I nod, trying not to wince at the memory of her pale skin, that one glass-blue eye staring into the sky. “I’m the one who found her. I called the police.”
Mrs. Sterling gasps, whipping off her glasses and staring across the pavement like I’m her daughter’s savior. Like I am the one who rescued her from the lake, except that I didn’t. By the time I got to her, she was already dead.
I stare into eyes the color of a weak sky, just like her daughter’s.
It’s to her that I make the offer. “Would you like to come inside?”
* * *
The Sterlings step across the threshold and pull up short, planting their shoes at the edge of the foyer rug and staring with obvious shock. Not at the house, at the size of the place or the way it looks ripped from a design magazine, but at the lake, glittering on the other side of the plate glass.
Mrs. Sterling sees it and bursts out crying. She clutches the flowers to her chest and just lets loose, a continuous sobbing that racks her body so hard I worry she might pass out. Her husband stands next to her, both hands shoved in his pants pockets, glaring out the window in grim silence.
I give them space, shimmying my cell from my back pocket, and text Chet.
OMG the Sterlings are here. Where are you?
Three little dots dance around at the bottom of my screen, and then:
Still in town. Want me to come home?
My gaze creeps to the Sterlings, lit up golden by the setting sun, and I wonder what Chief Hunt has told them. I wonder if they’ve already been to the B and B, if they’ve talked to Piper. If they’ve heard what their daughter was doing on her last days in Lake Crosby...or more specifically, who. My thumbs fly over the keyboard.
Actually, prob better if you stay away. Wait there until I give the all clear.
“Chief Hunt said she was under the dock.” Mr. Sterling turns away from the glass, and for a split second, his expression matches his tone, glittering with accusation. As if I was the one to drag his daughter up from her watery grave like some kind of lake monster. He squints, watching me from across the room. “Is that true?”
His wife gives him a pleading glance over her shoulder. “Hush, John. I can’t do this right now.”
I slip the phone in my pocket and reach for the teapot, settling it on a tray with some cups and saucers.
“When, then? When would you like to do it? That lake out there was our daughter’s final resting place. It’s the reason we’re here.” His face is purple and his voice a cold, hard slap. I don’t blame him for being furious, but his anger seems more than a little misplaced. His wife didn’t do anything. She’s suffering, too. And clearly, she’s in need of some comforting.
He aims his animosity at me. “I need to know where she was exactly.”
Mrs. Sterling shakes her head, clapping her free hand over her ear. “I don’t... I can’t hear this right now.”
“I need to know, Sharon.”
“John, please.”
Chet and I are used to heated arguments. We’re used to slamming doors and loud voices and cuss words shouted over our heads. We’ve learned the best way to not get beaned with a plate is to stand still and keep quiet, and fade into the background.
But there’s no background here. Not in a house that’s basically one giant room, not with two grieving parents looking to me for answers.
“You should know that they handled your daughter with the utmost care. Especially the lead diver, Micah. He’s our neighbor, and a dear friend.” I don’t mention he’s Chief Hunt’s son, as that would only muddle things that have no business being muddled. I think of how he refused to bring her to shore any other way than by doing it himself, by plowing through the ice-cold water, even though he knew his father would refuse to give him any credit. “He could not have been more gentle.”
Mrs. Sterling is crying again, dabbing at her eyes with a sleeve. I eye the drooping roses in her other hand, the buds fainting over the crook of her arm. “Here. Let me put those in water.” I gather up the flowers, and she doesn’t protest.
“Does this Micah person know how Sienna got in there?” Mr. Sterling says, following me into the kitchen. “Do the police have a suspect?”
I lean the flowers in a pitcher I pull from the shelf and settle in the sink, then fill it with a couple of inches of water. “That’s a question for Chief Hunt, I’m afraid. I’m not up on the latest with the investigation. I only know what I saw on TV.”
Another lie, of course—the latest in a long string of them. But it doesn’t seem like a good idea to be spouting off his questioning of Chet or any of what Micah told me about Sienna’s jewelry, or that I saw her scarf hanging from Jax’s neck. Better to let the police decide which information they want to share.
