Identity Crisis

by Eliza Watson

  Kate had written to her son, undoubtedly hoping he’d one day change his mind and resume correspondence. The letters probably read like a journal of their lives here. All the highlights Olivia had missed. Olivia wished Kate would look away, enabling her to slip a few letters in her pocket.

  Olivia heaved the packed laundry basket off the floor. On the way out the door, Kate snatched a rosary from the wooden jewelry box on the dresser.

  They headed down the stairs, and in the foyer, Kate insisted on taking the basket. “I’m fine. Go get your valuables.”

  Spreading her dad’s remains over the lake seemed appropriate, but who knew where they’d end up if they were whisked off in a tornado. She flew out the door, and the wind whipped her hair in her eyes and pine needles against her face. Roger was running back from the cottages, nobody following him. Everyone was likely on the lakes or in town shopping. He scurried past the front porch toward the mini-golf course and canoe rentals. Olivia ran to the cottage and grabbed her dad’s urn and her laptop bag. His urn looked more like a marble sculpture, so doubtful anyone would question it. Right now, she really didn’t give a rip about her suitcase packed with designer clothes. She headed back toward the house, pausing by their SUV.

  Her dad’s paintings.

  A red car came barreling into the parking lot. It stopped, and Tracy flew out. “Where’s Megan?” she hollered, running up to Olivia.

  Olivia thought back to the two little girls in the water. “She’s inside with Kate.”

  Tracy rushed past her toward the inn.

  Olivia glanced over at the SUV and turned to head toward the inn.

  “Take the paintings,” Ethan said, materializing.

  “I don’t want them. I just didn’t want anyone else to have them.”

  “Take them.”

  He unlocked the back hatch and popped it open. He grabbed the paintings wrapped in cardboard. The car keys slipped from his hand and onto the ground. She scooped up the keys. They raced toward the inn.

  Hopefully, the Victorian house in which the museum was located had a basement. Right now, she didn’t care if her family had sold her dad’s paintings and condoned his crime. She just wanted them to be safe.

  * * *

  For the next half hour, Roger sat at a desk with the radio blaring. Kate played Barbies with Megan on the carpet in the corner. Ethan and Olivia sat on the couch while Tracy’s husband Jack sat in an overstuffed upholstered chair and she sat on the chair arm relaxing against him.

  Kate had grabbed several jars of candy, and Tracy raided the gummy bears. “We always got gummy bears when we came to Grandma’s house. If I scraped my knee, I got gummy bears. If Billy Olson looked up my skirt at school, which he always did, I got some. They always made things better.”

  Olivia smiled knowingly. In third grade, Ryan Simpson had called her four-eyes when she’d started wearing glasses for reading. She’d come home and polished off a half a jar of gummy bears. They’d been her comfort food as long as she could remember. Her dad had always kept a jar in the house. Guess maybe she did share a few traditions with her family.

  Tracy handed Olivia the jar, and Olivia scooped out some bears. They’d never made it to the grocery store, sidetracked by the forgery museum.

  “Hope the golf course is okay,” Jack said.

  “Jack ran the mini-golf course one summer when we were in high school. That’s when we hooked up.”

  Olivia pictured her and Tracy giggling and talking about the hot guy running the golf course. If they’d grown up together, they probably would have stayed up nights styling each other’s hair and gossiping about boys and fad diets.

  “Yeah, she used to prance around in her little bikini playing mini-golf, trying to get me to notice her. It was a hot pink bikini held together with little strings. I still remember the first time I untied those strings.”

  “Jack.” Tracy gave him a playful swat, glancing over at Megan, making sure she wasn’t listening. “I’m sure they don’t want to hear about your horny teen years.”

  “Hell, I’m still horny for you after seventeen years.” He gave Tracy a suggestive grin.

  Olivia couldn’t imagine having been with a guy for that long. Although Tracy grew up in a small town and lacked what Olivia would consider a fulfilling career, she couldn’t help but envy her. She seemed truly happy. If Tracy lost her job or her house in a tornado, she’d still have Jack and Megan. Two days ago, outside of work, the only thing Olivia had to show for herself was her condo. If she’d lost that in an earthquake, she’d have had nothing. Now, she had a family. If she ever revealed her true identity.

