A Dime a Dozen (27 page)

“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry. I value your friendship more than you can imagine.”

“Good,” she said, and then she pointed a finger at me. “So don’t ever keep a secret like that from me again! I feel like an idiot!”

“Why?”

“All my talk about ‘I know what Tom looks like,’ and ‘Tom has a girlfriend.’ How stupid could I be?”

I took a bite of my omelet, which was a bit tough. Harriet had many skills, but cooking wasn’t necessarily one of them.

“I tried to tell you yesterday morning,” I reminded her.

“I know you did,” she replied. “Good grief. Let’s just forget that entire conversation.”

“You got it,” I said. “Except the part where Tom chose me over a beauty queen.”

“Fine,” she said. “Except the part about the beauty queen.”

“So am I forgiven?” I asked.

“On one condition,” she said. “Details. I want lots and lots of details.”

Of course, I wasn’t about to give her a play-by-play of my entire evening with Tom. But I told her enough to make her happy, and she seemed especially pleased to learn he was even more handsome and more wonderful than either of us had ever imagined.

I eventually steered the conversation toward the day ahead of us and what each of us hoped to accomplish. I needed to spend some time with my database, loading in the information I had gathered the day before. Now that Enrique was most likely dead, it changed my investigation. Instead of trying to find his whereabouts, I needed to look through my interviews to see if there were any clues as to how this may have happened.

Overall, it was Pepe’s story that provided the most promising lead. I decided I would have to get back to Tinsdale Orchards to see if Enrique ever talked to Lowell Tinsdale that day as he had planned. Also, I needed to pass along to the police the information Pepe had given me last night.

Though part of my day would be spent learning about the autopsy of the mummy, Harriet planned to do nothing more exciting than sit in front of a computer at MORE and crunch some numbers, and I knew that was how she wanted it. When it came to any of my dangerous, scary, or irregular activities, she felt that the less she knew, the better.

The drive down the mountain was a bit dicey with the wet roads from the rain the night before. I could see Harriet in my rearview mirror, and most of the way down her face looked as pale and frightened as if she were on a roller-coaster ride. I thought it must be awful to have a fear of heights, and I was glad I couldn’t quite make out the choice words her lips were forming on the other side of her windshield.

At the bottom of the hill, I turned left and she followed suit, but when I came to the right turn for the Webbers’ house, I motioned for her to keep going straight. I had already told her that the office would be up about a mile on the left, and I had given her a key to the cabin so that she could come and go during the day, if needed.

When I got the Webbers’ house, I was quite relieved to see there were no cars in the driveway. I pulled to a stop and peeked into the garage, but it was empty as well.

Pocketing my car keys, I changed into sneakers and then nearly skipped around the house and down the lawn to where the canoe rested on a low wooden rack near the water. The canoe was big and heavy, but with a lot of pushing and pulling I was able to get it off the rack. Fortunately, the shed wasn’t locked, so I stepped inside and chose a paddle from the ones that were hanging there on the wall. I grabbed a nice, lightweight aluminum one and then ran back to the canoe, put one foot inside, and pushed off from the shore. I settled down onto the metal seat, used the paddle to straighten myself out, and then, finally, I was off!

I started slowly at first, knowing that my muscles needed to be treated gently. Though I had managed to get in some laps in the hotel pool in California, I hadn’t been able to paddle since I left Maryland nearly a week and a half ago.

After I warmed up, I continued at a pace fast enough to get my heart rate up, though not so fast to risk a pulled muscle. It felt so good! I let the wind whip at my hair as I went, feeling the familiar pull in my shoulders, the wonderful ache in my forearms.

There was a difference between lake paddling, which I was doing now, and river paddling, which I did at home. I had forgotten how good it felt to get out into a large body of water—particularly one this beautiful. In many places, the mountains loomed right up out of the water, their mirror images reflecting on the surface. The lake itself was clear but greenish blue, a color peculiar to the area and due to the various minerals in the water. All I knew was that in some ways this place felt more like home to me than my real home did.

I pressed onward, paying no attention to time or space but simply paddling, stroke after stroke. Heart pounding in my chest, I finally eased up, letting myself coast, letting the boat carry me forward through the water. Truly, there was nothing in the world like that feeling.

Rather than make my usual U-turn at the end of my outbound paddling, this time I simply turned to the right and cut a wide, slow arc through the open water. This brought me near the shore, and as I went I recognized a familiar stretch of rock at the base of the mountain. Among the crags and crevices, if the light hit it just right, you could always make out what looked like a giant face: Two darkish depressions formed a crooked pair of eyes, a large piece jutting out between them made the nose, and underneath was a slash in the rock that gave a sort of straight-lined mouth. Years ago, Bryan and I had nicknamed the face in the rock “Old Gus,” and whenever we paddled past, we always told him hello.

“Hello, Old Gus,” I said now, smiling wistfully.

I knew that if I continued on around two more bends, I would come to Camp Greenbriar. I thought about paddling there now, but I didn’t have much time, and that was an experience I didn’t want to rush. Instead, I made a wide circle to turn myself around. I would go there later in the week.

For now, I still had an investigation to run. To that end, I overshot the Webbers’ house just a bit so I could take a look at the new neighborhood that backed up to their land. As Dean had said, the houses were big and expensive looking, though I didn’t think they were very pretty, and none of them had much in the way of landscaping. From my vantage point on the water, I could easily understand why everyone felt certain that the person I had spotted running through the woods was headed straight to that neighborhood. I was just sorry the police hadn’t been able to catch the person—whoever he was—that night.

