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By Watersday afternoon, the novelty of staying inside napping and reading had worn off, even for me. I opened the cupboard where I had stored board games and the shoe boxes filled with plastic figures I had purchased as toys for the children of my future guests. I dismissed the jigsaw puzzles as being too sedate, even if the four of us worked on one together. I dismissed the games that were too young for my companions. Finally I pulled out a box and held it up to show Aggie and the boys. “Let’s play Murder.”
I tried not to think too long or too hard about the way all their eyes brightened and the amount of enthusiasm they showed as we set up the game. They looked a little puzzled as I explained the game, but they recognized the fireplace poker, rope, revolver, knife, and hammer as weapons. I had to explain the garrote.
“Teeth would work better to choke your prey,” Conan said, studying the game piece.
“Yours, maybe. Mine? Not so much.” Could you garrote a Bear or Panther? Could someone get a wire around a neck and through all that fur fast enough not to get clawed to pieces? Another question to ponder when I couldn’t fall asleep.
I let each of them fan a different set of cards while I selected victim, weapon, and location and tucked them in the little envelope. Then I shuffled all the cards and dealt them.
“Now we have to figure out who died and—”
Aggie, Conan, and Cougar immediately laid down the character cards they were holding, then looked at me.
“Do you have any humans?” Aggie asked.
I revealed my character card.
“Now we know which human is dead,” Conan said.
“But we still need to figure out where that human died,” I said.
They laid their location cards over the rooms on the game board and looked at me again. I put my location card over the kitchen, which left the dining room as the only location uncovered. I held up a hand before the three of them could put down the weapon cards. “To make it more interesting, let’s say that a player has to fetch a weapon and bring it to the dining room, and if a person has the card to show that weapon wasn’t used, he, or she, only shows it to that one player.”
Needing to roll dice and move their pieces along the squares to reach a room suddenly added more interest to the game. Since even Aggie was more of a predator than me, I didn’t point out that I had explained the rules before we had started, so the whole thing would have been more interesting if we were trying to figure out the who, what, and where instead of just the what.
Even then, the terra indigene didn’t seem to understand that every player worked alone. Maybe that was something I should mention to Officer Grimshaw. They might not cooperate if one brought down a deer and wanted to keep his lunch for himself, but when it came to finding a human who did a bad thing, they scattered and regrouped. Each of them clumped over the board to reach the closest room with a weapon, and then they headed for the dining room, taking the weapon with them. Since I was considered part of this odd pack, I followed their example and fetched the knife that had been in the kitchen, leaving the garrote that had been discarded there. Maybe it would have been a weapon of opportunity in a crime show. Not a likely weapon since I didn’t think most people knew how to kill someone with a garrote. You probably had to go to assassin school or something and take the garroting class to learn how to do it properly. Which didn’t mean someone couldn’t do it badly but still be effective in the end.
I think they all figured out the knife was the weapon, but they all guessed incorrectly, letting me reveal the final piece of evidence.
“That was pretty good,” Cougar said, making me think he would offer a cub the same encouragement for almost catching a bunny or some other small edible.
“Yes,” Conan agreed. “But our way of playing the game is better.”
“You all play a different version of Murder?” I asked.
They nodded.
I considered making an excuse to stay in my suite for a few hours. Then I considered that this was good practice for entertaining lodgers on a rainy day. Not that I would be expected to play games with my lodgers. I would be expected to provide drinks and snacks and fight with the rabbit ears that provided sketchy TV reception in this kind of weather since there was bound to be someone who preferred television over board games.
“Why don’t you set things up for your version of the game while I see what I can rustle up for snacks?” That suggestion went over well and gave me an excuse to retreat for a few minutes.
I was pondering what I had available that would feed two carnivores and two omnivores when the phone rang.
“The Jumble, Vicki speaking.”
“It’s Julian. How are you doing out there?”
“Since I’m not planning to leave until I run out of food or the rain stops, I’m doing pretty well. Aggie, the boys, and I are about to play the terra indigene version of Murder.”
“Oh.” A single word followed by the slightest pause. “Well, I’m glad you’re not on your own there in the storm.”
Something in his voice. It suddenly occurred to me that Julian might be lonely. He lived in one of the Mill Creek Cabins, but he was the only tenant. That meant he was as isolated there as I was at The Jumble. Of course, if the roads were passable and he could reach the village, he could rent one of Ineke’s rooms for a night to avoid being alone.
“I don’t know what the main roads are like or if my access road is passable, but if you’d like to join us . . .” I did have two guest suites on the second floor of the main building, so I could offer him a place to stay instead of going out on slick roads after dark. And since I’d already said Aggie and the boys were here, he wouldn’t mistake the offer as more than an invitation for friendly company.
“I’d like that. Is there anything I can pick up since I can stop at Pops’s store before I leave Sproing?”
“You’re already in the village? Are you sure you want to come out in this weather?”
“I’m sure.”
I wasn’t sure I would brave the roads today for anything less than an emergency, but I took him at his word and considered what I was going to run out of by tomorrow morning. “Bread, milk, sandwich fixings?”
“Got it. I’ll see you in a little while.”
The larder was a little more bare than I’d thought, even for snacks. I cut up some carrots, cut some cheddar cheese into squares, and made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I eyed the jar of sweet pickles but put them back unopened.