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Mele,” he said sternly. “If you’re thinking about snooping into this murder investigation, think again. The captain already has you tagged as a problem. He’s not a guy you want to mess with.”
    I drew myself up, wishing it wasn’t so dark so he could see how outraged I was by his attitude. I mean—he’d been acting like he had forgotten who I was and now he was going to give me advice on getting along with his arrogant boss?
    Think again, cutey pie. You may be handsome, but I’m not one to flip for the next chiseled chin. Just move on and let me be.  
    That was what my face would have told him if only he could see it. And I might actually have said some of it out loud if something hadn’t rustled in the bushes at the far side of the courtyard and he hadn’t reached for his weapon. I gasped, and he pulled away from me and headed over to take a look.

Chapter Five

      “Possums,” he called back as he waved his flashlight around in the brambles.
    “Oh.”
    Okay, so that had been his flashlight, not a weapon. I guess he didn’t feel as threatened as I did out there in the dark. But right now, he was one of the things threatening me , and I wanted to get back to where the crowd was. Safety in numbers and all that.  
    I heard Jill calling me and I took the opportunity to slip back into the meeting room and find her. Let the good detective crawl around in the dirt on his own. The meeting was over, my informant hadn’t shown up and I was ready to get out of there.
    “Where were you?” Jill asked curiously.  
    “I’ll tell you all about it in the car,” I promised, looking around for Bebe.  
    I found her talking to a nice looking young man in hiking gear with a backpack and a walking stick.  
    “Mele, this is Gary Kramer,” she told me. “He’s hiking the Pacific Trail. I invited him to come stay at our place for the night, but he’s got a campsite rigged up somewhere and he wants to stay true to his objective.”
    He started explaining all about his need to live free and be humble and I pretty much tuned him out. He looked nice enough, but I thought his principles were a little crazy—like some sort of over-aged hippy.  
    But then I looked at him again. Camping out? Really? As though he didn’t have the money for anything else? And yet, the clothes he wore were definitely top of the line. His nails looked manicured. His haircut was exquisite. Hmmm.
    He seemed nice enough, but I was surprised at Bebe for taking to him so strongly, so fast. But wait. There might be a method to her madness. Could she be on a quest to make Michael jealous? That had to be it. I’d seen him on the other side of the hall and I was pretty sure she had too. I smiled and shook Gary’s hand and when he accepted her invitation to come to breakfast the next day, I didn’t say a word.  
    Once we were all three in the car, I pulled out my little note and showed it to them. They began to shriek. I’d figured on that. I rolled my eyes and waited for the clamor to stop.
    “This is why I can’t show you these things when they happen,” I told them earnestly. “You two do this every time. It’s like you want to make sure that the rest of the universe is informed.”
    They didn’t buy it. They thought I was the bad guy for keeping it from them.  
    “We could have come with you. We could have come in from three sides and caught the murderer! You cheated us out of all the excitement.”
    “What excitement? The possums? They aren’t even very cute.”
    We stopped for ice cream cones. I had a pralines and cream double scoop. We sat at a little table in the corner and we laughed and talked and whispered about my note.  
    “Who do you think sent it? Honestly.”
    “I don’t have a clue. I was really disappointed when nobody showed up.”
    They went through every name they could think of who might have sent the message to me, but we didn’t find anyone who seemed to fit the pattern very well.  
    By the time we got