by J. R. Ripley
Twenty more long minutes went by. We’d all but given up on Mary McKutcheon showing herself. The sun was coming up stronger now and the layer of fog on the surface of the lake was slowly rising, as if an invisible hand was pulling back a blanket. It looked like it was going to be a beautiful Carolina-blue day. Several people had already turned to leave. The word breakfast was mentioned and hunger pangs promptly rose in my gut. A chocolate bar can only go so far and I’d left the fudge in the apartment.
“Wait a second.” I held out my arm and extended a finger. “What’s that?”
“You see something, Amy?” John sat taller, eyes scanning the water.
“There.” I wiggled my finger. “What is that?”
The susurrus of suddenly curious voices disturbed the near hypnotic sound the water made as it lapped against the beach.
A strong, cool wind was in our faces. A blurry, wet, white shape drifted sluggishly toward us.
“Dead fish?” someone asked.
“Don’t think so,” replied another.
“Looks like someone threw a bag of trash in the lake,” I heard one of Amy the Ex’s friends remark.
“Slobs,” Amy the Ex said with an air of disdain.
Could it have been nothing more than a few bags of trash floating in Ruby Lake, our town’s very own miniature version of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch?
Then I realized I was seeing a body. A human body. “That’s a person!” I leaped into the lake, ignoring the harsh cold.
I heard splashing behind me. Officer Sutton grabbed my shoulder and held me back. “Let me.” He sloshed forward through the water and muck.
Two of Amy the Ex’s companions fell out of their chairs in their haste to retreat.
The body was draped in sopping, white cloth that wrapped tightly to the flesh. A large, rounded hump was visible along the back of the body, though equally shrouded. Several bits of what I thought might be sago pondweed clung to the bobbing form. The pondweed is a submergent species of plant and a favorite food source for waterfowl, which dive beneath the water’s surface to reach the nutrient-rich plant. Only the reproductive stalk peeks above the water during the plant’s summer flowering phase.
Sutton carefully pulled a tendril of the drooping green weed from the figure’s face. It was a woman. Her half-submerged face was white and puffy. Nonetheless, I recognized Lana Potter behind that diving mask. “It’s Lana.” My voice came out a shrill whisper.
“Who?” John asked.
“She works at the diner.” At least she did.
The officer grabbed Lana Potter under her flaccid arms and pulled her to shore with John’s assistance. A long, black hose trailed behind her. Sutton removed her dive mask. Harsh red gouges outlined where the mask’s border had pressed against her face. I saw now through the wet, semitranslucent material that the cylindrical shape on her back was a scuba tank. Sutton turned his head toward the group of us hovering near the edge of the lake like a bunch of skittish ducks. “She’s dead.”
There were gasps and screams. A crow cawed in response.
Kim idly held her phone in her hand. She’d joked that she was going to get a shot of the widow in the lake rising from Ruby Lake and post it on YouTube. “We’ll be famous!” she’d quipped earlier.
Officer Sutton looked at her. “I’d better call the chief,” he said, his face set, his tone grim.
26
The police and EMTs arrived within minutes. Jerry now hovered over Lana Potter’s body while Officer Reynolds snapped pictures of the scene. Wearing nitrile gloves, Jerry carefully pulled back the volumes of fabric covering Lana’s form. A sci-fi looking contraption was strapped to her back along with the air tank. Curved PVC thrusters, their nozzles aiming toward her feet, were positioned along the side of each shoulder, attached with a stiff harness. Aluminum arms with controls on the ends were designed for steering, as I understood them.
As the day came into focus and under the sun’s dominion, the small fishing boat I’d been watching earlier came toward us, moving fast. I recognized the Sunset Sally by her distinctive orange roof. Captain Harrow was at the helm.
Moments later, the boat came to a stop and a younger man, who I now recognized as Jean Rabin, dropped an anchor over the side. Ethan Harrow unstrapped a rubber dingy from the stern and lowered it into the water. Both climbed aboard and Jean picked up the oars and rowed them ashore.
