Free Death Climbs a Tree by Sara Hoskinson Frommer

“I think you need to see it here. It might have something to do with what happened here yesterday.”
    â€œSit tight. I’m on my way.”
    She stabbed her stick into the ground a few feet from the stone, sat down on the wet leaves, and leaned against the trunk of a tulip poplar. Even its relatively smooth bark dug into her back. Why hadn’t she thought of using the stick earlier? She could have tied her handkerchief to it, like fake flowers on a car antenna. She didn’t need to guard the stone. If it had been under the leaves that long, it wasn’t likely to disappear now.
    But she was glad he was coming.
    When she heard the Chevy, she went to meet him, picking her way carefully at first. She didn’t trust the greenbrier and grapevines not to trip her. But once she reached the clearing, she ran.
    Fred had thrown on yesterday’s rumpled clothes, and he hadn’t bothered to shave, but he looked good to her. His stubble rasped her cheek.
    â€œSo, what’s this great find of yours?” His eyes crinkled down at her.
    â€œI’ll show you. It’s just past Sylvia’s tree.”
    â€œOh?” But he followed without pushing her to tell him more.
    Joan was glad she’d left the stick to mark the spot. “Here it is,” she said. With a twig, she lifted the wet leaves by the log. “There. Look at that!”
    He looked blankly. “That what?”
    â€œThat Petoskey stone.” She pointed the twig at the gray, oval pebble nestled in the leaf mold.
    â€œWhat’s a Petoskey stone?”
    â€œA kind of fossilized coral. When they’re polished or wet, like this one, they’re easy to spot. I used to find them on the beach when our family spent vacations on Lake Michigan, especially up by Petoskey, where they developed. It’s the waves of the lake that make them so smooth. But this is a long way from the beach—it didn’t get here by itself.”
    â€œYou brought me out here to show me a lake pebble?”
    â€œI wanted to take it to you, but I was afraid I’d be destroying evidence.”
    â€œEvidence of what?”
    She took a deep breath and blurted it out. “I think someone shot Sylvia with it. It looks just like a spot on the side of her head. The right size and shape, I mean.”
    â€œYou and Andrew didn’t hear a shot.”
    â€œNo, but with Andrew talking and the birds carrying on, we couldn’t have heard a slingshot. Andrew used his Wrist-Rocket—it’s a kind of powerful slingshot—to shoot a line over the platform.”
    â€œYou’re serious?” He squatted down to look at it.
    â€œYes. It’s smooth enough that it might have fingerprints on it. I was afraid I’d destroy them. Besides, if I moved it, you wouldn’t see where it landed.”
    â€œYou’re not the only person to go to the beach. People down here like Lake Michigan, too, you know. Maybe it was a special souvenir to Sylvia, and she had it on her platform. It could have fallen off when she did.”
    Joan thought about it. “I don’t see how. She landed only a few feet from the tree, over there. Why would it fall here, on the opposite side? But if it was shot from a distance, couldn’t it keep going after it hit her?”
    Still squatting, he looked up at her. “What’s the range of that thing?”
    â€œA Wrist-Rocket? About a hundred yards. That’s why I took Andrew’s away from him when he was shooting at cans in our neighborhood. I couldn’t afford to fix any more windows.”
    Fred stood and looked through the trees, and Joan followed his gaze. Even without leaves, the tree trunks seemed to cluster together in the distance.
    â€œSo someone could have stood far enough away that you might not have seen anything,” he said. “It’s possible, I’ll grant you that. Even so, this rock could have come from some kid shooting out here, like