by Kate White
I was the first to arrive. I was glad I’d requested a table outside because the sky above was bright and cloudless, and the soft breeze felt good on my skin. The lake was speckled with sailboats and powerboats, and off in the distance I saw bunches of people filing up the ramp of the Minne Ha Ha.
Two minutes later, Jessie came striding across the weathered wooden deck. Her glossy brown hair flowed around her shoulders and bounced as she walked. Several male diners glanced in her direction, not bothering to disguise their positive assessment.
“Hey, hey,” she called out in greeting. I jumped up from the table and we embraced in a hug.
“Forgive the cliché, but you’re a sight for sore eyes.”
“Ditto.” She plopped into a chair across from me, beaming. “Wow, what a view. I see why people dig coming here.”
“I know. I’d love to come back one day when I have more time to enjoy it.”
“Isn’t there a scene in The Last of the Mohicans that takes place at Lake George?”
I nodded toward the rise at the end of the lake. “Yeah, the fort was up there. No sign of Hawkeye these days, however. I could sure use his help at the moment.”
She hooked a leg around a spare chair at the table, dragged it closer, and propped one of her booted feet on the seat.
“Tell me more about this crazy story you’re covering. I’ve been reading your posts and I’m completely hooked.”
“It got even crazier as of last night,” I said. “And sadder, too.”
I filled her in on Alice’s death, knowing that since she’d been in her car part of the morning, she probably hadn’t viewed the latest post yet.
“Oh Bailey, that’s horrible,” she said. “And what about you? Aren’t you scared?”
“Yeah, a little bit. But as long as the killer doesn’t think I’ve been tipped off to his identity, I should be okay.”
We took a moment to each order a Cobb salad and an iced tea, and then Jessie eyed me intensely.
“Have you told Beau yet? He’s not going to like this new development.”
“Actually, Beau’s been much better about the job risk issue since we talked it over this summer. The irony is that he’s in Colombia right now, and he’s been hard to reach, which has been frustrating the hell out of me.”
“Columbia, South Carolina?”
“No, South America.”
“God, isn’t that the country where people get kidnapped by drug cartels?”
“Yes, in the past, but it’s supposed to be pretty safe now. He’s been having issues with cell service, though.”
I didn’t really think that Beau had been kidnapped, but her comment had stirred my unease. I pushed it from my mind, knowing that it was useless to fret.
The waiter returned with our drinks and I seized the opportunity to shift topics.
“So how was the weekend with Jason?” I asked.
“It was really nice, especially considering I hate fishing and don’t eat trout. I guess that means I must be wild for him.”
“I’m really happy for you, Jessie. He seems like such a great person.” Her last boyfriend had cheated and lied, and I was glad she’d found a stand-up guy to replace him.
“What about you and Beau? Is he still dropping hints about marriage?”
“He told me he’s giving me time to get used to the idea before he raises it again. I’m not skittish about Beau. I just feel so gun-shy about being married again. My first one turned into such a disaster.”
Our salads arrived and we discussed her next assignment, as well as several former colleagues from Buzz who were attempting, like us, to navigate the upheaval in the media landscape. It should have been fun to catch up—it had been a few weeks since we’d seen each other—but I could feel my attention constantly being tugged away and my mood turning seriously gloomy. I kept picturing Alice lying dead on her dock, her full, vibrant life wiped out in an instant. And I was thinking about the killer, too, wondering if he’d read my post and convinced himself that I knew more than I was letting on.
“Bailey, are you okay?” Jessie asked.
“Yeah, sorry. I guess I’m pretty shaken up about Alice.”
And I was, I realized. Not only had I felt a connection with her because of our harrowing experience at Sunset Bay but also I’d really grown to like her as a person—her passion for reporting, her wry sense of humor, her down-to-earth, bushy-brows-and-black-beret style. We probably would have stayed in touch.
“I don’t blame you, Bailey. It’s such a loss.”
“And it makes me sick that her killer is out there, probably right in this town. I’ve been going crazy trying to determine what clue Alice stumbled on, but I’m not having any luck.”
“You’ll figure it out. Maybe you have to do that thing you always do, look at it from a totally different angle—backward or sideways or whatever.”
I smiled in spite of my mood.
“I told you I do that?”
“Not in so many words. But I’ve listened to you discuss stories before and that always seems to be your strategy. You write it all down in one of those composition books of yours and then stand it on its head, seeing what it tells you.”
“Well, this time, unfortunately, that isn’t working.”
Following lunch, I walked Jessie to her car and we hugged goodbye. She begged me to keep her posted on developments, how I was faring, and when Beau turned up.
Hurrying back to the hotel, I checked the time. There was a good chance that Ben Hatfield had arrived in town by now. Rather than head upstairs to my room, I decided to swing by Alice’s place in the hope of finding him ensconced there. If the house hadn’t been cleared yet or Ben wasn’t there, I would look for the neighbor who’d told me that his wife had Ben’s number.
As I was reaching for my car key, my phone rang. Cody Blaine returning my call.
“You left a message saying you had something important to talk about,” he said. “About Alice Hatfield.”
