On Thin Ice (3 page)

I
t was late afternoon by the time Alec arrived home. He had told Megan that he would keep in touch and let her know what forensics found out about the invitations and if they found anything out on the lake.

Every time he had looked at her, something inside of him went to pieces and he completely forgot all police procedure, everything he had ever learned.

He tried to concentrate on the case. He remembered Sophia Wilcox as a short, pudgy, flighty, dark-haired girl. Megan and Sophia had been friends since kindergarten. His brother Bryan had dated Sophia briefly. Then again, his brother Bryan seemed to have gone out with everyone briefly.

He went on to the police database and looked through the report on Sophia’s accident. Her car had gone over an embankment on a highway in California and had tumbled down a cliff into the sea. There wasn’t much left of the car and driver, but bits and pieces
seemed to indicate that the brakes had been seriously worn down. She left behind a husband and two children.

He turned to the report about Jennifer. Once upon a time, before he met Megan he’d had a crush on Jennifer. However once he met Megan, he judged all other women by her. Jennifer had wanted to be a missionary he remembered. She planned to go to Africa or China. She always said that as soon as she graduated from high school she would leave Augusta, leave Maine for good.

But out of all their friends, she was the one who stayed in Augusta. Jennifer had died in precisely the same manner as Sophia had. She had drowned when her car went over a hill into a reservoir near her home in Augusta. She left behind a husband and three children.

Alec looked at his watch and decided that with the time difference, it wasn’t too late to call California. When he was put through to the officer investigating Sophia’s death, he identified himself and asked if there was any new information on the car accident.

It took a while for the detective to even find the case report on his computer or in his files. Finally he said, “We’ve put that death down to an accident. We are thinking that maybe she simply fell asleep.”

“The report said the brakes failed.”

“The brakes were not good. But the car was so destroyed we couldn’t know for certain,” the officer said.

“Anything about the crash strike you as strange?” Alec asked.

“The family insisted that she had had her car in for a service that very day.”

“You talk to the mechanic?” Alec questioned.

“Yes. He said the car was in good working order when she drove it out of the shop. He checked the brakes and they were fine. Just curious. What’s your interest in all this?”

Alec said, “A second person died the same way here in Maine. Her brakes failed. The two were friends.” He told the officer about the wedding that didn’t happen. He omitted the fact that he was to have been the groom.

“That’s interesting. Maybe this case deserves a second look,” the officer said.

“I guess it does,” Alec said.

They exchanged names, numbers and e-mail addresses. They promised to keep in touch. It was a start.

It was probably too late to call Augusta, but Alec did anyway. He found Detective Brantley Peterson, the officer who had handled Jennifer’s case, still in his office working.

Alec identified himself and told him the same story he had told the officer in California.

“Things have happened here,” Alec said. “Another member from that wedding party came to see me today. She’s worried for her life.”

“Why’d she come to see you?”

“She’s an old friend. She received a copy of the invitation from that twenty-year-old wedding,” Alec answered.

“Did the other women receive the invitation prior to their deaths?”

“I don’t know, but it would be worth checking into.”

“Yes, it would.”

When he hung up, he realized how difficult it was going to be to keep his connection to Sophia, Jennifer and Megan a secret. It was only a matter of time before someone found out. He was handling the whole thing very badly. He needed to be honest. He needed to pray.

He couldn’t pray for himself, but he could pray again for his child, and he could pray for Megan. He prayed for her safety. He prayed for wisdom for himself and Steve, and for everyone working on this case, but he didn’t—couldn’t—pray that he and Meggie would find their way back to each other. That would require too much of him. He would have to repent the one secret sin that had been a part of his life for twenty years.

Before he closed his laptop, he saw that he had a new email. The subject line read: MEGGIE.

He stared at it. She had sent him an e-mail?

He clicked on it. The e-mail wasn’t from Meggie. He stared at it in growing horror.

THE SHOOTING WAS A WARNING. NEXT TIME I WON’T MISS.

He read the e-mail again and again. The sender was an innocuous Web e-mail address that was simply a series of numbers. Maybe Adam, his favorite geek from the church youth group, could tell him exactly where the e-mail came from. Stu had some expertise on the Internet, but sixteen-year-old Adam seemed to know everything there was about e-mail and the Internet.

He forwarded the whole message to Stu and then e-mailed Adam. He also decided to head over to Steve’s to get his take on things. He printed the e-mail.

