Summit Lake

by Charlie Donlea

  Kelsey took a sip. “I can’t turn down a coffee invitation. I love this place. It’s beautiful, feels perfect for this town.”

  Rae smiled. “It’s a popular attraction, for sure.”

  “How long have you worked here?”

  “A while. I run the place now, since Livvy wanted a break. She’s the owner.”

  “Yeah? I was actually hoping to talk to the owner. For my article.”

  Rae made an I’m-sorry face. “That would be Livvy Houston. She’s hardly ever around anymore. Comes in occasionally, but not much. And not at all since Becca was killed.”

  “Why?”

  “It was too much for her. Police were asking her questions, then customers, too. Some detectives showed up from down South. It was too much.”

  “Are you here a lot?”

  “Every day now.”

  “Were you here the day Becca Eckersley was killed?”

  Rae nodded. “I was.”

  “Did you see her here?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Talk to her?”

  “No.”

  “Did Mrs. Houston?”

  “Yeah, they talked for a while. Livvy is friends with Becca’s parents.”

  “The police chief thinks Livvy Houston might have been the last person to talk to Becca before she was killed.”

  “From what I know,” Rae said, “she was. But if you want to talk with Livvy, you won’t find her here. She’s fallen off the map since Becca was killed. She lives here in town, though. West side, in the foothills. You could try making a house call. Not sure she’ll talk to you, though.”

  Kelsey pulled out her notepad and wrote down Livvy Houston’s name.

  “Anything you can tell me about that day? About Becca?”

  “Not much,” Rae said. “I was working in the kitchen and it was pretty slow, so I wasn’t out here much.”

  “You know most of the customers?”

  “Sure. Know their faces, anyway. Most of their names. Except on the weekends, we get a lot of out-of-towners.”

  “You remember anyone from the day Becca was killed who stands out to you?”

  Rae thought a minute. “Not really. No one I can think of. It was just a normal Friday.”

  “How long was Becca here that day?”

  “Couple hours at least. She was working on a bunch of stuff.”

  “Yeah, studying for a law school exam. You see anyone other than Livvy talk to her?”

  “No, from what I remember, she came in alone and left the same way.”

  Kelsey paused, looking at her notes and taking a sip of coffee. “Okay. You mind if I come back to talk to you about that day if I need anything else?”

  “Yeah, sure.” Rae pointed to the gossip group at the bar. “Everyone who comes in here talks about it. The regulars sip lattes and splash gossip around every morning, and they all have their own theories about what happened to Becca. Some of it’s pretty wild.” Rae smiled. “You’re welcome to join the conversation any morning.”

  “Thanks,” Kelsey said. “And thanks for the coffee.”

  “Good luck.”

  It was four blocks to the Winchester Hotel and then another quarter mile until she reached the hospital grounds north of the town center. The hospital sat on the banks of Summit Lake, and the automatic doors slid open when Kelsey approached the front entrance. At the reception desk she made inquiries until she was directed to the third floor, where she found the nurses’ station.

  “Hi,” Kelsey said. “I’m looking for Dr. Peter Ambrose.”

  “Sure,” the nurse said. “He should be in his office. Last door on the right.” The nurse pointed down the hallway.

  Kelsey smiled and headed down the corridor. When she reached the office, the door was open and she knocked on the frame. Peter Ambrose was sitting behind the desk paging through charts and typing on his computer. He wore blue surgical scrubs and a long white coat that had his name stenciled on the breast pocket. A nice-looking man with short, cropped hair and sideburns that bled into a shadow of scruff across his face, he had an All-American look. Kelsey could imagine him as the valedictorian of his high school class or the bowman of the Yale crew team, where he studied. Kelsey had done a little research into Dr. Ambrose. She always did some picking before she asked someone for help.

  He looked up. “Hi.”

  “Hi. Dr. Ambrose?”

  “Yeah.”

  “My name’s Kelsey Castle. They told me downstairs you might be able to help me.”

  He cleared a space on the desk by stacking charts to the side, then pulled the surgical cap from his head. “Come in.” He pointed to the chair. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’m in town writing a story on the Becca Eckersley case. I write for Events magazine.” She handed Dr. Ambrose a card as she sat down. “Are you familiar with the case?”

  He studied her card for a moment. “Only because the girl was treated here. I wasn’t directly involved.”

  “I’m trying to get hold of Becca’s autopsy and medical records from the night she was brought in. Is that something you can help me with?”

  Dr. Ambrose swiveled in his chair and threw his surgical cap into the trash. “I don’t think so. Medical records are protected, so you’d have to get permission from the family.”

  “That’s not happening. The family is very private. They’re not going to allow me to look at the records.”

  “Without their approval, I’m not sure there’s much I can do for you.”

  She paused for a moment.

  “You have full access, though. Right? To the medical records?”

  “Sure. If I wanted to look.”

  “Do you want to look?”

  Dr. Ambrose smiled. “I told you, I wasn’t the treating physician, so I have no reason to look.”

  “What if I told you I thought things were missed. I just need help getting my hands on some of this information and I know I’d be able to piece a few things together.”

