Chapter 29 Annie
After a few hours of dreamless sleep, Annie woke to a dull morning and dressed quickly.
She splashed her face with cold water, which did nothing to help the circles under her eyes, and jogged down the stairs toward the house, stepping inside to find Walt and Laura already at the breakfast table.
Laura invited Annie to the last of the scrambled eggs on the stove and a hot cup of coffee.
“Any progress on the case?” Walt asked as Annie sat down.
“Some.” She rubbed at the corners of her eyes. “I’m guessing Jake filled you in on what’s going on?”
“We haven’t spoken to Jacob yet,” Laura said. “We didn’t want to be in the way on his first investigation, but, gosh, things sure aren’t looking good for Daniel Barela, are they?”
Annie’s fork stopped halfway to her mouth. “Who told you that?”
Laura leaned forward. “Oh, honey, after what happened with Ronnie Boyd last night, half the town is in an uproar about the case.”
For a moment, Annie didn’t reply, mouth hanging ajar as her eyes flicked back and forth between Jake’s parents, their heads tilted identically as they gazed at her with twin lines of concern on their faces.
Finally, she returned her fork to her plate. “What happened with Ronnie last night?”
The phone rang in the kitchen, and Walt and Laura traded a look as Laura stood to answer it.
“Here we go again,” she said as she stepped away from the table, and Annie turned questioningly to Walt, who shook his head.
“Apparently, after you and Jake left the Boyds’ house yesterday, Ronnie headed straight down to the Wolf.”
Annie groaned and took a bite of her eggs.
She knew by now that the infamous Howling Wolf Bar and Grill was the only tavern for thirty miles in any direction.
It sat just south of town, off the highway, mostly hidden behind a thick ring of arborvitae, as though announcing to the rest of Lake Lumin exactly what sort of patron was welcome within its stucco walls.
Shady men. Sketchy men. Men who lived on the fringe.
And Ronnie Boyd had long been its most reliable customer.
Walt stifled a yawn. “I guess Ronnie climbed up on the bar and started shouting about Daniel’s guilt to anyone who would listen, then drank himself into a stupor and demanded that the men form a vigilante posse before he passed out behind the pool table.”
A lukewarm piece of egg was stuck in her throat, and Annie forced it down with a gulp of coffee.
“And the guys who were down there? What did they do?”
“Well, they didn’t exactly rally around him, if that’s what you’re asking.
But they all went home to their wives and kids, and naturally the story spread like wildfire.
Now everyone knows it wasn’t that Justin Grimes guy, and the whole town has just about decided Daniel is the guilty party, what with the water in her lungs and her being found out in that clearing way back in his woods and all. ”
Annie closed her eyes against the headache forming at her temples.
It hadn’t even been twenty-four hours since the autopsy report, and already everyone in town had a detailed rundown of the results.
Across the kitchen, she could just make out Laura’s muffled half of the conversation as she chatted on the phone.
“Goodness no, honey,” Jake’s mother said, “I slept like the dead that night, didn’t hear a blamed thing from the Boyd house, but there’s been shouting over there for as long as I can remember, carries right through the woods…
I know… Well, you’re right about that, Ronnie’s been getting worse for years.
Now, I’m not saying he’s capable of killing his own daughter, mind…
” There was a pause, then a murmur of agreement.
“Well, it’s an interesting theory at least. I’ll be sure to let Jacob know. ”
Annie realized with a fresh twist of anxiety that the phone was sure to be ringing off the hook at the station, too. They would be fielding calls all day from every busybody in Lake Lumin, phoning with what they deemed to be suitable theories and helpful information.
“I better go.” Annie rose from the table and reached for her plate. “Things are going to be nuts in town.”
“Good luck.” Walt lifted his coffee mug in a salute of farewell.
Jake’s cruiser wasn’t in its normal spot when Annie parked along the curb of Hughes Street half an hour later, and the office was dark when she entered. She brewed a fresh pot of coffee, filling a mug when there was just enough in the carafe and carrying it to the desk.
As she sank into her chair, the phone rang, and it did not stop ringing for the next forty minutes.
Phil from the General Store called to say that Jamie had come in asking for beach towels in January, in January, and did Annie think that was significant to the crime?
