Shroud of Fog: (A Cape Trouble Romantic Suspense Novel)

by Johnson, Janice Kay

  SHROUD OF FOG

  A Cape Trouble Novel

  By Janice Kay Johnson

  ISBN-10: 0989041859

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9890418-5-0

  Shroud of Fog

  Copyright 2013Janice Kay Johnson

  All Rights Reserved

  Cover Design by Seductive Designs

  Image copyright © luriiSokolov (couple)

  Image copyright © Fodor90 (forest)

  This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, locations and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, locales, or events is entirely coincidental.

  License Notes

  This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. The e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to an online retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Dear Reader,

  It’s with delight and trepidation that I launch a new series of romantic suspense novels set in the small Oregon Coast town of Cape Trouble, where a host of intriguing people think they can heal from their wounds visible or invisible – or hide from dangers they’re not yet ready to confront.

  I don’t know what it says about me that I love to write about characters haunted by childhood events! Sophie Thomsen spent summers in Cape Trouble as a child, until one foggy morning when she heard her mother die and found her body between the sand dunes. Of course that tragedy has nothing to do with the murder of Sophie’s aunt twenty years later…or does it?

  And doesn’t fog give almost everybody the creepy-crawlies? It too often blankets Cape Trouble in Shroud of Fog, a presence as real as Sophie’s memories of her mother, a beautiful woman who fascinated too many men.

  Developing a cast of characters you’ll want to meet again was one of the challenges of writing this book, which begins the series. Not all are likeable, and some harbor secrets that will come to haunt them, when their own troubles finally catch up to them.

  Look for the second Cape Trouble story in August of 2014 – and, in the meantime, I hope you keep looking for my Harlequin Superromance novels in print and as e-books.

  There’s nothing I like more than hearing from readers! Look for my Facebook page and my website at www.JaniceKayJohnson.com.

  Janice

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  About The Author

  CHAPTER ONE

  Why on earth wasn’t Aunt Doreen answering her phone?

  Disgruntled, Sophie Thomsen sipped her coffee from the travel mug as she waited at the red light. The tinge of worry, she could probably blame on the eerie effects of coastal fog. For most of her life, Sophie had hated fog. This morning it was thick enough that she felt peculiarly alone even though she was driving down the main street of Cape Trouble. The tourists passing on the crosswalk in front of her appeared and disappeared, ghost-like and colorless in their anoraks and heavy sweaters.

  The morning fog might or might not burn off. You never knew on the Oregon Coast, and especially at Cape Trouble, infamous for hidden, dangerous rocks offshore and the peculiar mist that rose from the river that flowed into the Pacific Ocean and formed the southern edge of town. Sophie had spent enough time here on the coast to guess that yes, the sun would be out in another hour or two, the sweaters would be shed, the kites and beach towels would emerge, and some brave souls who didn’t mind standing in waders by the hour in icy water would be spotted casting their lines in Mist River – named, of course, for its mysterious propensity for cloaking itself in drifting tendrils of gray.

  She and her aunt had made vague plans to meet this morning at the storage facility, but hadn’t set a time. There wasn’t any real reason to feel anxiety. One thing you could say for the friendly town of Cape Trouble – sarcasm fully intended – was that if there’d been a car accident or an aide car had been summoned anywhere within a ten mile radius, everyone including Sophie would already have heard every gory detail.

  Probably Doreen had simply gone ahead and was happily working inside the storage unit, sure Sophie would show up eventually. Aunt Doreen was very capable of being scatterbrained. Lucky she’d already given Sophie the code to get in and even a key to the lock.

  The light changed, the green less visible than the red through the fog. Sophie looked carefully to be sure the last pedestrian had stepped onto the sidewalk. She drove more slowly than usual along Schooner Street, lined with small seafood restaurants, coffee houses, boutiques and gift shops, their lighted windows made indistinct through the gray shroud of fog.

  Although it had been twenty years since she’d spent more than a few days at a time here, she knew the town well. Like other picturesque Oregon coast towns, Cape Trouble had been commercialized, but the changes were mostly cosmetic. The Victorian era homes were nowhere near as grand as those in Astoria far to the north, but charming enough to be a draw along with the lighthouse, the broad sandy beach, the never-ending waves, the much-photographed sea stacks and the whale watching tours that departed from a pier that thrust out into the river.

  Sophie’s family had spent summers here when she was a child. Before. That’s how she thought of it. Before and After. Before the great divide that had riven her life and left her a different person on the other side of it. Sophie would gladly never have visited Cape Trouble again, or even the Oregon Coast, but unfortunately the one person in the world she truly loved lived here, so she’d resigned herself to those occasional visits.

  What she didn’t understand, Sophie thought with the unsettled sensation she’d had ever since arriving last night, was why she’d let herself be talked into spending the entire month of June here to help with the auction intended to raise money for a cause she didn’t personally support.

