Stranger's Game

by Colleen Coble

  “Okay.” Just knowing she had an ally lifted a boulder off her shoulders. Maybe her quest wasn’t a lost cause after all.

  Chapter 10

  Joe might have bitten off more than he could chew.

  The scents of beef and garlic wafted through the kitchen as he stirred the stroganoff. With the added security necessity for all that was happening next weekend, he wasn’t sure how much help he’d be to Torie.

  But he really wanted to help. The doorbell sounded, and he set down the spoon to answer it. That might be Craig. He’d asked his friend to join them tonight in case he had some real information to shed light about Lisbeth’s death. He hoped Torie didn’t feel ambushed to have the state trooper here, but Joe trusted Craig.

  He opened the door and saw Craig’s curious face. “Come in. I hope you’re hungry.”

  “Starving.” Craig entered the foyer. “You were very mysterious on the phone, but I did what you asked and brought the information on the Nelson case. Why all the interest?”

  His friend still wore his state police uniform, and his face showed his fatigue from the day’s work.

  “Later,” Joe said. “Want a drink? I made sure to get some Dr Pepper. It’s in the fridge.”

  “I’ll help myself.” Craig shut the door behind him and meandered toward the kitchen, where he opened the fridge and pulled out a can. “Want one?”

  Joe had followed him and gave the stroganoff a brisk stir. “Later.”

  The doorbell rang again. He could only hope and pray Torie would understand why he’d asked Craig here too. She’d take one look at him in his uniform and know something was up.

  When Joe opened the door, he nearly took a step back. Her dark-brown hair hung down her shoulders for the first time instead of up in its distinctive crown of braids. She looked softer somehow, more approachable. His fingers itched to test the texture of her hair. The flowing sundress exposed her shoulders and arms before draping gracefully to her knees.

  Maybe he shouldn’t have invited Craig. Having her to himself would have been much better. But the damage was done.

  “You look beautiful.” He pressed his lips together, but it was too late to call back the words.

  A delicate color swept up her long neck and lodged in her cheeks. “Thanks.” She stepped inside and held up a shoebox. “I’ve got some information in here I wanted you to see.”

  “Uh, sure.”

  Her gaze went past him, and her eyes widened when she spotted Craig behind him. Her accusing stare swung back to Joe. “What have you done?”

  “He’s a good guy, Torie, and he brought all the police know about Lisbeth’s death. I thought you’d like to see. He’s not actively on the case so he has nothing to hide from you. I haven’t told him anything other than I was looking into Lisbeth’s death. You can explain your interest in it.”

  Carrying a Dr Pepper, Craig walked toward them from the kitchen. “Well, hello. I didn’t know we had another guest.” His quizzical gaze slid from Torie to Joe.

  “Torie, this is Craig Hall. He’s been a good friend of mine for a while now. Craig, this is Torie Berg. She works in the IT department at the resort.”

  She heaved a sigh and held out her hand. “Hi, Craig, thanks for coming. Lisbeth Nelson was my best friend, and I’ve known Anton since I was born. He arranged for the job here so I could look into her death.”

  Craig glanced at Joe, then back to Torie. “You’re the newcomer questioning whether it was suicide?”

  “I don’t believe her death was suicide or an accident.”

  Joe heard the note of desperation in her voice and prayed for Craig to really listen. If he discounted her right away, this would be a fiasco.

  “I’m listening,” Craig said.

  “I need to tend to dinner,” Joe said. “Let’s continue this in the kitchen while I take care of the final prep.”

  “Where’s Hailey?” Torie asked.

  Joe spoke over his shoulder as he hurried to stir the stroganoff before it burned. “My parents took her to dinner. I have to pick her up at eight thirty at their house in Brunswick so we have a couple of hours.”

  Torie settled at the breakfast bar and laced her fingers together. “Nice kitchen. The resort remodeled it?”

  “Just before I moved in.” Joe gave the meal a brisk stir. “Tell Craig what you told me.”

