“Hello to you, too. You look like hell, by the way.” Even from here, parked a good fifteen feet away, I can see he looks exhausted, the lines around his eyes and mouth deeper than just yesterday. His scruff is two days old, maybe three. I close my door, and the clap echoes across the water. “Have you been getting any sleep?”
“Do catnaps at my desk count?”
So no, then. Not sleeping.
I slide my hands into my back pockets, stepping right up to Sam, staring up at him. It feels strange to be standing near enough to see the amber flecks in his eyes, the scar from a long-ago biking accident that slices his brow. The last time I was this close, I planted two hands on his chest and shoved, hard enough he fell backward over a chair. He looks skinnier, too.
“What about food? And before you crack some joke, I don’t mean coffee and sugar doughnuts. I’m talking about real food. Something with vitamins and protein.”
I used to fuss at him like this all the time, egging him on to eat better, to dress nicer and study harder, and he used to roll his eyes and tell me he already had a mom and didn’t need another. Subconsciously, at least, there must be a reason I’m doing it now, trying to shoot us back to that place when we were on better terms. A kind of apology, maybe, or because I miss his friendship. All I know is that it feels good to be doing it again.
He checks his watch. “Do you mind if we hurry this along? It’s pretty much all hands on deck down at the station, and I need to be getting back. Why did you want to meet?”
“I saw Jax.”
And just like that, his impatience drops to the gravel beneath us, replaced with something sharp and intense. “When? Where?”
“On my back deck.” A tiny stab of guilt spears me between the ribs, but I manage to hold Sam’s gaze. “And two nights ago.”
“You’re freaking kidding me, right?” He shakes his head, looks away in disgust. “I was at your house just yesterday. You looked into my face and you didn’t say a goddamn word.” He flicks his gaze to Chet. “Did you know about this?”
Chet stuffs his hands in his coat pockets, turning his back to the wind. “Dude. You know as well as I do there ain’t nobody on this planet can tell Charlie what to do. Least of all me.”
Sam reaches for his phone, sliding it out of his pocket. “You know that cops in five counties are looking for him, right? You know he’s wanted on suspicion of murder.”
“I do now.”
“Jesus, Charlie. When a suspect is seen on your back deck, you tell the cops. I shouldn’t have to tell you this. Did you talk to him?”
Unlike Sam, I remain calm. I recount my conversation with Jax, word for word. His not-so-subtle implication linking two bodies to Paul. The weird way he peered through the trees to Micah’s. And just like Jax did, I save the best part for last.
“Watch your back? He said for you to watch your back? And you still didn’t tell me?”
“Jax shouts poetry at the tourists and presses his face to the shop windows, puffing up his cheeks like a blowfish. I thought he was an innocent kook. I thought it was a warning, not a threat. So, you can quit with the reprimands or we’re leaving.” I pause, just long enough to let him suck back down whatever he was about to say. “Though while I’m here, I might as well tell you the boat got loose this morning. Chet says the seats were slashed and the ropes sliced clean through. You can’t help but wonder.”
I leave it at that, with wonder. It’s as much as he’s getting from me. We both know what I meant by it.
Sam shakes his head, incredulous. “You really do have a death wish, don’t you?”
“Oh, stop. I’m telling you now, aren’t I?” I pause, chewing on a lip. “This also seems like as good a time as any to tell you I’m pregnant.”
“Congratulations.” He says it with so much disgust, I actually flinch. “You don’t need that man to help you raise a baby, you know. The Charlie I used to know didn’t need anybody. She could do pretty much anything on her own.”
“Everything but get herself pregnant.” My wisecrack lands like a belly flop, and Sam looks away. “Come on, Sam. You know this baby was made out of love.”
“That may be so, but Paul is still a murder suspect. Billy Barnes didn’t see him on Wednesday morning.”
Billy Barnes. The man Paul claimed to have passed on his early-morning run. The alibi isn’t holding up. The revelation is like getting punched; I’m breathless from the shock. My gaze pulls to Sam, his face set in hard lines as he watches it all sink in.
