Her eyes, deeply hazel and rounded, stood out against pale skin. “Is it true?”
“Depends on what you’ve heard. I’m assuming Carol Ann Wilmette’s still on dispatch.” If so, the chances were good that everyone in town already knew the details and then some. Carol Ann never met a piece of gossip she didn’t pass along to her best friend Amelia, and Amelia never heard a piece of information she couldn’t twist into something salacious.
Then again, what could possibly be worse than the truth in this situation?
“Everyone’s saying Hudson’s dead. It’s all over town that someone up and killed him.”
Since the ambulance carrying his body was just pulling out of the drive, I didn't see any sense in hiding the truth.
"It's true. Hudson is dead." Somehow, saying it right out like that made the whole thing more real. Either that or the adrenaline level in my system had dropped. Whichever it was, my knees started to wobble, and when I pushed my hair back with a shaking hand, Jacy noticed and slid an arm around me for support.
If possible, her face went a shade paler as I let everything spill out. “It was horrible. I’m the one who found him. There was so much blood. His head. His eyes. Looking at me. Empty.” My breath whistled in and out as the tears came. “I think somebody hit him with the ice bucket.”
I broke down, the sobs coming faster as Jacy patted me on the back.
"Honey you've had a terrible week, and it just keeps getting worse. Momma's going to want to come out and burn sage to cleanse your spirit or some such nonsense."
Mention of LuAnne Wade brought a watery half-smile. Jacy’s mother claimed she carried the reincarnated soul of an ancient shaman and didn’t do anything unless she ran it past her spirit guides first.
“If I thought sage would clear my run of bad luck, I’d let her do it. Heck, I’d dance naked under the full moon and wave feathers around if it stopped the weirdness. Ernie told me not to leave town. Jace, I think I'm a suspect.”
The dirty look Jacy threw in Ernie's direction told me what she thought of that, and after giving me another pat on the shoulder, she led me over to the Jeep and settled me into the passenger's seat.
“Even if you can't leave town, there's nothing saying you have to stick around here all day. You sit tight while I fix everything. “
Out of the side mirror, I watched her advance on Ernie and launch into a conversation that I didn’t need to hear to know she was giving him a piece of her mind. He tried to keep her from getting a look into Hudson’s room, but I saw annoyance give way to sorrow when she did. Because of her inherent Jacy-ness, she softened and patted Ernie Polk on the arm. Even annoyed, Jacy couldn’t help but be supportive, and as far as I knew, this was the first murder he’d ever had to investigate.
Our little town ran more toward death by old age or car accident.
Returning with a sober expression, she pointed to my open door. “This your room? You have your key?”
I shook my head and waved my hand to indicate that it was in the room, then sat there while she gathered up my phone and my purse and locked the door behind her.
“Look at the line of cars. It’s going to take forever to get out of here.” Jacy’s presence had eased some of the heaviness from the past few days, but not enough. The need to move, to run far and fast from my thoughts, at least for a little while, was like a bubble of pressure in my chest.
With a wicked gleam in her eye, Jacy grinned at me. “That's what Jeeps are for. Buckle up, buttercup. We’re taking the scenic route.”
Hands flashing, Jacy steered the Jeep around the back side of the motel, skirted the trash receptacle, then gently nudged over the curb and drove into the field behind.
"I've always wanted to drive through a field of corn, but this is close enough." Tall grass whipped along the undercarriage with a shushing sound while Jacy found and drove through what had to be every furrow and divot in a four-acre span.
Her grin, considering the scene we'd just left, seemed less disrespectful of Hudson's loss than a way to reaffirm life and eased some of my overwhelming sense of doom and dread. She kept up an easy chatter until we finally came out onto the main road and instead of turning right toward town, turned left.
"It's okay, you can relax now." She grinned at me and then looked pointedly to where both my hands, white-knuckled, clutched the chicken handle on the dashboard. "You've lost your mojo, woman. I remember a time when you'd have been standing in the seat, holding onto the roll bar and whooping at the top of your lungs."
