Charred to handle, p.1
Charred to Handle, page 1
CHARRED TO HANDLE
IRON & FLAME COZY MYSTERIES, BOOK 6
PATTI BENNING
SUMMER PRESCOTT BOOKS PUBLISHING
Copyright 2024 Summer Prescott Books
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication nor any of the information herein may be quoted from, nor reproduced, in any form, including but not limited to: printing, scanning, photocopying, or any other printed, digital, or audio formats, without prior express written consent of the copyright holder.
**This book is a work of fiction. Any similarities to persons, living or dead, places of business, or situations past or present, is completely unintentional.
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CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Epilogue
Also by Patti Benning
Author’s Note
Contact Summer Prescott Books Publishing
ONE
“Oh, turn it up. I haven’t heard this song in years.”
Lydia complied, turning the dial on the old radio in Jude’s truck. Smiling, she leaned back in her seat and gazed out the window. It was an early summer evening, and they had the windows cracked to let in the breeze as they drove. Trees hugged the road on either side of them. Every so often, Lydia caught glimpses of the Wisconsin River.
Lydia would have been smiling even if it was the middle of a hailstorm, though, because she and Jude were on their way back to Quarry Creek from a perfect date. Dinner at a nice Korean restaurant in Wausau, a place neither of them had ever been before. The food had been delicious, but what really made the date perfect was how easy it was to be with Jude. They had been friends for over half a year by now, and this felt like the natural next step in their relationship.
The kiss after dinner had been nice too. She was already planning on stealing another when he dropped her off at home.
“Look,” Jude said, slowing down as he pointed off the road and into the trees. “Turkeys. There’s a tom and his hens.”
“Oh, wow. I’ve never seen so many before. I guess they don’t come into town much.”
“I get some in my yard sometimes, but they tend to stick to the outskirts of town,” he said. “For such big birds, they—”
He broke off and frowned, slowing the truck down farther. Lydia leaned forward, peering out the window. “What? Did you see something else?”
“That van,” he murmured. “I recognize it. Spoke to the girls who were driving it earlier today.”
The vehicle he was talking about was a big van, something of a cross between a cargo van and a minivan, which was parked at a turnoff that led to the riverbank. There were no people in sight, but that wasn’t unusual; this area was part of the state forest, and there were a myriad of paths and access roads for the DNR in the area. With the nice weather, it wasn’t uncommon for people to go hiking out here.
“Is there a reason they shouldn’t be parked there?” she asked, not sure why Jude looked so concerned.
He shook his head. “No, that’s fine. It’s just that when I spoke to them this morning, they said they were going to kayak for about an hour before heading into town for a spa day. It’s a little weird that their van is still out here, that’s all. Plus, they were planning on launching farther down the river. There are rapids around the next bend, and when I warned them about it, they said they had some sort of app on their phones that tells people about the best kayaking locations, and it had warned them about the rapids already. They assured me they knew what they were doing, and I left it at that.”
“Maybe they decided they wanted more of a challenge?”
“Maybe. The rapids aren’t the worst along the river, but they can still be dangerous for people who aren’t prepared for them. I hope nothing bad happened to them.”
The truck had slowed to a crawl, and Jude drummed his fingers anxiously on the steering wheel. He was a game warden, which meant he was a certified peace officer. Most of his focus was on keeping the animals and the environment safe, but if someone was lost or injured out here, finding them was a part of his duty too. He might not have been on the clock right now, but she knew he still had a duty to these people. Even if it wasn’t a part of his job description, he would still have been worried — he was just that sort of person.
“Let’s stop and check on them,” she said, knowing he was going to ask in a second anyway. “They’re probably fine, but it can’t hurt to make sure.”
“Sorry,” he said as he hit the blinker and pulled into the turnoff. “I didn’t want our date to end with work. Hopefully, this will be quick.”
“Trust me, nothing could wreck this evening for me.”
She gave him a reassuring smile, then reached for her seatbelt. He was off duty, which meant there was no reason for her to stay in the vehicle, and she was starting to get curious herself. Maybe they were having trouble with their van. It wasn’t dark out yet, but it was getting there, and if they were still out kayaking, then they were cutting it pretty close.
The turnoff was just above the riverbank, with a steep, sloping path down. She could hear the splash and burble of the water as it raced past, and the low drone of insects. As they slammed the truck’s doors, the turkeys they had seen a little farther up the road startled and took off in a flurry of feathers and gobbling.
Jude waited for them to quiet down before he called out, “Hello? Anyone here?”
The forest seemed to eat his words; the sinking sun made the shadows between the trees deepen, and it was easy to imagine getting lost in those woods. Though if they were kayaking on the river, she wasn’t sure how lost they could get. She frowned.
