LITMIR.BIZ

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myself for an attack, I considered diving into the tent and fending Derek off with that long-handled cast-iron skillet, which if I was correct, had already been used as a weapon that day. But it was part of the crime scene and should not be disturbed. Besides, it was too heavy for me to fling around with anything resembling precision. I would probably end up twirling myself and the skillet across the beach and into the lake.

      Derek tossed a lock of blond hair off his forehead. “What’s going on?”

      “Don’t come any closer,” I warned with all the authority of a short person wearing a police hat with a donut attached to the front.

      The voice in my ear said, “The police are almost there.”

      “The party’s canceled,” I said.

      Derek’s eyes were half covered by his upper lids. “What party?”

      From near the lake behind me, a woman demanded, “What are you doing here, Derek? You’re not invited. Go away.” I recognized Terri’s shrill tones and turned around.

      Wearing a red life jacket over a red fleece hoodie, jeans, knee-high rubber boots, and binoculars on a strap around her neck, Terri was striding toward us and away from a red canoe pulled up on the shore next to Rich’s dock. The canoe hadn’t been there before I talked to Cheryl. Terri must have beached it almost silently.

      Derek held his palms out toward us. “I’m leaving.” His hands were mostly clean, but black lined the creases. The stains looked a lot like the soot that Nina and I had scrubbed off our hands the night before after doing battle with the long-handled skillet in Rich’s cottage.

      I was sure that the police would want to talk to Derek. “Wait in your car,” I suggested. “Someone will explain.”

      He sneered. “I don’t have a car. And I don’t know what’s going on here, but I’m not getting involved.” He stomped up the hill toward the driveway. The heels of his boots were worn down at the sides.

      Terri turned to me. Her cheeks were flushed, and her lips were thin with anger. “What are you doing here?”

      I guessed she didn’t know that Rich had ordered donuts and coffee from me. “I . . . Rich asked for our coffee and Boston cream donuts.”

      She glared at me but didn’t say anything. Had her canoe paddle been the one I’d heard banging against a gunwale a couple of times since I arrived? She could have clobbered her long-lost and suddenly new boyfriend with the skillet, the plate of Boston brown bread, or her paddle, and canoed away quickly and noisily. After she was sure that someone else would be here and would therefore appear guilty, she could have slipped quietly back to shore and acted innocent.

      I wasn’t certain, but I thought that the canoe I’d heard being bumped with a paddle was aluminum. Terri’s canoe looked like fiberglass with wooden gunwales.

      I knew it wasn’t nice to question her before she learned the truth about Rich, but I wasn’t sure that what had happened to him would upset her. Maybe she already knew. I didn’t ask why she went canoeing in huge rubber boots. According to Tom, heavy boots could have been at least part of the reason Rich’s late wife drowned in this lake. Instead, I asked her, “Were there other boats on the lake?”

      “I heard some boats while I was out there, but it’s too foggy to see more than a few feet away, and I don’t know who else might have been paddling around.” She touched her binoculars. “I go birding in my canoe whenever I can, but today, when I had my first chance to canoe on Lake Fleekom since Derek got us kicked out of the cottage we rented, it was too foggy to see many birds. It was cold, too.”

      We rented? According to Derek and the rental records that Nina and I had found in the cottage, Derek was the renter, in name at least. Terri wrapped her arms around the red life jacket. It almost perfectly matched her canoe. She continued shivering.

      I wasn’t cold, but I was close to trembling, too, from shock.

      Above us near the driveway, a motorcycle roared away.

      I asked Terri, “How many homes and cottages are on this lake?” I tried to sound casually friendly and conversational despite the phone plastered to my ear.

      “Ten or twelve, I guess, from what I could see before Derek and his friends got us kicked out, plus there’s a county park with a beach where people launch rowboats and canoes. This lake’s too small for motorboats.” Her gaze darted from me to the tent to the back of Rich’s house to the driveway. “Do you know where Rich is? He sent me away so he could surprise me after the caterers arranged everything inside the tent.” She pointed up toward the driveway. “They’re leaving, so they must be done.” She looked down at her rubber boots. Their toes glistened with water. “I suppose I should go change, but I’m sure he won’t mind if I just peek into the tent first.”

      Whether she cared about Rich or not, I didn’t want her to see him or interfere with the apparent crime scene. Feeling terrible about him and also about keeping his death a secret from her, I blocked her from going closer to the tent. “The party can’t go on.”

      “What?” she screeched. “Why not?”

      A man pushed through the hedge between Rich’s yard and the neighbor’s. How did police keep crime scenes pristine before backup arrived? People were coming from everywhere, even out of the bushes. The man strode across Rich’s lush lawn to us. He was tall and muscular. His paint-stained work pants and sweatshirt made me guess that he was not dressed for Rich’s party. Maybe, like Terri, he had not yet changed. Judging by the gray in his hair and the wrinkles in his neck, he was about Rich’s age.

      “What’s wrong, Terri?” he asked. His brown eyes looked concerned. A small spray of cedar stuck out of his hair above one ear.

      Terri reached up, pulled the debris out of his hair, and dropped it on the lawn. It could have looked like an intimate gesture if she hadn’t seemed too distracted to notice what she was doing. “This caterer says the party can’t go on.” Maybe she was also too distracted to realize that the intimacy of her gesture could have given away that she was close to Rich’s neighbor after only recently reconnecting with Rich.

      And perhaps as much as two hours after Rich might have been attacked . . .

      I guessed that the police would want to talk to these two, especially Terri, and they’d also want to be the ones to inform her of Rich’s death so they could gauge her reaction. I pointed up the hill at a cozy grouping of lawn chairs near a deck spanning the rear of Rich’s house. “You two could sit up there until everything’s sorted out.”

      Like Terri’s ex-boyfriend, the neighbor looked strong enough to fatally wield that skillet. The blue, yellow, and white splotches on his outfit were probably paint, but what about the red and brown ones? I didn’t want to stare at them but couldn’t help it. He held a hand out toward Terri, “I’ll wait with you, Terri.” Maybe he knew what was in the innocent-looking party tent and why I didn’t want Terri to see it.

      Terri ran her hands through her pixie-cut brown hair. She barely seemed to hear either of us. “Rich said I should put my canoe away when I got back. I’ll do that.”

      I knew I should try to stop her, but the sound of sirens, still far away, distracted me. Unless the hills and valleys around Lake Fleekom were throwing echoes in strange directions, the sirens were coming toward us.

      Terri shrieked, “Is there a fire?” She glanced up toward Rich’s house as if expecting flames to spew out of upper story windows. Because the house was set into the hill, there were three floors in back. The neighbor put his arm around her. She sagged against him for a second, then detached herself and marched down to her canoe. She lifted it to her shoulders and carried it above her head up the hill. The neighbor retrieved her paddle from the beach and followed her to the back of the house. She lowered the canoe and slid it underneath the deck. Although she was only about my size, she made it all look easy. I was certain her canoe weighed more than my kayak, which I tended to carry with both hands in front of me like the novice I was.

      Rich’s

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