by Kate White
Her eyes widened briefly, but then she shrugged dismissively.
“I’ll be fine. I don’t have far to go—just up the road.”
“Are you staying at the Lake Shore Motel?” I’d spotted it on the corner of Wheeler and Route 9N. The owner was the guy who reported seeing Shannon jogging—every day except Monday.
She hesitated before answering. “Yeah.”
“I was actually planning to stop there to speak to the owner. Why don’t you let me give you a lift?”
She shook her head quickly, the ponytail bouncing. “Like I said, I’m fine. . . . But thanks anyway.”
She spun back around and broke into a run again, pumping her arms in rhythm with her legs. I noticed that she wasn’t wearing reflective gear, so she seemed to be at risk in more ways than one. But she’d made it clear she didn’t want me butting into her business.
I retreated to the Jeep and took off again, giving the jogger a wide berth as I passed. I caught a brief, final glimpse of her in the rearview mirror before she was swallowed into the gloaming.
I reached the Lake Shore a few minutes later. It wasn’t hard to see why the owner was able to keep tabs on Shannon’s runs. The front office, I noticed, was at the end of the one-story white clapboard building, facing Route 9N, and its front wall was taken up almost entirely by a window. Though there were a few cars in the parking lot, a blue fluorescent sign announced vacancy, and my guess was that the motel, like the one where I was staying, wasn’t even half full. I’d read that business slowed drastically in the Lake George area after Labor Day, but that there was always another burst of tourism in October, people taking in the peak of the jaw-dropping fall foliage.
The counter in the small reception area was being manned by a skinny guy in his early twenties, dressed in a white short-sleeved button-down. I guessed that he wasn’t the owner, who was probably off duty now if he usually had the morning shift, but the desk clerk could at least direct me to him.
“What can I do for you?” he asked with a tired smile. A TV droned behind the half-closed door to his right, and I wondered if he’d been watching the tube in there before I arrived.
“Is the owner around? I’m a reporter, and I’d love to interview him about Shannon Blaine.”
Since the guy had already given at least one interview, I was pretty sure he would be game for another. What I’d discovered when I first started on the crime beat was that people on the fringes of a story—and sometimes even those in the thick of it—were almost always eager to get their faces on camera or their names in print. Unless, that is, they had good reason to stay on the down low. And even then, people who should have kept their mouths shut sometimes made the mistake of talking their asses off.
“Uh, you’ll have to come back in the morning,” the clerk said quickly. “He works the desk seven to two.”
“Oh, gosh, I have to file the story tonight—and it would be great to have a few quotes from him. Could you call him and ask if I could possibly swing by his home?”
His mouth dropped open, as if I’d just asked him to strip to his tighty-whities.
“He doesn’t like me to bother him after hours.”
“It’s really important. We’re trying to help the police find this woman.”
“Um, okay. Give me a minute, will you?”
He slipped quietly into the room behind him and shut the door. The wait at least gave me a chance to glance out the plate-glass window, keeping my eyes peeled for any sign of the jogger I’d encountered.
The desk clerk finally reemerged along with a pale, beefy man, probably in his late forties.
“Terry Dobbs,” he announced, letting his eyes sneak briefly up and down the length of my body. He was wearing khaki pants paired with a light flannel shirt, and his gray hair stood up in small tufts on his head, as if he’d been roused from a nap in front of the TV when the clerk popped in. “What can I do for you?”
I thanked him for his time and explained the purpose of my visit, giving my spiel about Crime Beat and our desire to assist in the search for Shannon.
“Happy to help,” he said. “We’re all hoping for the best.” The way he puffed his chest up suggested he was as eager for the attention as he was to assist, but hey, after being ditched by Cody Blaine, I didn’t really care about his motives as long as he didn’t go making shit up.
He cocked his head toward the clerk. “Gary, why don’t you grab your smoke break now so I can chat with this nice young lady. I’ll keep an eye on the desk.”
