’ll grab Milo’s vest and leash, and then we can continue on to the burial sites.”

“Okay. I’m going to take another look outside.”

The location Stella’s killer had chosen to bury her was only about five minutes from Cass’s boathouse. The grave had eventually been found in a wooded area behind the campground. Stella had gone missing in the fall after the campground had closed for the season. As far as burial sites went, the killer hadn’t chosen a bad one. This entire end of the lake was pretty deserted from mid-September through mid-May.

“And Tracy was found near here?” I asked Cass after he led me to Stella’s temporary gravesite.

“Yeah. Just over here.” He led the way.

“And Patricia?”

“Closer to the water.” He walked in the direction of the lake. There was still yellow tape sectioning off the location where Patricia’s remains had been found.

“In terms of location, Patricia could have been buried by the same person who buried Stella and Tracy.”

“Yes, but everyone knew where Tracy’s body was found. It was in the newspaper and all over town. I don’t think the same person killed both girls. I can’t prove it yet, but I will.”

“When Stella was found, that was in the news as well,” I pointed out.

“Yeah, I guess it was.”

“So theoretically, the person who buried Tracy could have been someone other than the one who buried Stella, but knew about it and decided to bury Tracy here as well.”

“Theoretically, yes. But that isn’t what I think happened.”

I took several steps toward the water and looked at my reflection. “Yeah. Me neither.” I picked up a rock and tossed it, causing ripples on the surface. “So, what now? Does anything we’ve done today help you figure out who killed those girls?”

Cass frowned. Milo trotted over and sat at his feet as if sensing that his best buddy needed his support. “I have this gut feeling that there is something staring me in the face that I’m just not homing in on. We don’t have a lot to go on in terms of Stella and Tracy’s murders, but I do have a lot of leads to follow up on in regard to Patricia’s death, so I’ll start there. If I can find her killer and prove that person didn’t kill Tracy, at least I’ll have that to work from.”

“Have you eliminated any of the suspects you told me about?”

“Actually, I have. I spoke to Walter Young, who has an alibi and was nowhere near the party when Patricia went missing, and I spoke to a friend of Patricia’s who swears she was with Gayleen at the party and that they eventually left together. Unless she is lying, and I have no reason to believe she is, Gayleen didn’t have the opportunity to kill and bury Patricia.”

“So that just leaves the boyfriend and the teacher who should never have been at the party in the first place.”

“As well as a few others whose names have come up. I have several interviews lined up for later this afternoon, so I hope I’ll know more by the end of the day.”

Cass called Milo and headed toward the car.

“Will you be at the shelter this afternoon?”

“I’m not sure,” he answered. “Probably not if I am making progress in the case.”

“I’ll be working in the ticket booth at the haunted barn this evening. Maybe if you don’t make it to the shelter, you can meet me there. We can grab a bite after.”

Cass turned and looked at me. He smiled. “I’d like that.”

Chapter 21

“I guess I was expecting a decent turnout, but there was no way I was expecting this,” I said to Naomi, who just happened to have a volunteer shift at the haunted barn that paralleled my own.

“The haunted barn is always a popular event. We have a good turnout every year, especially on opening night. Most folks want a chance to go through before everyone posts about their experience on social media and spoils the surprises along the way.”

“I get that. It does seem like if you tape a show or are planning to attend an event on any night other than the first, you’d better stay off social media if you are worried about spoilers.” I looked out at the line that wound around the parking lot. “I don’t see how they are going to get all these people thorough before the barn closes at midnight.”

“Not our problem because our shift ends at ten.”

“I guess.” I had to admit to having my doubts that we’d get out of here on time. I hoped so because I hadn’t eaten and I was starving. Maybe making plans with Cass had been a bad idea. “I just hope our relief shows up by ten. I’m both starving and exhausted.”

“You did really well with the training today. Did it feel a bit more natural than it did on Tuesday?”

“It did, yes. I had a much better idea of what to do and how to relate to the dogs I worked with. I’m looking forward to my shifts next week, and of course, volunteering with Cass is a blast. I missed him this afternoon.”

“I guess he had to work.”

I nodded. “He has two murder cases to solve, both of which are pretty complex.”

“Are you still thinking that Stella and Tracy’s deaths are linked, but Patricia’s isn’t?”

I nodded as I counted out the change due to the person I’d been helping. I wasn’t sure we should be talking about this here in the ticket booth of one of the busiest events of the entire year, but no one seemed to be paying any attention to us, and we were standing in a secure building with a glass enclosure between us and the customers we were serving. “Cass and I retraced Stella’s final afternoon this morning. We started at the middle school, then went to the site where the barn where it is believed she died used to be, and then on to the burial site. I have to say the entire experience was very sobering.”

“Did you learn anything?”

“I don’t know that Cass learned anything he didn’t already know, but I found out for the first time that Stella hadn’t taken the normal route the two of us usually did that day.”

“She didn’t?”

“She took the wooded path that starts behind the baseball field and ends up on Aspen Drive. Cass thinks that someone might have been waiting in a car on Aspen Drive for school to get out, and Stella just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”