Free Illegally Iced by Jessica Beck Page A

answered. She loved her luxuries, and her idea of roughing it was not having room service at a fine hotel.
    I lit the kerosene lamp so we wouldn’t be caught by the pending darkness, and it was enough to throw a soft yellow glow into the room. A massive fireplace anchored one end, and the other had a simple bed and dresser. Between them, there was a kitchen on one side and a small table and two chairs on the other. There was a sofa and a small desk near the fireplace, and bookcases were present in just about every other open spot.
    “Where’s the bathroom?” she asked.
    I pointed outside to the outhouse, and her dismay blossomed.
    “Suzanne, this is like some kind of twisted time machine.”
    “I never said that James wasn’t a bit of an odd bird,” I answered. “He believed this cabin matched his attitude, and who are we to dispute it? I’ll take the desk and you search the rest of the place.”
    “That shouldn’t take either one of us very long,” she said.
    I opened the desk drawers and started examining the papers inside. There was a small bound notebook inside one, and I opened it and scanned it quickly. It was part “to do” list, part reminder, and part journal. I wondered if it might lead to any insights into James’s life—and more importantly, who might want to kill him. I couldn’t easily decipher his chicken-scratch handwriting in the flickering yellow light, so without conscious thought, I tucked it into my purse. There would be time to examine it later, but for right now, I needed to finish searching his desk. On top of the stack of papers in the second drawer, I found a greeting card with a large red heart on the front, broken once, but now secured again with tape. Inside, it said,
    James, You NEED to FORGIVE me. I CAN’T go on like this. I MEAN IT.
    Rebecca’s name was scrawled at the bottom.
    “Grace, you’ve got to see this.”
    I handed her the card and watched her expression as she read it. “Wow, did she just threaten him at the same time that she was asking for a reconciliation? The girl’s a little volatile, wouldn’t you say?” Grace put it down and took a quick photo of it with her phone.
    “She might think she’s just being passionate, but if you ask me, I believe she’s just a little bit crazy. Wow, James picked a real winner there, didn’t he?”
    “I can see why he wanted to get away from her,” she said as she looked past the card into the open drawer.
    Grace plucked something out of it, and I protested, “Hey, that’s my job.”
    “You can read it when I’m finished,” she said with a smile.
    “At least let me read it over your shoulder.”
    “Fine,” she said, and we both moved closer to the light. This was written in thick pencil on a plain sheet of notebook paper, and the force of some of the writing had been so intense that the paper was actually torn in a few places.
    James, enough is enough. I’m not your whipping boy. Back off, or you’ll regret it.
    “Wow, James seemed to bring out the emotions in people, didn’t he?” she said as she got a snapshot of that as well.
    “I’ll say,” Suzanne answered. “I wonder why the police chief didn’t take these when they searched the place?”
    The door must have opened while we’d been reading, because I hadn’t heard a thing. It was a testament to James’s skill in making hinges that moved so effortlessly as well as the engrossing reading.
    “He didn’t take them because he hasn’t seen them yet,” Chief Martin said with a heavy tone in his voice. “What are you two doing in here? You’re both directly interfering with an active police investigation. You realize that, don’t you?”
    “We thought you’d already come and gone,” I admitted.
    “So, that gives you the right to just break in here? Is that what you’re saying?”
    “I knew about the key,” I explained, “and James expressly invited me to use it whenever I wanted.”
    “I suppose you have proof of that?” he