by Linda Hall
The kettle sang. He rose and poured some instant hot chocolate mix into two mugs and then added boiling water.
Megan asked, “How does he know I’m here? I keep a low profile. I’ve always been really, really careful.”
Alec massaged her cold hands between both of his warm ones. “Stu and Steve and I are working night and day on this. Meanwhile,” he said, getting up, “I’d like to get this note over to Stu. What was the name of the delivery company that dropped off the flowers?”
She couldn’t remember if it was a regular delivery company or a florist van. She shook her head. She just didn’t know. The bundle of flowers had blinded her from remembering who it was who had driven them down here. Which is probably what her tormentor had wanted. She said, “The delivery guy didn’t have black hair. I do remember that much.”
Alec opened up his cell phone and made a couple of calls. She listened while he told Stu the particulars of the flowers and the note. “Yeah,” she heard him say. “I’m heading out on the ice in a few minutes to see what’s what.” When he closed his cell phone, it rang once. “Messages,” he said.
“It’s okay,” Megan said. “You can answer them. Go ahead. I’ll be okay.”
He pressed a bunch more buttons on his cell phone and sighed. “Ah, my mother. She’s called twice. I haven’t been able to connect with her since we got back. She always wants to make sure I’m home safe. I also have a message from Denise. Maybe something to do with the office. I have to head back there later today. Ah, and one from my friend Adam.” He punched a few buttons. “He sent me a text. Hmm.” He took a few moments to read it. “I’m not surprised at this. This one will interest you.”
“What is it?” she asked.
“Adam discovered that the e-mails both you and I received originated from the Schooner Café.”
“Are you saying that someone at the Schooner Café is behind all of this?” she asked.
“No,” he said, closing his cell phone. “It means that the e-mails originated from someone who happened to be using the Schooner Café’s Wi-Fi. But my friend can’t find who the precise person is who sent them. He’s working on it, however.”
“Are you going to go back to the Schooner Café, then?”
“I will, eventually, but I need to head out to the fishing shacks now.”
“Can I go with you?”
He stopped and looked at her. “You want to come with me? On the snowmobile?”
“Sure,” she said, surprising even herself by this boldness.
“So you’ve decided not to cut and run?”
“Maybe I’ll cut and run later. But I’d like to know what’s going on. This is about me. Maybe I could be of help. Let me just grab my jacket.”
He looked down at her and did a half grin. “You’re going to need more than a jacket.”
“I don’t have much of anything more. But I do have a wool hat and mittens. And Nori’s been so nice to me. I’m using an old pair of boots that used to belong to one of her daughters.”
“Let me run up to the lodge. Maybe Nori will have something that would work.”
“Boots are one thing, but Nori is miles taller than me.”
“Maybe her daughters, then. Don’t go anywhere.”
In no time at all Alec was back with a snowmobile suit of Nori’s, which fit her just about as expected. The tips of her fingers landed somewhere in the elbows of the suit and the legs of the suit dragged along the floor. Still, by rolling up the sleeves and the legs they managed to get it to fit—more or less.
Outside, he said, “If your hands get cold you can just roll down the sleeves. Here’s the helmet.”
She eyed him. “So you just happened to bring along an extra helmet?”
“Just in case. Have you ever been on one of these before?”
“Never. And I even grew up in Maine.”
“How about a motorcycle?”
She told him she had.
“It’s just like that. Sit behind me, put your arms around me and hang on.”
She held on tight and soon they were speeding across the flat surface of the lake.
It was exhilarating! For a moment she decided to allow herself to forget about all the threats and murders and just concentrate on the raw beauty of God’s creation. The white. The cold. The flat expanse of ice.
Twenty minutes later, Alec slowed. There was an island out in the middle of the frozen white. It was a lump of land smothered with snowy fir trees. Alec drove around the island slowly.
On the side of the island facing an open part of the ice was what looked like an inlet, or it would be in the summer. Alec slowed and pointed.
