The Clue in the Trees: An Enchantment Lake Mystery Read online

  “Pfft! Investigating a murder will be far more educational than school, anyway.”

  Francie held her phone out and stared at it. Had she heard those words from her grandfather?

  “The sheriff doesn’t want me to,” Francie explained. “She told me to stay away from it.”

  “She should be glad for your help,” he said, and humphed.

  Francie barely got out a “good-bye, talk to you later,” she was so speechless.

  “Okay, now for some chemistry,” she said aloud but hadn’t even cracked the book when the phone rang again. This time it was Nels. The sound of his voice was like a massage for her ears, she thought, sinking back in her chair and laughing at the analogy.

  “What?” he said.

  “Nothing.”

  As he talked about his classes and professors she pictured his sun-streaked hair and stormy-lake blue eyes. But as soon as he brought up the murder, she tried to cut the conversation short, telling him she wasn’t interested.

  “You? Not interested?” he said, suspicion creeping into his voice.

  “I don’t have time,” she said. “What with the play and everything.”

  “Uh-huh.” He clearly didn’t believe her. “You know that some of the students involved in the dig go to school here, right?”

  Francie hadn’t known that. She sat up. “Who?” she couldn’t resist asking.

  “Mallory and Jackson.” Francie could hear the smile in Nels’s voice.

  “Oh,” Francie paused, trying to keep herself from asking any more questions, but before she could stop herself, “do you know them?” slipped out.

  “Mallory is in one of my classes,” Nels said, then added, “You know what her last name is?”

  “No.”

  “Waxwing.”

  “As in pipeline Waxwing?”

  “Uh-huh. That’s her father.”

  “Blow me down.”

  “You want me to check it out?” Nels asked hopefully. “See what I can find out?”

  Francie bit her lip. This might be a lead that could clear Theo. But, then again, who knows what might turn up if Nels started asking questions? Even more damning evidence against Theo was what. So she said, “Not really.”

  There was silence on the other end of the line.

  “Look, Nels,” Francie explained. “I’m in a brand-new school” (that was true) “trying to make friends” (that was a bald-faced lie), “have the lead in a play” (true), “and have a lot of homework” (not terribly true). “And I have to go.”

  There was a brief pause and then Nels cleared his throat. “Are you seeing someone else?” he asked.

  “Seeing someone—? Absolutely not!” That, at least, was an absolutely true statement.

  “So, we’re still good?” Nels asked.

  “Yeah, yeah, we’re good,” Francie said.

  “Okay,” Nels said, but Francie thought he sounded like he didn’t believe her. But then, why should he? She supposed he could tell she was lying about something, and how could he know which things she said were true and which were not? Francie began to understand what Theo had been talking about when he said that keeping a secret could make a person into a liar. She had lied to every single person she’d talked to that night.

  The person Francie found herself lying to the most was Raven. So much so that she wondered if Raven was on to her.

  13

  Raven Is On to Francie

  FRANCIE DID NOT DISCUSS the murder or her suspicions with anyone. Naturally, kids at school asked her who she thought did it, but she would act disinterested, after which they would immediately become disinterested in her.

  Only in her little apartment, when she should have been studying, or during some classes when she was supposed to be working on something, did she try to puzzle it out. She drew maps showing all the cabins, noting where each person from the dig had been staying and a little sketch of the path through the woods that each would have taken to get back to the site. During study hall, she took a sheet of notebook paper and at the top wrote the presumed time of the murder, then under that heading wrote where everybody along the lake had been. Her list included the names of all of the suspects and their alibis, if she knew them, plus any other information she knew about them.

  At the bottom of the list, she wrote simply, Theo? She stared at the name for a long time and then scribbled it out.

  At the end of third-hour English, Ms. Broderick said, “Please pass your assignments to the back of the row.”

  Francie, who had been daydreaming, grabbed a paper from her notebook and passed it behind her to Raven. Raven was about to hand it to the person behind her when she stopped. She turned back to Francie, paper in hand, and whispered, “I don’t think this is the paper you meant to hand in.”