Back at the Webbers’ house, I struggled to bring in the canoe and ended up getting my sneakers all wet. I finally had it on the rack when I heard someone calling my name. I looked up to see Natalie stepping from the house onto the deck, waving at me. I waved back, thinking how much she looked like Bryan at that moment.

“Do you need some help?” she called.

“No, I got it.”

I put away the paddle and joined her on the deck.

“That’s sure a familiar sight,” she said, “to watch you out on the lake.”

“Oh, Natalie,” I said, feeling the warmth in my muscles and hands, “I had forgotten how absolutely gorgeous it is out there.”

Natalie looked tired, and it occurred to me she had probably been up even later than I had last night.

“Are you okay?” I asked. “What are you doing home?”

“Harriet told me you’d be here,” she said. “I decided to come back to the house to see if I could catch you.”

“Is something wrong?”

“Just sit here on the deck with me for a few minutes. I feel like this week is going by so quickly, and that we’re jumping from crisis to crisis without any time to really talk.”

“A lot has happened this week,” I agreed.

“A lot has been happening in your life before this week, from what I understand.”

Uh-oh.

Judging from Natalie’s expression, I realized that Harriet must’ve said something to her about me and Tom.
How could she?

“Have a seat, Callie,” Natalie said.

Heart pounding, I did as she asked. Though this conversation had been inevitable, I still couldn’t help wishing I were anywhere but here at this moment.

“Something tells me my coworker has a big mouth,” I said.

Natalie sat in a chair next to mine so that we were both facing the lake. The morning sun sparkled on the gentle waves, and for a moment I closed my eyes and listened to the familiar sound of distant birds.

“She didn’t say it on purpose. I overheard her on the phone with someone from your office. ‘Callie’s got a boyfriend, and you’ll never guess who it is,’ something like that.”

“She must’ve been talking to Margaret,” I said, thinking of our receptionist and knowing that of course Harriet would have to run and tell her the news of me and Tom. It was simply too big of a story to keep all to herself. And I had never said it was a secret.

“Do you remember the last visit you and Bryan made here before he died?” Natalie asked.

I nodded, picturing a blur of boating and board games and big meals with the family. As always, it had been a fun trip; at the time, we hadn’t known it would be Bryan’s last.

“One morning the two of you came down to the house so that he could fix my kitchen faucet for me. While he worked on that, you took out the canoe for a ride.”

“I remember that morning,” I said. “Seems like I was trying out some new strokes with the paddle. I just went back and forth out there, practicing my Minnesota Switch.”

“That’s right,” Natalie said. “I was watching you, and I commented to Bryan what a graceful wife he had. Do you know what he said to me?”

I shook my head, feeling a wave of sadness suddenly wash over me, though I didn’t know where it had come from.

“He said, ‘Mom, she might not be so graceful the next time you see her. We’ve started trying for a family.’”

I closed my eyes and leaned my head back, feeling the threat of tears.

“I didn’t know he had told you that,” I said finally.

“Considering that he died before you had a chance to conceive,” she said, “I almost wished he hadn’t told me. Believe me, I mourned the children my son would never have almost as much as I mourned him.”

“Me too,” I whispered.

“Since then,” she continued, “my prayer for you has been that you would find someone else to love, someone else to marry, while you’re still young enough to have children of your own.”

I opened my eyes and looked at her.

“Natalie, I don’t know where this relationship is going to take me,” I said. “It’s still very new.”

“That doesn’t matter,” she said, and when she blinked, a tear rolled down her cheek. “What matters is that you’ve finally come out of hiding and started
living
again. You’re so young, Callie. Life still holds so much for you.”

I reached out and took her hand in mine and we sat there, side by side, looking at the lake.

“Sometimes I feel very old,” I said.

In the yard a squirrel scampered up the pole of a bird feeder, reached inside, and pulled out some sunflower seeds. Nearby, a blue jay squawked from a tree, and eventually the squirrel ran away—though not before he had filled his mouth with the seeds.

“So what are you trying to say here?” I asked. “That I have your blessing on this new relationship?”

She squeezed my hand tightly and then let it go.

“Yes,” she replied. “I’m trying to say that no matter where life takes you—and I know it’s going to take you somewhere wonderful—you will always be my daughter, and you will always have my blessing.”

Twenty-Seven

Inevitably Natalie and I moved on to the topic of the Morales family. I asked her what she thought might happen next, and she said that basically things would remain in limbo until the autopsy was finished later in the day, though fortunately the children would be leaving town soon. As I had already figured out, the body first had to be proven to be Enrique, and then it would have to be determined whether he was killed or had died in an accident.

I asked Natalie what kind of accident could leave a man buried in a bin of fruit. She said it didn’t seem likely but supposed there was always a chance he had fallen off a ladder while picking apples and had either broken his neck or been knocked unconscious when he landed in the bin. Other pickers could’ve dumped their apples in on top of him without looking, and before anyone knew it, the bin would’ve been taken to storage and locked away, where the drop in oxygen would finish the job the knock on the head had started.

“Sounds like a pretty crazy theory to me,” she said. “But, then again, a mummy in a box of apples is crazy enough all by itself.”

“What does Luisa think happened?” I asked.

“She thinks someone killed Enrique and hid his body there on purpose. It wouldn’t have been hard to do—there weren’t many workers around on the day he died. A quick blow to the head out in the field, hide the body among the apples, and wait for the forklift to come by and load up the bin with all of the others. If that were the case, however, then that leads to a very strange question: Why would you hide a body somewhere you knew it would be found a few months later?”