Sean refused to go to the closest hospital in Potsdam.
“No trouble, no trouble,” Dr. Sherwood Griffin answered, looking across the room at the patient in bed. “Just wake him every couple of hours, check his eyes and reflexes, give him the pain meds every six hours. He’ll be sore but I’ve seen far worse.”
“I’m not taking any pills,” a pale and exhausted Sean mumbled from the bed.
Lucy sat down next to him. “Can I convince you to sleep?”
“Yes.”
“By morning, I guarantee you’ll be wanting something to knock out the pain.” Griffin grinned, revealing crooked white teeth.
Sean didn’t return the physician’s smile. He took Lucy’s hand and pulled it to his chest, forcing her to lean over him. Through clenched teeth, he said, “Get him out of here.”
She kissed him lightly. She had an impulse to lie down next to Sean and make sure he was really okay, even though she knew he was going to be fine. She’d been periodically shaking since returning from the mine shaft. She didn’t understand her unusual reaction, considering she’d been around plenty of dead bodies at the morgue and none of them had affected her the way the dead blonde had.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” she told Sean.
He nodded, still glaring at the doctor. When Sean had found out that Sherwood Griffin doubled as a veterinarian, he’d almost agreed to go to the hospital.
Lucy walked Dr. Griffin down the path toward the main lodge. The sun had just set, the sky glowing orange, pink, and purple. She wanted a moment of peace and silence to absorb the stunning beauty of the scene, thankful that Sean was alive.
But the doctor had something else in mind besides quiet contemplation. “I heard Tim say you found a body in the mine.”
“Yes.”
“Probably a hiker. We’ve lost more than a few in my sixty-nine years. Think because we have rolling hills and some good trails they can just do what they like, but there’s plenty of danger if you don’t know what you’re doing.” He looked her over, top to bottom. “You’re a city girl. What were you doing near the mine?”
Tim hadn’t told the doctor about the vandalism, and Lucy wasn’t going to. “I’ve done my fair share of camping.”
He laughed. “Your hands are too pretty to spend much time outside.”
Though his comment could be a compliment, his tone was one of derision. She’d already considered the lost hiker theory, but the positioning of the body didn’t suggest accident. Possibly natural, but more likely not. Someone had specifically arranged the body.
However, she asked, “Have you heard of any hikers gone missing recently?”
“Nope, but that don’t mean much. If anyone’s missing, they’ll be posted at the Fire and Rescue.”
“Where’s the station?”
“We’re too small for our own substation, but about twenty minutes southeast, up the mountain near Indian Hills, there’s a good-sized station. Handles a much larger area than just our little dot on the map. When I was little, we had over four thousand people in Spruce Lake and our own pump engine. Now, less than four hundred.” He shook his head.
Tim emerged from his house. He extended his hand to the doctor. “Thanks for coming out, Doctor. Please send me the bill.”
“Glad to do it, Tim.” He looked over at the lodge and frowned. The smoke and fire in the kitchen had blackened the walls outside the windows. “I heard you had a kitchen fire. Word is it was arson.”
“Word sure gets around fast.”
“The Getty boy is on Fire and Rescue, and he’s sweet on Trina. You tell Trina something, the entire town knows by sundown.”
“The sheriff is sending an investigator tomorrow,” Tim said.
“And what about the body in the mine?” Lucy asked.
“They will need to bring in equipment, the coroner, and a detective. Everyone should be here by eight in the morning.”
Lucy thought of the woman spending another night exposed like that. Someone somewhere loved her-a husband, a parent, a sister, a child. Her family deserved to know what had happened as much as she needed a proper burial.
“Where’s Adam?” Griffin asked, changing the subject. “Haven’t seen him around much lately.”
“He’s blowing off some steam,” Tim said. “This resort is his brainchild, and he’s really upset.”
“Well, Tim, some things just aren’t meant to be.”
Odd comment, Lucy thought.
“I’ll check on your guest in a couple days,” the doctor continued. “Holler if you need anything, Ms. Lucy. I’m overdue for my nightcap at the Lock amp; Barrel. Maybe you should spend more time in town, Tim. Get people used to seeing your face. Bring Adam. Might make them a bit friendlier to your wild ideas for Joe’s land.”
“A resort is hardly a wild idea,” Tim said. He rubbed his face. “I just don’t know who would do this.”
“I’m sure it’ll all work out,” Griffin said as he got into his car.
Lucy frowned as she watched him drive off. The doctor had contradicted himself. Some things “aren’t meant to be” followed by “it’ll all work out”? Maybe she’d misunderstood, or he was thinking about something else, but his words lingered in her mind even as his car disappeared from sight.
Tim turned to Lucy. “So Sean’s okay?”
“Sore, a few stitches in his leg, and he hit his head pretty good. But he’ll be fine. He’s resilient.”
“That’s a relief.” He turned back toward his house. “Would you like some coffee? Something stronger? I’m not much for liquor, but we have some beer.”
“No, thank you. I’m going to go back and sit with Sean.”
“I’ll walk with you.”
They started back up the trail that led to the cabin, discreet ground lighting guiding them along the path. “What did the doctor mean about people getting used to seeing your face?” Lucy asked.
“My parents divorced when I was five.” He stopped walking for a moment, looking out at the lake through the trees. The sun had set, but the twilight made the lake sparkle darkly. “My mom brought me to visit my dad once a year until she remarried, but she’d always hated this place. The isolation. The quiet. The last time I was here, before my dad’s funeral, I was sixteen. Adam was three. I barely knew my dad, and I don’t know my brother. Didn’t,” he corrected, “until last year.”
He said nothing for a long minute. “Adam lived here until he was ten. His mother divorced Dad, too-my father wasn’t the easiest person to live with. Stubborn and set in his ways, but he loved this land and in a certain way he had the patience of a saint. My best memories here were going fishing. Adam ended up spending every summer here. I’ve wondered that if my mom wasn’t so bitter, I might have had the same summers Adam had.”
They started walking again. “Adam loves this place,” Tim said, “and I’ve grown to love it. I know he’s quiet, but all this stuff that’s been happening is tearing him apart.”
Lucy thought a conversation with Adam Hendrickson was overdue-perhaps without his half-brother Tim around.
She said, “I think it’s a given that your saboteur is someone you or Adam knows, someone you’d recognize. Sean said the arsonist was a teenager. There can’t be too many in a town so small.”
“Everyone in Spruce Lake goes to school in Colton. But maybe it’s not someone from town. There are a lot of small communities in the area, outside of what’s considered Spruce Lake. At least three villages of more than two hundred people.”
“Whoever it is knows the area well,” Lucy said. “And they have a huge stake in making sure you don’t open this resort.” She stopped outside the cabin. “Can you put together a list of everyone you can think of who might have a reason-however lame it may sound to you-to stop the resort? Personal or financial.”
“Duke already asked for the same thing, and I told him there’s no one.”
“Either someone hates you-or Adam-so much they want to hurt you personally, or they have a financial interest in ensuring you don’t open this resort.”
“Adam would have said something.”
