Shroud of Fog: (A Cape Trouble Romantic Suspense Novel) (19 page)

The Sun ’N Surf was a relatively low-rent motel that was
nonetheless clean and ideal for families.  Each room had a kitchenette, and all
of them were strung along a low bluff above the beach.  Really, it was a
surprise some hotel chain hadn’t bought out the owners years ago, razed the
existing building and erected something a lot fancier.  He would be sorry to
see that happen.  The few times he could remember he and his mother going on
vacation, this was exactly the kind of place they’d stayed.  He had loved those
rare weeks at the beach or in the mountains.

He parked beside the marked city police car that sat right
in front of the brightly lit unit.  He’d barely gotten out when he heard a
woman’s sobs.  Before he reached the door, Kreider, lanky and absurdly young in
his blue uniform, came around the end of the building.  Relief flooded his face
at the sight of his boss.

“I just went down to the beach, but it’s so damn dark.  Even
with the flashlight, it was hard to see anything.”

“Wake up everybody in the department.  Get them down here. 
Let me talk to the parents before I call in Search and Rescue.”

A harried looking man who was hovering just inside the room,
the night manager appeared to be as relieved to see him as Officer Kreider had
been.  The mother sat on the edge of the bed weeping, while a little boy
pressed against her making whimpering sounds.

The manager gestured toward the sliding glass doors on the
ocean side of the room.  “The father is out on the beach.”

“What can you tell me?”

It was Mom who had woken up and had to go to the bathroom. 
The manager glanced at his watch.  “Maybe forty-five minutes ago?” he said
uncertainly.  As she came out of the bathroom, the band of light had fallen
across the pull-out bed her children were sleeping in.  She’d seen that the
daughter wasn’t in it.

Daniel managed to get her attention long enough to find out
that they’d all gone to bed about ten o’clock.  She admitted to conking out
immediately and knew her husband had, too.  They’d driven over from Salem that
morning, romped on the beach all afternoon, gone out to dinner and played board
games the rest of the evening.  She’d have sworn they were all exhausted.  No,
she insisted, there hadn’t been any family quarrels, the kind that would have
the daughter deciding to run away.

Once she’d woken her husband, they had found the sliding
door unlocked.  Neither of them could absolutely swear they had locked up
before going to bed.

That wasn’t good news, although Daniel was careful not to
say as much.  Until now, he’d worked on the assumption that the kid had sneaked
out for some reason.  That was still his best guess.  But an unlocked slider
could be eased open by a man who’d seen the cute girl earlier and noted where
she and her family were staying.  Everybody sound asleep, Dad maybe snoring, he
could have slapped a hand over the kid’s mouth, or even knocked her out with a
gas like ether, if he was a sophisticated predator, and quietly carried her out
of the room.

The rest of Daniel’s small police force began arriving and
he went out to organize the search.  Once they fanned out on the beach with
flashlights, he woke guests in the nearest rooms.  The only one who had
anything useful to say was the woman in the next unit, who had fallen asleep
not more than half an hour ago.  No, she was quite sure she hadn’t heard any
vehicles arriving or leaving.  In fact, she’d been marveling at how quiet this
place was at night.  She thought she had heard a sliding door opening and
closing, though.

“It never occurred to me it wasn’t just someone stepping out
to admire the moonlight on the ocean,” she said guiltily.

Except there wasn’t much of a moon tonight, which was what
made the search so challenging.

What time had she heard the door?

Oh, maybe eleven?  Her uncertainty was plain.

Daniel was getting a bad feeling, but it took him a moment,
standing out in the quiet by himself, to realize the feeling didn’t have
anything to do with the missing child.  Or only because he was reminded how
easy it was to break into someplace, unheard by sleeping residents.

Shit
, he thought,
I should call Sophie
.  But
all he’d do is wake her up with no justification beyond disquiet that had no
basis in fact.  He’d slept fine last night, and she’d been alone then, too.

Even so…  If he’d had a single officer who wasn’t scouring
the shoreline shouting out Skyla’s name, Daniel would have sent him to do a
drive-by of Sophie’s rental cottage.

But even from here, with the night so still, he could hear
the voices.  “Skyla!  Skyla, if you’re here, your parents are scared because
they don’t know where you are.”

Concentrate on finding this girl instead of obsessing about
Sophie Thomsen, he told himself, and decided he’d give it five more minutes
before he called in some more help.

*****

It wasn’t easy falling asleep again, once Daniel had left. 
Sophie’s body ached in unaccustomed places, her heart ached for a different
reason altogether – or, maybe, not such a different reason – and her mind
refused to shut off.

