Trip Wire by Charlotte Carter

Author:Charlotte Carter
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780345482006
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2005-03-28T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIVE

FRIDAY

1

Woody was making me his famous apple pancakes. Which was mighty nice of him, in light of our last meeting. We had not talked since I freaked out on him and Ivy at the commune the day after the murders.

Ivy was still asleep. I had awakened the two of them at one-thirty in the morning, offering no explanation why I’d chosen that ungodly hour to come calling. I’ll explain everything tomorrow, I told them, and we had all stumbled into our respective beds.

When I awoke in my old room about 9 a.m., I could smell the sausages and coffee. I followed my nose out to the kitchen and found my uncle, fully dressed, sleeves rolled up, sifting flour into an old crockery bowl.

I hardly knew where to begin, how to apologize. After a minute of fumbling for the words, I gave up, lip trembling, willing myself not to bawl like a baby.

Woody put down his wooden spoon and came over to me, hugged me tightly. “You will always be my girl,” he said, and there may even have been a bit of wetness in his eyes.

“But,” I said when I’d brushed away the tears, “you still think I’m foolish to get all up in this murder thing, don’t you?”

“I wish you wouldn’t, Cass. But I can see you’re going to do it anyway. So I have to stand with you.”

The pancakes didn’t disappoint. They were just as delicious as I remembered. Truth was, Woody was a better cook than Ivy, who had help with the household stuff several days a week. But on lazy Sundays or holidays, Uncle Woody would prepare one of his specialties—pancakes, or pepper steak, or his sensational duckling in sweet sauce.

After eating, we sat at the kitchen table over our coffee. Woody lit a cigarette with his beloved old Zippo. “Jack tells me you came to see him.”

“Yeah, I did.” I hoped Klaus hadn’t gone whining to Woody, telling him how rude I’d been, or that I’d stormed out of his office.

“He says some things are coming to light about these two youngsters. Details about the deaths. It’s not nice, Cass.”

“I didn’t think it would be.”

“He says the boy was tortured before they killed him.” Tortured. Jack Klaus was right: That was personal, I thought. “But it looks like they killed the girl right off. The homicide detective thinks she might’ve just walked in on it.”

I swallowed hard, refusing to visualize any of it.

“Cass, doesn’t common sense tell you somebody was trying to get something out of that boy he didn’t want to give up?” he said.

I nodded.

“Must have been a pretty big secret he was keeping.”

“Wilt didn’t keep secrets.”

“You sure about that?”

I hesitated before answering. I was thinking about what Klaus had revealed yesterday—the old relationship between Mia Boone and Dan Zuni. That was a secret, wasn’t it? But I didn’t know whether Wilt was party to it.

Almost as if he was reading my mind, Woody said, “Cass, you were devoted to this boy. But you have to ask yourself some hard questions.

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