“Did you plant that Kingsport reporter?” I say, suddenly livid. “Did you get her to start that rumor?”
Sam doesn’t seem the least bit offended at the accusation. “Here’s what you don’t get, what you’ve never gotten—that I’m not the only one with suspicions. In fact, I’d be willing to wager that most people with a functioning brain are seeing the same thing I’m seeing—a man who stood to gain more money than he could ever make in one lifetime with his rich wife gone. Sure, okay, I’ll admit he got away with it the first time, but two female bodies under the same dock? That’s too much of a coincidence to be a coincidence.”
“You just told me you were looking at Jax for Sienna’s murder.”
“Okay, but ask yourself this—why is your husband running all over creation avoiding questioning? What has he got to hide?”
I look out over the lake, refusing to give Sam a reaction, even though his words strike a gong in my chest. All morning I’ve been thinking something similar.
“Did he tell you about the police report Katherine filed two weeks before she drowned?” My gaze whips to Sam, and he pauses, taking in my expression, which I couldn’t clamp down on fast enough. “He didn’t, did he? Somebody’d skinned a skunk and smeared it all over the leather interior of her car. She didn’t think much of it, either, at the time. Just needed a police report to make a claim on the insurance. The stank pretty much totaled it.”
That explains Paul’s face when I told him about the opossum, at least. What it doesn’t explain is why he failed to tell me about it. Because I saw his expression in the mirror. I know he made the connection.
Chet shuffles his feet, gravel crunching underneath the soles. “Sam’s right, Charlie. Things are lining up too tight. Maybe you should...I don’t know...put some space between you and Paul. Just until the dust settles.”
I shake my head—not because I don’t agree, but because I don’t want to. These are some of the same things Sam told me a year ago, and I hadn’t listened then, either—and not just because of his crappy timing. It was because of the words he used when he dragged me into that corner of the country-club kitchen, the way he’d said them with his lips curled in disgust. That Paul was a monster and a murderer. That I was an idiot and a fool. There’s not a bride on the planet who would have listened to all that ugliness.
For me, it was as easy as breathing. I chose Paul that day, and Sam here still hasn’t forgiven me.
He leans a hip against the freezing metal of his car. “If you’re not going to listen to Chet or me, at least talk to Micah. Ask him why he told me Paul and Katherine’s marriage had hit some rocks, that their relationship wasn’t as smooth as Paul would like everybody to think. That toward the end there, there was a lot of fighting.”
This time, I can’t hold back on my frown. Micah tattled on Paul to an officer of the law. He told a cop that Paul and Katherine were fighting in the months before her death. And not just a cop—Sam, who from the very start suspected Paul. Who would like nothing more than to slap on some cuffs and cart him down to the station. Micah had to know what he’d be implying with such a statement. Why would he say such a thing?
Unless it was true. The thought whispers through my mind before I can stop it, but I can’t go there. If that’s the case, if Paul and Katherine’s marriage was falling apart when she drowned, then how could I ever believe another word he says?
I feel myself losing it, that grip on everything I’ve been fighting so hard to hold together—my belief in my husband, my marriage—and so I do the only thing I can think of. I say what I brought Sam here for and, in doing so, take the heat off Paul and swivel the spotlight onto someone else.
“I hear you found Sienna’s coat in Jax’s cabin but that her scarf was missing.”
“From Micah, I presume.” When I don’t deny it, Sam scowls. “He shouldn’t be running around town talking up this case. He knows better. Next time you see him, tell him I said to keep his mouth shut.”
I roll my eyes and describe the scarf for Sam, every detail I can remember about the color and the fringe and the fussy pattern, the way it was long enough to be looped around a neck multiple times. I can tell by the way his eyes turn to slits that it’s hers. That scarf belonged to Sienna.
“How do you know all that?”
And there it is, my ideal opening. The perfect place to admit I saw it hanging from Sienna’s neck that first day. To step off this hamster wheel of lies and half-truths and come clean. Let the chips fall and trust they will fall the right way.
