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So frustrating.
But their normal routine.
She remembered feeling that she was being followed the last time she’d passed by the large fountain, but now, as there were so many people crossing beneath the large live oak trees, she saw no one who seemed to be focused on her, no dark figure lurking behind the trunk of one of the trees.
Don’t forget: Someone broke into your house just a few nights ago.
That thought brought goose pimples to the back of her arms. Out of the corner of her eye she caught a glimpse of a man in black and her heart clutched before she noticed the slash of white at his neck: his clerical collar.
A priest or preacher, for God’s sake!
Nikki, get hold of yourself!
“Come on,” she said to the dog, and took off toward home.
Once in the house, she threw a frozen pizza in the toaster oven and while it baked, filled a glass with ice and Diet Dr Pepper. Sipping the drink, she climbed the stairs to her office and opened her laptop to start researching the Beaumont family. What did she know about them? Tyson, her brother’s age, was the current owner and manager of the property, a real-estate developer like his father, Baxter. Tyson was the only living child of Baxter and Connie-Sue, who lived in an expensive adults-only center on a golf course just out of town. Tyson’s sister, Nell, had died at a young age, drowning in the river near the old house where they had all resided with Beulah, Tyson’s step-grandmother and matriarch of the clan, and Connie-Sue had insisted they move from the estate as it was too painful for her to live so close to the spot her daughter had died.
The timer on the toaster oven dinged. Downstairs, where the kitchen smelled of sizzling pepperoni, oregano and mozzarella, Nikki retrieved two slices of hot pizza and a couple of paper towels, then returne
d to her attic-office and pored over tons of information about the Beaumont estate. She sorted through deeds of sale, news clippings, articles and pictures, searched the Internet for historical records, joined a group dedicated to the history of the area, read for hours, immersed in all things Beaumont. As she picked at her dinner, she took notes and gave up around eleven.
In a nutshell, the Beaumont estate had once been massive, spreading across the shores of the river, and had been cut up over the years, the most interesting pieces being the Marianne Inn, near Black Bear Lake, where the recent body had been discovered, the abutting acres of Channing Vineyards, which was owned and run by Jacob Channing, and a much smaller parcel near the Marianne Inn purchased by Wynn Cravens and now home to Bronco.
She eyed the records for the Marianne Inn. After the Second World War, over a hundred acres had been developed into the Marianne Inn property, once a flourishing hunting and camping resort in the middle part of the last century. It had been built and run by Baxter Beaumont’s father, Arthur, who had dedicated it to his first wife, Marianne, who had died when Baxter had been less than two. Arthur had married Beulah soon thereafter.
Nikki glanced out the window and saw her own watery reflection. The night was closing in and her neck starting to ache.
She stood and rotated her shoulder while looking down at the notes, pictures and copies of deeds of sale scattered on her desk.
Her gaze landed on a picture of the lodge at the Marianne Inn, which looked like an original black and white photo that had been tinted.
So maybe that’s why the color was off.
Her pulse ticked up.
The sign for the inn had been tinted a deep crimson and the lettering a distinctive script in white.
“Oh, God,” she whispered as she remembered the boat hidden in the shadowy branches of the willow tree at the Beaumont estate the day the bodies were discovered. It, too, was red but faded, and she hadn’t been able to read the graying lettering, had only caught a glimpse, but now, staring at the sign for the Marianne Inn, she was certain it was the same.
“Let’s see,” she said to herself as she sat down at her computer and googled the old inn once more, searching through the images, which were an array of photographs of the inn in its heyday. Shots of the pine-paneled interior with its massive staircase and rock fireplace that climbed two floors, the waitstaff in the dining area, smiling cooks in crisp white dresses, pristine aprons and hairnets working over a massive stove. There were shots of guests lounging outside the French doors that opened to the river, women in swimming suits from the fifties and sixties sunbathing. Other shots of men decked in fishing gear while proudly displaying strings of catfish, bass and sunfish, the scales of their catches glinting in the sunlight.
She found several pictures of the back of the lodge and the private pier jutting into the river. Rowboats and motorboats were tied, each with the distinctive white on deep red logo of the Marianne Inn.
“Bingo,” she whispered.
The color was off as the boat she’d thought she’d spied lurking under the drooping branches of the willow tree had been more of a faded orange than deep red, but the flowing script had been identical. The boat had once been part of the old lodge’s small fleet.
And Nikki Gillette thought she was the only one who knew about it. She bit her lip and wondered who had been at the helm of the small craft. And more importantly, why had he or she been at the Beaumont estate on the day the two decomposing bodies of the Duval girls had been discovered?
* * *
It was after ten at night when Bronco cracked open another bottle of SweetWater, then flipped the cap of the pale ale into the overflowing trash. Only one bottle left in the fridge, along with half a hamburger and the usual bottles of catsup, mayo and mustard.
Not much else.
He’d become a hermit.
Ever since finding those damned bodies, he’d holed up in his house, only getting out for that meeting with the attorney and cops and a couple of runs to the closest convenience store, a mini-mart, where he also filled up his truck.
