“Is the pond still stocked?”
“I highly doubt it.” Noah took two cups and poured them both some iced tea. No matter the reason that brought her to his doorstep, it was still a sweet gesture. “You’re more than welcome to try it. Just remember to throw back any bass under a pound.”
“Oh, I’m good,” Reese protested goodheartedly. She took the cup from his hand. “It must be nice coming home to a house of your own.”
“You make it sound like you miss yours,” Noah pointed out, lifting the drink to his lips. Damn, but that was fine sweet iced tea. “You said you grew up in Heartland.”
“I did, but I live in Springfield, Illinois right now.” Reese lifted her flip-flops a step higher so that it was easier for her to rest her elbows on her knees. “I like the independence, but there are times when I miss being close to my family.”
Noah would have inquired why she wasn’t spending her summer with them, but he didn’t have to.
“You can ask me about Lance, you know.” Noah figured he’d get to the real reason she dropped by, instead of beating around the bush. “He was at the camp that summer when your cousin was there. I’m not sure what you hope to find other than she learned to swim that season.”
“I don’t know, either. I made a list of those who attended that year, but I don’t think that’s going to help me now. It seems that the entire town was involved in that camp in some way or another.” Reese sounded so wistful that Noah had to fight the urge to touch her in comfort. She glanced down at her pink toenail polish as if to try and find words. “Chad Schaeffer made me realize this morning that pretty much everyone knows why I’m here in town. It wasn’t my intention to stir up a bunch of hard feelings for everyone. I mean, I want answers…but I don’t want to upset anyone.”
“Not a lot happens here in Blyth Lake,” Noah shared, wanting to ease her concerns. He hadn’t expected her to look up at him in that moment. Those golden flecks in her eyes had dimmed until they were almost imperceptible. “Residents still leave their front doors unlocked around here. The sheriff deals mostly with domestic calls if someone has too much to drink and making sure Jeremy Bell makes it home from Tiny’s. No one was prepared for something like Emma’s disappearance.”
“Believe me, I understand exactly what you mean.”
They sat in silence enjoying the sunshine and the melodies Mother Nature provided. It was odd, considering they didn’t know each other. He found her company was soothing.
“I know what you need,” Noah said with a smile after five minutes had passed. He set down his cup next to the pitcher and reached for one of the sledge hammers leaning up against the porch. “You need to relieve a little built-up stress.”
“Oh, I do, do I?” Reese laughed a bit until she realized he was serious. Her dimple faded, and she raised an eyebrow when he held out his hand. “With a ten-pound sledge hammer?”
“I got an eight, if you’d rather use that. It’s amazing what a little physical effort can do to relieve stress.” Noah realized his statement could be taken many different ways, though his intentions were truly innocent. Even so, the slight blush that appeared on her cheeks was quite endearing. “Watch that board.”
“I would suggest Chad as the person to fix that, but all he did was laugh when I asked if he was the one who was going to be doing renovations for you.” Reese stopped before the threshold, almost hesitant to enter. Noah moved the lever on the screen door so that it remained open. “Why are you doing all the work yourself?”
“There’s something to be said for constructing one’s own home. I guess it was how we were raised with my dad and all.” Noah rested his hand on her lower back, the gesture automatic. She instantly moved forward and into the vacant living room. “My dad and I spent the morning cleaning out the trash left behind by the teenagers who were using this place as a party palace. Some things never change, but now that I’ve got the place, they don’t have a choice but to find somewhere else to have their bonfires.”
“What is it you plan to have me do with a sledge hammer?” Reese stopped in the middle of the living room and turned around, taking in every nook and cranny of the place. She finally walked over to the banister and ran her hand over the scratched wood. “I didn’t realize there was so much potential in here. The floors are going to be amazing once they’re refinished.”
“I could tell,” Noah said with a laugh. He regarded her closely, wondering what it was about the place that made her uneasy. There was only one way to find out. “You haven’t seen anyone out here, have you? I know every family who’s ever owned this property. They were all good people.”
“I’m sorry. There was always something creepy about this place, but now I can see why you bought it.” Reese slowly strolled through the small foyer beside the office and the staircase, her fingers caressing the wall. She entered the kitchen and called back, “Look at this view from the kitchen window. It’s incredible!”
Noah waited for her to return, her brown eyes now holding that gleam of excitement he’d experienced the moment his father had handed him the key to this place. She frowned when she looked down at the sledge hammer by his side.
“You’re not tearing apart this beautiful maple railing, are you?”
“God, no,” Noah replied, wondering just what kind of monster she thought he was. “See this wall? It wasn’t part of the original design. The Andersons added it on when they bought the place twelve years ago. The kitchen was much more open to the rest of the house.”
“You’re going to open up the floor plan then.” Reese walked back from the way she came, peering inside the small room that wouldn’t be there after he was done with it today. “Oh, this is going to be fun.”
“Goggles.” Noah lifted up the pair his father had brought, handing them to her. “Always wear protection.”
Damn. That was the second time his words lent themselves to a slightly awkward sexual innuendo. His words could be taken out of context, although she didn’t appear to have done so. He’d been on deployment for way too long to talk with civilians anymore.