But getting Steve involved at this level would mean sharing a part of him that no one knew about.

Alec wondered if it was worth the risk.

Nori Baylor, the proprietor of Trail’s End Resort, where Megan had rented a cabin, had invited Megan and the other cabin guests up to the lodge for coffee and dessert that evening. Nori’s daughters and her husband Steve were going to be there.

The lodge was brightly lit when Megan got there. As she walked up the shoveled path, various motion lights lit her way. Now that she knew that Steve, who used to be a police officer and sometimes worked with
Alec on cases, was the owner of the place, she felt immediately safer.

Nori was at the front door to the lodge even before Megan had a chance to knock. Nori said, “Come in, come in. You’re the first to arrive.” She opened the door wide. “My daughters are here, but Steve isn’t back yet.” Nori’s smile was happy and bright. Her eyes sparkled. Megan wondered what it would be like to be so content. And so in love.

Inside, Megan hung her jacket on an ornate coat tree by the door. She commented on it and learned it was an antique that had been unearthed from a big room of treasures behind the kitchen.

Megan was led into the main living room, which was huge and high ceilinged. Nori had set out small silver bowls of candy and nuts and the place smelled of apples and cinnamon.

“I’ve got some mulled apple cider on the go,” Nori said. “Have a seat in here and I’ll be right in. Daphne, Rachel, come meet our guest.”

A moment later Nori’s daughters entered. Megan had been told they were twins, yet obviously they weren’t identical. The one who introduced herself as Daphne was taller and seemed a bit more outgoing. They shyly said hello and then scurried off to help their mother in the kitchen. Megan sat on a brown leather couch and gazed at the roaring fire.

Nori entered with a tray, set it down on the coffee
table and sat down across from her. “I’m so glad you could come up this evening,” Nori said. “I don’t know where the other guests are, but I’m sure you’ll meet them. Vicky and Brad are their names. Also, Steve should be along soon, too. He had to go out with Alec for a minute—” Nori stopped and put a hand to her mouth. “I’m sorry to bring that up. I forgot.”

Earlier in the afternoon when Nori had come to Megan’s cabin to give her more towels, Megan had told Nori about what happened on the lake, leaving out the part that she and Alec knew each other. The story she had told had her out for a walk on the ice, and just happened to run into the sheriff, and that shots were fired out on the lake.

Nori touched Megan’s arm. “I’m so sorry this had to happen to you.”

“It’s okay.”

“So tell me about yourself,” she said. “You’re from Baltimore?”

Megan nodded.

“What do you do there?”

“I’m in graphic design.”

“Graphic design! I’m an artist, too.”

“Really, well, I can’t call myself an artist. Not anymore so much. I mostly manipulate computer images. I haven’t done any creative stuff for myself in a long time. Not since I studied it in school.”

“My late husband taught fine arts at a university….”

And they were off and running, talking about art. Megan learned that it was Nori who had painted the big mural of a schooner on the side of the Schooner Café.

“Later,” Nori said, “I’ll take you up to my loft and show you some of my works. One of the things I would really love to do here is to have a retreat for artists. That was my goal when I bought this place. We wanted to make it a retreat center for Christian artists, writers and musicians. So far it’s just a guest resort—and that’s fine—but our future plans call for more retreats.”

“That sounds like a wonderful idea.” Megan found herself warming to Nori. Maybe she would even go to an artists’ retreat.

A few moments later there was the sound of talking and stomping of boots at the kitchen door. Megan looked toward the kitchen. Alec was entering with a big man. He was as tall as Alec, but bigger all-around. She presumed this was Steve.

Alec saw her and stopped in his tracks. “Hello,” he said.

“Hi.” Nori waved a few fingers at him and smiled.

Nori said, “I would introduce you, but I know you met earlier on the ice.”

“We did,” Megan said, smiling sweetly at Alec.

He kept staring at her. Finally he asked, “What are you doing here?”

It was an odd question and Nori laughed lightly. “Alec, she’s staying here in the cabin called Grace.”

Grace was the largest of the Trail’s End cabins that Nori had shown Megan. The cabin was the farthest from the lodge but the closest to the road. All the cabins used to be numbered and they were just referred to by their numbers, but Nori and Steve had given each cabin a name.

“I don’t know why, but I got the idea you were staying in town,” Alec said to Megan.

“I thought this was town.”