Chief Kennedy intercepted them. “Stop right there.” Both men stopped. “What are you doing here, Harrow?”
The big man looked pained. “I—we came to see.”
Jerry narrowed his eyes at the two men. “You know anything about this?”
Harrow studied Lana from a distance. “Maybe.” His voice a mere whisper.
Jerry pointed to the ground. “Don’t move from this spot. Stay out of my way. I’ll get to you two when I can.”
Despite the chief’s orders, I watched as Jean Rabin slinked away and took a seat some yards away on a fallen pine trunk. He held his head in his hands and stared silently out at the lake.
“What is that thing she’s strapped into?” Kim asked.
“It appears to be a jet pack,” Jerry said.
“A jet pack?” Kim’s nose wrinkled up.
“One of those water jet packs, I believe,” I replied.
Kim nodded in recognition. “I’ve seen people playing with those.” Riding them had become a popular recreational activity at the lake in recent years.
“Stand back, please.” Dan extended his arms and herded us away from the lake’s edge. Everyone was ordered to stand back and wait to have their names and contact information taken by the police. They had come to see the widow in the lake and I wondered if some sort of weird cosmic joke had come to pass. I knew next to nothing about Lana Potter. Perhaps she had been a widow herself. That would be a very weird, very eerie coincidence if that proved to be the case.
Andrew Greeley, dressed in black, stooped stoically over the body, watching the police do their work. An ambulance sat waiting to take her away.
“What was a waitress doing wearing scuba gear, a water jet pack and a white sheet?” Kim said.
Kim was clearly perplexed, but I wasn’t. “Meet the widow in the lake,” I replied.
Kim’s eyes grew. “She was pretending to be Mary McKutcheon!”
The police looked at her with curious eyes.
“Why the hell would she do that?” demanded Jerry.
“My guess is that she was put up to it,” I answered. “Lana was planning on rising up out of the lake.”
“Just like we were all waiting for,” Dan Sutton said.
“Why would a woman agree to a fool stunt like that?” Jerry asked. “And who might have put her up to it?”
I turned at the sound of plaintive howling. Gus McKutcheon came crashing through the woods from the direction of his house. “I think the answer to your question has arrived.”
Jerry looked from me to Gus, who stood unsteadily in his bare feet, wearing black trousers and a white shirt with the tails hanging out.
Annika, Ross, and Dominik appeared at the edge of the trail and took in the scene. Annika and Dominik held hands. Ross separated from them and wandered over to where Jean was sitting.
“What happened?” Gus froze in place, his feet sinking in the soft grass. “Lana! Baby!”
Dan Sutton stepped forward to stop him but Gus broke past him and ran to Lana’s side. He cradled her lifeless head in his hands. “Lana! Lana!” Tears ran down his face. “No, this can’t be!” He turned to the chief, eyes afire. “She can’t be dead! She can’t be!”
Jerry barked a few words and Officers Sutton and Reynolds gently pulled Gus away from Lana’s corpse.
Gus eyed them wildly, then spun on the skipper. “What happened? This wasn’t supposed to happen!” Gus’s hands were clamped around the fisherman’s collar.
“I don’t know,” Ethan Harrow said, looking glum and not a little in shock himself. One end of the long hose, which had a
pparently been used to pump water to the jetpack, dangled limply in his hands.
“Looks to me like she got tangled up in this crazy contraption and drowned.” Jerry jotted something in his notebook.
“She was supposed to rise up out of the water.” The skipper wiped his brow with the back of his sleeve. “I checked her tank myself.”
“So it was an accident?” Lance Jennings from the Ruby Lake Weekender had appeared from nowhere looking like he’d just been roused from bed.
Jerry turned. “What are you doing here, Lance?”
Lance explained that his father had demanded that he race over and get the story. “He heard about it on his police band radio.”
“Fine,” said the chief. “But get your story from over there with the rest of them.”
“But, Chief, can’t I get a statement?”
“I just gave you one!”
