by Wendy Webb
Your description of the Dakotas sounds so different from what we have here. Fields of sunflowers! Imagine! I cannot comprehend the idea of living somewhere that didn’t touch the water.
I am sorry to learn that you are not coming home for Christmas, but in truth, I did not expect you to do so. Remember what I said that day at Widow’s Cove? Your intentions to come home are good, but I know it is a long trip.
You will be a different person when you come home to stay, but I know that, no matter how much living you do without me, you will not forget.
Merry Christmas, Jess.
Your friend,
Addie
That night, Addie tossed and turned in her bed. Sleep would not come. She lay on the bed in her darkened room and looked out the window at the impossibly tall, thin jack pine trees swaying in the wind. A light dusting of snow covered their branches, which were illuminated by the full moon and a sky filled with stars. Addie watched as, every now and then, a stray cloud seemed at once to hang close to the earth and wisp over the moon. It was a perfect, crisp winter night, but her thoughts weren’t dwelling on the beauty of the landscape.
Addie was kept awake that night imagining the time when Jess would finally return home for good. Her eyes strayed over the snow-covered ground, and she thought of how wonderful it would be if Jess arrived right then, driving a horse-drawn sleigh. It’s not so unusual an idea, she thought. Several families in the small community kept horses, and though she didn’t have one of her own, Addie loved their soft coats and musky scent. She loved the way she could see their breath on winter days. They seemed so intelligent with their enormous, kind eyes.
Addie imagined that Jess would pull up to her window driving Mrs. Anderson’s dappled gray horse. Addie would run out of the house bundled in her coat, hat, and muff, and Jess would place a heavy blanket over the two of them for the ride. Off they’d go, over the snow-covered fields and up to the cliff overlooking the lake, where the sleigh would glide along silently, its runners whispering through the new-fallen snow. It was the warmth of this image, her favorite fantasy, that finally lulled Addie to sleep.
Dreams came then, dreams Addie didn’t understand. She saw a jumble of images that flashed into and out of view in rapid succession as though someone were flipping through a picture book. Jess walking down a city street, dressed in a dapper new suit. A woman laughing. Jess chatting with a man she didn’t recognize. A party. People clinking champagne glasses. Women wearing glittering ball gowns and dancing round and round in a ballroom.
Then everything faded into a white mist—fog. It was blinding until a face began to materialize, bit by bit. It was the face of an old woman with impossibly bright-blue eyes. She began speaking in a language Addie didn’t understand. “Ma petite fille chérie. Le danger vient.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
After breakfast with Simon, Kate had taken Alaska for a long walk while she was thinking about her next move. She dropped Alaska at the inn before heading to the coffee shop downtown, where she ordered her favorite indulgence—a latte with a half shot of both almond and chocolate—and noticed a tall man staring at her from across the room. She smiled slightly, thinking she knew him from somewhere. But she couldn’t place exactly where. When she had coffee in hand and was turning to leave the shop, he rose.
“Kate Granger?” he asked, his voice startlingly deep.
“Yes,” she said after taking a sip of her coffee. “I’m Kate. And you are—?”
“Detective Nick Stone,” he said. “I’m working with Chief Stratton on the case you’re involved in.”
Involved in. Kate’s stomach seized up at the sound of it. “Are you here to take another statement?” she asked.
“Not exactly,” he said, nodding toward a table by the window. “But do you have some time to sit and talk?”
Kate followed him to the table, a silence falling between them as they sipped their coffees and watched the first tourists of the day appear on the street.
As they sat there together, that same feeling of familiarity took hold of Kate. A companionable silence, that’s what this was. She looked into his face, a face she knew but had never seen. His eyes were deep and brown, his skin the color of her latte. A slight black goatee framed his perfect mouth. He smiled, the kind of brilliant, high-wattage smile that movie stars flash on the red carpet, and Kate couldn’t help smiling back.
