Buzz Off (8 page)

We headed upstream, Hunter in the stern for muscle power and steering, me up front in the bow, paddling and scouting for rocks and shallow spots. Once we left Moraine behind us, hardwoods flanked ridges following the banks of the river. Then the trees on the east side opened up and the slope tapered off into cattail marshes. Red-winged blackbirds perched on top of cattails and wetland grasses, calling to each other. When they flew off almost simultaneously, it should have been an indication of things to come. But we missed the warning.

Hunter and I hadn’t said much until now, although I was bursting with curiosity. “What’s new with Carrie Ann?” I finally asked. I couldn’t help myself. Call me nosy, but I really wanted to know what they were doing together. Back when Carrie Ann and I hung out in high school, Hunter hadn’t cared for her personality. Of course, times and people change. I still couldn’t see the two of them being close, though.

Hunter laughed easy behind me. “Jealous?”

“That’s the arrogant man I know so well,” I teased. “Sorry to disappoint you, but I was just wondering.” Which wasn’t exactly true. Hunter and I had spent some time together recently and I liked what I saw.

He chuckled again, but didn’t answer my question.

I pressed on. “I have to tell Carrie Ann she won’t be working for me anymore.” I kept a keen eye out for any sign of my kayak, first scanning the sides of the river in case the pint-sized troublemakers had pulled it ashore, then peering mid-stream in case they’d sunk it like last time. Those kids could have left it anywhere.

“I wouldn’t fire her if I were you,” Hunter said.

“I can’t handle any more of her erratic behavior. She’s an alcoholic.”

“She needs a job, and she needs the stability you can provide her.”

“Listen to you defending her.” I switched my paddle to the other side, dipped the blade while I watched ripples of wind glide across the water. All bird life had vanished from sight because of the incoming storm.

“Would you reconsider your decision if I told you she’s going to AA meetings?” Hunter said.

“Since when? She was drunk at the store yesterday.”

“She just had her first one.”

That surprised me. Carrie Ann had come a long way if she was ready to finally admit she had a drinking problem.

Now that Hunter mentioned her newfound sobriety, I couldn’t remember seeing any beer bottles on their lunch table.

“She didn’t say anything to me about AA,” I said. “Carrie Ann didn’t mention one word to me, and I’m family.”

“Maybe she didn’t tell you
because
you’re family.”

“I wouldn’t have told anybody else. She could have trusted me.”

“Give her another chance?”

“I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it.” I stopped paddling and twisted around to look at Hunter. “Should we head back?” He looked up. So did I. The sky had darkened significantly since we’d set out.

“I don’t hear thunder in the distance,” he said. “I’m not afraid of a little water. Unless you want to turn around?”

I listened for rumbling. “I don’t hear anything, either.”

“Then onward, Pocahontas.”

It figured that soon after, the sky let loose. I could hear rain slapping at the treetops, driving through to the next layer of canopy before pounding into the water around the canoe like buckshot. We guided the canoe under as much cover as we could find along the wooded side of the shoreline, then met in the middle of the canoe to huddle under the windbreaker Hunter had had the foresight to bring along.

In better weather, this was my favorite part of the Oconomowoc River, where it continued all the way to Loew Lake, which nestled in a valley within one of our state forests. I’d completed that scenic journey many times. From where we sat I could see the Ice Age Trail following the west side of the river.

Before long, rain was falling in sheets and the windbreaker broke down as a working tarp. Hunter held the canoe in place with a firm grip on a thick maple branch, otherwise we would be spinning out of control in what I feared might develop into funnel weather.

If the firehouse tornado siren went off, it meant we were in big trouble.

I remembered fantasizing about an adventure similar to this when I watched Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner fight their way through a Colombian rain forest in
Romancing the Stone
. And again when I saw
Six Days, Seven Nights
, where Harrison Ford and Anne Heche crash-land on a deserted island. How she couldn’t adore him from the very beginning was beyond my comprehension.

Recklessness and romance. That’s what I craved.

Hunter had that same starlike male sexiness that Ford and Douglas had. But I didn’t look half as good as Kathleen or Anne did with mud all over and their hair plastered to their faces. Not to mention the cold. Suddenly, I was freezing to death in wet clothes that clamped onto my body like cling wrap. It didn’t feel good at all, and totally not sexy.

“How are you doing?” Hunter asked, with water streaming down his face.

“I need a hot shower.” I tried to keep the whimper out of my voice. My kayak could go fly a kite for all I cared.

“You’ll have to settle for hot conversation instead,” Hunter said, still holding us in place with one hand clutching the branch. The other arm squeezed me closer to his body, where I got a really good view of his feet.

They were tanned and toned and shiny wet from the rain, with wisps of man hair on each toe.

I needed to redirect my thoughts before he tuned into them, an ability I’ve discovered that most men possess as long as it involved sexual context. “I wanted to thank you for trying to get Grace to agree to an autopsy,” I said, wiping mascara from my face. Movie stars never lost their makeup, even after a night between the sheets. So much for this particular fantasy.

