Shroud of Fog: (A Cape Trouble Romantic Suspense Novel)
Read Shroud of Fog: (A Cape Trouble Romantic Suspense Novel) Online
Authors: Janice Kay Johnson
ISBN-10: 0989041859
ISBN-13: 978-0-9890418-5-0
Shroud of Fog
Copyright 2013Janice Kay Johnson
All Rights Reserved
Cover Design by Seductive Designs
Image copyright © luriiSokolov (couple)
Image copyright © Fodor90 (forest)
This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters,
locations and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, or have been
used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, locales,
or events is entirely coincidental.
License Notes
This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.
The e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like
to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for
each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was
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author.
Dear Reader,
It’s with delight and trepidation that I launch a new series
of romantic suspense novels set in the small Oregon Coast town of Cape Trouble,
where a host of intriguing people think they can heal from their wounds visible
or invisible – or hide from dangers they’re not yet ready to confront.
I don’t know what it says about me that I love to write
about characters haunted by childhood events! Sophie Thomsen spent summers in
Cape Trouble as a child, until one foggy morning when she heard her mother die
and found her body between the sand dunes. Of course that tragedy has nothing
to do with the murder of Sophie’s aunt twenty years later…or does it?
And doesn’t fog give almost everybody the creepy-crawlies?
It too often blankets Cape Trouble in
Shroud of Fog
, a presence as real
as Sophie’s memories of her mother, a beautiful woman who fascinated too many
men.
Developing a cast of characters you’ll want to meet again
was one of the challenges of writing this book, which begins the series. Not all
are likeable, and some harbor secrets that will come to haunt them, when their
own troubles finally catch up to them.
Look for the second Cape Trouble story in August of 2014 –
and, in the meantime, I hope you keep looking for my Harlequin Superromance novels
in print and as e-books.
There’s nothing I like more than hearing from readers! Look
for my Facebook page and my website at
www.JaniceKayJohnson.com
.
Janice
Why on earth wasn’t Aunt Doreen answering her phone?
Disgruntled, Sophie Thomsen sipped her coffee from the
travel mug as she waited at the red light. The tinge of worry, she could
probably blame on the eerie effects of coastal fog. For most of her life,
Sophie had hated fog. This morning it was thick enough that she felt
peculiarly alone even though she was driving down the main street of Cape
Trouble. The tourists passing on the crosswalk in front of her appeared and
disappeared, ghost-like and colorless in their anoraks and heavy sweaters.
The morning fog might or might not burn off. You never knew
on the Oregon Coast, and especially at Cape Trouble, infamous for hidden,
dangerous rocks offshore and the peculiar mist that rose from the river that
flowed into the Pacific Ocean and formed the southern edge of town. Sophie had
spent enough time here on the coast to guess that yes, the sun would be out in
another hour or two, the sweaters would be shed, the kites and beach towels
would emerge, and some brave souls who didn’t mind standing in waders by the
hour in icy water would be spotted casting their lines in Mist River – named,
of course, for its mysterious propensity for cloaking itself in drifting
tendrils of gray.
She and her aunt had made vague plans to meet this morning
at the storage facility, but hadn’t set a time. There wasn’t any real reason
to feel anxiety. One thing you could say for the friendly town of Cape Trouble
– sarcasm fully intended – was that if there’d been a car accident or an aide
car had been summoned anywhere within a ten mile radius, everyone including
Sophie would already have heard every gory detail.
Probably Doreen had simply gone ahead and was happily
working inside the storage unit, sure Sophie would show up eventually. Aunt
Doreen was very capable of being scatterbrained. Lucky she’d already given
Sophie the code to get in and even a key to the lock.
The light changed, the green less visible than the red
through the fog. Sophie looked carefully to be sure the last pedestrian had
stepped onto the sidewalk. She drove more slowly than usual along Schooner
Street, lined with small seafood restaurants, coffee houses, boutiques and gift
shops, their lighted windows made indistinct through the gray shroud of fog.
Although it had been twenty years since she’d spent more
than a few days at a time here, she knew the town well. Like other picturesque
Oregon coast towns, Cape Trouble had been commercialized, but the changes were
mostly cosmetic. The Victorian era homes were nowhere near as grand as those
in Astoria far to the north, but charming enough to be a draw along with the
lighthouse, the broad sandy beach, the never-ending waves, the
much-photographed sea stacks and the whale watching tours that departed from a
pier that thrust out into the river.
Sophie’s family had spent summers here when she was a
child. Before. That’s how she thought of it. Before and After. Before the
great divide that had riven her life and left her a different person on the other
side of it. Sophie would gladly never have visited Cape Trouble again, or even
the Oregon Coast, but unfortunately the one person in the world she truly loved
lived here, so she’d resigned herself to those occasional visits.
