Again, tires crunched along the driveway, and Louise Trenton pulled up. Though she was a large-boned woman, Louise’s movements were fluid and graceful and decidedly feminine as she stepped out to engulf them in hugs. Her style of loose-fitting slacks and silky blouses was anachronistic, reminiscent of a young Katherine Hepburn.
“Dear Gawd!” Louise exclaimed in a southern drawl barely affected by her years in Minnesota. “I always forget how remote this place is. I mean, I love Spirit Falls, you know that, but don’t you ever get the willies staying here all by yourself?”
“Not if I don’t think about it,” Robin said a bit too enthusiastically. “Besides, I have a phone, and if it really gets to me, I sleep with all the lights on.”
Catherine arched one eyebrow, a talent she’d tried unsuccessfully to teach Robin when they’d been college roommates years ago.
Robin met her gaze. “Besides, I’m not alone, not if you count the resident bats.”
“Oh, Lord, don’t remind me!” Louise shuddered.
Robin flicked her hand dismissively. “They keep the mosquitoes down. Given the choice, I prefer bats.”
Coming out of the cabin, Foxy set a water dish down for the dog.
“I thought Grace was riding with you.” Catherine peered into the backseat.
Louise laughed. “Yeah, well, by the time I got everything stuffed into my car, there was no room. Besides, Grace wasn’t sure when she’d be ready, so we just scrapped the whole carpooling thing.”
They all turned when Molly Pat, barking sharply and running in tight circles, alerted them to the last arrival. It was minutes before Grace Samuel’s station wagon emerged from the tunnel of trees that defined the driveway. As soon as her car door opened, the dog leapt onto Grace’s lap and wet her face with kisses. “Ooh, you’re just so sweet,” Grace cooed. Molly Pat accepted the adulation until the antics of a pair of red squirrels got her attention and she was gone.
Catherine opened the car’s back door and a paper bag tumbled out, spilling its contents. Falling to her knees she reached under the car to retrieve the can of Deep Woods Off and two rolls of toilet paper, brushing the dust off before sticking them back in the bag. Composing her face as if nothing had happened, she asked, “So, what’s new, Gracie?”
Grace snorted. “New? We’re talking about my life.”
Lately, Grace had begun grousing about her ordinariness, from her average height and shapeless shape to her lank hair (a nondescript brown) and smallish eyes (hazel), now hidden behind prescription sunglasses. She had a predictable workday wardrobe of suits (black, navy, beige, or taupe) and another wardrobe for the weekend—today it was jeans, tennies and a plain white sweatshirt.
Grace jabbed a thumb over her shoulder. “Hey, what’s going on across the street? I saw a catering truck heading down the drive.”
“Oh, that’s Ross’s place.” Robin wrinkled her nose. “I guess he’s having a party.”
Louise called in her throaty voice from the doorway. “Did someone say party?”
That speeded up the unpacking. In a few minutes the five women had gathered in the kitchen for their traditional champagne toast, accompanied by strawberries.
Raising her fluted glass, Foxy flipped her auburn hair over her shoulders, sniffed the air and, instead of toasting Spirit Falls and its gracious hostess, she said, “Why do I keep smelling burned hair?”
“That,” Robin pronounced, “would be Moose flambé.”
As Robin and Catherine recounted the story of the cracked chimney and singed moose, they all trooped in to see the damage.
“Thank God y’all were here when it happened,” Louise said with a hand to her chest.
The others laughed as they moved to the screened porch at the front of the cabin where they kicked off shoes and socks and made themselves comfy on cushioned deck chairs before laying waste to Louise’s Brie quesadillas and a second glass of champagne, observing their first and only commandment: Thou shalt not utter the word diet.
Foxy flung her shapely legs over the arm of her chair. Even in simple movements, her dancer’s discipline showed. “How can an hour and a half make such a difference?”
The others murmured assent. It was the smell of pine, the sound of bullfrogs, and the tranquilizing effect of the waterfall, they agreed. It was not having a schedule. It was not having to meet anyone else’s demands. All that, and more.