  “Ethan and Olivia are celebrating their one-year anniversary,” Tracy said. “How’d you two meet?”

  Ethan and she exchanged glances. They hadn’t prepared a story for how they’d met. They didn’t expect to be put on the spot about it.

  “At a museum,” Ethan said, staring into Olivia’s eyes. “I was trying to figure out what the hell a Picasso painting was supposed to be, and she clued me in. We went for a glass of wine and stayed at the restaurant until closing.” He grasped hold of Olivia’s hand and pulled her close to him, placing a warm kiss on her cheek. She laced her fingers with his.

  She wished they’d met under better circumstances such as that.

  “How romantic,” Tracy said.

  “You’re getting that sappy look in your eyes, like you’re gonna start talking about chick flicks,” Jack said.

  Roger walked over. “Radio just gave an all-clear bulletin. No tornado touched down, but winds gusted up to ninety miles an hour.”

  Everyone walked upstairs in silence, apprehensive about what they would encounter. Olivia carried her dad’s urn, and her laptop bag slung over her shoulder.

  She glanced down at the wrapped paintings in Ethan’s hands. “Thanks for grabbing those.” She wouldn’t have wanted anything to have happened to them, and it wasn’t just because she didn’t want them circulating in the art world.

  He nodded. “Sure.”

  They walked down the hallway, glancing in rooms, everything appearing intact until they reached the porch where a large tree limb stuck through the roof.

  “Ah, damn, look at that.” Roger glared at the branch, placing a hand against his chest, rubbing it.

  “Don’t get yourself worked up,” Kate warned him. “Isn’t worth another heart attack.”

  Another heart attack?

  “Just my acid reflux,” he assured her.

  “Needed a new roof pretty soon anyway,” Jack said.

  “Just be glad everyone’s okay,” Kate told Roger. “Remember when Wausaukee was leveled? Entire community gone in a matter of minutes. They rebuilt and went on.”

  Roger stepped off the porch, eyeing the birdhouse and train car from the squirrel obstacle course lying on the ground. “Hope none of the little fellas got hurt.”

  “They’re pretty smart,” Ethan said. “They probably hid out under the porch. Hell, they probably built their own storm shelter.”

  Roger let out a hearty chuckle, giving Ethan a pat on the back. “Wouldn’t doubt it.”

  Olivia envied Ethan’s knack for saying the right thing at the right time. She never knew what to say except when it came to art.

  Stillness hovered over the lake. No boats, water skiers, or canoes in sight. The storm had sucked the life out of nature, leaving wilted flowers and fallen tree branches in its wake. It appeared very little rain had fallen. A tree limb through a cottage window had Roger once again rubbing his chest.

  Memories of her dad’s death came flooding back. He’d died mere minutes before she’d arrived at the hospital. She hadn’t realized all the things he might have told her had she made it there in time. She’d have told him she loved him—something they’d rarely said to each other. She’d stood at his side, certain that the aching, hollow feeling in her chest had also been a sign of a heart attack.

  “At least it’s not rented until next weekend,” Kate said. “A sheet of p
lastic will do the trick until you have time to fix it.”

  “I can take care of it,” Jack said. “But right now I’m gonna check out the canoes. Got them all strapped down so they should be okay. Hope the people that were still out pulled up on shore and made it to the basement of nearby houses. Thank God the campers had already returned from the race.”

  “Where do they go in case of a storm?” Olivia asked.

  “They have enough boats to evacuate the island and head over to Harborview Bar till the storm passes.”

  Roger glanced over at the mini-golf course next door. “I’ll see how the course fared.”

  Kate gave him a concerned look. “Maybe you should wait until you’re not so upset.”

  “I’m fine,” Roger snapped, apparently tired of her fussing.

