To Darkness and to Death by Julia Spencer-Fleming Page B

Although, they might be stretched thin, what with it being a hunting Saturday and Duane unavailable and Pete on leave. Maybe he’d take care of it himself. Linda’s words came back to him:
Is this the man who can’t take a vacation because the police department might fall apart without him
? Maybe she had a point. His gaze settled on Clare, bending over the table, tucking a falling strand of hair behind her ear. Maybe.
     
     
    10:00 A.M.
     
    Driving up the main road to Haudenosaunee—if two dirt ruts and some gravel could be called a road—felt odd to Becky. It wasn’t that she hadn’t been on the property many times before. As a kid, she would visit her dad as he hauled logs out of the Haudenosaunee woods, sometimes riding behind him in the seat of the skidder, her breath clouding the air, sometimes bouncing in the front seat of the truck as it crunched over the frozen trails toward the main road. Then, as a college student, she had visited the great camp itself as Millie’s guest. They would hike to the waterfall for a swim and then smoke pot in the ruins of the first great camp, the only spot where Millie’s dad was guaranteed not to stumble over them. Summer’s green or winter’s snow, that was her experience of Haudenosaunee, not this gray, splay-limbed November landscape, and never alone.
    Around a gentle curve, and she stepped on her brakes, seeing a big red pickup headed straight for her. The truck, driven by an equally big man in hunting camouflage, slowed to a crawl, then nosed its way as far off the road as possible. The driver gestured her to proceed. As she crept past him, he rolled his window down. She stopped and did the same.
    “You’re not Millie van der Hoeven, are you?”
    One of the search team, then. “I’m afraid not. I’m a friend of hers. She’s still missing?”
    He nodded. “Hopefully not for long, though. You say you’re her friend? Has she ever mentioned someone she’s seeing in the area? A boyfriend?”
    Becky propped her arm over the edge of the window. “No, she hasn’t.” What a weird thing to ask. Unless—“Does she have one? Do you think she might be with some guy instead of lost in the forest?”
    The man nodded. “Maybe. It’s something I’m following up on.” He leaned forward and fired up his truck. “Sorry to bother you. You looked sort of like her picture.”
    “No problem. Sorry I couldn’t help.” She raised her hand and shifted into gear again. When she was past the truck, she rolled her window up. Looked like Millie. She wished. She supposed that to a guy as old as her dad, any two girls with long blond hair looked alike.
    She hoped Millie had an unknown, undisclosed boyfriend. It made more sense than getting lost at Haudenosaunee.
And
, that selfish voice in the back of her brain said,
it would mean she’d still show up on time for the ceremony tonight
. Becky shoved the thought away. The ceremony was going forward. Everyone would be there to sign papers and shake hands and smile for the cameras. She couldn’t, wouldn’t, consider the alternative.
    Even this trip to Haudenosaunee was going on faith. If she had had any real doubts about the sale going through, she could have called the contractor and told him to dismiss the crew that would be meeting her at the great camp within the next half hour. She glanced at her car’s clock. Make that twenty minutes. She hadn’t canceled. The planning walkthrough would go on as scheduled. She and the crew would discuss the most economical and efficient way to dismantle all the modern Haudenosaunee buildings.
    Then came the hard part of the day. She had to tell her father, as the owner of Castle Logging, that his equipment, which he had garaged over the summer at his most recent cutting site, had to go. The conservancy’s lawyer had asked her to get a detailed inventory, because they would be responsible for any buildings and machinery on the property after the title changed hands. She wasn’t looking