Alec’s eyes locked on to Megan’s and hers to his. They were like this for several seconds until she picked up her cider and brought it to her lips. Nori broke the silence by saying, “What a horrific thing to happen to a guest. You arrive on a bit of vacation, you decide to go for a walk on the ice and the next thing you know someone is out there target practicing.” To Alec she said, “I was just thinking it’s a good thing that you were out ice fishing. What a wonderful coincidence. I might even say that God may have been at work there….”

Megan nearly choked on her cider.

Steve said, “We’re taking the shooting very seriously. We don’t think it was just people randomly target practicing.”

“You don’t?” Nori’s eyes were wide. She looked at Alec. Obviously she thought the gunman was after Alec, maybe for a past crime he had solved or someone he had successfully put into prison. “Oh, Alec, that’s
awful,” Nori said. “Are you able to stick around for a while or do you have to get back to work?”

“We’re back to work,” Steve said. “We’re checking on a threatening e-mail.”

Nori nodded. “You guys don’t need to stay. You go and take care of that e-mail. We can’t have this kind of crime around here.”

Megan asked, “Is there anything you need me for?”

It was Steve who answered her. “Not really. Not now. Alec said you didn’t see anything. Is that right?”

Megan said she hadn’t.

“The less we need to involve you the better,” Steve said.

Megan raised her eyebrows and stared hard at Alec. Imperceptibly, he shrugged. Obviously, he hadn’t told Steve about their previous relationship.

Later, after she got back to her cabin, all she felt was regret and a kind of deep sadness. It was as if she was being hurt all over again. She would bury herself in her work this evening, and try not to think about a boy from twenty years ago who had ridden her on the handlebars of his bicycle, down the hill while she laughed and yelled at him to go faster, faster, faster.

When she checked her e-mail, the message with the subject line, OUR HOUSE, barely registered. Since she got a lot of spam, she deleted the e-mail.

And then she didn’t know why—something about
the subject line caught her attention—she retrieved the message from the trash folder.

The message simply read, WE WILL BE TOGETHER SOON. OUR HOUSE IS ALMOST READY. Attached was a photograph of a house. Normally she didn’t open strange attachments, but this one displayed automatically when she opened the e-mail. She studied the photo. The house looked vaguely familiar. Or maybe it was that tree in front of the house which she thought she recognized. Or did she?

Several hours later, she woke up. She had been dreaming about her son. Megan got up and sat at her little kitchen table and opened up her laptop. She looked at the picture of the house and read the e-mail again. Suddenly she realized that she knew that house. It was the house she lived in until she was five and her parents had died. The tree was the little sapling she and her father had planted so long ago. In the picture the tree had grown, the trunk thick and strong, the branches dense, profuse with the rich green of late summer.

This house, this tree was just an hour outside of Augusta in a town called Bath, Maine. When her parents died, she had moved in with her grandmother who lived in Augusta. In all the years she had lived in Augusta, she had never gone back to look at the house in Bath.

WE WILL BE TOGETHER SOON. OUR HOUSE IS ALMOST READY.

What did this mean? That she was going to die next? That soon she would be joining her parents? Did this whole thing have something to do with
them?

M
egan read the message again, studied the picture, looked at the e-mail address from which it was sent. The address was a series of numbers and letters.

She needed Alec on this. He was her only connection with the past. Even though it would be painful, they had to work together on this. She had come this far after all.

She called him.

“Alec here.” His voice was gravelly with sleep.

She looked at her watch. Maybe six-thirty was a bit early in the morning. “Did I wake you?” she asked.

“Who is this?”

How could he not know her voice? “It’s Megan.”

“Oh…Meggie…Megan. Oh.”

He seemed flustered.

She said, “I got an e-mail last night…”

A pause. “About the shooting?”

“No.”

“Megan?”

She held the receiver tightly to her ear. “It was a short, cryptic e-mail with an attachment. It was a picture of a house. Alec, it’s the house in Bath that I lived in until I was five. I recognize it!”

He said, “We should meet. We need to talk. About a lot of things. I’ve spoken with the investigating officers regarding the accidents in California and Augusta. Plus…I got an e-mail, too.”

“The same one?”

“Not exactly. I’ll show it to you. As much as Steve thinks we should keep you out of everything, you probably should know about this.”

She paused before asking, “Steve doesn’t know about us, does he?”

