“Yes, that’s why she was presumed dead.”
“Presumed.”
“Sure. No body so we can only deduce that she’s dead.”
“What if it wasn’t her blood?”
“It was definitely her blood. The lab tested it and confirmed.”
“Oh.” I chewed my lower lip as I thought. “What if someone took her blood and dumped it there? Or she even drew her own blood?”
“First of all, she would’ve had to draw a lot of blood. Not just a couple tubes full like you have done when going for a blood test. Why go to that extreme to disappear? It wasn’t like she had a life she needed to run from but if she wanted to walk away, she could’ve picked up and done that at any time and nobody would’ve blinked an eye besides maybe her mother.”
He had a point.
“Okay, I’ll talk to you later.”
“I thought I’d swing by with a couple steaks around six and we could break in your barbecue,” he said.
I glanced over at the covered stainless cooker sitting behind me on my patio gathering dust. “That sounds nice but make it a bit later. Around seven o’clock. I’ve got some errands to do.”
“I love you.”
“Love you too.” After I ended the call I explained what Garrett said and then returned to looking through the books on the grass. I didn’t find any more hidden notes so I went back to answering emails on my laptop. Tracey sprawled out on the grass and appeared to doze for a few minutes while I worked. When she woke up I told her I had some errands to do. She glanced at her phone and said the garage called to say they were still waiting on a part for her car.
“Do you mind driving me home?”
I agreed to do that and we packed up the box of Ron’s stuff and climbed into the car. Tracey lived in the basement apartment of a small older two-level house in town.
“You know where I live now so you can just come over anytime,” she said as I pulled to the curb. “Or, you know, text me so we can do coffee or tea or burgers or even just hang since you don’t drink and I don’t need to drink either so...”
She hopped out and mouthed text me as she offered me a wave and a smile.
Once she was inside her place I punched an address into the navigation system. It was the cottagey area at Oak Lake mentioned in Ron’s book. I’d never frequented the area before but it was only an hour each way so I’d be back in plenty of time for dinner with Garrett.
I stopped for gas and checked my phone before hitting the road again. There was a message from Katie saying that she had come up with a list of places Ron used to go and she believed they could all be areas that would be useful in my investigation. She didn’t include the list, instead, she told me which nights she was free to go to dinner and named the steak house she preferred.
“Katie at her best.” I just shook my head.
Part of me felt bad for my old friend because she lost so much after last year. She’d nearly been killed because she was connected to me and then she lost her mom and her home. Although the fact that she had to grow up and get a job or two to survive like the rest of the world might actually be a good thing.
As I drove up to the lake area I thought about Tracey and how easy things were with her. My only other true experience with friendship had been my friendship with Katie. Being with Katie had always been a tumultuous whirlwind of activity and, at the end of the day, Katie did what was best for her. Tracey wasn’t like that. She was easygoing and made me feel interesting. I was cautiously optimistic about the idea of having a friend.
Dr. Chen would be so proud of me.
The Oak Lake area had one corner store with a gas station, an ice cream shop and a small commercial building with a combination of insurance and housing sales. I decided to stop for an ice cream before I headed out for a look-see around the lake. The woman serving up soft-serve behind the counter looked as old as the town. After I paid her for my cone, I showed her Ron’s picture on my cell phone.
“Do you ever remember seeing this guy around here?”
She took readers out of her pocket and slid them up her nose before she glanced at the picture. “Ronald Low. The guy who killed that nice Ava girl. Haven’t seen him lately on account of he’s dead but then you know that already because you’re that weird girl who found him.”
She was a helluva lot smarter than I gave her credit for and she watched a lot of news. I took a long lick of my ice cream cone.
“So before Ron turned up dead, or even before Ava went missing, any chance you saw just him or even the two of them together out here? I understand he enjoyed hiking up this way.”
“Nope, never saw either of them up this way but of course saw her mom from time to time.” She motioned for me to step aside so she could take the order of two boys behind me.
After she’d served them I walked back up to the counter. “Ebba Johansson? You’ve seen her around here?”
“Well, sure, but not lately. Not since her daughter was killed. Who feels like coming out to their lake cottage after that? Always said she’d retire here but who knows what’ll happen now.”
“I didn’t know she had a place out here...” I stared out the window as if I could see the cottage or the lake from where I stood, but access to the lake was still a half mile away and the other side of the street was only dense bush and tall cedars. “When was the last time you saw her?”
“Not sure. I heard rumor she was trying to sell that massage business of hers and maybe she’ll sell this place too. Can’t say I blame her. Your only kid dies. What else you got to live for, right? She should get a pretty penny for the cottage. All the small lakeside cabins out that way are selling off and they’re being replaced with McMansions. Guess our lake is the next hot spot to buy real estate. Who woulda thought, right?”
All kinds of thoughts started spinning through my head. I looked out the window and then gave another lick to my cone. “So how far is Ebba’s cottage from here?”
