Chapter Eighteen
The evening was cool but clear. Harlow couldn’t see stars yet, it wasn’t quite dark enough, but she knew they were about to appear, and she wanted to witness that first showing.
Wilder was on her mind, and even the thought of a blanket of stars overhead couldn’t remove the niggling worry that he was going to be very upset with her for violating the no trespassing signs on the property the women wanted to purchase.
She wished she felt more remorse; after all, her friends had been shot at.
The shots were more of a warning—at least that was her take on it—but she’d accomplished what she’d set out to do, and there was satisfaction in that.
She’d been trying to figure out what exactly she had been missing.
The plowed-up ground, where it was, made no sense.
No one would plant a crop in that location, not when they had so much land to plant on in direct sunlight away from the building. So why had they done it?
The urge to go to the studio and examine every photograph she had taken of the area directly in front of the barn was very strong.
She resisted. She would go in a few minutes, after the stars had begun to show themselves.
She always found serenity in that first revealing of an overhead wonder.
She knew that across the United States, many places didn’t have the astonishing view of the night sky the way she did.
Just as many never saw an ocean or incredible mountains, fewer and fewer were able to make out the beauty of the stars overhead. To her, that was such a tragedy.
She rocked gently, her mind turning back to the moments when the shots had rung out, thinking about the way Shabina’s dogs had herded her toward the Jeep to get her out of danger.
Misha had come immediately at her whistle and jumped into the vehicle, but Zahra had instinctively run to save her dog.
She could have been shot. Everyone was unpredictable in a crisis.
It hadn’t been such a good idea to take her friends beyond the no trespassing sign.
If she was going to take such a risk, she should have done it alone. Now remorse was setting in.
Harlow sighed and glanced up at the fading blue of the sky and then around her to the view of the Sierra.
There was comfort in her surroundings but no real answers.
The answers, she was certain, were in her studio.
The questions would nag at her until she studied those photos.
There really wasn’t a good reason to put it off.
“Let’s go, Misha,” she encouraged, rising. “We’ve got to do it, and sitting here wishing I knew answers without actually looking for them is silly.”
Misha, at the word go, immediately leapt up and began to race around in circles, running down the stairs and then back up, eager for action.
Harlow found herself laughing at the dog’s antics.
Misha loved her walks. She loved runs. She backpacked on very long trips with Harlow and always seemed as though she looked forward to the hikes.
“You really are the perfect dog for me,” she told the animal, following her down the stairs. “I don’t need protection dogs like Shabina has, or one I have to baby all the time. I’m lucky to have found you.”
Misha barked twice, the sound joyful. Clearly, she felt the same way. Harlow glanced at the sky, and to her satisfaction, the first stars and even the moon had appeared above her. She laughed. “That’s a good omen. We’re bound to find the answers, Misha.”
Misha seemed to agree with her, running in the direction of the studio and then rushing back to her as she often did.
She knew the way. It was well traveled, a small trek Harlow took most evenings.
The studio was one of her favorite places.
Wilder had become used to her disappearing into her private space.
Like Misha, he never seemed to mind; in fact, he often encouraged her to create when she became restless.
The studio was cool, the scents of paint, clay and vanilla spice familiar to her. She always found comfort there. Misha immediately ran over to the table where she had large bins, one of which held dog treats.
Harlow burst out laughing. “I haven’t even turned on the lights yet, you naughty dog. What exactly did you do to deserve a treat?”
She flipped on the lights in the studio and then crossed to the table. “I guess the cuteness factor deserves a treat.” Misha sat nicely and waited for her treat before taking it very gently on Harlow’s yes.
Harlow spent the next hour examining her photos of the area in front of the barn. The rocks and ground, both of which had been uneven and covered in years of debris, as well as the pieces of wood falling from the barn as it slowly collapsed.
What exactly was she looking for? If the owner had bulldozed the area, overturning the ground repeatedly and removing the smaller boulders and larger rocks, there had to have been a reason.
Had the inquiry into purchasing the property triggered the owner to do such a thing?
If so, it meant he was hiding something. There wasn’t any other explanation.
Harlow laid the photos out carefully on her table and turned her brightest lights on them.
She spent the next hour and a half scrutinizing the photos she’d taken.
Spiderwebs and rattlesnakes. What else was in the boulders that she wasn’t seeing?
Something had to be there that maybe she hadn’t noticed.
Something important. She set her large freestanding magnifying glass over the first photo and then carefully went down the long line, taking her time, noting the slightest differences.
The angles. It took her several passes to see the shiny webs tucked into the rocks.
The same thick, sticky webs were attached to the outside of the rocks near the base.
Her heart stuttered, giving her that reaction that told her she was on the right track.
She had never thought much about the webs on the ground.
She’d been very focused on the building and snakes.
Also, the way the sun hit the frost had been the biggest interest for her in the photograph.
She’d gone to the barn for the express purpose of photographing the way the frost was caught in the orb spiderwebs and along the barn walls.
The ground webs hadn’t been as much a part of her ideas until she’d seen the results in her photographs, then she’d included them.
Now, she spent time focusing on them. The more she studied them, the more she realized the sticks and debris on the ground weren’t necessarily from the collapsing barn.
In fact, the more she looked at it, the more it appeared as if what she had first considered sticks were boards and parts of trees, old small logs strewn on the ground.
Had they been deliberately placed there? What was the point? If the thick sticks and tree limbs had been placed by a human, they would have been there awhile. She could tell from the amount of weathering and buildup of dirt and leaves over and around them.
The silk webbing was thick, attaching to the sticks or small tree limbs just as it did the boulders.
Again, she began to inspect the series of photographs.
She went inch by inch. Was that an actual spider she’d captured?
She turned up the magnification and centered the glass directly over the web.
The silk ran out from the small tree limb lying on the ground in the midst of dead and dying leaves.
The web had heavy trip lines extending all around it.
The long silk threads funneled into a burrow to create a hole where the spider seemed to reside.
Harlow had seen many types of trap and funnel-web spiderwebs.
This looked a little different from what she remembered.
She wasn’t certain exactly why. The funnel-web spiders she had encountered in her travels across California had different webs according to the type of spider it was.
Some appeared to look like orbs. Others gave the appearance of cotton candy.
The spiders themselves often took on different looks.
She’d seen one that looked like a bug to entice its prey.
Another actually appeared to look like a tree.
She had taken several pictures of that one.
She had photos of various spiders taking on the appearance of a snake, a bird, a wasp, even a butterfly. They had always fascinated her.
She went back to study the spider she had inadvertently captured in a photograph of the rocks near the barn.
It didn’t look like any of the funnel-web spiders she was familiar with.
It was shiny and black, much larger than the ones she had run across in her adventures.
She bent closer to the magnifying glass, once more turning up the power in order to better see the spider.
It was definitely larger and shinier, more like a widow than the funnel-web spiders she had come across.
She straightened and paced away to walk the length of the room to help herself think.
She had always had a fascination with spiders and their webs.
Somewhere, in the past, she had seen that particular spider before.
She had definitely read about the various types of webs the funnel-web spiders across the United States made.
She’d photographed many in her travels. She’d seen that spider and possibly the web in the rocks.
That was unusual. The same web was attached to the small tree limbs, the silk leading down to a burrow where the spider waited for its prey.
She just had to recall the exact spider.
Many funnel-web spiders were venomous, but few killed in the United States. It was different in Australia. The Sydney funnel-web spider was considered one of the deadliest spiders in the world, if not the deadliest, but it was found only in Australia.