  “Why don’t you go with him?” Olivia told Kate. “I’ll take that basket upstairs, then join you.” She eyed the box of letters in the basket Kate had set by her feet.

  Kate smiled. “That’d be nice, dear.”

  “I’ll tag along,” Ethan said. “See if we have some repairs to do.”

  Roger shook his head. “Can’t have you spending your entire vacation helping rebuild this course if needed. Wouldn’t be right.”

  “We aren’t water people,” Ethan said. “Came here to relax. I find working with my hands relaxing. I’d like to help out.”

  Olivia gave him an appreciative smile. He nodded faintly, turning and following Roger toward the golf course.

  She ran her dad’s urn back to the cottage. She returned and took the basket up to her grandparents’ bedroom, her heart racing like a funnel cloud across an open field. She closed the door behind her and set down the basket. Hands shaking, she took the top off the box. Since she’d have to steam open Kate’s letters to read them, she decided to start with a large open manila envelope.

  A brief note accompanying a stack of papers was in her dad’s handwriting and read Please hang on to these. Our safety may one day depend on them.

  No address or postmark on the envelope led her to believe her dad had given it to Kate before they’d gone into hiding.

  She thumbed through the stack of papers, discovering a half dozen provenances, each with sales receipts, letters of ownership, and other legal documents attached. Not for any of the high-end or middle-market paintings at the museum, but for middle-market paintings that twenty-four years ago probably sold for a hundred grand to a million each and currently went for five to ten times that, depending on the market. Paintings like her dad had sold.

  He’d obviously planned to use them to buy their safety if someone came after them. Had he kept the paintings in San Francisco, separate from the provenances? Had her dad fabricated these provenances, as well as painted the forgeries? Had he been a one-man show, except for the mob’s connections to buyers?

  Hard to imagine somebody else hadn’t created the provenances. Fabricating a provenance took a high level of expertise and a lot of time and research. It required compiling catalogs for auctions that never existed and sales receipts for transactions that never occurred. All of which had to be untraceable and undisputable.

  These were very likely what her dad’s killer was after and proved he was from her dad’s past. So how had the mob or a former partner tracked him down?

  A snitch in the U.S. Marshals? She no longer believed Ethan was crooked. He cared about her safety. About doing his job. But he wasn’t the only U.S. Marshal who knew about her circumstances.

  Just how much did Mike know?

  Maybe Roy Howard knew her dad had been hiding the paintings and he’d confided in Mike. How well had Mike known Roy? Ethan had mentioned they’d all worked together on various witness protection assignments. According to Ethan, Mike knew art from working in the FBI’s Art Crime Division. Her condo was trashed while Mike had supposedly been guarding it. If she told Ethan about the provenances and asked him not to say anything to Mike, would he? She couldn’t trust Ethan not to. He’d likely find her story far-fetched and would never believe Mike was dirty. And really, her evidence was circumstantial, possibly a product of her imagination.

  She stuffed the provenances in her purse, then stuck the empty envelope back in the box. Kate probably hadn’t looked inside it in years. She wanted to sneak a stack of her grandma’s unmailed letters, too, so she could learn all about her family’s life after she and her dad had left Five Lakes. However, her mind was already reeling from all the information she’d uncovered today. She’d save them for another time.

  She headed back outside. Everyone, including Ethan, was at the mini-golf course. She stood on the porch and punched the museum’s phone number into her cell. No answer. Did Bella have anyone to check on her? Ethan had mentioned Olivia’s Grandpa Newman was dead. Had they had other children? Ethan hadn’t said, but he hadn’t mentioned Tracy and her parents either.

  She had to check on Bella.

  She glanced over at Roger assessing the damage to the course, his hand once again to his chest. Ethan needed to stay there in case Roger had a heart attack from the stress. Roger needed Ethan’s protection more than she did right now. Besides, that guy had set off the bomb at one in the morning their time. No way could he have already made it to Five Lakes.