“Hold on. If they were going to kayak down the river, how were they planning on getting back to their van? I’m assuming the current is too strong for them to paddle against it.”
“I’m not sure,” he admitted. “Usually, you have someone who drops you off upstream or picks you up downstream. They may have hired a rideshare service.”
“Could they have been planning to hike back to the van?”
“From their original launch point? Sure. There’s a service road that follows the river down a few miles. If they got off at the right spot, they could have walked back up to their van and driven it down to get the kayaks. From here, they would have had to walk along the main road. It’s doable, I guess, but it wouldn’t be very safe. People drive too fast, and there isn’t much of a shoulder.”
“Maybe they tried it anyway,” she suggested. There had been no response to his shout. There was no sound at all but that of the rushing water. “It might be taking them longer than expected. Maybe we’ll see them on our way into town.”
“Hopefully.” He hesitated, then approached the van to knock on the passenger side door before he peered through the window. His shoulders relaxed slightly at whatever he saw inside, and he opened his mouth to say something, but before he could get a word out, he froze, standing so still he might have been a statue.
“Jude?”
“You might want to get back in the truck, Lydia.”
“What’s going on?”
She moved forward to stand next to him and peer through the window. She saw the silhouette of a woman sitting in the passenger’s seat, and her reaction was much like Jude’s had been—instant relief paired with dawning horror as her eyes adjusted and she was able to see the interior of the van more clearly.
The woman’s eyes were open and staring blankly ahead, and her hair and clothing was sopping wet. Her lips were blue-tinged, and she had a wound on her temple, as if she had hit her head on something.
She was dead. Lydia knew it in her gut, but she still felt blindly for the van’s door handle and pulled on it. As soon as the latch clicked, Jude snapped out of it and jumped into action, opening the van’s door for her. They both jumped back as a handful of pebbles and stones clattered to the hardened dirt of the turn-off. The passenger seat and footwell were covered in dirt, grit, and wet leaves, as were the woman’s clothes, as if she had crawled through the debris on the forest floor … or been dragged through it.
Jude hesitantly checked for her pulse and shook his head after only a moment. “She’s gone,” he said. “Her body’s cold already. Rigor mortis is setting in. She must have been here for hours.”
“What happened?” Lydia asked in horror as she took in the dead woman.
She looked young, in her early twenties, and had blonde hair and a pale pink shirt with a design incorporating a kayak, some waves, and the sun on it. She looked like she should be laughing with her friends, not sitting dead in a van in the middle of nowhere.
“If her kayak capsized and she inhaled enough water before she got out, she could be a victim of dry drowning,” he said, though he sounded uncertain.
“Dry drowning?”
“It’s a delayed reaction that sets in within an hour after your lungs got water in them,” he said. “But it’s much more common in children than adults. It’s possible that she managed to get back to the van aft er being submerged, but the dry drowning set in before she could get help. Possible … but unlikely.”
“People don’t just drown in vans, Jude. Are you saying someone put her here after she died in the river?”
“She was with a group of three other women,” he said. “Something must have happened. Maybe one or two of them got her back to the van before returning to the river to help another one of their friends. If they hit the rapids wrong and more than one of them went in the water … she might not be the only casualty.”
Lydia didn’t think it could get more serious than a dead body in a van, but the thought of this woman’s friends still out there, hurt and grieving and lost after getting swept away in the river made her heart ache.
“What should we do?” she asked. “We need to go look for them, don’t we?”
“We need to report this first,” he said. “Whatever happened to the rest of this woman’s group, they’re going to need more than just the two of us to help them when we find them.”
TWO
While Jude called to report what they had found, Lydia collected her phone, an unopened bottle of water, and a folded blanket from Jude’s truck. She knew his work truck had all manner of first aid and emergency supplies in it, but the pickings were slimmer in his personal truck. Still, she wanted to have something to offer to the missing women if they found them. It was summer, but the river was still cold, and if they couldn’t get dry, they might be freezing by now.
She returned to the van just as Jude was ending the call. She could tell by his casual demeanor that he knew whoever was on the other end of the line personally, which wasn’t surprising considering he often worked hand in hand with the local law enforcement.
When he ended the call, he paused to look at her. “It might be best if you stay here.”
“No way,” she said. “If someone’s hurt out there, you might need my help. And if there’s two of us, I can stay with them while you run back here to show the authorities where to go. Plus, four eyes are better than two.”
“The ground is pretty slick by the river, and there’s no path down to the rapids.”
She crossed her arms, the blanket and water bottle tucked under her elbow. “Luckily, I wore my flats tonight. I wouldn’t try to do this in heels.”
He sighed. “All right. Just watch where I step and let me know if the going is too rough. I’m going to be moving slowly too. The last thing those people need is for one of us to get hurt and delay their rescue even farther.”
