Critical Impact (7 page)

“That would be good for her. She's taking this whole thing pretty hard. She's accusing me of keeping things from her. I'm not.” He took another sip of his lemonade, and they talked some more.

Anna adjusted the blanket under her arm and noticed a movement in the parlor window behind where they were sitting on the swing. Maybe her mother was rearranging the room or unpacking. She should go in and tell her mother not to bother. She excused herself, saying she would be right back.

It wasn't her mother who was in the parlor room.

Marg's back was to the door and she was sitting beside the window, obviously listening to everything that she and Stu were talking about. Eavesdropping? Why?

“Marg?” Anna stood in the doorway.

The woman turned suddenly, saw it was Anna, opened her eyes and mouth wide, put her hand to her chest and said, “I just came here to sit beside the window and get a breath of air. I'm so used to just coming in here and sitting in this window seat. Oh, dear, I need to remember that you are living here now.”

Anna wasn't buying it. The woman was clearly listening in on their conversation. Anna's emotions
veered between angry frustration and sympathy. Marg shouldn't be in someone else's room, but she had a close friend who was calling the injuries her husband had sustained God's judgment. No wonder Marg was a little off center these days. She just wanted to hear what Stu told her about the case.

Maybe Anna just needed to give her the benefit of the doubt.

 

There were no new messages for Stu when he finally got home. Peter Remington hadn't called and the address for Jack Habrowser had been incorrect. All week they've been trying to find both of these men with no luck.

He had to admit that he was worried about Marg. Since the bombing, she'd been acting strangely. Anna had told him that Marg had been listening in on their conversation and also that Lois had told Marg that the bombing was God's judgment. He wondered about Marg's friendship with Lois. Perhaps that wasn't the wisest friendship in the world. But was there anything he could do about it? Probably not.

Now that Anna was home, he was worried about her, too. He wondered about her, too. So far, he didn't think she had anything to do with what went on, but Lorraine's words, and Marg's accusation, continued to haunt him. He thought of that entirely windowed room that Anna was sleeping in. Anyone wanting to get in the cottage would merely have to punch the glass in.
Yet, short of putting bars on the windows, there was little they could do. Was Anna safe there? Had the bomb been meant for her? Had Peter Remington been involved? Where was that guy and why couldn't Stu and Liz find him?

Restlessly, he stood at his window and gazed out in the direction of Anna's mother's place and prayed for her safety, prayed for direction in the case.

Inside, even though it was late evening, he sent her a text message. Just checking to make sure you're okay.

A few minutes later his phone vibrated. She wrote—I'm fine. Thanks for asking.

He texted back—Be careful. Keep your doors locked.

She wrote—I don't think my mother ever locks her doors. This is Whisper Lake Crossing, you know.

He wrote—That's what I'm worried about.

 

Anna liked it that Stu was worried enough to text her at ten-fifteen just to make sure she was okay. She didn't have the heart to tell him that she'd been sleeping. Her cell phone vibrated and its vibration on the bedside table had awakened her.

This was her first night away from the hospital. No night nurse would be a call button away. So before she went to bed, she made sure her water glass was filled and that her two pain pills were right next to it, along
with the bell that she was to ring if she needed her mother. So far she hadn't needed to take the pills.

She lay back down and soon fell asleep. A short while later she woke up, and thought she saw the shadow of a figure enter her room.

She closed her eyes and when she opened them again the figure was gone. It was just a dream, she told herself. Just like in the hospital, probably brought on by the medication she was taking. Except she was taking different pain pills now, ones that weren't nearly as strong. Still, she had been through a lot and the doctor told her it might be a while before she got over the trauma of the bombing. Bad dreams and nightmares could be a part of the aftermath.

She prayed and fell back to sleep.

When she woke up again, her arm ached. Perhaps she had slept on it wrong. She tried to ignore the pain. Tried to pray through it, but she couldn't. She would have to break down and take the medication.

She leaned up on her left side and flicked on her bedside lamp. Her water glass was empty. She stared at it. She was positive she had filled it before she went to bed. Did she drink it in the middle of the night? Or spill it? She leaned over and looked on the nightstand. No puddle of water. She looked down beside her. No water on the floor, either. The pills were missing, too. She suddenly realized that her bell was gone. How could that be?