Another local who didn’t give her name called in to say that she’d visited the community pool on the day after Jamie’s murder and had felt a chill run from head to toe as she stepped into the water, which meant Jamie must have been drowned there, and Sally from the bed-and-breakfast phoned to bring attention to the fact that the nearest resident to the crime scene was a man who didn’t quite fit in, an outsider who lived by himself up a dead-end road in a boathouse, and was “mighty peculiar,” as she put it.
Annie took the tips in stride, scolding each and every one of the callers to stop speculating, reminding them that she and Jake were the ones who had to worry about catching the killer, and that spreading rumors would only amplify the fear already hanging over the town like fog.
She’d just hung up on the fifth caller when Jake appeared on the other side of the glass door.
“Cedar,” he announced as he stepped inside, tossing a thin file onto the desk with a thump.
He fell into his chair and dropped his head into his hands.
Annie forced the words out. “The results are back?”
“Yeah,” Jake muttered into the heel of his hand, slowly turning his head to catch her eyes.
“The wood shavings were made of cedar. Just like the canoe. And the stuff on her thumb? Willow charcoal. The exact kind used in drawing pencils. The sample of water from her lungs isn’t back yet, but even without it, this is more than enough evidence.
Once the town finds out, they’ll be calling for Daniel’s blood. Heck, half of them already are.”
“I know.”
“I’ve never seen anything like it. This town has lost its mind.
I walked to work today, and I must have been stopped seven or eight times.
People are clustered together in little groups, talking over the details of the case like they’re hashing it out in court.
I finally had to disconnect my phone this morning so I could eat breakfast in peace. ”
He sounded angry, the barely subdued irritation in his voice raw and utterly foreign to the man who normally sat beside her at the desk.
“Were you able to track Daniel down?”
“No.” Jake lifted his head from his hands.
His hair was tousled, and his uniform shirt was one button off at the collar.
“I went down to the Wards’ place after I dropped you off yesterday, but they said he’d already left for the day, so I went home.
Must have called the boathouse thirty times last night, but he never answered, so I drove back up there around midnight.
Gate was still locked and his truck wasn’t in the clearing.
He’s hiding, Annie, and he’s not leaving me much of a choice about how to handle this thing. ”
The words only worsened the tight feeling in Annie’s chest.
Hiding. It was what Daniel did best.
A shadow darkened the sunlight beyond the door, and they both looked up as Ian Ward appeared on the other side of the glass, pushing his way into the station with a cigarette between his teeth.
“Ian.” Jake rose from his seat. “What can we do for you?”
Ian avoided Annie’s gaze as he blew out a breath, twin plumes of smoke streaming from his nostrils.
“Thought I’d come by,” he said around the cigarette. “I’ve got some information that may be useful to you.”
“Oh?” Jake asked, his tone clipped.
Despite the wrinkled shirt and the hair slicked back from his receding hairline, Ian somehow managed to convey a sense of superiority as he stared down his nose at Jake and took another long drag from his cigarette.
He freed the stub with two fingers and blew a cornucopia of smoke toward the desk, still ignoring Annie completely.
“That’s right. I might have a bit of knowledge pertaining to the Boyd case.”
Annie could read Jake’s body language as well as anyone, and she didn’t miss the impatient tapping of his fingers or the nostril flare of irritation.
“You might, or you do?”
Ian took one last drag of his cigarette and leaned forward to stub it out on Annie’s nameplate, leaving the crumpled butt smoldering on the countertop.
“I do.”
Annie resisted the urge to reach for her nameplate and brush the ashes away, but Jake made a show of lifting the butt from the counter with two fingers and dropping it into the trash.
“Well,” he said, “you obviously came in to tell us, so go ahead and talk.”
Ian rested his arms on the counter and took his time clearing the mucus from his throat before he spoke again.
“As you know, Jake, my family is… well-connected. We have our finger on the pulse of this town, and not much happens that escapes our notice.”
The phone on the desk rang loudly, and Annie quickly lifted the receiver and slammed it down again. Ian didn’t even seem to notice as he droned on.
“You’ll know that the Lake Lumin rumor mill reaches the Ward estate first ninety-nine percent of the time, and the other one percent is when folks think we must have heard about it from someone else already.”
Ian was enjoying this. Dragging it out. Dangling the information that he had like bait.
“If you have something to tell us, say it,” Annie snapped, glaring up at him from her chair. “We’ve got a lot to do today.”