  Torie launched into how she was sure Lisbeth’s death was not an accident and how the state police had brushed off any concerns. Then she opened the shoebox and withdrew a journal. “I found her journal too. She knew she was in danger.” She leafed through the book and found a page before she slid it across the white quartz countertop to Craig. “Look at the June 6 entry.”

  Joe came around to read it too. He hadn’t heard anything about the journal.

  June 6

  Someone broke into my cottage last night. I didn’t know it until I got up this morning and found the back door standing open. There was a note on the dining table that read, “I KNOW WHO YOU ARE. GO AWAY OR FACE THE CONSEQUENCES.”

  Craig stared at the journal. “Wow, this isn’t what I was expecting tonight. I’ll help in any way I can. I’m not technically on the case, but I’ll poke around and see what I can find out.”

  Seeing Torie’s brown eyes fill with tears geezed up Joe’s insides. He clenched his fists together. He didn’t have the right to comfort her but sure wanted to.

  “Sounds like the guy has had the key to the cottage awhile,” Craig said. “Long enough that he terrorized Lisbeth too.”

  Joe ladled up the food and handed out plates oozing with the aromas of garlic and sour cream. “Eat up. We’ve got our work cut out for us.”

  Julie used to say he had a hero complex and wanted to save everyone, but he’d never admitted to it. Maybe she was right after all.

  * * *

  Torie had found it hard to look at Joe while eating dinner. Couldn’t he have warned her that he was bringing Craig here? While it appeared the state cop was agreeing to help her, she still felt on edge as she put her plate in the dishwasher.

  Craig rinsed his plate and stacked it behind hers. “Let me show you what I’ve got.”

  She settled on a seat and watched as he pulled out a file and laid it on the island’s countertop. “That’s not much evidence. Is that all of it?”

  He nodded. “I’d thought only Joe would be looking at it, so I brought everything, even the coroner’s report. You might not want to read that or see the pictures. It’s graphic.”

  She suppressed a shudder. “So what do you have then? Why did the detective in charge of the case brush me off when I told him I didn’t believe her death was accidental?”

  He pulled out a picture of the sand to show her. “There were footsteps along the edge of the water to where she entered the foam at the shoreline. See here—just one set of prints, so she wasn’t dragged in by someone else. There was water in her lungs, so she wasn’t killed, then dumped in the water.”

  “Seawater?” Torie asked.

  “The results aren’t back yet. They should be any time though. There were no bruises on her arms to indicate she’d been roughly handled. And her roommate reported she’d been despondent and had been taking pills for depression. So while we haven’t ruled on it yet, the department is leaning toward suicide. It’s a dangerous area where she was. There’s a sharp drop-off not far offshore and a dangerous riptide.”

  Torie had to force herself not to leap from her chair. “I don’t believe that for a second! Lisbeth was the most optimistic and eternally happy person I’ve ever met. You say Bella Hansen told you this? I’ll talk to her myself. She’s wrong.”

  Craig’s eyes shuttered, and she knew her adamant refusal to listen had hurt her case. She bit her lip. “I’m sorry. I have to remember this is evidence that’s been collected. It’s not a judgment on Lisbeth.”

  “When did you last talk to her?” Joe asked.

  She forced herself to glance his way, and the plea in his green eyes dissolv
ed her sense of betrayal. He was only trying to help. “About a month before she came here we talked for about an hour by phone. And texted nearly every day even after she came.”

  “So sometime in early May? How much had you been around her in the last few years?”

  “Well, she lived in Chicago, and I was in Scottsdale.” When she wasn’t traveling. “But we got together four times a year or so. And we spoke on the phone every week, sometimes more than once. We emailed and texted nearly every day. Believe me, if she’d been depressed or seeing a doctor for depression, I would have known.”

  The pity on Craig’s face told her he’d heard that kind of excuse before. People weren’t always honest, even with those closest to them.

  “Except you hadn’t spoken to her in a month by phone, only text,” Craig pointed out.

  “I tried to call her several times and didn’t reach her.”

  “And she never called back? That was unusual, wasn’t it?”