She got up, pulled her robe around her as best she
could and got down on her hands and knees. The bell wasn't under the bed. Neither were the pills.

By now the pain in her arm was excruciating. She remembered what the nurse had told her. Don't try to skimp on pain pills. Don't be brave. Take them if you need them.

With her empty glass in hand, she groped her way into the bathroom. Because Lois's door was open, Anna didn't want to turn on the hall lights. But that wasn't a problem. Her mother had plugged a soft night-light into the bathroom counter outlet. Anna walked toward it.

A few feet from the bathroom door, she saw her bell sitting right on the counter and outlined by the eerie blue light of the night-light. How had the bell gotten in here?

She headed toward it.

Just as she was about to walk into the bathroom, she felt a sharp jabbing pain on her knee and heard the crash of glass. She called out before she fell forward toward the hard ceramic tiles of the floor. At the last minute she reached for the grab bar with her left hand and grasped it tightly.

Her mother was there in an instant.

“Anna!”

She looked up, dazed from where she was kneeling, surrounded by jagged shards of glass.

“What happened?” her mother asked, flicking on all the lights and helping her to her feet.

“I don't know,” Anna said, attempting to pick the glass out of her legs. “I was just coming into the bathroom. Ow.”

“Why didn't you ring the bell?” And then Catherine looked down. “Anna! You fell over this?” Catherine bent down and began picking up pieces of broken glass. “This is one of the outside windows! What's it doing in here? Who brought it in here?”

“I don't know, Mom,” Anna said, attempting to rub her knees with her left hand.

“And why didn't you ring the bell?”

“The bell was in the bathroom,” Anna protested.

“Why was the bell in the bathroom? Did you put it there?”

Anna said a barely audible “No.”

“You just sit there.” Her mother sat her down on the closed toilet seat. “I'm going to get a broom and a first aid kit. Don't move. We have to get to the bottom of this.”

The commotion woke Lois, who stood in the doorway, her hand over her open mouth. “What happened here?”

“We don't know,” Catherine said. “It looks like one of the old windows was leaning against the doorway into the bathroom. Lois, did you bring this window inside?”

Lois shook her head, eyes wide.

“Well, somebody did. And it wasn't me. This wasn't here when I went to bed. This is not good.”

“I may have seen something,” Anna said quietly. She was sitting on the closed toilet seat and rubbing her knees.

“What!” Catherine stared at her.

“I thought it was a dream.”

“What did you dream?”

Anna told her mother and her aunt about seeing a figure in her room earlier, but that she had ignored it, thinking it was a dream brought on by a new medication.

“Well, this whole thing is a mystery, and look at your knee. It's bleeding. You wait right there while I get some antiseptic and bandages.”

While her mother went into her own room to fetch these things, she and Lois didn't talk much. Lois stood there, staring, her hand across her mouth, and Anna felt too weak and tired to speak.

When her mother returned, she went to work on Anna with tweezers, antiseptic and bandages. “Stu is on his way. He'll be here in a minute,” her mother said, wetting a washcloth with warm water.

“You called Stu?” Anna didn't know how she felt about that.

“He's coming right away.”

Anna nodded. Was someone trying to hurt her? It was certainly beginning to look that way. Feeling a sudden chill, Anna pulled her robe around her more tightly. There had to be a simple explanation. She looked up at the doorway.

If the new grab bar hadn't been installed, she could have fallen on her broken arm and done even more serious damage. Just the thought of that made her cringe. She closed her eyes while her mother pressed the warm, wet washcloth to her knees and then gently began picking out the bits of glass.

“Lois, will you let in Deputy McCabe when he comes?” Catherine asked.

“Mom, I still can't believe you called him.”

“He's worried about you and, frankly, so am I. When he left last night he gave me his card and specifically said that if anything strange or unfortunate happened to you, I was to call him day or night. How do your knees feel? I think I've got all of the pieces of glass out.”

“They feel okay now.”

A few moments later Stu and Lois walked into the bathroom, while her mother was coating her knees with antiseptic. He bent down and looked at her. “What happened?”