Gary beat it, and after producing my notebook and pen, I sat in one of the straight-backed chairs in the reception area, gesturing for Dobbs to take a seat in the other one.
“I read in the Post Star that you often see Shannon running by the motel,” I said. “But not Monday morning. Is that correct?”
“Yup, that’s right. No sign of her on Monday.”
He’d crossed one leg over the other, casual-like, but I sensed he was on alert, as if he was being careful with his words.
“Is it possible that you were dealing with a customer at the same time Shannon ran by and you didn’t catch a glimpse of her for that reason? Or maybe you were on a call? Or a bathroom break?”
“Mondays are quiet as a tomb this time of year. I pretty much had my eye on this window the whole morning.”
“Of course, she could have taken another route that day.”
“Coulda. But it would have been the first time. Never seen her miss a day. Except Sundays. Church day.”
So it was possible Shannon Blaine had been abducted before reaching the Lake Shore Motel. Or that she’d never made it out of her house alive.
“Got it,” I said. “Any thoughts about what might have happened to Shannon?”
He shrugged. “I hear they’re entertaining all kinds of theories. That she’s got amnesia and is wandering around the woods. Some pervert grabbed her. She ran off with another guy. Or even that the husband’s behind it all.”
“Is there one theory you favor more than the others?”
“Nope. I just hope they find her. She looks like a real nice lady.”
I wondered if he ran his gaze up and down her body as he’d done to me.
“Just one last question, if you don’t mind, Mr. Dobbs. Did you ever see her running with anyone else? A female friend? A guy?”
“Nope, always alone.”
I thanked him again for his time and pulled out a business card, asking him to please contact me if anything else occurred to him. While I’d been talking, I’d kept one eye on the lit parking lot, and there was still no sign of the blond jogger. She should have been here by now.
“Oh, Mr. Dobbs,” I said, turning back to him. “I met a woman on the road who looked a bit like Shannon and she said she was staying here. Do you know who I’m talking about? Blond. In her early thirties.”
He pursed his thick pink lips and shook his head slowly back and forth.
“No, nobody like that here.”
Okay, that was weird. Perhaps the blond jogger simply had remembered her motel being at the end of Wheeler when it really wasn’t, or else she had lied to me because her place of lodging wasn’t any of my damn business. And, of course, it wasn’t.
From the Lake Shore I headed south on route 9N, passing seemingly endless motels, fast-food restaurants, and retail outlets, as I approached the village of Lake George, the center of town. It was time to crank out my post for the day, but I found myself in a quandary. Thanks to Cody ghosting me and the sheriff postponing the press conference, I had almost nada to show for my half day on the scene. I felt like a reporter covering a royal wedding who’d managed to snag only a quote from the guy who’d groomed the horses.
And that wasn’t a good thing. Crime Beat was hardly in the same league as Vanity Fair or the New York Times, but the writing was good for a true-crime site and the reporters seemed to be scrappy, ready to turn over every stone in their research. Dodson Crowe would be expecting a certain quality from my first piece o
f reporting for him, and I needed to deliver.
Finally, just as I pulled into the village, I had a brainstorm: I’d write my post from the first-person point of view. Though I’d used that approach in my book, it wasn’t a style Crime Beat writers typically employed. In this case, though, I thought I could make up for my lack of good quotes by offering plenty of impressions, even the chilling moment when I’d spotted the blond jogger on the road.
I found a spot for the Jeep right off Canada, the main drag in town, and after grabbing my laptop, I searched on foot for someplace to park my butt. The village was pretty charming, with one- and two-story commercial buildings, many with rustic-style peaked roofs. A few shops were still open, with racks set outside and souvenir T-shirts flapping in the evening breeze.
After finding a café, I settled in a booth, ordered a sandwich, and banged out the post. I described the fraught scene at Dot’s, the palpable fear of the local residents I’d interviewed, Kelly’s hopes that her sister was simply in a disassociated state, and my frustrations over being stood up by Cody even though I assumed it was for a good reason. I’d swiped one of the flyers with Shannon’s photo earlier that day, and from time to time as I typed, I stared at those riveting green eyes.