“You should take the first swing.” Reese lifted the black strap of the clear goggles over her hair and the back of her head. She secured them over her face until the plastic curve rested on the bridge of her nose. “Isn’t it good luck or something? This way, you only have yourself to blame if you regret doing the damage.”
Noah hadn’t heard that particular old wives’ tale before, but he wasn’t the superstitious type. He handed over the sledge hammer and stepped back, allowing her room to swing the heavy tool.
“She’s all yours, honey. Go for it.”
Reese bit her lip as she attempted to get a good hold on the rubberized grip over the wooden handle. Once she was comfortable with her grasp, she lifted the heavy weapon and swung for the fences. Her laugh reverberated throughout the empty house as her first try resulted in only a tiny dent.
“You can swing harder than that,” Noah encouraged, laughing with her.
Her next strike cracked the drywall.
“You’re right,” Reese said rather breathlessly with a radiant smile. “This is very therapeutic.”
Another blow of the sledgehammer had a piece of drywall falling to the floor, but her swing was off by a half foot or more. The angle of the head had made a rather deep hole.
“You’re lucky I don’t charge for…” Noah raised a hand to stop Reese from swinging the sledge hammer once more. He stepped closer to the portion of the wall she’d opened without meaning to, wondering what the hell was inside the partition. It looked to be some type of heavy construction plastic wrap. “Wait. Hold up for just a second.”
Noah grabbed part of the drywall and pulled it away, hoping to clear whatever was inside out of Reese’s way so that she could keep working.
“Noah, is that what I think it is?”
The sledge hammer hit the floor with a thud at the exact moment Noah took a step back at the realization of what was in front of them. Both
he and Reese stood side by side as they stared in horror at a secret this house had held for twelve years.
“We need to call the sheriff. Right now.”
Noah reached into the front pocket of his jeans and pulled out his phone, blinking one more time in hopes that the grisly scene in front of him disappeared. That wasn’t going to happen.
A decomposed skeleton wrapped in plastic stared out from its hiding place inside the wall. The jaw was slightly opened as if to be screaming for help. The color of the hair was still recognizable after all these years.
Just what kind of hideous crime had they uncovered?
Noah and Reese exchanged a horrified glance that conveyed a million words.
They were now bound together after having uncovered a shocking secret someone had wanted to stay buried forever.
CHAPTER NINE
Reese had never seen so many different types of law enforcement vehicles in one place at one time, not even when Sophia had gone missing and they had systematically searched the entire county.
There were two local police cars, along with the sheriff’s own official vehicle, as well as two state police cruisers and another two state unmarked detective cars parked behind Noah’s truck. A forensics van had arrived shortly after the police had pulled in, along with a satellite van with a media crew from Cleveland.
Blyth Lake wasn’t nearly big enough to have a local television station. The state police had made them park the TV van with its big tall dish antenna two hundred yards back from Noah’s property line. Hell, it was closer to her driveway than his.
As it stood, there was only one light bar still rotating the reds and blues on the sheriff’s vehicle. She was pretty sure it was out of habit, because he seemed to want to wash this most recent discovery off his hands and into those who had the proper resources to solve the nature of the crime made obvious by such a discovery.
“…had an inspector come out twice during the time the property was for sale,” Harlan Whitmore said to one of the detectives. They were standing beside the forensics van. The real estate agent’s eyes were glued to the house. “They never noticed a smell, let alone a body in the wall. Jesus.”
There wouldn’t have been a smell. Not after all these years. Add in the fact that the body had partially mummified within the plastic trapped inside drywall, it most likely masked any odors the Andersons might have noticed after they’d moved in all those years ago.
Noah and Gus were currently standing on the porch, talking to the sheriff. Miles Schaeffer had followed behind Gus when he’d come from the diner. The forensics team were currently extracting the skeleton from what was left of the wall. A deputy was watching the crime scene crew notate the location of every piece of broken drywall and placing it in evidence bags.
The forensics team were removing the entire wall and bagging the lot.
Another deputy was keeping the media contained to the side of the gravel lane up the road, while a state detective was speaking into his phone and ordering a search of the entire property using ground penetrating radar and divers for the pond.
Reese wouldn’t be surprised if more people showed up out of sheer curiosity.
Everyone had to be thinking the same thing—the body that had been hidden inside the walls of the Yoder’s farmhouse had to be Emma Irwin. The girl who everyone had known was dead, but had secretly hoped she’d run away.
Reese stood off to the side in the yard, making sure she wasn’t in anyone’s way. She’d already spoken to the taller homicide detective about how she and Noah had come to find the body. Dusk was falling and hours had passed since she’d set the sledge hammer down and tore off her goggles in disbelief at their grim discovery.
She couldn’t bring herself to leave. The forward motion just wouldn’t come.
“I heard what happened. Any word on whether or not it’s Emma?”
Reese had been so focused on trying to hear what was being said in multiple conversations that she hadn’t caught the rumble of additional approaching engines. A quick look told her that more people had arrived as she’d suspected and lined their vehicles along the lane back in the direction of her rental house. They were staying off Noah’s property, but only because of the deputy keeping them at bay beside the news crew.