Lance reluctantly stepped back, snapping pictures from the camera around his neck as he did. I waved in Lance’s direction. I was going to want a word with him later. I’d tasked him with looking into who else might have seen Bessie Hammond alive in the hours before her death and wanted to know if he’d come up with anything.
Amy the Ex and her friends were huddled tightly, away from the crowd, speaking in low whispers.
“Looks like a horrible accident, all right,” agreed Officer Sutton, breaking into my thoughts. “A horrible, horrible accident.”
Andrew Greeley, looking at Lana’s limp form from two yards away through a pair of soda-bottle-thick glasses, agreed that appeared to be the case.
Chief Kennedy loomed over Gus McKutcheon. “It seems to me you’ve got some explaining to do. Was this damn fool stunt that got this young lady killed your idea, Mr. McKutcheon?”
Gus took a step back. “Well, I—”
“And you were a party to this?” The chief pointed his finger at Ethan Harrow.
The captain hung his head. His arms hung limp at his sides.
“This was all a hoax?” I heard the disgruntled widow-in-the-lake memorabilia salesman holler in our direction.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve spoiling things for everybody,” added his wife, clinging to his arm. “Now the real widow in the lake may never appear!”
“You hear that, everybody?” bellowed the man. “This was nothing but a hoax!”
“It wasn’t a hoax,” Gus said. His eyes pleaded with the chief of police. “It was only meant to be a joke. A harmless prank.”
“There was nothing harmless about it,” I replied.
Gus sank to his knees and buried his face in his hands. “I am so sorry.”
I wasn’t so sure exactly who or what he was sorry for. But I was sorry that Lana Potter was dead. Especially since she was so insistent that we talk.
And now she’d never talk again.
27
As soon as Chief Kennedy was through with me, I backed away from the lingering crowd along the lakeshore. I pulled Kim aside. “Come on,” I urged, taking her arm.
“Come on where?” Kim had wrapped herself in the blanket and looked tired.
“I want to take a look at that cemetery,” I whispered. I couldn’t risk anyone hearing. Especially the police or Lance, who was still sniffing around trying to flesh something more out of the story.
“Are you crazy?” Kim tugged the ends of the blanket tighter.
“Shh.” I pressed my index finger to her lips. “No, I am not crazy. With everybody busy here, this is the perfect time to get a look.” I took some satisfaction in knowing that philandering Gus McKutcheon’s goose was cooked for sure now.
“This is the perfect time to go home and get a nap,” Kim snapped. “I have no interest in getting a look at any dirty old graves. Not unless one holds a queen-size bed with a down comforter.” She waved to Officer Sutton. “Oh, Dan!”
Dan jogged straight over, ignoring the ugly look his boss was aiming at his backside. “Yes, Ms. Christy?”
“Please, call me Kim.”
He beamed. “What do you need?”
“Can I catch a ride back into town with you?”
Officer Sutton looked over his shoulder at the chief. “It might be a little while. But you can wait in the Bronco if you like.” He fished out his car keys and handed them to Kim.
“Terrific.” Kim turned and stuck her tongue out at me.
As Sutton returned to his duties and Kim headed for his truck, I marveled at my friend’s ability to get men to bend to her will. Dan was so happy to oblige that he hadn’t even asked her why she’d needed a ride. While Kim’s breakup with Randy was still fresh, it was heartening to see the wound was showing signs of healing. Kim’s a dear. Randy’s an idiot.
To avoid drawing attention to myself, I worked my way in leisurely fashion away from the scene at the lake and toward the McKutcheon property. I knew my way around pretty well by this time. If I spent much more time out here, I might legally be entitled to file a homestead claim.
Treading lightly, I crept up on the forlorn and neglected-looking cemetery. It wasn’t that I believed in ghosts or was particularly superstitious, but there was no sense taking chances of any kind.
Especially considering Bessie Hammond had met her end out here in this neck of the woods. A fact that, now that it had popped into my head, made me question the wisdom of my wandering around out here alone when her killer had still to be caught.
Then again, that killer could be Gus McKutcheon. And at the moment McKutcheon was otherwise occupied in the hands of police.
