by Kat Bammer
There was nothing even remotely familiar inside the cottage. She entered and when she turned the corner from the entry to the living room, her throat tightened. There were personal touches of her father all around. He always had a particular ability to blend old things into a modern environment. Lisa touched the cool, gray stone mantle of the massive hearth which sat smack dab in the middle of the small living room. They must have gotten rid of some walls because she remembered the hearth, but she was pretty sure there had been walls, not the open floor plan that made the cottage appear bigger. On the left-hand side sat a very modern, beige kitchen, only separated from the living room through a bar. Even though the cottage was small, the bright colors gave the place a modern and roomy feeling. She could see her mother and father after a long day. Her mother would stand in the kitchen with a glass of white wine while her father sat on the bar nursing a beer.
Lisa turned toward the living room and sat down on the leather couch, which, surprisingly, was much more comfortable than it appeared. She studied the beautiful pictures on the wall: scenic images of Moon Lake, the lake, the woods, and the mountains that surrounded them. Her father had always loved this place. Her vision blurred, and she hugged herself, wishing it was her father who could hug her. She sniffed then bit her lip and stood up abruptly.
The keys.
Lisa turned toward the kitchen and twisted around. Where would they store the keys? She hadn’t seen a key rack in the entry so maybe they had a small office or something. She opened every door and drawer in the small cottage, but there weren’t too many possibilities and soon she gave up.
She dialed her mom’s phone from the landline. Her mother still refused to leave the hospital. She went to Karen’s for showering and changed and slept on the sofa for a few hours, but she just wouldn’t leave Whitebrook in case there was a sudden change in her father’s condition. Yesterday, Lisa had taken fresh clothes with her to the hospital when she visited her father. There had been no change at all. The doctors told them they wanted to wean him off of ventilation soon, so they could see if he could breathe on his own. They hadn’t said anything about what would happen if he couldn’t. Lisa’s stomach tightened every time she thought of this, so she avoided those thoughts as much as possible. Her avoidance strategy really didn’t work when she was sitting in the hospital, so she threw herself into setting up and running the Inn. Including the damn basement.
The phone call wasn’t successful. Her mother didn’t believe the basement was locked up but told her to go look in the small woodshed her father had built on at the back side of the cottage.
Thankfully it was unlocked and after a little struggle and a lot of cursing, she opened the heavy door with a squeak.
Sawdust, machine oil, and a smell so uniquely her father’s bombarded her, the intensity of it making her eyes sting.
“Hi, Dad.” Her voice shook, and she was greeted with silence. She stayed perfectly still until the pain lessened a bit. She knew it was stupid, but she needed her dad; she needed him to wake up again. There was so much she wanted to ask him. The urge to talk to him was overwhelming sometimes. And she needed just one more hug. He gave the best hugs. Strong, encompassing, and protective. She always felt safe in his big arms. Lisa sniffed and searched for the light switch. The keys, she was here for the keys. The place looked like her dad had just left: a broken chair, waiting in the corner to be fixed; a repaired ornate picture frame held together by a screw clamp on the workbench. Lisa smiled and touched the frame. Her dad always loved to fix things. He once told her that it was what made him the hero with her mother. And every man liked to be a hero for his wife.
A huge sob lodged in her throat and another wave of desperation washed over her. Today wasn’t going as planned.
“Stop with the sentimental crap, Lisa. Concentrate!” She opened one tool cabinet after the other, going through the mechanics, but the moment she had forgotten what she was actually searching for, her left hand touched a large key ring. She pulled it out and was about to close the cabinet again when her brain recognized that there were no tools in there, not a single one. But there were papers, lots and lots of papers, neatly sorted into various folders. Lisa squinted, but the light didn’t penetrate the inside of the cabinet enough to see clearly, so she took out the top three folders to take a look at them in the light. Lisa blinked rapidly and shook her head. What she saw didn’t make sense. Maps, newspaper cutouts. Pictures of women. Lisa spread the papers all over the workbench. One newspaper article, with the photo of a young woman, caught her eyes immediately. There, photographed with a smile was Sophie Fisher, Peter’s sister. It was an article of how she went missing after attending a party and was later found dead on a small meadow in the woods between Moon Lake and Stone Valley. Her killer had never been found. Lisa shuffled through the other articles. There were other incidents of dead women in the county—four different women, all killed, but not all unsolved. One woman was obviously killed by her ex-boyfriend, who went to prison for it, but always protested his innocence. Lisa was completely flummoxed and her mind raced. Why would her dad keep articles of those dead women in his workshop? Why would he have a map where the locations of their bodies were marked? Some newspaper articles were really old too. He must have had them for a long time. What the hell?
“Lisa, you out there?”
She gasped and jumped back. Peter was here. She looked at the papers in front of her. What if her dad had something to do with these dead women? What should she do? Show him? He was law enforcement after all. He would certainly know what to do. But what if? Lisa scraped all the stuff together and threw it back into the tool cabinet.
She sprinted toward the door, switched off the light, and closed the door firmly behind her.
Right at that moment Peter turned the corner, and they nearly ran into each other.