Jacy’s observation touched a raw spot. “My life doesn’t feel especially whoop-worthy at the moment.”
When Jacy took one hand off the wheel to find mine and give it a squeeze, I had a vision of my bloody body stumbling away from the Jeep in smoking ruins. Good grief, she was right. How far had I fallen? Who was this mouse of a woman inhabiting my body?
“Then again, I bought Spooky Manor yesterday. Seems like that ought to earn me a few points on the mojo scale.”
Dumbfounded, Jacy spun the wheel and pulled over to the side of the road. Twisting in her seat to face me, she said, “What did you just say to me?”
"Oh, pull your eyebrows back down before your face freezes like that and scares dogs and little kids. It was an impulse purchase … you know, near the register." Not that far off from the truth. "It was an excellent deal. Cheaper than first, last, and security. And I'm building equity." According to my mother, anyway.
“But Spooky Manor. I mean … what if it really is haunted?”
Considering my viewpoint on that particular subject had been waffling ever since I handed over the check, the only thing I could say was, “I don’t believe in ghosts, and I got a good feeling when I went over and tried to get a look through the windows.”
A pickup truck roared past, so close the wind rocked the Jeep. Nearly losing her side view mirror wasn’t enough to sway Jacy’s attention. “Let me get this straight. You bought a house, and not just any house, but one with a reputation for being haunted, without even getting a tour of the place first?”
The look on her face went from surprised to the sympathetic frown normally used around the very elderly who are no longer in full control of their mental faculties.
“When you put it like that, it sounds a little—”
“Stupid?” she supplied.
“Well, well. Tell me what you really think.” My defenses went up. “I was going to say reckless. Daring. Bold, even.” A spark of fire flared to life in my belly—the first one in days that hadn’t been born from fury.
“I’m getting an entire house—one with good bones according to people who actually have been inside—for less than the cost of renting an apartment. The place is a steal, and even if it is haunted, the ghosts can’t be worse company than my lying, cheating, soon-to-be ex-husband. Now, does that sound stupid to you?” There might have been more heat in my tone than I intended, but I’d had the worst week ever.
Jacy swung her door open and exited the vehicle. What on earth was she doing? Dumping me on the side of the road? That would put a cap on the crappy week.
To my great surprise, she let out a loud whoop and went into a butt-shaking dance. “She’s back,” Jacy sang out, gyrated a few more times, then came around to pull open my door. “Get out here and celebrate.”
“I am not dancing around on the side of the road like a lunatic. It wouldn’t be proper considering the events of the day.” But I was smiling.
My refusal didn’t seem to put a damper on Jacy’s enthusiasm, but she did get back into the car. “Well, you’re halfway back, anyway.” She yanked the shifter, put the Jeep in gear, and sped off down the road talking a blue streak about how we’d fix the place up and make it cozy.
Sighing, I let her voice flow over me like a soothing balm to the soul. I’d missed this—her—more than I’d realized. Enough that I lost track of all the turns she’d made and didn’t recognize the road.
“Um, where are we going?”
“You have been gone way too long if you’re lost in your own backyard. I’m taking you out for a day of peace, a chance to unwind. We could both use a break.” Wrapped up as I was in my own problems, I wasn’t so preoccupied I couldn’t hear the stress in her voice.
“Is something wrong?”
Before Jacy could say anything, my phone rang, and when I fished it out of my purse, my mother's name was on the caller ID.
"Bad news travels fast. I'd better answer, or she'll keep calling until I do." By the time I got done reassuring my mother that I was okay, we'd made several more turns, the last onto a road I knew well.
“Sorry about that. ” Thumbing the power button, I shut my phone off. “No more interruptions. Tell me what’s going on.”
“It’s nothing really.” Jacy’s hands clutched the steering wheel so tightly her knuckles showed the strain. “Nothing to worry about.” Except she was worried. Had she been hiding something this whole time? Only a jerk would have missed the signs.
“Spill,” I ordered.