  Francie snatched it back, mortified to see that it was her list of suspects. She stuffed the paper into her schoolbag and rifled through her notebook for the assignment, which she handed to Raven just as the bell was ringing.

  Going through the lunch line, Raven took a quesadilla and began reciting, “Mallory: showering at Mrs. Hansen’s. Gretchen: swimming at Mrs. Hansen’s. Jackson: grilling at Potter’s. Pete: ditto. Potter vouched for both of them, so those two in the clear?”

  Francie’s head swiveled. “Wait a minute,” she said. “You remember all that from a two-second glance?”

  “I have a good memory for details, when I want to remember.”

  “Geez,” Francie said.

  “And now you owe me,” Raven said. “I saved you from something—intense embarrassment or possibly worse—but I can see you are not as disinterested in this murder as you pretend to be.”

  Francie didn’t answer but nodded to the offered salad.

  “You gotta admit the murder is more interesting than any box, silver or otherwise.”

  Francie shot Raven a warning glance; Raven pantomimed zipping her lips shut.

  “All right, what all do you remember from that glance?” Francie said, after they were seated at their usual table, far from anyone’s ears.

  Raven folded her quesadilla into a small, fat square. “Potter. Motive? Mrs. Hansen? Deaf, too old. Field trip students–slash–teacher,” Raven recited. “Long shot. Pipeline guy. Has motive. A list of potential suspects of the murder, I presume,” she added. “Everybody’s wondering why you aren’t sleuthing out this murder like you did the last time. What’s going on? Why the secrecy?”

  “The sheriff warned me away from it. She said she didn’t want me messing with her investigation.”

  “Mmm,” Raven said. “So, there was one more name on your list, wasn’t there?”

  “There was?” Francie mumbled, her mouth full of bread and cheese. “I don’t remember any other.”

  “You crossed it out.”

  Francie shrugged.

  “How come?” Raven said. Her dark eyes bored into Francie, and Francie wondered if Raven saw things in Francie’s mind the way she seemed to see everything else.

  “How come what?” Francie stalled.

  “How come you crossed off that name?”

  “I don’t know,” Francie mumbled. “Probably decided it wasn’t important.”

  Raven slid herself and her tray to the far end of the table on the empty side of the cafeteria. Francie slid herself and her lunch along with her.

  “Are you sure it’s because you didn’t want anyone else seeing that name?” Raven asked.

  Francie was silent.

  “It’s Theo, isn’t it?” Raven said softly. “You suspect Theo.”

  “No!” Francie protested. “I . . .” But nothing else came out of her mouth.

  “You are a good actor but a terrible liar,” Raven said. “Listen. It couldn’t have been Theo.”

  “Absolutely couldn’t have been,” Francie agreed. She really had to scramble now to prevent this from getting out of hand.

  “He’s too good looking!” Raven laughed. Then, more seriously, “Plus, he’s your brother. I mean, he
wouldn’t do that! Or wouldn’t you at least know if he murdered someone?”

  Francie swallowed the lump of bread that seemed stuck in her throat. She felt an itchy feeling in her head that meant she was going to cry. She cried more easily now that she wasn’t sleeping very well, but she really didn’t want to cry here in the cafeteria, in front of Raven or anyone else. But she felt her nose start to run. She grabbed her paper napkin and held it to her nose, then her eyes.

  “You okay?” Raven said, her dark eyes a well of sympathy. Why had Francie ever thought Raven was ordinary looking? This girl had the kindest eyes on Earth. Those eyes—they saw everything! There was no hiding anything from her! Her name, which Francie had once thought was ironic, she now understood suited Raven perfectly.

  “I don’t know him very well, though,” Francie choked out. “And to tell you the truth, I’ve been avoiding him since all this happened.” Tears dripped down onto her lunch.

  “Why don’t you just ask him?” Raven said.

  “I’m too afraid to know,” Francie whispered. “I don’t want to know. What if he did it?”

  “All right, then,” Raven said, glancing at the clock. “The only way to exonerate him is to figure out who did it and thereby prove it wasn’t Theo.”

