Cookie Kowalski was not only my very best friend on planet Earth, but she was also my receptionist slash research assistant who was darned near becoming a fantastic skiptracer. And she was my neighbor to boot, who cooked a mean enchilada. Like, really mean. Like so hot under its corn tortilla collar that my taste buds tingled for days after eating them – aka, perfect.

“Hey, boss. How’s it going?” she asked.

Normally we had coffee every morning and discussed the day’s business, but I’d left so early, I didn’t get to explain that I couldn’t have coffee with her anymore. And I’d never get to have coffee with her again. The thought sent me into a deep, dark depression, the one where I curled into a ball and sang show tunes to myself. Then I remembered it was only for another eight months or so. Maybe I’d get lucky and the little bun in the oven would pop out a couple weeks early. I’d have to do jumping jacks and run a couple of triathlons when I reached the beached-whale stage. Hurry her along.

“I’m investigating a cold case with Agent Carson. What’s up?”

“Oh, sorry to bother, but your uncle called. He has a case for you.”

Kit pulled up to the main gate, turned off the SUV, and started riffling through her briefcase.

“No bother, but Uncle Bob can bite me. I’m not talking to him.” I was a tad irked at the moment with my uncle, a detective on the Albuquerque police force.

“Okay, but he has a case for you,” she said again, her voice singsong.

“Don’t care.”

“It’s right up your alley. There’s been a rash of suicide notes.”

“That’s not right up my alley. That’s, like, two blocks over from my alley.”

“It is when the people who supposedly wrote those notes are missing.”

I straightened. “Missing? Where’d they go?”

“Exactly,” she said, a satisfied smirk in her voice. “Right up your alley.”

Damn. She had me. I felt rather than saw Reyes smile from the backseat. “We’ll be back in a couple. Fill me in then.”

“You got it.”

We hung up as I took in the area. The sign that used to announce a visitor’s arrival to the Four Winds Summer Camp was now covered with boards that simply said CLOSED with a few NO TRESPASSING signs posted here and there for good measure.

I glanced at Kit. “I’m surprised they’ve kept the camp closed all this time.”

She shrugged. “Would you send your kid to a camp where a mass murder took place?”

“Good point.”

“And I guess it’s partly out of respect as well,” Kit continued. She gestured toward the metal gate. “We’ll have to hike it from here. The gate is padlocked and I don’t have a key.”

From our vantage, I still couldn’t see the outbuildings or lake, but I felt a gentle tug from just over the hill. There was certainly something there.

This was going to be tricky. Kit didn’t know anything about my abilities, for lack of a better term. And after my high school fiasco with Jessica, only several of my closests knew. Even with them, I’d kept it to myself as long as I possibly could. So, investigating a crime scene with her so near and nothing else to really distract her could prove sticky, as I tended to talk to dead people.

Hopefully, however, my plan would work. If Reyes was going to tag along, the least he could do was be a distraction. We got out of the SUV and I nodded toward him. He nodded back, albeit reluctantly, and we were officially on a Mission: Impossible episode. I so wanted to dart around humming the theme song, but I didn’t want to add to Kit’s already low opinion of me.

I closed my door and started the hike up the trail to the grounds. Reyes seemed to magically appear beside me, but he didn’t press the issue of my – gasp! – walking away without him. He was just going to have to deal. I needed him to direct Kit’s attention elsewhere if we came upon any departed. I could always use my cell phone, pretend to talk into it when I was actually speaking to a departed, but that got me only so far. Sometimes the situation demanded a more assertive approach. For example, I’d once had to put this guy who died in a convenience store robbery in a headlock. It was really awkward, since there had been several cops standing nearby. I barely escaped a padded cell with that one, but the guy told me what I needed to know, so it was totally worth it.

But for some reason, I didn’t want Kit to see anything like that. She was good people. I didn’t want her to think of me as a raving lunatic. It tended to put a damper on relationships.

We hiked through thick foliage and across overgrown brush to get to a clearing sprinkled with outbuildings and a small lake. The grounds before us, once a thriving summer camp for kids, were now a series of crumbling cabins and neglected vegetation.

“This didn’t happen on Friday the thirteenth, did it?” I asked, noticing a small wooden rowboat in the middle of the lake, completely empty. It rocked gently to and fro. This was way creepier than I’d thought it would be.

“No,” Kit said, walking up behind me.

I strolled to the sunlit clearing, stepping carefully around a patch of prickly pear, and watched as children, all girls, skipped rope, played hopscotch in the dirt, created Jacob’s ladders out of threadbare pieces of string, and fell back in the grass, giggling until their bellies hurt.

The scene reminded me of my childhood. Long before Jessica came around, I’d had a best friend like that. Her name was Ramona. She had skin the color of dark coffee and wore her frizzy hair in two braids that started behind her ears and ended before they touched her shoulders. They stuck straight out to the sides more often than not, and that is one of my most cherished memories. I thought the sun shone just for her. Her laughter warmed me to the deepest depths of my soul.