But that’s not how things work in a town like Lake Crosby, not with Sam steering suspicions. The story he would weave together from very few facts, the fabrication he so desperately wants me to believe. I refuse to give him the ammunition.
Because Sam is right about one thing. I am stubborn. Sometimes it takes me a long time to learn my lessons, but I always learn them.
I turn for the car, revealing the only part of the answer he needs to know. “Because when Jax showed up at my back door, her scarf was wrapped around his neck.”
24
June 12, 1999
10:36 p.m.
Somehow, they ended up in a tobacco field. Jax wasn’t sure how it happened, didn’t really remember much other than the music blaring and Paul shouting to slow down and suddenly they were airborne, flying over the field like the Dukes of fucking Hazzard. Jax hung his head out of the window and yee-hawed, or maybe it was Micah. They landed with a thud in the dirt and plants, teeth rattling in their heads, everybody laughing but Paul.
“Are you insane?” Paul unhooked his belt and flung himself between the seats. “I know you have a death wish, but Micah and I don’t. We’d really like to live, and we sure as hell don’t want to do that in a jail cell or worse, because if we get arrested Micah’s dad will kill us.”
Jax looked at Micah, and the two collapsed into giggles. They were way past buzzed now, wasted on too much tequila and thin mountain air. In the back of his head, Jax knew he shouldn’t be driving.
But he was also too drunk to care.
“He’s right,” Micah said, clutching his stomach. “My dad will murder us, and then he’ll bury our bodies somewhere nobody will ever find.”
They were right. Jax didn’t doubt Officer Hunt’s anger could boil over into revenge, or that he was capable of covering up a triple murder. Micah’s dad was scary as hell.
Suddenly, Jax’s door lurched open. He blinked, and there were two of Paul.
“Get out of the car.”
“It’s my car.”
“Stop messing around and get out. You’re done driving.”
Jax opened his mouth to say he was nowhere near done, but somehow, Paul had already unhooked Jax’s seat belt. He grabbed a fistful of Jax’s T-shirt and hauled him out of the car, then shoved him through the open back door. Jax landed facedown in the leather.
Micah clutched his stomach, laughing like a hyena.
Paul dropped into the driver’s seat and stabbed a finger across the console. “You shut up. I mean it, Micah. Not one word. I need to concentrate.”
Jax closed his eyes and they were moving again, bouncing across the dusty field, mauling some poor farmer’s tobacco crop.
25
“Here she is. I found her.” Chet twists in the passenger’s seat of my Honda and wags his cell phone in the air. “Sienna Anne Sterling.”
For the past twenty minutes, we’ve been sitting here in the deserted Dominion lot, vents spewing hot air at our heads. Sam is long gone, but Chet and I haven’t moved other than to scroll through our phones because I’m desperate for more information. I need to know what Sienna was doing here, why she was going around town, asking about Jax and Paul. I need a sign if I can trust my husband or not.
Chet passes me his cell phone, and there she is, the stranger I found in the lake. Those light blue eyes. That light blond hair. I’m staring at her Twitter profile.
I expand the screen and read from her bio. “‘Yogi. Vegan. True crime slut. Aspiring podcaster blowing shit out of the water in Lake Crosby, NC.’” I look at Chet. “That’s her. What shit?”
“I don’t think she means it literally.”
“Well, I know that. But she was in town to look into some old crime, and this bio makes it sound like she’d found something.” I say the words and realization creeps up my body, paralyzing me to the seat. Sienna came here to ask about a past crime. I found her talking to Paul. She was asking Wade about him. And now she’s dead.
The phone slips from my fingers and onto my lap. “Oh my God. Oh my God. I think I’m going to throw up.”
“Then give me back my phone before you yak all over it.”
He snatches it from my thigh, and I lean my forehead against the steering wheel and try to breathe around the panic. What if Sienna came here looking into Katherine’s death? What if when I found them, she was asking Paul about his swimmer wife who slipped under the waves and drowned? The doubts rise, pouring up and out of me, filling the air in the car with a sweet, sickly dread.
