My stomach lurched. Two men in a cloud with two lines below. Not a cloud, a geyser. Spraying boiling water over the two men. The lines would be the mine cart rails.

The miners hadn’t left because it was too dangerous. The two men were caught in the steam vent. In her searching for the change in the stream, she would have found them. Or maybe the dogs found them first. What would she have done? Buried them? Gone for help?

Something nudged my memory, but every time I focused on it, it would scurry away. Maybe if I moved on, it would come to me.

She’d drawn Roy next. If I guessed correctly that she went for help, then maybe she sought Roy and the Mule Shoe Ranch. Had she sketched the drawings for him? She wrote checks, so she was capable of writing, but based on her note, her skills were primitive. Wait. That note was written to throw off an investigation. She might have only been able to sign her name on a check. Could she communicate a more complex idea? Regardless, Roy said she left without anyone figuring out what she wanted to say. And that she’d been very upset.

Or maybe Roy was lying. He’d locked himself in his office and didn’t go looking for Cookie after she told him the staff was AWOL. Because of that, Cookie almost died.

Could Roy have sent for me to uncover any of this?

I was getting a headache and not moving any closer to answers.

Keep going to the next drawing. The sheriff. Had Mae gone to the sheriff with the sketches, and the sheriff didn’t understand? Understood but didn’t believe her? Could the sheriff be tied up in this somehow? After all, someone got off that helicopter. Another hole in the puzzle.

I sighed in frustration. I’d started off well but didn’t know enough to decipher the rest of the drawings, and I had more questions than before. There had to be more clues, more evidence, more angles that I hadn’t yet figured out. Those answers were at the Mule Shoe.

One thing I did know for sure: whatever Mae had been trying to convey, she’d been murdered for it.

Chapter 27

Discovering the body missing from the stall dried Bram’s mouth and sent his heart racing. The killer must have moved the corpse, but why? Cautiously he searched the rest of the area, but he could find no sign of the missing man.

When they’d saddled the horses early this morning, he hadn’t thought to look over here. For usually being so careful, he’d been overlooking a lot lately. He cautiously opened the door to the center part of the barn. Bales of hay were stacked almost to the beams holding up the tin roof. He saw no sign of anyone lurking behind any of the bales.