  Not that she could tell Doreen so. It would mean talking about things she didn’t talk about. Not with anyone.

  Two stoplights and one turn later, she broke out of town, heading away from the ocean, the fog thinning as she drove. She passed first the Safeway and hardware stores, the laundromat and a pharmacy as well as neighborhoods of more ordinary houses where the locals actually lived before reaching the least attractive part of town, never seen by most visitors. Two garages, an auto body shop, some kind of metal fabricating business, plumbing supply, lumberyard, two seedy bars, a wooded stretch and – finally, two turns later – the sprawling storage facility made up of long buildings encased in metal siding, covered with metal roofs, and enclosed in a high chain-link fence.

  The metal siding and roof presumably explained Aunt Doreen’s failure to answer her cell phone.

  With a sigh, Sophie rolled down her window, punched in the eight digit code preceded by a * and ending with the # key, then waited while the huge gate rolled jerkily to one side.

  Sophie glanced again at the notebook page on which she’d jotted the information. The auction committee had unit…4079. The buildings weren’t clearly labeled, so she turned d
own the first aisle and discovered herself passing 1001 on one side and 2045 on the other. Which didn’t altogether make sense. Well, the first row on her right – the 1000s - proceeded in numeric order, but the ones on her right were given to odd fits and starts.

  She wasn’t the first here this morning. A moving truck was being loaded at one space, a plump woman, a boy of perhaps twelve or thirteen and a man with a pot belly currently wrestling a sofa up the ramp. The man was shouting at the woman and boy, who weren’t lifting their end up as high as he’d like. The woman began screaming back just as Sophie carefully maneuvered through the narrow lane between truck and the storage spaces on the other side. She flinched at the language.

  Around the corner, another woman seemed to be poking rather desultorily inside a space that was packed, literally, concrete floor to ceiling and bare-stud wall to wall with…well, household possessions, Sophie guessed, glimpsing the white side of some appliance as well the plush back of a chair, the top of an end table plus lots of cardboard boxes and some bright plastic tubs. If the poor woman was hoping to put her hands on one thing, Sophie didn’t envy her.

  That was unit 3006. On the other side of the next aisle was…3093. The 4000s had to be here somewhere, didn’t they? And surely she’d spot Aunt Doreen’s aging white Corolla.

  Sophie passed other tenants either putting more possessions into their rented spaces or taking them out. The place really was huge. There were occasional doors that likely opened to short hallways where tenants could access small spaces – maybe five by ten feet or ten by ten – but most units seemed be at least fifteen by twenty or more. And there were parking spaces for RVs, boats on trailers, cars covered by canvas, a horse trailer and… She stared. Good Lord, was that a carnival carousel? She’d swear it was.

  A last jog, and she found herself facing a shorter row of buildings that formed an L to the rest of the facility. And yes, she was finally among the 4000s.

  It wasn’t until she reached the end and turned again that she discovered a couple of units were caps to the rows, and 4079 was one of those. Aunt Doreen’s car was not parked in front. And she couldn’t miss the lock clipped over the hasp of the closed metal door designed to roll up.

  Well, damn.

  Sophie parked and tried her aunt’s number again. Four rings and she was back at voice mail. She had already left several messages. Wonderful. Well, she had the key and she was here, so why not open up and see for herself the stuff the auction committee had procured? Not to mention how well organized the amateur enthusiasts were.

  But when she got out and tried fitting the key her aunt had given her last night into the lock, it didn’t fit. Not even close. Sophie frowned. The brand name on the key didn’t match the one on the lock, but she hadn’t expected it would. She knew her aunt had had copies made of the original keys so practically every member of the auction committee had one – something Sophie thought hadn’t been smart. So she supposed it was possible the keysmith hadn’t done a good job. But…so bad the key wouldn’t even go in the hole?

  Had someone replaced the lock in the past few days? Without telling Doreen, who was the auction chair? That didn’t make sense unless the committee had decided to expel Doreen but hadn’t gotten around to telling her. And that seemed unlikely, given that Sophie’s aunt was the moving force behind the whole enormous effort.

  Sophie drove back to the office she’d passed at the entrance and went in. A middle-aged woman behind the counter said, “You looking to rent a storage space?”

  “No, I was expecting to meet my aunt – Doreen Stedmann – here at the space she rented…”

  “Oh, you’re Doreen’s niece Sophie.” The woman beamed. “I’m Marge Hedgecoth. Why, Doreen talks about you all the time! Says you’re some kind of fancy event planner.”

  “Well…”

  “She was so excited that you were coming.” She frowned. “I haven’t seen her yet this morning, although I don’t open until ten, you know.”

  Yes, Sophie had noticed the sign on the door. Tenants had access to their units from six a.m. until midnight with special arrangements required for other times, but office hours were more limited.

  “She’s probably just late,” Sophie said, then explained that the key she’d been given didn’t fit into the lock. “I’m wondering if I might have written down the wrong number for the space.”

