Page 12 of Be A Detective, They Said. It’ll Be Fun, They Said

Chapter Five

The woods where the group met, was thick with pine trees and plenty of worn paths to follow. The cold night and the half-moon gave the space, alive with foliage, an eerie glow.

“Are you sure you’re up to this, Nina? I really wish you’d wait in the car for us. You look wiped.”

“And I really wish you’d stop fucking yapping in my ear. I’m fine,” she spat, stomping toward the place where the Facebook group had met last night. When Nina was frustrated, annoyed she couldn’t do something or someone challenged her mettle, she lashed out.

This was one of those times. To be perceived as weak, no matter the circumstances, is unacceptable to her.

“Sorry if I’m trying to be a good friend and look out for your feeble backside!” Marty spit back.

“Sorry if you’re being annoying AF.”

I pushed my way past a thorny bush and grabbed both of their arms. “Girls, knock it off! If Nina says she’s fine, then she’s fine. If Marty wants to be concerned about you, as am I, then she’s allowed. Now stop arguing and get walking. We need to look around the whole area. If that sharpshooter Benson said he saw Neerie that night, and it’s true, we’ll smell her. It hasn’t been that long, and we haven’t had any snow or rain. Though, it looks like we’re about to get some. Now get to sniffing before we lose her scent.”

“Yes, Mom,” Nina teased, the tension lifting, leaving behind only the cold air and the scent of a hundred humans.

We were about a half hour in, scouring a good square mile, including the area where the shooting incident had occurred, when I finally asked, “Anything, guys? I feel like I’m wandering around in circles. I smell her, but the scent goes nowhere.”

Nina appeared out of the dark, her beautifully pale face ghostly in the velvety night. “Same. It’s like one big damn circle of Neerie, but I’m tellin’ you two, I sure can smell the blood from where the guy was shot.”

“Same,” Marty added, plucking leaves from her flannel jacket. “So what now? Where do we go from here? Neerie was here, but nobody remembers it except Benson, and Benson’s in human jail. Smelling her scent doesn’t do us any good if it leads nowhere.”

Nina crossed her arms over her chest. “Doesn’t mean we can’t talk to this dude Benson. I can get inside a human jail. I’ve done it before.”

I held up a hand. “Getting in people’s heads is taking a toll on you, Nina. That can wait for the moment. Let’s talk about this text Neerie sent to Earl about the basement. She said, ‘I have to go to the basement.’ What could that possibly mean?”

Marty ran some lip balm over her lips. “Maybe she has a basement? Do you know if she has one? I don’t know why she’d show up here and then text Earl to tell him she had to go to the basement. She was definitely here, though. I smell her bossy pants everywhere. The strange thing is, like you both said, her scent goes in a big circle but there’s nothing outside the circle to indicate she actually left the woods.”

I pointed to the screenshot Nina had sent us of Neerie’s text. “To me, this looks like she possibly began a text and was interrupted. Neerie’s nothing if not articulate. She’s particularly articulate when it comes to telling us all what to do. What I don’t understand is why she sent it to Earl, who seemed to have no idea what it meant? Or maybe she sent it to other people, too? Naida said she hadn’t heard from her in two days, so she didn’t send it to her.”

“Well, she probably wouldn’t if it had to do with some conspiracy. Her sister thinks she’s fucking deranged, too, Wanda. Maybe the text meant nothing at all. To me, it looks pretty innocuous, like maybe she was telling someone whatever they were looking for was in the basement.”

But my gut said differently. I shook my head. “No. This means something. I can feel it. It’s almost too innocuous. Maybe she didn’t mean to send it to Earl at all? Why would she send someone she doesn’t know a text about a basement if it’s her basement she’s talking about? We need to go to her house and see what we can see. If she has a basement, there could be something helpful there.”

“Cool-cool. We’ll go to her house tomorrow. Are we done here, though? Because I’m not seeing shit and I wanna say goodnight to Charlie and Carl before they go to bed. I need to see my kids. I need to see something wholesome and good.”

I gave one last glance around, the barren trees swaying in the frigid air, the rustle of bushes and debris loud in the quiet forest, and nodded. My toes were frozen anyway. I was ready for story time with my babies, a hot cup of tea and maybe a nice warm bath, scented with lavender.

With a long sigh borne of my frustration, I nodded. “I guess so.”

We began heading back toward the SUV, parked on the outskirts of the woods, when I tripped over a root, falling on the ground with a hard crack and landing in some thorned bushes.

“Argh!” I cried out as the back of my head hit a rock, the thorns scraping along my skin.

“Wanda!” Marty called, dropping to the ground to reach for me.

“Here, allow me,” an incredibly deep, almost seductive voice said.

I felt an enormous, unfamiliar hand grip my wrist, and without thinking, I allowed it to help me up.

Yet, when I went to push the hand away, all I got was a handful of hair…

What in all that’s furry and smelly?

I’m not usually much of an alarmist, but listen, this wasn’t just any ol’ hand. I screamed, long and ear-piercing. “Take your hands off me!”

The hand immediately let go, freeing me to jump back and fall into Marty. Nina came up from behind and steadied us before whipping in front of us in protection mode.

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