Copper Lake Confidential (16 page)

“Guess what?” Clary helped herself to a piece of bacon from Anne’s plate. “Me and Mama are gonna do something special this morning. Aren’t we, Mama?”

Nothing like easing into a subject. Macy poured herself a cup of coffee before facing them. “If it’s okay with you guys. She’s bored with packing.”

“So are you, I bet,” Brent said.

Macy responded with the raise of her brows.

“Go ahead,” Anne added. “We’ll work in the library. All the books are going to the local library, right?” She made a shooing gesture. “Go on, take your coffee and get out of this house.”

“Thanks, guys.” Macy hugged each of them, then went to the island. She slung her purse strap over her shoulder, then hesitated. Her keys were supposed to be right there next to her bag. Maybe she’d left them inside...but why would she have put them inside after letting them into the house last night after dinner? “Have you guys seen my keys?”

Brent cut into the over-easy egg on his plate. “You had them in your hand when we came in the door.”

She glanced at Anne, who shook her head. “I was helping Clary carry the ice cream. I didn’t pay attention. Maybe you put them in the freezer?”

Macy checked. No keys. She rummaged through the papers on the island. Nothing. Brent and Anne left the table to help her look, and even Clary helped, though the first time she looked in a box and saw books, she lost interest.

“Here they are,” Anne called from down the hall.

Macy followed her voice into the living room, where her sister-in-law dangled the keys from her finger. “Where were they?”

Anne looked at Brent, then shrugged. “On the fireplace mantel.”

Under their wedding portrait. Macy chilled. Not once in the six years she’d lived there had she ever left her keys on the mantel. And not once last night after dinner had she set foot in the living room. She
knew
it.

“Th-thanks.” She took the keys from Anne, avoided making eye contact with either her or Brent and called for Clary. “Let’s go, pretty baby.”

“Have fun,” Brent said with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm.

As she buckled Clary into her car seat, she considered how the keys had wound up on the mantel. 1) Brent had put them there. 2) Anne had. 3) Stephen had. 4) A ghost had. Or 5) she’d had another episode and done it herself. The only thing she could say beyond a doubt was that Clary hadn’t done it because she couldn’t reach the mantel, and there wasn’t a single piece of furniture in the room the girl could have moved by herself.

But why would Brent or Anne or Stephen move her keys? The idea was ludicrous. When had any of them had the chance? Brent and Anne had come in from dinner and gone straight to the guesthouse. When Stephen arrived, he’d been in the kitchen with Macy before they’d gone to the guesthouse. When he left, she’d walked him to the door, where he’d given her a couple of toe-curling good-night kisses. He’d never had the chance to go into the living...

Except the twenty minutes or so he was alone on the patio while she bathed Clary and put her to bed.

She shifted the van into Reverse and automatically checked the back-up camera but didn’t move her foot from the brake. What reason could Stephen possibly have for moving her keys? And why last night, when he was the only one whose time in the house was unaccounted for? If he’d wanted to play mind games with her, he’d had plenty of other opportunities.

But if it hadn’t been him, that left her. Why would she misplace her own keys? Because this whole trip to Copper Lake had her a little unhinged. Because she’d imagined an intruder in the guesthouse and misplaced the Fair Winds contract and the cologne bottle. Because she had a history of mental illness related to Mark and his passing. Because she was one of those people all her friends and acquaintances said things like
Poor thing
and
Bless her heart
about.

Because that fluttering and sweating and shaking this morning
had
been the precursor of a panic attack, even if she was taking her medicine and staying active.

Because she was losing control again.

Blowing out a heavy breath, she checked the camera once more, then backed out of the driveway. Even driving slowly, it took only a minute or two to reach Stephen’s house, where she parked on the side of the road next to the gate.

“Is this were Dr. Stephen lives?”

She checked her smile in the rearview—steady enough for a little girl—then faced her. “Yep.”

Clary unbuckled her harness in the time it took Macy to unhook her seatbelt and open the door. Clary scrambled over the console and the driver’s seat, then jumped to the ground, raising little puffs of dust in the soft dirt. They’d reached Stephen’s door and Clary had banged on the wooden frame of the screen before Macy had time to second-guess coming here. He might be writing. Sunday could be his day to sleep in until noon, or he could be getting ready for church or have plans with someone else.

