Your ex–best friend,
Pamela
One
I’ll walk you back to your cabin, Miss Stenson,” Luke Danner said.
Irene felt the hair stir on the nape of her neck. She paused in the act of fastening her black trench coat. Should have left earlier, she thought. Should have gone back to the cabin while there was still some daylight.
This was what came of being a news junkie. She’d just had to have her evening fix, and the only television available at the Sunrise on the Lake Lodge was the ancient model in the tiny lobby. She had ended up in the company of the proprietor of the lodge, watching the relentless stream of depressing reports from correspondents around the globe. Earlier she had seen him flip on the No Vacancy sign. That had worried her a bit. There were no signs of any other guests at the lodge.
She tried to think of a reasonable excuse to turn down the offer of an escort. But Luke was already on his feet. He crossed the shabby, well-worn lobby in long, easy strides, heading toward the front desk.
“It’s a dark walk to the cabin,” he said. “Couple of the lights on the footpath are out.”
Another little chill went through her. She’d been dealing with her over-the-top fear of the dark since she was fifteen. But this nervy, atavistic reaction wasn’t just the usual twinge of deep dread that she experienced whenever she contemplated the fall of night. It was all mixed up with the edgy, unfamiliar awareness of Luke Danner.
At first glance some people might have been inclined to underestimate him. She would never in a million years make that mistake, she thought. This was a complicated man. Under certain circumstances he would no doubt be a very dangerous man.
He was of medium height with a tough, compact, lean frame and broad shoulders. His features were stark and fiercely hewn. His hazel-green eyes were those of an alchemist who has stared too long and too deeply into the refiner’s searing fires.
There was a sprinkling of silver in his closely trimmed dark hair. She suspected that he was within shouting distance of forty. There was no wedding ring on his left hand. Probably divorced, she decided. Interesting men his age had usually been married at least once, and Luke Danner was nothing if not interesting. Make that fascinating.
He’d barely spoken to her over the course of the last hour and a half of all-news-all-the-time television. He’d just sat there beside her, sprawled in one of the massive, ancient armchairs, legs stretched out on the worn rug, and contemplated the unnaturally cheerful reporters and anchors with a calm, stoic air. Something about his attitude suggested that he had already seen the worst the world had to offer and was not particularly impressed with the televised version.
“I’ll be fine on the path,” she said. She removed a penlight from the pocket of her coat. “I’ve got a flashlight.”
“So do I.” Luke ducked briefly out of sight behind the reception desk. When he straightened he held a large, heavy-duty flashlight. In his big, capable hand it looked disconcertingly like a weapon. He eyed her little penlight. Amusement gleamed briefly in his eyes. “Mine’s bigger.”
Ignore that remark, she told herself, opening the door before he could do it for her.
The bracing night air sent a shiver through her. She knew that it rarely snowed at this elevation. The Ventana Lake resort region was in the mountains, but it was not far from the moderate climes of wine country. Nevertheless, it was still early spring, and it could get very cold after dark in this part of northern California.
Luke whipped a somewhat battered, fleece-lined leather jacket off a coatrack that had been fashioned from a set of deer antlers, and followed her through the door. He did not bother to lock up, she noticed. But then, crime had never been a big problem in the town of Dunsley. She knew for a fact that there had been only two murders here in the past two decades. They had occurred on a summer night seventeen years ago.
She stopped at the edge of the stone-and-log entranceway of the lodge. It was seven-thirty but it might as well have been midnight. Night hit hard and fast in the heavily wooded shadows of the mountains.
She pulled up the collar of her trench coat and switched on her small flashlight. Luke fired up the giant, commercial-grade torch he had retrieved from under the reception desk.
He was right, she thought wryly; his flashlight was definitely bigger. The wide beam it projected swallowed up whole the narrowly focused rays of her dainty penlight and leaped ahead to rip large chunks out of the dense night.
“Nice flashlight,” she said, reluctantly intrigued. No one appreciated a good flashlight more than she did. She considered herself a connoisseur. “What kind is it?”
“Military surplus. Got it on eBay.”
“Right.” She made a note to check out the military surplus shopping sites online the next time she was in the market for a new flashlight. That wouldn’t be long. She upgraded regularly.
Luke descended the three stone steps beside her, moving with a lithe, comfortable ease that told her he certainly had no qualms about facing the night. She got the feeling that very few things scared Luke Danner.
She surveyed the path. “Not just a couple of the path lights out, I see. Looks like none of them are functioning.”
“Got some new ones on order down at the hardware store,” he said, unconcerned.
“Be wonderful if they got installed by summer, wouldn’t it?”
“Is that sarcasm I hear in your voice, Miss Stenson?”
She gave him a brilliant smile. “Heavens, no.”
“Just checking. Sometimes you sophisticated folks from out of town are a little too sharp for us locals.”
Don’t play the small-town rube with me, Luke Danner. I didn’t just fall off the back of the turnip truck, myself. True, she didn’t know much about him—wasn’t sure she wanted to learn more—but she could see the gleam of diamond-hard intelligence in his eyes.
“Something tells me you don’t belong in Dunsley any more than I do, Mr. Danner.”