Jude led the way over to the path that led down to the riverbank. She could see right away why he was hesitant about her coming along; it wasn’t really a path at all, but a slick looking depression in the ridge that led down to the river. Most of it was bare, muddy soil with the occasional half-buried rock or root on the way down.
She might not be wearing heels, but the slip-on flats she had worn for their date didn’t have nearly as much traction as Jude’s shoes did. Still, she thought she could make it down safely as long as she was careful. She could use some of the roots as handholds, and the rocks looked like they were dry enough not to be slippery.
Jude went first, and she followed far enough behind that if she slipped, he would have time to get out of her way or brace himself to catch her. They both made it to the bottom without falling, though she had a couple of close calls. The riverbank wasn’t much better; it was all sucking mud that threatened to pull her shoes off if she wasn’t careful.
“Someone else definitely came down here, but I don’t see as many footprints as I would expect if all four girls were here,” he said.
“Maybe she came back alone.”
“Maybe,” he said, though he didn’t sound convinced. “Something about this isn’t adding up.”
They started moving down the riverbank. A little farther ahead, it widened into a pebbly shore, and she breathed a sigh of relief as soon as she was able to stop fighting with the mud for her shoes. The poor things were never going to recover, but she would gladly sacrifice her shoes if it meant they found the dead woman’s companions alive.
“Is that sound the rapids?” she asked when she realized the sound from the river was getting louder.
“Yeah. They’re not as impressive as you might be thinking; nothing you’d want to go whitewater rafting on. Just a lot of shallow rocks and fast water. They don’t look dangerous, which is partially what makes them deadly.”
There was no sign of the other women, though they called out occasionally. Each time, Lydia held her breath hoping to hear an answer, and each time, she was disappointed.
Then they rounded the bend in the river, and she saw the rapids … and something else. A bright pink kayak was caught in a fallen tree limb on the other side of the river.
They stood still and shouted, calling out for the missing women, but they had no more luck than they did before.
“It’s only the one kayak,” she said. “Maybe she did come back alone, and she got caught in the rapids like you said.”
“That’s impossible,” he said.
“What do you mean? It seems pretty clear. Kayak. Rapids. She fell in and managed to get out and get back to the van, where that dry drowning thing happened, like you said.”
“Because the kayak is caught on the bank before the rapids,” he pointed out. “If she lost control in the rapids, we would have found it farther downstream. The river is calm between here and the van … so what happened to her? How did she fall out of her kayak? How did she drown, but somehow end up back in the van? And if she drove here alone and somehow managed to get back to the van after falling into the river, why would she have gotten into the passenger side instead of the driver’s side?”
“So, we keep looking for her friends,” Lydia said. “Maybe they’re past the rapids.”
He hesitated, still looking at the kayak across the river. He had gone from worried about the missing women, to wary about something else, and it was starting to make her uncomfortable too. He was right; something was wrong here. Something more than a sad, accidental death.
Were they looking for murderers, instead of survivors?
The sound of a vehicle with a siren approaching tore their attention away from the abandoned kayak. “We should head back,” Jude said. “The first responders might be able to access her emergency contacts, and that might tell us more about who she was with. If you’re right and she did come out here alone, or with just one of her friends, the others might not even know what happened.”
Making their way back along the river to the slope up to the turn-off was no more fun than the journey down had been. Jude helped her up the last few feet of the incline, then they turned to face the paramedics and the police together.
Detective Bronner was the only one she knew, though Jude seemed to know a few of the officers. She was glad that he was familiar with them, because if it was just her, she doubted they would have chatted as much, which meant she would have gone home with even more of her questions unanswered.
“I’m glad you two found this,” Detective Bronner said once he joined them near Jude’s truck. She had already put the meager supplies she had gotten out of it away and had been watching the police officers examine the van and the body. “A lot of people wouldn’t have stopped. It could have been days, which is never a good thing in this summer heat. Though one of the patrol units probably would have spotted it before too long once that missing person’s report got put out.”
“She’s a missing person?” Jude asked.
The detective nodded. “Her friends stopped in to file the report this afternoon. They’re all from out of town, so I wasn’t too worried. I figured she had gotten lost out on one of the unmarked service access roads, and would find her way back eventually.” He gazed sadly at the van. “I can’t say how sorry I am that I was wrong. I suppose I’ll have to drop by the bed and breakfast after this and break the news to them. That’s never a fun conversation to have.”
“I talked to them this morning,” Jude said. “I was out on my usual patrol, and I saw them parked along the side of the road and stopped to see if they needed help. They were just looking for service to get their navigation app working. They told me they were planning on launching their kayaks at the junction about six miles downriver of here and were only planning on doing an hour trip. I made sure they knew about the rapids in case they decided to launch farther up. I have no idea what she was doing up here. She’s the only one who was missing?”