“No,” he said evenly. “Not yet. We should talk. We need to talk this through.”

“I agree,” she said.

“How about one hour? The Schooner Café for breakfast. I’ll see you there.”

“I’ll be there.”

“Can you forward me the e-mail and picture?”

She did.

When she got to the Schooner Café an hour later, it was busy. Alec, however, wasn’t there. She checked her watch. He was five minutes late. Not a lot. People could be five minutes late and nothing might be wrong. Then why did she feel so nervous? She scooted into a
booth and a horrible déjà vu settled over her. Maybe he wouldn’t come. Maybe it would be like last time.

Marlene came over with the coffeepot and said, “Megan! I didn’t see you there in that booth or I would’ve come over sooner. I have a message from Alec. He was here around half an hour ago working on his computer and then he left. I think he got a phone message or something. He wants you to come over to the sheriff’s office and wait for him there. He shouldn’t be more than half an hour. He said it’s important, an emergency.”

“Did he tell you what the emergency was?” Megan asked, sliding back out of the booth.

“No, he didn’t. Could you wait for a minute? I was just in the middle of making a breakfast sandwich for him when he had to leave. Can you take it to him, if you wouldn’t mind?”

Megan said she would and also ordered a muffin and coffee to go for herself.

Since the sheriff’s office was just a block away from the Schooner Café, Megan decided to leave her car where it was and walk. She passed a small drugstore with an elaborate Valentine’s Day display in the window. She had to turn away.

A couple was walking toward her, arm in arm, up the cold, slippery street. The woman was slightly taller than the man was. She was skinny with long, straight hair down to her waist. This looked like the couple who was staying in a cabin down from her own at Trail’s
End. The woman’s long hair swayed from side to side as she held on to the man’s arm and laughed. The woman looked a little older than Megan. A streak of pure white ran from her left temple and down through the length of her long hair.

The man was big, had white hair and a gray beard. He was jolly looking and wore sunglasses. Megan had seen this man last night when she had looked out of her cabin window. There was something about him even then which gave her a momentary pause. But this morning he looked like a harmless Santa Claus.

They struck her as a comfortable married couple on a little winter vacation. Megan looked back at the Valentine’s Day display and was suddenly envious. She wondered what it would have been like to have been married to Alec for twenty years.

As the couple made their way past her, the man nodded slightly in her direction. There was that feeling again. It was something she couldn’t put her finger on. When he caught her staring at him, and raised his eyebrows above his sunglasses, she quickly looked away.

Megan arrived at the sheriff’s office and Denise ushered her in to see Alec. His lips were pressed tightly together in a thin line. She set his coffee and bag of food on his desk. While she waited for him to speak, she sat down and unwrapped a muffin.

On his desk was a printout of the e-mail she had received and a color copy of the house picture.

“You got my e-mail, I see,” she said.

He nodded. “And this is the one I received.” He pushed a piece of paper across the desk at her. She read it.

“The shooting was a warning? A warning about what?” she asked.

He shook his head. “I don’t know.” Abruptly he said, “There’s been another death.”

“What?”

“Do you remember Paul Magill?”

She felt a shiver of fear. He was to be Alec’s groomsman. “How did he die?”

“Same as the other two. The brakes on his car failed. He hit a truck.”

“Where did it happen?”

“He lived in Augusta. It happened last night. My parents called me this morning.”

“Had you kept in touch with Paul?”

Alec shook his head. “A little. Not with Sophia and Jennifer, of course, but I kept in touch with Paul and…”

Bryan.
She looked up at him but didn’t finish his sentence. She didn’t mention the name of the brother who by his horrific actions had effectively stopped their wedding and driven them apart.

Megan didn’t move. She put down her muffin and wiped her fingers on a napkin. “How is he?” Megan asked drily.

Alec looked up at her sharply. “I told you he’s dead.”

Megan put the napkin on the table. “I didn’t mean him. I meant…Bryan.”

“Good. He’s good.” Alec felt his hands stiffen at his side.

“Is he still in…?”

“Prison?” He finished the sentence for her. “No. He’s been out almost ten years now.”

“You’re in touch with him then? He lives nearby?”

Alec shook his head. “He doesn’t live near here. He moved to New Mexico when he was released.”

“New Mexico. Why did he move so far away?”

“He wanted to start over.”

“Well.” Megan looked around the room but didn’t finish her sentence.

