Page 94 of Death on Riddle Road

“They said lots of people think it’s safer if there are no other cars, but, actually, it can mean someone is lying in wait who needs a car.Or if there’s one car, it could be two people waiting and they’ll attack you and the second person will drive off in your car.So that’s not any better.”

She stared at me.

I tried to backtrack.“Of course, that could apply more to interstate rest stops, not, uh, parks and places like this.”

She still didn’t say anything.

“You can always stay here in the car with the doors locked,” I proposed.

“And let you go up there by yourself?Forget it.Just remember, this wasyouridea to come here and why you couldn’t have remembered all that about people lying in wait to attack usbeforewe came up here, I don’t know.”

We both looked around thoroughly before we got out.Clara also checked her phone, mumbling that she’d take even one bar over no bars.

We headed toward the sign proclaiming the beginning of the trail.

The path was clear, but not wide.Or easy.

Rocks poked up from the surface like ribs, with their tripping hazard upped by washouts of soil around them.

Branches and even tree trunks had fallen across the path in places.The older ones had mostly been cut in place, leaving a gap for the one-person path to pass through.A few more recent ones required climbing over.

The route curled around trees, forming switchbacks in touching distance of the trunks.

“Poor Mamie,” Clara said, puffing from behind me.

“Why poor her?”I puffed back.

“She was trying to do this at full speed, trying to keep up with Robbie.We can take it relatively easy.”

“True.But he went even faster, so poor him.”

“Yeah, but he must have had a reason and she didn’t know what it was, so that made it scarier for her.”

I thought about that as we climbed higher and harder.

Yes, something had driven Robbie.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

We climbed andclimbed.Periodically, the path dipped, which weirdly wasn’t any easier than the uphill.

And it wouldn’t have mattered anyway, because we went sharply up again, with railroad ties dug into the path for ladder-like purchase.

Most of the year these leafed-out plants would make the path a tunnel of green.

I recognized some of the bare bushes as Japanese honeysuckle, an invasive species that leafed out earlier and held its leaves longer, helping it crowd out natives.

Yes, I’ve encountered it in my yard.My neighbors on one side said they like the spring blooms and they didn’t care that the county and state declared the bushes undesirable.

In other words, I have cut down and pulled out a lot of Japanese honeysuckle, especially on that side of my yard.

We came up yet another rise.What was different this time, was we could see sky ahead on the right side between the trunks.There was still some rising ground on the left, but we’d reached the highest point on the right.

“I think this might be it,” Clara said from behind me.

“It goes up a little more,” I protested, slowing but not stopping.

“Yeah, but here’s a bench and there isn’t one up there.”