"Safer?" Kelly's eyebrows went up. "You don't think we're safe here?" She looked around quickly.
It occurred to me that, with the girls here, now would be a bad time to tell Kelly about last night. It also might be unnerving to her to think of me, a former spy, as worried.
"I just don't know this place that well. I'm used to our camp." I hoped that would be enough to explain it.
Kelly got up and went into the lodge, returning with the map of camp.
"There's only one road into camp," she pointed out. "The bluffs are the border for most of it, but it does look like some private property on that side." She pointed to the woods behind the ropes course.
"Does it show the ranger's cabin?" I asked.
Kelly scowled. "That's strange. It looks like it's in the middle of the woods, just west of the road we came in on."
I squinted at the map. "That is strange. And there's no trail on the map either."
Back home, our ranger's house was the first place you saw when you pulled onto the property. In fact, you couldn't access any of the camp without driving past his home. That's where the gate was that closed the road every night.
This was different. Almost as if Ned was some sort of hermit who didn't want to be around people.
"Once we're done here, let's hike out to his cabin," I said.
Kelly agreed. It took a little while to clean up five sticky girls who'd managed to get maple syrup all over themselves. Once we got everyone into clean clothes and backpacks, we lined up, ready to march.
"What is happening with the investigation today, Mrs. Wrath?" Inez asked as we crossed a little bridge that went over the lazy river creek.
"I need to see Virgil Jacobsen, the postmaster, and we have to go through the house again."
"To find the other two clues!" Kaitlyn shouted.
"That's right."
"I kind of hoped that there would be a trail here in spite of the map." Kelly looked around. "We can't just wade into poison ivy."
That was a good point. A massive meadow of the itchy stuff coated the way in. What was with a place where a woman had dangerous bugs as pets and the only way to get to the ranger's cabin was through a moat of poison ivy?
"Girls," I said. "We are going to look for a trail. Betty, Inez, and Kaitlyn, you guys go right. Lauren, Ava, and I will go left. In five minutes, Mrs. Albers will whistle to bring us back. Hopefully we will find the trail. Okay?"
"An adventure!" Inez cheered.
"That's right. An adventure. But not too far. If it looks like there's nothing up ahead, just come back here, okay?"
We split up with each group of three heading out in different directions.
"Why isn't Betty with Lauren?" Ava asked.
Lauren looked at me curiously.
Because those two were dangerous together.
"Because we should all mix things up now and then, just to get to know each other better."
Lauren wiggled her eyebrows at Ava. "She must've read that in the guidebook."
"Totally," Ava agreed.
I didn't argue. Instead, we worked our way all the way to the road before turning back. We made it back to Kelly before she called us. The other girls had found a trail. We followed them to a spot on the other side of the tents we'd passed.
We passed by one of the campsites with its four cabins. Once we came to the edge of the woods, we paused. Sure enough, there was a trail there, but it looked new. All the foliage had been cut away, but recently. Very recently.
"How did you find this trail again?" I asked.
Betty, Inez, and Kaitlyn looked at each other as if wondering what to say.
"It was just here." Betty shrugged.
I looked at her backpack. It seemed to have something heavy in it.
"Hand over the machete." I held out my hand.
She looked at me with an almost convincing innocence. "What's a machete?"
"It's the thing you used to cut all this down to make a trail."
The girl sighed and dropped her backpack to the ground.
"Merry," Kelly said.
"Hold on," I said. "Where did you get it? You didn't bring it with you."
"Actually." Betty pulled the giant knife out by its handle. "I did. I had it rolled up in the sleeping bag."
I shook my hand in front of her, palm up.
"Merry," Kelly said. "I don't think you should…"
Betty slapped the flat of the blade onto my palm just as I realized what Kelly was saying.
"There's poison ivy on the blade, isn't there?" I didn't move, not even to drop the machete to the ground.
"That's why I held it by the handle," Betty said.
My brain finally caught up with my actions, and I set the machete down. At least I hadn't curled my fingers around it. But that didn't excuse my stupidity. I knew that you didn't touch something that had touched poison ivy.
My palm began to itch badly. I wanted to scratch it but knew that would make it worse.
"Come on," Kelly sighed. "Let's get back to the lodge. Who wants to do first aid on Mrs. Wrath?"
Five hands went up quickly. The girls skipped all the way back, discussing methods of bandaging my head and setting my leg if it was broken.
"It itches!" I whispered to my co-leader.
"Don't touch it," Kelly warned. "Good thing I brought calamine lotion."
Back at the cabin, after five minutes of washing and drying my hands, Kelly examined my palm.
"Not bad," she said. "I think we caught it quickly."
As she smeared calamine lotion on my palm, I felt relief as the itching went down.
"What on Earth made you do that? You know better."
I nodded. "I do. I've just been distracted."
"You really have. I don't know if it's a good idea to go back to Aunt June's house. You might accidentally free the golden poison frog."
I changed the subject. "Why isn't there a trail to Ned's cabin? Doesn't that strike you as bad planning?"
She
