Haunted Hamlet (Zoe Donovan Mystery) (9 page)

“Zoe?”
he greeted me.

I hopped down out of my monster of a truck.

“Yes, I’m Jeremy’s friend, Zoe Donovan, and this is my friend, Ellie Davis.” I reached out to shake the man’s hand. “Your ranch is gorgeous.”

“Thank you
; I like it. The land has been in my family for four generations and I’m quite proud of it.”

“I didn’t realize yo
u raised horses as well as dogs,” I commented as a herd of horses trotted by in a nearby pasture.

“My father and his father before him were horse breeders
, but I’ve always had a fondness for dogs and dog training, so when I inherited the ranch, I added the dogs.”

“Do you train the horses as well?” I
asked.

Peter nodded toward a man sitting on the fence of one of the corrals
, watching another man dressed in Levi’s and a plaid shirt put a large black horse through a series of commands. “Actually, I turned the horses over to my dad’s best friend, Chip, who has lived on the ranch since before I was born. I enjoy the horses, but I really prefer to work with dogs. Chip has a way with horses that only comes from decades of working with them.”

“So you train the dogs for law enforcement?”
I asked.

“
I do train dogs for law-enforcement agencies, but I raise and train guide and service dogs as well. I have two full-time assistants, but I still keep darn right busy.”

“I can imagine.”

“Can we meet Shep?” Ellie entered the conversation.

“How about we chat a bit first
?” Peter suggested. “There’s a table and some chairs inside, if you’d like to follow me.”

“Okay
.” Ellie trailed along behind the man, who was quite the looker, as we made our way to the office that was located in the front of the white building we had parked near.

“Please take a seat,” Peter directed Ellie.

“What would you like to know?” she asked, fidgeting as she sat down and waited for him to begin.

“Have you had a dog before?” Peter asked.

Ellie hesitated. “No. Is that a problem?”

Peter shrugged. “Not necessarily. Are you famil
iar with the handling and care of dogs?”

“I pet
sit for Zoe all the time.”

“And she
’s a fantastic pet sitter,” I added as I walked around the large room, looking at the photos on the wall. “My dog Charlie absolutely adores her.”

“Tell me a bit about your home situation
.”

“Home situation?”

“Are you married? Single? Do you have children? Other pets? Do you rent or own your home? House or apartment? That sort of thing.”

“Oh, okay.”

Ellie seemed nervous, but I thought she was doing fine, so I decided to wander around the office while they chatted. The walls were covered with photos of men with horses. Some of the photos were in black and white, while others looked to have been taken fairly recently. The photos were interesting; not only could you see the progression of men who had lived and worked on the ranch but the ranch infrastructure as well. The earliest photos showed a house a third of the size of the current structure, with only a single red barn. As we’d driven up, I’d noticed at least four large buildings, which I guessed housed either dogs or horses.

There were also photos of men and women I assumed were family members
, as well as some from the key moments of Peter’s life. In one photo he stood proudly in a cap and gown alongside a group of friends, and others were of the various proms he’d attended, as well as several of him alongside various dogs.

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” I s
aid as I did just that, “but this man standing with the group in front of the lake: who is he?”

Peter looked up from the paperwork he was filling out as he spoke to Ellie. “His name is Adam Davenport.
The photo was taken the summer after I graduated high school. My friend Puk talked me into getting a job with him at the summer camp they used to have at Star Lake.”

“Adam was a counse
lor?”

“Yeah, everyone
in the photo was. I only worked at Star Lake that one year, but Puk went back every summer until they closed the camp down after those counselors died.”

Star Lake is only about
five miles from Ashton Falls. The privately owned lake had been home to a summer camp for inner-city kids until it closed thirteen years ago. I was only a kid at the time of the incident, but I vaguely remembered that although it was strictly against camp rules to leave the area or to possess alcoholic beverages, a group of counselors snuck away to the Henderson house to party one summer night. Three people had died and another was missing before the night was over.

“Was Puk one of the counse
lors who snuck off?” I wondered.

“No
; he was working out at the camp when the tragedy occurred,” Peter informed me.

I looked back at the photo. There were eighteen men and women posed in front of the lake. There was one woman who looked sort of familiar
, although I couldn’t place her. I didn’t recognize any of the others, so my guess was that none of the counselors who were on staff with Peter that year had remained in the area. I had no way of knowing how many of the counselors in the photo were still on staff by the time the accident occurred. For all I knew, with the exception of Puk, the staff could have turned over completely. It did, however, make sense that at least a few had remained. I tried to decide if the man in the back left-hand corner was a younger version of the man I’d seen in the costume shop that night.

“Was Adam Davenport working at the camp that year as well?”

“Yes, I believe he was. Why do you ask?”

“Mr. Davenport
recently came to Ashton Falls to do research on the Henderson house. I’m afraid he’s dead.”

“Dead? What happened?”

I explained to Peter Darwin the series of events leading up to and preceding Mr. Davenport’s death, while he filled me in on what he knew about the incident thirteen years ago. I felt bad that Ellie’s bid to adopt a new puppy was being waylaid by our conversation, but eventually Ellie did meet Shep, it was love at first sight on both sides, and soon Ellie and I were packing up the truck to head back up the mountain.

“Thank you so much.” Ellie hugged Peter for what seemed like the hundredth time. “I
’ll take such good care of Shep; I promise. And feel free to come by to check on him any time you’re in the area.”

“I just might do that
.” Peter smiled as he helped to load Shep into the back of my truck, which had been specially outfitted to transport both large and small animals. “I like to keep track of my kids.”

“Do
you have a lot of dogs to keep track of?” Ellie wondered as she petted Shep one last time before closing the door of the crate that would ensure a safe trip home.