“I'm a klutz,” she said, trying to make light of it.

Her mother told him.

Stu's eyes narrowed. “Where is the glass now?”

Lois said, “I swept it up and threw it all in the garbage.”

Stu bent down and looked at the door. He looked up at the sisters. “And you have no idea how this old window got back inside here?”

They shook their heads. Stu examined their front
and back doors, plus all their windows. Stu kept asking questions. He quizzed her over and over about the figure she'd seen in her room. But she couldn't remember much. He asked her about the bell, and ended up putting it in an evidence bag and taking it with him.

Stu wouldn't leave until every window was shut and locked and the doors were double bolted. He also promised that a patrol car would be by periodically to check on the house.

All of this was supposed to make Anna feel better, but it ended up making her feel even more afraid.

W
hen Stu arrived at the sheriff's office the following morning, Alec was on the phone. He was standing up, frowning. His voice was rising, and Stu hardly ever saw him angry.

Liz gave Stu an “I-don't-know-what's-going-on” shrug as he went to his desk. He decided that today he would find Peter Remington if it was the last thing he did.

The glass episode last night worried him. Was someone trying to harm Anna? He thought about her dream, the odd man she saw clutching the pillow and the IV, the pane of glass. All strange coincidences? He wasn't sure, but he would find out.

He opened up his notebook, but Alec's loud conversation caught his attention. “Why wasn't I contacted about this?” Alec demanded.

A pause. Then Alec said, “She's in my jurisdiction, however.”

Another pause.

“You had no right to drive into Whisper Lake Crossing this morning and take her in for questioning, not without contacting us.”

Stu looked up. Who was Alec talking to, and who was the “she” that he was referring to?

Alec said, “Deputy Stu McCabe was in charge of this case. He should have been contacted.” A pause. “Oh, you can bet we'll be there.”

Alec slammed down the phone. He looked directly at Stu. “The Shawnigan police came into Whisper Lake Crossing this morning and took Anna in for questioning.”

“What!” Stu was shocked. “Why?” He had done nothing but question Anna all last week about the bombing. If the Shawnigan police wanted to question her further, why didn't they just talk to her at her home? Why come and drive her all the way to Shawnigan?

Alec said, “Seems they found something in her locker.”

“What locker?” Stu stood up, almost knocking over his chair.

Alec was out the door. “Come with me.”

In the car Alec said, “It seems that a firefighter found some fertilizer in her locker.”

“Fertilizer?” Stu was trying to make sense of it. “What fertilizer?”

“It was determined to be the same kind that was used to make the bomb.”

Stu's head was spinning. “I didn't even know she had a locker. Where was this locker?”

“She was assigned a locker in the fire hall in Shawnigan for the mock disaster. She didn't lock it, so a firefighter opened the wrong one by mistake. That's when he found it.”

“Does she know where the fertilizer came from?”

“She says she's never seen it before,” Alec said.

Stu clenched his fist. “Anybody could've put it in that locker. If it was unlocked, as you said.”

Alec nodded. “That's what I'm thinking.”

“She never told me about any locker. Maybe she didn't know she had one.”

“She knew, all right. One of her makeup aprons was hanging on a hook in the locker. In a pocket was her wallet,” Alec replied.

“She's been looking for her wallet.” Stu paused. “Have we recovered all of her personal belongings from the crime scene?”

“We thought we did.”

Anna's face lit up when Stu and Alec arrived. She was sitting at a desk with a police officer. Stu came over and crouched down beside her. “Hey,” he said quietly. “You okay?”

“They think… They found… I don't know what's going on. I never even used that locker.” Her voice was weepy and desperate. “The last time I had my wallet, it was in my bag. I know it was. I've been looking for
it. I was going to go to the cabin at Flower Cottage and look some more. I don't know how it got there. How did my wallet get into that locker? How did it, Stu?”

She looked near tears, shaky and pale. Alec was talking to the police officer, whose badge read Dennis Wilde. “Why did you think it was necessary to drive all the way into Whisper Lake Crossing and pick her up without calling us?” Alec demanded.