“The creek overflowed this spring and took out most of the road out that way so the road is closed for repairs. If you’re up for the walk, it’s about a mile by trail. You start off to your right when you’re in the parking lot at the boat launch. You’ll pass a couple other small cottages that are going to get torn down and rebuilt too. Ms. Johansson’s is the third one on that side of the lake. A small white house with gray shutters.” She tilted her head at me. “Not that you’re going to find anyone or anything up that way on account of the road’s closed and nobody’s living in the other cottages. Don’t know why you’d bother. Ebba’s too busy grieving so she ain’t been around.”
“Maybe I’ll just enjoy the walk around the lake then.”
She offered me a derisive snort.
After I thanked her for her time I returned to my vehicle. The heat of the day had the ice cream racing to cover my fingers. I did some fast lick-slurp maneuvers so that not a drop was wasted. I drove through town to the boat launch’s empty lot and parked facing the lake. It was a beautiful view. The lake was so calm and clear it acted like a mirror to the pines that surrounded it. I reached for my phone and took a picture of the view. I went to send the photo to Garrett along with a text of my location before heading on my hike but there was no cell range. Guess that would have to wait. I reached in the back seat for my pack only to find it wasn’t there.
“Shit.”
I popped the trunk to look but knew it would be empty. I’d left my pack in the kitchen with my dowsing rods and a few water bottles and had completely neglected to grab it when I left to drop off Tracey. Oh well, it wasn’t like I was climbing Mount Baker. Even by Ron’s hiking book notations this trail was rated easy and considered just a stroll around the lake without any inclines or challenging terrain.
I checked my phone for the time. It was an hour to get back home and a mile each way to check out this cottage. Even if I meandered a bit and
took in the view I’d be back in plenty of time to be with Garrett feasting on barbecued steaks by seven. It was a nice leisurely one-mile stroll so it wasn’t like I needed a pack full of water bottles and granola bars but it would’ve been helpful to have my rods. Especially because it was as likely a place as any for Ava’s body to be dumped. Maybe even a more than likely location.
“I’ll just have to make my own.”
I didn’t want to be hauling my purse around on the trail so I stuffed it under the back seat and locked up. I stuck my phone and keys in my pockets and set out to the edge of the boat launch parking area where a visible trail disappeared after a few feet into the bush. It didn’t take me long to find a forked branch growing out of a tree that lined the trail. With apologies to the tree, I broke it off and cleared it of leaves and shoots. It had been a long time since I’d used old-school divining rods, and just holding the Y-shaped branch took me back to that first time.
“If you have the knack, they’ll help you find water,” Gramps told me.
Neither one of us had counted on rods helping me find dead people instead.
Even with sweat pooling in my armpits from the heat, that early memory iced my veins.
With a shudder I held the Y arms of the branch in each hand, leaving the stick part pointing in the direction I was headed. The minute I stepped farther down the shade of the trail I felt my body relax a little. I walked with the rod out front and breathed deep the fishy scent of the lake and piney smell of the giant cedars around me. The path was weed-choked and hard-packed dirt and obviously hadn’t been used a whole lot but it wound scenically, following the bend in the lake.
I thought about everything I knew about Ava and Ebba and knew something was entirely off about the ransom murder thing. Ron had never felt like a likely suspect. Maybe Ebba killed her daughter and faked the ransom note. I don’t think Ebba hated her daughter, but it could’ve been done in an argument. I knew from my own experience that family relationships were complicated and seldom how they appeared. She could’ve killed Ava in a fit of rage. And if she killed Ava, maybe she killed Ron to cover it up? But then she leveraged her business to get the ransom and called me in to find Ava’s body? What would the purpose of that be? If she was the killer, why wouldn’t she just lay low and hope Ava’s body was never found?
I paused as I came upon the first cottage, which had a massive wraparound porch with a perfect view of the lake, but the entire building leaned precariously to one side. The new owners would no doubt level it but they’d have themselves a great location.
An annoying fly buzzed the sweat around my upper lip and I swatted it away and wished I’d thought to buy a water bottle from the ice cream shop before going on this jaunt. I picked up my pace, rod out in front of me, just wanting to get this over with. As I walked another idea occurred to me. Ava could’ve sent the ransom to her mother to get the money. Her note inside Ron’s hiking trail sounded like she was excited to travel with him. Maybe he wasn’t quite as excited about her and she killed him in the caves and then sent Mommy a letter to try and get the hell out of town forever. I’m sure she could’ve faked her own death somehow with all that blood but I wasn’t sure. From everything everyone told me, the relationship could’ve been a one-way street. She loved him and Ron was just not that into her. If she had faked her own death, hiding out at the cottage until she could make her escape seemed pretty likely.
The second cottage was only a couple hundred yards or so from the first and was in roughly the same shape. The land had been cleared behind and I could see clearly to the road that would’ve been the regular access to these houses had it not been closed. Windows of the cottage were boarded, the door hung off its hinges, and some development sign was displayed prominently in back facing the road. I thought I felt a tremor in the branch in my hand and I paused and stared hard at it for a couple minutes.
“If you’re going to do something, just do it,” I grumbled.
I tried stepping a few feet right and then left but the rod remained still. Some dowsers had better luck with a tree branch but my copper divining rods had always been more in tune to my skill. Still, I hoped this branch would give me an indication if Ava’s body was around these parts somewhere. I never thought to ask, but I’m sure Garrett would tell me the police had done a thorough search of this area once they found out Ebba owned land here.
