Summer on Mirror Lake

by JoAnn Ross

  “There’s an old joke about an American and a Norwegian who meet while sitting next to each other at an Oslo bar,” he continued. “‘Are you Swedish?’ the American asks. ‘No,’ says the Norwegian. ‘I’m Norwegian. But I’ve been sick.’”

  “I’d be careful telling that joke around here,” Gabe suggested as Jarle roared with laughter at his own joke. Descendants of the Swedish loggers who’d helped settle Honeymoon Harbor still made up a good share of the population.

  Jarle shrugged shoulders as wide as Paul Bunyan’s ax handle. “Our countries have had a long and complex relationship. But, despite our differences, we’ve always thought of ourselves as brothers. And like brothers, we make fun of each other. The same way you Mannions do.”

  “Can’t argue with that,” Quinn said as the door opened and a family who apparently wasn’t put off by Gabe’s vibe sat down at a table overlooking the water. “Just think about the boat,” he advised.

  His brother hadn’t been kidding about the dinner rush. As the place began to fill up, and Quinn got busy mixing drinks, drawing and pouring beers, and waiting on tables when orders started to stack up, Gabe threw some bills on the bar and left.

  * * *

  THE HONEYMOON HARBOR police station was located across from the ferry landing and next to Cops and Coffee, which had been established by three detectives who’d retired from the Seattle police force. Not quite ready to take up fishing, they’d settled into small-town life, and given that the entire state of Washington seemed to run on coffee, they fit right in, catering to the caffeinated population. Playing on a cop stereotype, they also made the best doughnuts on the peninsula.

  “I have your book,” Chelsea greeted Donna Ormsbee, the manager and daytime 911 operator. She reached into her bag and pulled out a paperback featuring a woman standing in the middle of burning rubble. In contrast to her unrelentingly cheerful attitude, Donna always was first in line to put a hold on the latest apocalyptic novel.

  “You didn’t have to deliver it,” the older woman said as she clutched the book to her chest. For as long as Chelsea could remember, Donna had dressed for the seasons. Today’s blue shirt featured a summery beach scene with sugary white sand nothing like the Pacific Northwest’s kelp-and driftwood-strewn beaches.

  “I was dropping by anyway.” She glanced past Donna’s desk toward the glass door leading to Aiden Mannion’s office. He was talking on the phone, but when he spotted her, he held up a finger, letting her know he’d be only a moment.

  When he stood up, Chelsea allowed herself a moment of enjoyment at the way the dark blue shirt hugged a torso that she could remember being ripped, back when most of the kids at Honeymoon High spent the summer hanging out at Mirror Lake. Although his fiancée, Jolene Wells, was the lucky woman who got to touch, Chelsea figured that there was no harm in looking.

  “Right after you called me, I made a call to the state patrol,” he told her as he came out of his office, which was barely larger than her own at the library. Honeymoon Harbor didn’t have that much serious crime, and those who committed it usually ended up in the county jail. “The kids went into foster care four years ago after their parents’ SUV went off a coastal cliff. According to the officer who was first on the scene, the parents, who weren’t wearing seat belts, were thrown out as their vehicle hit the rocks on the way down.”

  “Meaning they probably died,” Chelsea said.

  “The car landed upside down, and somehow, the older girl, who was eight at the time, got her younger sister out of the car seat and carried her away from the scene just before the vehicle caught fire.”

  “That’s horrendous.” Chelsea’s eyes teared up at the thought.

  “According to the older girl—”

  “Hannah,” Chelsea murmured, remembering how protective she’d been of her younger sister. No way could she have imagined this scenario.

  “Yeah.” He glanced down at his notes. “Hannah. She told the first officer who showed up at the scene that her parents had been fighting, which distracted them from seeing a deer run into the road. We found the doe’s body on the other side of the road. I’m guessing that the girls’ father instinctively swerved to avoid it—”

  “And the car went off over the cliff.”

