Stranger in the Lake(57)
“Okay, but ask yourself this—why is your husband running all over creation avoiding questioning? What has he got to hide?”
I look out over the lake, refusing to give Sam a reaction, even though his words strike a gong in my chest. All morning I’ve been thinking something similar.
“Did he tell you about the police report Katherine filed two weeks before she drowned?” My gaze whips to Sam, and he pauses, taking in my expression, which I couldn’t clamp down on fast enough. “He didn’t, did he? Somebody’d skinned a skunk and smeared it all over the leather interior of her car. She didn’t think much of it, either, at the time. Just needed a police report to make a claim on the insurance. The stank pretty much totaled it.”
That explains Paul’s face when I told him about the opossum, at least. What it doesn’t explain is why he failed to tell me about it. Because I saw his expression in the mirror. I know he made the connection.
Chet shuffles his feet, gravel crunching underneath the soles. “Sam’s right, Charlie. Things are lining up too tight. Maybe you should...I don’t know...put some space between you and Paul. Just until the dust settles.”
I shake my head—not because I don’t agree, but because I don’t want to. These are some of the same things Sam told me a year ago, and I hadn’t listened then, either—and not just because of his crappy timing. It was because of the words he used when he dragged me into that corner of the country-club kitchen, the way he’d said them with his lips curled in disgust. That Paul was a monster and a murderer. That I was an idiot and a fool. There’s not a bride on the planet who would have listened to all that ugliness.
For me, it was as easy as breathing. I chose Paul that day, and Sam here still hasn’t forgiven me.
He leans a hip against the freezing metal of his car. “If you’re not going to listen to Chet or me, at least talk to Micah. Ask him why he told me Paul and Katherine’s marriage had hit some rocks, that their relationship wasn’t as smooth as Paul would like everybody to think. That toward the end there, there was a lot of fighting.”
This time, I can’t hold back on my frown. Micah tattled on Paul to an officer of the law. He told a cop that Paul and Katherine were fighting in the months before her death. And not just a cop—Sam, who from the very start suspected Paul. Who would like nothing more than to slap on some cuffs and cart him down to the station. Micah had to know what he’d be implying with such a statement. Why would he say such a thing?
Unless it was true. The thought whispers through my mind before I can stop it, but I can’t go there. If that’s the case, if Paul and Katherine’s marriage was falling apart when she drowned, then how could I ever believe another word he says?
I feel myself losing it, that grip on everything I’ve been fighting so hard to hold together—my belief in my husband, my marriage—and so I do the only thing I can think of. I say what I brought Sam here for and, in doing so, take the heat off Paul and swivel the spotlight onto someone else.
“I hear you found Sienna’s coat in Jax’s cabin but that her scarf was missing.”
“From Micah, I presume.” When I don’t deny it, Sam scowls. “He shouldn’t be running around town talking up this case. He knows better. Next time you see him, tell him I said to keep his mouth shut.”
I roll my eyes and describe the scarf for Sam, every detail I can remember about the color and the fringe and the fussy pattern, the way it was long enough to be looped around a neck multiple times. I can tell by the way his eyes turn to slits that it’s hers. That scarf belonged to Sienna.
“How do you know all that?”
And there it is, my ideal opening. The perfect place to admit I saw it hanging from Sienna’s neck that first day. To step off this hamster wheel of lies and half-truths and come clean. Let the chips fall and trust they will fall the right way.
But that’s not how things work in a town like Lake Crosby, not with Sam steering suspicions. The story he would weave together from very few facts, the fabrication he so desperately wants me to believe. I refuse to give him the ammunition.
Because Sam is right about one thing. I am stubborn. Sometimes it takes me a long time to learn my lessons, but I always learn them.
I turn for the car, revealing the only part of the answer he needs to know. “Because when Jax showed up at my back door, her scarf was wrapped around his neck.”
24
June 12, 1999
10:36 p.m.
Somehow, they ended up in a tobacco field. Jax wasn’t sure how it happened, didn’t really remember much other than the music blaring and Paul shouting to slow down and suddenly they were airborne, flying over the field like the Dukes of fucking Hazzard. Jax hung his head out of the window and yee-hawed, or maybe it was Micah. They landed with a thud in the dirt and plants, teeth rattling in their heads, everybody laughing but Paul.
“Are you insane?” Paul unhooked his belt and flung himself between the seats. “I know you have a death wish, but Micah and I don’t. We’d really like to live, and we sure as hell don’t want to do that in a jail cell or worse, because if we get arrested Micah’s dad will kill us.”
Jax looked at Micah, and the two collapsed into giggles. They were way past buzzed now, wasted on too much tequila and thin mountain air. In the back of his head, Jax knew he shouldn’t be driving.