A welcoming bark sounded inside, then the door opened. It was a toss-up whose greeting was more excited—Clary’s or Scooter’s. Though Stephen’s was much quieter, just a smile that sent warmth all the way to her toes, it persuaded Macy of two things. She wasn’t interrupting his morning, and he hadn’t played some weird mind game with her keys last night. Granted, Mark had fooled her, but she’d learned to be cautious as a result. If Stephen knew about her inpatient care, if he’d moved the keys to screw with her, she was ten times the fool Mark had made her. Something deep inside, something primal and instinctive, said she wasn’t
that
big a fool. She could trust this man.

Which meant there’d been an intruder—not likely with the alarm always armed—or a ghost or she couldn’t trust herself.

“What brings you two pretty girls to our place this morning?” Stephen asked.

“We wanna do something fun,” Clary replied.

He unlatched the screen door and held it open for them to enter. Scooter hesitated a moment as if he couldn’t quite resist the lure of freedom, but in the end the lure of playing with Clary won out. “I can think of a lot of fun things to do,” Stephen murmured as Macy followed her daughter inside. “We’d have to ditch the little one for some of them.”

This time the intensity on his face ignited the heat. She resisted the urge to fan herself because common sense told her the temperature rise was all internal. With the windows open and the ceiling fan whirring, the small living room was perfectly comfortable.

“No ditching,” she said just as quietly. “My baby said, ‘But I wanna do something fun with
yooouu,
Mama.’ I was thinking we’d start with breakfast.”

“Hmm. I have protein bars and coffee. I’m not sure I want to see Little Bit on caffeine.”

“It’s not a pretty sight. I thought maybe the four of us could go to Ellie’s, then do...something.”

His laughter was genuine. “Have you forgotten what constitutes fun, Macy?”

“Back in Charleston, we’d go to the beach or to the Battery downtown or visit one of the historic sites.”

“Here we go to the lake or the parks or to the square downtown or visit one of the historic sites. We have an active historical society, the botanical society’s gardens are in full bloom and we even have a couple of museums. Oh, wait, I bet you worked on all of those, didn’t you?”

Because he was standing so close and it had been her standard response to Brent’s teasing, and because he was right, she smacked him on the shoulder. “We could just take Scooter and leave you here, you know.”

“Yeah, but you wouldn’t have near as much fun.” He grinned and turned toward the bedroom off the living room. “Just let me change.”

“Into what? Another white T-shirt?”

His only response was a childish tongue stuck out.

He was back in a couple of minutes in a clean white T-shirt and denim shorts that still bore the creases from being folded.

Clary chatted all the way to the restaurant and was thrilled to help hold Scooter’s leash on the walk from the car. They were seated at a wrought-iron table and chairs, patterns mismatched, in the shade of a crape myrtle. It would be a beautiful setting when the tree was in bloom, though the dropped blossoms would make regular cleanup a necessity.

It was Ellie Maricci herself who took their order, greeting Stephen affectionately, making a big deal over Clary and Scooter and hugging Macy. “I’m glad to see you back here. It’s been way too long.”

A strange sensation swept through Macy, both pleasant and alien. She’d gotten dozens of hugs at Mark’s funeral, but since then, physical contact was pretty much limited to her immediate family—and, now, Stephen. Like Anamaria’s embrace at the park her first day back, Ellie’s hug felt nice and genuine.

“Are you here to stay?”

Aware of Stephen’s gaze on her, Macy shrugged. “I don’t really... There’s so much to do before I think about...”

At least it wasn’t a flat, certain refusal. Stephen would probably find optimism in that.

“I can imagine. But it would be a shame to deprive the young boys of Copper Lake the pleasure of knowing Clary. She’s going to be a heartbreaker someday.” Ellie grinned and winked at Clary, who did her best to wink back, then switched from friend to server mode. “What can I get you folks today?”

* * *

Copper Lake on a pretty spring Sunday was at its best. With little to no touch-up, it could more than do justice to the cover of a glossy tourist brochure. Flowers were blooming, the square was neatly manicured, the war memorials gleamed and the river lazily flowed. Cars filled church parking lots, and delicious aromas drifted on the air as restaurants geared up for the after-church crowds. It was welcoming. Peaceful.