She tossed and turned, trying every position but standing on
her head.  It didn’t help that she was keeping an eye on the clock.  She felt
sure Daniel wouldn’t come back, but would he think to call to let her know the
little girl had been found?

No, he wouldn’t want to wake her.

She didn’t like to think about the girl, alone out in the
darkness.  Or…not alone.

Alone, please.  Alone had to be better, even if she was lost
and scared.

The next thing Sophie knew, she was alone in the shifting
fog, which muffled and confused, making even familiar landmarks unfamiliar. 
Mommy liked mornings, but she shivered whenever it was foggy and started a fire
instead of suggesting a walk on the beach.  Why would she go out in the fog?

Sophie jerked at a noise that didn’t sound like Mommy’s
voice.  Stiffening, she opened her eyes and realized she’d nodded off and been
dreaming.

The sound wasn’t part of her dream.  She heard it again, the
tinkle of broken glass falling.  As if a hand swiped shards away away from the
window frame.

Fear suffused her, keeping her still while she thought
frantically.  What if she hid under the bed?  Would he, whoever
he
was,
think the cottage was empty?  But what if he’d been watching it and knew
better?

Her frantic gaze found the clock.  12:43.  Daniel had been
gone less than an hour.  If the intruder had been watching, he might have
waited just long enough for her to have fallen asleep.

Grateful she’d pulled on a T-shirt and flannel pajama
bottoms after Daniel left, she slipped out of bed on the far side from the
door.  If only she had her phone within reach, but it had to be sitting out at
the table beside her laptop where she’d left it.

Not that she’d have dared dial anyway.

Straining to hear any noise from the living area, she
tiptoed to the window.  Thank heavens it was covered by curtains instead of
blinds that would have rattled.

A soft thud came to her ears.  He had stumbled, probably
over one of the plastic storage totes left sitting in the middle of the floor.

Oh my God oh my God.

Since her arrival in Cape Trouble, she hadn’t so much as
tried to open the old-fashioned sash window in the bedroom.  At home she almost
always had her bedroom window open a crack at night, but here…here she’d been
trying to shut out the the heartbeat of the surf and the salty ocean smell,
because they triggered too many memories.

Terror running like a current of electricity under her skin,
she prayed this window hadn’t been painted shut.  Or the wood hadn’t warped,
making it balk when she shoved upwards.  She’d have only one quick chance. 
Push up, knock the screen out, tumble through the opening.

Scream.

*****

Daniel didn’t even have to think about where he was going. 
No, he wouldn’t wake her up, but he needed to see for himself that the cottage
was still dark and peaceful.  He might even get out and walk around it, just to
settle this creeping sense of disquiet that wouldn’t leave him.  He didn’t want
to scare her if she should be awake and hear a soft footfall along the side of
the house or in the back yard, but he’d rather that than go home without being
positive she was locked in, snug and safe.

Fortunately the kid had been found quick, before he’d had to
call in Search and Rescue volunteers or sheriff’s department deputies.  She had
just wanted to see the beach at night, she said tearfully, only somebody had
walked by, scaring her, and she got turned around and there were funny noises,
like this hoarse honking that he told her was probably sea lions chatting. 
She’d hidden behind some rocks.  It was so dark she wasn’t sure she could find
her way back to the hotel.  And then when she saw the first men with
flashlights on the beach, that scared her even worse.  The breeze, they
determined, had been snatching the voices that called her name and whipping
them the other direction from where she was hiding.

Her dad yelled at her and hugged her and her little brother
burst into tears.  Mom sobbed even harder.

Daniel thanked his officers and drove away before any of
them could so much as start toward their own vehicles.  He thought about what
Alex Mackay said about an itch, and knew that’s what this was.  Some atavistic
instinct whispered,
She’s in danger
, and he had to listen.

The streetlights were at the corners, leaving the center of
the block in darkness.  He saw nothing to alarm him, but didn’t feel the relief
he should have, either.  Damn, he wouldn’t admit this weirdly paranoid episode
to anyone.  Even as he ridiculed himself, though, he switched off his
headlights and rolled to a stop a couple of houses away.

The sound of him opening his door was loud in the quiet
night.  He left it open.  There was no way to shut it quietly.  He told himself
he just didn’t want to wake sleeping folks.  Flashlight in hand, he walked
toward the rental cottage.