“I’m sure you’ve heard that she was killed.”
“The paper’s saying it might be foul play. Do you think that’s true?”
“I do, and I suspect the person responsible murdered Shannon, too. And the campers who went missing.”
“But—if she was murdered, how does that connect with Shannon?” His voice sounded ragged with both concern and frustration.
“I think she figured out a clue to the killer’s identity, and he went after her. Which means it’s definitely someone in our midst, someone you might even be acquainted with.”
“My god.”
“I know I’ve asked you before if anyone’s aroused your suspicions, but let me get more specific. Can you think of anyone who was hanging around the volunteer center, maybe more than he should have, and also knew Alice? And who Shannon might have been familiar with from St. Timothy’s?”
He sighed.
“I only stopped by the center now and then. Mostly I was working with the search teams. And when I was there, I was too much of a zombie to notice anyone hanging around.”
“What about the guy who owns the Lake Shore, at the end of your road? He told Alice he always used to see Shannon run by the motel. Do you know him?”
“I’ve never met the guy, but I’ve seen him around. Wait, are you thinking he could have done this? Do the cops—?”
“I don’t have any specific reason to suspect him other than the fact that he seemed to keep tabs on Shannon, but I’ve told the police and they’re going to talk to him again.”
“You say Hatfield interviewed him. Could he have let something slip at the time?”
“I don’t think that’s what happened. She found something online, probably yesterday morning when she was working at home.”
The call went deadly still.
“Cody?”
“Okay, this might mean something.”
“What?” I asked, my heart skipping.
“Alice Hatfield called me yesterday with a question. Maybe it rel
ates to the clue you’re talking about.”
Chapter 18
TELL ME,” I DEMANDED.
“I’ve already mentioned it to Killian, so I assume I’m not out of line telling you,” Cody replied. “Right?”
“Right.” Killian would hardly endorse Cody spilling the beans to me, but advising him not to blab wasn’t in my job description.
“And this needs to stay off the record. I don’t know what Killian plans to do with it.”
“Of course.”
“She left a message for me on my home phone around one, but I didn’t call her back. I assumed she was angling for a quote, and needless to say, I had more important things to focus on. It’s been a nightmare dealing with the press, by the way, but I don’t want to change my number while the investigation is active and someone might call with a tip.”
Please, I thought. I don’t need all the backstory. Just tell me what the fuck Alice said.
“But you eventually talked to her?”
“She called again, and I decided if I didn’t respond, she’d only keep hounding me. She asked if I could confirm that Shannon had gone on retreat at the Sunset Bay center the summer she was fifteen.”
My breath caught. So Shannon had once stayed in the very location where the killer dumped her body. It was possible that she’d crossed paths there with the person who would murder her years later.
“Do you think Alice had this on good authority?”
“It seemed that way, but like I told you the other day, Shannon had never mentioned anything about the place to me.”
“Did Alice say where she’d learned this piece of information?”
“No, she refused to tell me. Said it was confidential. I would have pressed her—what right does she have to keep that kind of detail all to herself?—but I was dealing with my kids.”
“Kelly seemed fairly sure that Shannon hadn’t ever been there, but I’m wondering—has anyone asked your mother-in-law?”
“I don’t know and, frankly, I doubt it’d do much good. She’s so loaded up on Xanax, she can barely remember her own name right now.”
The mention of drugs was the prompt I needed for my next point of discussion. In the background I heard a child’s voice. The words were indistinguishable, but the tone implied an urgent request, which meant my time was running short.
“I really need to go,” Cody said.
“Please, one more second. Is there any chance—and I ask this only because I want to help find the truth—that Shannon had developed a reliance on drugs this past year, like painkillers for an injury?”
“What? Absolutely not.” I could feel his anger spike through the phone. “What the hell are you basing that on?”
“Initially there were rumors that the two campers might have been dealing drugs or at the very least buying.”
“Not Shannon. Ever.”
“Sometimes a person—”
“I said not Shannon, ever. I better not see even a hint of that on your website.”
The child’s questioning tone had morphed quickly into a wail.
“I was simply—”
But he’d already hung up.
I paced the dull gray carpet, raking my hands through my hair as I digested his revelation. Who could have told Alice that Shannon Blaine had spent time at the Sunset Bay Retreat Center? And was this the alarming clue she’d turned up?
In and of itself, this tidbit hardly seemed worthy of the word “scary.” It would have piqued her interest, as it had mine, but not rattled her. And it was tough to imagine how she’d found it online. I’d already come up empty searching the Internet about the retreat center. Perhaps Alice had come across an old photo from there that had included Shannon.
And perhaps this detail had led to another revelation, a fact that was truly scary. Shannon might have befriended one of her fellow attendees—or even an employee—while on retreat, a guy who became fixated on her. The person could have known about the basement storage area in the outbuilding. Perhaps the fixation burned off over the years, only to become reactivated when the two of them recently became reacquainted. At church?
I needed to bag the missing-woman Internet search, at least for now, and follow this new thread.
