Stranger in the Lake(55)
I bristle a little at the this—murder is so darn inconvenient—but I’m not about to slap the hand extending an olive branch. I give her my brightest, happiest smile. “I’d love that, Diana. Thank you.”
23
On the day Katherine Marie Keller drowned, the woman who four years later still haunts this town and my marriage, I had just clocked in at The Daily Bread diner in town. It was an hour before opening time, and we were gathered around a table by the window for our morning meeting, a run-through of specials and instructions that our manager Leonard always started with prayer. He’d just flipped to the appropriate page in his Bible when sirens sounded on the other side of the glass—too many of them whizzing by. Police. Ambulance. Rescue squad. Leonard made us hold hands and pray, loud and long, for whatever God’s creature they were dashing off to save.
The lunch shift was in full swing when the news reached the diner. People shaking their heads and whispering, holding hands and saying prayers for the poor, lost soul. Katherine was dead before they pulled her out of the water.
I wasn’t the only person in Lake Crosby who found it suspicious an experienced swimmer would drown in a lake she swam in every day. Those treks to Waterfall Cove and back were how Katherine stayed fit, her workouts so regular that the boaters knew to watch out for her. One of them, a fisherman, spotted her on her way back, a brunette in a crimson bathing suit executing the perfect butterfly. Strong. Powerful. Two hundred yards from home.
The mountain came alive with questions. How does a perfectly healthy woman drown in water she swims in every day? Did she run out of breath? Get a cramp? And why did she have fresh bruises on her right ankle?
That last one is what keeps Sam awake at night still. Four small round bruises just above her foot, plus one larger one by her heel. Fingerprints, Sam claims, though the medical examiner never went that far. The ME documented the bruises, but she didn’t find much else. No alcohol or drugs in her blood, no other injuries. Nothing to give anyone reason to think Katherine’s death was anything other than a tragic accident. The case was closed before it was even opened.
And Paul? Paul was on a run when she went under. I know this from the photographs in the paper, his beet-red cheeks shiny with sweat, his look of terror to come home to a driveway filled with police cars. Some reporter pointed a camera at his face at the exact moment Chief Hunt delivered the bad news. Talk about a money shot. There’s no way he could have faked that kind of grief.
And yet that reporter’s question won’t stop playing on repeat in my head. Any chance the two deaths are connected? Jax’s words thump bass lines in my ears: That’s two. Watch your back.
Diana is long gone by the time the back door bangs open, and I jump clear off my chair. My heart settles when I see Chet, drenched from the waist down, his boots dangling from two fingers. He drops them, and they land on the tile with a splat.
“Did you get the boat?”
“I got the boat. Froze my ass off in the process, but I got it. I hope you got insurance, though. The seats were slashed to shreds, and so were the ties. Sliced clean through.”
I think of the opossum, rotting in the early-morning sun on the back deck, blood and guts and white bone. That awful word that’s bled—literally—into the grass. That’s twice now someone has crept up dangerously close to do damage with a knife, both times when Paul wasn’t here.
Just like he wasn’t here when Katherine drowned. Or when Sienna slid into the lake. A fluke? That explanation feels too convenient, much too easy. So what, then?
I consider calling Paul, telling him to get his ass home or else, forcing him to finish the conversation we started last night, the one he ran away from this morning. I feel like all I’ve done is ask, and I’ve gotten very little in return. Paul clammed up. He sneaked out for a reason.
When you’re ready to hear the truth, you call me. Not Paul, but Sam’s voice, an echo cutting through my mind, the last words he said to me before he stormed out of the wedding. Maybe I’m ready to hear what he has to say about Paul. Maybe it’s time to judge for myself.
The muddy puddle under Chet’s feet is spreading fast. It seeps over the tiles and over the grout lines, creeping closer and closer to the hardwoods.
I grab some kitchen towels and toss them on the puddles. “Go get dressed. We’re going to town.”
Thirty minutes later, Chet and I pull in to the gravel lot of Dominion Marine Salvage, otherwise known in these parts as the boat junkyard. Where boats go to get chopped into pieces and sold in repair shops and on eBay. Mostly legit, though Lake Crosby boats do tend to disappear and Donny Dominion spends his winters lounging on a beach in the Panhandle, so your guess is as good as mine. Either way, the place is dead this time of year, not to mention on a stretch of deserted road on the outskirts of town.
In other words, perfect.
“Up there,” Chet says, pointing to the far end of the lot, where I spot Sam leaning on the hood of his car, scrolling through something on his phone. The day has warmed up to somewhere in the low fifties, but Sam has always run hot. He’s soaking up the early-afternoon sunshine in short sleeves and no jacket, immune to the frigid breeze rustling in the trees. He hears the gravel crunching under my tires and pushes off the car.
“You’re late,” he says as we’re climbing out. His phone rings, but he silences it and slips it in his pocket. Chet’s the only one of us who gets a smile, and even then, it’s half-assed. Sam’s anger runs deep, and it spills over to all the McCreedys.