In the daytime, the garden was beautiful.  At night, he didn’t
like it, even as the scent of roses in bloom drifted to him.  Overgrown lilacs
and other shrubs cast shadows even in the darkness.  The arbors and tangle of
climbing roses and honeysuckle and who knows what else blocked a good sightline
to the cottage from the street.

He had almost reached the opening that led beneath a garden
arch when he heard the rough scraping of wood and then an odd clatter.  Even as
he thought,
what the hell?
he was running.

*****

The window hadn’t wanted to go all the way up, but she could
squeeze through the opening.  She had to.  With a hard shove, Sophie ripped the
screen off and was shinnying herself through the window even as she heard the
loud thud of footsteps on the hardwood floor behind her.  Not a word, but a
rasp of breath.

Her T-shirt seemed to catch on the window frame. 
Frantically, she levered herself forward and fell, twisting so that she’d land
on her shoulder rather than her head.

Branches grabbed and scratched, slowing her descent.  She’d
have sworn she felt a hand grab at her ankle, too, but if so it missed. 
Sobbing, she came down painfully.  She couldn’t let herself pause even for a
second.  What if he came out after her?

Scream
.  But she couldn’t draw enough of a breath. 
She scrabbled her way out from beneath whatever bush this was until she felt
grass beneath her hands and knees.

That’s where the flashlight beam found her.

“Sophie?”  And she knew the voice to be Daniel’s.

Daniel was not happy.  He could have had the son-of-a-bitch.

He should have understood instantly that someone was in her
house.  He shouldn’t have paused long enough to be sure Sophie was uninjured.

Not until she had gasped, “Inside.  Someone’s in there,” had
he left her and raced around the corner of the cottage to the back, where he
immediately saw a broken window – and the back door standing open.  He swung
the beam of light around the yard, but didn’t see the dark shape of a man
hiding.

For the first time in a long while, he pulled a weapon and
went through a door with a rush, sliding to one side even as he used his elbow
to nudge the light switch on.

Clearing a place the size of the cottage took less than a
minute.  The guy was gone.

He called for backup and got his young troops driving nearby
streets in hopes one of them would spot a man on foot, but he already knew it
wouldn’t happen.  This guy was willing to take some major risks, but he was
also smart enough to have figured out how to disappear.

Sophie hadn’t argued when he packed up her essentials,
stuffed her in the passenger side of his SUV, and took her home for the night. 
There, she showered and then let him doctor her scratches, wincing as he
applied antibiotic ointment and covered it with gauze.

In bed, he waited while she squirmed until she apparently got
as comfortable as she could, after which he spooned himself behind her, laid
his hand on her stomach and murmured, “Sleep tight.”

As beat as he was, he expected to have trouble sleeping.  He
knew he wouldn’t be able to if she couldn’t, but, with astonishing speed, she
dropped off, and he was able to follow.

She was still asleep when he got up at least an hour later
than his usual, but by the time he came out of the bathroom she was up and had
started his coffeemaker.

Seeing the stiff way she moved, he banished her to a chair
in the dining nook and took over the minimal breakfast preparations.

“I’ll take you over to the cottage this morning so you can
get the rest of your stuff,” he told her as he waited for sliced bagels to pop
out of the toaster.  “You’ll be staying here.”

“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea,” she said to his
back.

He swung around to frown at her.  “Why not?”

“You haven’t sounded like a man who wants a live-in
girlfriend, even a temporary one.”

“I want you here.”

“People will talk.”

He snorted.

She had been sitting quietly at his table, sipping coffee
and waiting for the toasted bagels he’d promised her.  Now she bent her head
and gazed down at her hands on her lap.  “It’s…an awful lot of togetherness,”
she said quietly.

 What did
that
mean?  She thought he’d irritate her? 
Bore her?  What?

“If you weren’t here, I’d have been staying at the cottage,”
he told her.  “If you don’t want to share my bed, you don’t have to.  I have a
guest room.”

The house was a rental; he hadn’t decided yet whether he
wanted to stay long enough in Cape Trouble to buy.  He felt at home in this
house, though.  It was an older place, in good repair and with a fresh coat of
paint, although not fancied up like the cottage Doreen had rented for Sophie. 
A solid two-story with three bedrooms, it was painted a good old-fashioned pale
gray with crisp black and white trim.  The remnants of a garden meant a big
lilac by the detached garage had bloomed this spring, and a few spindly roses
had followed.

Sophie met his eyes.  “It’s not that.  It’s…what you said.”

What he’d said.  Daniel puzzled over that as he understood
what he was seeing in her eyes was apprehension.  Then he knew.

You scare me, Sophie.
  That’s what he’d said.