“They won’t tell us anything,” Mr. Sterling fumes. “What kind of operation doesn’t tell the parents what they’re doing to find their daughter’s killer? This is ridiculous. It’s bullshit.”
It is bullshit, and I’m pretty sure his question was rhetorical.
I fill the teapot with hot water, drop in a bag of Lipton and carry everything over to the couches. “Please, let’s sit down.”
I point Mrs. Sterling to a couch, but the problem with a house that’s built around lake views is that there’s not a seat in the house without one. She sinks onto the cushion facing the kitchen, giving her a clear shot of Micah’s dock farther up the cove, but at least from where she’s sitting, she can’t see ours.
I sit at the opposite end, busy myself with the arranging of cups on the coffee table.
Mr. Sterling has too much nervous energy to sit. He paces along the edge of the carpet. “I told her to let it go. I told her this podcasting business was dangerous. If somebody got away with murder all those years ago, you better believe they’ll murder again.”
“I saw her Twitter feed, all the stuff about Bobby—Skeleton Bob. Why did she think he was murdered?”
“Because of the necklace.”
“John.” Mrs. Sterling flashes a glance in my direction. “We’re not supposed to talk about the necklace.”
I sink onto a chair and shuffle through my memories of the weeks after Bobby and his Camaro emerged from the depths, dripping in mud and gunk. After two recreational divers swam up on Bobby’s car, Micah and his boys brought it to the surface and turned the accidental discovery into a walking advertisement for his company. It was on every front page and television screen in the Southeast, and made Lake Hunters into a household name. Thanks to Bobby Holmes, Micah became a local celebrity.
But I’ve heard all the stories. I’ve read all the articles. None of them mentioned a necklace, and Sienna wasn’t wearing one. I tick off the jewelry Micah told us he’s combing the bottom of the lake for—hoop earrings, a pearl bracelet and watch, a ring. He didn’t mention a necklace. I’m certain of it.
“That necklace got our daughter killed. It’s the reason Sienna is dead.” He is pacing now, in long strides perpendicular to the couches, back and forth across the carpet. “I will shout about that thing in the town square if I have to. I won’t shut up until they find who did this to our daughter.”
His wife frowns. “We don’t know she’s dead because of the necklace.”
He stops abruptly. “Don’t be ridiculous. That necklace is a clue. Sienna always said that necklace was going to make her famous, and it did, didn’t it? Our daughter is famous, but it’s because she’s dead. Because she was murdered.”
“I don’t understand,” I say. “What necklace, and how did she connect it to Skeleton Bob? Because there are thousands of people on the lake every summer. It could have come off a skier’s neck last decade, or somebody could have flung it out of a car ten minutes ago.”
“Because of Jeremy—he’s the diver who found the car. He took the necklace from the car and hung it around his neck. He wore it like some kind of trophy. Bu
t Sienna saw the engraving on the back, and she traced it to here, to the lake. That’s when he told her what really happened.”
I sit very still, a freezing cold finger climbing my spine. How many necklaces are there in the world? Billions, probably. But a necklace she could trace to Lake Crosby? What are the odds?
“What did the necklace look like?”
My voice sounds all wrong. Too high, quivering in my skull like an airplane going down because surely, surely they’re not talking about the same necklace.
“A dog tag with the town’s coordinates,” Mrs. Sterling says, and her words leach to the lining of my stomach. “You know. The intersection of longitude and latitude smack in the center of the lake. It was gold.”
Not just gold. Solid, weighty twenty-four-karat gold. Only the best for Diana’s boys.
Fresh tears are brimming in Mrs. Sterling’s eyes, and she buries her face in her hands. “I just can’t believe this is happening. We made it through childhood without her choking on a marble. She didn’t get shot up at school or die in some fiery crash when she got her license. Every time we reached this big milestone in her life, I thought, whew, we made it through another phase alive.” She looks up, her cheeks slick with tears. “And now this. How did this happen? Mrs. Keller, do you have children?”
