CHAPTER ONE
The day before she discovered the body, Laura Marsh hid behind a tree on a ledge twenty yards from the small lake she had inherited. Below, a stranger had filled three garbage bags with litter from the lake's beach. He tied off the top of the last bag, and peeled off his shirt, revealing a broad, muscular back. Sweat on his tanned skin glistened like dew drops in the August sunlight. He kicked off his sandals and loosened his belt. His jeans slid to the ground. He folded them, put them on top of his shirt, and stretched his naked frame.
Laura gazed at his slim ankles, up past the bulging calf muscles, past the back of his knees and up the long, slender thighs. She averted her gaze, but for only a moment.
He waded into the water, dived and swam to the middle with long, graceful strokes. Laura pushed hair from her brow. It sprang back as usual. She pushed it away again and wiped perspiration from her forehead with the back of her hand.
How cool the water must feel, she thought. For a brief, wild moment Laura was tempted to rip off her clothes and dash for the water. After all, it was her lake. She had recently inherited it, a weather-beaten house, an old log cabin and an acre of woods.
When the man turned and swam toward the beach, Laura held her breath. She leaned against the tree as the man's long strides brought him out of the water and into full frontal view. She felt close enough to touch him. Damp heat surged through her body. Her hand slipped into her shorts. She imagined his lips on hers, the feel of his wet hardness. She forced herself to turn away.
When she first saw the beach, only three days before, the soft sand had been violated by discarded bottles and cans, paper sacks, food wrappers and a pair of red panties. Then she had carefully waded through the debris and made plans to clean it up, no matter how long it took. She just hadn't gotten to it yet.
Laura was watching because earlier she had gone up the gravel drive to check her mailbox. It was empty. A pickup was parked on the road opposite the lake. She sneaked down to the ledge to see if people from the truck were adding to the beach mess. Instead, this man was taking it away.
A thread of fear and excitement wormed its way up her spine. Had he been there before while she was alone in the house just up the hill? She continued to watch as his chest muscles gleamed in the sun. He flipped his head. Water sprayed from his close-cropped hair. Must be about my age, maybe thirty-five, she thought. He brushed water from his body and wriggled into his jeans. He put on the sandals, balancing first on one leg and then the other, to wipe sand from his feet.
I should shout at him and demand that he get off my land, she told herself. Why was he cleaning up the beach anyway? Was he looking for something?
He picked up the three bags, holding two in one hand, one in the other, and glanced toward her as he walked to the road. She ducked behind the tree. Moments later Laura heard the truck engine start. The sound of the motor gradually faded. She became aware again of birds singing and leaves rustling high in the breeze.
Laura scurried down a path leading to the edge of the lake. She flipped off her sandals and wiggled her toes into the hot sand. She waded into the coolness up to her knees and splashed water on her face.
She stood motionless and imagined the stranger standing beside her, his hard body touching hers. She would smile at him and he would take her in his arms. Her breasts would press against his chest. She would no longer be alone. Laura shook her head to dissolve the image.
She waded out of the water, took off her blouse and brassiere, slipped out of her shorts, returned to the water, and dived in.
* * * *
CHAPTER TWO
Laura saw the same guy the next day sitting by a window in Hardee's eating a sandwich and reading The Chicago Tribune. A woman with a wrinkled, frowning face, gray hair and dull eyes, sat across from him. His mother? Laura's gaze returned to the man. She pictured him once again standing on the beach shaking water from his naked body as his muscles glistened in the sun.
Mary Anderson's chatter about the town's hospital dissolved the picture. Mary and Laura had worked together there where they both were nurses. Laura left to care for Charlie Horton. Much to her surprise, after Charlie died, she was informed that he'd willed her his house, barn, two acres of wooded land, including the lake, and somewhere in the woods a log cabin.
Mary, tall and skinny, with large capable hands and a smile that seemed to make patients fell better, was nicknamed Bones, but Laura never called her that.
After the inheritance, Mary said, "About time you got a break, Laura."
Now they were meeting for lunch as they had at least a couple of times a month since Laura left the hospital. Hardee's had become one of the major meeting places in Crankston. Its high sign was a landmark and the red brick building still the newest thing in town.
"What's your interest in Jim Jason?" Mary asked. She sipped from a glass of cola and looked at Laura as though she already knew the answer.
"Who is Jim Jason?"
Mary sighed. "You've been looking at him and his wife for the last several minutes. I declare, if you don't get out of that old house more you'll become a hermit."
"His wife? She looks so much older. I suppose you know all there is to know about Mister Jason," Laura said.
"What else is there to do in Crankston except talk," Mary said.
"Mister Jason," Mary emphasized the mister, "is teaching journalism at Larsen Junior College. He came here from Boston where he was a hot-shot reporter for the Sun. His wife is a manic depressive and he couldn't leave her alone when he was at work. She tried to commit suicide several times.