“The situation warranted it,” Officer Wilde said. “This morning a firefighter found a small bag of fertilizer on the floor of her locker. Then he noticed the apron and the wallet. There were traces of fertilizer all over the wallet and the apron. Currently, we're having the locker examined for prints and we're having the fertilizer tested.”

“That's not enough to bring her in and hold her,” Alec said.

Dennis frowned. “We're not holding her. We're not arresting her. We're just detaining her. We just don't want her going anywhere. Right now she's a person of interest.”

“Are you finished with her?” Alec said. “We'll drive Anna back to Whisper Lake Crossing.”

“There's the little matter of Peter Remington. She claims that it could be this Peter who is framing her. But—” Officer Wilde paused and said quietly, “There is always the possibility that the two of them are working together.”

Anna said, “I told them everything I know. I don't know where Peter is.” She was clenching and unclenching the fingers of her left hand.

“We are actively looking for Peter Remington,” Alec said. “Meanwhile, if you have no more questions, we'll take her home.”

On the way to the car, she said to Stu, pleading in her eyes, “Do you believe me?”

He wanted to say yes, of course he did. And that was at the heart of the problem. He wanted to believe her. He wanted that more than ever—yet in that very deep part of himself, he just wasn't sure. Every day he talked with her, every day he spent with her, his feelings for her grew. He said instead, “Anna, let's just go home. We'll figure all this out.”

 

Anna felt numb. She sat on the couch in her mother's cottage and looked straight ahead. Stu doubted her and that hurt worse than her arm, worse than the gashes on her face or the cuts from the glass in her knees. He hadn't answered her when she had asked if he believed her.

All the way home in the patrol car, no one had said a word to her. Anna had simply sat in the front seat and looked out the window. And then she had another thought. What if Stu had been pretending all along? She didn't have a stellar track record when it came to figuring out who was truthful and who was not when it came to men.

Maybe this whole week Stu had just been a police officer looking for information. That's all. Just trying to solve a case.

“You're not drinking any tea,” her mother said to her.

“I can't.”

“I'm sure that was all a misunderstanding. You'll see,” said her mother.

Lois came into the living room, dressed for church. “I heard you had an ordeal.”

“You might say that,” Anna said, looking up.

“I'm on my way to Bible study. We'll keep you on the prayer line,” she said and smiled solicitously at her. But Anna was really in no mood. “Why?” she asked. “When you think what has happened to me is all a part of God's will and God's judgment?”

“Oh, Anna, no,” said her mother, shocked.

“Lois does, though.”

Lois stood still, holding her Bible and handbag close to her chest, saying nothing.

“I heard you talking to Marg last night about all this being God's judgment.”

“You were sneaking around and listening?” Lois accused her.

“I was in my room.”

“What I said wasn't meant for your ears.”

“What about Marg?” Anna asked. “Her husband almost died. Was that God's judgment? How do you think that makes her feel?”

“Lois!” Catherine said. “How could you, even for a moment, believe that?”

“You misheard,” Lois said. “You had to be there for the whole conversation. I have to go. I'm late. It's not what you think.” She backed out of the room.

When she had gone, Catherine said to Anna, “This is what I mean when I said I was worried about Lois—all this talk about God's judgment. That's why I'm so concerned.” Catherine shook her head and went back to the kitchen.

And Anna was left alone with her thoughts.

If it was true that Stu had doubts about her, even a few lingering doubts, then she had no one to trust but herself and God. She was out of the hospital now and on her own. Maybe she needed to take control.

She took her cell phone out onto the porch and with trembling fingers she punched in the number that she knew so well. And just as she knew she would, she got Peter's answering machine. And just as she had done so many times in the past, she left a message. Only this time it wasn't those desperate messages of the past,
“Please call me. Where are you? I waited and waited…”

This time her message was crisp and short. “Peter, I know you're there. It's imperative that you call me right away.” She gave him her new cell-phone number.

Next she punched in another familiar phone number. When her California friend Cassie answered
the phone on the second ring, her first words were almost a scream. “Anna! I've missed you. How are you? I've been e-mailing and e-mailing you.”

Anna felt duly castigated. Cassie was one of her closest friends in California, her roommate, a woman who was probably the only one out there who really took the time to get to know her.

