Shadow Lake

by B. J Daniels

  Slowly, he rolled over and gingerly put an arm around her. Her body felt stiff, but within seconds, she softened and leaned back into him, spooning into the curve of his big body. He could hear her crying softly.

  He pulled her closer, snuggling against her, his heart threatening to burst as he fell asleep holding his wife.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  RUTH FAIRBANKS WAS ALREADY sitting at a table by the window when Police Chief Nash arrived the next morning. It was one of those dark and gloomy rainy spring days that perfectly matched his own mood.

  Seeing her expression, he glanced at his watch. Five minutes early and she still gave him a look of impatience, as if she’d been made to wait and didn’t like it.

  What was so important that they had to meet here in secret this time of the morning anyway?

  “Coffee?” she asked as he grumbled “Mornin’” and pulled up a chair across from her.

  He nodded yes to the coffee and removed his hat. The place was empty, of course, since it wouldn’t open for weeks.

  She poured him a cup from a carafe. The table was set with cloth tablecloth and napkins, china dishes and real silverware along with a bowl of fresh fruit and an assortment of pastries that looked homemade.

  Amazing what a call from Ruth Fairbanks accomplished. But then the Fairbankses were royalty in this town and everyone knew it. Especially Ruth, who wielded more power here than the president.

  Nash reminded himself that he was no exception to that control, either. The matriarch had got him here at this hour of the morning without even telling him why. He’d had to leave Lucinda, who’d still been sleeping, when it was the last thing he wanted to do.

  The thought did nothing to improve his bad mood.

  “What is all this about?” he asked with a wave of his hand at the table. He hadn’t touched the cup of coffee she placed in front of him and didn’t plan to until he knew what she wanted.

  She sighed, picked up her china cup, took a slow sip of her coffee, all the time watching him over the rim with the clearest steel-gray eyes he’d ever seen. Both her sons had gotten her eyes, but neither could freeze a man with only one look the way their mother could.

  He reminded himself, though, that he was one of the few people left around who had known Ruth before she became Mrs. Fairbanks. Looking at her now, he could barely recall the scrawny little girl who’d shown up on the first day of school so many years ago in a threadbare dress.

  Her name had been Ruth Ashworth back then. The dress was a hand-me-down that swallowed her skinny frame. Her face was freckled, the gray eyes huge and scared. He remembered feeling sorry for her because everyone knew she was the only daughter of Pete and Mabel Ashworth, a couple of early hippie types who lived a hand-to-mouth existence out on one of the islands in the lake.

  That was back when land like that wasn’t worth much. A person could squat on the land for a while and take over ownership.

  So it was no wonder that on the first day he’d laid eyes on her, Nash couldn’t even imagine that one day Ruth Ashworth would grow into a true beauty, who would marry a rich older man who would buy that island and build her a mansion on it. What Nash could never understand was why Fairbanks left intact the shack that Ruth used to live in on the other end of the island.

  Maybe, like Nash, Big Jim Fairbanks wanted to remind Ruth of her past.

  “Ruth,” Nash said, using her first name to remind them both where she came from even though, in this town, anyone else who remembered Ruth’s humble beginnings wisely kept it to himself. “You didn’t ask me to meet you here to have coffee and fancy pastries.”

  His plate was too full for bullshit this morning and if she was going to give him hell about Anna Collins coming to her house, he just wanted her to get it over with so he could go home and have that talk with his wife.

  “You and I used to be friends, Robert Nash. I need to know something. From you, I expect complete honesty. You saw the body they found in the lake. Was it my son’s? Was it Jack’s?”

  He couldn’t have been more surprised if she’d asked him about flying saucers. He picked up his coffee cup and took a swallow, burning his tongue.

  “I’m asking you as a friend.” Her voice broke. “Are you one-hundred-percent positive it was Jack?”

  He hadn’t expected this and wasn’t sure how to answer kindly. “Ruth, whose body would it have been if not Jack’s?”

