Lakeside secrets, p.1
Lakeside Secrets, page 1
Omar turned. Inches separated them.
The seconds ticked by, neither of them moving, their gazes locked. And then Karine went to her toes.
His mouth touched hers. Her fingers skimmed down his arms in a touch so light he could barely feel it, which made it all the more exciting somehow.
He kept the kiss light, exploring her mouth.
Karine stepped back all too soon. Her eyes shone with surprise, desire and uncertainty.
He knew her well enough to know she’d need time to process the line they’d just crossed, so he took two steps backward, giving her space.
His gaze hooked on something over Karine’s shoulder. A flash of metal. “Get down!”
He grabbed Karine on instinct. They hit the ground hard enough to rattle his jaw.
The gunshot reverberated in the air around them.
Lakeside Secrets
K.D. Richards
K.D. Richards is a native of the Washington, DC, area, who now lives outside Toronto with her husband and two sons. You can find her at kdrichardsbooks.com.
Books by K.D. Richards
Harlequin Intrigue
West Investigations
Pursuit of the Truth
Missing at Christmas
Christmas Data Breach
Shielding Her Son
Dark Water Disappearance
Catching the Carling Lake Killer
Under the Cover of Darkness
A Stalker’s Prey
Silenced Witness
Lakeside Secrets
Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Karine Eloi—Marilee Eloi’s daughter, who is on a misson to bring her mother’s killer to justice.
Ranger Omar Monroe—Karine’s best friend and a Carling Lake ranger.
Marilee Eloi—Karine’s mother and Jean’s former wife.
Jean Eloi—Karine’s father and the prime suspect in his former wife’s unsolved murder.
Deputy Shep Coben—Deputy in charge of current and cold cases.
James West—Omar’s friend and part-time West Investigations employee who helps Omar and Karine investigate.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Epilogue
Excerpt from Winter Warning by Danica Winters
Prologue
There’s no need to panic. Karine Eloi will probably stay in Carling Lake just long enough to put the house up for sale then she’ll return to that godforsaken city where she lives. After all, she’s some kind of big-shot financial person in Los Angeles. Nobody would trade that life for Carling Lake.
Marilee Eloi’s killer just had to keep a clear head.
The killer had been lucky, damned lucky, for more than twenty years. No one had even thought to connect them to Marilee’s murder. Besides, folks in this town wanted to believe Marilee had died at the hands of an outsider, that one of their own couldn’t have done something so evil. And they’d had the perfect scapegoat. Jean Eloi. Even his name was snooty.
Jean had snuck right in and married a hometown girl and the Carling Lakers hadn’t liked that one bit. It hadn’t taken more than a few well-placed rumors, the best kind if you asked the killer, to get people casting suspicious glances and talking all about how Marilee’s highfalutin husband must have been the murderer.
If the killer had known she’d been in the house with her mother, little Karine might have fallen prey to the big bad burglar that night too. Why leave a witness when you didn’t have to? Karine wasn’t a witness, though. She’d slept through the whole thing and that was what had saved her life all these years.
But now she was back in town and that was bound to kick up memories that the killer would rather stay buried. That new sheriff was far too progressive for the killer’s liking. What if he decided to show off by delving into a more than twenty-year-old murder?
One problem at a time. The killer would have to keep a close watch on Marilee’s girl. Maybe give her a reason not to linger in Carling Lake. And if there was any cause to worry...well then, the killer would just have to finish the job that was started twenty-three years ago.
Chapter One
It was far too quiet in Carling Lake, New York. That was the problem, Karine Eloi thought as she turned onto her back and stared up at the ceiling, willing sleep to come. She was used to the sounds of Los Angeles. The ever-present car horns, shouts, music and other assorted fracas of the city. The high-pitched squealing and fervent scratching coming from the attic above her was one thing that did remind her of Los Angeles. Or rather, the dump of an apartment she’d lived in when she’d first moved to the city. She made a mental note to put mousetraps on her shopping list and tried to tune out the sounds.
When she’d arrived in Carling Lake earlier that evening, she’d stood on the sidewalk in front of the house, looking at the place that had been her home for the first twelve years of her life. It looked familiar, but time and tragedy had dulled her memories of the place. But while the town and house she lived in had faded in her mind, the boy who’d lived next door never had. Omar Monroe had been her best friend since they were five years old. Even after her father had moved them three hours away to Springtree, Connecticut, she and Omar had remained close. Not even her move across the country to Los Angeles for college, and her subsequent decision to stay on the west coast, could break the bonds of their friendship.