Anna said, “I know. I'm sorry. I've been kind of out of it for a while. I had an accident. I broke my arm.”

“Broke your arm! Oh, Anna. How?”

When Anna told her, Cassie's first reaction was, “That was
you?
That bombing's been all over the news. I can't believe you were there! I didn't even know where you lived. You left in such a hurry.”

“I left you a note.”

“Yeah, a little handwritten note,” Cassie said.

“A long letter,” Anna protested. She sat down on the porch swing. “Two pages.”

“But you never said where you were going.”

“I told you that I would get in touch with you as soon as I could. And that time is now. Cassie, do you have any idea where Peter is? Has anyone out there told you anything? The police are looking for him. They think he had something to do with the bombing. And I'm sort of wondering this myself.” She got up from the porch swing and began walking from one end of the porch to the other as she talked.

“No,” Cassie said, “and people around here are
furious. He didn't show up to work. Tell me again why the police think it was Peter?”

“Because of his knowledge of special effects in movies.”

“You're kidding me.”

“Apparently not. He's not answering his cell.”

“He never does.”

“I know,” Anna said.

Before they said goodbye, Anna made her friend promise to call her if Peter showed up. Cassie said, “No matter what anyone said, I thought you were one of the best makeup artists we had out here. I know it's crazy out here, but you are good. I wish you'd stuck it out.”

When the call ended, she was standing next to the wind chimes. As she pocketed the cell phone, she leaned against them and they sounded. She looked up at them curiously. Why was she suddenly thinking about wind chimes?

 

Whenever Stu needed to work something through, he took his mountain bike on a long, hard, sweat-producing, muscle-burning ride. He had two favorite paths; one went up the side of Dragon Mountain along the road one way and the second went up the same mountain on the backside. Both were black diamonds, not for the faint of heart. He always came down the same path. He never varied his route. It was straight
down the mountain, and he was always trying to beat his last time.

He had around an hour and a half until he had to be back at the station and he had things to think about, things to pray about.

He decided to cycle up the front side of the mountain. It was slightly steeper and rockier than the back path. Up near the top of the mountain, he could see the whole of Whisper Lake and then come right back through a shallow part of a rushing rock-strewn stream.

As he rode, he thought about Anna. She was a suspect now. Some very incriminating evidence had been found in her locker. And even though Anna seemed totally innocent, how well, really, did he know her?

In an investigation, it was wrong for a police officer to become personally and emotionally invested in a case. It was unprofessional and he should know better. And there was still the matter of Peter Remington. Where was he and was he somehow involved in the case? Were Peter and Anna working together? And what about Hilary's blog? How did that fit in? Or did it?

Halfway along the trail where he could see the lake, there was a straight stretch, a place where he usually coasted. He didn't today. He geared up and pumped hard, until he came to the next steep stretch. This was the part of the trail where most people bailed. But this
provided him with the best thinking time. He shifted into a higher gear and kept pedaling.

Why did Marg think Anna was responsible for the bombing?

At the dip in the trail, Stu rode through the stream, splashing rocks and bouncing across the pebbles. He loved riding and the way it cleared his mind and let him think.

Soon, he was at the highest point of the trail. It had taken him twenty minutes to get up here. He looked at his bike computer. A record. He had never made it this fast before. That should give him some satisfaction.

He stopped, breathed deeply and looked out over the panorama, down at the lake. A series of cumulus clouds over the lake looked like snow-capped mountains. If a person hadn't been told otherwise, he might believe that those clouds were actual mountains. He stared at them, breathing heavily for several minutes. Stu felt he could almost see Canada from here.

He'd been taught that what you think you see is not always the way things are. This was something Alec had tried to drill into him during the time he'd been at Whisper Lake Crossing. He looked at the clouds. Could he be missing some important piece of the puzzle? Could he be seeing things that weren't there?

God,
he prayed,
help me to get it right. Help us all to figure it out. And help me to put my personal feelings aside.

Ready, he took another gulp of water, set his computer and off he went. He felt good, he felt in control. His legs felt good. He didn't have all the answers, but he knew they would come.