Blue Lake

by Elizabeth Buhmann

  Blue Lake

  Elizabeth Buhmann

  Blue Lake

  A Mystery

  Copyright © 2019 by Elizabeth Buhmann. All rights reserved.

  http://ElizabethBuhmann.com

  ISBN: 9781094643601

  First Print Edition: May 2019

  Cover and interior design by Rachel Lawston, LawstonDesign.com

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in print or electronic form without permission.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  1. A Little Mystery

  2. The Loss of a Child

  3. The Suicide’s Ghost

  4. Wasn’t it Murder

  5. Blue Lake

  6. Chez MacDonald

  7. The Angry Old Man

  8. The Prodigal Daughter

  9. One Mystery Solved

  10. Running Away and Hiding

  11. The Slamming Door

  12. The Idyll

  13. The First Tragedy

  14. Didn’t You Know

  15. Cousin Sophie

  16. The Library and Attic

  17. To Richmond and Back

  18. What Possible Harm

  19. The Writing Box

  20. A Baseless Accusation

  21. Mrs. Marsden

  22. What To Do

  23. Look to Your Own Self

  24. Too Much For Her

  25. Anything For You

  26. Alone with Her Mother

  27. Who Knew

  28. No More Running Away

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Lay Death At Her Door

  1

  A Little Mystery

  Richmond, Virginia 1968

  Her hair caught his eye, hair the red-gold of autumn. She was at the far end of the hall in a brand-new office building, coming toward him, side-lit by early morning light from floor-to-ceiling windows on her left.

  He hadn’t seen her in eight years, not since she ran away—was sent away? disappeared?—in 1960. For at least a year after that, he thought he recognized her every time he caught a glimpse of strawberry-blond. He’d been wrong so many times that eventually he’d given up. A lot had happened since then—a two-year stint in Vietnam, college on the GI bill—but he still kept her memory in a soft place and still responded when he saw that color hair.

  It was Friday, the end of his first week at a new job in Richmond, not that far from home. A lot of people who grew up in rural western Virginia ended up in Richmond, so maybe she had too. Regret stabbed through him, closely followed by guilt. Had she been nearby all along? He should have looked for her instead of accepting that she’d left their hometown without a word of explanation.

  The woman walking toward him was the right height. The outline of her jaw, the graceful swing of her hips fit his memory exactly. This was not a girl but a young woman, as of course she would be—they’d been in their teens the last time he saw her. The hair had the right texture—fine curls floating weightlessly, drifting like a wake behind her.

  He slowed to a stop in front of a glass door with Blue Ridge Advertising in slate-gray-and-gold script. She too had slowed but barely glanced his way. She reached for the door and he got to the handle first.

  His eyes met the vivid blue of hers, and pure delight rushed over him. “Ree? Ree Medina?”

  When he dreamed he’d found her, she would smile, as glad to see him as he was to see her. But this was reality. Her eyes widened and she stepped back. “My name is Regina Hannon.”

  The name was wrong.

  “I’m sorry, I thought I knew you.” But the voice was hers. “It is you, isn’t it? Aren’t you Ree Medina?”

  She said again, “My name is Regina Hannon.” But as she spoke, her eyes grew wary and her voice dropped. “Some people used to call me Ree.”

  He heard himself blurting, “Don’t you remember me?”

  Of all the possible reactions, that she wouldn’t remember him—he hadn’t contemplated that one. It knocked the wind out of him. Could he have been that unimportant to her?

  But even as these thoughts piled through his mind, her eyes changed and color rose in her face. “Oh!”

  “It’s me, Al. Al MacDonald.”

  She pressed her hands against her chest, and he thought she almost teared up for an instant. “I’m sorry! I didn’t recognize you.” Her lips softened, the corners lifting in a sweet, familiar smile. “You’ve changed a lot.”

  “I know.” He flashed back to his awful high school yearbook picture—goofy boyish grin, buzz cut on the sides of his head, a thick yellow shock hanging down in front. His hand flew up to his hair, reassuring him that it was longish all over and well-trimmed. “You haven’t changed a bit. I would have known you anywhere.”

  He drew breath to ask where she’d been, what had happened, why she’d left, all the questions that had once tormented him and died unanswered, but something in her eyes, the way she held herself, as if holding her breath, stopped him.

  He sneaked a quick look at her left hand and was relieved to see it ringless. “I’m sorry. I thought your name was Medina.” How could he have been wrong about that? “Weren’t you Ree Medina back then?”

  She wouldn’t meet his eyes. “My sister’s married name is Medina. When I was in high school, I often stayed with her.” She spoke so softly that he angled an ear to hear her finish. Then she peered into the Blue Ridge office, looked at a tiny gold wristwatch, and gave him an apologetic smile. “I work here. I have an early meeting.”

  “Oh, sorry. I just started at Pike Patterson.” He jumped to open the door and tipped his head toward the other end of the building, where he’d come from. “Engineering, down the hall. I was looking for Rosa.” She gave him a quick, considering glance as she passed him, and he thought crazily that she might wonder why he wanted to see Rosa, so he explained. “Rosa does drafting after hours at home.”