“There it is,” he said.
She could only see the back of the vehicle but she could see it was a truck. It looked as if someone had driven it as far into the trees as he could before abandoning it.
Alec sped up and drove away.
“Where are we going?” she yelled.
“We have to visit with Earl. He’s the one who gave me the tip about the truck.”
They were approaching a little settlement of fishing shacks.
The grouping of shacks looked like an arctic refugee camp with its minuscule, multicolored buildings scattered on the ice. There were some vehicles parked out on the ice, a few dozen dogs who ran around, some snowmobiles, plus a couple of guys sitting in lawn chairs smoking and talking.
“It’s a regular little town,” Megan said.
“It is. I think it’s more for the social life than for the fishing. Some of these guys even have flat-screen TV hookups in there. Earl does. Look at the satellite dishes.”
She did so and blinked.
“It’s different for me. I go out fishing to be alone. It’s my time to think and meditate and pray. I’m notorious for not even bringing my cell phone,” he said.
They walked toward a dark green shed with a shiny red door. “Earl’s place,” Alec told her. “Earl runs the only gas station in town. If you’ve gotten gas in Whisper Lake Crossing, then you’ve probably met Earl.”
“I think I have,” she stated.
At the red door Alec said loudly, “Knock knock.”
“Come in, come in,” came a deep voice from inside.
Alec opened the door and ducked into the room. Megan followed.
A smiling man, with a plaid cap and dark green jacket, was wedged with pillows into a lawn chair. He said, “Come in, have a seat. Forgive me if I don’t get up. The ol’ back ain’t what it used to be.”
“How’s the back?” Alec asked.
“Fair to middlin’. Gettin’ better maybe. Got another MRI coming up. Can’t stand up for any length of time, but the day I have to give up fishing is the day I pack ’er in.” To Megan, he said, “Fell off a roof a while ago. Did a number on my back.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said.
“It happens. Stuff happens. It happens to the best of us.”
She nodded.
Earl said, “Don’t just stand there with your faces hanging out, take a seat.” Alec pulled up a slatted lawn chair beside Earl. Megan sat in a canvas chair next to him. In the center of the floor a hole was cut away in the carpet and through the ice. Deep down she could see the flatness of white cold water. Beside the cutaway was a fishing rod on a metal V-stand.
Alec said, “We came about the truck, Earl. I assume it’s the one I saw on the north end of Twin Peaks Island between the trees.”
Earl nodded. “That’d be the one.”
“When did you first notice it?” Alec asked.
“About three days ago. When the ice melts, that thing is gonna sink. We better get someone to tow if off before then. But it’s not a truck I recognized, so that’s why I thought I’d give you a call.”
“Thanks. I’m glad you did,” said Alec. “Earl, you’re here a lot. Have you seen anyone that you don’t know hanging around, anyone unfamiliar?”
Megan fought the urge to say, Anyone with black hair?
“You me
an maybe the someone who drove the truck out onto the island?”
“Yeah,” Alec said. “You see anyone around here who might have left it there?”
“Did see one guy. Big guy. Mid-sixties, maybe. Had a lady with him, who had long hair with this white stripe in it. Like a skunk. Both looked like hippy refugees, if you ask me.”
Megan said, “I know who they are. My neighbors at Trail’s End. They’ve rented cabins. Brad and Vicky.”
“He wore sunglasses. Dark as Hades out here and he’s wearing sunglasses.”
Megan nodded. “That would be him.”
“What did they want?” Alec asked.
“They come around wanting to rent a snowmobile. Come asking everyone. After the man come around here that’s when I noticed the truck over there. The next day, in fact.”
Megan wondered how a person could see all the way to the island. And then seeming to answer her question, Earl pointed to a pair of binoculars on a small folding table. Alec was right. Earl did appear to make it his business to know everyone else’s business.
