Last Resort (12 page)

TWENTY ONE

Despite our heated conversation on the way home—or maybe because of it—Jake did get lucky when we got back to the cabin.

Twice.

Then we had dinner, sat out on the deck with a couple of beers, built a campfire in the small fire ring in the lawn and talked about everything but the campground and dead Harvey and just who might be suspects. Which meant we talked about kids and Jake's work and the house.

The sun streamed through the window the next morning and we were both slow to get out of bed. Jake was in the shower when my phone buzzed and I saw Will's name on the screen. My heart immediately jumped into my throat as I imagined all of the possible scenarios of Very Bad Things that might force my thirteen-year old to call me.

I tapped the screen. “Hi, Will.”

“Mom.” Will's voice was slightly agitated but nowhere near panicked hysteria. My heart calmed down a bit.

“What's up?”

“Okay, it's nothing too bad,” he began.

A new surge of alarm pulsed through me. “What?”

“Okay, so I was mowing the lawn this morning,” he explained, his voice coming out in a rush. “Just like I always do. Grandpa helped me get it started.”

“Okay,” I said. “Are you hurt? Did you run something over?”

“No, no,” he said quickly. “Nothing like that.”

I waited.

“Well, so Grandpa was looking at the hedges and he thought he should trim them for you guys. Like a surprise or something.”

I leaned back against the pillows. “Okay...”

“So I helped him get it all set up with the extension cord,” Will said. “And he started trimming and everything was fine.”

“Is your grandpa alright?”

“Yeah, he's fine,” Will said impatiently. “But, well, he sorta accidentally cut through the extension cord while he was trimming...”

“What??”

“He's fine. The trimmer is fine. But the cord...is not.”

I breathed a small sigh of relief. “Okay. Well, good. I mean, not about the cord but good that no one is hurt.”

“Right. But that's not why I'm calling.” He hesitated. “Grandpa wants to go buy a new extension cord so he can finish trimming the hedges. But I told him I want to put it back together. The cable stuff. It's a pretty clean cut and I think I can twist it and tape it all back up.”

Will was always tinkering with computers, installing more memory and modifying other hardware. But his extent of knowledge in the electrical department was pretty much limited to plugging cords into outlets.

“Absolutely not,” I said firmly.

“What? Why not??”

“Because I'd like to come home to four kids, not three.”

“You're saying you don't trust me? You don't think I know what I'm doing?”

“You don't, Will. It's electricity. Do you remember the field trip we went on? To the electric co-op?”

He didn't say anything for a minute and I knew what he was thinking about. There had been a model house on display with all kinds of electrical hazards highlighted inside. A balding man with a monotone voice explained all of the dangers lurking inside of homes and we were all ready to move into a tent afterward, we were so thoroughly freaked out. We'd told Jake about our harrowing field trip and he'd laughed and promptly turned on every electrical switch in the house.

“Fine,” he said grudgingly. “But can I keep it? Just look at it and stuff? I promise I won't plug it in to anything.”

I appreciated his inquisitive mind. I liked that he wanted to know how things worked, that he wanted to take things apart and see them from all angles.

I just didn't want him to die.

“Fine,” I said, sighing. “But if you plug it in, you lose computer privileges for a month.”

“Awesome! Thanks, Mom!”

He hung up and I set the phone down just as Jake stepped out of the tiny bathroom

“Do I even want to know?” he asked. “I heard you say it was Will, so I assume the house burnt down or something.”

“Not that bad,” I said. I told him about the cord and the hedges.

He stretched out on the bed, his towel wrapped loosely around his waist. “Thank God he didn't electrocute himself.”

“I know,” I said. “He could have just decided to test it without calling me first.”

Jake eyed me. “Not our son, Daisy. Your dad.”

“Oh.” I hadn't really thought about that.

Ten minutes later, Jake was dressed and ready. “What's on the agenda today?” he asked, running the comb through his hair.

“I don't know.” I really didn't. He'd let me know where I stood with sleuthing so I knew that was off the table. We could have headed back down to the pool but my nose was pink and Jake's shoulders were red; we both probably needed a day off from laying around in the sun.

“Let's go for a walk and think about it,” Jake suggested. “Get some fresh air.”

I slipped into my flip flops and followed him out the sliding door. The morning air was cool and the birds were singing a symphony in the canopy of trees near the deck. Smoke still clung to the air from the campfires the previous night, but everything felt clean, crisp. Kids were out on their bikes and for a moment, I wished we had brought our four rather than stashing them with my parents. But then I realized I couldn't remember the last time Jake and I had been away together and I knew we needed the next couple of days to ourselves because I wasn't sure we'd get another block of time like this.

We made our way to the road but Jake stopped short. I almost bumped into him.

“What are you doing?”

He pointed to the rental car parked in the gravel driveway. “Looking at this.”

I leaned around him so I could see what he was staring at. The back passenger tire of the rental was completely flat.

“How on earth did that happen?” I asked, moving closer to the car. “I must have run over a nail or something coming home from grocery shopping.”

“And house hunting,” Jake added. He crouched next to the tire, running his fingers along the surface.

“Maybe we can patch it up,” I said hopefully. I thought back to the single street of shops in the neighboring town. I didn't remember seeing an auto repair shop.

“Pretty sure this isn't patchable.” He looked at me and jerked his head toward the tire.

I squatted next to him. “What is it?”

“This tire was slashed.”

Sure enough, there was a long, thin cut in the rubber, about three inches wide. Definitely not patchable.