“So, what can I do for you?” Kate asked, finally, holding her paper cup a bit too tightly and spilling a little of her latte out the top as a result.
“We’ve basically run into a brick wall with this case,” Stone said. “We’ve got no leads, no missing persons reports that match the woman’s description. No murder weapon. No suspects. We’ve got very little to go on.”
Kate didn’t respond, not knowing where he was leading.
“I’m hoping you can shed some more light on it for us,” he said.
“Well, I’m sorry for your trouble seeking me out, but I don’t know anything more than I’ve already told Johnny,” Kate said, pushing her chair away from the table and rising to her feet. “Now, if you’ll excuse me—”
“I shouldn’t be telling you this, but the chief brought your husband—ex-husband?—in for questioning,” Stone said.
“Kevin?” Kate was surprised at how the name burned on her tongue. “Why?”
“An unfaithful husband, a beautiful dead woman and her newborn baby . . .”
Kate sat back down with a thud. “You have got to be kidding me.”
“Fortunately, he checked out just fine,” he continued. “The chief gave him a lie-detector test. He didn’t like that too much.”
“I could’ve saved you the trouble,” Kate said. Whatever Kevin had done, he was no murderer. Or was this Detective Stone insinuating that she was?
“Your actions on the beach that morning made some fairly ugly thoughts cross the chief’s mind,” he said, in answer to Kate’s unspoken question. “We had to rule out both you and your husband as suspects.”
Kate shifted in her chair. “And now? What do you think now? Because this is ridiculous. I didn’t kill anybody. And Johnny Stratton knows it.”
“What do I think?” he asked, lowering his voice and leaning toward her across the table. “I think you know more than you’re letting on. I can see it in your eyes right now.”
Kate looked downward, not wanting to reveal herself even further, but she felt a blush rise to her cheeks.
Detective Stone continued, “Spend as many years as I have interrogating suspects, and you can tell when a person is lying. Or covering something up.”
Kate looked into the man’s eyes. She had no idea what to say.
“I work out of the precinct here in Wharton, and so the chief asked me to talk to you,” he went on. “Why don’t you just tell me whatever it is, Kate? Don’t you want to help us solve this case?”
Kate thought of the woman’s face, reflected in the mirror in her dreams. “Of course I do,” she said.
“Then now is the time to tell us what you know.”
Kate took a deep breath. This was getting out of hand. She and Kevin, suspects in a murder? Her dreams were one thing, but this was all too real. She needed to tell the truth, now. Yet, how was she supposed to do that? Psychic dreams? She was going to come off sounding like a wacko. First the cheating scandal and her rather public display at the Tavern, and now this. If people weren’t talking about her before, they certainly would be now if word got out. She stood up from the table and nodded toward the door.
“Can we walk a bit?” she asked him.
He picked up his coffee and followed. “Lead on.”
Out on the street, people were weaving in and out of the shops. Boats were floating in the harbor. An altogether normal day. Kate and Detective Stone ambled together along the shoreline path.
“I’ve been reluctant to say anything,” Kate began, looking out at the water, “because I don’t want to hear it whispered behind my back at the diner or the g
rocery store. If I tell you what I know, can you promise me it’s not going to end up on the record?”
“What record?” Detective Stone grinned. “We’re just two people talking out here on the lakeshore.”
Maybe this wasn’t going to be so difficult after all.
“This may sound insane,” she said, eyeing him with a slight smile.
“You’d be surprised what I’ve seen and heard in this line of work.” The detective sat down on a large piece of driftwood, picking up a rock and skipping it once, twice, then three times over the calm lake. When the ripples subsided, the surface was as still as a pane of glass. “Very little is going to sound insane to me.”
“Okay,” Kate admitted, joining him on the log. “I have seen that woman before.”
Detective Stone seemed to be holding his breath. He stayed quiet for a bit, waiting for Kate to continue. When she didn’t, he prompted her. “Go on.”
“I’ve been having dreams about her.” Kate sighed, knowing how crazy it sounded.