  “Isn’t this an active investigation?”

  “It is.”

  “Why don’t you just let the police piece it together?”

  “They’re trying.”

  “And you’re going to do a better job than the police?”

  “Not better, just different. Homicides are solved all the time when new eyes look at old evidence.”

  “I bet that’s accurate. But again, I’d have to get permission from the family before I could hand anything over to you.”

  Kelsey nodded. “Okay. I understand.”

  “Why don’t you talk to the family? You might be surprised.”

  “Maybe,” Kelsey said as she stood up. “Thanks for your time.”

  “What’s the interest?” Dr. Ambrose asked as she was leaving.

  Kelsey turned in the doorway. With a runner’s body and big caramel eyes, Kelsey knew how to use her presence to get her point across. “First and only murder in Summit Lake. Prominent family. Young law student with everything going for her, squeaky clean and straight as an arrow. State authorities have taken the case from the local boys because this story stinks, and someone wants something buried and hidden. It’s exactly what my magazine publishes, and the type of thing I’m really good at figuring out.” She shrugged. “Thanks again for your time.” Kelsey stepped into the corridor.

  “Stinks of what?”

  “A cover-up.”

  “You know her?” Dr. Ambrose asked.

  “Who?”

  “The victim?”

  “No, but the little I’ve learned about her makes me think something’s off with the whole story and the current police theory.”

  “Which is?”

  “That a stranger broke into her house, assaulted her, and fled into the night without anyone seeing a thing.”

  “Sounds flimsy.”

  “And lazy,” Kelsey said.

  He ran a hand over his chin as he thought. “Who’s covering things up?”

  “I don’t know.”

>   “And why would someone hide details of a young law student’s death?”

  “Good question.”

  “You think my hospital is involved? My staff? That’s ridiculous.”

  “I don’t know who’s involved, Dr. Ambrose. I’m not making accusations, I’m looking for answers. And I need some help finding them.”

  He rubbed his hands together, finally folding them on the desk as if in prayer, then checked his watch. “How about this. I have to round on some patients this afternoon, then I’ll poke around and see what I come up with. I can’t get you any records or documents, but I can quietly read through what’s available and tell you what I find.”

  “You’d do that for me?”

  “I’ll do it for myself. Now I’m curious.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Give me a day to see what I can come up with. Let’s get together tomorrow night.”

  Kelsey nodded. “Perfect.”

  “There’s a place called Water’s Edge, just off Tahoma Avenue.”

  “Seven?”

  “That works.”

  Kelsey smiled. “Thanks for your help.”

  “I haven’t done anything yet.”

  She waved good-bye and rode the elevator to the ground floor, mentally checking off items on her to-do list. This was what early fieldwork looked like. She talked to many people and started down several avenues of discovery, some she knew would run off to dead ends and others would lead to more information that required further investigation. But if enough trails were started, Kelsey knew one of them would lead somewhere important.

  CHAPTER 9

  Becca Eckersley

  George Washington University

  December 21, 2010

  Fourteen months before her death

  December in the District of Columbia was bitter, with winds off the Potomac that ran up your back and into your spine. Becca pulled her scarf to her eyes and jogged to Old Main for her last exam before Christmas break. Butterflies floated in her stomach. Not from fear of Prof. Morton’s final exam and whether it would resemble the stolen test she had memorized, but instead from the anticipation of what waited after this semester. She harbored her feelings for three years, keeping them secretly stowed. Sharing them with no one, not even Gail. But now she finally decided to unlock those feelings and put them on display.

  There would be some explaining to do, and perhaps some awkward days or weeks ahead. They would pass, though. And if they didn’t, graduation was on the other side of winter, not six months away. The confines of the social circle she constructed around herself would no longer limit her, and if friendships faded, Becca would assume it was the way life after college worked. In the world that waited outside George Washington University, secrecy about the man she loved would play no role.

  It took three years of friendship to lay the groundwork, and on such strong footing it was not hard to understand how she fell so far so fast. Now she was two hours from finishing her seventh semester. Only one left after this and Becca wondered where that semester would lead. She envisioned happiness and bliss and finally holding his hand during strolls through campus. Saturday morning breakfasts—which they currently could only enjoy when they snuck out of Foggy Bottom and found a deserted cafe—could be enjoyed openly, like any other couple. She was tired of lying to Gail, and it was definitely time to stop sneaking herself out of his bed early in the morning before the campus woke.

  As she jogged to Professor Morton’s exam, her stomach continued to stir. The butterflies grew more intense as she imagined the coming year.

  The campus thinned during the ten days that constituted finals week as students scribbled their exams and left for home. Only the unluckiest of students had to wait until the last morning for their freedom. Most were done the day before and well into Christmas break by that night, which was something of an event around campus—a sayonara to the semester of hard work. And for Becca Eckersley and her three friends it was a final passage; the last time they would celebrate the end of a semester and the coming break. It was the end of an era. Next time this happened they would be at the end of their college careers. There would be no breaks in front of them, except for the summer before law school, which was likely to scatter them across the country.