  “That’s what the detectives deduced from the skid marks. The car was pretty much burned down to the wheels, so there wasn’t any way to tell if anything had been defective, but the older girl told the police on the scene that her parents had begun drinking heavily in the weeks leading up to the accident, which was corroborated by the coroner’s report putting both parents’ alcohol blood level above the legal limit. There were also reports of an altercation between the girls’ father and another soccer dad during a kids’ game at the coast the day of the accident. Which could well have led to an argument on the drive home.”

  “Poor things.” Once again Chelsea felt a personal connection with the two young girls who’d made her library a sanctuary. Just as she once had. And, she considered, if she were to be perfectly honest with herself, she probably still did. Everyone had a place where they fit. Where they felt that internal sense of belonging. The library had always been hers.

  “Long story short, with no family to claim them, they landed in the system. I was talking with their caseworker when you got here. She told me they’ve been hard to place.”

  “That surprises me. They seem very well behaved and it’s more than apparent that Hannah would do anything to protect her little sister, Hailey.”

  “That’s part of the problem,” Aiden said. “Most of the families who take kids in are already on tight budgets. Even with the monthly payments from social services, two kids cost a lot more out of pocket than one. But the last time they tried to separate them, the younger one ran away.”

  “To be with her sister.”

  “Bingo. Making matters worse is that the older one—”

  “Hannah,” Chelsea reminded him.

  “Yeah. Hannah warned the caseworker that if they don’t keep them together, they’ll just take off.”

  “She’s not possibly old enough to manage on her own, let alone with Hailey to take care of.”

  “Mrs. Collins, head of Salish County Social Services, knows that. As does her caseworker. And they both know that Hannah knows it, too. But no one’s willing to take the risk.”

  “Thus the traffickers,” Chelsea murmured.

  “Traffickers?”

  “When I offered to drive them home, Hailey said they weren’t allowed to take rides from strangers because of the traffickers. The house didn’t look all that well kept. And no one was home.”

  “Mrs. Hayes, their foster mom, often has to work overtime to make ends meet. It’s my guess that taking in the kids helps with her budget, but from the inspection reports, the kids aren’t in any danger.”

  “Just ignored.”

  He shrugged. “Probably. But they aren’t the only latchkey kids in town. And their situation still sounds better than some of the kids I see when I go out on domestic violence calls.”

  Honeymoon Harbor was a beautiful town that at first glance seemed as if it could be a setting for a Pacific Northwest reboot of Mayberry R.F.D. But beneath its appealing quaint Victorian appearance and public spirit, it couldn’t escape the problems shared by any town or city.

  Chelsea thanked Aiden for taking the time to check the girls’ history and left the office, wondering what to do next. While she didn’t want to interfere with anyone else’s lives, neither did she want to risk those two girls being so alone. Because she knew all too well how it felt, coming home to an empty house. Then later, as things spiraled more and more downhill, coming home to find her mother passed out on the couch.

  “You’re a librarian.” She gave herself a pep talk as she drove to her apartment housed in a former 1880s lumber baron’s Victorian mansion. Although it involved climbing three
flights of stairs, her room gave her a wonderful bird’s-eye view of the boat basin, where the boats that weren’t out enjoying the perfect Pacific Northwest summer day bobbed peacefully on the water. There was also a row of houseboats that had been docked there since long before she was born.

  Smoke drifted in on the salt-tinged air, suggesting that someone was grilling meat and making her wish that she’d stopped for something at the market deli section. She’d been so busy planning the Summer Readers’ Adventure, she was down to Rice Krispies and some berries from Blue House Farm she’d bought at the farmers’ market. Deciding that she wasn’t hungry enough to drive back downtown to the market or one of the restaurants, she opted for the cereal, which she ate while Googling, hoping to find some way to legally help the girls without getting on the wrong side of social services.

  Something she’d spent much of her childhood and teenage years trying to avoid.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  GABE WAS BACK out on the deck overlooking Mirror Lake, nursing a beer while watching a sailboat skim across a skyline that had turned rose gold. Maybe Quinn and the Norwegian cook were right about him taking up sailing again while he was here. The last time he’d been on the water had been the summer of his senior year of high school when he’d built an eighteen-foot Northeaster Dory. After taking it out to make sure it was fair, he’d sold it to an orthopedic surgeon from Tacoma for tuition money.