Louise stretched her arms over her head and shook her curls. “I can’t wait to spend some time down on the beach,” she exclaimed.
“And sit behind the waterfall.” Grace shut her eyes and smiled broadly, remembering their last retreat here.
Thoughts of the previous year’s adventure momentarily silenced the women. Scrambling over the slippery rocks below the waterfall, they had cringed as cold water tumbled over them. Blindly, they’d felt for the hidden crevice to sit behind the watery curtain with their feet sticking out to catch the sun’s warmth. They’d sat like this, chattering like a tree full of sparrows.
“I hate to tell you,” Robin said, ending the rare moment of silence, “the last two steps to the creek are underwater. If we sat under the waterfall this year, it would be the last breath we’d take. In fact, the water’s running so fast, we won’t even be able to swim below the falls this time.” She took a sip of champagne.
Grace groaned. “And I forgot my bathing suit, just in case we wanted to go skinny dipping again.”
“Whatever we do, we’ll have fun,” Foxy didn’t need to remind them. “Even with clothes on.”
“True.” Grace turned to Robin. “So, tell me more about this neighbor—Ross, was it? I don’t remember him from before.”
Robin settled back in her chair. “Ross Johnson and his wife built that cabin right after we bought this one, and for years we used to get together as couples. I always liked him and Sandy, but then three or four years ago they got divorced, and since then his entertaining has been … well, let’s just say it’s the kind men don’t want their wives to find out about. The women are young, the men mostly paunchy and middle-aged.”
“Our age.” Louise’s tone was lugubrious.
“Thanks, I needed that reminder,” Foxy said.
Sprawled on her owner’s lap, Molly Pat watched the women intently, her eyes following the route of each morsel of food.
Robin continued. “Last night when Cate and I made a run to the liquor store, there was a gorgeous young man there, not the type Ross usually entertains—Latino, I think—who was buying a bunch of high-end stuff—Chivas, Courvoisier, Stoly—enough for a real bash. Cate, of course, was hovering right over him and heard when he told the clerk to put it on Ross Johnson’s account. The guy was charming, but something about him was just off. Cate and I both felt it.”
“True,” Catherine chimed in. “Something about his eyes.”
“Besides the fact that they were gorgeous and a startling blue,” Robin hastened to add.
Grace eyed them both. “That’s the second time you said gorgeous.”
“Well, he was. Not to mention, half our age,” Catherine said. “But there was definitely something about his eyes that made us think he was high on something.”
“Maybe they’re growing pot over there,” Grace said. “It’d be a good place to hide an operation like that. Or even a meth lab.”
Catherine twisted her mouth to one side. “I think Robin would have noticed a marijuana farm. She’s probably photographed every square foot of these woods.”
“How’s the book coming, anyway?” Foxy asked.
Robin’s contract promised delivery of approximately 125 photos with accompanying text. Her publisher hoped the coffee-table book, Seasons in the Woods, would come out in time for Christmas. “I have all the photos, captions, and most of the writing done for summer, fall and winter. Yesterday I got some great shots of a pileated woodpecker, a porcupine, and some wild turkeys near the falls.”
Glancing in the direction of the falls, Louise said, “You are going to write
up the legend, aren’t you?”
“Of Spirit Falls?” Robin shrugged. “I’m not sure. As far as I’m concerned, it’s bad enough having the local kids scrambling along the cliff at night hoping to catch a glimpse of the poor woman’s ghost wandering along the creek.”
“I thought it was the ghost of a baby,” Louise said. “Wasn’t it a baby that drowned?”
Grace shook her head. “No, it was the mother, wasn’t it?”
Clasping her turquoise amulet, Cate turned to Robin. “You’d better tell it again.”
Robin nodded, folding her legs as if sitting around a campfire. “Just before the Civil War broke out, a young family was picnicking upstream, a mother, father, and their son. The toddler was playing at the water’s edge and fell in before the mother could stop him, and the father drowned trying to save him.”
“So whose ghost is it?” Foxy asked.