Chet yammers away, oblivious to my distress. He scrolls through her Tweets, reading them aloud with a running commentary. An expensive yoga retreat in Florida. Restaurants she’s tried. Books she’s read. Nonsense about the Kardashians. I hear him, but he’s miles away. Right now, it’s just me and Paul in this car, a man with six million dollars’ worth of motive and no real alibi.
“Hey, listen to this one,” Chet says, twisting in his seat. “‘Why were Lake Crosby police so quick to write #SkeletonBob off as a runaway?’”
I lift my head from the steering wheel. Blink. “What did you just say?”
“I said she wonders why the cops were telling people that Skeleton Bob was a runaway. I don’t remember anything about him running away from home.”
I snatch the phone from his fingers, and there it is, her Tweet from October 28. A little over three weeks ago. Relief slackens my bones, and I think I might cry. I think my body might melt into the grubby upholstery because she didn’t come here for Paul.
“She was here because of Skeleton Bob.” He was the unsolved crime she came here to solve. Skeleton Bob, not Paul, not his late wife.
“Well, duh. What did you think, that she came here for Katherine?” Chet’s eyes go wide with realization. “Oh. You did, didn’t you?” He laughs, a breathy sound. “That would have been awkward.”
“Not funny, Chet. This is serious. We need to tell Sam.”
Chet shrugs. “I’m sure he already knows. Once we plugged in her last name, she wasn’t all that hard to track down. A couple of clicks and he’ll end up like we did, right here on her Twitter profile. As a matter of fact, he’s probably already been and gone.”
I click on the hashtag, #deathinthedeep, and the Tweets fall into a neat column. Dozens and dozens of them from @SiennaAnne.
June 13, 1999: drug dealer and all-around bad guy Bobby Holmes disappears without a trace. When the cops closed the case without a body, the general consensus was good riddance. Nobody cared, for twenty years. #SkeletonBob #deathinthedeep
Bobby Holmes deserves more than fifteen minutes of fame. He deserves justice. Was his death an accident or a crime? The truth depends on who you choose to believe. #SkeletonBob #deathinthedeep
New details in the Bobby Holmes case, coming soon to a podcast near you. Not as open and shut as the police would like us to believe. #SkeletonBob #deathinthedeep #thetruthiscoming
I keep scrolling, but it’s more of the same. Tweets as advertising, meant to drum up interest for a podcast that didn’t yet exist. Unless there are recordings somewhere—her cell phone or laptop, maybe. At the very least, there would be notes, interviews, an electronic trail.
I frown, my gaze skimming the Tweets. “But Bobby Holmes wasn’t killed. He crashed his car into the water and drowned.”
“Mama was convinced he was in witness protection, remember? She was like, ‘Wherever that boy is, it ain’t some shithole town in Montana. Bobby’s smart, and he knows how to negotiate. He’s probably living large on the beaches of Mexico by now.’”
Chet grins at the memory, but I don’t want to go there. Our mother was always spouting off some stupid conspiracy theory, the more ridiculous, the better. For her, Bobby Holmes was a hero, a street-smart whiz kid who knew how to work the system. It didn’t matter a lick that he was a criminal, as long as he never got caught—unlike her husband, whose own incarceration was such a disappointment.
“My point is, nobody’s calling his death a crime, not even the police. Bobby landed in the lake by accident.”
Chet tilts his head, frowning. “Still. Now that we know he was at the bottom of Pitts Cove all this time, it doesn’t feel like the cops looked very hard. Wouldn’t he have busted through a guardrail or left skid marks or something?”
“There are always skid marks on that curve.”
“True. But when they happen at the same time that a person goes missing, seems like you’d have to try real hard not to put two and two together.”
Chet’s right, and he and Sienna have landed on a point all those ghost hunter shows missed: that nobody tried very hard to find Bobby Holmes. Without him blaring heavy metal music out the windows of his Camaro or squealing his tires in the church parking lots, the town settled back into its slower, quieter ways. For everybody but his sister Jamie, Bobby’s disappearance wasn’t so much a mystery as it was a relief. They were perfectly fine with forgetting he ever existed.
Stranger in the Lake Page 18