Bitterroot Lake, Alicia Beckman [good books to read for 12 year olds .TXT] 📗

the dead dad. Which is horrible. It’s hideous. No kid should have to lose a parent at eighteen. But she’ll be fine, Sarah. You know she will.” Holly’s voice shook as she went on. “I’m so sorry for what I said this morning. Forgive me?”

Sarah bit her lower lip and nodded. “Then I thought the woman in the dream might be you. But what if it’s Mom?”

 21

She’d come to the lodge expecting to be alone, but now that she finally was, Sarah wasn’t sure what to think or feel. Nic was still in town, Janine out cleaning cabins. Holly had gone for a run, saying it was time she shook off her self-pity and got moving.

As intrigued as she was by the finds in Caro’s trunk, she had work to do. She couldn’t inventory dirt. And if her mother did decide to sell, they had to know what work the place needed. She took her notebook and phone to the top of the house. Room by room, she snapped pictures, took measurements, and made notes. In between rooms, she made trips to the cellar to move laundry—sheets, towels, and curtains Janine brought in from the cabins.

She set a basket of towels on a kitchen chair. Mundane tasks like folding laundry could be meditative. Other times, they opened the cracks that let sadness creep in, the spidery, many-fingered tendrils of sorrow in a life. All the things that were supposed to be perfect, but never were.

When had she become such a mope?

She reached for the next towel. It didn’t come and she gave it a tug.

“Meeow.”

“Oh. Bastet.” She scooped up the cat, one claw catching on a thin white dish towel that fluttered up with her. Fluttered like the nightgown on the woman in the dream.

Sarah loosened the cat’s claw from the fabric. “Who are you?” she asked. “What do you want from me?”

But she wasn’t talking to the cat.

“Sarah?”

“Nic. You’re back.” Sarah set the cat on the floor and picked up the towel. Saturday, the stitching read, beneath the outline of a girl hanging laundry. Apt. She tossed it aside to rewash, then turned on the heat under the teakettle. “Perfect timing. The cat and I were just about to take a break. What did you find out in town?”

“I hardly know where to start. I met Dan Fleming for lunch at the Spruce. Nice guy.”

“So why was he in business with Lucas?”

“You cynic, you.” Nic cracked a wry smile and sat. “They kept separate clienteles. He had no idea Lucas had done any work for McCaskill Land and Lumber.”

Curious. Sarah plunked bags in two heavy white mugs.

“He’s been interviewed at length, of course,” Nic continued. “He was meeting with clients when Lucas was killed.”

“What about Misty?” The kettle whistled. Sarah filled the mugs and set them on the table. She checked her chair for the cat before she sat, but the creature had disappeared. “They live in Whitefish, right?”

“Right. She keeps an office above the shop there, where she was holed up all afternoon. Dan says the sheriff’s office confirmed both alibis. Thanks.” Nic spooned sugar into her tea. “He’s adamant that there was nothing going on between him and Misty until after she left Lucas, but Lucas didn’t believe that.”

“Was Lucas serious about a congressional run?”

“Dan doesn’t think so. Lucas was really good at shaking hands and making promises, but the job is a lot more work than that.”

Sarah frowned, wondering why her brother had done business with the man.

Nic took a quick sip, then set her mug down, holding it with both hands. “I was in the prosecutor’s office when she got a call from the state crime lab.”

“About the letters? That’s the only physical evidence they have now, unless they’ve found the gun and matched the fingerprints.”

“No. No gun yet. And it’s harder to get prints from a gun than you think. Plus, it’s a common model. How did your cousin put it? ‘Guns are like pine cones in Montana. Shake any tree and at least one will fall out.’ There’s probably a .38 in half the houses in the valley.”

Her mother hadn’t wanted guns around the kids, so her father kept his deer rifles and the shotgun he used to hunt ducks in a safe in his office. And the handgun he always carried in the woods. You never knew what trouble you’d run into, he’d said. You might hit a deer on the highway and need to put it down. If Connor did the same, he’d left it in his truck when he came inside.

“They can’t seriously believe,” Sarah said, “that Janine would ever own a gun, let alone use it. Not after what happened with her mother.”

“We know that, and I reminded Leo and the prosecutor. But our beliefs don’t prove anything.”

“And you called me a cynic.”

“They have to be skeptical. Because people aren’t consistent. Our observations aren’t as accurate as we think they are, and they’re influenced by what we want to believe,” Nic said. “Every single one of us has done something even our closest friends never imagined we would do.”

Not a reminder she actually needed.

“Here’s where things get ugly. Two things. I probably shouldn’t tell you either one.”

“Nic. Tell me.” Sarah put her palms on the table and leaned forward.

“They got a search warrant for Janine’s apartment in Missoula. That’s routine. They found a file in her desk drawer. Filled with clippings about Lucas over the years.”

Sarah sat back. “What the—”

“Every time his name made the paper—for some lawsuit, when his father died, when he ran for County Attorney—she kept the article. It’s a thin file, but …”

“But it’s a file. Holy cow. What’s the second thing?”

“The secretary, what was her name?”

“Renee Harper.”

“Right. She told you they’d taken the computers and printers to check for evidence that Lucas wrote the letters to you, Holly, and Janine. They also took a laptop from his house, and according to Dan Fleming, quizzed both him and Misty on whether Lucas had access to