Blood Trail

called a partnership desk," Bertie told her, caressing a gleaming edge of dark brown wood with a fingertip. "It's really two desks in a single piece of furniture." She lifted a pile of newspapers off one of the chairs and motioned for Vicki to sit down. "Ruth and I bought it almost twenty-five years ago now. If you don't count the cars or the house, it's the most expensive thing we ever bought."

    "Ruth?" Vicki asked, leveling a space on the desk blotter for her coffee.

    The older woman picked up a framed photograph off one of the bookshelves, smiled down at it for an instant, then passed it over. "Ruth was my partner. We were together for thirty-two years. She died three years ago. Heart attack." Her smile held more grief than humor. "There hasn't seemed to be much point in housecleaning without her around. You'll have to excuse the mess."

    Vicki returned the picture. "It's hard to lose someone close," she said softly, thinking that Nadine's eyes had held the same stricken look when she'd spoken of her twin. "And I'd be the last person to criticize housecleaning. As long as you can find things when you need them."

    "Yes, well ..." Bertie set the photograph of Ruth carefully back on the shelf and waved a hand at the rows and rows of titles; History of Marksmanship, Rifle Shooting as a Sport, Position Rifle Shooting, The Complete Book of Target Shooting. "Where do we start?"

    Reaching into her purse, Vicki drew out the lists of those who used the conservation area with any frequency - both sets of birders, the nature photography club - and laid it on the desk. "I thought we'd start at the top and compare these names with first the Canadian Olympic teams, then regional award winners, then down to local winners."

    Bertie bent over and scanned the lists. "Be easier though if you knew who had registered weapons in this group. Doesn't the OPP have ... ?"

    "Yes."

    The older woman looked a little startled at the tone and the muscles moved around her mouth, but Vicki's expression helped her to hold back her curiosity. After a moment she asked, "Just the Canadian teams?"

    "To start with, yes." Vicki took a long swallow of coffee and wondered if she should apologize. After all, it had been her own damned fault she didn't have that registration list. "If they turn up empty, we'll start on other countries. If you have ..."

    "I have every Olympic shooting team for the last forty years as well as the American nationals, most of the regionals, and local competitions from Pennsylvania, Michigan, and New York."

    The Canadian teams were in seven fat red binders. Even ignoring all the statistics, the photocopies of newspaper articles, and the final results, the daunting number of names to wade through started Vicki's head throbbing again.

    If this were a television show, I'd have found a bit of shirt caught in that tree that could have belonged to only one man, there 'd have been a car chase, a fight, time out to go to the bathroom, and everything wrapped up in a nice, neat tidy package in less than an hour. She laid the first list of birders beside the first binder and pushed her glasses up her nose.
    Welcome to the real world.

    A half a dozen times during dinner, Peter changed his mind about telling the rest of the family what he knew. A half a dozen times, he changed it back. They deserved to know. But if he could present them with the proof. ... Back and forth. Forth and back.

    A part of him just wanted to dump the whole thing on the older wer and let them take care of it but Rose's knee bumping randomly against his under the table kept knocking that thought out of his head. He hardly tasted a mouthful of his food because every time he inhaled, the only thing he could smell was his twin and the only thing he could think of was proving himself to her
    .
    "Peter! The bread?"

    "Sorry, Aunt Nadine." He couldn't remember her asking for the bread but her tone made it obvious she had. As he passed the plate of heavy black bread up the table he realized that whatever else he decided, he couldn't tell his aunt. To say I think I might know who killed your twin without having the proof so she could act would just be worrying at the wound.
    Besides, she thought he was still a cub and treated him not much different than Daniel. He had to prove to her that he was a man. He hadn't noticed before, but Aunt Nadine smelled very much like Rose.

    He couldn't tell his father. His father was wounded. He couldn't even talk it over with his