I shake my head, try not to throw up. “No.”
“Well, be glad. Being a parent is a constant worry. It never goes away, ever. Not even when they’re grown and gone. It’s the burden of being a mother.”
I don’t even know what to say to that. My mother didn’t worry, not even a little bit, but I have bigger problems. Tell Paul I need to talk to him, Jax said, right before a girl with his necklace turned up dead, and Paul took off into the woods. Only a guilty man would do that. A man with something to hide.
“Where’s this necklace now?”
“That’s the problem,” Mr. Sterling says. “Nobody can tell us. Not the police. Not the people in the B and B.”
Mrs. Sterling nods, her summer-blue eyes boring into mine. “It’s gone. The necklace has vanished.”
31
I don’t wait until the Sterlings are done with their impromptu memorial. As soon as they’ve carted the flowers out the back door, the second they’ve rounded the corner for the stairs that will lead them down to the dock, I’m reaching for my cell. Chet’s number rings and rings, then pushes me to voice mail.
“Chet, call me. Sienna came to town with a necklace that connects Bobby to Jax. Did she say anything to you about it, or was she maybe wearing one? Either way, it’s MIA. Call me the second you hear this.”
I hang up and stare out the window, at the lake and hills and light that’s fading fast.
Being responsible for a man’s death would drive a person batty. It would drive me batty. Chet, too, probably. Maybe Jax ran Bobby off the road. Maybe Jax saw it happen and jumped in to save him, losing his necklace in the process. Or maybe it was worse than that—maybe he was sitting next to Bobby in the Camaro when they crashed. Maybe he was driving.
The thought wipes me clear inside, a bright white light that’s blank and blinding. For a second or two, I think I might pass out from the enormity of it. It would explain so much. Why Jax kept quiet about it for all these years. Why he traded his golden-boy status for a reputation as the town loon. Why he crumbled under the weight of all that guilt.
And now the necklace links Jax to Bobby Holmes to Sienna, a shiny, definitive token someone was willing to kill to make disappear.
And what about Paul? How much did he know? I stare out the window and will my mind to come up with a safe explanation, with an answer that makes some sort of sense. My brain bubbles with half-formed thoughts, but the same one keeps rising to the surface: Paul doesn’t have an alibi for the morning Sienna went into the lake.
Would he do that? Silence an innocent stranger in order to keep Jax’s secret safe? Would he weigh loyalty to an old friend over another life? I think these things until my bones are ready to jump out of my skin. The Paul I know would never do any of these things, but if the past few days have proved nothing else, it’s that I only know the Paul he’s wanted me to see.
The Sterlings are down by the shoreline now, standing at the far edge of the dock. Mrs. Sterling tosses the roses in one by one, while her husband watches from three feet away. The wind picks up her hair, whirls the petals from the flowers. There’s a storm brewing, the clouds low and heavy over the mountain and in my heart, and I don’t know what to believe.
My phone beeps with a text from Paul.
Home in 15, see you soon <3
I grab my keys and race to the car.
* * *
The rain starts as I’m rounding the bend to Knob Hill, fat splatters on the windshield, knocking against the roof, sliding in rivulets down the glass. I flip the handle for the wipers and they squeak and whine, leaving greasy streaks on the windshield. It makes it hard to see past the next curve, to judge if the car coming at me is Paul’s or another SUV. If he was where he said he went, to the Curtis Cottage on the southern end of the lake, he’ll be taking a whole different road home than the one I’m on now.
A silver Toyota whizzes past, and I blow out a sigh of relief. The road before me is empty, and it feels darker than before. I reach down and flip on my headlights.
I dig my phone from the cup holder and call Sam on his cell.
“Kincaid.” It comes out gruff, the word hurried, and for an irrational second I wonder if he knew it was me when he picked up, if he still has my name in his phone.
“Sam, it’s me. Charlie. Is it true Sienna had Jax’s necklace?”
A pause. “I take it you’ve talked to the Sterlings.”
“Is it?”