Karine had hoped to see him when she reached town, but traffic had put her behind schedule and the house next door to the one she now owned, the house Omar had lived in his entire life, was dark by the time she’d arrived. She knew that as the only full-time state park ranger assigned to the Carling Lake area, Omar often had to work late, but she was excited and more than a little anxious to see him; it had been six months since he’d come out to visit her in Los Angeles. She remembered the punch in the gut she’d felt when she dropped him off at the airport, how difficult it had been to watch him walk away, knowing she wouldn’t see him the next day.
She turned onto her side and closed her eyes. She was sure she’d see Omar soon enough. Right now, she had to get some sleep. But her mind wouldn’t shut off. Coming back to her childhood home had opened up a Pandora’s box of emotions that wouldn’t be quelled by slumber.
The two-story home was an imposing mix of brick and clapboard. But it had been well maintained, just as Mr. Hill, the lawyer who had managed the family trust, had told her. The home had been in Karine’s family for nearly sixty years, built by her grandfather, Wayne Barstol, who’d had the forethought to pass it to his daughter, Marilee, and then on to her, his granddaughter, via a trust so that it would remain in the family. After her grandfather had passed away, Karine and her parents had moved in. She may have been young when she’d lived here, but she remembered how much her mother had loved the house and Carling Lake.
A memory floated to the forefront of her mind as she’d stood on the sidewalk, peering up at her childhood home. Her, her mother and her father sitting on a swing hung from the porch ceiling, cuddled under a blanket on a starry night. And laughter. Lots of laughter.
There’d always been a lot of laughter when her mom was alive. Not after though.
Karine couldn’t remember what her father’s laugh sounded like or the last time she’d seen him smile.
She swallowed the tears that rose in her throat. Her father hadn’t wanted her to ever return to Carling Lake. After her mother’s death—her murder—twenty-three years earlier and the suspicion that had swirled around him, Jean Eloi had packed their bags and moved them to Connecticut, never looking back. He’d wanted Karine to do the same.
Never look back.
But Karine couldn’t just plow ahead like her father had. She’d been there. She’d seen...something. Her dreams, her nightmares really, made that quite clear. But what had she seen?
Her dreams had never been clear enough to answer that question. For her father, it was tough enough dealing with the reality that his beloved Marilee was gone. The who and the why wouldn’t bring her back, so he’d pressed on, remarried and gotten on with his life.
For her, it was the opposite. Each year, each moment lately, the need within her to know who and why grew stronger. Why had her mother been taken from her? Who had shattered her childhood and changed her life so irrevocably? Two months ago, she’d turned thirty-five and, by the terms of the trust left by her grandfather, become the outright owner of the family home. She’d known what she had to do. Go to Carling Lake and get j
She’d made it to Carling Lake. Now what?
She was a financial analyst without the first idea of where to start investigating a murder.
Her mind churned through what she knew about her mother’s murder. Twenty-three years ago, while Karine had slept upstairs and her father was at a faculty function, someone had broken into the house. The then sheriff had theorized it was a burglar who hadn’t realized anyone was at home. Her mother must have awakened and confronted the intruder. The confrontation had ended with her mother being bludgeoned.
There was so much about that night and the days after that was foggy for Karine, but she remembered talking to a policeman with bushy gray eyebrows and kind eyes. Telling him she hadn’t heard or seen anything after her mother had put her to bed for the night. She remembered, too, hearing the police officer speaking to another cop.
I don’t think she saw anything. Small blessing.
For more than twenty years, she’d also believed that, but now she wasn’t so sure anymore. As her thirty-fifth birthday approached, the dreams had begun. Vivid dreams. Her mother lying on the floor in the hallway. A red river around her. And a figure over her mother’s body.
In the dream, the figure was never clear enough to tell who it was or even if it was a man or a woman. At first, she’d thought it was nothing more than a dream, but each time she had it, the details became clearer, sharper. The fireplace poker was on the floor next to her mother. The red river, she realized, was blood encircling her mother’s head. The back door to the house was standing open. She could see it all as if she was there. Or had been there. Everything except the face of the person who’d killed her mother.
Karine had all but given up on the police ever naming a suspect, much less convicting anyone, until a few weeks ago. That was when she’d received an email from Amber Burke Spindler, one of her mother’s closest friends.
She remembered Amber from when she was younger, even though Amber had made no attempt to reach out to Karine after she and her father had moved to Connecticut. No one from Carling Lake had made any effort to keep up with her or her father, except Omar and his parents.
She gave up on sleep and reached for her phone on the nightstand. She scrolled to the opened email chain from Amber.
Karine,
You may not remember me. My name is Amber Burke Spindler, and I was friends with your mother. Good friends at one point. There is something I need to speak to you about. It’s important. About your mother. It’s too much to type out and too dangerous to put on paper. I need to tell you in person. Please get back to me. And tell no one.