  Marge verified that, indeed, the auction committee for the Save the Misty Beach campaign had rented number 4079, beginning in March when the first of the donations had begun pouring in.

  “Well, Doreen gave me a key, which is unusual, but she wanted to be sure anyone who needed to drop something off could get in. So let me get my cart and I’ll follow you out there.”

  She flipped the sign on the door to a picture of a clock that indicated she would be back in ten minutes and and climbed into a golf cart parked by the back door. Sophie was able this time to drive directly – more or less – to her aunt’s unit, which faced the chain link fence at the back of the property and the woods beyond. As Sophie parked again and got out, it occurred to her that it was really rather lonely back here, blocked by the bulk of the building from being seen by any other units except the one other that faced the same direction.

  The golf cart arrived. A small, wiry woman with short, graying hair and skin that was beginning to look leathery, Marge got out and confidently poked her key at the lock.

  “What in tarnation…?” she muttered.

  Sophie saw immediately that she wasn’t having any better luck.

  After a minute her hand dropped. The two women looked at each other in something approaching consternation. “Hmph,” she said. “I suppose they’re entitled to change the lock.”

  “But Aunt Doreen gave me this key only last night. Could she have forgotten…?”

  “Did you call her?”

  “She’s not answering.” Sophie couldn’t put her finger on why she was so uneasy, but she was. “I went by her house first, and she wasn’t home. Her car wasn’t there, either.”

  “I’ve a mind to cut that lock right off,” Marge declared.

  Sophie stared at the metal door. “I’ll happily pay for a replacement lock.”

  “Well, then, you just hold on and I’ll be back in two shakes.”

  The morning was chilly enough Sophie began to pace. Wisps of fog lingered. If she went one way, she could see down the aisle at the far side of the property, which was currently empty. The other way, she could see the same people working in their units that she’d earlier passed. A few covered vehicles were parked back here, too. She ended up at the chain-link fence, staring into a forest that looked surprisingly primeval, considering how long this area had been settled and that it had likely been clear-cut at one time.

  There wasn’t much forestry on this side of the coastal range anymore, though; winter storms and ocean winds kept trees small compared to farther inland and therefore unprofitable. These were hemlock, spruce and cedar, she thought, although she couldn’t have told a hemlock from a spruce from a fir, if the truth be told. The evergreens were underlaid with shrubbery, some native, some not. Oregon grape, she thought, the ubiquitous salmonberry, huckleberries, the ferns that loved the damp climate, and other bits of foliage and even a few late spring flowers she didn’t recognize.

  Movement, caught by the corner of her eye, made her jump until she saw that a squirrel was scampering up the trunk of a tree. It paused on a branch to gaze at her with suspicion before darting out of sight.

  She was smiling when Marge returned with a pair of lethal-looking bolt cutters.

  Sophie hit re-dial on her phone and, at the sound of her aunt’s voice saying, “I’m too busy to take this call,” shook her head at Marge, who marched over to the door and applied the bolt cutters.

  Marge appeared entirely too scrawny to cut through a quarter-inch or more of steel, but with a snap, the lock fell open. “There you go,” she said with satisfaction.

  Sophie took the lock off, set it
on the concrete to one side, turned the hasp and heaved the door up. With a squeal and clatter, it rolled on its tracks.

  Beside her, Marge gasped.

  The interior was shadowy and astonishingly full, but Sophie was instantly riveted by the mess. Boxes were open, items spilling out. Smashed ceramic and shattered glass sprinkled the concrete floor. A framed picture lay face down, glittering glass around it and a hole stomped through the back. Somebody had broken in, was all she could think. Rifled the contents without caring what was destroyed. What a disaster.

  Dear God, Sophie thought in shock, had Aunt Doreen seen this? Might she have gone to the police?

  The committee or her aunt had obviously bought multiple shelving units, the kind that could be easily assembled and then taken apart to be moved, because a number of them lined the walls. Most were still packed with boxes of assorted shapes. Peering in, Sophie saw framed pictures carelessly stacked to one side. Tall or awkward things filled the middle. Was that a cat climber? A huge basket that had been covered with cellophane spilled gourmet foodstuffs across the floor.

  Along with her dismay at the implications of the mess, it was the clutter and the dim lighting that explained why her eyes didn’t immediately focus on the figure crumpled at the back. Even when she saw…what she saw…she rather stupidly gaped at the drying pool of a dark substance that had crept far enough from the – body? – to soak the corner of a cardboard box and possibly damage the contents.

  It was only then, reluctantly, that her eyes focused on that ruined head, and she saw the face.

  “Oh, dear God,” she whispered, at the same moment as Marge whirled, raced to the fence and lost her breakfast through it.

  *****

  The gate to the storage facility stood open when Daniel Colburn drove up in his squad car. Marge Hedgecoth stood just inside, waiting beside her golf cart. She didn’t look so good.