  Torie nodded. “I am so mad at myself for not hopping a plane and coming to see her. I thought maybe she was caught up in her new job with odd hours, and I was busy myself.” Her dad had sent her to a struggling hotel in The Bahamas, but she couldn’t tell them that.

  “You didn’t find any pills in her belongings, did you? That’s because she hated taking pills of any kind. She wouldn’t even take aspirin for a headache.”

  Craig consulted the notes. “There was an unmarked bottle of pills that we tested and found to be Prozac.”

  “They weren’t hers—I’m certain of it.” Torie sent a pleading glance Joe’s way.

  “The bottle could have been planted,” Joe put in. “Was it tested for fingerprints?”

  Craig frowned and his gaze ran down the page before he shook his head. “Nothing about that. It seemed clear-cut that she’d either been swamped by a rogue wave and carried out to sea or she killed herself.”

  “Is it too late to check for prints?” Joe asked.

  “Maybe not. I can check on it. If her prints are on the bottle, it will be more likely accepted that she was taking the drug.”

  “What about her doctor? Did you check to see who might have prescribed them?”

  Craig shook his head. “There was no prescribing information so we assumed she’d bought them illegally.”

  “She’d never do that.” Torie had to keep reminding herself no one knew Lisbeth like she did. The detectives were making assumptions about the case based on very little evidence.

  Her head began to pulse with pain. “Anything else?”

  Craig scanned through the pages again, then handed them to her. “I don’t see anything, but you can take a look.”

  At least it wasn’t the pictures. Torie read through the pages, and a paragraph jumped out at her. “She was wearing jeans and hiking boots. She loved hiking. Why would she have been walking on the beach in boots? Especially if the waves were coming over her feet. People don’t do that.”

  Joe frowned. “She has a point, Craig. You have to admit that’s strange. She was fully dressed when I pulled her out of the surf.”

  “If she planned to drown herself, maybe she thought the boots would help weigh her down,” Craig said. “When someone is in that much despair, they don’t always do logical things.”

  It was clear that Craig thought he had all the answers, so she turned to Joe again with an unspoken plea. His compassionate gaze held her captive for a long moment before he spoke.

  “What do you think could explain the evidence?” he asked.

  Her thoughts swirled so wildly she had trouble pinning them down. Walking along the water’s edge with boots. It didn’t make sense. “Could I see the picture of the footprints again?”

  Craig plucked a picture off the top of the pile. “Yeah, here you go.”

  She took the glossy photo and stared at it. Boot prints. She squinted at it. “They look deep. You realize Lisbeth barely weighed a hundred pounds and was only five one?”

  Joe reached out his hand. “Let me see that.” When she passed the photo over to him, he studied it, then nodded. “She’s right, Craig. Those prints are deeper than a tiny woman like Lisbeth would make.”

  Craig took the print and stared at it. “I’ll mention it to the detective, but I think the body has already been released. Unless there’s more concrete evidence, I don’t think they’ll reopen the investigation. The sand could have been extra soft that day.”

  “Listen to yourself making excuses for headquarters,” Joe said. “You’ve lived here too long to actually believe that. And look at the size of the prints. I’d say that’s a man’s size ten at least.” He turned his attention to Torie. “What size shoe did Lisbeth wear?”

  “It was a joke between us that we both had such trouble finding shoes. I wear a twelve, and she wore a four so we both shopped in specialty stores.”

  “There’s no way that’s a size four boot,” Joe said. “See what you can do, Craig.”

  Craig tucked the papers and picture away. “Don’t hold your breath, but I’ll give it a shot.”

  So much for help. Torie would have to investigate this herself. Her gaze went to Joe, who looked impossibly handsome in his jeans and T-shirt. At least he believed her.

  Chapter 11

  Danger, danger.

  Joe watched Torie’s dark hair glimmer with red highlights cast from the pendant lights over the breakfast bar. There hadn’t been a woman in his kitchen since Julie had died, and yet somehow he liked watching Torie’s tall, elegant figure move around the space, scooping up utensils and loading the dishwasher as if she belonged.