  “It’s a simple question, Rob,” she snapped. “Are you one-hundred-percent positive it was my son’s?”

  Nash sighed. The body had been badly decomposed from being in the water for so long, but he didn’t want to tell her that. “Ruth, Jonathan made the identification. Why aren’t you asking him?”

  “So you aren’t sure.” She leaned back, nodded and picked up her coffee cup.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “I’m no fool, Rob. I know the body was in bad shape. So if I want to know positively, without any doubt that Jack is in that grave, then I have to open the casket, compare his dental records and maybe even run DNA tests, right?”

  Nash swore. “Ruth, you don’t want to—”

  “I already called Judge Gandy this morning.”

  “I’ll bet he loved that, given the hour,” Nash quipped.

  “You’ll be getting the required documents needed to oversee the exhumation. I want it done as quickly as possible and as quietly. How long will it take to get the results of DNA tests?”

  He shook his head. “Weeks. In your case, days.” He could well imagine the headlines if the press got wind of this. “Ruth, does Jonathan know what you’re doing?” He knew even before he asked that Jonathan would never have gone along with this. “Are you sure you want to proceed?”

  She gave him a look that left no doubt. “Now that we have that taken care of, tell me what you know about this woman, Anna Collins.”

  He sighed. “You’re talking to the wrong person. Officer Walker is handling the incident.”

  She lifted a brow. “Why aren’t you handling it?”

  “I was out of town when the call came in and it’s just a traffic accident.”

  She kept looking at him.

  “Truthfully, you probably know more about Anna Collins than I do,” he said.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I’d never seen the woman before she ended up on my doorstep. Although—” she frowned “—her name sounded familiar. Why is that?”

  As if he had a clue. “I wouldn’t know.”

  “Don’t be obtuse. It’s all over town that her car went into the lake and she almost drowned. Is there something else to know about her?”

  He drained his cup and poured himself another, eyeing the pastries. The way this conversation was going he would need all the caffeine and fortification he could get.

  “She told me that she thinks Jack saved her life,” Ruth said, making him nearly spill his coffee.

  “What?” Walker hadn’t told him this. But then again, he hadn’t given Walker a chance to tell him much of anything since he hadn’t been interested. He’d had other things on his mind.

  “So you really don’t know anything,” she said impatiently. “Where did her car enter the lake?”

  “On the edge of town. She came out to your house to tell you Jack saved her?”

  “Actually, no. Apparently she didn’t know who the man was until she saw a painting of Jack in our living room. She seemed to think that some friend of hers, an attorney, had contacted us about witnessing a hit-and-run accident.”

  Nash didn’t know what to say.

  “Apparently, it was why she came to Shadow Lake and ended up in the lake,” Ruth continued. “She said that either she or this friend, a Gillian Sanders, was supposed to meet someone named Fairbanks at the rest stop outside of town that night. Do you know anything about this?”

  It was news to him. “No.”

  Ruth pursed her lips, making it clear she didn’t think he was doing his job. He really needed to retire.

  “What I
want to know, Rob, is why she thought she saw Jack.”

  “Obviously she’s mistaken. I guess she has some kind of head injury and nearly drowned. Now she has pneumonia.” He was glad Walker had filled him in on that much at least. “I hope you aren’t having the exhumation based on what this woman claims, given her mental state. She lost her son in a car accident and was in a coma for six months. She’s clearly not stable.”

  Ruth said nothing for a moment, just fixed him with that unwavering icy stare. “Anna Collins said Jack had a scar across his face.” Her voice broke and Nash swore silently, cursing Anna Collins for putting Ruth through this.

  “Ruth, I really think you should reconsider the exhumation.”

  “Don’t even bother to try to talk me out of it,” she said stiffly.

  “Ruth, there is no evidence that—”

  She reached into her purse and handed him a scrap of paper. He wiped his hands on his napkin and reluctantly took what appeared to be half of an envelope. There was something written on it, although he could barely decipher the words.

  “What is this?” he asked.