  Focused earlier on getting to the safety of the basement, she hadn’t given Ethan back the car keys. She’d slipped them in her pocket, and they’d both forgotten about them. Not that he’d expected her to sneak off with the SUV. She slipped the keys from her dress pocket, praying Bella was okay.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The mini-golf course’s sign, Around the World in 18 Holes, was still intact, unlike many of the structures. The wind had taken off the top of the Eiffel Tower, and the Great Wall of China wasn’t looking so great.

  A distressed look consumed Roger’s face as he bent over and picked up a clock face belonging on top of Big Ben. “Built this course with my dad the summer after I graduated from high school. Had a great time.”

  Ethan couldn’t imagine wanting to have spent time with his father.

  “Strange how so much in the world has changed while some things have stayed the same,” Roger said. “All these tourist attractions are still so popular.” He peered over at a castle’s damaged tower and missing drawbridge. It was pretty much intact except for being drenched from the water once contained in its surrounding moat. “Hope to take Kate to Blarney Castle in Ireland one day. She was born there. Left when she was six, and she’s never been back. Not sure if we’ll make it there or not. You travel much?”

  “Mainly in the US.” He’d recently spent two weeks at a roach hotel in Monterey—saw nothing but talk shows on TV—and a month at a cabin in the boonies of Northern California—saw nothing but woods. This was a nice change of pace from his usual safe houses. “Would like to go to Europe one day. My mother was Hungarian. She never made it to Hungary. You should take Kate to Ireland.”

  Roger nodded thoughtfully, rubbing his chin. “Suppose I should. Right now, I should get moving on this course.” He let out a labored sigh, looking overwhelmed by the magnitude of the project that lay ahead. He placed a hand on Ethan’s shoulder. “That’s mighty nice of you to help out. This place has been in the family for three generations. Can’t imagine losing it.”

  Like Olivia had mentioned earlier, Ethan couldn’t imagine living in one place for so long. However, Olivia longed to spend her life in one home, whereas he’d never had the desire. Yet, having a lake home like Roger’s here held a certain appeal. Having something to show for generations of work.

  “Amazing what a little paint and some wood will do,” Ethan said.

  “Can’t do repairs without money.” Roger pushed his Packers cap back and rubbed his forehead. “Sorry. Shouldn’t be discussing money problems with guests. Haven’t even mentioned it to Kate.”

  “I won’t say a thing.” Except maybe to Olivia. She’d be crushed if her grandparents lost their legacy. He’d do everything in his power to make sure that didn�
�t happen. For their sake, and for Olivia’s.

  A siren wailed in the distance, and they glanced across the lake at a flashing blue light on a boat zipping across the water.

  “Looks like they’re headed over to Sunset Lake,” Roger muttered, pressing his fingers against his chest, a pained look on his face. “This ain’t good.”

  “You got a friend on Sunset Lake?”

  Roger shook his head. “No, but…” he trailed off.

  Ethan followed the man’s gaze across the lakes. What was up?

  * * *

  Roger peered in the direction of Sunset Lake, worried that the storm had uncovered the past. Even if it had, what were the chances the authorities would figure it out? They’d done a damn good job covering their tracks twenty-four years ago.

  That night was a blur. Partially because he’d tried his darnedest to forget it. He couldn’t be certain about anything that had happened that night. He could handle the consequences of that evening if it came down to it; however, he didn’t want his family to suffer, to lose their home. They’d lived there since Kate and he had married. Losing it would hurt Kate something fierce. He’d already lost a son and granddaughter. He couldn’t lose his home.

  He hadn’t always been the best father, out drinking a bit too much with his buddies, missing family functions. After Andrew and Olivia went into hiding, that all changed. His family came first. He’d somehow thought if he changed his ways, God would return them home one day. But He hadn’t.

  He stared in the direction of Sunset Lake. He didn’t know which would be more devastating to his family: losing the cottages due to financial problems or the lake level getting lower.

  * * *

  According to the women at the beauty salon, they’d gone to the basement during the storm, but Bella hadn’t come down, and now her car was gone. Olivia was preparing to head to Bella’s when her phone rang. Rather than Ethan, having just discovered her disappearance, it was Rachel, in a total panic.