It was home, Stephen realized. Because of his mom’s regular moves, he’d never developed a connection to the places they lived. What was the point when he knew they would be moving on before long? But this town... It had been luck that brought him here, and now he wanted to stay. He belonged.

If only Macy felt the same.

They’d done nothing special—a leisurely breakfast, play on the toys at the riverfront park, a walk around downtown showing Clary her hometown. They didn’t call it that to her, of course. She regarded this visit as a vacation, a trip to a strange place to do boring stuff before returning to the only home she remembered.

How would she feel when Macy took her away from that home? She was three. She would miss her grandparents and Brent and Anne, but she would adapt. He was proof that the ability to adapt was a good thing.

As they approached the square, Clary pointed to River’s Edge across the street. “Is that a church?”

“No, sweetie. It used to be a house. Now people have parties there.”

“It’s a big house,” she said dubiously.

“Yes, it is,” Macy agreed. She didn’t mention that Clary owned such a house herself. It would be one more of those things she didn’t understand.

Clary turned her head and sniffed the air, like a hound on a hunt. “I smell cookies.”

Stephen sniffed, too. “I smell fresh-ground Topeca.”

“Can we have a cookie, Mama? And some whatever he said?”

Macy gave them both reproving looks, then faced A Cuppa Joe, and her own nose delicately twitched. “Coffee.” Though she’d had a cup with her when they picked up him and Scooter, plus another cup with breakfast, she practically sighed the word. “Okay,” she said sternly. “One cup, one cookie. And something besides coffee for you, Clary.”

They turned the corner, where a couple of tables and chairs flanked the coffee-shop door. Stephen looped Scooter’s leash over an iron hook set into the wall, then held the door for his girls.

His
girls. He liked the sound of that.

There was never anything simple about a coffee run in Copper Lake. Both Joe Saldana and his wife, Liz, were working, and their dogs were patients of Stephen’s. They knew Macy, too, and talked warmly with her while Clary narrowed her choice of treat from the entire refrigerated case to a row of brightly decorated cookies. With Liz’s help, she settled on a sugar cookie as big as her head decorated like a watermelon. As Stephen picked up the tray, Joe tossed on a couple of dog biscuits for Scooter.

“You gotta love a place that takes care of their four-footed customers,” Stephen said as he maneuvered the tray onto one of the outdoor tables.

“You gotta love a place whose coffee smells this good.” Macy cupped both hands to the ceramic mug—A Cuppa Joe was big into recycling, reducing and reusing—but all she’d done so far was sniff the steam rising. Could he put a similar supremely content look on her face, given the chance?

He’d like to think so, but Joe’s coffee was hard to compete with.

“Did you sleep well last night?” he asked after dragging a chair to the two-person table for Clary. The kid didn’t bother sitting in it but crouched next to it, feeding Scooter his cookies one half at a time—and slipping a few bites of her own in, too, if the green frosting on Scooter’s beard was anything to judge by.

He looked back at Macy in time to see her shoulders stiffen slightly. If he hadn’t spent much of the past six days with her, he might have missed it entirely. But her hands didn’t tremble as she took a sip of Topeca’s Manzano blend, then set the mug on the table, and her face didn’t show any emotion beyond pure appreciation for a cup of El Salvador’s best coffee.

“I did. It was nice having Clary to cuddle with.” She gazed across the street as a couple of teenage boys jogged through to River Road, then met his eyes again. “But when I got up this morning, I couldn’t find my keys. I leave them on the kitchen island. I always have. But we finally found them on the mantel underneath the wedding portrait.”

He faked an accusing look. “Were you planning to scratch out your faces with the keys? ’Cause I’ve got to tell you, car keys weren’t made for destroying canvas and oil. Now that your brother’s here, we’ll get a ladder and have that bonfire you were talking about.”

Her smile was unsteady. “I don’t remember putting them there.”

He wasn’t sure why that was so important to her, but he shrugged. “You forgot. You were preoccupied. It happens all the time. My mom once found hers in the medicine cabinet, and Dr. Yates left his once in a cat’s crate. The cat and his owner were halfway to California by the time she found them.”