Copyright Information
Lake Roosevelt
Copyright © 2015 by Dean Wesley Smith
First published in Smith’s Monthly #16, WMG Publishing, January 2015
Published by WMG Publishing
Cover and Layout copyright © 2015 by WMG Publishing
Cover design by Allyson Longueira/WMG Publishing
Cover art copyright © Philcold/Dreamstime
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Contents
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About the Author
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Copyright Information
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This book is dedicated to Kris, who loves me enough to have gone with me into the remote lake once. Once was enough. Thanks.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The town of Roosevelt existed. And it was actually destroyed by a mudslide that filled the valley and formed Lake Roosevelt over the top of the mining town.
I want to thank Bobby Young for helping me get to the remote lake the first time almost forty years ago now. Standing on the shores of Roosevelt Lake and staring down into the waters at the remains of the town of Roosevelt is a very strange experience that is very difficult to forget.
PART ONE
A Really Bad Picture
CHAPTER ONE
July 14th, 2016
Oregon Coast
WHEN A BESTSELLING historical crime writer sees a ghost, it’s a bad, bad sign.
Kelli Rae had no idea why a ghost would haunt her, especially in the Whale Port Diner on the Oregon Coast.
Coming north along the winding highway, the Whale Port Diner had looked clean and funky and just the type of place that might serve a great chicken fried steak lunch. A girl’s juices could really get moving over a good chicken fried steak with thick white gravy with just enough pepper to give it a bite.
Add yellow corn near the white gravy and you have heaven built right into a small-town diner.
She had wheeled her little blue two-door Mercedes into the small empty gravel parking lot and climbed out into the fantastic smell of ocean and beach. Two blocks down the hill below the two-lane highway, the surf pounded the rocks and sand, the sound so loud it almost covered up the noise from the few passing cars.
It was just after four in the afternoon and the sun was still high in the sky, but the temperature and slight ocean wind made goose bumps appear on her legs. Since she had on Levi’s shorts and a light blue blouse with a halter-top under it, the sea breeze cut right through her. Middle of the summer and the place felt cold. She couldn’t imagine what the wind off that ocean felt like in the winter.
The wind whipped at her short black hair, even more so than while she was driving with the top down.
Note to self: Don’t come back to the Oregon Coast in the winter.
Along the two-lane coast highway small wooden buildings seemed to huddle together, forming a sort of downtown area about three blocks long. A couple antique stores, an old-style theater, and a small grocery store that she could see. The ocean roared down the hill to one side, steep mountains climbed away from the town on the other side. It felt like the town was just hanging onto the side of the hill, hoping to not get blown away in a big storm.
She took a deep breath, letting the thick ocean air clear her mind as she moved her shoulders and arms around to loosen up tight muscles. There was a slight hint of fish in the air, and ocean salt. She could understand just from the wonderful smell why someone would live out here in the sticks, on the edge of land.
She took another deep breath of the thick air. It was almost good enough to eat.
Maybe not as good as chicken fried steak, but it could be close. Depended on how good this diner’s food was.
She studied the front of the little place for a moment. It looked good, like it had top food. A person could always tell the quality of the food in a diner by how rundown a place looked. If it was rundown, but not cared for, the food sucked. But rundown and still loved, the food would be top notch.
This diner looked like it had been a shop of some sort at one point and been remodeled a few times. It now had a steep pitched roof and black shingles. The reddish/brown paint on the wood siding was peeling slightly from around the large windows across the front facing the ocean and the highway. And one roof edge was warping slightly. But the windows were clean, the sign fairly new, and no trash littered the gravel parking lot.
Rundown, but loved. She could be in for a top-notch chicken fried steak.
The door actually had a bell on it and it clanged softly as she entered. Oh, how perfect!
Then things just got better. The freshly baked bread smell hit her like a hammer and she just stopped with sensory overload. Ocean breezes outside and fresh bread inside. Clinging to the side of a hill trying not to slip into the ocean might be worth it just for the smells.
Four empty booths filled the area under the front windows, another on the end next to what looked like a real Wurlitzer Bubbler jukebox. That thing had to be worth thousands. It wasn’t on at the moment and instead some oldies radio station played faintly in the background, not loud enough to be distracting.
A Formica-topped counter ran along the back wall with eight bar stools attached to the floor in front of it with cracked red leather seats. She was in diner cliché.
Or maybe she was still back in her hotel room a hundred miles back down the beach dreaming of this place.
She was the only customer, so she had her choice of where to sit, so she headed for the counter and grabbed the stool third from the end on the left, facing the kitchen window where the sounds of pots banging could be heard. The cash register, an old black one with real push keys, covered the far left end of the counter.
The leather seat felt cold against the back of her legs, but not sticky. Another good sign.