The detective did not respond right away. Then he narrowed his eyes and asked, “What kind of dreams?”
“I dream that I’m her,” Kate shivered. “I’ve never seen her before—in real life, I mean. I don’t know her name, who she is, or where she lived. I just started having these dreams a few weeks ago. In the dreams, I look into a mirror, and it’s not my face I see. It’s hers. Night after night. I didn’t think too much of it beyond my own overactive imagination until that day we found her on the beach.”
As she spoke, Stone watched her eyes. They were clear, unwavering, searching for his validation. He knew she was telling the truth, her truth, however unbelievable it might be.
“You’re sure it’s the same woman?”
Kate nodded. “I have absolutely no doubt it’s the same woman. I dreamed bits of her life. And I saw her husband.”
Stone was silent for a moment, considering what Kate had said. “You saw the husband in a dream. What was it about, specifically?”
“Well”—Kate thought back—“nothing really. Just ordinary things on an ordinary day. She was waking up in the morning. Her husband was there. They were deciding what they were going to do with the day. He brought her lilacs.”
Detective Stone nodded. “Is there anything else?”
“No,” Kate said, searching her mind for the smallest detail. “It seemed like they loved each other very much,” she added, her heart doing a flip at the thought of it. “They seemed happy.”
Detective Stone nodded, considering all that she’d said. Kate expected him to simply thank her and be on his way.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell Johnny about this before,” she said. “I didn’t know how to find the words to say it. I knew he’d think I was crazy. It just sounded so insane.”
“How’s this for insane?” Detective Stone smiled at her. “Would you be willing to come back to the station with me?”
“The station? Why?”
“You said you dreamed about the husband, right? Do you think you could pick his face out of a file of mug shots?”
“Absolutely,” Kate said.
“Come on,” Nick Stone said, scrambling to his feet, extending a hand to Kate to help her up.
When skin met skin, Kate was barraged with images playing in her mind like a slideshow, starring her and this detective. Scenes of laughter, of deep conversations, of sitting on a front porch. The two of them walking through the snowy woods, him carrying a camera, her mittened hand holding on to his. The two of them falling into bed, arms and legs entwined. Children ran through the slideshow, as did pets, all populating scenes of a life well lived. And then it was over, as instantly as it had begun.
Kate shook her head, staring at him. What was that all about? He was staring at her, too, looking into her eyes, then at their hands, then back again.
“Have you been in Wharton long?” Kate managed to cough out. “I’m here often because my cousin runs Harrison’s House, and I don’t recall ever seeing you before.”
He nodded. “I just transferred up from the Twin Cities.”
“What brought you here?” Kate wanted to know.
“This,” he said, gesturing out toward the lake. “The outdoors. And I thought life at a slower pace might be just the thing for me for a while.”
Stone didn’t tell her about the face of the fifteen-year-old boy who had pulled a gun on him and his partner one snowy night in Minneapolis and had paid for that mistake with his life, nor did he tell her about the face of the boy’s mother, whose searing, abject grief over the body of her dead son had taken up residence in Stone’s heart and refused to leave.
“You wanted a slower pace, but you got a crazy lady dreaming about murder victims,” Kate said, grinning. “Sorry about that, Detective Stone.”
“Nick,” he said. “You can call me Nick.”
Two hours later, Kate’s head was pounding after looking at countless mug shots, viewing every male face they had on file. None of them even slightly resembled the handsome man Kate had seen in her dreams.
Nick shook his head and sighed audibly. Seeing his disappointment, Kate winced. “I’m sorry I wasn’t of more help.”
“I knew it was a long shot,” he said. “More than a long shot. No, I was thinking about something else, another bit of information I found out today.”
“Can you tell me what it is?” she asked him.
Nick took a minute to think about this. He wasn’t in the habit of sharing information about a murder case with a suspect, but at the same time, Kate was the only lead they had, albeit a strange, supernatural one. Maybe sharing a bit of information would jar something loose in her brain, or make her say more than she intended.