At one point I paused to take in the view of the lake. I let the branch dangle from one hand as my other went to touch the wedding band still around my neck. Although it might seem weird, it felt comforting to have this token of my parents’ ill-fated match around my neck. I checked my phone but still no signal so I marched on with a mosquito chomping my right ankle and some gnats tickling my ears.
Dense shrubs briefly swallowed the trail, leaving me to wonder if I’d somehow lost my way, but when I pushed through I could see the small white cottage with the gray shutters just off to my right. I took a picture of it with my phone. It was just a simple building but my heart thudded painfully as I approached it. Warily I pushed away branches from my face until I got to the house’s yard and then began stomping through the knee-high weeds.
A movement in the grass to my left nearly caused me to scream but it was only a cute brown bunny getting the hell away from me. I breathed a sigh of relief and hoped I wouldn’t pick up a tick or step on a snake in this tall grass as I trudged forward. The branch didn’t move at all and I was both disappointed and relieved. If Ron killed Ava at the state park a hundred miles from here, it felt ridiculous to think he’d drive her all the way here to dump her body and if Ebba killed her own daughter she wasn’t likely to have brought the body here either.
I stopped walking once I got to the wooden stairs of the cottage. The place looked quaint but unused and badly in need of paint. The curtains were all drawn tightly closed with nobody enjoying the sparkling lake view but me. I sat down for minute, putting my self-made dowsing rod on the step beside me, and looked out to admire Ebba’s view. It was pretty damn awesome. The sound was a cacophony of birdcalls and honeybees and the smell was of lake water and pine. If you were going to retire and get away from it all, this would’ve been a good way to do that.
Turning back to face the cottage, I took in the faded wood siding. It really would be a great place to get away from it all. I hoped if Ebba had sold it that the new owners wouldn’t tear the place down and build what the ice cream lady had called a McMansion. Sure, it wasn’t in perfect shape but, unlike the other two that were beyond salvage, this one just needed a little TLC. A slap of paint and a few boards replaced and it would be good as new.
I left the branch on the stairs and walked toward the door. The steps moaned softly as I walked up. I thought I heard muffled crying but when I strained to listen, a murder of crows cawed and cackled in the blackberry bushes nearby. I reached for the screen door and it creaked loudly on rusted hinges. I expected to find the inside door locked but the handle turned easily.
“Hello?” I called out.
Once inside the dim cottage, my eyes strained to adjust to the darkness.
“What the hell are you doing here?” a woman’s voice sniffed.
“Ebba?” I squinted my eyes and turned in the direction of her voice.
“You were expecting maybe Ron’s ghost?” She hiccupped loudly and then belched. I was about to ask her if she’d been drinking but the stench of wine wafted over to me just as the question formed on my lips.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to just walk in.” Finally my eyes adjusted to the hazy lighting. “I didn’t expect to find anyone here.”
All the furniture was covered in white sheets. Ebba Johansson sat on an overstuffed chair in the corner. There was a bottle of wine between her knees and no glass in sight.
“I could say the same about you.” Her words were slurred and her lipstick smeared. “Never thought I’d see you here either.”
She po
inted a manicured finger at me, then lifted the wine bottle to her lips to drink. After she guzzled what was left inside she let the bottle just drop to the floor where it toppled over on its side next to a couple of full bottles.
“Sit down. Let’s chat.”
She nodded toward the sofa next to her chair. I hesitated at first but then walked over and sat down. Dust lifted off the covers as I landed on the couch.
“I guess this is a pretty peaceful place to get away from it all,” I said. “The view is amazing.”
“Mortgaged to the hilt but, hey, what do I care? Worked my ass off to buy it so I’m hanging on to it a little longer.” She lifted her chin proudly and then tilted her head at me. “Why are you here? Shouldn’t you be out stomping around Washington State with your rods looking for my poor daughter?”
An odd smile played on her lips at the end of that statement.
“Just thought this might be as good a place as any to have a look,” I told her. “Did Ava ever come out here with you?”
“Once or twice on her own with some guys. Maybe even with Ron. She’d party here and leave a mess. She never wanted to come out here just to relax with me.”
When she got to the last couple words her voice hitched and she began to sob. I let her cry. She’d lost her daughter. Sure she was sitting in a cottage in the woods by herself and getting drunk but who was more entitled to do that then someone who’d lost their kid to a violent death? It was unbearably hot and stuffy in the house.
I pulled my damp T-shirt away from my chest and blew air onto the pendant nestled in my cleavage while Ebba cried. I wanted to reach over and comfort her but I didn’t know how. I wasn’t exactly raised knowing how to show affection. If I ever cried, I was given a reason to.
After a few minutes, Ebba blew out a long breath and then she picked up her purse from the floor. She dug inside and took out a fistful of tissue and blew her nose noisily.
“Seems stupid, you coming out here,” she snapped at me. “You know what? I’m going to let you go. You are free.” She waved an unsteady hand at me. “Consider yourself off the clock. I don’t need you anymore.”
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