Where are you, Shannon? I wondered. Where in the world did you go?
Though I wasn’t going to allow my imagination off the leash yet, it was time to review, and perhaps reconsider, the probabilities in the case. According to Kelly, her sister hadn’t appeared to be under emotional duress or suffering from severe mommy burnout, so that weakened the idea of Shannon simply splitting on her own. As for the injury angle, it seemed unlikely to me that Shannon had done a face-plant on the road and was now wandering the woods with a head wound.
That left stranger abduction, a decent possibility, despite Kelly poo-pooing it.
And it also left Cody. Now that I’d seen the guy’s good looks in the flesh, it wasn’t hard to imagine him as a magnet for women, someone who could have cheated on Shannon and wanted out of the marriage without a lot of ugly strings attached. Though two sheriff deputies had conducted a brief search of the Blaine house after Cody reported his wife missing, I was sure law enforcement was now itching to make a more thorough inspection, not only of the house but also of the family garage and vehicles. They would want to conduct tests with luminol, which highlights traces of blood even if there’s been a thorough attempt to bleach them away.
But they couldn’t do it simply because of that itch. They needed either Cody’s permission or a search warrant indicating there was probable cause that a crime had been committed there.
I didn’t add any of this speculation to the post. It was too soon for that. But tomorrow I was going to see what I could learn about any girlfriend in the wings, either from the moms at the school or employees of Baker Beverage.
Over a cappuccino I reviewed what I’d written, cleaning up grammatical errors and polishing the prose as best as possible in the little time I had. Finally, I attached it to an email to Dodson and hit send. I had to admit that I felt a little giddy delivering the first daily reporting I’d done in ages. I just hoped that he wouldn’t have an issue with my first-person tactic.
By the time I left the café, in danger of someone sweeping under my feet, the combo of caffeine and deadline jitters had left me wired, as if tiny firecrackers were exploding in my bloodstream. I decided to walk for a while and attempt to unwind. Though most of the shops had finally closed for the night, a handful of restaurants remained open, and there were still a few folks ambling along Canada Street.
A couple of blocks later I found myself in front of a small tavern. Through the front window, I could see it was half full with what looked like a local crowd, dressed for early fall in plaid shirts and turtleneck sweaters. I decided to spring for a glass of wine.
There were a few empty stools at the bar, and I slid onto one and ordered a California cabernet from a friendly, bearded bartender. A string of colored lights had been strung above the row of bottles behind the bar, and it gave the place an enchanting, almost magical look.
As I glanced around I realized that the row of picture windows on the rear wall faced the lake. Since it was dark now, all I could see was a slim necklace of lights, which were probably affixed to the ends of piers and boat docks. Maybe there’d be a chance for me to come back here for lunch one day and really take in the lake. I’d read that the first Europeans to come upon it were Jesuit priests, one of whom dubbed it Lac du Saint-Sacrement, though after winning the French and Indian War, the British renamed it after King George II. But long before either the French or the British were around, the Mohawk Indians called it Andiatarocte, meaning the place where the mountains close in.
I’d taken only a sip of wine when I heard my phone ping, and I grabbed it from my purse. A text from Dodson. Bracing myself, I opened it.
Like the first person. Stay with it. Posting now.
Okay, good. I could relax at least and focus on the eighties hits playing on the sound system.
The pat on the back from Dodson, however, hardly put me in a celebratory mood. A young mother was missing, and even if she was still alive, it was unlikely that she’d be found unharmed.
After dropping the phone back in my purse, I caught the eye of a woman at the end of the bar, perched on a stool six or seven spots away from me. She was middle-aged, probably late fifties, slightly heavyset, with short, coarse brown hair, and still wearing her hip-length unbuttoned coat, the kind my mother used to call a “car coat.”