“Hi,” a woman said to Kelli, smiling as she came out of the kitchen area in the back wiping her hands on a white towel. “Howya doin’?”
The women was taller than Kelli’s five-six by a good six inches and had wide, square shoulders and a face that looked square as well. A big woman with dark hair pulled back and a wide smile that filled her almost oversized face. Her accent told Kelli she was from the Chicago area of the Midwest.
“Doing great,” Kelli said. “Hungry. How’s your chicken fried steak?”
“Best on da coast,” the women said. “Comes with potatoes, yellow corn, and a fresh dinner roll. Choice of clam chowder or a salad to start. Eight-ninety-nine.”
“The rolls are what I’m smelling?” Kelli asked.
“Sure are,” the women said. “Dave just took them out of the oven, so they’ll be really hot and soft.”
“Perfect,” Kelli said. “Chowder to start, with a cup of coffee.”
Her mouth was already watering and her stomach growling as the women turned and went back into the kitchen without writing any kind of ticket up. She had only had a sandwich for lunch about three hours before, so this was perfect.
Behind her the door chimed and she glanced around to see a state cop come in. He was a looker, with deep blue eyes and a handsome square face. He had on a leather jacket and all the stuff police lugged around with them on his belt. He smiled at her and she smiled back as he took a seat in one of the booths looking out the window.
This little town was really starting to look up. A great diner and a handsome man, all in the same five minutes. She was a writer, she didn’t need to li
ve anywhere. She might think of staying here for a short time, although if she did that she would miss her office in her home in Las Vegas. She loved that book-filled, light-filled room. She had already been away from it almost too long.
Of course, the ghost was still fifteen minutes from walking through the door and changing everything.
CHAPTER TWO
July 14th, 2016
Oregon Coast
THE WILD PACIFIC Ocean pounded on black rocks to Jesse Parks’ left as the coast highway wound around a sharp ridge in a mountain and went into a massive tunnel through tall pine trees that made the bright sunny day seem suddenly dim. He loved the beauty and extreme ruggedness of the Oregon Coast. Not as much as he loved his home in the remote Valley County in Idaho, just miles from the small tourist town of McCall. But the coast was a close second in his heart.
Jesse Parks glanced at the tablet-sized tracker sitting on the passenger seat of his Jeep SUV and made note that Kelli Rae had stopped about ten minutes ahead. More than likely to get something to eat in the small town of Whale Port.
He had been following her for two days now as she made her way slowly up the Oregon Coast. She clearly hadn’t been in a hurry to get anywhere and so far today had only covered about a hundred miles in just about six hours. She seemed to stop for anything that looked interesting.
For a week before that he had learned more about her than he wanted to admit. But to learn about a target was his job, what Duster Kendal had hired him to do for some reason.
He hadn’t let her see him in all the time he had been following her and researching her, but now seemed like as good a time as any to get a little closer. In another day or so he was going to report back to Duster his findings and get home to Valley County.
There was nothing at all unusual about Kelli Rae that he could find. She worked too hard, did more research than anyone ever needed to do, and seemed to enjoy her life from moment to moment. She had two doctorate degrees in various aspects of historical research and a number of masters’ degrees along the same lines, including one in library science.
She was as Duster had hoped she might be. A really, really good historian. Why Duster was interested was beyond Jesse, but he made it a practice to not ask clients why there were interested in researching someone. Just better that way.
He was really starting to miss his big log home and all the openness of the land and mountains around it. Even though the Oregon Coast was beautiful and rugged, he was going to need to get back to the real mountains.
Kelli Rae was a bestselling writer of true historical crime books, with the multiple degrees in history and criminology to back her up. Her books and research all focused on crimes that had occurred in the past in the western part of the United States. A strange thing to focus on and write about, but it had made her millions, and from what Jesse could tell, her research was unimpeachable. At least that’s what all the critics said. Considering how much time she spent at it, there was no wonder.
He had no idea what she was researching on this trip. He hadn’t gotten into her notes to find that out. He had snooping limits.
She was twenty-eight, lived alone in Las Vegas and had no family. She didn’t drink or gamble that he could tell, and she also had more money than Jesse bet she even realized, considering how little she paid attention to her own finances.
Finances he had snooped into. And sadly, as most people, she had made his job very easy on that regard. But from what he could tell, no one was taking any money from her. She seemed to have an honest accountant.
She was twenty-eight and had no love interest of any type past a few brief one-night-stands. Considering how much her research and writing seemed to eat up all her time, that didn’t surprise Jesse in the slightest. The woman was flat driven.
Not at all like Jesse, who had the attitude of his favorite character, Travis McGee written by a writer by the name of John D. McDonald. Jesse worked when he wanted to or when something interested him or when a favorite client asked for a favor. Duster and his wife, Bonnie, were his friends, and paid him far, far too much when he had worked for them before.
