Fear of Frying

easily to you.“
    “I just haven’t had much experience. I’m so seldom wrong,“ Shelley said with a grin.
    “Secondly,“ Jane went on, “we need to formulate a few logical, reasonable theories to account for a dead Sam Claypool turning into a live Sam Claypool.“
    “A miracle?“ Shelley asked. She was cheering up. “Logical, reasonable, etcetera,“ Jane said.
    “Like what? If there were a logical explanation, we’d have thought of it already.“
    “Not necessarily. We’ve been too shocked at the apparent conflict of perceptions to study it dispassionately.“
    “You sound like a professor.“
    “I watch The Learning Channel, which is probably where you got that rye-bread theory. Now, seriously, there must be circumstances that could account for this.“
    “Give me an example,“ Shelley said.
    Jane paced the room, thinking. “Okay—here’s one. What if what we saw was identical twins.”
    Shelley’s laugh was more of a yelp. “Oh, Jane. If you’re going to be ridiculous, apply your Learning Channel experience. Be more modern. How about if Marge has been saving Sam’s toenail clippings and selling them to a syndicate of mad scientists who are cloning people?“
    “I like it,“ Jane said with a smile. “Okay, what if the body was somebody else wearing a really, really realistic mask. One of those latex things.“
    “That’s not quite silly enough,“ Shelley said. “But it is theoretically possible.“
    “Unfortunately, it brings us back to the same questions: why would anybody need to do that, and how could they have counted on us—or anyone-else-coming back to be witnesses?“
    “Okay—let me think this out. How about if somebody else was supposed to come back and be the witness?“
    “What do you mean?“
    “Well, suppose I was playing this trick for some reason. I might have gotten someone else to wear the mask, lie in the leaves, and all that. Then I’d come back here to the cabin, pretend I’d lost my watch, but was also sick at my stomach and asked you, as a good friend, to go look for it. I’d say I thought it might be on the ground at the far end of the campsite, and voila, you’d find the body.“
    “And before that could happen, somebody else accidentally stumbled on it for another reason entirely?“ Jane considered it. “Possible, I guess. So we weren’t supposed to find it, somebody else was. But why?“
    “Why is a different matter entirely. Right now we’re concentrating on how.“
    “Okay, but if we imagine this realistic mask, doesn’t it mean Sam himself has to be involved in the deception? Don’t you need to model it on a real face?“
    “Oh, I don’t think so. They have them made up to look like famous people at Halloween. I’m sure the President doesn’t let some toy manufacturer come into the Oval Office and make a mold of his face.“
    “I guess this mask thing is a possibility, but we can’t get hung up on it and miss something else. Shouldn’t we go to the lodge and see if we can find out where Sam says he was?“
    “Right. But we have another stop to make first. We need to go look at the place where we found him,“ Shelley said.
    “For clues?“
    “For our own peace of mind.”
    Jane opened the drapes before they left the cabin. “Wow! Look at that! You can see the creek now, it’s risen so much. But at least the sun’s trying to struggle out and it’s not raining.“
    “Come on, Jane. I’m getting hungry and it’s time for breakfast. We need to look over the campsite before all the good food is gone.”

    There were no clues in evidence.
    In daylight, they weren’t sure precisely where they’d seen the body. The whole site looked different. Rain had washed gullies and created weird little dams out of leaves here and there. The fire had not only gone out, but was a pool of nasty gray water.
    But there was a spot just beyond the clearing that looked as if the wet leaves were a little bit more squashed down.
    “He either got up and walked away or somebody picked him up,“ Jane said.
    “How do you figure that?“
    “Because there are no drag marks. Look.“ Jane put her foot on the leaves and pulled it back. It left a groove in the leaves and a muddy streak on the ground.
    Shelley nodded. “But it rained all night, I think. Other leaves could have gotten washed out over such marks.”
    They examined the area thoroughly, even turning over leaves to see if there were any objects or signs of blood, but discovered