Stranger in the Lake(45)
“Wow, this is some spread,” Micah says, taking in the food, doing the math. Two of each means none for Paul.
“Chet’s practicing to be a chef. You should see what he does with pimento cheese. He makes it taste like dessert.” My words are too fast and my voice too bright, like a spotlight on the melting snow outside.
“Here you go, Sheriff,” Chet says, handing over the beer. “Got any news about Sienna?”
I widen my eyes at Chet—real subtle—but Micah doesn’t seem to mind the question. “Yep, but not anything I can tell the two of you. Dad’s holding a press conference tomorrow morning, though, so maybe give it a watch.” He tips the bottle at Chet, then me. “Cheers.”
I pour myself a glass of water, but I can’t drink. My stomach is in knots, my hand shaking the glass. I set it on the marble with a hard smack.
“I hear you took the boat to town.” Micah pauses to receive my nod. “Don’t do it again, okay? This entire end of the lake is an active crime scene. I put up no-entry signs at either side of the bend by Piney Creek, and if you see anybody out on the water between now and tomorrow morning, I want to know about it.”
“What happens tomorrow morning?”
“We’ll be back in the lake as soon as it’s light, looking at currents, trying to determine her trajectory from the moment she went in the water until we fished her out so we know where to point the sonar.” His eyes flash with excitement. For Micah, there’s no better day than one he gets to strap on his flippers and an oxygen tank and skim the lake bottom like a catfish, sifting through the silt for evidence. “We’ll be starting in the cove, though, so if anyone tries to sneak past us, we’ll see it.”
I nod, the tightness I’ve been carrying around all day releasing just a tiny bit in my chest. Micah and his divers will be out on the cove tomorrow, which means no more surprise visits from Jax, no more vile words carved into the snow.
Micah swivels his head to Chet, watching from the other side of the counter. “In the meantime, Dad says for you to stop harassing Piper.”
A red flush sprouts on Chet’s cheeks, and his gaze darts between me and Micah. His expression says fuuuuuuuuuck.
“I wasn’t harassing her,” Chet says slowly, thinking about every word before it comes out of his mouth. “Piper and I were just...talking. About stuff.”
Micah gives him a knowing nod. “What kind of stuff?”
Chet coughs into a fist. “Basically, she told me to leave her alone because she doesn’t want to go to jail.”
Micah laughs. “That’s what she told him, too, though nice to have it confirmed by someone who’s not Piper.” He leans a hip against the counter, reaching down to scratch a knee. “I ran into Gwen on my way out of the B and B. She was spitting mad. She said Paul missed some big deadline?”
Chet’s dip sours in my stomach, hardening into a painful lump. Micah talked to Gwen, who’d already told me she’d trudged all the way down to county GIS but couldn’t get the email to send. The signal was too weak, the files too massive. After all that work, they weren’t able to put the bid in. Gwen must have been livid, and I’m sure she gave him an earful.
I nod. “When Paul’s back, he’ll call them to explain, see if they’ll accept his bid a day or two late. Surely they can’t hold him responsible for the snow, or for a traffic accident that took down the internet. Isn’t weather like an act of God or something?”
Micah is silent for a beat or two, and I know what he’s thinking, that Paul didn’t miss the deadline because of the snow or the accident. He missed it because he took off on an errand so important that he forgot all about the bid he’d been working on for months.
Micah takes a long, pensive pull from the bottle, then settles it onto the counter. “You know, back in high school, everybody made fun of Paul for turning in his term papers a whole week early. Professor Paul, we used to call him, including the teachers. He never waited until the last second to turn in anything.”
There’s a question in there somewhere, but I’m not about to touch it. Micah is right. It’s not like Paul at all to miss a deadline. If I keep my mouth shut, I won’t have to tell another lie.
“Here’s another thing Gwen and I can’t seem to understand. How’s Paul scouting anything in this weather?”
I swallow, trying to keep my breath steady. I want Paul to be here. I want him to swing his arm around my shoulders and explain it his damn self. “He left before the snow hit.”
“How come he’s not answering his phone?”
“No reception, I guess. Either that, or he forgot his charger.”
Or both. Or he’s too busy lying in a broken heap at the bottom of some bluff.
The kitchen is a pressure cooker. Micah is playing us. He talked to Gwen, and he knows Paul’s history. He knows the way Paul thinks, what makes him tick, what would make him run off in such a hurry. The walls shrink in, the ceiling moves lower, and the hot air blowing through the vents hurts my ears.
Micah sets the beer on the counter with a sigh. “Charlotte, what do you say we cut the crap? Because I think you know exactly where that crazy-ass husband of yours went, and if it’s the place I think he’s gone, then you’d best be telling me so I can do something about it. You won’t hear it on the press conference tomorrow, but all signs point to Jax for Sienna’s murder.”