Stranger in the Lake(42)
It’s such a maddeningly male thing to say and on so many levels. As if my love life is some kind of game, a competition to win Paul’s heart. As if the first wife’s death automatically guarantees the second wife’s security, like love is a matter of proximity and wives are interchangeable. But mostly, that I should just suck it up and let it go.
Chet studies me from across the desk. “I scrounged up some intel for you, but now I don’t know if I should tell you.”
“What kind of intel?”
“I swung by the B and B.” He leans in, lowers his voice to a shout-whisper. “I talked to Piper.”
“I thought you said nobody was out.”
“Not on the streets. They were all hunkered down in the bar, pounding Jack Daniel’s. Something like twenty people, all of ’em plastered. The place was a madhouse.”
“And? What’d Piper say?”
“Nothing. Not one goddamn thing, but Wade was there, too, and he sure was talkative.”
Wade. The guy leaning against the side of the B and B two days ago, when I came to town looking for Paul. The one who called me Charlie and Paul my old man.
Chet leans with both elbows on the desk. “Wade said he talked to Sienna the day before she died. She talked to a lot of people, apparently, and she was asking all of them about Jax. The cops are looking everywhere for him. They think Jax had something to do with Sienna ending up in the lake.”
Jax, who was looking for Paul hours before a woman washed up dead. I see him stepping out of the shadows at the back of the terrace, the skittish way he looked everywhere but at me. Tell Paul I need to talk to him.
“But according to Wade, it wasn’t just Jax she was asking about. She was also asking about Paul.”
The room goes hot. “My Paul?”
Chet gives me a who else? look.
“What about Paul? What did she want from him?”
Chet shrugs. “Like I said, Wade was baked. I couldn’t get much more out of him that made sense. You know how he tends to...”
Chet’s voice bleeds away, and new worries snag in my brain. Why was Sienna looking for Paul? Did she know who he was when she approached him in town, or did I feed that info to her when I introduced myself as a Keller? And Wade isn’t exactly known around these parts for his discretion. If he told Chet, he’s told other people. People like Sam, who will automatically think the worst.
Chet pushes up from the chair. “Hey, you got something to drink? I’m parched.”
“Check the fridge.” I gesture behind me, in the general direction of the kitchen.
He wanders off, and I sit here for a moment, the breath turning sluggish in my lungs. If what Wade said is true, if this woman was here asking about Paul, if he knew her, then he looked me in the eyes and lied like it was nothing. What else has he lied about? What other secrets has he stuffed down, hidden in files on his hard drive or buried around the house like rotten Easter eggs? Happy couples don’t keep secrets, and they don’t lie. What does all this say about us? What does it mean for our future? For the future of the baby growing in my belly?
And then the darkest, ugliest question rises above the rest, sticking to my brain.
What time did Paul get out of bed, really?
18
The snowstorm blows off on a warmer wind, clearing the clouds into a bright blue sky. Late-afternoon sunshine heats the hill behind the house, a blinding white field of smooth crystals melting like ice cream in the summer, sliding into the lake in slushy chunks. According to the news, we got a full eight inches, a record for this time of year, all of which is supposed to be melted by this time tomorrow. Welcome to winter in the South.
Word of Sienna’s murder has also made the news, though the details are scarce. They haven’t mentioned her name or where she washed up, only that she was fished out yesterday morning. I keep Paul’s laptop tuned to a local news station and roam from room to room, poking through closets and dressers, searching for anything that might explain why a dead woman under our dock might have been asking about my husband.
I save the study for last, settling in at Paul’s desk and digging through the drawers. I rearrange the pens, sort the paper clips and rubber bands, flip through a stack of unopened bills, Post-it notes and papers. I spread a pile of business cards across the desk, examine the names, put them back in the drawer with neat, exacting edges. He’s been gone too long. He could have made it around the lake three times by now.
Footsteps at the door snap me to attention. Chet wanders in, stirring in a mixing bowl with a wooden spoon. He’s in jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt, one sleeve dusted in a fine white powder. I mute the volume on the laptop.
“Hey, taste this, will you?” He scoops up a bite and holds the spoon across the desk, waving it in front of my nose. “Tell me if it needs anything.”
I wrinkle my nose at the wet blob of orange and pink. “It’s not pimento cheese, is it? I hate pimento cheese.”
“Nope. Let’s just say I took a few liberties.” He wags his brows and the spoon in the air. “Stop being a baby. Taste it.”
I sigh and take the spoon from his hand. Lick the blob with the very tip of my tongue. Frown, but only out of surprise. A pleasant surprise. I put the spoon in my mouth and it’s an explosion on my tongue, salty and sweet and...
“Is that nuts?”