I’d seen this woman before, I realized—at the volunteer center, where she’d arrived midafternoon and spent a few minutes talking intently with Kelly. Thinking she might be a family friend worth debriefing, I’d said a hasty goodbye to the Baker Beverage deliveryman I had been interviewing and made a beeline in her direction. But she’d been faster than me, taking off in her car before I could reach her.
I had another chance now, however. Though she clearly knew other patrons—she’d lifted her hand in a wave a couple of times—she was on her own, a half glass of white wine set in front of her. I grabbed my own glass and moseyed down to the end of the bar.
“Excuse the intrusion,” I said, “but I’d been hoping to talk to you at the volunteer center today and never had the opportunity. Do you have a minute now?”
The woman raised a dark, bushy eyebrow.
“What about?” Not rude, but hardly friendly, either.
“About Shannon Blaine’s disappearance. I’m a reporter. My name’s—”
“I know who you are,” she said bluntly.
“Did Kelly mention me?”
“No, but I recognize you. Your reputation precedes you.”
“I hope in a good way,” I said. Maybe she’d read A Model Murder, or had seen me discussing it on TV. I smiled, hoping to diffuse the odd tension permeating our encounter.
“I guess that depends.”
“On what?”
“Whether you think crime reporters should be behind the scenes, gathering the facts, or out in front, showing up on places like CNN and the Today show.”
It hit me then that she was another reporter, though I didn’t recognize her. I was briefly tempted to say something snippy, like “Oh, come on, let’s not be a player hater,” but that would have only worsened the situation.
“Who do you work for?” I asked.
“The Glens Falls Post Star. Probably too small potatoes for you to know.”
“Of course I’ve heard of it,” I said, hoping that by switching the tone I could appeal to her sense of collegiality. “Are you by any chance Alice Hatfield?”
“Yup,” she said, looking surprised but still guarded. “That would be me.”
“Well, nice to meet you. I guess you know I’m Bailey Weggins.”
She nodded.
Fine, I thought, I’ll take my toys and go home. But I intended to leave on a high note.
“Your reporting has been terrific. See you around.”
She leveled her hazel eyes at me.
“Thanks,” was all she said.
I returned to my perch and tried to enjoy the last of my wine. The crowd shifted again, and Alice Hatfield vanished from my line of sight. I was used to reporters being competitive but generally not pissy, except of course Matt Wong. Hatfield was making him look like one of the Care Bears.
Ten minutes later, I was back in my Jeep, headed to the Breezy Point. There was still some light traffic in the village, but before long I practically had 9N to myself. The wind had kicked up and it sent herds of dead leaves scurrying across the road ahead of me. Most of the motels and businesses were dark, clearly closed for the season.
The Breezy Point might as well have been. There were only three other vehicles in the parking lot—and lights peeking out from the doors of just two of the units.
When I stepped out of the car, the air seemed even crisper and smelled like fall—piney and mossy with a hint of wood smoke. I couldn’t wait to crawl under the covers.
Key in hand, I hurried toward the door to my unit. From behind me I heard the scrape of a shoe. My heart jumped.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve,” a male voice said.
I spun around, my heart in my throat. Cody Blaine was standing five feet behind me, and even in the dimness of the parking lot, it was hard to miss the fury in his face.
Chapter 3
INSTINCTIVELY I TOOK A STEP BACKWARD. HE HAD ONLY about four inches on me, but right now I felt every one of them.
“Cody,” I said, trying to keep my voice even. “What’s the problem?” Had I somehow misunderstood our meeting time or place?
“I want to know why you wrote those things about me.”
“What things?” Wait, he must have already seen my post.
“That bullshit on the website. Trying to ramp everything up so it’s really juicy. You said I blew you off today. You made it sound like I’ve got something to hide.”
“I didn’t say you blew me off. I said you never returned to meet with me, but you probably had plenty to take care of.”