“Hey, found you.” He looked at her and drew his eyebrows together. “You good?”
Lisa took a deep breath and smoothed down her clothes. She must look as agitated as she felt.
“Yes, I’m good. Do you need something?” Maybe she should tell him. Maybe he could make sense of it. It certainly would be the right thing to do. She crossed her hands over her chest. Maybe later, after she had more time to study the papers. Make sense of them herself.
“What’s that?” Peter pointed at the keys in her palm and the ring around her middle finger.
“Keys. I was searching for the keys to the basement. It’s locked.” Lisa laughed then bit her lip. Now she was even less thrilled to go down there.
“Are you sure? More likely the door is just stuck. But anyway, I need entry to a room. Officially.”
She crossed her arms when she realized Peter was obviously on duty, decked out in full uniform including his service weapon.
“Which room? Why?”
Peter fidgeted. “Room 5.”
“Why?” Lisa didn’t know if Room 5 was occupied or not, but either way, why would he need entry to the room? “The body you found?”
“Yes.” He tilted his head up and let out a heavy sigh. “It was a woman who went missing five days ago.”
She leveled her head to the side. She still didn’t know where he was going with this. “Okay.”
“She was a guest.”
A chill ran down her spine. Another dead woman. Here, at the Inn. “Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
The hairs on her forearms lifted. A guest? The dead woman was a guest. What the hell was happening here? “Okay.” She didn’t move; she just stood there rooted to the spot her legs too weak to walk.
“You coming?” Peter looked at her, his head tilted. “Is something wrong?” He touched her arm gently. “I know it was hard finding her and all, but I need you to hold it together and open that room for me or at least give me the key. Can you do that?”
Lisa’s vision blurred, but she nodded and started walking again. Her mind raced.
Something was very, very wrong and somehow it involved t
he Inn and her father. She needed more information.
“So, this woman, who was she?”
“Name’s Grace Ketley—stayed at the Inn for a few days. Went out one evening and hasn’t been seen since. We searched the woods around the club she went to. But Odin couldn’t find a trace of her.”
“Odin?” They had just passed the rose garden on their way to the side door by the kitchen when Peter whistled.
A huge, black lab ran toward them at full speed. Behind him, at a more leisurely pace, Cookie followed the lab.
“Meet Odin. He is my K9 Partner.” The lab sat before Peter and looked up at him with reverence.
When Lisa went down, he sniffed at her hand, and when she started to pat him, he immediately went down and offered his belly.
Peter chuckled. “He is still young, but a good boy.”
Lisa looked up at Peter. “He is adorable.” She straightened again and Odin got up and sprang around them the rest of the way. He tried to engage Cookie into playing with him. But the old lady wasn’t interested and flopped down on her usual spot at the kitchen entry.
Half an hour later Peter came down into the kitchen from Mrs. Ketley’s room.
“We already notified her next of kin; her husband will come get her belongings in the next few days.”
“Peter?” Lisa said, not knowing if she really wanted to know the answer to the question she was about to ask.
“Yes,” he answered.
“How did she die?” She held her breath.
“She was killed, Lisa—stabbed. Investigation is underway, so I can’t tell you more. But we don’t know who did it yet.” He laid his hand on her cheek and stroked her with his thumb. “I want you to be careful, okay. Don’t go out alone, especially not at night. It’s not safe. Promise me.”
The worry and affection in his eyes made her lean toward him. She didn’t know who was the first to act, but a second later she was pressed against his chest, inhaling his nice clean scent of soap and laundry detergent.
“Okay. I promise.”
14
Lisa was determined to sell the small-town charm to Claire. But sure enough the people of Moon Lake didn’t make it easy for her.
Claire had arrived the day before, and for her first day, they decided to take a walk through town. The weather was nice again, and it was unusually hot for early May in the mountains.
They weren’t even off the gravel parking lot of the Inn when the Reynolds’ longtime neighbor, Mrs. Brooks, stopped them.
“Do you remember when your foot got stuck under a rootstock, Lisa?”
Lisa grumbled. Yes, she could remember the incident. She must have been around seven, and her ankle had been hurting and swollen for weeks afterward. Maybe she remembered so well because her dad had taken a photograph of it. Which later took a prominent place at the first and luckily only article that featured her in the local newsletter the people of Moon Lake published every year around Christmas. Small-town charm all right.
It had taken some major operation, which included the fire brigade, to get her foot out of there.
After they said goodbye to Mrs. Brooks, it took them only ten minutes to arrive at The Fairview, a nifty name for the town square and main gathering point of Moon Lake, where visitors could enjoy a beautiful view of the lake and the mountains.
“It sure is beautiful here,” Claire said.
Lisa nodded and breathed in the smells: a combination of fresh, crisp mountain air, the lake, and heavenly smells of baked goods that wafted toward them from the café right next to old Patterson’s Store. The café was new. The small store, as well as its owner, Mr. Patterson, who sat in front of his store every sunny day, had been there for as long as Lisa could remember. Only Mr. Patterson was a lot older, now skin and bones, his face wrinkled, and his blue eyes sagging like the eyes of a bloodhound. He must have been in his nineties by now.
