Chapter Six
“If there is a serial killer in this campground, I hope he takes out Dave first,” Rob said as he walked through the back door of the store, going straight to the cooler and grabbing a soda. “I’ll even lend him a shovel.”
“Hey, Rob?” Brian called.
He turned to face the front desk and then froze in the act of twisting off the cap when he saw his brother wasn’t alone. And, of course, it had to be Hannah. He hadn’t seen her in two days, and naturally she was seeing him in a bad moment. Again.
They really needed to stop meeting like this.
“Sorry,” he said, because she was looking at him funny. “There isn’t really a serial killer in the campground.”
“That we know of,” Brian said, and Rob gave him a look that should have set the paper he was holding on fire. “It’s a statistical probability.”
“Really,” she said. “A statistical probability?”
“Okay, a statistical possibility, at least.”
“But even if there was,” Rob said, “I definitely wouldn’t aid and abet him in taking out any of our campers.”
She blinked, and after a few seconds, her body relaxed. “If we do have to sacrifice somebody, Dave would get my vote. If he’s the killer, though, I wouldn’t bet money on him having acted alone.”
“Ah, you’ve met Dave and Sheila?”
“They were the doom in my Grocery Shopping Trip of Doom. I don’t remember seeing any bleach or duct tape in their cart, if that helps narrow your suspect list.”
He was about to explain why this was something of an inside joke when he remembered that the talk about a murderer in the campground had started with Hannah traveling alone.
Somehow he didn’t think confessing that the four of them were talking about whether or not she was a criminal would make this situation any less uncomfortable.
“Okay,” Brian said, startling Rob because he’d forgotten his brother was there for a moment. “I guess we can add ‘make sure there are no campers in the store before complaining about the campers’ to our list of lessons learned since buying the place.”
“Yeah, but...it’s Dave.” Rob shrugged. “I think even Sheila would understand.”
“Anyway, you want both tanks filled?” Brian asked Hannah.
“Yes, please. I didn’t fill them for the road. I just kept enough in one to run what I need, but it’s almost out.”
“We can do that. And from now on, you don’t have to walk all the way down here. You can just text me or Rob and we’ll take care of it for you. You can also call, but we always welcome visitors to the store because it gets boring in here.”
“Except Dave,” she said.
He grimaced, making her lips twitch. “No, even Dave.”
“I’ll go grab my propane tanks and bring them down.”
“We can come get them,” Rob said.
Hannah crossed her arms and he recognized the body language of a woman about to get stubborn. “Do you do that for all your campers or just for me because I’m a woman?”
Brian snorted. “To be perfectly honest, I feel like our father has some kind of dad radar that would ping if we sat on our asses and let a woman wrestle a propane tank and we’d hear about it.
But to answer your question, it’s a service for all of our campers.
The utility side-by-side has a holder built into it for just that purpose. ”
Rob was relieved when she dropped her arms. “Okay, thanks. And to be perfectly honest, as you said, I would have let you do it anyway. I was just curious whether you thought I couldn’t do it myself.”
“Mom’s radar is even stronger than Dad’s,” Rob said. “There’s zero chance we tell any woman there’s something she can’t do.”
“I think I’d like your mom.”
“You’ll get to meet her next weekend—the weekend before we fully open. Along with almost everybody in our family,” Brian said, and Rob groaned. He couldn’t remember who had come up with the idea of the cookout—probably his mother—but he wasn’t looking forward to it.
“I’m not sure what my plans are,” Hannah said. “But maybe.”
After the door closed and they were alone again, Rob took a long swig of soda. His mouth always felt dry when he talked to her.
“Maybe it’s her,” Brian said with a chuckle. “For all we know that camper’s full of bodies of hitchhikers and she wants to go out in the woods to find a good place to bury them.”
Rob barked out a laugh that made Stella lift her head. “She’s not a serial killer.”
“That’s what everybody who’s known a serial killer has said about that serial killer before the bodies were found in the freezer.” Brian grabbed a set of keys from a hook under the counter. “I’ll go get her propane tanks. If I’m not back in an hour, call the FBI.”
“I’ll go.”
Brian looked at him for a long moment and then shook his head. “I don’t think so. Since meeting her, you’ve fallen in the pool and you’ve hit your head. With your luck, you’ll wreck the UTV or blow up the propane station.”
Rob didn’t bother to protest. If he fought to fill Hannah’s propane tank, he’d just take more crap about how she’d turned him down flat at the restaurant.
He’d come into this endeavor with the intention of earning the respect of his family, and so far it wasn’t going well.
Hannah woke feeling more rested than she had in a long time. The camper was comfortable and her nest was cozy. Plus, the campground had been almost silent, other than the faint sound of traffic on the main road and the low rumble of the nightly train.
Because they were all in New England and had mostly shown up just to set up their campers for the summer, the other seasonals had left for the week. She knew when it warmed up and they were open to the general public, that would change, but for now she looked forward to quiet weekdays.
