Oof. No mention of Micah and the Lake Hunters by name, an intentional slight. I think about Micah watching on the big TV in his kitchen, and I can just about hear his fist punching through the wall.
“The ME has determined the official cause of death to be drowning, but also informed us that the victim had a contusion to the head that preceded her death. This contusion would have rendered her unconscious, and we’re working under the assumption that it was not an accident. To be clear, folks, this is a murder investigation.”
He pauses as a murmur works its way through the crowd.
“Though I appreciate the public’s need for information, I am not prepared to discuss the details of this investigation at this time. The only thing I can tell you is that we’ve identified the victim as Sienna Anne Sterling, age twenty-nine, from Westerville, Ohio. Her family has been notified, and they ask you to please give them space and privacy during this difficult time. Thank you.”
The chief gathers up his papers to a barrage of shouted questions from somewhere off camera. He tosses an annoyed look past the cameras, but he doesn’t lumber off the dais. One of the voices, high and female, rises to the top like cream.
“Chief Hunt, do you have any suspects?”
The chief rolls his eyes. “Yes.”
“Can you give us their names?”
“Nope. Next question.” He points at the bottom left-hand corner of the screen.
“Do you have any indication as to the murder weapon, and has any other evidence been recovered?”
“Yes and yes, but that’s all you’re getting out of me on that subject. Anybody else?”
A jumble of voices, then another feminine tone pushing through: “Sir, it’s been reported that the Lake Crosby home where Ms. Sterling’s body was found is the same home where, four years ago, another woman, the homeowner at the time, drowned under mysterious circumstances. Any chance the two deaths are connected?”
The pen falls from my hand and onto the floor, rolling under the refrigerator. Katherine’s name was on the deed? I’m living in her home, not Paul’s?
I stare at the screen, and I recognize the emotion that flashes across Chief Hunt’s expression, the way it crumples his forehead and drags the corners of his mouth toward the floor. I saw it just last night after Paul returned, on the face of the chief’s son.
He leans onto the podium with both forearms, the papers clutched in a fist. “Young lady, who do you work for?”
“WXPT, Channel 19, from Kingsport, Tennessee.”
“Did y’all hear that? This lady here from WXPT in Kingsport is going about, making reckless suggestions on live television, planting rumors that are guaranteed to take on a life of their own. Everybody listen up, because I’m about to nip this one in the bud. We are investigating the murder of Sienna Sterling and only Sienna Sterling. The Katherine Keller case is closed. Anyone who implies anything otherwise is guilty of spreading fake news.”
And with that he stalks off screen. Press conference over.
The cameraman scrambles, and the shot shimmies into a pretty blonde behind a news desk. She rattles off a quick recap of everything we’ve just heard, then follows it up with a longer list of all the things we don’t know, things like suspect and motive and evidence. She doesn’t mention Katherine’s death again, but it’s there, throbbing between the lines, filling up the empty pauses.
Chief Hunt was wrong about nipping things in the bud; that seed has been planted and watered now. It’s already sprouting roots that are twisting around the truth, strangling it like kudzu. I peek around the wall to the front of the house, where people are milling around up at the mailbox. Reporters, staked out at the top of the drive.
I return to the kitchen, fishing the pen from under the fridge and adding to the list. Katherine. Sienna. Pitts Cove. Micah and Jax and Paul. Lies. So many lies. I look at the words, and my whole body tingles with the feeling the universe is laying something out for me. Giving me important pieces to the puzzle, spreading them out on a table for me to see, but there are too many to sort through. The more pieces I get, the more I can’t tell the edges from the middle. Nothing fits together, nothing makes sense.
My phone buzzes with an incoming text—Paul, telling me he’s picked up his car and will be spending the day visiting build sites. I toss it onto the counter, breathing through a wave of anger. An early doctor’s appointment is one thing. Following it up with more appointments means he’s avoiding me.
The tightness in my chest doesn’t loosen as I stare out over the lake. The sun is good and high now, the sky a cloudless dusty blue, bright against the still-shaded water. Lake to the back, wall of reporters to the front, trapping me in this place. I spot movement down the shoreline, a flash at the far end of the cove. I recognize the lazy gait, those long legs and broad shoulders. Chet, right before he disappears into the pines.
My baby brother was so easy to fall in love with, velvety pink and squirming in that grubby blanket, blinking up at me with those pretty eyes. The first time my mother shoved him in my arms, my heart squeezed and soared at the same time. I remember thinking it strange that love could come in such a tiny bundle.
When it happened again with Paul, falling in love felt as easy as slipping into a warm bath. I gave him my heart, and I saw it as a sign. See? I remember thinking. You are not your mama. Your heart has room for more. I thought loving him made me a decent person. I thought it made me better than her.
I never stopped to think about what turned her love ugly. I never wondered about all the things that could make love flip over to show its underbelly, cold and dark and dangerous. I never considered how easy it might be, or how once love slips away, if it’s possible to ever get it back.
But as I stare out the window at the glittering lake, these are the things I’m thinking about now.
* * *
“Helloooo.” Diana’s voice echoes off the foyer walls, slicing through the weatherman’s chatter on the TV. I hit Mute as the front door closes with a thud. “Anybody home?” Her heels click on the hardwoods.