“What makes you say that?” he asked, a little too politely.
“Call it a wild, intuitive guess.”
“You do that a lot?”
“Do what a lot?”
“Make wild, intuitive guesses?”
She thought about it. “Sometimes.”
“Personally, I don’t like guesswork,” he said. “I prefer facts.”
“No offense, but that sounds a bit obsessive.”
“Yeah, it does, doesn’t it?”
They crunched along the gravel walk that linked the lodge’s twelve individual log cabins. Or rather, she crunched in her fashionable high-heeled black leather boots. Luke wore running shoes. She couldn’t even hear his footsteps although he was right beside her.
Through the trees she caught glimpses of silver on the broad black mirror that was the lake. But the glow of the moon did not penetrate the tall stands of pine and fir that loomed over the grounds of Sunrise on the Lake Lodge. She could hear ghosts whispering in the boughs overhead. Her hand tightened convulsively around the grip of the penlight.
She would never admit it to him, she thought, but she was glad that Luke was with her. Night was never a good time. It would be worse than usual tonight because she was spending it in the town that haunted her dreams. She knew she probably would not sleep until dawn.
The gravel crunching and the eerie sounds of the wind in the trees feathered her nerves. She suddenly wanted to talk; to make casual, reassuring conversation. She needed the comfort of the company of another person. But judging from his earlier silence while they watched the news together, she had a hunch that polite, meaningless, social chitchat was not Luke Danner’s thing. Dinner dates were probably a major ordeal for him.
She glanced at the first cabin, the one Luke evidently used as his personal residence. The porch light was on in front but the windows were dark. There were no lights on in any of the other cabins with the glaring exception of the one she had been assigned. Lights blazed in every window of Cabin Number Five as well as on
the front and back porches. She had left the place fully illuminated earlier when she decided to make the trek to the lobby and the only available TV.
“It looks like I’m your only guest tonight,” she said.
“Off-season.”
She reminded herself that the tiny resort communities that ringed Ventana Lake acknowledged only two seasons, off and high. Still it seemed strange that the lodge was so empty.
“Mind if I ask why you turned on the No Vacancy sign?” she asked.
“Don’t like to be bothered in the evening,” Luke said. “Bad enough having people turn up at all hours during the day wanting to rent a room. A real pain.”
“I see.” She cleared her throat. “Are you new to the hospitality business?”
“I don’t think of it as selling hospitality,” he said. “More like a necessity. Someone needs a room for the night, fine, I’ll rent one to him. But if the customer can’t be bothered to arrive at a reasonable hour, he can damn well drive on around the lake to Kirbyville and find himself a motel there.”
“That’s certainly one way to run a lodging establishment,” she said. “Although maybe not the most profitable approach. When did you take over the lodge?”
“About five months ago.”
“What happened to the man who used to run this place?”
She sensed immediately that the question had aroused Luke’s curiosity.
“You knew Charlie Gibbs?” he asked neutrally.
She regretted the query. True, she wanted to talk tonight, but the last thing she intended to discuss was her past in this town. Still, she was the one who had invited him down this particular conversational byway.
“I knew Charlie,” she said carefully. “But it’s been several years since I last saw him. How is he, by the way?”
“Real estate agent who sold the lodge to me said he died last year.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
And she was, she realized. Charlie had been getting on in years when she lived here in town. She was not surprised to learn that he was gone. But the news elicited another of the small, unsettling twinges of loss that she had been experiencing since she arrived a few hours ago.
She had not known Charlie Gibbs well, but, like the monument of a library in the park, he and the dilapidated old lodge had been a feature of the landscape of her youth.
“I’m told business will pick up around here right after Memorial Day,” Luke said in a tone that lacked any semblance of enthusiasm. “I hear it runs pretty hot and heavy through Labor Day.”
“That’s the way it is in summer resort towns.” She paused briefly. “You don’t sound overly thrilled with the prospect of increased business.”
He shrugged. “I like it nice and quiet. Main reason I bought the place. That and the fact that I figured I couldn’t go wrong with waterfront property.”
“Isn’t it a little difficult to make a living with your approach to the business?”
“I get by. Come summer, I’ll jack up the rates. Make up for the slow months.”
She thought about the SUV parked in front of his cabin. The vehicle was big, expensive and new. Charlie Gibbs had never been able to afford such high-end transportation. Nor had Charlie ever worn a watch like the one Luke was wearing, she reflected. Titanium chronographs that looked as though they could be submerged to a depth of three hundred feet and keep track of several different time zones did not come cheap.
Her curiosity was growing by the second, but she sensed that Luke would not welcome an in-depth discussion of his household finances. She groped for another subject.
“What did you do before you bought the lodge?” she asked.
“Got out of the Marines about six months back,” he said. “Tried the corporate world for a while. Things didn’t work out.”
She could well believe that he had spent time in the military, she thought. It wasn’t just the way he held himself, as though he were dressed in a uniform instead of a casual shirt and jeans; rather it was the aura of confidence, authority and command. Alpha male through and through. She knew the type well. Her father had been a Marine before he became a cop.
