Carol Ericson - Circumstantial Memories

Ryder parked his truck across the road from the B and B and walked along the side of the property, his boots crunching the gravel. He knew Gracie was with Mrs. Ballard to help her prepare for Zack’s funeral tomorrow. He just hoped Charlie had better things to do than spy on Rosie. Ryder didn’t need a con frontation with Charlie right now.

Clutching the manila envelope with the cash against his body, Ryder knocked on the door of the guesthouse. No answer. “Rosie?”

He followed the sound of the gurgling stream in back of the guesthouse. The trees across the water swayed in the light breeze, their leaves playing peekaboo with the sun and throwing a dappled pattern on the ground.

A twig snapped and the hair on the back his neck rose. He narrowed his eyes as he peered into the dense foliage across the creek bed. “Rosie?”

Clambering over a few rocks, Ryder made his way along the edge of the stream and pulled up sharply. A woman crouched over the edge of the water as if drinking from the stream.

With his mouth dry, Ryder crunched through the rocks on the creek bed to reach her side. The woman was kneeling over, face down in the water, her long brown hair fanning out around her.

Ryder swallowed a lump in his throat as he crouched next to her. He nudged one bare shoulder, and a woman he presumed to be Rosie Fletcher fell over on her side. Ryder swore as Rosie’s lifeless, bulging eyes stared at him.

At first he thought someone drowned her, but the angry red marks around her throat told a different story. Someone had strangled her and then shoved her head in the water.

Ryder scanned the ground around her body and caught sight of a small, white card floating on the water, caught by a pile of pebbles. He pinched the edge of the card between two fingers and retrieved it from the creek.

Drops of water magnified and distorted the gold embossed letters announcing Dr. Brody’s practice. Ryder flicked the soggy card with his index finger, sending pinpoints of water flying into the air. Is this the information Rosie had to offer him? If so, where did she get the card?

He glanced down at Rosie’s inert form, the marks on her neck already purpling. Wherever she got the card, that information was lost to him now, sealed behind a dead woman’s vacant eyes.

“For one crazy heart-stopping minute, I thought she was you.”

Julia wrapped her hands around a cup of hot tea, trying to warm the chill that invaded her skin. The sun shone brightly in the blue sky, but the news of a third murder blotted out its warmth. A third murder at her door.

“Did the sheriffs find anything on Rosie’s body?” Julia lowered her voice as the waitress hovered at the next booth. “Any clue to what information she had about Dr. Brody’s accident?”

“Dr. Brody’s card was floating in the creek near Rosie’s body. I gave it to the cops. It was the least I could do. They’re not too happy with me for not calling them first after Rosie told me she had info. I explained that she threatened to clam up if I called the cops, and I didn’t even tell them about the money. Except Rafe. I told Rafe.”

“Dr. Brody’s card?” Julia knitted her brows as she blew on her tea. “His business card? The same as the ones you found on the trail?”

“Exactly the same. Maybe someone had one of those cards, and if that someone wasn’t a patient of Brody, it got Rosie thinking about why he had his card.”

“They still haven’t located Charlie?”

“No, and they’re mighty interested in talking to him. Do you want anything to eat along with that tea?”

She shook her head. Ryder had hurried over to the store from the crime scene to tell her about Rosie’s murder before she heard it through the grapevine and then dragged her off to Miner’s Café for a lunch she didn’t feel like eating.

“This is such a mess.” Julia covered her face with her hands. “Why would Charlie go through all this trouble to get to me if he wanted Rosie?”

“Maybe he used Rosie as a substitute for you. Maybe he figured once I came back into the picture, he didn’t have a chance with you.”

She ignored his implication, served with a heaping side of ego. “Don’t you have a hard time believing Charlie murdered anyone?”

“People act irrationally. If he’s innocent, where is he?”

Her hand jerked, sloshing tea into the saucer, as a horrible thought slammed into her brain. “What if Charlie’s dead, too?”

Ryder grasped her hand, droplets of tea and all. “He’s not dead. Whether he did it or not, he’s running scared. Our guy’s not too shy about leaving dead bodies lying around. If he killed Charlie, he wouldn’t hide the body. It’s as if he’s flaunting his cleverness in front of us, like he’s playing a game.”

Julia shivered and sipped her tea. “I don’t think murder is clever.”

Ryder thanked the waitress for his burger and fries and dug his elbows into the table on either side of his plate. “He’s clever because he’s making us suspect our own. What if your stalker is an outsider? This guy with the sunglasses? Or someone staying at one of the B and Bs?”

“Are the police questioning all the guests at the Mountain View?”

“Yeah, but it’s Charlie they really want.” Ryder squeezed the ketchup bottle, squirting ketchup all over his fries.

“ Shelby must’ve inherited her love of ketchup from you.” Julia wrinkled her nose. “She smothers her fries with the stuff, too.”

Beaming, Ryder glanced up from his ketchup operation. “She does?”

A pain twisted in her chest. Ryder didn’t know much about his daughter. Did he want to learn? Julia flattened her palms on the smooth tabletop. “Was Gracie there?”

“Nope.”

“She’s about to get a taste of her own busybody medicine.” She grimaced, the thought giving her no satisfaction at all.

Ryder popped a drenched french fry into his mouth and rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “I dreamed about these fries while I was eating boiled goat in Somalia.”

“Is that all you dreamed about?” All she’d been dreaming about since they made love was a repeat performance, but since she’d taken up residence at the McClintock ranch, they’d only exchanged a few furtive kisses.

He stopped mid-chew, a smudge of ketchup on the corner of his mouth. Julia extended her hand and dabbed the ketchup with the tip of her finger. Then she sucked the ketchup from her fingertip and she didn’t even like ketchup.

Ryder swallowed his food and then took a long draw from his iced tea. “The Miner’s french fries and sex.”

Her brows shot up. “In that order?”

“At the same time.”

Ryder’s low chuckle ignited a flame in her belly and she choked out, “At the same…”

She jumped as the chair next to her scraped against the wood floor and Rafe straddled it. He hung over the back and snatched a fry from Ryder’s plate.

“Ugh, why do you have to ruin them by soaking them in ketchup?” He dropped the fry back on Ryder’s plate and dusted his hands together.

“Have you located Charlie yet?” Ryder scooted the fry Rafe touched off his plate.

“Nope, and Gracie is kicking up a fuss. She insists her baby boy is lying injured and near death somewhere, a victim of the killer who strangled Rosie.”

Julia gulped and twisted a napkin on the table. She’d had the same feeling. “Do you have any evidence linking Charlie to Rosie’s murder?”

“Other than the fact that he had the hots for her and she was probably just leading him on?” Rafe shrugged. “No. Whoever did this covered his tracks. No clear footprints, no evidence left on the body that we can detect, no witnesses.”

“But you have Brody’s card.”