Daughters of the Lake(28)

“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.”

“I can’t imagine it.” Simon squeezed Kate’s hand. “Who could kill their own wife and baby?”

Kate shook her head. “I know. But plenty of people do. You only hurt the ones you love, isn’t that the saying?”

“I don’t get that they can’t pinpoint the time of death, though,” Simon said. “I thought they could tell exactly when a person died.”

“My dad told me that the lake is so deep, so cold, and so clean—no algae or other organisms—that it can actually preserve bodies.” Kate lowered her voice. “He said that if you die and sink to the bottom of Lake Superior, it’s like you’re on ice. It’s hard to tell when, exactly, you expired.”

In fact, beneath the lake’s glassy surface at that very moment, a graveyard of sunken ships littered the austere, rocky bottom, filled with the well-preserved remains of the sailors who had been carried to their deaths hundreds of years before. Local divers knew which wrecks were free of these tangible ghosts and which to leave in silent memorial to the unfortunate souls entombed there.

“You mean, the bodies don’t look dead?” Simon asked.

“According to my dad, they look dead all right,” Kate explained. “It’s just that they don’t—I guess decompose isn’t the right term—but they don’t break down. They’re intact.”

Simon shuddered and crinkled his nose. The very thought of it was upsetting on many levels. A mother and a baby, frozen forever in the moment of their deaths.

“The thing about this particular body is, it—she—is extraordinarily well preserved, even by the lake’s standards,” Kate went on. “She seems to have been killed just a few minutes before we found her. But that’s the other thing that’s not adding up. It’s what I was bursting to tell you. That nightgown she was wearing was at least ninety years old. It was made by a local company called Anderson Mills, which went out of business that long ago.”

“So, she was into vintage clothing?”

“I was thinking the same thing,” Kate said. “Is that thrift shop still open on Front Street? What’s it called?”

“Mary Jane’s.” Simon nodded. “They’ve got a lot of vintage clothes.”

“It stands to reason they might have stuff from Anderson Mills because it was a local company,” Kate said.

“You’re right,” Simon said. “People cleaning out their grandmothers’ closets is how they get lots of their stock. I know I took boxes and boxes of Grandma Hadley’s things to them.”

“This woman might have bought that nightgown there!” Kate said. “Maybe somebody on staff would remember her.”

Kate took a sip of wine and wondered if Nick Stone had thought of that.



Much later, after she and Simon had had dinner, ambled around town with a happy malamute, and polished off that bottle of wine, Kate was snuggled in bed. As she lay there, her vision—or whatever it was—of herself and Nick Stone played over and over in her head. It was so clear, just as clear as her memory of her conversation with Simon earlier in the living room. What did it mean? Did she know this man and not remember him? Was her mind playing tricks on her?

She punched her pillow and turned onto her side, hoping for a dreamless sleep.





CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Great Bay, 1902

Addie’s screams woke her parents and the dogs, all of whom were at her bedside in an instant. The girl was sitting upright in her bed, dripping with sweat. Her ashen face was whiter than the sheets that were tangled at her feet.

“Honey, honey,” Marie cooed, smoothing her daughter’s hair. “You just had a bad dream.”

Addie stared at her, wild eyed, not quite realizing that she was home, safe in her bed, and not still enmeshed in those confusing dream images.

Marie encircled her daughter with her arms and drew her close, rubbing her back, murmuring soft words of comfort into her ear. The dogs jumped onto Addie’s bed in their attempt to do the same.

“You’re safe,” Marie said to Addie in her darkened room. “It was just a bad dream. Hush now, girl. “

While Marie was comforting Addie, Marcus padded into the kitchen, lit the stove, and warmed some milk. He entered the room with a steaming cup, and all of them, father, mother, daughter, and dogs, sat on the bed for a moment while Addie sipped the warm milk.