Though it was late morning, the heavy canopy of trees kept me in shadows. The forest was deadly still. Where were all the birds?
I wiped a bead of sweat from my forehead as I stood a dozen yards from the graveyard, taking it all in, before proceeding onward. The gate hung open on one broken hinge. The other hinge appeared to have rusted and come loose long ago. I counted eight tombstones. Half were simple stones partially sunken in the soil. The others were vertical sandstone grave markers whose names were now as illegible as those lying horizontally. No matter. The grave I was interested in was unmarked and far fresher than those that had stood here for a hundred years or more.
I exited the cemetery and turned to my right, toward the newer mound that had caught my eye the other day. Dirt and stones had been piled loosely a good foot or two above the surrounding ground. There was nothing to indicate what lay beneath. There was nary a weed, twig, or leaf on it.
The whole thing was rather odd. Why was the body buried here and not in the cemetery? Why had no effort been made to camouflage the site?
I knelt alongside the grave and ran my fingers through the cool earth. A woodpecker’s tapping sounded far off, reminding me of Drummy, my wood-pecking friend-slash-alarm clock. I’d missed him that morning, having been out the door before his ritual hammering began.
I pulled my phone from my pants pocket and took a picture of the mound. “Here’s some evidence for you, Jerry.” I clicked a second picture for good measure. I typed in the message: Fresh grave McKutcheon house—curious? I then texted both pictures to Jerry Kennedy’s personal cell phone along with my message. Let him dispute that hard evidence.
“Go ahead,” an unwavering voice said. “Dig.”
I gasped. In my haste to spin around, I got tangled up in my legs and fell to the ground sideways. I leapt to my feet, ready to fight or flee—preferably flee!
“D-Dominik!” The last time I’d seen him he’d been down at the lake with the others. Had he followed me? A chill crossed over me like an icy breeze.
“That is what you would like to do, no?” He swiveled his eyes toward the fresh grave. “You want to dig?” Dominik smiled now. “Maybe find your dead body?” His hands were deep in his pockets. “So. Dig.”
I licked my lips and nodded. What choice did I have? I bent my knees and began plucking away tiny rocks, thinking that maybe I could hit him in the head with one and make my escape. The stones were so small though, and I’d never had good aim.
&nbs
p; Feeling I had no alternative, I began digging earnestly with my fingers. The earth was soft and came up easily. While I dug, I kept one eye on Dominik. All the while, I wondered if I would get out of this alive or if I was digging to make room for me in that grave. “You mind telling me who he is?”
“I don’t mind.” Dominik stepped closer. “You want me to help you?” He knelt beside me and I caught a trace scent of bergamot.
“So, who is he?”
Dominik smiled, which only scared me all the more. Was he toying with me? “It is not a he. It is a she.”
I paused, planting my hands in the ground to keep from tipping over again. “It?”
“The goat.”
I shook my head. “The what?”
Dominik held out his hands and helped me to my feet. “Here, you seem to be tiring. Let me finish for you, Amy.” He gently moved me aside. “Besides, I’m not certain you will enjoy the sight we are about to witness. To tell the truth, me either.”
I stood in stunned silence as Dominik redoubled his efforts. In moments, he’d revealed a hairy, dirty white leg. I peered over his shoulder. “That’s a—”
“Goat.” Dominik took the word right out of my mouth. “Her name was Miss Kitty.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Like from the old TV show?”
Dominik shrugged. “Channing named her. She did say it was a name in one of your American TV programs. The Gunsmoke?” He scraped some dirt from around the hoof. “Would you like to see more?”
I waved my hands at him to indicate he could stop. “I’ve seen too much already. Please, stop.” I thought I’d gag seeing the tiny maggots silently crawling along the dead beast’s leg.
“Good. To be honest, I’d rather not see more myself.” He quickly covered the exposed portion of the goat.
“Miss Kitty was diseased,” Dominik said as he wiped his hands on his trousers. “She died about a week ago. We have been having some illnesses with the goat herd.”