He’d arrived before her—or at least his bedraggled pickup truck had. She drove past it and cruised the entire lot in search of a police car. During her drive to Concord, she’d repeatedly checked her rearview mirror to see if she was being followed. Paranoia didn’t come naturally to her, but if Knapp knew she and Stavik had gone to the Old Colonial Inn together, someone must have followed them then.
As far as she could tell, no one had followed her this time. If Stavik had been followed and a cop was in the vicinity, the cop must have used an unmarked car.
She parked as far from the rusty old pickup as she could, shut off the engine, and took a deep breath. The Volvo’s interior smelled of her shampoo, even though she’d patiently blow-dried her hair after her jog. Her muscles hummed with energy. The exercise had pumped her up.
Or maybe it was the prospect of seeing Stavik that flooded her arteries with adrenaline. She’d taken a huge risk coming here, trusting him—well, sort of trusting him. For all she knew, Stavik was Cavanagh’s murderer. Knapp seemed like a total idiot, but he might be only a partial one, as right in his suspicions about Stavik as he was wrong in his suspicions about Lainie.
Yet Knapp seemed even less trustworthy than Stavik. She’d believed Stavik when he’d admitted to being traumatized by his discovery of Arthur Cavanagh’s body that ghastly morning. The way he’d talked about the scent of blood in the building . . .
More adrenaline surged through her, causing her to twitch. She took another deep breath, commanded herself to stay calm, then opened her car door and filled her lungs with the fragrance of pine and spruce and spring air.
She locked the car and searched the lot for witnesses. A few people milled around, nowhere near as many as the number of cars would indicate. The beach down by the pond must be crowded.
At the edge of the lot stood a replica of the one-room cabin Thoreau had lived in during his year at Walden Pond. Lainie didn’t see Stavik there, but the presence of his truck in the lot indicated that he was somewhere in the vicinity.
She hid her keys inside her fist, in case she had to punch him or flee. She didn’t want to be groping in her purse for her car key if he was attempting to kill her.
Nearing the cabin, she spotted him as he emerged from inside. He saw her and waved.
Advertise to the world that we’re meeting, why don’t you, she thought sourly. Maybe he ought to send up a flare to help Knapp’s deputies locate them.
Like her, Stavik had changed out of his funeral attire. He wore blue jeans that were in much better condition than the faded and frayed work jeans he’d had on the day she’d met him at Emerson Village, a muted plaid shirt and, like her, a pair of leather sneakers. Had he chosen sneakers so he could run away if necessary? That was why she’d chosen them.
She closed the distance between them, the ridges of her keys biting into her palm. He smiled slightly, then lost his smile as he read her grim expression. “Have you ever seen this cabin?” he asked, gesturing toward the building behind him.
“Lots of times.” She escorted her fourth-graders to the historic site every year, and she and Roger used to bring Karen and Randy to the pond to swim when they were children. They’d always loved to visit the one-room cabin, which wasn’t much bigger than an outhouse. Its austere interior contained a cot, a small writing table, and a wood stove. Like her students, Karen and Randy had been astonished to think of a man living more than a year alone in such a tiny house, with no running water, no refrigerator, no TV, computer, or video game system.
“Not exactly the sort of house Cavanagh Homes would construct,” Stavik remarked.
Not exactly. Stavik must have realized how tense she was, and she appreciated his attempt to put her at ease with a little joke. If he were going to murder her, he wouldn’t waste time being ingratiating, would he?
“Okay,” she said briskly. “Why are we here?”
“You know why we’re here,” he answered. “Officer Blubber thinks we killed Cavanagh.”
“Speak for yourself,” she retorted, then squeezed her keys and regained her temper. “He thinks you killed Cavanagh.”
“And he thinks you’re my accomplice. At least, that’s what he’s been hinting at with me. Is he telling you something different?”
She conceded with a glum sigh. “I don’t know how he could reach such a conclusion. I told him I’d never even met you before that afternoon at Emerson Village.”
