“That’s odd.”
“That’s not the half of it. We started investigating where her clothes came from,” Nick continued. “Here’s where it gets really strange. Her nightgown had a tag on the back of the neck. It was made by Anderson Mills, a clothing manufacturer based here in Wharton.”
“That doesn’t sound so strange,” Kate was confused. “Especially if she lived around here.”
Nick leaned in toward Kate and lowered his voice. “Nobody had ever heard of Anderson Mills, so I did some checking online. It shut down ninety years ago.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Kate had left the police station with a promise from Nick that he’d check in with her soon. After spending some time in the coffee shop processing the day’s events, she walked up the hill to Harrison’s House, her mind running in several directions at once.
She found Simon in front of a blazing fire in the living room. She snuggled in next to him.
“I think I’m going to take you up on your offer to stay in town awhile,” Kate said.
“Splendid,” Simon said, brushing some unseen lint off his shoulder. “I wasn’t going to let you go, so it’s nice I don’t have to use restraints.”
Kate pinched her cousin’s arm. “I’m just bursting to tell you this news. There’s been a development in the case of the woman on the beach, and I think I can find some answers right here in Wharton.”
Kate told Simon about her experience with Nick that day, looking at mug shots to identify the husband she had seen in her dreams.
Simon’s eyes danced. “Nick? Who is this Nick?” The way he said it, the name had several syllables.
“Detective Stone. He’s new in town.”
He squinted at Kate. “Nick Stone. It sounds so utterly masculine.”
“Oh, stop,” Kate groaned.
“Handsome detective, new in the department . . .”
“How do you know he’s handsome?”
“From the look in your eyes when you said his name,” he said, grinning from ear to ear. “What’s he like?”
Now Kate could feel her face redden. “He’s . . . I don’t know. Nice, I guess.”
Simon squinted at her. “Is he more Tom Cruise or Tom Selleck?”
Kate grinned. “Neither. Idris Elba.”
Simon’s eyes grew wide. “OMG. Someone’s going to be inventing reasons to scurry down to the police station. And by ‘someone,’ naturally, I mean me.”
Kate gave his arm another pinch, harder this time. “Get me a glass of wine, already, and I’ll tell you the rest of the story.”
Simon hopped up and returned with a bottle of wine and two glasses.
“You know what?” he said, pouring her a glass. “I just remembered that Jonathan met him.”
“Who?”
“Your detective!”
“He’s not my—”
“Oh, stop with your silly denials. Anyway, I was away when he stopped by to meet us. A couple of weeks ago. Jonathan said he was delightful and wondered if we shouldn’t invent some crimes around here to keep him coming back.”
“A dinner invitation might be more effective,” Kate said, taking a sip.
“But not nearly as much fun. Now. Back to your mystery. I have a thought. Maybe the husband is the one who killed her. Maybe that’s why he didn’t report her missing.”
“Nick—Detective Stone to you—strongly suspects that’s the case,” Kate said, taking a sip of wine. “He told me that, in his line of work, the most obvious answer is usually the right one. A murdered mother and baby usually points to the father.”
“I can’t imagine it.” Simon squeezed Kate’s hand. “Who could kill their own wife and baby?”
Kate shook her head. “I know. But plenty of people do. You only hurt the ones you love, isn’t that the saying?”
“I don’t get that they can’t pinpoint the time of death, though,” Simon said. “I thought they could tell exactly when a person died.”
“My dad told me that the lake is so deep, so cold, and so clean—no algae or other organisms—that it can actually preserve bodies.” Kate lowered her voice. “He said that if you die and sink to the bottom of Lake Superior, it’s like you’re on ice. It’s hard to tell when, exactly, you expired.”
In fact, beneath the lake’s glassy surface at that very moment, a graveyard of sunken ships littered the austere, rocky bottom, filled with the well-preserved remains of the sailors who had been carried to their deaths hundreds of years before. Local divers knew which wrecks were free of these tangible ghosts and which to leave in silent memorial to the unfortunate souls entombed there.
“You mean, the bodies don’t look dead?” Simon asked.
“According to my dad, they look dead all right,” Kate explained. “It’s just that they don’t—I guess decompose isn’t the right term—but they don’t break down. They’re intact.”
Simon shuddered and crinkled his nose. The very thought of it was upsetting on many levels. A mother and a baby, frozen forever in the moment of their deaths.
“The thing about this particular body is, it—she—is extraordinarily well preserved, even by the lake’s standards,” Kate went on. “She seems to have been killed just a few minutes before we found her. But that’s the other thing that’s not adding up. It’s what I was bursting to tell you. That nightgown she was wearing was at least ninety years old. It was made by a local company called Anderson Mills, which went out of business that long ago.”
“So, she was into vintage clothing?”
“I was thinking the same thing,” Kate said. “Is that thrift shop still open on Front Street? What’s it called?”
“Mary Jane’s.” Simon nodded. “They’ve got a lot of vintage clothes.”
“It stands to reason they might have stuff from Anderson Mills because it was a local company,” Kate said.
“You’re right,” Simon said. “People cleaning out their grandmothers’ closets is how they get lots of their stock. I know I took boxes and boxes of Grandma Hadley’s things to them.”
“This woman might have bought that nightgown there!” Kate said. “Maybe somebody on staff would remember her.”
Kate took a sip of wine and wondered if Nick Stone had thought of that.
Much later, after she and Simon had had dinner, ambled around town with a happy malamute, and polished off that bottle of wine, Kate was snuggled in bed. As she lay there, her vision—or whatever it was—of herself and Nick Stone played over and over in her head. It was so clear, just as clear as her memory of her conversation with Simon earlier in the living room. What did it mean? Did she know this man and not remember him? Was her mind playing tricks on her?
She punched her pillow and turned onto her side, hoping for a dreamless sleep.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Great Bay, 1902
Addie’s screams woke her parents and the dogs, all of whom were at her bedside in an instant. The girl was sitting upright in her bed, dripping with sweat. Her ashen face was whiter than the sheets that were tangled at her feet.