Bryan was the little brother he had protected against all the bullies of the world, and he was still doing it. Because of his father’s failing health, his parents couldn’t make the trip to see their youngest son anymore, so Alec had taken over that responsibility. Alec said, “He works at an electronics store.”

“He was always good at that sort of thing.”

“He’s a Christian now. He accepted Christ in prison.”

Megan nodded.

Five years into his sentence, Bryan had eagerly told Alec that he had found God through a prison Bible study. God had changed him. Correction—He was changing him. It was an ongoing process that God was helping him through, he told his older brother.

Alec continued, “He still goes to church where he lives. He has a girlfriend. My father can’t fly, so Bryan and Lorena, his girlfriend, are saving up money to fly out here to get married.”

“It’s weird,” she said. “That a person can kill someone and go to jail, and then just come out and lead a normal life like nothing happened.”

He looked down at his desk, at the two e-mails side by side. He lined up their edges. “It hasn’t been all that normal. He’s been through a lot of counseling. He’s prayed and paid his debt.”

“My grandmother is still dead.”

He looked into her eyes. “I’m sorry, Megan. I shouldn’t have said that. Nothing will make up for the death of your grandmother, I know that.” He paused. “I never got a chance to tell you how sorry I was then.”

She said rather thoughtfully, “The confusing thing is that Bryan was someone that I liked. Used to like.”

Alec agreed. “We all used to like him. He had his problems but he was genuinely likable.” Megan had even dated Bryan a few times. But when Bryan introduced Megan to Alec that summer at camp, it was the end of anything between Bryan and Megan. Bryan had understood when Alec and Megan got together. He’d laughed about it, actually, made jokes about how his older brother had “stolen his girlfriend.” “The best man won,” Bryan had said, playfully punching his brother in the shoulder. They were all still friends.

“Sophia used to have a crush on him,” Megan said.

“A lot of girls did.”

“He was a bit of a rebel, but people liked him.”

Yes. Bryan was a likable guy. That’s why it had made no sense at the time that Bryan would deliberately push Megan’s grandmother down the stairs to her death. No one could believe that Bryan would actually do that. There was no cause for it. They all got along. Megan and Alec were going to have a big happy family wedding.

And then Meggie had found her grandmother at the bottom of the basement stairs, her neck crushed. She died in the hospital two days later from a massive head wound but not before she told everyone, including the police, the EMT attendants, and Meggie herself, that it was Bryan who had pushed her down the stairs.

The accusation was ridiculous, of course. Everyone knew that Megan’s grandmother was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. Yet the forensic evidence proved otherwise. They found evidence of Bryan’s presence at the scene of the crime all over the place—hairs on her body, his skin under her nails, evidence of the struggle. In addition, Bryan had a gash on his right cheek made by her fingernails.

To top it off, a witness, a neighbor, said she’d seen Bryan and Megan’s grandmother arguing several times. This witness said under oath that the young man had shoved the woman very roughly in the driveway
not two days before her death. As to why he would push Megan’s grandmother or what they were arguing about so strenuously remained a mystery to this day.

“Are you worried Bryan is next?” Megan asked.

Alec looked at her. That was exactly what he was worried about.

She looked away. “I can’t do all this. Our son is dead. I’ve had enough pain,” she said.

His head jerked up at her. He wasn’t sure he had heard her correctly. “Megan?” he said tremulously.

“Our son was stillborn. There was a heart defect. He never had a chance. I thought you should know.”

It felt like a punch, as if someone had hit him hard in the gut expelling all of his air. There just didn’t seem to be enough air in the room for him to find another breath.
You never told me,
he wanted to yell at her.
Why didn’t you tell me? Why couldn’t I know this?

“What…happened?” he asked.

“I went to live with my godmother in Baltimore and it happened there. The baby was a boy. In my mind I’ve always called him Jack. After my father.”

He said, “There was nothing the doctors could do?”

Megan shook her head.

“Megan.” He looked into her eyes where a tear welled in her left eye and another wandered down her cheek. She brushed angrily at them with her fists. He wanted to go to her, hold her in his arms and never let her go.

I’ve had enough pain.
That’s what she had said.
She had lost her parents, his own brother had killed her grandmother and her son had died.

“Megan,” he said. “I’m so very sorry.”

How could he have done what he did to her? Oh Megan, Megan will you ever forgive me for putting my family, my brother, ahead of you and the love we had?