Stranger in the Lake(37)
“I’ve already started the process for a warrant.”
I bristle. “I said I don’t know. Not that you couldn’t see.”
“The warrant is procedure,” Micah says, “mostly to cover all the bases. Defense attorneys love to use any little missed step to eliminate evidence.”
Sam confirms it with a nod. “And that’s something I want to avoid. We’ll be asking for anything the cameras picked up starting on Tuesday evening and up until the moment you spotted her. Time of death was somewhere between 4:00 and 6:00 a.m.”
His words send a billow of heat to my skin, and the room hollows out, the smell of bacon and vanilla burning like acid in my lungs. That means she hadn’t been in the water for all that long when I found her. The numbers on the nightstand clock flash across my brain, crimson as fresh blood. It was 6:04 when I woke up to an empty pillow next to me.
What time did Paul leave? When he reappeared, covered in sweat and mud and blood, was it really from a fall down Fontana Ridge? I sink onto a stool and remind myself to breathe.
“God, poor Sienna.” Chet’s voice is tinny, ringing in my ears. “Did you figure out where she’s from? What she was doing in Lake Crosby?”
“We did, but we’re not releasing any details, not until we get ahold of her next of kin. The folks down at the B and B are under a strict gag order, but you know Piper.” Sam shrugs, more resigned than unconcerned. His tone is as serious as ever. “We threatened her with jail time. We’ll see how much good it does.”
None, probably. Nothing keeps in this town, not in the bed, not at the dinner table, not at the bar or B and B. And especially not with Piper.
Chet settles the platter on the island, bobbing his spatula between us. “Who wants the first?”
“Sam.” I push the stack of plates his way, pass him the sugar and jam, which I know he’ll choose over butter and syrup. I know where this conversation is going, and I can’t even think about food.
He dumps on the jam, smearing it around as he asks the next question. “But since she was found on your property—”
I stop him right there: “It’s Paul’s property.”
The irony is not lost on me. This past year, I’ve tried so hard to think of this place as home. To not cringe when I come up on a framed photo with another woman in it, to not fret that all my belongings, every stitch of what I own, could fit in the hallway linen closet. I tell myself I don’t care that the pantry shelves are too high and the pillows too soft and I’m not supposed to eat on the white linen couches, or that I’d made myself small and unobtrusive so I’d fit in Paul’s preexisting life. Now, as soon as this place turns into a crime scene, it’s not my home but his. I only live here.
Sam puts down his fork. “Since she was found on the property where you currently reside, I need to ask where you were the morning of November 20, say from 4:00 a.m. on.”
My heart stops for a full second, like a slow-motion crash. “Okay.”
Sam waits. Shakes his head. “Okay what?”
“Okay, ask away.” I sit completely still, reminding myself to breathe. In my head I’m doing the math. Fontana Ridge is a little over three miles from the front door. The timing is doable but just barely, and only if Paul sprinted.
Sam rolls his eyes. “Where were you from 4:00 to 7:00 a.m. on the morning of November 20?”
“Upstairs asleep.” I say it without blinking, with so much conviction that I almost believe it myself, but I can feel myself dipping into panic because I know the question that comes next.
“And Mr. Keller?”
And Mr. Keller. A liar and a secret-keeper, maybe, but not a killer. No way.
My heart gives three telltale thuds, boom boom boom, but I manage to keep my face calm. “In the bed next to me.”
But Sam was here when Paul ran up yesterday morning, saw the blood and mud from his supposed tumble down Fontana Ridge. Good thing Paul’s a fast runner.
“His alarm went off at six,” I say before Sam can ask.
A lie and an alibi, wrapped into one.
16
June 12, 1999
8:17 p.m.
Jax’s car reeked of weed.
Correction: his dead mother’s car reeked of weed, three puffs from the remnant of a crumpled joint Micah produced from his pocket, one toke apiece before it singed Jax’s fingertips and he flicked it into the wind. He had to admit, it took some of the edge off his anger, but he didn’t like the way it turned her car, a fully loaded Jeep Cherokee his dad gave her for her last birthday on this earth, into something out of Wayne’s World. The 38 Special blasting from the speakers wasn’t helping matters either.
But Paul drove a two-seater, so it was either this or Micah’s Acura NSX, a gift from his mom the day he got his license. Micah’s dad might be a cop, but the money came from his mom’s side, thanks to her great-great-granddaddy’s tobacco fields. But Micah’s Acura had a back seat built for a duffel bag, and it was a stick, something only Micah knew how to operate. Jax’s car was the obvious choice.
He hit the button for the windows to air the cab out and took a sharp right. Fast-food wrappers and empty bottles rattled around on the floorboard.
“Where are we going?” Paul said, pointing behind them. He was seated smack in the middle of the back seat, the seat belt straining as he leaned his upper body over the console. “Town’s that way.”