  “I know.”

  “I have some work to finish up from my old job, and Ron said she could do it for me.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “You know Ron? That’s who I’m meeting.” She added behind her hand, “He’s my boss.”

  “I met him last week in the parking lot.”

  Rosa looked up from her desk in the open work area. Plump, with caramel-colored hair and eyes, she mimicked a child’s bye-bye wave.

  Ree Medina—he couldn’t help thinking of her that way—stopped in front of a closed door that said Ron Elkin, President, and said, “Good morning, Rosa. Is Ron in?”

  “Yeah, Beckie’s not in yet, but he’s in his office. He said to go on through. He’s waiting for you.”

  She gave Al one last shy smile. “Nice to see you again.”

  She opened the door and knocked on an inner one. A voice sounded from inside, then she was gone.

  Rosa dimpled up and said, “Hi. You know Regina?”

  “I knew her growing up.” He didn’t say he’d known her by another name entirely.

  “Oh yeah? Like in grade school?”

  “No, high school.” He realized he was still staring at the door she had disappeared into and pulled himself away.

  Rosa was watching him with obvious curiosity.

  “I’m not sure she really even remembers me,” he said, though he knew this wasn’t true.

  Rosa scooted back and pulled a flat case from underneath her desk while he glanced at snapshots and studio portraits of two little girls. Before he could ask about them, she flapped a stack of paper on the desk.

  “Got your drawings.” She put away the case. “Regina’s a sweetheart, I really love her. So pretty. I bet she was a cutie in high school.” She wiggled her eyebrows.

  Al pulled the drawings to him and glanced at the one on top
. “These look great.” He flipped through the pages. “She was a sweetheart then too. And yeah, as pretty as she is now. Out of my league.”

  Rosa pushed both hands at him. “Aw, go on. I bet you were a dreamboat in high school.”

  “No, really. I was a dumb cluck.”

  But he grinned, and Rosa said, “Nah! I don’t believe you!”

  Memories rushed back to him. He had been the college-prep math-and-physics guy in high school, the long-distance runner, the dork who read nineteenth-century English novels for fun. He was just as surprised as everybody else when it turned out he was the guy that Ree Medina liked. His mind skimmed back to the present. “She’s not married, right?”

  Rosa, who’d been eying him with the intense interest of a dedicated gossip, beamed. “Nope. Why, you carrying a torch?”

  “I guess I am. I mean, sure.” Might as well hang it out there. Maybe enlist an ally.

  “I don’t blame you. I’d say she’s pretty hard to get though. None of the guys around here can get the time of day from her.”

  “They try?”

  She leaned forward and stage-whispered, “Ron. He’s always trying to get her to go out for lunch or coffee or a drink after work. She just says no thanks.” Rosa hesitated. “She keeps to herself. Not like she’s stuck-up. Just kind of a loner, you know? But she’s so nice, by far the nicest one here, at least to me.”

  “Yeah?” Now that he’d found her, he was wild to know more about her, and Rosa, leaning forward on folded arms, was obviously primed to talk.

  “She goes to lunch with me sometimes, which none of the others would. I’m just a secretary, which makes me a nobody, according to them.” She shot a dark look in the direction of the other front offices, all still closed. “So I go to lunch with Regina and we run into this big important client and she introduces me and says she works with me. Hardly!”

  “Yeah, well, I wasn’t too cool in high school and she was nice to me too.” She had even promised to go to the prom with him junior year, except before they had a chance to go, she disappeared. He thought about what he’d gleaned so far and backtracked. “A loner?”

  “I don’t know. You’d know her better than I do, if you knew her back then.”

  But how well had he known her back then? Apparently he hadn’t even known her name.

  Rosa blew across the top of a mug of steaming coffee. “So then you’ve seen her parents’ house? It’s so amazing.”

  “Well, yeah…” Increasingly, he sensed a need to tread carefully. The Ree Medina he remembered lived in a cottage outside of town, nothing special. “Why?”

  “Must be nice to live like that. Grow up like a princess.”

  This made no earthly sense. He was almost afraid to hear more. “You’ve seen it?”

  She blew on the coffee then sipped. “Just the picture. I’m sure it’s even more beautiful in person. So to speak.”

  He wasn’t sure what to say. “It’s, uh… what picture?”

  “The one in her office. It’s a painting.”

  “Oh.” He must sound like an idiot, but this really was confusing. He didn’t want to blow her cover, but he’d walked her home from school many times. She had lived in a little one-story house, neat enough but directly on a country road and very modest. “I wouldn’t have said it was like a castle.”

  “Oh, are you kidding? All the grounds and gardens and the lake? Like some kind of little kingdom.”

  “I, uh, I visited her house a few times. I don’t know if it was that one.” Was this someplace she lived before he knew her? Or was it where she’d gone?

  “She said she loved to hang out in the attic, which was, like, on the third floor? And the house was on a hilltop, so she could look across the lake and the hills and see way across the valley, and she would imagine she was a princess shut up in a tower, waiting for a knight to come and rescue her.”

  He was speechless.