What she didn’t understand, Sophie thought with the
unsettled sensation she’d had ever since arriving last night, was why she’d let
herself be talked into spending the entire month of June here to help with the
auction intended to raise money for a cause she didn’t personally support.
Not that she could tell Doreen so. It would mean talking
about things she didn’t talk about. Not with anyone.
Two stoplights and one turn later, she broke out of town,
heading away from the ocean, the fog thinning as she drove. She passed first
the Safeway and hardware stores, the laundromat and a pharmacy as well as
neighborhoods of more ordinary houses where the locals actually lived before
reaching the least attractive part of town, never seen by most visitors. Two
garages, an auto body shop, some kind of metal fabricating business, plumbing
supply, lumberyard, two seedy bars, a wooded stretch and – finally, two turns
later – the sprawling storage facility made up of long buildings encased in
metal siding, covered with metal roofs, and enclosed in a high chain-link
fence.
The metal siding and roof presumably explained Aunt Doreen’s
failure to answer her cell phone.
With a sigh, Sophie rolled down her window, punched in the
eight digit code preceded by a * and ending with the # key, then waited while
the huge gate rolled jerkily to one side.
Sophie glanced again at the notebook page on which she’d
jotted the information. The auction committee had unit…4079. The buildings
weren’t clearly labeled, so she turned down the first aisle and discovered herself
passing 1001 on one side and 2045 on the other. Which didn’t altogether make
sense. Well, the first row on her right – the 1000s - proceeded in numeric
order, but the ones on her right were given to odd fits and starts.
She wasn’t the first here this morning. A moving truck was
being loaded at one space, a plump woman, a boy of perhaps twelve or thirteen
and a man with a pot belly currently wrestling a sofa up the ramp. The man was
shouting at the woman and boy, who weren’t lifting their end up as high as he’d
like. The woman began screaming back just as Sophie carefully maneuvered
through the narrow lane between truck and the storage spaces on the other
side. She flinched at the language.
Around the corner, another woman seemed to be poking rather
desultorily inside a space that was packed, literally, concrete floor to
ceiling and bare-stud wall to wall with…well, household possessions, Sophie
guessed, glimpsing the white side of some appliance as well the plush back of a
chair, the top of an end table plus lots of cardboard boxes and some bright
plastic tubs. If the poor woman was hoping to put her hands on one thing,
Sophie didn’t envy her.
That was unit 3006. On the other side of the next aisle
was…3093. The 4000s had to be here somewhere, didn’t they? And surely she’d
spot Aunt Doreen’s aging white Corolla.
Sophie passed other tenants either putting more possessions
into their rented spaces or taking them out. The place really was huge. There
were occasional doors that likely opened to short hallways where tenants could
access small spaces – maybe five by ten feet or ten by ten – but most units
seemed be at least fifteen by twenty or more. And there were parking spaces
for RVs, boats on trailers, cars covered by canvas, a horse trailer and… She
stared. Good Lord, was that a carnival carousel? She’d swear it was.
A last jog, and she found herself facing a shorter row of
buildings that formed an L to the rest of the facility. And yes, she was
finally among the 4000s.
It wasn’t until she reached the end and turned again that
she discovered a couple of units were caps to the rows, and 4079 was one of
those. Aunt Doreen’s car was not parked in front. And she couldn’t miss the
lock clipped over the hasp of the closed metal door designed to roll up.
Well, damn.
Sophie parked and tried her aunt’s number again. Four rings
and she was back at voice mail. She had already left several messages.
Wonderful. Well, she had the key and she was here, so why not open up and see
for herself the stuff the auction committee had procured? Not to mention how
well organized the amateur enthusiasts were.
But when she got out and tried fitting the key her aunt had
given her last night into the lock, it didn’t fit. Not even close. Sophie
frowned. The brand name on the key didn’t match the one on the lock, but she
hadn’t expected it would. She knew her aunt had had copies made of the
original keys so practically every member of the auction committee had one –
something Sophie thought hadn’t been smart. So she supposed it was possible
the keysmith hadn’t done a good job. But…so bad the key wouldn’t even go in
the hole?
Had someone replaced the lock in the past few days? Without
telling Doreen, who was the auction chair? That didn’t make sense unless the committee
had decided to expel Doreen but hadn’t gotten around to telling her. And that
seemed unlikely, given that Sophie’s aunt was the moving force behind the whole
enormous effort.
Sophie drove back to the office she’d passed at the entrance
and went in. A middle-aged woman behind the counter said, “You looking to rent
a storage space?”
“No, I was expecting to meet my aunt – Doreen Stedmann –
here at the space she rented…”
“Oh, you’re Doreen’s niece Sophie.” The woman beamed. “I’m
Marge Hedgecoth. Why, Doreen talks about you all the time! Says you’re some
kind of fancy event planner.”