  “Anna Collins said she found it in her coat pocket.”

  “It’s just some scribbles.”

  Ruth reached over and took it back. “Why are you being so difficult?”

  He looked down at his coffee cup and bit his tongue. He wanted to state the obvious: Jack was dead. And because of that Anna Collins couldn’t have seen him on the bottom of the lake. And digging up his body was only going to cause a lot of pain for nothing, plus bad publicity if it got out.

  “What aren’t you telling me, Robert?”

  “Ruth—”

  “Don’t use that tone with me, Robert Nash. I’ve known you my whole life. The woman saw a painting of Jack and fainted on my doorstep. I saw her expression when she looked at a photograph of Jack. She saw Jack. She believes he saved her life.”

  Nash groaned, knowing there was nothing he could say to convince Ruth otherwise.

  “Are you going to investigate her claim or not?”

  He stared at her. “We’re getting Anna Collins’s car out this morning. I should know more then.” But even if Walker could prove the woman hadn’t seen Jack Fairbanks on the bottom of the lake, he doubted it would change Ruth’s mind about the exhumation.

  “Thank you.” She put down her coffee cup. It clattered on the plate and, for the first time in a long time, he saw her lose her composure. Her gaze met his and he saw the raw pain in those frosty gray eyes.

  His cell phone rang. “That’s probably Walker calling me now to say the wrecker’s here.”

  THE WRECKER OPERATOR WAS waiting with a larger, newer tow truck when Walker arrived.

  The beer and spareribs he’d had last night weighed heavy on his stomach as he got out of his patrol car and walked to the edge of the mountain to watch as the cable was lowered to the lake where the divers were waiting.

  The air felt damp, the threat of rain and low-hanging clouds over the lake giving him only fleeting glimpses of the water. He felt anxious as the blue Cadillac finally broke the surface.

  This time he stood back as the behemoth was winched from the water.

  He called the chief when the wrecker arrived only to find him upset. Ruth Fairbanks apparently now wanted an exhumation of Jack’s body, proof that there was no way Anna Collins could have seen him under that water. He hoped there would be answers to a lot of questions as he watched the car surface.

  The Cadillac had been on its top when the divers had found it. Anna Collins had said that she was trapped upside down under the water. Had she been?

  Walker rubbed his forehead, thinking about a note the chief said Ruth Fairbanks had shown him. Apparently, Anna Collins, or a friend of hers who was a lawyer, had been meeting someone named Fairbanks at the rest stop. At least that’s what Anna Collins had gleaned from the note that Walker had yet to see.

  In fact, he wondered why Anna Collins had failed to mention it to him? He’d known she’d used her in-car emergency service to map out the route to Shadow Lake—and the police station. She hadn’t come to town by accident.

  Maybe later he’d drive up to the rest stop and take a look around just in case she had met someone there before going in the lake.

  The big blue Cadillac inched up the mountainside to crest the top. Walker watched as the wrecker operator and his crew hurried to release the steel cable and flip the car over onto its wheels for transport.

  Water streamed from every crack in the car. He could see the large suitcase. When the car was flipped back over, it landed in the backseat. Strange she hadn’t put the suitcase in the trunk.

  “Just a minute,” he said to the wrecker operator. “There’s something I need to check before you take it in to the garage.”

  The guy looked at him as if he was nuts. They’d been holding up traffic, even if it wasn’t much traffic. The sooner they got the car off the highway the better. “It can’t wait five minutes?”

  “No,” Walker said. The front side windows had both been broken out to run the strap through to hook up the tow cable. He reached a gloved hand through the window opening and popped the lever on the trunk. “There’s something I want to check.”

  “Trunk seems to be stuck,” the wrecker operator said. “I’ve got a crowbar you can use.”

  Walker took the tool and walked to the back of the car. He forced the crowbar under the lid and pried until he heard the lock break.

  Curiosity getting the better of him, he lifted the lid.