Robin splayed her hands. “Supposedly the mother’s. The legend goes that she went mad with grief and guilt after losing both her husband and son, gone in an instant, and so she spent the rest of her short life wandering up and down the banks of the creek, dressed in the puffy-sleeved blouse and long skirt she was wearing for their picnic. They say she can still sometimes be seen along the creek near the falls, a figure in white.”
Grace leaned forward. “Have you ever seen her?”
Robin grinned. “You mean, do I see dead people?”
“I think it should be in your book,” Louise drawled. “Like it or not, tragic stories have romantic appeal.”
“True,” Robin agreed, “but this is basically a book of nature photography, and so far I haven’t managed to get a picture of the ghost.”
They looked, not speaking, out into the trees. Shadows lengthened on the picnic table. Several squirrels darted from branch to branch, down the trunk of the largest white pine and back to the safety of its greenery. Molly Pat took it all in, her ears twitching. The peacefulness was pervasive and unshakable. Or so they thought.
2
Across the road at the nearest cabin, Ross Johnson stepped onto the deck. He was tall and well-built, projecting a ruggedness that, despite his urbane wardrobe, looked more at home in the out of doors—the Marlboro man in Brooks Brothers.
It was not quite dusk, and the air was still and humid. His shirt clung to him, the charcoal gray silk blackening in growing patches on his chest and back. He sucked in his gut and eased the fabric away from his skin. As soon as Melissa was out of the shower, he’d ask her if she had talcum powder. His date for the weekend, Candi-with-an-i, had nothing but baby powder, not exactly the image he was going for.
He slapped his arm, then his bare ankle. His palm came up bloody. Swearing under his breath, he slid the door back and ran his hands under the kitchen faucet. “Do you remember where I stuck those torchieres, the ones that keep these fucking bugs away?” he called to José. He squashed another blood-filled mosquito on the back of his neck, then washed and dried his hands a second time and stuck his head into the living room. “Did you hear me?”
José looked up from the sandwich he was assembling at the bar. He said, “Sorry, boss, I can’t hear you over the music.” After rearranging the meat on the deli tray, he returned it to the refrigerator behind the bar. “Okay, whatchew need?” He grinned, showing even white teeth.
“Torchieres,” Ross said. “Those outdoor candlesticks. I want them on the deck.”
Wiping mayonnaise from the corner of his mouth, José finished chewing and swallowing before answering. “I think maybe they’re in the firewood bin on the deck.”
Exasperated, Ross turned to leave the room. “Well, then, put them out in the holders and light them.”
“Sí, boss.” José flashed a smile before adding under his breath in perfect Oxford English, “When I’m good and ready, you pretentious git.”
Ross checked his Cancun-tanned image in the hall mirror, tilting his cleft chin up to make sure he was cleanly shaven. He squared his shoulders, which retained the powerful look of his brick-laying days, even though, as owner of the fastest growing construction company in Minnesota, he did precious little manual labor any more. “And get me another Rob Roy—not with that cheap shit either,” he called out.
An olive slipped from José’s fingers and bounced along the floor in time to the Caribbean beat. Retrieving it, he dropped it into Ross’s glass. “I don’ give you no sheep shit, boss,” he said, sliding back into his Hispanic persona. “Maybe I get those bug candles now.” As he handed the drink to a scowling Ross, they both turned at the sound of a door opening.
Emerging from a steam cloud, Melissa exited the bathroom with wet hair and a towel that didn’t quite meet in the back. She strode purposefully down the hall, oblivious to the two men who watched the pink triangle of her right buttock winking at them until she disappeared into the bedroom she shared with Ross’s old friend Martin.
“She’s a looker, that one,” José said. “She keeps checking me out. You think your friend would mind—?”
Ross inspected his nails. “Yes, Martin would mind very much if you messed with Melissa. Your role tonight is bartender,” he said close to José’s ear, “not gigolo.”
“I’m—whatchew say—ambidextrous. I can do both, no?” José grinned again.
There was no warmth in Ross’s smile. “No.”
As José sauntered from the room, he said, “I think maybe I’ll check on Candi. See if she needs something, you know?”