“Well…”
“She was so excited that you were coming.” She frowned. “I
haven’t seen her yet this morning, although I don’t open until ten, you know.”
Yes, Sophie had noticed the sign on the door. Tenants had
access to their units from six a.m. until midnight with special arrangements
required for other times, but office hours were more limited.
“She’s probably just late,” Sophie said, then explained that
the key she’d been given didn’t fit into the lock. “I’m wondering if I might
have written down the wrong number for the space.”
Marge verified that, indeed, the auction committee for the
Save the Misty Beach campaign had rented number 4079, beginning in March when
the first of the donations had begun pouring in.
“Well, Doreen gave me a key, which is unusual, but she
wanted to be sure anyone who needed to drop something off could get in. So let
me get my cart and I’ll follow you out there.”
She flipped the sign on the door to a picture of a clock
that indicated she would be back in ten minutes and and climbed into a golf
cart parked by the back door. Sophie was able this time to drive directly –
more or less – to her aunt’s unit, which faced the chain link fence at the back
of the property and the woods beyond. As Sophie parked again and got out, it
occurred to her that it was really rather lonely back here, blocked by the bulk
of the building from being seen by any other units except the one other that
faced the same direction.
The golf cart arrived. A small, wiry woman with short,
graying hair and skin that was beginning to look leathery, Marge got out and
confidently poked her key at the lock.
“What in tarnation…?” she muttered.
Sophie saw immediately that she wasn’t having any better
luck.
After a minute her hand dropped. The two women looked at
each other in something approaching consternation. “Hmph,” she said. “I
suppose they’re entitled to change the lock.”
“But Aunt Doreen gave me this key only last night. Could
she have forgotten…?”
“Did you call her?”
“She’s not answering.” Sophie couldn’t put her finger on
why she was so uneasy, but she was. “I went by her house first, and she wasn’t
home. Her car wasn’t there, either.”
“I’ve a mind to cut that lock right off,” Marge declared.
Sophie stared at the metal door. “I’ll happily pay for a
replacement lock.”
“Well, then, you just hold on and I’ll be back in two
shakes.”
The morning was chilly enough Sophie began to pace. Wisps
of fog lingered. If she went one way, she could see down the aisle at the far
side of the property, which was currently empty. The other way, she could see
the same people working in their units that she’d earlier passed. A few
covered vehicles were parked back here, too. She ended up at the chain-link
fence, staring into a forest that looked surprisingly primeval, considering how
long this area had been settled and that it had likely been clear-cut at one
time.
There wasn’t much forestry on this side of the coastal range
anymore, though; winter storms and ocean winds kept trees small compared to
farther inland and therefore unprofitable. These were hemlock, spruce and
cedar, she thought, although she couldn’t have told a hemlock from a spruce
from a fir, if the truth be told. The evergreens were underlaid with
shrubbery, some native, some not. Oregon grape, she thought, the ubiquitous
salmonberry, huckleberries, the ferns that loved the damp climate, and other
bits of foliage and even a few late spring flowers she didn’t recognize.
Movement, caught by the corner of her eye, made her jump
until she saw that a squirrel was scampering up the trunk of a tree. It paused
on a branch to gaze at her with suspicion before darting out of sight.
She was smiling when Marge returned with a pair of
lethal-looking bolt cutters.
Sophie hit re-dial on her phone and, at the sound of her
aunt’s voice saying, “I’m too busy to take this call,” shook her head at Marge,
who marched over to the door and applied the bolt cutters.
Marge appeared entirely too scrawny to cut through a
quarter-inch or more of steel, but with a
snap
, the lock fell open.
“There you go,” she said with satisfaction.
Sophie took the lock off, set it on the concrete to one
side, turned the hasp and heaved the door up. With a squeal and clatter, it
rolled on its tracks.
Beside her, Marge gasped.
The interior was shadowy and astonishingly full, but Sophie
was instantly riveted by the mess. Boxes were open, items spilling out.
Smashed ceramic and shattered glass sprinkled the concrete floor. A framed
picture lay face down, glittering glass around it and a hole stomped through
the back. Somebody had broken in, was all she could think. Rifled the
contents without caring what was destroyed. What a disaster.
Dear God, Sophie thought in shock, had Aunt Doreen seen
this? Might she have gone to the police?
The committee or her aunt had obviously bought multiple
shelving units, the kind that could be easily assembled and then taken apart to
be moved, because a number of them lined the walls. Most were still packed
with boxes of assorted shapes. Peering in, Sophie saw framed pictures
carelessly stacked to one side. Tall or awkward things filled the middle. Was
that a cat climber? A huge basket that had been covered with cellophane spilled
gourmet foodstuffs across the floor.