Amber Burke Spindler
She’d thought about the email for weeks before she’d finally responded. Her father had never liked talking about her mother or the way her mother had died. Whenever she’d attempted to bring it up, he always said it was a tragedy and that she should try not to think about it. But the older she’d gotten, the less she’d heeded his advice. She’d searched the Carling Lake Weekly online for news on the murder and, talking to Amber, someone who’d known her mother and been around during the time of her murder, just might get her the answers she needed. Karine knew the police theory was that her mother had surprised a burglar. But something about that explanation just seemed off.
She hadn’t told anyone about the email from Amber. Not even her best friend and Carling Lake resident, Omar Monroe. She knew he’d have pressed her to tell the authorities about Amber having reached out to her, and she didn’t want to do that until she knew what Amber had to say. She’d tried to convince Amber to disclose whatever it was she wanted to tell her via email and had even offered to call or video chat, but Amber hadn’t budged.
In the end, curiosity had won out. She’d used some of the vacation time she had banked from years of early mornings and late nights at her investment firm and headed to Carling Lake. She hadn’t told Omar about Amber’s email, but he was aware that she hoped to convince the sheriff to reinvigorate the investigation into her mother’s murder. She’d also known her father would try to talk her out of it if he realized the truth, so she’d told him only that she was coming to Carling Lake to ready the house for sale.
She’d arranged to meet Amber the next afternoon at Amber’s house in an upper-class section of Carling Lake where lots of the rich part-time residents lived. Amber could afford to live there having married then divorced Daton Spindler, heir to Spindler Plastics.
Karine was anxious to hear what Amber knew about her mother’s death that was so important she couldn’t tell her in an email or video chat and why, if it was so important, she hadn’t told the police.
She set the phone aside, swung her feet over the side of the bed, and rose. She was too wired to sleep. What she needed was a cup of chamomile tea to help settle her nerves. Luckily, she’d arrived in town with just enough time to drop off her suitcases and head to the supermarket before it closed since 24/7 shopping hadn’t seemed to have made its way to Carling Lake just yet.
She padded down the stairs; the moon providing more than enough light to guide her. In the kitchen, she hit the switch for the penlight that hung over the stove, but left the brighter recessed lighting off. She’d found an old-fashioned stainless-steel kettle in the cabinet next to the sink earlier that evening and filled it now. While the water in the kettle heated, she stepped over to the sliding-glass doors that led from the kitchen to the back porch and slid them open.
Mr. Hill had rented out the house over the years and it had been several months since the last renter had vacated. She’d left the windows open for several hours after dinner, yet the air inside the house was still stale and heavy.
Karine turned back to the floor-to-ceiling pantry and reached inside for the thin can that held her favorite brand of chamomile tea leaves.
A muscular arm clamped around her waist, yanking her backward. The can clattered to the tile floor, spilling tea leaves at her feet. The scream that ripped from her throat was cut off by a gloved hand.
* * *
OMAR MONROE DIDN’T know how anyone could choose to live in a place where they couldn’t see the stars. He’d bought his childhood home from his parents when they’d decided to move to Florida and now he looked up at the dark blue sky rimmed with purple and dotted with twinkling stars. It was breathtaking. He glanced over at the house next door. He had hoped to be home by the time his best friend, Karine Eloi, landed in town, but when he’d arrived, the lights inside the house next door had been out. He knew Karine had arrived, though, by the rented sedan parked in the usually empty driveway.
As a state park ranger, he spent the day just how he liked to spend every day: protecting and preserving the Carling Lake Forest. He’d lost track of time when he’d been out on patrol today. It wasn’t like him, but since he’d earlier discovered several dead birds along a stream and creek feeding into Carling Lake, he’d been taking even more care on his patrols, on the lookout for any abnormalities or animals that appeared to be in distress. He’d noted some concerning issues, enough so that he’d been authorized to conduct water samplings of the stream and creek, looking for pollutants. But those samples had come back clean and, as far as his boss was concerned, that had been the end of it.
But that wasn’t the end of it. Not for him. He knew this forest as well as he knew himself. He’d grown up in Carling Lake, playing in these woods, fishing, camping and hiking with his father. He’d known from a young age that he wanted to become a state ranger. Protecting this particular forest was a job he took seriously, and he’d been overjoyed when the position had opened up four years earlier and he’d been able to transfer from his then position in Buffalo, New York, to his hometown of Carling Lake.
But something was off inside his forest. The town’s economy depended on tourism, but some of Carling Lake’s visitors didn’t realize how delicate the forest’s ecosystem was. Any introduction of outside contaminants, even accidentally, could throw that system out of balance. And if it wasn’t an accident? Ecoterrorism was more prevalent than a lot of people realized. Without knowing what he was dealing with, Omar couldn’t pinpoint a motive or know what corrective steps might have to be taken. He needed to figure out what was going on, and fast. Before irreversible damage was done.