“My guests will be here in less than an hour,” Ross called lamely after him. He clenched his jaws. It wasn’t so much the idea that José might attend to Candi’s needs, but it was his damned insolence. By providing Candi for Ross’s weekend entertainment, José was merely letting Ross know that in some matters he had the upper hand. It galled him! He walked into the kitchen, bumping over a stack of boxes the caterers had left in the corner.
A door slammed downstairs. “Damn mosquitoes!” Martin yelled, as he stomped up the stairs.
Ross laughed. “Well, it is almost dusk. Isn’t this your second walk today, buddy?”
Martin lifted his nylon windbreaker and checked his pedometer. “Eight point two miles.” He took his baseball cap off and pushed thin, sweaty hair to one side.
Ross had never known Martin to be particularly conscientious about exercising. He looked leaner than he had in years, but had gone from pudgy to skinny without ever passing through fit. His cheeks bore deep vertical creases Ross had never noticed before, and purplish smudges under his eyes bespoke the insomnia he’d been complaining about of late. Martin, thought his friend, looked all of his fifty-four years and then some. “When did you start wearing pink?” Ross teased him.
Martin looked down at his windbreaker. “It’s coral.”
“Oh, yeah, that sounds much more masculine.”
Ignoring the jibe, Martin looked over his shoulder. “What are the girls up to?”
With a theatrical eye roll, Ross said, “I hope you don’t call them girls at the college?”
Martin snorted, poured a half tumbler of Courvoisier and ran it quickly under the faucet. “You think I’m an idiot? It’s a good way to get your ass sued for sexual harassment. Just this spring I had to suspend one of my professors for referring to his teaching assistant as Miss T and A.”
Ross’s expression was pained. Before he could respond, Candi came in, wearing a black dress that hugged her curves, sleek as a seal’s skin. “José said to tell you he went to the gazebo until everyone gets here.”
“I see.”
She smoothed her short bob and licked her lips. “I wondered if you could give me a hand with my zipper.”
Christ, she’s insatiable! Ross thought, touching her waist as he zipped up her dress.
She slipped out of his reach, smiling coquettishly over her shoulder as she walked back toward the bedrooms.
“Let’s go out on the deck,” he said to Martin. “It’s stifling in here.”
Some time later, José and Melissa cam
e up the back steps onto the wraparound deck.
Ross heard the wheedling tone in Melissa’s voice “But I don’t understand,” she was saying to José. “Why all the secrecy?”
José laughed mirthlessly. “Trust me, chica, there’ll be no photography once the guests arrive. I think you just took your last picture.
The inside of the cabin, unlike its rustic exterior, had the appearance of a gentlemen’s club, complete with oak paneling, wainscoting, and massive leather furniture. Here a successful man, and Ross was certainly that, could bring his girlfriend, smoke a Cuban cigar, indulge in the finest French brandy and not have to answer to anyone. Here he felt validated for his years of hard work.
Sometimes he could almost convince himself it was nobility of character that led him to share this refuge with other carefully selected guests, those who knew how and why to be discreet. Ross took a quick visual inventory of his guests gathered near the stone fireplace, knowing he had chosen well.
Tonight the cigar smoke mingled with the sweeter smell of marijuana. The room currently held an octet of guests, most of them well into inebriation. The men were conversing—and perversing, as Ross liked to say—with obliging and attractive younger women.
He made his way over to a man who sported well-defined biceps and the striking woman with him. “Hey, Johnson!” the man began.
Ross held up his hand. “No last names tonight.”
“Right, like nobody’s gonna recognize me,” the professional athlete said, showing his famous lopsided grin.
His girlfriend laughed, letting out the smoke she’d been holding in her lungs.
“It’s a house rule we all respect.” Ross watched as the man digested his meaning, then he resumed a casual air. “Did José take care of you?”
“Oh, yeah.” He gestured to the hand-rolled joint his companion was sucking on. “He took care of us real good.”
Ross clapped him on the back and moved about the room. His eyes rested on Martin and his girlfriend. Yesterday, when Martin and Melissa had arrived, they’d been all over each other, holding hands and gazing into each other’s eyes—obviously more than a dalliance.
Murder at Spirit Falls Page 2
