So it was happening all of a sudden. I didn't think Jake and I were responsible for it, but it sure sounded as if it was all something more than a coincidence. I could think of two possibilities. One, maybe someone wanted others to think that Windy Vista was an unsafe place. They wanted to drive people away, so that it would either have to close or be sold. It was hard to think that anyone would want it to close, though, especially given the fact that most of the people I'd run into seemed to love the resort.

The other possibility was that someone was just mad at Delilah and were trying make her life miserable and force her out of business. The twins had openly said they didn't like her. I couldn't imagine that Chuck and Jaw were too fond of her, either.

But would either of those things be enough of a reason for someone to actually kill Harvey?

Hackerman glanced at his watch, then at his wife. “We gotta be getting down to bingo at the lodge at the resort.”

Rhonda Hackerman made a face as if that was the last thing she wanted to do. Then she glanced at Jake. “You should come. And play.”

“I'm not much for bingo,” Jake said, smiling at her. “But good luck.”

She murmured something I couldn't understand and looked him up and down like she wanted to cover him in chocolate and eat him.

I slipped my hand into his and stared at Rhonda. “Enjoy bingo. We'll find something to keep us busy.” I winked at her. “If you know what I mean.”

Rhonda's face darkened as Hackerman pulled her away.

THIRTY

“I thought you meant we were going to go have sex,” Jake said.

We'd left the Hackerman's lot and continued walking past our cabin, taking the long outer loop to stroll in the sunshine.

“That's what I wanted her to think,” I said. “I swear, I'm going to punch her in the face if she looks at you like that one more time.”

“Like what?”

“Like she wants to strip and throw you to the ground right on the spot,” I growled.

“I hadn't noticed,” Jake said, but he was grinning.

“Maybe I'll just punch you instead.”

“Back to my original question,” Jake said, squeezing my hand. “I thought we were going back to the cabin to—”

“I need to think,” I told him. “Clear my head. So you'll just have to keep your desire at bay for the moment. Unless you'd like to go chase down Rhonda Hackerman.”

He squeezed my hand again. “Stop. The only woman I'm interested in chasing down is you.”

“Good answer,” I said. “And I'm too distracted to have sex right now.”

“Why's that?”

“Because all of this is bothering me,” I said as we walked. “Those idiots stealing the router. The vandalism. The murder. What exactly is going on here?”

Jake didn't answer right away. “I have no idea, Daisy,” he finally said. “Maybe it's just not a great place.”

I shook my head. “I don't think so. Delilah loves this place. It's killing her to see this all go bad. She cares about it too much to not be a great place. Harvey loved it, too. I mean, even Hackerman sings its praises. It's not a bad place at all, but I think someone is trying to make it a bad place.”

“Maybe just bad luck then,” he said.

We turned the corner on the loop and I was about to tell him I disagreed when we heard a scream coming from the main office at the bottom of the hill. We looked at each other, then broke into a jog to get down the hill.

Delilah was sitting at her desk in the office, frozen.

I looked around. There was no one else with her.

“Delilah?” I asked. “Are you alright?”

She was staring at the phone in her hand.

“Delilah?” Jake asked.

She tore her gaze away from the phone. She looked like she'd seen a ghost. “What?” she said, her voice raw.

“We heard you scream,” I said. “Are you alright?”

Her eyes returned to the phone and she stared at it blankly. “There's no money,” she whispered.

I glanced at Jake. He was watching her with a puzzled expression on his face.

“There's no money?” I asked.

“There's no money,” she repeated, louder this time.

“Delilah,” I said gently. “What are you talking about?”

“I just called the bank.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “There's no money.”

“Your money?”

“Windy Vista's,” she said, swallowing hard. “The account is empty.”

“It's supposed to have money in it?” Jake asked.

She nodded slowly. “Harvey and I, we'd opened up an account. We'd taken both of our savings and put it together. We were going to use it to try and invest and see if we could make some more money. I didn't really understand it all. It was Harvey's plan. He said we could buy some stocks and if the stocks increased money, we'd make money. And if we did, then we'd have some extra cash for around here.”

That made sense. It was a bit risky, but if it they were investing money they didn't need, then I could see Harvey's thinking. Try to increase what they had in order to put it back in Windy Vista.

“But it didn't make money?” I asked.

She set the phone down on the desk, still looking at it. “It made a little. Not enough for him to cash out, but he thought in a few more months it might give us a little something.” She set her hands on the desk like she was trying to steady herself. Her knuckles were white. “But we're so low on cash right now and I have to pay our bills. I...I just checked the account so I could withdraw the money to pay them.” Her voice shook. “And it's empty.”

“Completely empty?” Jake asked, his brow furrowed.

“Completely empty.”

“Who had access to the account?” I asked.

Delilah set her head in her hands, staring down at the desk. “Just me and Harvey. That was it. It was our money. My savings and his. We were the only ones.”

I wanted to put my around her and hug her. Her streak of bad luck was unbelievable.

“Can you check the account?” Jake asked. “See when the last withdrawal was made?”

“I already did,” she answered. “It was two days before you found Harvey. And he made the withdrawal. I just called the bank after I logged into the account.” She paused. “It's gone.”

All of it had to be more than a coincidence. Jake had accused me plenty of times in the past about being an overzealous conspiracy theorist, but this was too much. A dead body. Missing money. I didn't believe for one second that it wasn't all connected.

I just wasn't sure I could do anything about it.

“Can you call your vendors?” I asked. “Tell them you'll be late with the bills? Ask for an extension?”

She shook her head slowly. “I've been doing that for the last two months. This was it. There will be no electricity, no water, no nothing. I'm not even going to have time to get it ready to sell. We can't even make it through the summer.” She coughed and even though I couldn't see her face, I knew she was crying. “I'm just going to have to close it down.”

I looked at Jake, pleading with him to do something. But he just held his hands up, like he had no idea what to do. He was just as helpless as I was.

Delilah finally lifted her face from hands and wiped at her eyes. “I'm sorry.”

“Don't apologize.”

“I don't mean to dump all of this on you,” she said. “I'm just at a loss.”

“We understand,” I said. “It's okay.”

Jake's hand touched my elbow. “We'll give you some space. We'll check on you in a little bit. Is that alright?”

Delilah was staring straight head, her eyes focused on something outside the window. “Sure. Yes. Of course.”

I didn't want to leave, but I wasn't sure what else to do. Reluctantly, I let Jake pull me out of the office and we left Delilah sitting there, staring off into space.

THIRTY ONE

“I know your bleeding heart wants to help,” Jake said, shaking his head. “But my head says we need to start making plans to leave.”

We'd left Delilah and stopped off at the pool. Not to swim, but to think. We'd found a couple of chairs under an umbrella. It was crowded, the blue water filled with campers. Most of the chairs were covered in colorful beach towels and discarded clothes. Water bottles and tubes of sunscreen littered the table tops.