  The conversation he’d had two days earlier with Quinn kept replaying in his head. The garage of the cabin—who needed space for five cars?—could make a good shop. If he were staying here. Which he wasn’t.

  His first sight of the ten-thousand-square-foot house named Eagles Watch owned by Ajay Deshpande, a Seattle tech billionaire he’d gone to UW with, was a revelation. And definitely more space than he’d bargained for when he’d taken his old fraternity brother up on the offer to use the house for the summer.

  The only thing it had in common with a cabin was that both were made of logs. Still, when he’d called to ask about leasing it, Ajay had told Gabe that he was thinking of putting it up for sale because business was so ridiculously busy he never made it over to the peninsula. Plus, having hit his midforties and with no wife yet on the horizon, let alone the four kids he’d once thought he’d someday have, he had no need for the six bedrooms (three of them masters), seven baths, a home theater, gym, indoor pool with a roof that opened for the summer, a two-story library, the five-car garage and a commercial kitchen Bobby Flay would be more than happy to cook in.

  And if all that wasn’t enough, eighteen-foot-tall floor-to-ceiling glass doors accordion folded open onto the three-tiered deck boasting an outdoor kitchen complete with another stove, fridge, farm sink, three gas grills and a brick pizza oven.

  A smaller one-bedroom cabin had been built next door on the seven acres for the intended live-in housekeeper who would, Gabe assumed, also cook. For now, a trio of maids from The Clean Team, a local cleaning service, came in weekly.

  “Hell,” his old friend had said, “feel free to stay as long as you want. Someone ought to get some use out of the place.”

  The house was an embarrassment of excess, yet at the same time, the builder had somehow created the feeling of the family home it had been designed to become. It was what Gabe would have chosen, if he’d ever planned to leave New York City to return west and start a family.

  Still, with private, wooded waterfront space like this being in high demand from wealthy buyers from California to Canada, it wasn’t as crazy an investment as it might seem. And unlike stocks and hedge funds, land was finite because God wasn’t making any more of it. If he bought it, then leased it out while high housing costs continued to rise, he could turn a tidy profit. And, on the occasion he did come home, he’d have a place to stay.

  Although it was still over-the-top for Honeymoon Harbor, Ajay’s dark British Racing Green Range Rover in the garage was a lot less conspicuous than the Porsche 911 GT2 RS Gabe had leased last year. It wasn’t as if he’d needed the outrageously priced car. Especially since he had a driver to take him from his apartment to his office. And he’d never driven it anywhere he’d even approached the need for its seven hundred horsepower. But as Carter had taught him, in the golden city he’d entered, a closet filled with designer suits, soft-as-an-infant’s-bottom Italian shoes, a flashier new car every season and a young eager-to-please supermodel mistress in your bed were all a way of keeping score. While he’d bought into the heady financial hierarchy, Gabe had passed on the supermodels.

  He’d forgotten how quiet life could be without the cacophony of city noise. The only sounds were the sigh of a salt-tinged breeze in the tops of the Douglas fir and cedar trees, the lapping of the Sound tide onto the sand beach, and the hum of bumblebees buzzing around the showy clusters of red, white and purple rhododendron blooms in the gardens surrounding the house. Last night he’d heard the hoot of an owl and the lonely howl of what could possibly have been a rare gray wolf, or more likely a coyote.

  The sound of a car engine broke that silence, and since his family were the only ones he’d given the wrought iron gate code to, he stood up, walked around to the front of the house and watched the SUV with the Honeymoon Harbor Police Department seal on the door come up the drive.

  “I come bearing dinners,” Aiden announced as he climbed out carrying a familiar red cooler.

  “Doesn’t Mom have something better to do than cooking?”

  “Live with it,” Aiden advised. “I had to when I first came back. And with school closed for the summer, even with the classes she’s taking to finish up her design degree, she’s got extra time on her hands.”