Sam sighs. “That’s the rumor going around, but I’m still working to confirm. Nobody’s laid eyes on the necklace but the Sterlings and presumably the killer, and until we locate Jax, we can’t prove he no longer has his. I’ve got a call out to a detective in Ohio. They’ve gone to question the diver.”
“Paul owns all of Pitts Cove, Sam. He has for years.”
“I know.”
“Do you think he knew about Jax’s necklace in Bobby’s car? And not just because you hate the guy. I’m talking about real, concrete evidence.”
“Why, because trying to conceal what was at the bottom of Pitts Cove isn’t evidence enough?” A string of thunderous claps shakes the Civic down to the tires, and Sam pauses long enough to let it pass. “But okay, here’s what I know. I know Jax showing up on your back deck is a regular occurrence, once about every six or seven days. I know that his visits usually last somewhere between twenty to thirty minutes, and that by the time Jax leaves he’s showered and fed and wearing clean clothes. I know Paul never lets Jax leave without giving him a prepay card, which he pays for on the company AmEx. I know these visits are friendly and usually end in a hug.”
I stare out the slice of road lit up by my headlights, the way it goes blurry between swipes of the windshield wipers. “How do you know all that?”
“The cameras on the back of the house. You mailed me the log-ins, remember? They only go back sixty days, but there were enough of them for me to see all that. The prepay cards I heard about from a couple of cashiers in town. Apparently, Paul buys ’em in bulk.”
Sam gives me a moment for the message to sink in. Paul has been in touch with Jax all these years. He’s brought him food and clothes and a cell phone. He’s looked after him. I think of Jax stepping onto the back deck in Paul’s boots, the acres and acres of land he bought up around Pitts Cove, that time he made me ring him up for an expensive prepay card I assumed he wouldn’t use—and he didn’t. He tucked it in a pair of his old boots and gave them both to Jax.
It’s not some nefarious scheme to bury old bones, Paul said when I asked him about Pitts Cove, and I wasn’t sure I believed him.
Staying silent about a crime is a crime. If Paul knew Jax was somehow responsible for Bobby’s death, then he’s spent the past twenty years helping a man stay quiet about another man’s death, which in my book can’t be explained away. Jax should have reported it the second he popped to the surface, and Paul should have the second Jax ran blubbering to him.
“Where are you?” Sam says into my ear, and I almost drop the phone. I’d forgotten he was there, waiting on the other end of the line.
“Heading to town to find Chet.”
“Okay, well, be careful, and maybe lie low for a day or two, will you? Something’s not right here, and I’m still puzzling out what it is. My gut tells me everything’s connected, and that includes Katherine’s death. I’ll call you as soon as I’ve got a handle on the situation.”
We hang up, and I’m dropping the phone into the cup holder when something darts into the road. A brown blur, flying across the windshield. I stomp the brakes and give a jerk to the wheel, and the tires Chet’s been hollering at me to replace for months now lose traction on the wet asphalt. The car slides sideways, hurtling me toward an incline that will drop me ten feet, maybe more, into a creek. I overcorrect, hands slapping at the wheel, then overcorrect the other way, but it’s too much for the old Civic. The car lurches into a spin, flinging me around like a fairground ride. After five or six turns, my back fender connects with something solid, and a loud, metallic chunk slams me back into my seat, snapping my head sideways. My skull slams into tempered glass, and everything goes deathly silent.
No, not silent. There’s the steady patter of rain, the wind in the tops of the trees, another rumble of thunder. And heavy breathing—mine.
I sit very still for a moment, taking stock. My head hurts, and my chest where the seat belt tried to cut me in half. I press a hand to my lower belly, but there’s nothing. No pain, no cramping. Other than the whack to the head, I think I’m fine.
My car, however, not so much. I twist around, looking out the smashed back window on the passenger’s side. I’ve landed flush against a tree, a pine at the edge of the road. The impact folded a deep dent in the Civic and stuck a branch through the glass, letting in the sharp tang of sap and green wood and rain. I twist the keys, but nothing happens. The engine’s dead.
Stranger in the Lake Page 22