  “When she was a kid, she would dress up in these old clothes from a hundred years ago—or no, maybe just from when her mother was young? Rich long dresses and jewelry.” Rosa rummaged in a bag at her feet, pulled out a foil-wrapped package, and offered him a pastry. He took one, a little half-moon pie with fork-marks around the edge. She took one for herself and then stashed the packet in the side drawer of her desk. “You want coffee? I can make a pot in the break room.”

  “No, I’ve got some. I have to get back.”

  But he made no move to leave. He tried a bite of the pastry and waited. As he hoped, Rosa picked up the thread about Ree Medina—this Regina, whose name sounded strange and distant to his ears.

  “That’s another thing. The clothes she wears. Nothing flashy, but I see the catalogs and I know what she pays for some of those things. Like Saks Fifth Avenue? Bloomingdale’s?”

  He flashed back to the dress she was planning to wear to the prom. She’d shown it to him. An old dress that she was altering to look more like what the other girls would wear. A gown from a bygone era, wispy silk in a blue that made her eyes glow like jewels when she held it up against herself.

  Rosa’s voice brought him back to the present. “So you like it?” She was looking at the pastry.

  He nodded, mouth full. It was sweet, with a strong taste of cinnamon and another spice he couldn’t place.

  Rosa prattled on, keeping one eye on the doors to make sure no one would overhear. “I asked her, what are they paying you? Joking, you know, but really, I said, how can you afford that? She makes a lot more than me, but not enough to pay for the kind of clothes she wears or that car she drives. She just laughed and said her father paid for it. ‘I’m not too proud for that,’ she says.” Rosa popped the last bite of pastry in her mouth and talked around it. “I said, ‘Are you close to your dad then?’ And she said no. Didn’t want to talk about him.” Rosa crumpled up the empty foil wrapper and tossed it in the trash. “Poor little rich girl maybe, huh?”

  Al said truthfully, “I never thought of her that way.”

  He racked his brain. He hadn’t met her father. Or her mother. Once, a man had appeared behind her at the door when she came out to meet him. Without looking back, she said, “Let’s go,” and hurried down the road, which seemed strange, but he’d been so happy to be with her that he’d promptly forgotten about it. She’d only invited him into the house once, the time she showed him the dress, and nobody else was there that day.

  “She’s really nice, but hard to know,” said Rosa, finger-sweeping crumbs off her desk.

  “Yeah.” He tossed his napkin in the trash can and gathered up his drawings. “That’s for sure.”

  “A mystery.” Rosa sat back and stuck her index finger in the air. “You know what?” With a glance at the door, she lowered her voice as she said, “I think Miss Regina Hannon’s got some kind of weird, tragic secret.”

  He laughed this off as melodrama. “I don’t know about that.”

  But then the full impact of what Ree Medina claimed struck him for the first time. Regina Hannon? He knew that name—Hannon—and where he came from, it was synonymous with mystery. Mystery and murder.

  2

  The Loss of a Child

  Regina’s office at the back of the building looked onto a wooded lot. She was Blue Ridge’s most junior hire, so she didn’t rate one of the larger offices in front, but she didn’t mind. She liked the view. Outside, the midsummer sun found its way through the trees to form green pools on the grass.

  Behind her, in the hallway, she heard voices, doors opening, a laugh. The clock on her desk ticked. Regina glanced at it as she reached for the stack of paper Ron had given her. A list of items needed: a logo and designs for a brochure, a poster, a flier. Copy for each of these: a phone number, reassurance, guarantees of confidentiality and safety. A catalog of services available to runaway girls.

  “We’re talking about chicks that have been on the street for a while,” Ron had said. “They think it’s going to be a lark to take off alone on a Greyhound bus, hitchhike to San Francisco
, sleep in a park. The Starting Block is supposed to help them dry out, clean up, and go straight.”

  Ron had no idea that his words hit Regina like so many punches to the gut. Catapulted her to a place and time she preferred not to think about. And that was on top of Al MacDonald showing up. She hadn’t seen a single person from her hometown high school since the end of junior year. No one had called her Ree Medina since then either. The very name gave her a sick, creepy feeling.

  Al she did remember, and the memory softened her. He’d sat next to her in eleventh grade homeroom. Not one of the cool guys, no. He was different. Sweet and funny. A short laugh escaped her. He could be goofy, in fact. She mused briefly over his opening the door for her and remembered that he’d also been unfashionably gallant. There had been times when he had been the one person in the world who made her feel safe. He didn’t know that. She’d kept him at arm’s length. Seeing Al again made her heart ache for what her life could have been.

  He looked good now. Handsome actually. He’d been tall and rangy back then. He’d filled out since and had a decent haircut for once. Shame washed over her. She’d run out on him eight years ago. He’d want to know why, but one of the things she’d always liked about Al was that he never pried, never tried to force anything out of her.

  A soft knock, and Rosa slipped through the door, holding out a pastry on a napkin. “I brought you a little spice-cake pie. Homemade, with pumpkin.”

  “Thanks. Mmm. Smells wonderful.” Her mouth watered at the scent of yeast and cinnamon.