“Grace is a stubborn woman when she makes up her mind,” Hunter said.

“Her sister-in-law said someone from the beekeepers association was picking up the honeybees tonight.”

“Don’t you want them?”

“Of course I do, but apparently Grace didn’t think I was the best choice. And the bees aren’t really mine, at least not legally. Manny owned them. Grace can do what she wants.”

“Maybe she felt that if you had them, the bees would be too close to home for her. They’d be a constant reminder of the day she lost her husband.”

I shivered as the wind gusted again, driving rain into my skin like pinpricks. “Let’s get out of here.”

“We’ll have the wind at our back. We can give it a try.” He pulled me closer, if that was even possible. “First, promise to give Carrie Ann another chance.”

“What’s it to you?” I blurted out, pulling away enough to meet his eyes. “Why all the sudden concern?”

“Because she came to me for help.”

“Why would she do that?”

He shrugged. “What do you say?” he pressed. “Give her another chance?”

I couldn’t refuse those deep blue eyes. I sighed. “As long as she stays sober, comes in on time, and does her job. Yes, I’ll give her another chance. But you owe me.”

“Thanks. Come on. Let’s go. The storm is passing.”

Which was true. As quickly as the rain had started, it was ending. The clouds didn’t exactly part and the sun didn’t shine, but the end was in sight. If only the wind would die down. When Hunter pulled away from me, I tried to wring some of the water out of my halter top.

The adventurous romantic fantasy I had envisioned was completely ruined.

“Is that your kayak?” Hunter called out. I followed his gaze.

“That’s it!”

My kayak must have been lodged between clumps of cattails in the marsh, and the wind and torrential downpour had set it free. Designed for speed, it came at us fast with the wind gusting at its stern and vegetation streaming behind it like it had risen from a watery grave. We paddled like mad to intercept it before it crashed into the rocky bank on our side of the river or had a chance to change course and take off downstream ahead of us.

We came within reaching distance. I dropped the paddle into the bow of the canoe and stretched out both hands to get a firm grip on the kayak.

What I saw made me sit back down hard. I couldn’t form words. My mind couldn’t get past the image of the body sprawled faceup inside the kayak, hair knotted and plastered to her face, her red top drenched and splattered to her body like thick paint.

“Dammit!” I heard behind me.

Hunter scrambled toward the front of the canoe, almost tipping us out into the river. I clutched both sides, lifting up and shifting my weight in the direction I thought would steady us, but my brain wasn’t working like it should.

“Sit down,” Hunter shouted.

Too late. The canoe flipped faster than my numb mind could register the action. Splashes and sputters later, we came up clinging to the canoe’s underside.

Hunter had a few choice words for the situation, which I won’t bother repeating. Nor did I acknowledge the glare he shot my way before we managed to right the canoe and get back inside.

By then the kayak had banged up alongside the riverbank, and we had to paddle over.

“Who is it?” he asked, jumping out of the canoe and grabbing the kayak before it could move away. “Do you know?”

I nodded, not that he was looking my way. “Her name is Faye Tilley.”

I’d seen the dead woman on my ex-husband’s arm at our divorce trial, and most recently, making a spectacle in front of The Wild Clover. Faye was wearing the same jewelry she’d worn at the hearing—a butterfly barrette in her hair, and one of the dragonfly earrings was dangling from her right ear. The left one was missing.

I stumbled out of the canoe onto solid ground and considered passing out. But that wouldn’t accomplish anything productive. Instead I sat down hard and watched Hunter spring into action. I made a mental bullet-point list of what happened next:

The music from the library’s bluegrass band event wasn’t playing when we paddled into Moraine near Stu’s. A few bar patrons standing along the river watched us come in. Hunter jumped out of the canoe and ran for his truck and took off back to join the other professionals in their search for answers. My thoughts were a jumble. I couldn’t get poor Faye’s face out of my head.

And Clay. He would have to be told. Did I have to be the one to tell him the horrible news?

After securing the canoe, I stood on the shore—barefoot, wet, and wind-whipped. Where had my flip-flops gone? Oh, yes, I remembered—into the river when the canoe tipped.

More people were beginning to gather at the river’s edge. Word was spreading. I had to get out of here before they heard that Clay’s ex-wife had found his girlfriend’s dead body in her kayak.

It was true that I’d wished Clay Lane dead a bunch of times, sometimes even verbally in front of witnesses, but I’d never extended that sentiment to any of his conquests. I figured they would be punished enough when they figured out that Clay wasn’t what he seemed.

A terrible idea flittered across my mind. What if Clay had killed her? Impossible. The man wasn’t capable of that kind of extreme emotion. Through our entire relationship, he’d never displayed passion for anything other than his own creature comforts. Good food and sex without borders, those were his most important needs.

Someone wrapped a towel around my shoulders. My mom and grandmother appeared out of nowhere and rescued me from the crowd of spectators, guiding me to Grams’s Cadillac Fleetwood, refusing to let anyone interfere with our progress.

I heard the band tuning back up.