“Anderson’s brother was killed”—Ellie swallowed, her gaze dropping to her lap again—“and Anderson…got away. He tracked me down in the woods outside of George’s cabin. That’s how I got this.” She tugged at the top of her thermal shirt, revealing a bruise in various shades of green, yellow, and purple. Daisy winced in sympathy. “They’re still hunting for him, but the sheriff’s pretty sure he headed to Mexico and won’t be seen again.”
Just that quick mention of the sheriff made Daisy shiver, and she quickly refocused her attention on Ellie.
“With my dad, it’s hard to know what’s real and what’s not. Plus, I think he was trying to protect me by not telling me who Willard’s murderer was. We thought Joseph—the search and rescue guy who was killed—might be involved.” She shot Daisy an apologetic look. “Or maybe even Chris.”
“What?!” Daisy straightened abruptly. “Chris? Why? He’s the most ethical, kindhearted, nonmurderous—”
“I know! I know!” Ellie waved her hands as if trying to calm Daisy. “Now, at least. Once I spent time with Chris, I knew he couldn’t have been involved. It was just, after he left me alone at the cabin right before Anderson arrived…”
The conversation with Chris replayed in her head. “Oh, when you were shot! Chris told me about it. He feels so awful that you were hurt on his watch.”
“That’s what he said,” Ellie agreed. “He explained about the lack of radio and cell reception, and he apologized to me and George.”
Although Daisy still felt prickly at any suggestion Chris could be a bad guy, she turned her attention to a different question niggling at her brain. “So did your dad say anything, or give any hints as to who it might be?”
Ellie bit the side of her thumbnail. “Not really. The last time I talked to him, before he left Armstrong, all he said was something about ‘the fires.’ We were interrupted before he could explain what he meant, and he checked himself out that afternoon.”
“The fires?” Lou and Rory chorused.
“You didn’t mention that before,” Lou said, scribbling “Fires” on the paper and underlining it several times. “What’d he say about them?”
“Sorry,” Ellie said, looking back and forth between Lou and Rory. “I figured it was just in his mind, especially after the explosion at the cabin. He didn’t say much, just mentioned ‘the fires.’”
“The cabin exploded?” Daisy repeated, her eyes widening, but the others weren’t listening to her.
“Rory,” Lou said, “could you ask Ian if there were any unusual fires last fall or winter, around the time that Willard was killed?”
“Sure. There’ve been some intentionally set fires since I started volunteering with the department,” Rory said. “Just small structures, like tool sheds. Plus, there were those wildland fires last fall.”
“Oh!” Ellie sat up straight. “I saw those burned areas when we were hiking to the cabin. George said those were probably arson, too.”
“Derek told me that he and Artie found accelerants and other suspicious fire-starting stuff in a forest service cabin,” Lou added as she wrote nearly illegible notes under the “Fires” heading. “Did Rob and the fire chief think they were used to start those wildland fires?”
“I don’t know, but Ian will.” She pulled out her cell phone. “As long as he’s not on a call, he’ll answer.”
No one spoke as they waited, but Rory eventually shook her head as she ended the call. “Voice mail,” she explained. “I’ll try him a little later.”
“Lou,” Daisy said a little tentatively. As the newcomer to the group, she didn’t want to bring up a suggestion that had already been discussed or, even worse, was so illogical that it didn’t need to be discussed. “Wasn’t your cabin intentionally set on fire?”
“Yes.” Lou’s jaw tightened at the memory. “But that was my nutso stalker. He was in Connecticut when Willard was killed.”
“Oh.” Something didn’t seem right, though. “Isn’t it strange that your stalker burned down your house at the same time there was an arsonist loose in Simpson?”
The other three women went quiet, staring at Daisy.
“I did wonder why Clay went from thinking he loved me to full-on homicidal,” Lou said, finally breaking the silence. “He—or whoever it was—actually kicked me back into a burning building. That doesn’t really say ‘come back East with me and be my wife.’”
“But Rory said all the other fires have been small buildings,” Ellie said.
Lou winced. “My cabin wasn’t very big.”
“‘Shack-like’ was the word someone used to describe it,” Rory said.
“Hey! Watch the cabin smack-talk, bunker dweller.” Despite her words, Lou was laughing. “Wait…did that ‘someone’ happen to be Callum?”
Rory’s phone rang, saving her from having to answer Lou.