“I told him that, too. He obviously considers us both good liars.”
“I’m not,” Lainie said. “I’m one of the world’s worst liars.” She heard a jangling behind her and turned to see a family walking toward their car—two parents, two kids, and a slobbering Labrador retriever with a collection of metal tags clanking against its collar. All of them, even the dog, looked carefree. Lainie tried to recall the last time she’d been carefree. Sometime before Roger’s diagnosis, maybe.
“I’ve been known to lie on occasion,” Stavik admitted, “but it’s not my strong suit.”
Confessing that he sometimes lied paradoxically made him seem honest to her. “Why do you suppose Knapp suspects us?” she asked.
“I don’t know why he suspects you, except that you turned up at the house where I found Cav’s body. He probably read somewhere that murderers always return to the scene of the crime.”
“He learned that at the police academy,” she informed Stavik. “You also returned to the scene of the crime.”
“I was at the scene of the crime from the start.” Stavik shoved his hands into his pockets and leaned against the rough-hewn clapboards of the cabin’s outer wall. “My fingerprints are everywhere, including on the nail gun that was used to kill Cav. Of course they would be. I used the damned thing all the time. And my shoe prints were all over because I walked on the floor that morning, including stepping into a puddle of blood. My hair was on his body because I tried to do CPR on him. What the hell did they expect? I’m all over the crime scene.”
“Were anyone else’s fingerprints on the nail gun?”
“If they were, Knapp didn’t tell me. But the way Cav was killed—it wasn’t a crime of passion. It was more like an execution. Whoever did it was probably careful to wear gloves or wipe off his prints.”
Lainie doubted she would remember to wipe her prints off a weapon she’d used to commit a murder. But she wasn’t a criminal, and she didn’t think like one. “Are you saying Arthur was executed?”
“That sounds kind of dramatic, doesn’t it?” Stavik shrugged. Even in his loose-fitting plaid shirt his shoulders seemed huge.
“Why would the Rockford Police think you were the executioner? You don’t have a motive, do you?”
He looked sheepish. “That’s another problem. Cav and I never got along. We were always going at it. Knapp interviewed the crew and heard from them how it was between Cav and me. Everyone else hated Cav, but I was the foreman, so I was the one who got in his face. They had complaints, they came to me, and I went to him and fought it out. He called me names. I called him worse names. He was a son of a bitch, and the crew heard me tell him that on an average of five times a day.”
Lainie pictured Arthur making a fool of himself with the flashy young blonde at Olde Towne Olé. He was indeed a son of a bitch. “What did your crew complain about?” she asked, curious about Cavanagh’s professional, rather than personal, son-of-a-bitch credentials.
Stavik shrugged again. “He used to cheat the guys out of overtime. He’d make them work extra hours, then refuse to pay them time and a half. A couple of years ago, he fired the whole crew and brought in non-union workers. I quit working for him then. No way was I going to work with non-union guys. The project stalled out, and he begged me to come back. I told him I’d return only if he rehired the union crew. He caved, but he resented the hell out of me for winning that round.” He shrugged again. “It wasn’t
an easy relationship.”
“So you hated him, you left your fingerprints everywhere, and you knew how to use a nail gun.”
“What do you think?” Stavik asked, smiling crookedly. “Enough to convict?”
Lainie laughed, then stopped laughing. His question wasn’t funny. Besides, she didn’t want to laugh with him. He was a son of a bitch himself.
“Come on,” he said, motioning with his head toward the path that led from the parking lot to the lake. “Let’s go look at the pond.”
She decided walking was a good idea, even if it meant all the pond-worshipers would see her and Stavik together. Anyone passing through the lot would see them together, anyway. They were together. And she was outside Rockford. God help her, Knapp might arrest her for leaving town.