  “Maybe she ought to take up knitting.”

  “Don’t suggest that unless you want to be lugging a suitcase of sweaters back to New York.” On top of the cooler was a red-and-white pizza box from Luca’s Kitchen. “Dad brought me pizza when I was playing hermit out at the coast house. I figured it was the least I could do for you.”

  “Thanks. But shouldn’t you be home having dinner with your fiancée?”

  “Jolene and her mom are hosting a bachelorette party for a client at their spa, so I decided to come eat pizza and watch baseball with you. The Mariners are playing the Yankees.”

  “I may have grown up here, but I’m team Judge,” Gabe said.

  “Sellout,” his brother countered. “But it’ll make things more interesting. What do you want to bet on? The score or home runs?”

  “Why not both?”

  “You’re on,” Aiden said, as he set the cooler on the deck and the pizza on the table. “And to make things more interesting, how about going for a trifecta and adding in RBIs?”

  “Works for me. What time’s the game?”

  “Seven.”

  “We’ve got time for the pizza. I’ll get some plates and beer.”

  “Luca threw in some paper plates and napkins. I didn’t know if you had anything that plebeian here at Versailles.”

  “So it’s a bit excessive for Honeymoon Harbor.” And yeah, he had sounded defensive.

  “You think?”

  “Yeah. I think. Right now it’s home sweet home. Though I’m considering buying it.”

  “Seriously? I thought you were going back to New York after Labor Day.”

  “I am. It’d be an investment property. I happen to know the owner’s ready to get rid of it, so I could get a good deal.”

  Aiden looked out over the lake, where the reflection of the mountains was turning glassy again after being crossed by a boat’s wake. “When I came back home, I was at loose ends,” he said. “While I was spending those weeks hiding out at the coast house, trying to figure out what the hell I was going to do with the rest of my life, I never, not once, imagined I’d end up police chief.”

  “I doubt anyone else did, either.” Aiden had once been the Mannion family’s black sheep and Honeymoon Harbor’s bad
boy. A born charmer, he’d talked his way out of more trouble than a lot of guys would’ve gotten away with until he’d made the mistake of boosting a twelve-pack from the back of a delivery truck outside Marshall’s Market. That had been the last straw that had caused the judge to throw up his hands and threaten to send Aiden to juvie.

  But without attempting to use the power of his office, which John Mannion had far too much integrity to ever try, their dad deftly worked out a deal where, so long as Aiden stayed out of trouble for the last two months of high school, he could enlist in the Marines when he turned eighteen and have his juvenile crime-spree record expunged.

  “Dad had it figured out. At first I thought he was crazy. But—” he shrugged “—it turned out to be exactly the right thing for me to be doing.”

  “Good for you. And why do I get the feeling that there’s a message in there?”

  “I was just saying. Sometimes life can take some strange twists, like me getting through deployments without a scratch, then getting shot after becoming a cop, which brought me back here, but going with the flow can also take you interesting places you might not have considered.”

  Gabe got the message. Loud and clear. “Maybe coming home worked out for you and Quinn. But small-town life isn’t for me. I like the rush of my life in the city.”

  “That landed you in the hospital.”

  Damn. Gabe never should’ve told Aiden and Quinn about that. But Aiden must’ve been one helluva interrogator during his days working LAPD, because he’d gotten Gabe to spill the beans about what had happened to have him returning home. It had been the day after he’d landed in town, a Monday afternoon, when his two brothers had shown up at the house with thick rib-eye steaks and fishing poles.

  While they’d fished off the dock, Aiden had shared a story from his time as an undercover cop in LA that had sounded a lot like a modern-day gunfight at the O.K. Corral. A shooting in which he’d been wounded, his longtime partner killed, that had brought him home, where he spent his first weeks at the family coast house, trying to drink the state dry. But now he’d sobered up, gotten himself engaged, and was pulling trout out of the water, like Sheriff Andy Taylor at the fishing pond in Mayberry.