  “Or me,” Francie said.

  “What? Do you suspect yourself, too?”

  “No, but the sheriff does.”

  “Really?” Raven said. “The plot thickens . . . and all the more reason to solve this sucker—and fast. You, me, and Jay.”

  “Jay?”

  “He’s the research king. We gotta have him.”

  14

  Trip to Enchantment

  THE LAKE WAS FLOODED with late-afternoon light. Sunlit lily pads made the surface of the water look as if it had been set with gold dishes. Francie and Raven stood on the shore at Sandy Beach Resort watching Jay and his golden retriever, Roy, play fetch.

  “The thing is, Raven,” Jay said, pausing to throw a tennis ball into the lake, then watching Roy plunge in after it, “if the oil isn’t transported by pipeline, it’s going to be transported by train, which is way more dangerous. More deadly accidents are likely to occur with train transport than with a pipeline.”

  “The thing is, Jay,” Raven said, “it shouldn’t be transported at all! We have to get off our dependence on fossil fuels. The biosphere can’t handle it! And what about this?” Raven gestured out to the lake. “What happens to our water when there’s an inevitable spill?”

  Sandy came up behind them. “What’s going on? Finally going to investigate that murder?”

  Francie spun around. “No,” she said. “Just arguing about fossil fuels.”

  “Oh,” Sandy strolled out on the dock and the others followed. “Well, too bad you’re not investigating,” he said, as he lowered the boat from the launch, “because if you were, there’s something I thought you might be interested in. But if you aren’t . . .” He gestured for them to board.

  “Tell us!” Raven chirped, stepping down into the boat.

  Next Roy leapt in and, of course, immediately shook his wet coat, spraying water all over them.

  Sandy started the motor, expertly pulled away from the dock, and swung the bow to face the far shore. “I don’t know if it has anything to do with anything or not,” he said, “but the customs and immigration people—the Canadian customs people, too—have been over here lately. Apparently they’re investigating some kind of smuggling.”

  “No kidding!” Jay shouted over the motor. “Just like in Prohibition days.”

  “You know about that?” Sandy shouted back.

  “Yeah, sure,” Jay said.

  Of course he does, Francie and Raven said wordlessly to each other.

  “We’re pretty close to Canada, and there was some rum running back in the ’20s and ’30s, during the Prohibition era,” Jay hollered. “Shoot-outs and everything! But what are they smuggling now? Not liquor.”

  Sandy shook his head. “I don’t know what it is. The customs people asked a bunch of questions but wouldn’t tell us anything. It was all very hush-hush. I don’t think they want anyone to know they’re around, because they’re trying to catch somebody.”

  As the boat pulled up to her aunts’ dock, Francie wondered aloud if it might have anything to do with the murder. Sandy shrugged and asked if they wanted a ride back—they did, maybe in a couple of hours. Everyone climbed out and he took off across the lake.

  “Theo isn’t here!” Astrid said when they stopped at the cabin.

  “We haven’t seen him for a couple of days,” Jeannette added.

  “Okay,” Francie said. On the one hand, she was kind of relieved. She wouldn’t have to explain to Theo what they were doing out there. On the other hand . . . where was he?

  After promising to come back for hot cider and cookies, the three friends walked the leaf- and pine needle–strewn trail to the dig site. Roy bounded ahead of them.

  “Are you worried about your brother?” Raven asked.

  “I’m sure he’s fine,” Francie said, although she was not. She walked with her head down, absorbed in her thoughts.

  “Hey,” Raven said, “when we write the book about solving this mystery, what should the title be?”

  “The Perplexing Puzzle of the Perished Paleontologist,” Jay said.

  Raven and Francie groaned.

  “The Theory of the Three Thoughtful Thespians,” he offered.

  “No!” they shouted.

  “The Bewildering Breach of the Buried Bones.”

  “Go away!” Francie said.

  “Okay,” Jay said, dropping behind them to snap pictures.

  “Seriously, though,” Raven said. “How about . . . hey! A clue in the trees!” she shouted.