Shannon’s mother might be too doped up to talk to me, but there was a chance Kelly could coax the information out of her on my behalf. Surely Killian would be trying to follow up on Alice’s question, but I had no guarantee he would share any findings with me.
I grabbed my phone and tapped the number for Kelly. Voice mail. Her words from earlier echoed in my head: “I’ve tried to be respectful of the press, but you guys go too far.” I bet there was little chance I’d hear back from her.
But I had to find a way to convince her to ask her mother about Shannon staying at Sunset Bay, and whom she might have met there. My best option, it seemed, was to pay Kelly a visit at home. I knew where the Claibornes lived—I’d looked up their address in the white pages last week in case I needed it—and if she wasn’t home, I’d wait until she showed.
Unlike the Blaines, Kelly and her family didn’t live in Lake George. They were farther south, in Queensbury, and I was there in less than twenty minutes. Though the parts of the town I’d seen before had featured mostly commercial buildings, today I found myself in an attractive residential section filled with fairly upscale-looking homes, probably forty or fifty years old.
The Claiborne house, the smallest on Linden Lane, wasn’t in the same league as the Blaines’ place, but it was attractive and spiffy looking, a center hall colonial painted white and accented with black shutters. The yard was bordered by a white picket fence, which looked freshly painted. There were no cars in the driveway and both doors on the double garage were down, so I couldn’t tell at a glance if anyone was home. I parked in front, swung open the gate, and after stepping under the portico, rapped on the door with the brass lion-head knocker.
No one responded. I peered through one of the windows that framed the door, wondering if Kelly might simply be ignoring uninvited visitors, but there was no sign of movement through the sheer white curtains. Had she returned to her job? If that was the case, her work as a reading specialist was probably tied to school hours and she would be home soon. And then there was the young daughter. In light of Shannon’s murder, Kelly would want to be home when the girl returned for the day.
I waited for well over an hour without seeing anyone enter the house. After a quick bathroom break and coffee stop, I returned and knocked again, but still nothing. Another thirty minutes passed. My iPod had already shuffled through most of its songs and was now into repeats. But there was no way I was leaving.
Finally, at about four, the family SUV crept into my rearview mirror and pulled into the driveway to my rear. I was relieved to see Kelly, not Doug, emerge from the driver’s seat. Dressed in the same black trench as yesterday, she assisted her mother out of the car. Mrs. Baker moved unsteadily and seemed to have aged ten years since the first press conference. Kelly grasped the woman’s elbow and guided her slowly indoors.
I gave them about ten minutes to settle in, hoping to keep the annoyance quotient of my visit to a minimum, and then jumped from the Jeep, retraced my steps up the walk, and knocked again. The curtain in one of the front windows twitched, and seconds later Kelly swung open the door. I was anticipating exasperation, but her expression betrayed only weariness.
“Yes, what is it now?” she asked.
“Kelly, I’m not sure if you heard my message yet, but I think there’s a chance that the reporter Alice Hatfield’s death is related to Shannon’s. Can we speak for a moment?”
She took a couple of beats before nodding, her mouth set in a grim line.
“All right, come in,” she said. She led me down the center hall into the mutely toned living room. The large coffee table was strewn with newspapers, half-full coffee mugs, used paper plates, a couple of wineglasses, two apple cores, and an old pizza box, reflecting the chaos of the Claibornes’ live
s over the past days.
Kelly was wearing dark pants and a turtleneck sweater in burgundy, a color that to my knowledge had never flattered anyone. I was struck again by the contrast between her and Shannon, or at the least the dazzling, luminescent Shannon I’d seen in photos. It couldn’t have been easy having a gorgeous younger sibling. If Kelly had felt jealous or resentful of her sister, her grief was probably now mixing with guilt in a strange, awful brew.
Frowning, Kelly perched on the edge of an armchair and motioned for me to sit across from her.
“From what I read, Alice Hatfield’s death bore no resemblance to the others,” Kelly said. “Or are you saying she was murdered because she knew something?”
“I believe the latter. The other day, you said you weren’t sure whether Shannon had ever been to the center at Sunset Bay, but Alice had reason to think Shannon had been on retreat there. When she was fifteen.”
Kelly rose from the chair, apparently too restless to sit.
“Okay, but if she had, how could that be anything more than a coincidence? It would have been close to twenty years ago.”
“It could be significant in a way that we don’t understand yet. I know your mother must be suffering terribly right now, but would you be willing to ask her about this?”
She pursed her lips together as she weighed my request.
“All right, give me a moment,” she said finally.
When she returned five minutes later, she didn’t bother taking a seat again.
“According to my mother, my sister never spent any time there,” she announced. “Apparently Shannon asked once about a retreat—she doesn’t recall if it was Sunset Bay or elsewhere—but my mom wouldn’t let her go. She had heard that kids snuck into each other’s rooms at those things and ended up having sex.”
“Okay, so Alice’s tip had been incorrect. But I still think she managed to discover something about your sister’s killer, and the guy found out she was on to him and killed her, too. I have a hunch it was a person she knew, and very possibly your sister was acquainted with him as well.”
“And so we might know him, too. God, that’s chilling.”