  “Shit,” Walker said as he saw what was inside.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  ANNA WOKE WITH a start. Disoriented in the dim room, she jerked back as she felt a hand touch her arm and turned to find Officer D.C. Walker sitting again on the chair beside her bed.

  Anna had expected to see Marc. Hadn’t Mary Ellen said he was on his way? So why hadn’t he stopped by the hospital yet? Maybe he’d changed his mind about coming up to Shadow Lake. She could only hope.

  “Nightmare?” Officer Walker asked, studying her.

  The expression on his face made her sit up, pulling the covers to her chin. The clock beside her bed read 1:32 p.m. She vaguely remembered dozing off after both breakfast and an early lunch.

  The good news was that she felt a lot better. Her skin was cool to the touch and for the first time in almost two days, her head didn’t ache.

  She braced herself for what she knew had to be about last night and her trip out to the island. From what Dr. Brubaker had said, upsetting the Fairbankses was going to have repercussions.

  “I don’t recall.”

  His smile could have cut glass. “That must be hell, not remembering when you’re asleep or when you’re awake.”

  She felt dread settle into her bones.

  “We pulled your car from the lake,” he said as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small tape recorder. He placed it on the nightstand.

  Her pulse began to pound in her ears.

  “I need to ask you a few questions,” he said as he punched Record. “I’d like to tape our conversation, Mrs. Collins. Would that be all right with you?”

  She heard the hospital room door open and was relieved to see Dr. Brubaker step in.

  “I asked Dr. Brubaker to join us,” he said. “I’m filling in for Chief Nash in his absence.”

  She saw the doctor’s somber expression as he went over to the window and opened the curtains. Outside, the sky was overcast and gray as if about to rain if it hadn’t already. Dr. Brubaker leaned against the wall and didn’t meet her eyes, seeming to tell her that he could no longer protect her.

  But protect her from what? Were the Fairbankses going to press trespassing charges? Could they? Heart racing, she turned to see the police deputy take the pencil from behind his ear and open his small notebook.

  She needed a lawyer. Every instinct told her to stop this right here and demand a lawyer.

  The truth was she had no one to call. She’d always
depended on Gillian.

  “What is this about?” she asked, needing to know just how much trouble she was in.

  “If you have no objections with me taping this, Mrs. Collins…”

  “No, no objections,” she said and felt fear burrow under her skin like a painful splinter as the cop began with, “Your name is Anna Collins, isn’t that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re married to Marc Collins of Seattle?”

  “Separated.”

  He looked up at her. “But still legally married.”

  “That’s what I’ve been told. I don’t know that for a fact.”

  “Mrs. Collins, I’ve spoken with your husband on several occasions and again this morning before I came here. He has told me that he called you two nights ago and informed you that he hadn’t gone through with the divorce. He says the two of you planned to have dinner out to celebrate a reconciliation.”

  Had she really agreed to that? It would explain the clothing she’d found in her hospital-room closet. His favorite black dress on her, high-heeled sandals, her dress coat. Exactly what Marc would have wanted her to wear for a night at some too-expensive restaurant.

  She recalled the first time she had ever laid eyes on Marc Collins. She’d been in the process of getting her mother’s home ready to sell and had some real estate questions. She’d seen his sign next to a small, nondescript office.

  Something about it had appealed to her. Apparently his office manager had just quit. He’d been bent over a desk full of papers, his dark hair standing up at all angles from running his hands through it, his tie loosened, his office in complete chaos. He’d looked up and appeared so lost and desperate…. Her heart had gone out to him.

  It was the vulnerability in him that would have made her go back to him.

  She saw that Walker was waiting for an answer. “I have no memory of talking to my hus—to Marc.”

  He raised an eyebrow at her obvious resistance to call Marc her husband. “Tell me what you do remember.”

  She told him again, starting with her last memory of that evening, from the deer that bounded onto the highway to letting out her breath in the submerged car at the bottom of the lake at the sight of the horribly scarred man at the side window. At least, his face had appeared scarred. She explained that she now wondered if the scar had been an optical illusion.