She fell into step beside Stavik on the path. Below her feet, dry orange pine needles crunched like a straw rug. “So, if Knapp has all this evidence pointing to you, why is he giving me a hard time?”
“Because he’s an idiot?” Stavik guessed.
Lainie didn’t like sharing his opinion. She didn’t want them to have anything in common. But she couldn’t dispute his assessment of Knapp.
“Did he warn you not to leave town?” she asked.
Stavik chuckled. “He gave me a lot of warnings. He was obviously trying to scare the shit out of me.”
“Did he succeed?”
Stavik glanced down at her. “No. I’m still full of shit.”
She swallowed the urge to laugh again.
“It’s so peaceful here,” he said as they crossed the road and descended to the sandy beach. “Even with a crowd. Too bad there aren’t more places like this, just a quiet forest and a lake.”
“There aren’t more places like this because companies like Cavanagh Homes tear down the trees and put up McMansions,” Lainie pointed out.
“Yeah.”
She hadn’t expected such quick agreement from him. “You’re part of the problem,” she reminded him. “You’re one of the people tearing down the trees and putting up the McMansions.”
“That was another thing Cav and I fought about. He didn’t have to knock down so many trees. It’s harder to build around trees, it costs more. So okay, you charge more for the final product. Most home buyers are willing to pay for the trees. But no, he’d roll in the bulldozers and flatten the acreage. You saw what he did to the woods at Emerson Village. The site looked like a bomb had hit it.”
“Don’t tell me you’re a closet member of the People for the Preservation of the Planet.”
Stavik shot her an enigmatic look. Maybe he was a member.
“Do you think they could have killed him?” she asked.
“Some environmental extremists are capable of murder. Cav used to get emails containing death threats.”
“From environmentalists?” she asked. Stavik nodded. “Did you tell the police?”
He sighed. “They’ll never see those threats. He used to delete them.”
“But still . . .” Lainie felt her own personal clouds part above her. “If he received death threats, that’s where the police should be focusing. They shouldn’t be wasting their time on you.”
“Or you,” Stavik shot back. His reminder that she was under suspicion caused the clouds to regroup around her.
She followed him down one of the paths that circled the lake, carrying them away from the dozens of people on the sand and the few brave souls who’d actually waded into the pond. The water must be freezing, Lainie thought. The afternoon wasn’t all that warm, and in April, Massachusetts lakes were swollen with melted snow.
Stavik climbed onto a rock beside the lake, reached down, and gripped her hand. Once she’d joined him on the rock, he sat. She did, too. It wasn’t as comfortable as the sofa in her den, but the view was better.
“So how do we convince the police that whoever sent Arthur those death threats is their culprit?” she asked.
“I don’t give a damn who their culprit is, as long as they realize it isn’t me.” He bent one knee and rested his arm on it. “We’ve got to clear our names, Lainie. One fucking drink—excuse me,” he apologized. “One drink and they’ve turned us into Bonnie and Clyde.”
“My drink wasn’t even alcoholic,” she added.
“And you said you’d never have another drink with me.” He eyed her with what was either disappointment or speculation.
“I don’t have drinks with married men,” she explained, hating how prissy she sounded.
“I’m not a married man.”
“You’ve got a daughter.”
“Shared custody with my ex-wife. You’ve got a daughter, too. She answered the phone when I called you,” he reminded her. “Are you married?”
Shared custody. Ex-wife. Lainie should have thought of that, but her mind had obviously been tainted by the sight of Arthur Cavanagh with his blond friend, and by Angie’s and Sheila’s pointing out that men, with the exception of Roger, were not saints. “No, I’m not married,” she said, then steeled herself against the sudden affection she felt toward Stavik. “But you didn’t know that when you asked if we could get together again.”
“No ring,” he reminded her. “A lady like you, a sweet small-town schoolteacher, I figured if you were married your left hand would tell the story.”
She wasn’t sure she appreciated being pigeonholed like that: a sweet small-town schoolteacher. She was going to have to start swearing, she resolved, and doing outré things. Maybe she could get arrested for murder. That would spice up her image.
