Nigel rolled his eyes very poshly. "The woman was a bit barmy. Barking mad. Perhaps she wanted a little excitement."
"She's dead. How would she have any excitement?"
"Exactly." He reached into a drawer and pulled out a key ring with one key on it. "Here you go. The house is the large brown and blue Victorian at the end of the street. If you have any questions, please call me. I believe you have my number."
"The house in the painting in the hall?" I turned to look through the doorway.
"Yes," he said. "It's the most expensive house in town. Is there anything else? As you can see, I am quite busy at the moment."
I looked around and thought of the empty reception area before getting to my feet and shaking his hand. "Thank you. I'll be in touch."
Outside, I tried to wrap my head around all the things he'd said. Hickenlooper didn't believe Aunt June had been murdered. There'd been no autopsy. She had a collection of insanely dangerous pets. Maybe this was a no-brainer. It seemed highly likely that Aunt June wasn't murdered after all. Nigel had said she was crazy. As her lawyer, he would know better than I did. Still, I should talk to the doctor at least.
Across the street, the girls were coming out of the post office. Damn. It was too late to see the tooth. I'd have to check it out another time. And I'd really wanted to see it.
"That was amazing!" Inez jumped up and down as I joined them.
"It was huge!" Kaitlyn enthused.
Lauren agreed. "I was impressed. I wonder if he was part beaver?"
Ava gushed, "You have to see it, Mrs. Wrath!"
We all turned to Betty, who was strangely silent.
The girl yawned. "I've seen better."
Kelly motioned to the van. "Come on, ladies. We have to get to the camp."
She started driving, casting occasional glances my way.
"How was the meeting?"
"Weird." I explained everything but the killer creatures.
"And the spiders?"
"I'll tell you about that later." I gestured toward the back seat with my eyes.
"Okay," she said before shouting into the back seat. "Who wants to go to Camp des Morts?"
CHAPTER FOUR
"It says here"—Lauren was in the back seat on her cell—"that there are Indian burial mounds shaped like animals!"
"Which animals?" Ava asked.
"Snakes, bears, fish, easy stuff," Lauren replied. "We'll have to make our own."
"Yes!" Kaitlyn roared enthusiastically.
"We'll need a body…" Inez suggested.
The girls buzzed in the background, eagerly making plans that I was pretty sure I didn't want to know about.
"What arrangements did you make for us?" I asked Kelly as the girls discussed shapes for their burial mounds, which included manatees and aardvarks and Bigfoot.
"We have the small lodge." Kelly smiled. "It has a room with bunk beds, a kitchen, and a fire pit out back."
I looked out at the landscape. We were ascending the bluffs. "That's good."
The troop's favorite activity, besides naming animals, was fire-starting. My girls could get a roaring fire going in mere seconds with only one match. We'd come a long way from a couple of years ago when we'd go through an entire box just to get kindling started.
"Did you bring food?" I asked. Why hadn't I thought of that before? "Was I supposed to bring stuff?"
"I packed sleeping bags, toilet paper—all the important stuff. We'll get food in town. Did you see a grocery store?"
"Just that convenience store." I noticed we were pulling up to a giant totem pole. "That it?"
Kelly nodded. "Someone is supposed to meet us at the lodge."
We drove onto a winding gravel road that divided lush green forest on either side before coming into a large open area. There was a small lodge and a larger one, several campsites, a zip line, and a high ropes course.
"No pool?" Inez sounded dejected. Not having a pool was like not having s'mores—a terrifying prospect at best.
"No pool. But they have something even better," Kelly said. "A lazy river to tube on."
This seemed to be acceptable, as there was an eruption of glee from the back seats.
The camp looked like a staged postcard, with gentle rolling hills surrounded by forest. A short, plump, smiling woman was waiting for us as we pulled up to a large, log-style building.
"Hello!" She waved cheerily as we disembarked. "My name is Toad. I'm the camp director."
"Toad?" I asked. She looked to be near sixty. Had she been called that her whole life?
She laughed. "Oh, I forgot. It's my camp name. Whenever I'm here I use it. And since camp ended a week ago, I keep forgetting I have another name."
Betty stepped up. "I'm Cobra." She pointed to Lauren, Ava, Inez, and Kaitlyn in that order and named off, "Asp, Rattler, Blackadder, and Viper."
We'd never had camp names before. And why did she pick snakes? The other kids didn't seem surprised by this, so I guessed it was all set up in advance. That was typical of my troop. There were a lot of things I found out about after the fact—some of them not dangerous.
Toad beamed, apparently not startled by the deathly quintet. "That's nice!" She looked at Kelly and me. "And your names?"
"Oh, um, Kelly." I pointed at my co-leader then myself. "And I'm Merry."
Toad's face fell.
"We don't really have code names," I said.
"Camp names," Kelly corrected.
"Right. What she said."
"That's too bad," Toad tut-tutted. "It's always more fun at camp with camp names."
The girls gave us stony looks.
"Guys, I'll never remember your camp names." Hell, I was thrilled to have only one Kaitlyn.
Kelly added, "Besides, we are only here a few days."
"Whatever you want to do is fine by me. Let's go inside." Toad led us through a set of glass double doors.
The lodge was just as impressive on the inside. From the stone tile floor to the log walls and the high, timbered ceilings, this looked more like a model of what a lodge should be. A huge stone fireplace was in the corner, surrounded by