  “That is a totally lame title,” Francie said.

  “No! I mean there’s a clue in the trees!” Raven pointed up at the branches overhead where something glinted in the sunlight.

  “What is that?” Francie asked.

  “Give me a boost,” Raven said.

  Francie cupped her hands and Raven put her foot in the offered step, boosting herself high enough to grab the item.

  “It’s just a hand spade,” Raven said. “Like for gardening.”

  “What’s it doing in a tree?” Francie wondered.

  Raven stepped back down to earth and jammed the spade, sharp side down, into the dirt.

  “Somebody must have just stuck it there and forgotten about it,” Francie said, adding, “weird.” She looked around and shivered a little bit. “Do you feel like maybe somebody else is out here?”

  “Well, there’s Jay,” Raven said. Jay still lagged behind, taking pictures.

  “I don’t mean Jay.” Francie shuddered and glanced into the woods. “I feel as if we’re being watched.”

  “I guess Roy would sniff out a person, right?” Raven said, pointing at the dog, snuffling around the base of a tree.

  The retriever could probably smell all the way to the great boreal forests of Canada, Francie thought. Imitating the dog, she breathed in the smell of fall: wet granite, damp bark, deep piles of old pine needles, the sour smell of fallen leaves.

  “Okay,” she said, glancing back to make sure Jay was out of earshot. Jay did not know of Francie’s suspicions about her brother, and she wanted to keep it that way. “Tell me everything you remember about the day of the murder.”

  “There was a scarf,” Raven said.

  Francie flinched. Unconsciously she wound the wool scarf around her neck a little tighter.

  “Yours?” Raven asked. “Except it was in Theo’s hair.”

  “You noticed that?” Francie asked. There really was no point in trying to keep anything secret from Raven, she realized. Why had she even tried?

  Raven nodded. “It must have fallen off on the path and he didn’t notice it, I suppose. I picked it up.”

  “You!” Francie exclaimed. In her chest, it felt as if dry leaves spun and twirled, fluttered, leapt.
/>
  “I was thrilled,” Raven said. “It was like when a damsel drops her handkerchief and a handsome prince picks it up, only in reverse.”

  “What?”

  “Hello. It meant I had a reason to seek Theo out to return the scarf to him.” Raven pantomimed the action, swooping down to pick up a fallen leaf and offering it to Francie.

  “Did you find him?”

  “I didn’t see him,” Raven said, “but I heard him. I heard him in the tent talking to Digby.”

  So, Francie thought, she wasn’t the only one who knew Theo had spoken with Digby.

  They arrived at the dig site to find yellow police tape still strung between trees, although looking a bit bedraggled. Roy paid no attention to it and ran right underneath it while the two girls stopped. Jay still lagged behind.

  “Is this still off-limits?” Raven asked.

  “They probably just forgot to take down the tape,” Francie said. She lifted it and Raven crawled under. “So what did you do with the scarf?”

  “Since I could hardly barge into the tent and say, ‘Sir, you’ve dropped your beautiful floral scarf,’” Raven said as she held the tape up for Francie, “I just left it outside where he would see it when he left. Right there.” She gestured to a spruce tree’s low-hanging boughs.

  “The sheriff says it was the murder weapon,” Francie admitted. “The scarf, I mean. Digby was strangled with it, apparently.”

  “Creepy,” Raven said. “Is that why the sheriff suspects you?”

  “I suppose,” Francie said.

  “Well, the scarf would have been accessible to anyone and everyone,” Raven said, echoing Francie’s thoughts. At least, thought Francie, it made Theo less of a suspect. Or did it?

  As if reading her thoughts, Raven said, “Why do you suspect Theo? Where was he and what was he doing during the time of the murder?”

  Francie didn’t know. Why, oh why, had she fallen asleep then, of all times?

  “After I found Digby, when he was . . . um, dead,” Francie said, “I went through the woods—I was confused and took the wrong path, and when I came out of the woods, I saw Theo washing his hands in the lake. It just looked so suspicious.”