“It’s nothing, really. We’re here, so we’ll have to talk about it later.” Jacy slowed until the tires barely crunched over the gravel road.
“Count on it.”
Through breaks in the trees, I caught glimpses of diamond sparkles rippling over Elbow Lake—so named for the v-shaped curve that, from an aerial view, looked like a bent elbow. Filing away the determination to dig an explanation out of Jacy at a more appropriate time, I inhaled and let the smell of the lake push everything else away.
CHAPTER 10
“This place. It’s like magic.” Jacy put my thought into words. “Every time I come to the lake, I feel like a kid again. You remember the night the bat got into the camp?” Her dimples showed when she smiled, the lines of worry smoothed over for the moment.
"How could I forget? The sight of your mother in her nightgown and bunny slippers … holding the dishpan over her head to keep the bat from getting in her hair with one hand, waving around Denny's butterfly net with the other. A moment that will forever be burned into my memory. Remember my dad trying to get up on water skis?"
“I do,” she replied. “You know we have some video footage of him floating around. I’ll have Denny burn you a copy. I’ve missed you, Ev. I mean, I’m really sorry your marriage didn’t work out, but I’m going to be totally selfish and say I’m glad you’re home. Sorry if that makes me a poor excuse for a human being, but there it is.”
“I missed you, too.”
I'll admit to going misty-eyed when we rounded the final turn, and the cabin came into view. "It looks exactly the same." Constancy—a concept I'd come to appreciate in the past few days. Well, that and fidelity, but for entirely different reasons.
Cedar shakes stained tree-bark brown, and a green metal roof made the cabin blend into its surroundings as if it had grown rather than been built among the pines. An early summer coating of rust-colored needles carpeted the path to the porch and felt both crunchy and soft under my bare feet. I didn’t even remember toeing off my shoes before stepping out of the Jeep, the action was so automatic.
“I wish I had my suit. The water looks tempting.” An hour before noon, and the thermometer had already climbed into the sweat zone. What surprised me more than the desire to dive under the ruffled surface was the hunger evoked by the scent of burning charcoal coming from two camps farther down along the shore. After the events of my morning, I hadn’t been sure my appetite would ever return.
Jacy swung the latch open and hung the padlock back on its metal loop before looking me up and down. “You don’t look like you’ve put on a single pound since high school, so you can probably still fit into that pink bikini you left there the night you and Hudson—” The grin fell off her face as she remembered the reason we’d come here. “Anyway, there are plenty of suits in the dresser. I’m sure we can find something to fit.”
While Jacy opened up the windows to let in the fresh air, I took a look around.
If the outside of the camp looked the same, the interior had undergone more than a few changes. Wide plank flooring made from pine, sanded and stained a rich walnut color, replaced the scarred vinyl I remembered. More pine, only in a golden tone, lined formerly unfinished walls and ceilings in the main area and in both of the small bedrooms.
“Hey, there’s a bathroom. That’s new.” It was housed in a closet-sized addition.
“The incinerating toilet. I tell you it’s the best invention of the century. No more trips through the slug zone to get to the outhouse in the middle of the night.” Those slugs had been Jacy’s pet peeve about spending a good portion of the summer three miles outside the nearest power grid. “No plumbing required and it runs off propane.”
“Are these the same bunks? They look different than I remember.”
To accommodate the extra additions, like me, that Jacy or her brother Denny inevitably brought to camp, her father had nailed rough lumber horizontally to the studs on either side of the door and added plywood over the top of them to hold mattresses. Rough steps allowed access to the top bunks, and a privacy curtain made from old blankets ran down the middle of the room to separate the boy’s side from the girl’s.
“They’re sort of the same.” I heard cabinet doors opening. “Or mostly, anyway. You know dad never was good with his hands. I don’t think he owns a level. When he had the walls insulated and finished, he asked the carpenter to use the old pieces and build something similar.”
When I stepped back into the main room, Jacy stood in front of the open refrigerator door—it ran on propane as well.