They chatted for a few more minutes before they left. Alec said thoughtfully to Megan as they made their way back to the snowmobile, “Maybe it’s about time I met those neighbors of yours.”
“Do you think they’re involved in this? How could they be? I don’t even know them.”
“Maybe I do,” Alec said. “It hasn’t escaped my attention that every time I come around, your big gray-haired neighbor makes himself scarce.”
Megan thought about that. The day they were walking down from the trail, Brad and Vicky had been heading right toward them. They had veered away at the last moment. In fact, Brad had taken Vicky’s arm and moved her to a quick right turn. Also, they never seemed to be around when Alec was.
Megan and Alec climbed back on the snowmobile. When they reached the island, Alec parked the snowmobile and they got off. The only sound was their boots crunching across the ice. It looked to Megan as if the driver of the truck had driven around the entire island looking for the perfect hidey-hole to drive into. He had found the perfect place. She imagined that in the summer this was a natural inlet between trees, a wonderful place for a canoe, maybe even a picnic. The casual snowmobiler wouldn’t even see this truck the way it was parked behind a huge fallen tree.
Alec bent down and examined the snow-covered ground at the opening of the inlet.
“What are you looking for?” Megan asked.
“Any kind of track marks.” Alec knelt and with a gloved hand touched a piece of ice. He snapped a picture of it with his cell phone.
Megan knelt. “Is that a track?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. My guess is that whoever left the truck here drove away on a snowmobile. If we’re lucky we can get the make and model of snowmobile by the tracks.”
She looked ahead at the back end of the truck. A fine skiff of snow covered it all around. Alec snapped more pictures. He said, “If I compare the amount of snow on the truck with how much snow fell recently, I can get a pretty good indication of when this truck was left here. And yes,” he said moving closer, “I think this is the truck I saw someone with a gun get into that day.
“Also, the fact that Earl doesn’t know this truck says a lot. Earl knows the make and model and year of every vehicle in town. He knows when anybody gets a new car. That’s why I take it seriously when he calls and tells me he’s seen a suspicious truck.”
Before they went up to the truck itself, Alec took more pictures. He walked carefully around it. To Megan, all it was was an abandoned old rusty pickup. The back hatch was down, and there didn’t seem to be anything inside of it. Alec took pictures from every angle.
“I thought cops used digital cameras,” she said.
“This new phone of mine takes better pictures than my old digital camera.”
Alec got a small shovel out of the back of the snowmobile and started shoveling out the bed of the truck. The license plate had been removed. “Surprise. Surprise,” he said. He turned to Megan, “Can you go over by the snowmobile for a moment?”
She looked at him. “Why?”
“I’ll tell you later. Just do it, okay?” His eyes looked tired. She complied. She had reached the snowmobile when he called her. “It’s okay. You can come back now.”
“What was all that about?”
“No one’s in the cab. I just wanted to make sure.”
“Oh.” She thought about that. Alec was obviously looking for bodies and there were none.
He tried the driver’s side door. It creaked open all the way. “Unlocked,” he said. “It looks cleaned out.”
Megan leaned around him for a look. The truck had an old-fashioned bench seat covered in cracked green Naugahyde, badly ripped and split.
Alec took out a small pen flashlight and aimed it into the various crevices of the truck. They went around to the passenger side. He tried the glove compartment. It appeared to be empty. No ID. He felt around inside.
“Why would someone just leave a truck like this?” Megan asked.
“When someone feels that someone else has seen said vehicle, that might be a good reason to abandon it. Or if said vehicle has been used in the commission of a crime, it might be abandoned. The other reason is that the owner just didn’t want it anymore. That happens a lot around here.”
He was still feeling around the inside of the glove box when he brought something out and said, “Bingo.”
“What is it?”
He brought out a little plastic battery case with snaps.
“What’s that for?” she asked.
“Batteries,” he said. “Rechargeable batteries. Good ones. In a battery pack.” He turned it over. “We’re in luck. The bar code’s still here and looks fairly decipherable.”