"They moved into that old white house on Locust Street. Her parents left it to her some time ago. He hired Mrs. James to keep an eye on his wife when he's working. Of course, he's not teaching now during the summer, but Mrs. James still is there every day."
"I suppose he told you all this himself," Laura said. "It's amazing how everyone confides in you."
"You know I never reveal my sources," Mary said.
"Let's talk about something else. I left the hospital to get away from illness and suffering, and yet we always seem to wind up talking about some form of it."
"Yes, I know it must have been tough for you after you moved away. I talk about the hospital because after working there all those years I know you want to hear the gossip even if you won't admit it.
"And yes, Doctor Ralph still is at Chicago General and still is married and still is fooling around with another gullible nurse, from what I hear."
Laura laughed and was pleased to realize that it was genuine.
"Does that laugh mean you're over your 15-year love affair with Doctor Ralph and now you're interested in another married man; is that what you're telling me?"
"Yeah, sure," Laura said. "You see me looking at a man who is a stranger to me. I'm wondering who he and the woman with him are, and you jump to that conclusion."
Laura tried to suppress the annoyance she felt. She was afraid Mary was seeing right through her even as she was denying to herself her interest in Jim Jason.
Once, several years ago Laura had revealed in hushed tones to Mary the false details of a torrid romance she supposedly was having with a fictitious man from out of town. Mary had swallowed the whole story. Later Laura convinced her it wasn't true.
Now she was tempted to tell Mary about seeing Jim Jason naked at the lake but resisted even though she would have enjoyed watching Mary's eyes widen. And wouldn't Mary love the mystery of what the man was doing there.
"He is handsome, isn't he," Mary said.
"How is Hank coming with the addition on your house?" Laura asked.
Hank, Mary's husband, seemed to be interested only in watching baseball and football on television and playing catch with their teen-age son. The additional room was for Mary's mother who was coming to live with them when it was finished.
"Hank knows she'll be with us the moment he gets done. He's in no hurry, you can bet on that," Mary said, taking the bait to change the subject.
Later, as Laura walked the mile or so home from Hardee's, she though of Doctor Ralph Boyer and how she had fallen in love with him at the hospital while they both were young and eager.
The rat waited until the last minute to reveal he had a wife who would join him as soon as she finished college. Laura vowed to break it off, but the affair continued in spite of her constant bouts with guilt and shame. All that was over, and she had to get on with her life. Interested in a married man again? Never. She kicked at a stick as she walked along the country road.
Her house! What a nice sound. But could she afford it? The house needed repairs. Soon Laura would have to go back to work, probably at the hospital. After Charlie died she was lonely and unsure of what she wanted to do. She thought of leaving Crankston--she had lived there most of her life--but she lacked the desire to do that or anything else.
She strolled up the gravel driveway to the house and thought about getting her binoculars and going to the lake. But Jim Jason probably wouldn't be there. It was late afternoon already. Besides, for all she knew, he still was at Hardee's reading the newspaper.
"Maybe I'll read one of the books the old man left behind if I can find something that interests me," Laura said aloud as birds chattered in the trees that surrounded the house. I'm talking to myself again, Laura thought as she trudged up the steps to the wrap-around porch.
Later she sat on a worn wicker chair on the porch trying to get interested in a novel about a man looking for oil in Alaska. There was no breeze and the late summer heat hung in the air like wet flannel. A crow complained to the world from a nearby tree.
The words of the novel dissolved into images of sand and muscle. She erased those images and become entangled in the mystery of the reason why Jim Jason had cleaned up the beach. And then it was back to the sequence of scenes when he undressed, went into the lake and then came out again. She got up with the intention of taking a cold shower but instead dug out a swimming suit she hadn't used in years and, after putting it on, headed down the hill from the house toward the lake.
She was about half way down when she realized she didn't have her binoculars. She retrieved them, cautiously made her way down the hill and leaned against a tree. She scanned the beach and the overgrown area that came down to the rest of the shore. She was startled to see the bottom of a bare foot sticking out from brush at the edge of the beach. She shivered in spite of the heat as she stared. The foot did not move. Should she call police? What if it was someone asleep or maybe there were two people down there mostly hidden by the brush. Still the foot did not move. She would be embarrassed if she called police and whoever was down there was gone by the time police arrived.
She started down the incline, stopping twice to stare at the foot through the binoculars. It still was in the same position as before. She scanned the brush, saw no one. Her instincts suggested the person attached to that foot was sick, injured or maybe even dead. She had to know, now that she had come this far, so she cautiously made her way across the beach to the underbrush, checking frequently to see if anyone else was around.
As she got closer she could see more of the body through the brush piled on it. She hesitated, thought again of running back to the house and calling police, took a deep breath, hurried to the foot and frantically removed the brush.
The naked body of a young woman lay face down in the sand. A reddish-purple area was on the small of her back. No sign of breathing.
Laura turned the body over. Ugly red lines marked the throat. She checked but found no pulse. The young woman apparently had been strangled.
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