“Lunch options are limited. We have condiments, canned tomato soup, and eggs. Probably should have stopped for supplies, but I wasn’t thinking that clearly when we left. What do you think? Make do with what’s here or drive back to town?”
It wasn't hard to read her tone—Jacy wanted to stay, and now that we were here, I did, too. "Soup and eggs work for me. Can't be worse than those peanut butter and pickle sandwiches Denny used to eat."
“He still does that when he comes up here, you know. Melanie says if she’d known he had such lousy culinary leanings, she might never have fallen for him.” Jacy chuckled. “That’s what he gets for marrying the head chef at a five-star restaurant. Still, she’s at the point in the pregnancy where she’s craving weird things, so maybe he’ll get her to try one after all.”
“This will be their second? Or is it third?”
"Second." Only because I'd known her for so long could I hear something off in Jacy's tone. "They had the ultrasound last week. It's a boy." She changed the subject back to food, and I let it go for the time being. "Do you remember where to find the herb patch? These eggs would taste better with some chives, and there's basil in the window box on the utility shed that should be far enough along to not miss a few leaves."
A pair of loons cruised into the mouth of the cove, ducked under, then resurfaced right in front of the camp, and I realized I’d never seen one loon alone. They always showed up in pairs. Pretty sad when birds are more constant than people.
My mood threatened to turn dark again, so I pulled my thoughts back from a pattern sure to turn into a spiral and collected Jacy’s herbs. We ate our lunch sitting cross-legged on the dock and kept the conversation confined to memories of happier times. When the plates and bowls were clean, Jacy dug out bathing suits, including the infamous pink bikini—which only fit because I’d burned off some weight the past few days.
“Up for a paddle?” She tossed me a wrap that doubled as a towel. “It takes about an hour to get to the dam and back from here by kayak.”
Ten minutes later, slathered in sunscreen, we launched from the grassy bank. It took maybe ten kayak lengths before my body fell back into the rhythm of dip and pull. Another five lengths before the rhythm emptied me out into a state of peace.
“Thanks for kidnapping me. I needed this.” The light breeze had died with the coming of noon, its loss turning the water to mirrored glass. I was
almost sorry when we reached the dam.
“We needed this.” Jacy stopped paddling, let me pull alongside. “We’ve been trying for a baby for over a year. My doctor couldn’t find anything wrong, so she referred us to a fertility clinic.” Haunted eyes met mine. “We’re going next week, but what if they say I can’t ever have a baby? Ev, I’m so scared.”
Turns out, you can’t hug a person from one kayak to another without one or both of you tipping over, so I had to settle for an arm squeeze and verbal reassurance.
"We haven't told anyone yet. I didn't want to worry my folks, and Brian's mother keeps asking when we're going to give her a grandchild. I guess maybe I should have said something because talking about it makes it seem less overwhelming, but I didn't want to make them worry, too."
“I’m glad you told me,” I said, holding an oar down in the water to keep the kayak from turning away from her. “There are so many alternatives these days, and it could be that you’re just psyching yourself out.”
Jacy sighed. “I know. That’s what my OBGYN said, but we pushed for a second opinion because if a specialist says it’s just nerves, I might be able to settle down and conceive. I think she was a little annoyed that we wanted a referral, but you know me. I’m a brooder.”
“You’re going to be a great mom, and I know it will happen for you. And if you need me for anything, I’m here.”
Jacy inhaled a deep breath through her nose, then blew it out her mouth. I could almost see most of the tension leave her body. “Okay. Good. I’m good now. Wanna head back?”
We turned and paddled in companionable silence until we were within sight of the camp. I heard the loud, droning sound just before the bee went by the end of my nose with barely an inch to spare.
At least, I thought it was a bee because I caught a glimpse of yellow as the body flashed past.
"Whoa." I don't care who you are--when something that big with a stinger gets up close and personal, you freak out a little. I tried to maintain my dignity, and just paddle faster to get away from it, but the bee took my apparent lack of interest as a challenge, sped up, and buzzed my head again.
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