“Someone did this on purpose?” I asked.

“Sure looks that way,” Jake said, sighing. “I'll call AAA and see if they can get someone out here. I'm pretty sure rental cars are covered.”

“They'll have to tow it somewhere though, won't they?” I straightened and rubbed at the small of my back. “I mean, they're not just going to bring a tire here and change it out for us.”

“I don't know,” Jake said. “I'll call them now.” He pulled out his phone and his wallet and, within minutes, was talking to a representative about our options.

I crouched down to examine the tire again. It was definitely a knife that had sliced through the rubber. My thoughts immediately turned to Hackerman; I wouldn't have put it past him to damage our property, especially after our run-ins with him. He didn't like me or Jake, which gave him double the reasons necessary for vandalizing our property.

But that didn't make a ton of sense, given the conversation we'd had. He wanted us gone, plain and simple. Knifing our car—our only way in and out of Windy Vista—seemed counterproductive.

Maybe it had been the twins, Mary and Carrie. They were crazy enough to do it. And they probably felt like they had motivation, considering I'd discovered their ex-boyfriend dead in the woods.

“Done,” Jake said, shoving the phone back into the pocket of his khaki shorts. “They'll send a tow truck here this afternoon. There's a repair shop about twenty miles from here. I told her where we were and how we didn't have the ability to pick it up so they'll arrange to have it towed back for a nominal fee.”

I nodded. “Okay. That sounds reasonable.”

“Much more reasonable than whatever idiot hacked at our tire.” There was a frown permanently etched on to his face.

“Come on,” I said, grabbing his hand. “Let's go for our walk. Forget about the tire and the car. It's a vacation, remember?”

He mumbled something under his breath but he let me pull him along, toward the road and then down toward the clubhouse.

We saw small groups of campers making their way down toward the pool and clubhouse, too, chattering as they walked. They all seemed to be heading their with a purpose. One of the ladies who'd been doing water aerobics was walking and I asked her what was going on.

“Summer Olympics,” she said brightly. Her short brown hair was wet and I wondered if she'd just finished another round of swimming. “It's an annual thing. All kinds of games and stuff. You don't want to miss it.”

Jake shot a look in my direction and I lifted my hands in surprise.

“Thought you memorized the activities,” he said in a low voice.

“Well, clearly I missed one.”

We followed the horde of campers down to the pool and noticed the set up immediately. The pool's parking lot had been turned into what looked like a carnival set-up. There was a basketball hoop, a ring toss, a long jump area, a ping pong table and a variety of other carnival like games. Streamers and balloons were hung up all along the pavilion and music blasted from a set of speakers that had been carted in. I wondered if Stan the DJ was stationed behind the music table.

“Ping pong's an event?” Jake asked, his eyebrows raised. “I could totally win that.”

Jake adored ping pong. I didn't think he'd ever walked past a table and not picked up a paddle and played anyone willing to give it a go. He really wanted to clear out our basement so we could get our own table and set it up down there. And because he was very good at it, no one ever wanted to play him. I think he envisioned himself as one of those guys from China who swung as hard as they could and somehow managed to keep the ball on the table. It was amusing to watch, but it was not amusing to have him as an opponent.

I patted his shoulder. “Go find out how to win the ping pong championship, honey.”

Maybe it would take his mind off murder and mayhem and slashed car tires. I smiled to myself. Who was I kidding? He didn't need any help pushing those things out of his mind.
I
did.

He gave me a grim smile and wandered over in that direction.

I took stock of the rest of the games set up. Half of them were designed for kids and half were designed for adults. I semi-recognized several faces, as all of the volunteers running the games were campers at the resort. There were prizes for both kids and adults, cheesy fun prizes that were worth more in bragging rights than in actual value. It was the kind of thing where you could really see the community that Delilah had built, with people smiling, kids laughing and cheering and it felt like everyone knew one another. I felt a pang of sadness for her as I remembered her words from the previous day. It was hard to imagine that this might be the last Summer Olympics, that the campground might be shuttering its doors forever, that the sense of camaraderie among the campers was something fleeting and delicate, at the mercy of hard numbers and cold facts. I didn't want to think about those things. I just wanted to concentrate on how nice it was to feel like we were a part of it.

However, an hour later, I wasn't sure being a part of it was such a good idea.

Jake entered the ping pong tournament and, like I figured, won every single match easily. He was a shoe-in for the ping pong championship. He was covered in sweat and smiling as he waited for his opponent. But when I saw who walked out to face him in the final match, I got a little nervous.

Actually, a lot nervous.

Because Wayne Hackerman stepped up to the other side of the table, a red, white and blue headband on his head, the mirrored sunglasses on his face, and a fancy-looking paddle in his hand.

“Are you kidding me?” I said, coming up next to Jake before they started. “That guy?”

Jake grinned at me. “I know, right? Can you believe my luck?”

“Your luck?”

His eyes widened. “I'm going to crush him.”

“Remember karaoke night?” I whispered to him. “Can we please not have a repeat of that?”

“There won't be a repeat,” he informed me. “Because I'm going to crush him.”

“Can you stop yakking with your coach so we can get on with it?” Hackerman snarled from the other side of the table. “Won't take but a couple minutes and then you can go back to whispering with the little lady.”

Little lady.

“Crush him,” I growled.

Jake nodded and spun the paddle in his hand.

Ten minutes later, Jake was up 11-2 and smiling like the cheshire cat in front of the crowd that had gathered to watch.

“What's the score again?” Jake asked across the table. “I forget.”