Luke was the guy who would keep his head and lead you through the smoke and flames to safety when everyone else was running around in a mindless panic. Men like this certainly had their uses, but they were not the easiest sort to live with. Her mother had explained that to her on more than one occasion in tones of great exasperation.
“The lodge must have been in bad shape by the time you bought it,” she said. “It was practically falling apart the last time I saw it, and that was quite a while ago.”
“Been working on the infrastructure a bit.” He looked toward her cabin, perched on the edge of the lake amid a stand of tall trees. “Maybe you didn’t notice the little card in the room that suggested you might want to help the management of the Sunrise on the Lake Lodge save the environment by making sure that all lights were turned off when you left the cabin.”
She followed his gaze to Cabin Number Five. It glowed like a football stadium in the middle of a night game.
“I saw the card,” she assured him. “But I also noticed that management was driving a very large sports utility vehicle that probably gets less than five miles to the gallon. I naturally assumed, therefore, that the request to conserve energy was merely a devious, hypocritical ploy designed to make guests feel guilty if they didn’t help management save a few bucks on the lodge’s electricity bill.”
“Well, damn. Told Maxine the card wouldn’t work. Never pays to be subtle. You want people to obey the rules, I said, you’ve got to make the rules loud and clear. No two ways about it.”
“Who’s Maxine?”
“Maxine Boxell. My assistant manager. She’s a single mother. Her son, Brady, is going to handle the lodge’s boat during the summer. I understand we get a lot of guests who like to go out on the lake at that time of year. Maxine says we can charge a ton of money for a three-hour fishing trip. She’s also after me to get another, faster boat that can be used to haul water skiers. I’m holding off on that decision, though. Might encourage too much business.”
The name rang a bell. There had been a Maxine who graduated from the local high school in June of the year that the world had shattered. She had been Maxine Spangler then.
“Mind if I ask what brings you here to Dunsley, Miss Stenson?” Luke asked.
“Personal business.”
“Personal, huh?”
“Yes.” She could do inscrutable, too, she thought.
“What kind of work do you do?” he asked when it became clear that she wasn’t going to fall for the not-so-subtle prompt.
What was this about? she wondered. He had barely said two words earlier but now he had suddenly decided to ask some very direct questions.
“I’m a reporter,” she said.
“Yeah?” He sounded amused, and a little surprised. “Could have fooled me. Wouldn’t have figured you for a member of the media.”
“You know, I get that a lot,” she said.
“Those high-heeled boots and that snappy coat are real impressive. It’s just that you don’t look like one of those scrawny airhead beauty pageant dropouts who read the news on TV.”
“That would probably be because I work for a newspaper, not a television station or a network,” she said dryly.
“Ah, you’re with the print media. Different species entirely.” He paused a beat. “What paper?”
“The Glaston Cove Beacon.” She waited for the inevitable response.
“Never heard of it,” he said.
Right on cue, she thought.
“I get that a lot, too,” she said patiently. “Glaston Cove is a little town over on the coast. The Beacon is a small daily, but the owner, who also happens to be the editor and publisher, has recently added an online site where you can download the current edition.”
“Hard to think of anything going on here in Dunsley that would draw the attention of a report
er from Glaston Cove.”
This was more than polite inquisitiveness, she decided. It was fast becoming an interrogation.
“I told you, I’m here on personal business,” she said quietly. “I’m not covering a story.”
“Oh, yeah, right. Sorry, I forgot the personal business part.”
Like heck he had forgotten it. She smiled a little grimly to herself. He was starting to apply some pressure but it wasn’t going to work. She was not about to explain herself to a stranger, especially not one from this particular zip code. After she met with Pamela she would be putting Dunsley in her rearview mirror.
When they reached Cabin Number Five, she was surprised to find herself torn between a sense of relief and a tingle of regret. She took the key out of her pocket and went up the front steps.
“Thanks for the escort,” she said.
“No problem.” He followed her up the steps, took the key from her fingers and fitted it into the lock. “When I checked you in this afternoon, I think I forgot to mention that there’s free coffee and doughnuts in the lobby between seven and ten.”
“Really? I’m dumbfounded. You made it clear that the management of the lodge did not believe in offering amenities.”
“You were asking about room service, for Pete’s sake.” He opened the door and surveyed the brightly lit main room of the little cabin. “We don’t go in for that kind of thing. But we do have the morning coffee and doughnuts. Assuming we’ve got guests, that is. Which, thanks to you, we happen to have at the moment.”
“Sorry to be such an imposition.”
“Yeah, well, guests happen in this business,” he observed somewhat dourly.
“That’s a very philosophical attitude.”
“I know,” he said. “I’ve had to cultivate one since I became an innkeeper. Luckily I’ve had some training. Anyhow, as I was saying, the doughnuts were Maxine’s idea.”
“I see.”
“I agreed to let her give it a trial run for a month. I don’t recommend them, to tell you the truth. They taste like sugar and sawdust. Got a hunch they’re a little past their pull dates by the time Maxine picks them up. Can’t be one hundred percent positive about that, though, because the Dunsley Market doesn’t believe in stamping ‘use by’ dates on their perishables.”