I’ve lived here long enough to know that she does this, lets herself into her son’s home, treats it like it’s her own. Who knew a big house surrounded by woods could come with zero privacy because Diana could walk in any minute? I shove a smile up my cheeks as she comes around the corner, her arms holding a giant white basket wrapped in cellophane.
She sets it on the counter and moves closer, peeling off her sunglasses and inspecting my face. “You’ve got your color back, I see. Feeling better, are you?” She smells like gardenia and vanilla.
“Much better, thank you. Paul’s not here.”
I didn’t mean for it to come across like that, like I know she’s only here for him, but there it is.
I needn’t have worried. Diana doesn’t seem the least bit offended. “I know. I just got off the phone with him. Dr. Harrison says it’s too late for stitches, but he cleaned up Paul’s brow and gave him a shot in the butt. I told him on a handsome face like his, scars add character. Just look at Harrison Ford, for example, or that guy who played Waterman.”
“Aquaman.”
“Whatever.” She reaches for the basket, drags it across the island by the cellophane. “I picked you up a little something.”
Whatever it is, it’s not little. I take in the size of the basket, the thick layer of tissue paper bouquets concealing whatever’s underneath. A normal person shells out a couple of extra bucks for a gift bag from Walmart, but not Diana. Diana shops at the kind of stores where the wrapping is as extravagant as the gift.
“I... You didn’t have to do that.” An unpleasant tightness gathers in my chest at her thoughtfulness.
“I know, but I couldn’t resist.” She grins, claps her hands three rapid-fire times, and her enthusiasm is like a saw against my skin. “Go ahead. Open it.”
I tug on the canary yellow ribbo
n wound around the top of the cellophane, and the plastic opens up like a flower, the filmy petals floating to the countertop with a soft crinkle. I remove the tissue paper, pretty pastel bouquets arranged in a tight layer to conceal what’s underneath. A rubber giraffe smothered in polka dots. A chenille bath towel with floppy elephant ears hanging from the hood. Pacifiers and rattles and blankets and clothes, a mountain of miniature sweaters and footed pants and onesies as soft as butter. I pull out a knitted hood shaped like a miniature strawberry, tiny enough to fit on my fist, and set it on the marble with the others.
“I know it’s early still,” Diana says, admiring a sweater with a teddy bear embroidered across the front, “but I went in that baby store just to take a little peek, and before I knew it, I’m standing at the cash register with a mountain of stuff. We didn’t have all this when Paul was born. The cribs and the rugs and the changing tables and—Oh my God, the mobiles! So precious. I would have bought you one of those, too, but I couldn’t decide. Have you thought about colors yet? Do you have a theme for the nursery?”
When Chet was born, our mother wrapped him in an old T-shirt and put him in a box on the floor. If he cried in the middle of the night, she’d shove him, box and all, into my room. Of course I don’t have a theme for the nursery. I didn’t know I was supposed to.
“Diana, this is all...”
“Too much?” I look up in surprise, and she laughs. “Go ahead—you can say it. It won’t be the first time I’ve been accused of being too much. I know I have the tendency to go overboard, especially when it comes to my family.”
I smile. “I guess I can’t fault you for that. But it is a lot. Does a baby really need all this stuff?”
“Well, no. Of course not. A baby doesn’t need any of this, but that’s the whole point.” She picks up a stuffed lamb, holding it by its fuzzy neck. One eye is shut in a saucy wink, its lashes stitched to the fabric with shiny black thread. “Grandmothers are supposed to spoil their grandchildren, especially the first one. I’m supposed to spend a ridiculous amount of money on stuff they’ll grow out of within a year. That’s part of the bargain.”
She says it without an ounce of malice, and I tell myself it’s not a dig of some kind, not a subtle swipe at my penniless, motherless existence. My mother will not be dropping by with expensive gifts. I will not have to tell her to back off. She can’t be bothered to love her own children, much less a grandchild.
Diana shakes her head. “You know, I had actually given up on the idea that Paul would ever have kids. I’d resigned myself to the fact I’d have to live the rest of my life without knowing what it was like to be a grandmother. If he’d married someone his own age, that window would be closing up about now.” She pauses, looks at me. “I guess I have you to thank, don’t I?”
It’s the closest she’s come to saying she approves of Paul’s choice of wife, and it’s like all those times when my mother told me I was pretty. I find myself liking Diana a little more for the compliment.
“You should know that Paul and I didn’t plan this. We weren’t looking to get pregnant this early on in our relationship, but I guess sometimes life has other ideas.”
“You do want this baby, though, don’t you?”
I pick up a silver teething ring tied with a tulle bow, and it really is beautiful, so beautiful I’d never even consider buying it myself. A blast of longing hits me hard, a physical tug in my chest—for this baby, for things with Paul to go back to the way they were before yet another dead woman’s body washed up in the lake. For Diana to like me, even if only because of my ability to give her a baby Keller.
“Yeah. I do. I want this baby with everything inside of me, and so does Paul.”
“Good, because now that I’ve gotten over the surprise of it all, I can’t tell you how excited I am.” Her gaze wanders to the items spread across the island, and she laughs. “Clearly I’m excited. Though I hope all these gifts didn’t scare you off, because when all of this—” she sweeps a hand in the general direction of the lake “—dies down, I’d really love to throw you a shower. At the club, maybe, or a restaurant in town. Up to you.”
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 snea
ked 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.
Stranger in the Lake Page 17