You scare me, too.

Ignoring the toast popping up, he went to her.  When she
tilted her head back to maintain eye contact, Daniel cupped her cheek in his
hand and told her the truth.

“Not being with you as many hours a day as I can manage
would scare me a whole lot worse.”

She searched his face, finally closing her eyes and resting
her head into his hand.  “Okay,” she murmured.  “Until you arrest Aunt Doreen’s
murderer.”

And then she planned to move out? 
She’ll be going back
to Portland anyway
, he reminded himself, and refused to dwell on the
painful cramp beneath his breastbone.

*****

The day was another misty, chilly one, the kind Sophie hated
most.  She wanted to hug herself, and it wasn’t only to hold in her body
warmth.

Hannah showed up to drop off several new donations that had
just arrived in the mail.  She was vibrating with excitement.

“W Seattle Hotel in Seattle gave a two night stay.  And
Southwest Airlines gave tickets.  Can you believe it?”

They hugged, and then Sophie showed her where she was at. 
Hannah looked, approved, and departed in a whirlwind, saying she couldn’t leave
the store for long.

Now, left alone to work except for her attending police
officer, Sophie closed a cardboard box, slapped a length of masking tape on it
and wrote with black felt tip pen, Ceramic Wall Plate, and the donor’s name. 
When she rose to her feet, she groaned as muscles and joints both protested.

Officer Slawinski jumped forward in alarm.  “Ms. Thomsen,
you’re not supposed to do any heavy lifting!”

“Do you see me lifting anything?”

“Well, no, but…”  He trailed off in confusion.

She smiled at him.  “If you wouldn’t mind putting that on a
shelf.”  She nodded at the box at her feet.

Once he’d leapt to do as she asked, Sophie told him she
wanted to go with him to the other storage unit to evaluate what was left there. 
She waited while he rolled down the door of this one and locked, even though
that seemed unnecessary, then walked with him around the corner to the back of
the long building and number 4079, where Doreen had been killed.  Sophie’s gaze
went to the now-empty parking spot where her aunt’s aging Corolla had been
hidden under a canvas cover.  Once Daniel had had the car fingerprinted, he’d
had an officer drive it to Doreen’s house, where it now sat garaged.  He’d
asked Sophie to hold off selling it briefly, which was fine by her.

With an effort, she turned her gaze to the fog-shrouded
woods beyond the chain link fence.  The sight was no improvement, though - the
woods made her shiver, and she deliberately turned her back to watch as
Slawinski unlocked and pushed the metal door up with a clang.

Someone – presumably one of Daniel’s officers – had swept up
the broken glass and gray dust of fingerprint powder from the concrete floor. 
Even the blood had been swabbed up.  The cat climber had been long since shifted
to the new storage unit.  The gourmet foods that had been spilled across the
floor, some trampled, had been relegated to a garbage dumpster.  But she
couldn’t forget.  She tensed every time she looked into this unit, seeing
double – the increasingly bare interior overlaid by that first snapshot.  Body,
congealing blood soaking into a cardboard box, the cut glass vase lying on its
side, boxes knocked askew and torn open.

She blinked hard this time and mostly saw what was here
now.  And yes, she decided as she surveyed the space, she
was
getting
somewhere.

She had most of the paintings and prints to go.  They’d been
stacked at the back, for the most part.  Two shelving units were still loaded. 
There were some oddball, bulkier things, like a big, shiny red wheelbarrow
loaded with tools, potting mix, a garden statue that made her think of the
Easter Island faces, gloves and who knew what else.  She thought it went with a
gift certificate that offered a garden design, given by a prominent Oregon
landscape architect who, among other things, had had a television show on some
PBS channels here in the Northwest and wrote a column for the Oregonian.

“I guess we should bring that,” she said, and Slawkinsi
grabbed the handles and moved it outside, where he waited for her.  Thank
goodness for the free labor – she felt like an old woman today.  The hot shower
she’d taken at Daniel’s had loosened up her bruised body, but it had long since
stiffened again.

She chose a fairly large cardboard box that looked
promising, experimentally hefted it and determined it wasn’t heavy, then
carried it back around the corner.  This time she stayed behind, doing a few
stretches while Officer Slawinski was out of sight before she sighed and sat
back down behind her card table and opened the box she’d brought.

Like so many, it was full of other boxes as well as a few
plastic grocery bags that held soft items.  She opened the first of those with
interest, able to see that it was a quilt.