“Hundreds. But each and every one is dear to me.”

“Well, please do come and visit Shep. We’d both enjoy spending time with you at the lake. It’s beautiful in the valley, but nothing compares with October at the lake.”

Was Ellie actuall
y flirting with Peter Darwin? It seemed like it, and if I read things correctly, Peter didn’t mind the attention at all.

“I planned to make the trip up the mountain to attend the Haunted Hamlet this weekend. Perhaps we can meet up somewhere?” Peter suggested.

“I’m working the zombie run in the morning on Saturday, but maybe Friday evening or Saturday afternoon? We have a new event this year. It’s a haunted hayride, which promises fun for all who dare to venture into the ghostly forest.”

“
Perhaps Friday.” Peter smiled. “I have your number; I’ll call you to confirm a time and place.”

Wow, way to go
, Ellie.
She’d come away from this trip with both a dog and a date, while all I’d managed to acquire was a clue to a murder mystery I’d sworn to myself I’d stay out of.

“Do you mind if we stop by the hardware store so I can try to talk to Puk?” I asked Ellie
as we drove back down the dirt road connecting Peter’s ranch to the county road that led to the highway.

Peter had shared that Puk, whose real name
was John Pukman, owned Bryton Lake Hardware and could usually be found there at this time of day. If he remembered anything about the night the campers were killed, I wanted to have the chance to interview him before Salinger realized he could be a good lead in the murder investigation. Not that Salinger and I weren’t getting along much better than we had originally; it was just that I still didn’t put a lot of faith in the man’s detective skills. He was okay at maintaining order in our community when it came to the easy stuff, like petty theft and handing out speeding tickets, but when it came to murder . . .

“Not at all,” Ellie s
aid. “Shep and I will take a walk around that park just down the street. It’ll give us a chance to get to know each other. He really is a great dog.”

“Yeah, he’s a sweetie. I didn’t realize he’d be a long
-haired shepherd. He’s going to require extra brushing, but his coat is gorgeous.”

“Remind me to pick up a good brush and
the other supplies I might need when we’re at the feed store. I hope they’re still open.”

“They
stay open late on weeknights,” I confirmed.

“So do you think this Puk
knows anything that can help explain Adam Davenport’s death?” Ellie wondered.

“I don’t know. Maybe. It just seems to be a huge coincidence that
he comes to Ashton Falls to do research on a house where a terrible tragedy occurred at which he may have been present, and then turns up dead in that very same house thirteen years later.”

“
It does seem sort of spooky. I know the whole town was in an uproar when those counselors died, but other than the fact that the deaths were classified as ‘mysterious,’ I don’t remember a whole lot about them.”

“
Three counselors died while at the Henderson house. According to Trenton, one of the girls fell down the stairs, another was hit on the head, and one of the boys ran out of the house and was hit by a car that was fleeing the scene. A fourth counselor, another guy, disappeared and was never heard from again. Most people believe the missing counselor killed the others and then fled, but no one has ever figured out why.”

By the time Ellie, Shep, and I got back to Ashton Falls it was time for me to leave for book club. Normally, it’s on Thursdays, but with the opening of Haunted Hamlet the next night, we’d decided to move it up a day. Apparently, Wednesday really wasn’t the best day for many of our members; as of the official start time, only Pappy, Hazel, Nick, and I had arrived.

“
We can give it a few more minutes, but then I say we vote to table the discussion until next week,” Hazel suggested.

That was fine with me. After the day I’d ha
d, I was exhausted and anxious to get home to Zak and Charlie. Not that sitting in front of the warm fire Hazel had built in her brick fireplace wasn’t pleasant. In fact, with the addition of the delicious wine she’d provided, I found that it was close to impossible not to nod off.

“Are you planning to come to the library for the Halloween party tomorrow?” Hazel asked me. “Your mom
will be reading to the preschoolers from our selection of seasonal favorites.”

“I’d like to come if I can work it out. What time is it?”

“We’ll start at ten and be done by noon. We spent the day decorating the children’s room, and a couple of our volunteers are bringing cupcakes.”

“Can I bring Charlie?”

“Certainly, if you’d like.”

Charlie was spending more time at home now that I lived with Zak and Bella
, but I still tried to bring him into town with me as often as was convenient. Charlie enjoyed hanging out with the dog Zak had adopted in July, when her human was forced to move to a retirement community, but he loved kids, and I knew he’d be thrilled to attend the party at the library.

“So how did everything work out with Ellie and the pup?”
Pappy joined the conversation. I’d mentioned to him the previous evening that we were making the trip down the mountain to look into adopting a German shepherd.

“It went really well.
We haven’t introduced him to Charlie and Bella yet, but I’m sure they’ll all get along great, as long as poor Charlie doesn’t get trampled on.”

While Charlie weigh
s less than forty pounds, Shep probably weighs close to a hundred, and Bella, a golden retriever/Newfoundland mix, weighs close to one-fifty.

“Your dad has big dogs and Charlie does fine,” Pappy
told me.

“That’s true
, but Shep is a puppy, and a bit more energetic than Dad’s dogs.”

My dad and mom have three dogs between them. Tucker, a golden retriever, had been with
Dad since he was a pup. He’s getting on in years and tends to enjoy sleeping the day away about as much as anything. Last October, I talked Dad into adopting a yellow lab whose owner also had to move to an assisted living facility. Kiva has a bit more energy than Tucker but likewise is happy to lounge for much of the day. The third dog in the family, Sophie, is a rescue my mom fell in love with while pet sitting for me during the time I brought the pregnant terrier to the boathouse to have her pups.