  Why would he feel that way about someone he’d just met five days ago? The fact was he’d been intrigued with her from the moment he met her. He wanted to punch through that reserve and see something no one else had noticed. “I can clean up.”

  “I’m weird. I like cleaning the kitchen, probably because every item has its place and it’s easy to make a clean sweep of everything.”

  “I’ve never thought of it that way. Cleaning is a continuous chore. It never stays clean, especially with a grazing eight-year-old in the house.”

  She turned from the sink, and he was struck by the deep brown of her eyes. In the past three years, he’d never even considered dating someone. Raising Hailey by himself took all his energy and focus. And he wasn’t sure how his daughter would receive having another woman around.

  He gave a light shake of his head at the way his thoughts were headed. Torie had given no indication she found him attractive so he might as well be swinging for the bleachers in vain.

  She rinsed the sink and laid the sponge aside. “All done.”

  “How about some coffee and popcorn? I’ve got another hour before I need to pick up Hailey.” He could see the no forming on her face and rushed on. “I thought we might talk a little more about the case. Maybe even look at that notebook. Are there any other indications Lisbeth felt threatened?”

  “Some of the pages had been cut out.”

  “That sounds suspicious.” He took her answer for a yes and poured two cups of coffee before he got out a bag of cheesy popcorn. When she took the popcorn from him without objection, a dose of elation shot up his spine. “Cream in your coffee?”

  “You have any heavy whipping cream? And honey?” Her nose wrinkled. “That’s a tall order, isn’t it? I sound like some kind of diva. Coffee the way I like it is my one vice.”

  “You’re in luck.” He got the carton of whipping cream from the fridge and found the bottle of honey in the pantry. “Voilà, your perfect coffee.”

  “Most people don’t have heavy whipping cream on hand.”

  “My diva daughter likes hot chocolate with heavy whip.”

  Torie set the bag of popcorn aside and stirred the cream into her coffee. “I knew I liked that kid.”

  Joe ripped open the top of the popcorn bag and kernels went flying all over the kitchen floor. He was so far out of the practice of trying to impress a woman, he didn’t know what to do,
and he stood staring at the mess with his mouth slightly open for a long moment.

  Torie put down her coffee and knelt to scoop the popcorn together in her hands. “I’m not sure it’s Hailey who’s the problem in the kitchen.”

  A laugh bubbled up his throat. “I’ve got ten thumbs tonight. Let me get a broom.”

  “I’ve got it. Open the trash drawer.”

  He pulled it out, and she dropped the debris into it, then washed her hands while he made more popcorn. With her coffee in hand she followed him into the living room, where he put the popcorn on the coffee table. They settled side by side on the plaid sofa.

  “Your cottage is a lot like mine,” she said.

  He nodded. “The bedrooms are on either end of the open space. We even have the same paint on the walls—Sherwin-Williams’s Agreeable Gray.”

  “I think your floor is darker than mine.”

  “Maybe.” The small talk was killing him. How did he ask about her life, what she liked, and how she’d grown up? Would she be offended if he probed?

  He wiped damp palms on his jeans before reaching for a handful of popcorn. “So, you were best friends with Lisbeth. How’d that happen? I mean, what drew you together?”

  Her eyes flickered, and she leaned down to pet Lucy, his calico cat who had decided to come out of hiding. At first he didn’t think she was going to answer, but she straightened and folded her hands in her lap.

  “I traveled a lot as a kid, so I can’t exactly say we grew up together, but we knew each other from summers here. When I went to college, she was my roommate. She always made me laugh with the goofiest expressions and her droll way of looking at the world. And she saw the good in everyone. I tend to be more cynical and think people are out to pull one over on me.”

  He winced inwardly. And wasn’t that what he was doing? Masking his romantic interest by talking about Lisbeth’s death was just as bad as what other guys had probably pulled with her. When she walked into a room, he could see how she’d command attention from every guy out there with her striking features and gorgeous thick hair. How many people had seen it down like she was wearing it tonight? A stab of jealousy surprised him.