A beautiful one, she saw, hand-quilted with tiny, precise
stitches, and old.  Hand-pieced, too, she was willing to bet, because the
pattern was Grandmother’s Flower Garden, a tough one to do by machine even now,
given the hexagonal pieces of fabric.

She reluctantly bundled it up again and put it on her pile to
take with her tonight – she’d need to spread it out and search for damage as
well as measure it, and she couldn’t do that here without taking a chance of
getting it dirty.

There was nothing to suggest who had given it.  In fact, as
she reached for one item after another, she determined that this box, more than
most, was full of a mishmash that ranged from too cheap to bother with – she
had a designated corner where she deposited things that were destined for a
thrift store or garage sale, if any of the volunteers wanted to try holding one
– to far too valuable to have been packed so carelessly.  Very few of the items
were tagged with a donor.  Had they been gathered early on, while somebody –
say, Doreen – had believed she would infallibly remember who gave what?

None of these items had been packed as carefully as they
should have been, either.  There was a stunning piece of Inuit art, for
example, that had its own box but hadn’t been so much as padded with wadded
newspapers.  That one, too, she put on her ‘take home’ pile, since she’d have
to research the artist whose name was scratched on the bottom.

Near the bottom was a shoebox, one old enough it had to have
been in someone’s closet for an awfully long time.  It had once held men’s
bedroom slippers, genuine suede with flannel lining, in a size 9.  Sophie set
it on the card table, barely glancing up as Slawinski deposited a huge, cellophane
wrapped gift basket and immediately left to fetch more.  Removing the lid, she
stared in surprise at a tangle of jewelry. 
Garage sale
, was her first
thought, but…there was a chain that had tarnished, telling her it was sterling
silver, and the gleam of that one might be gold.

She teased the necklaces apart with care, untangling
delicate chains.  The first necklace she detached was obviously cheap, a
crudely done enamel pendant hanging from a brass chain.  Garage sale.  But then
she separated out a charm bracelet – by the tarnish, definitely sterling
silver, with a delicacy that made her think it might be really nice once
cleaned up – and a ring.  A wedding ring, she realized, feeling her heart give
an odd thud as she picked it up and read the tiny engraved script inside:
Forever and a Day.  Who would dump a wedding ring like this? she wondered,
disturbed.  Didn’t it figure, there was no procurement form to suggest who had
given this box full of jewelry, making it impossible for her to call the donor
and say, “Did you really mean to give…?”

And then her eye was caught by a pendant, sterling
silver…no, there was no tarnish, it must be white gold set with a couple of
what might be tiny diamonds and a freshwater pearl.  It was an asymmetrical
heart, and as she stared at it Sophie heard a ringing in her ears and had to
blink against spots that seemed to float in front of her eyes.  Breathing hard,
she bent forward until her head was between her knees, hoping she didn’t pass
out.  Poor Officer Slawinski would have a heart attack.

“Ms. Thomsen!”  He dropped something with a thud and hurried
to her side.  She could see his big feet in shoes that needed polishing.  “Are
you all right?  Should I call the chief?”

She took a couple of deep breaths and then cautiously
straightened.  “I felt lightheaded for a minute, that’s all.  I’m okay.”  She
thought.  Her gaze cut sideways to the shoebox and the silver glint.

I’m overreacting.  This is ridiculous.

Yes, that necklace had made her think of the one her mother
had always worn, but she wasn’t even sure why, beyond knowing her mother’s had
been a lopsided heart like that, and she thought there’d been a pearl, too. 
But the truth was, she couldn’t summon a clear picture of it.  Part of her knew
she ought to be able to – when she was younger she’d sometimes played with it
while she sat on her mother’s lap, admiring it and asking Mommy to tell her
again about the day Daddy bought it for her.

But, like so much else, she’d blocked out any clear memory. 
Maybe she’d done it because the necklace’s disappearance was part of that
terrible day, and she so passionately didn’t want to remember any part of it.

Goosebumps were still crawling over her skin, and Officer
Slawinski hovered, his big, freckled hands opening and closing as if he thought
he ought to do something useful with them but didn’t know what.

Sophie had a picture of her mother in her wallet, but knew
without taking it out that the necklace wasn’t visible.  Most of the time, it
had been tucked inside her blouse.  At home in Portland, Sophie had albums her
father had given her, but she never looked through them and mostly pretended
they weren’t there, boxed on her closet shelf.

Even if this necklace was identical to her mother’s, it had
likely been mass produced, she reminded herself.  Her father had said it wasn’t
that valuable, she remembered that much.  So…this might look like Mom’s, but not
be it.