“So, do you share custody with your ex?” he asked.
“My daughter’s almost twenty-three, so custody isn’t an issue. And I don’t have an ex. My husband died.”
“Oh. Shit.” He glanced away, his smile gone. “Sorry.”
“That’s okay. I’m familiar with the word. The other word you said, too. I don’t use language like that, but I know what it means.”
“Fucking? Glad you know what that means,” he said, a teasing undertone in his voice. “I meant, I’m sorry your husband died.”
“So am I.”
They didn’t say anything for a few minutes. Lainie adjusted her position on the rock so its granite hardness wouldn’t make her butt go numb, and considered the man beside her. In church that morning, Angie had thought he was a hunk. Lainie wasn’t sure about that, but she’d never been the sort to fall for hunks. Back in high school, other girls always got crushes on the hunky guys—the football stars, the studs with bedroom eyes, the boys who swaggered down the halls, overdosing on their own charisma. Lainie had always been more interested in the oddballs, the cute math genius, the dimpled comedian who could juggle five tennis balls at once, the soccer players. Roger had been a handsome man, but what she’d loved about him was his kindness, his serenity, and his humor. Sure, he’d been smart and great in bed, but that hadn’t been what had captured her heart.
Well, the great-in-bed part hadn’t hurt.
And she shouldn’t be thinking about great-in-bed while sitting next to Bill Stavik, who despite not being married was still being investigated by the police for murder, which was surely reason enough for her to keep her distance from him.
“If it’s not the crazed environmentalists who sent him death threats,” she wondered aloud, “who could have killed him?”
“Me,” he conceded. “Or anyone else who worked for him. He really was a bastard to work for.”
“What about girlfriends? He fooled around, didn’t he?”
“Never,” Stavik said with such certainty she flinched.
“How do you know that?”
“It was a thing with him. He would never cheat on Patty. Never. A bastard in every way except that.”
She closed her eyes and conjured a mental picture of his companion
at Olde Towne Olé the last night of his life. His cousin, right? His sister. His customer, with a bosom out to there and goo-goo eyes. Lainie had wanted to believe his drink with the blond woman had been as innocent as her drink with Stavik at the Old Colonial Inn, but now that Stavik was swearing Arthur was the embodiment of marital fidelity, she couldn’t stop herself from assuming the worst about him.
“What if I told you I saw him with another woman?” she asked.
“I’d tell you whoever that woman was, he wasn’t cheating on Patty with her.” He gazed out at the lake, its flat surface reflecting the towering evergreens and white birch that surrounded it. “Cav was a faithful husband. His idea of morals was, destroy the environment, rip off your workers, but don’t wag your tail at any bitch other than your wife.”
Lainie folded her hands and tried to adopt his certainty. She’d wanted to believe Arthur was a decent man that evening at Olde Towne Olé, but now that he was dead and she’d somehow wound up on the police’s short list of suspects, she’d prefer to believe he was a lowlife with dozens of people gunning for him. Or nail-gunning for him.
“I’ve been thinking I should hire a lawyer,” she said. “Just in case.”
Stavik nodded. “I’ve got a lawyer. He’s great when it comes to divorces. When it comes to criminal law, he doesn’t know shit. I asked him for some referrals. It’s not like I’ve ever needed a criminal lawyer before”
She looked at Stavik’s hand, thick with calluses, his fingers long and square tipped. It was a hand that could wield a hammer, a screw driver, a wrench, a crowbar . . . or a nail gun. Was it a hand that could kill someone?
“So, we have a situation,” she said. “What are we going to do about it? Besides hiring criminal lawyers.”
He twisted on the rock so he could look at her. “Just for the record, you didn’t kill him, did you?”
Knapp’s insinuations were bad enough. Stavik’s sliced right through her. “How can you even ask such a thing?”
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