This time they had asked him to help on looking into Kelli Rae’s past. He had said yes without even asking why. For Bonnie and Duster, he would do damn near anything.
In fact, about five years before, Duster had suggested that Jesse get a long oil-cloth duster like Duster wore no matter the heat or the cold. Jesse was doubtful at first, but after a few times wearing the long and very light coat, Jesse couldn’t imagine being without it.
He had gone out and bought four light brown dusters and wore a light brown cowboy hat as well. Duster wore darker coats and hats. But since Jesse was almost as tall as Duster at six-one, they looked like a formidable pair when together. Like two sheriffs right out of the Old West.
Early on, right out of college, Jesse had built a reputation of being the best private investigator in the west. He had helped keep a very rich man out of jail on a crime he didn’t commit, and on another he had found an online stalker’s real home address for a rich client to get that stopped.
Those two things, along with hiring a great computer crew for his office in McCall to do basic background searches on new hires for about a hundred different companies and organizations from around the west, had made his name.
And his fortune.
And every so often he worked for Duster researching other historians and mathematicians. He had no idea why. He just did what Duster asked.
The small town of Whale Port, Oregon, appeared as he came around a sharp corner in the highway. The town consisted of maybe fifty buildings, at most, on a ledge between high tree-lined mountains above it and sharp rocks and pounding surf below it. The town existed at all because just on the other side of town was a small bay and river coming into the ocean. Jesse knew it was deep enough for some fishing boat docks.
Most of the fishing was gone now, but the town hung on with a two story white historical hotel, a few bed and breakfast buildings, a general store, some antique stores, a small grocery store, and two restaurants. All looked like they could use a good coat of paint, but considering the weather here, more than likely they had all been painted just last summer.
Kelli Rae’s blue BMW sat in front of one of the restaurants that looked like an old diner and was clearly well kept up.
At least she had good choices in places to eat. So far, in all his research, Jesse had found very few things he didn’t like about the woman, including her looks. If he didn’t have such a solid rule about getting involved with a target, he would have been interested.
He pulled in and parked between her car and a State Police car. Time to get a little closer to his target before heading home to Idaho. And besides, he was hungry.
He slipped on his cowboy hat and then slipped into his duster as he climbed out. Might as well not try to hide at all. She would remember him from this point forward.
And he liked the idea of that for some reason.
CHAPTER THREE
July 14th, 2016
Oregon Coast
KELLI HAD JUST finished her clam chowder when the door chime rang behind her. The chowder was just about as good and rich and thick as she could ever remember having. Melted butter floating on the top and the spoon just stuck straight up in the chowder when served. If she hadn’t seen it and tasted it, no amount of convincing would have told her chowder could be that good, that thick, that melt-in-the-mouth rich.
She pushed the cup that was closer to the size of a bowl forward, wiped her mouth, and glanced around at the new arrival in the diner.
The man looked like he had stepped out of a western novel. He wore a long tan oilcloth duster, a matching cowboy hat, and jeans and cowboy boots.
He took off his hat and then slipped out of his coat. He moved like a well-oiled machine, with no extra movement at all. He hung both the coat and the hat up on a coat tree near the right end of the counter.
He had shoulders that seemed to be so
lid muscle and his hips and legs were long and thin. Wow, two stunning men in the same diner at the same time. On the Oregon Coast in the middle of nowhere.
She was really, really going to need to think about staying here a little while. Maybe grab a night in the old hotel if she could get one of these men to buy her a late drink after dinner.
She must be getting horny, since she clearly hadn’t had thoughts like this for some time. Too much time on this research trip, more than likely.
Then the new arrival hunk-of-a-man turned and sat down on the second counter stool from the right.
Two seats from her.
He glanced over at her and smiled.
And their gazes locked and she was lost in those incredible green eyes and wonderful grin.
That shocked her. He clearly was very smart. And she had an attraction to him that went a lot farther than just a one-night jump in the sack.
Wow.
He seemed shocked slightly as well as he stared at her for a few counts too long.
She didn’t care. She wanted this stranger to keep right on staring. As long as she could catch her breath at some point.
She couldn’t remember a man having that kind of impact on her before. Never.
Not at first glance at least.
Maybe it was the ocean air.
At that point the large woman came from out of the kitchen carrying a big plate with Kelli’s chicken-fried steak, corn, and roll. It smelled wonderful and Kelli turned and smiled at the woman.
“Anythin’ else?” the woman asked.
“I don’t think I could eat even half of this,” Kelli said, laughing and shaking her head at the massive plate full of food in front of her.
“Save a little room for da pie,” the woman said, smiling and moving down in front of the handsome man.
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