“What are batteries like that used for?”
“Lots of things. Cameras. Cell phones. GPSs. PDAs.” He placed it in a clear plastic bag and put it in his pocket. “We’ll soon find out.”
“Doesn’t Bryan use batteries like that?” she asked.
His head spun around. “What did you say?”
“Bryan used to use battery packs, didn’t he?”
“Bryan?”
“For his radio-controlled stuff. Don’t you remember? Remember Bryan was always into flying those planes? I remember he had packages of batteries done up like that.”
“I don’t think he’s into that anymore. He left all his airplanes and all that stuff in a box in my parents’ basement. When he got out of prison and moved away, he didn’t take it with him. But thanks for reminding me. Perhaps Bryan can give me some advice and help on this. I’ll photograph it and send it to him in an e-mail. See if he has any ideas.”
“Yeah,” Megan said. “You do that.” She didn’t mean for her words to come across as acerbic, but he looked at her for several seconds before he frowned.
Neither Brad nor Vicky were around when they got back to Trail’s End. Nori said the couple had rented a snowmobile and had gone for the day. Alec decided not to wait for them. He would come back.
It wasn’t until long after he left for home that Megan remembered she hadn’t told Alec about the picture of Lorena. She wondered if it was important.
ELEVEN
Despite what his mother wanted, Alec could find no information on Bryan’s girlfriend Lorena. He was currently putting a check through on the police database, but nothing had shown up yet. He sent the e-mail address on to his friend Adam, hoping the fifteen-year-old computer whiz from church would be able to uncover something.
He looked at the time readout on his computer. He decided to call his brother. He would ask Bryan about battery packs for radio-controlled models. His mother would like it that he was asking Bryan for advice. And then he would ask about his girlfriend. Maybe he could even get an address for the elusive Lorena.
It was eight here. Which meant it was six in New Mexico. He tried Bryan’s cell phone. After four rings it went to his voice mail.
“Hey, Bryan, g
ive me a call when you get this.”
He opened up his cell phone and looked for Bryan’s other phone numbers. Bryan would just be getting home from work now if he wasn’t working evenings. He knew that Bryan had a landline to his apartment.
Bryan’s home phone rang and rang. It didn’t appear to have voice mail attached to it. After six rings Alec was about to hang out when somebody answered in a brusque voice, “Hal-lo?”
“Bryan?” It didn’t sound like his brother.
“Who? Who you tryin’ to get?”
“Bryan Black.”
“This is a pay phone.”
“Okay then, sorry.” Bryan must have canceled his landline or Alec had misdialed it. He tried again and got the same irritated guy.
“Sorry,” Alec said. “I must have written down the wrong phone number.”
“Who did you say you were looking for?”
“Bryan Black.”
“Bryan? You mean the Bryan who lives at one forty-two? That’s his name, right?”
“Yes.” That was his brother’s apartment number. “What phone am I calling?”
“This is a pay phone at the end of the hall.”
“But you know Bryan Black?”
“You talking about that weird guy? Guy never talks to nobody. Never even takes a shower far as the rest of us can tell. If that’s the guy you’re talking about.”
Alec blinked. This was not good. Part of Bryan’s problem was that he suffered severe depression at times. He had never understood why Bryan wanted to move so far away from his home and support system after he was released from prison. However, he told their parents that he had found the Lord and wanted to make a fresh start somewhere else. “Do you live in the same apartment building as Bryan Black?” Alec asked.
“I’m two doors down across the hall from that slob.”
“Do you know him at all?”
“Nobody knows that guy well. Keeps to himself, mostly. No one comes in. Hardly no one goes out.”
“He has a Bible study in his apartment, I understand.”
There was a laugh at the other end of the phone. “Him? A Bible study? You got to be kidding.”
Alec ran his hand over his face. None of this sounded very good. “Have you seen his fiancée? Has she been around? She’s tall and has long blond hair.”