The House Across the Lake(43)

Money is my guess.

That was the motive in Shred of Doubt. The character I played had inherited a fortune, her husband had grown up dirt poor—and he wanted what she had. Snippets of things Katherine said to me float through my bourbon-soaked brain.

I pay for everything.

Tom needs me too much to agree to a divorce.

He’d kill me before letting me leave.

I head inside, grab my laptop from the charging station in the den, say hi to the moose head, and go upstairs. Snuggled in bed under a quilt, I fire up the laptop and Google Tom Royce, hoping it’ll bring up information incriminating enough to persuade Wilma that something is amiss.

One of the first things I see is a Bloomberg Businessweek article from last month reporting that Mixer has been courting venture capital firms, seeking a cash influx of thirty million dollars to keep things afloat. Based on what Katherine told me about the app’s lack of profitability, I’m not surprised.

“We’re not desperate,” the article quotes Tom as saying. “Mixer continues to perform above even our loftiest expectations. To take it to the next level as quickly and as efficiently as possible, we need a like-minded partner.”

Translation: He’s absolutely desperate.

The lack of a follow-up article suggests Tom hasn’t yet been able to lure any investors with deep pockets. Maybe that’s because, as I read in a separate Forbes piece on popular apps, Mixer is reportedly losing members while most others are steadily gaining them.

More words from Katherine nudge into my thoughts.

All of Tom’s money is tied up in Mixer, which still hasn’t turned a profit and probably never will.

I decide to switch gears. Instead of looking for information about Tom, I do a search of Katherine Royce’s net worth. Turns out it’s surprisingly easy. There are entire websites devoted to listing how much celebrities make. According to one of them, Katherine’s net worth is thirty-five million dollars. More than enough to meet Mixer’s needs.

That word lodges itself in my skull.

Need.

Contrary to Tom’s quote, the word smacks of desperation. Want implies a desire that, if not met, won’t change things too much in the long run. Need implies something necessary to survive.

We need a like-minded partner.

Tom needs me too much to agree to a divorce.

He’d kill me before letting me leave.

Perhaps Katherine was being completely serious when she said that. She even might have been hinting.

That Tom was planning something.

That she knew she might be in danger.

That she wanted someone else to know it, too. Just in case.

I close the laptop, half sick from worry and half sick from too much bourbon downed way too quickly. When the room begins to spin, I assume either one of those things is to blame. Probably both.

The room continues to rotate, like a carousel steadily gaining speed. I close my eyes to make it stop and collapse onto my pillow. A dark numbness envelopes me, and I’m not sure if I’m falling asleep or passing out. As I plummet into unconsciousness, I’m greeted with a dream of Katherine Royce.

Instead of the Katherine I met in real life, Dream Katherine looks the same way she did in that Times Square billboard all those years ago.

Begowned and bejeweled.

Shoes kicked off.

Running through the dewy grass, trying desperately to escape the man she was going to marry.





Katherine is still sprinting through my dreams when I awake sometime after three a.m., slightly confused by, well, everything. All the bedroom lights are on and I’m still fully dressed, sneakers and jacket included. The laptop sits on the side of the bed that used to be Len’s, reminding me that I’d been drunk Googling earlier.

I slide out of bed and change into pajamas before heading to the bathroom. There I pee, brush my teeth, which had grown filmy, and gargle with mouthwash to clear away my bourbon breath. Back in the bedroom, I’m switching off all the lamps I had left on when I spot something through the tall windows that overlook the lake.

A light on the opposite shore.

Not at the Royce house but in the copse of trees to the left of it, near the water’s edge.

From where I’m standing, I don’t need the binoculars to know it’s the beam of a flashlight bobbing through the trees. The big unknown is who’s carrying that flashlight and why they’re roaming the lakeside at this hour.

I rush out of the bedroom and down the hallway, passing empty bedrooms along the way, their doors open and their beds neatly made, as if waiting for others to arrive. But there’s only me, all alone in this big, dark house, now descending the stairs to the main floor and heading to the porch where I spend most of my time. Once outside, I grab the binoculars.

It turns out I’m too late.

The light is gone.

Everything is dark once more.

But as I return inside and head back upstairs, I suspect I already know who it was and why he was out so late.

Tom Royce.

Putting the rope, tarp, and saw he’d purchased earlier in the day to good use.





I wake again at eight, dry-mouthed and nauseated. Nothing new there. What is new is a gut punch of unease about Katherine’s fate, summed up by the thoughts that hit me as soon as I gain consciousness.

She’s dead.

Tom killed her.

And now she’s either in the ground somewhere on the other side of the lake or in the water itself, sunk so deep she may never be found.