“We did an autopsy, but it raised more questions than it answered,” he said. “When we don’t have an ID on a body, we use things like dental work, clothes, scars, evidence of surgery, broken bones, anything to tell us any little detail about who the person was.”
Kate nodded. She had watched enough crime shows on television to know the basics.
“First of all,” Nick went on, “they found no evidence of surgery of any kind. No scars, nothing like that, except for stab wounds. Usually, people have some evidence of modern medicine, whether it be a broken bone that was set or a pin in their hip or a scar from a cesarean section.”
“A nip and tuck around the jawline,” Kate joked.
“Exactly,” Nick confirmed. “But she didn’t have any of that. And her teeth weren’t in the greatest shape, either. No fillings, no bridges. No evidence of any kind of dental work.”
“That’s odd.”
“That’s not the half of it. We started investigating where her clothes came from,” Nick continued. “Here’s where it gets really strange. Her nightgown had a tag on the back of the neck. It was made by Anderson Mills, a clothing manufacturer based here in Wharton.”
“That doesn’t sound so strange,” Kate was confused. “Especially if she lived around here.”
Nick leaned in toward Kate and lowered his voice. “Nobody had ever heard of Anderson Mills, so I did some checking online. It shut down ninety years ago.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Kate had left the police station with a promise from Nick that he’d check in with her soon. After spending some time in the coffee shop processing the day’s events, she walked up the hill to Harrison’s House, her mind running in several directions at once.
She found Simon in front of a blazing fire in the living room. She snuggled in next to him.
“I think I’m going to take you up on your offer to stay in town awhile,” Kate said.
“Splendid,” Simon said, brushing some unseen lint off his shoulder. “I wasn’t going to let you go, so it’s nice I don’t have to use restraints.”
Kate pinched her cousin’s arm. “I’m just bursting to tell you this news. There’s been a development in the case of the woman on the beach, and I think I can find some answers right here in Wharton.”
&n
bsp; Kate told Simon about her experience with Nick that day, looking at mug shots to identify the husband she had seen in her dreams.
Simon’s eyes danced. “Nick? Who is this Nick?” The way he said it, the name had several syllables.
“Detective Stone. He’s new in town.”
He squinted at Kate. “Nick Stone. It sounds so utterly masculine.”
“Oh, stop,” Kate groaned.
“Handsome detective, new in the department . . .”
“How do you know he’s handsome?”
“From the look in your eyes when you said his name,” he said, grinning from ear to ear. “What’s he like?”
Now Kate could feel her face redden. “He’s . . . I don’t know. Nice, I guess.”
Simon squinted at her. “Is he more Tom Cruise or Tom Selleck?”
Kate grinned. “Neither. Idris Elba.”
Simon’s eyes grew wide. “OMG. Someone’s going to be inventing reasons to scurry down to the police station. And by ‘someone,’ naturally, I mean me.”
Kate gave his arm another pinch, harder this time. “Get me a glass of wine, already, and I’ll tell you the rest of the story.”
Simon hopped up and returned with a bottle of wine and two glasses.
“You know what?” he said, pouring her a glass. “I just remembered that Jonathan met him.”
“Who?”
“Your detective!”
“He’s not my—”
“Oh, stop with your silly denials. Anyway, I was away when he stopped by to meet us. A couple of weeks ago. Jonathan said he was delightful and wondered if we shouldn’t invent some crimes around here to keep him coming back.”
“A dinner invitation might be more effective,” Kate said, taking a sip.
“But not nearly as much fun. Now. Back to your mystery. I have a thought. Maybe the husband is the one who killed her. Maybe that’s why he didn’t report her missing.”
“Nick—Detective Stone to you—strongly suspects that’s the case,” Kate said, taking a sip of wine. “He told me that, in his line of work, the most obvious answer is usually the right one. A murdered mother and baby usually points to the father.”