Today felt like a good day for a walk. She’d come here to clear her head, and nothing accomplished that for her like spending time outdoors.
Before going to bed, she’d checked the weather forecast and it was going to be on the cool and breezy side—which would help with the bugs—but the sun would be shining.
But first, coffee. After setting the Keurig to brew, she went into the tiny bathroom.
Then she looked at her phone, still plugged into the charging cord.
Usually she’d scroll through social media while she drank her coffee, but the signal wasn’t strong enough for that.
And it was probably for the best because scrolling social media would funnel her straight into her email inbox, and she wasn’t awake enough for Erika yet.
She also didn’t want her partner’s thoughts and projections and business plans in her head before she set off on her walk. Instead, she took her coffee and the pocket notebook she usually had within arm’s reach and sat at the dinette.
Flipping the pages, she skimmed the bullet points she’d transferred from the very extensive binder she kept about Elizabeth Cook Whaley.
The woman had disappeared in 1872 and considering how diligently her family had maintained records and how extensively they’d journaled, the fact nobody knew what had happened to her was remarkable.
Also remarkable was the fact she had lived here, on the campground’s land, and it was the last place she’d been seen.
Several hours later, Hannah had to admit defeat. She was soaked to the knees, had tangled with some pucker brush, and she hadn’t found a single stone she thought might have been the remains of the Whaley house’s foundation.
Not that she expected to find much, of course.
But finding old foundations in the woods wasn’t uncommon in New England, and she’d known from historical documents where Elizabeth’s husband had built their house.
So when she’d set out for what was going to be a leisurely walk and had become quite the trek, she’d been hoping to find the homesite of the young woman who’d captured Hannah’s interest when she was in college and sent her into the rabbit hole of historical true crime.
She was picking some kind of burrs out of her ponytail when her phone rang. It was in silent mode and she’d interacted with enough insects already so she jumped when it buzzed in her back pocket.
Then, laughing at herself and thankful nobody else was around to hear the high-pitched squeaking noise she’d made, Hannah pulled out the phone. For whatever reason, she had almost full bars in this spot, and Erika was calling her. This time, she decided to answer it.
“Hey, Erika.”
“Hannah! You actually answered!”
“I’m out in the woods, so you can keep me company while I walk. Unless I lose cell signal because it’s kind of spotty here.”
“You’re in the woods alone?”
Even over the phone, Hannah could hear her friend’s concern. “It’s not the wilderness. It’s just some woods in the back of the campground.”
“Have you had a chance to read my emails yet? I mean, I’m not trying to be pushy but—”
“And yet you’re being pushy.” There was affection in her tone, and she knew Erika wouldn’t be offended.
She was a full-steam-ahead kind of person, and as soon as an idea popped into her head, she wanted to act on it.
Hannah served as a good counterpoint to her, but it meant being firm about her boundaries sometimes.
“I’m here to think things over, and I can’t think and talk to you at the same time. ”
“But you’ll think better if you have all the data,” Erika pointed out. “You can’t make an informed decision without the information.”
“Good point.” She let her friend have the win, even though it wasn’t actually a good point.
No amount of data or information was going to help Hannah with this decision because it was about her own sense of right and wrong, and it had nothing to do with money or numbers.
“I’ll read the emails when I get back to the camper and shower off the mud and bug spray. ”
“Mud?” Hannah knew her friend wrinkled her nose after she said it. Erika was an inside cat, and preferred city streets to country roads.
“I’ll send you a pic, but it’s not for the socials.”
“Unless it’s cute?”
“Trust me, it won’t be cute, but even if you think it is, it’s just for you.”
“Fine. Not for socials even though it’s hard to be interesting across all the platforms when we’re in between seasons.”
The last few words Erika said were broken up, so Hannah took a couple of steps backward and then stopped moving. “I’m going to lose you if I keep walking and I have to pee, so I’m not going to stand here long.”
Erika laughed. “You’re the outdoorsy type. Can’t you just pee on a log or something?”
“I’m not hanging my naked butt over a log. You wouldn’t believe the mosquitoes here, and I’m doused in enough bug spray to strip the paint off a car, but none of it is inside the underwear zone.”
“Okay, fine. I’ll let you go so you don’t get a bunch of bug bites on your butt because scratching them would be so awkward. Maybe we can talk next week, when you’re not walking around in the woods covered in chemicals and mud.”
“I’ll read your emails today,” Hannah promised, and after they disconnected, she continued her walk back.
The closer she got to the top of the campground, the faster she walked.
She was itchy all over and she wasn’t sure if it was bug bites or the bug spray.
Luckily, her mother had taught them all the various plants and leaves to avoid contact with when they were kids—even the ones that weren’t indigenous to where they were camping—so she wasn’t worried about poison ivy and the like.
But maybe she should have gotten a stronger bug spray because she was pretty sure she did, indeed, have a bug bite on her butt.