  They met at the 19th, which was filled with GWU students and a few young professors who wore turtlenecks under elbow-patched sport coats. Becca and her friends sat at a tall, round table for four, a pitcher of beer half-spent and their glasses filled.

  “It was exact, am I right?” Brad asked.

  Gail gave a little smile. “Exact, exact. Like, no differences at all.”

  Becca took a sip of beer. “I have to admit, Brad. You delivered in the clutch.”

  Brad mimicked a high-pitched, female voice. “I’ll still love you when you don’t come through.”

  “Okay, okay. You came through for once, and we all owe you everything we have in school and life and in our future careers.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” Brad said. He looked up in contemplation. “Actually, that’s pretty right on. Do you have anything else to add?”

  “I do,” Jack said. “For a two-hour exam, it would’ve looked a little better had you not finished in thirty minutes.”

  Brad laughed. “I know, right? I was the first one out of there and then it was like an avalanche.”

  Gail laughed. “People bolted as soon as you stood up. It was like everyone was waiting for the first person to commit.”

  Becca laughed along with Gail but saw the concern in Jack’s eyes.

  “How many people had the damn thing?” Jack asked. He made a circular motion with his fingers. “I thought this was our little secret.”

  “I gave it to a couple buddies.” Brad shrugged.

  “I’d say half,” Becca said. “Considering how many people left early.”

  Jack shook his head. “Bradley, that’s just a good way to broadcast that something’s up.”

  “Come on. Morton wasn’t even proctoring. It was the old guy from the library and that lady.” Brad snapped his fingers as he thought. “From the admissions office or something. They don’t know how long the test was supposed to take. That geeky kid, what’s his name . . . with the half mullet?”

  “Andrew Price,” Becca said.

  “Right. He’s out of every exam in thirty minutes.”

  Jack poked a toothpick between his teeth. “Not exams with essay questions at the end.”

  “Trust me, if good ol’ ProMo had been in the room, I’d have stuck around for the full two hours. Which, by the way, was what you did. What’s up with that? Were you that nervous about leaving early?”

  Jack shrugged his shoulders and sipped his beer. “Wanted to make it look good.”

  “You’re a good actor, and you have a hell of a lot more patience than I do. I would have gone nuts just sitting there.”

  Jack looked at Becca. “I just hope things stay contained, if you know what I mean. And I hope everyone you gave the test to had the sense to miss a few questions. A perfect score from fifty kids with C averages spells Shitcan City for us.”

  Brad knocked Jack’s pint with his own, giving off a loud clink and splashing cheap beer onto the table. “Cheers, brother. Stop stressing. In the next few weeks we should all know where we’re going to law school and then it’s smooth sailing. As long as you don’t fail a course, the schools don’t even look at your final semester. Now drink your beer and relax. We’re on Christmas break.”

  “He’s really freaked out, isn’t he?” Brad asked.

  Becca raised her eyebrows and shrugged. “It didn’t look good that everyone left so quickly. And in Jack’s defense, I agree that maybe we should have just kept the test to the four of us.”

  “Maybe,” Brad said. “But some guys knew I had the key to Morton’s office, and I guess I didn’t want it to look like I was too scared to do anything with it. Plus, the guys I gave it to really needed it. They were in bad shape going in. Kinda li
ke you.”

  “Right, but like Jack said, if a bunch of kids with Cs suddenly ace the final exam, people are going to suspect something.”

  “I know one girl with a C who aced it, right?”

  Becca shrugged. “Yes, it helped a lot. Took some pressure off.”

  Jack and Gail had gone home early from the bar. Brad and Becca stayed and finished the pitcher before walking back to Becca’s apartment. Gail was sound asleep, and Becca quietly closed her bedroom door. She and Brad sat in the living room, Becca lying on the couch with her bare feet on Brad’s lap.

  “You know I did it for you,” Brad said.

  “Shush,” Becca said. “I don’t want Gail to know you’re here.”

  “I don’t care if Gail knows I’m here.”

  “I just don’t want her to wake up and come out here.”

  “Okay,” Brad said in an exaggeratedly hushed voice. “You know I did it for you?” he said again.

  “Did what?”

  “Got the test. You said you really needed help.”

  “Thank you,” Becca said. “I probably would have survived without it, but like I said it took some pressure off.”

  “Look how freaked out you are. You guys are overthinking this. And I’m getting a headache worrying about it.” Brad rubbed Becca’s feet. “This reminds me of the good old days.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Brad didn’t know how to tell her, couldn’t find the words to express how he felt about her. He knew she had similar feelings, and he was just about ready to ask her about them. Just about ready to let the words flow off his tongue. He’d thought many times of how that conversation would go. The “why did we wait so long to admit this” and “I’m so glad we don’t have to hide this any longer” slogans passed through his head when he imagined finally discussing his feelings with her. And now, here they were and here it was, the moment when they would get it all out in the open.

  But he choked. For some reason, the words wouldn’t form.

  “What do you mean?” Becca asked again. “About the good old days.”