It appeared the townsfolk didn’t want to wait to hear something secondhand. This was the biggest discovery in Blyth Lake history.
“Hi, Rose.” Reese folded her arms around her waist, wondering how Rose had gotten around the police line. That thought vanished after catching sight of Noah running his hand through his hair in frustration. She wished there was something she could do for him. The police had already told him that it could be at least a couple weeks before they released the crime scene and he was allowed back inside the house. If it were her, she’d have a For Sale sign up in the yard by tomorrow morning. “The homicide detectives are saying they won’t know anything until they get the…what’s left of the body back to their lab.”
Reese didn’t feel comfortable referring to the person as a skeleton or body. Whoever it might turn out to be had been an actual person, not just a bunch of dried-out tissue and bones.
“It has to be Emma,” Rose whispered, shaking her head in sorrow. “She’s the only one who went missing in the history of our town. Miles said that the body was found in that extra wall, which the Andersons had put into the house. That poor girl. To be killed and shoved into a wall to be entombed and forgotten for twelve years. No one deserves to be discarded like that. Lord only knows how she died.”
Reese had trouble swallowing, wondering if Sophia had suffered the same fate. Honestly, if it was revealed that the body was Emma Irwin, then it was possible that Sophia had run away or been murdered just like Emma. Had Reese been so blinded back then to whatever Sophia was going through that she refused to accept the truth?
“Your cousin, Sophia, was a nice girl. There isn’t anything definite saying she was hurt, too.” Rose wrapped an arm around Reese’s shoulders and squeezed. The kind gesture reminded her of what Noah had been trying to do. Look at how that turned out. “You should know that Sophia didn’t just teach Emma how to swim. She was having a real tough time after losing her grandmother. Sophia was the one to coax her out of her shell and get her to join in on the camp activities. When things calm down here in a day or two, come and talk to me. Maybe I can help you find closure in a way that helps you put this behind you.”
A thousand questions whirled in Reese’s mind, but she couldn’t form any questions. Maybe she didn’t want to come off as insensitive to what was taking place directly in front of them.
“Rose, how did you get past Deputy Wallace over there?”
The older, but lovely, woman raised an eyebrow at Sheriff Percy’s question. Her hair was cut short, but the grayish black strands somehow came off as stylish with her penchant for wearing silver. The light fragrance of her perfume was a welcome scent from the stale air inside the house.
“This young woman has not one soul in Blyth Lake to comfort her,” Rose pointed out, her bracelets creating a melody of sorts as she lowered her arm from Reese’s shoulders. “I was going to see that she got home safely.”
“Rose, I’m okay,” Reese murmured, noticing all eyes in the immediate area had drifted toward them. She patted the older woman’s hand. “Really. I’ll give you a call if I need anything, as well as take you up on your offer to talk about Sophia.”
Rose seemed to believe Reese’s declining of the invitation was the sheriff’s fault, and the two started nipping at one another. It appeared to be a common event, considering no one paid any attention to them after Reese stepped to the side and made her way toward Noah.
“You doing okay?” Reese wished she could say something that made all this okay. Words wouldn’t help. “Is there anything I can do?”
“I won’t be handing you a sledge hammer anytime in the near future,” Noah said wryly. His tired smile let her know that he was kidding, but she doubted she would ever
pick up a tool of any sort and swing it through a wall again. “It appears we attracted quite a crowd.”
Reese glanced over her shoulder, seeing a couple more media vans plus a larger crowd than before.
“You know that they’re going to think…”
“I know what they think.” Noah didn’t look too happy when Reese turned back around. This was affecting him more than he was letting on. “Why don’t you head on home to salvage what’s left of your evening? I have no idea how long I’ll be here, but I’m not leaving until most of the authorities and everyone else have vacated the premises. I want to help lock up and secure the house. At least, what they’ll let me do.”
It dawned on Reese that he automatically assumed either a curious journalist or maybe even a group of teenagers looking for a scare might try and break in to find something of note that they could spread around town.
“Are you sure?” Reese’s gaze was drawn to the open front door where a forensics technician was crossing the threshold. “I can stay, if you like.”
“I appreciate the offer, but you haven’t eaten a thing all day.” Noah’s name was being called by the technician. “I also appreciate you staying as long as you did, but I’ve got this covered. I’ll touch base with you tomorrow morning.”
Noah made his way back toward the porch and then took a couple steps at a time until he was standing next to the forensics tech. The two engaged in a serious conversation, leaving her no choice but to wander toward the police line. She wasn’t sure why she was feeling so bereft.
The sheriff had walked Rose back down the lane toward her car, where numerous other vehicles were parked either in the small field or along the lane. The low murmurs of chatter could be heard from the path that would lead Reese back to her place. She wasn’t walking straight into that cluster of curious bystanders.
Reese discreetly made her way parallel to the police line back to the other side of the property near the woods, taking a shortcut through the dense vegetation that separated Rose’s property from Noah’s land. The sun was falling rather fast, but she should be inside before complete darkness descended. Anything was better than facing all the questions that would be hurled her way had she taken the road back.
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