They greeted him and after a terse nod with his head, he spoke with a barely audible gravelly voice. “Good to have you back and good for you—you grew out of your awkward phase and grew some boobs.”
Lisa’s eyebrows shot up, and she gaped, at a loss for words. But she could feel heat fire up her face immediately.
Claire snorted, but after Mr. Patterson’s eyes cut over at her, she closed her mouth.
Lisa felt the tremors that shook Claire, while she suppressed her own laughter.
Mr. Patterson had always been gruff, but Lisa hadn’t expected something outrageous like this from that little, old coot.
They promptly said goodbye to Mr. Patterson, and Lisa dragged Claire across the square to the water’s edge.
She held it together, but when they were out of hearing distance, she joined Claire, who was having a full-blown laughing fit, and soon they both stood there, bent over, and laughed like loons.
Great first impressions in the middle of the main town square.
The weather had brought a lot of people out and about, and they received their fair share of stares. Until one young woman squealed when she saw them and tackled Lisa.
“Uff.” Lisa found herself in a tight hug and Claire cracked up again.
“You’re back. I’m so happy—don’t ever leave again, please, please, please.”
Lisa’s gasp turned into a smile and she slapped her friend, before she hugged her back. “Julie Brooks, I’ve missed you too.”
“Oh, don’t pretend. If you’d missed me, you would’ve come back much sooner. All of you left, and I died of boredom back here. No friends, no one to hang out with, and no one to go out with.”
Julie pouted for a second, but soon her signature smile and the gleam in her brown eyes reappeared.
Julie had always been the happy-go-lucky one in her group of friends. Even her curly, dark hair was bouncy. She had the ability to make everything better, brighter, and funnier. Nothing could ever dampen Julie Brooks’ mood, and mischief was written all over her face. Mrs. Brooks had had her hands full with the young tomboy. Julie was two years younger than Lisa but had always trailed along with her brother Paul Brooks, hockey legend, as her father had referred to him. Lisa had gone to school with Paul. Since they were neighbors, they grew up together, and spreading joy and filling every situation with laughter—that had been Julie.
“Oh, come on, you’ve got a ton of friends, and I’m pretty sure you were already a pro at flirting with the boys when I left.”
They ended their embrace, and both turned to Claire.
“Claire, meet my friend Julie.”
After the introduction, conversation flowed naturally, and Claire and Julie seemed to hit it off.
“My side hurts and we already made a spectacle out of ourselves.” Claire pointed at the café. “Let’s get a coffee and some of whatever smells so good.”
Lisa and Julie couldn’t agree more and all three of them turned to the Black Cat Café.
Upon entry they were greeted by a huge black cat that resided on what looked like a flower pedestal. The cat opened one eye but dismissed them immediately and fell back asleep.
The owner of the café was a pleasantly rounded woman in her thirties who smiled when they entered. “Hi, Jules,” she said and to Lisa and Claire, “Welcome to the Black Cat.”
“Lisa, Claire, meet Holly. She owns the café and makes the best pastries ever,” Julie said.
They chatted for a little while. Holly had moved to Moon Lake three years ago and opened the café in what had been a hardware store.
Julie and Lisa chose a table outside, at the side of the café, and enjoyed the sun in their faces. Claire got stuck inside at the cake display. And when she finally made her way outside, she was talking shop with Holly, who accompanied her.
“Hey, Holly. Can you take a break and sit with us for a while?”
Julie was her usual happy self, and Holly promised to come chat with them as soon as she could take a break.
To catch up with Julie was a delight. She still talked a mile a minute and told them animated stories abou
t the various things that had happened in the last few years. Julie had studied to become a physical therapist and now worked in Whitebrook. And lived at home again.
“So, you know Peter is back?” Julie looked at Lisa. She had been the only one who knew something had happened between Peter and Lisa to destroy the friendship. But Lisa hadn’t told her any details.
“Yes, we’ve met,” Lisa said.
“Have you met his wife? Awful person, such a snob, thinks she’s better than us small-town folks.” Julie made air quotes around her last words.
Claire’s brow came up, and she looked at Lisa questioningly.
“No, haven’t met his wife and not thrilled to do so,” Lisa replied.
“You probably won’t; they broke up anyway and she lives in Whitebrook now. Word on the street is, they’re getting divorced.”
Lisa and Claire exchanged another look, and Lisa knew she had a little explaining to do once they got back to the Inn.
“Paul and some of his teammates will come visit at the end of the month. I thought we could maybe have a barbecue at the Inn if you can fit it in,” Julie said.
Lisa’s heart made a jump. She now had a business to run. It was really time to take a closer look at the bookings and the business side of things.
“I have to check, but I’m pretty sure we can make that happen. Make a whole day of it for the guests, like Dad used to when we were young. Remember those? You just have to tell me when exactly, so we can plan accordingly. Is Paul still playing hockey?” Paul was drafted into the NHL right out of high school which had made him the golden boy of Moon Lake High and the whole small town.