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Lakeside Secrets
by K.D. Richards
Prologue
There’s no need to panic. Karine Eloi will probably stay in Carling Lake just long enough to put the house up for sale then she’ll return to that godforsaken city where she lives. After all, she’s some kind of big-shot financial person in Los Angeles. Nobody would trade that life for Carling Lake.
Marilee Eloi’s killer just had to keep a clear head.
The killer had been lucky, damned lucky, for more than twenty years. No one had even thought to connect them to Marilee’s murder. Besides, folks in this town wanted to believe Marilee had died at the hands of an outsider, that one of their own couldn’t have done something so evil. And they’d had the perfect scapegoat. Jean Eloi. Even his name was snooty.
Jean had snuck right in and married a hometown girl and the Carling Lakers hadn’t liked that one bit. It hadn’t taken more than a few well-placed rumors, the best kind if you asked the killer, to get people casting suspicious glances and talking all about how Marilee’s highfalutin husband must have been the murderer.
If the killer had known she’d been in the house with her mother, little Karine might have fallen prey to the big bad burglar that night too. Why leave a witness when you didn’t have to? Karine wasn’t a witness, though. She’d slept through the whole thing and that was what had saved her life all these years.
But now she was back in town and that was bound to kick up memories that the killer would rather stay buried. That new sheriff was far too progressive for the killer’s liking. What if he decided to show off by delving into a more than twenty-year-old murder?
One problem at a time. The killer would have to keep a close watch on Marilee’s girl. Maybe give her a reason not to linger in Carling Lake. And if there was any cause to worry...well then, the killer would just have to finish the job that was started twenty-three years ago.
Chapter One
It was far too quiet in Carling Lake, New York. That was the problem, Karine Eloi thought as she turned onto her back and stared up at the ceiling, willing sleep to come. She was used to the sounds of Los Angeles. The ever-present car horns, shouts, music and other assorted fracas of the city. The high-pitched squealing and fervent scratching coming from the attic above her was one thing that did remind her of Los Angeles. Or rather, the dump of an apartment she’d lived in when she’d first moved to the city. She made a mental note to put mousetraps on her shopping list and tried to tune out the sounds.
When she’d arrived in Carling Lake earlier that evening, she’d stood on the sidewalk in front of the house, looking at the place that had been her home for the first twelve years of her life. It looked familiar, but time and tragedy had dulled her memories of the place. But while the town and house she lived in had faded in her mind, the boy who’d lived next door never had. Omar Monroe had been her best friend since they were five years old. Even after her father had moved them three hours away to Springtree, Connecticut, she and Omar had remained close. Not even her move across the country to Los Angeles for college, and her subsequent decision to stay on the west coast, could break the bonds of their friendship.
Karine had hoped to see him when she reached town, but traffic had put her behind schedule and the house next door to the one she now owned, the house Omar had lived in his entire life, was dark by the time she’d arrived. She knew that as the only full-time state park ranger assigned to the Carling Lake area, Omar often had to work late, but she was excited and more than a little anxious to see him; it had been six months since he’d come out to visit her in Los Angeles. She remembered the punch in the gut she’d felt when she dropped him off at the airport, how difficult it had been to watch him walk away, knowing she wouldn’t see him the next day.
She turned onto her side and closed her eyes. She was sure she’d see Omar soon enough. Right now, she had to get some sleep. But her mind wouldn’t shut off. Coming back to her childhood home had opened up a Pandora’s box of emotions that wouldn’t be quelled by slumber.
The two-story home was an imposing mix of brick and clapboard. But it had been well maintained, just as Mr. Hill, the lawyer who had managed the family trust, had told her. The home had been in Karine’s family for nearly sixty years, built by her grandfather, Wayne Barstol, who’d had the forethought to pass it to his daughter, Marilee, and then on to her, his granddaughter, via a trust so that it would remain in the family. After her grandfather had passed away, Karine and her parents had moved in. She may have been young when she’d lived here, but she remembered how much her mother had loved the house and Carling Lake.
A memory floated to the forefront of her mind as she’d stood on the sidewalk, peering up at her childhood home. Her, her mother and her father sitting on a swing hung from the porch ceiling, cuddled under a blanket on a starry night. And laughter. Lots of laughter.
There’d always been a lot of laughter when her mom was alive. Not after though.
Karine couldn’t remember what her father’s laugh sounded like or the last time she’d seen him smile.
She swallowed the tears that rose in her throat. Her father hadn’t wanted her to ever return to Carling Lake. After her mother’s death—her murder—twenty-three years earlier and the suspicion that had swirled around him, Jean Eloi had packed their bags and moved them to Connecticut, never looking back. He’d wanted Karine to do the same.
Never look back.
But Karine couldn’t just plow ahead like her father had. She’d been there. She’d seen...something. Her dreams, her nightmares really, made that quite clear. But what had she seen?
Her dreams had never been clear enough to answer that question. For her father, it was tough enough dealing with the reality that his beloved Marilee was gone. The who and the why wouldn’t bring her back, so he’d pressed on, remarried and gotten on with his life.
For her, it was the opposite. Each year, each moment lately, the need within her to know who and why grew stronger. Why had her mother been taken from her? Who had shattered her childhood and changed her life so irrevocably? Two months ago, she’d turned thirty-five and, by the terms of the trust left by her grandfather, become the outright owner of the family home. She’d known what she had to do. Go to Carling Lake and get justice for her mother.
She’d made it to Carling Lake. Now what?
She was a financial analyst without the first idea of where to start investigating a murder.
Her mind churned through what she knew about her mother’s murder. Twenty-three years ago, while Karine had slept upstairs and her father was at a faculty function, someone had broken into the house. The then sheriff had theorized it was a burglar who hadn’t realized anyone was at home. Her mother must have awakened and confronted the intruder. The confrontation had ended with her mother being bludgeoned.
There was so much about that night and the days after that was foggy for Karine, but she remembered talking to a policeman with bushy gray eyebrows and kind eyes. Telling him she hadn’t heard or seen anything after her mother had put her to bed for the night. She remembered, too, hearing the police officer speaking to another cop.
I don’t think she saw anything. Small blessing.
For more than twenty years, she’d also believed that, but now she wasn’t so sure anymore. As her thirty-fifth birthday approached, the dreams had begun. Vivid dreams. Her mother lying on the floor in the hallway. A red river around her. And a figure over her mother’s body.
In the dream, the figure was never clear enough to tell who it was or even if it was a man or a woman. At first, she’d thought it was nothing more than a dream, but each time she had it, the details became clearer, sharper. The fireplace poker was on the floor next to her mother. The red river, she realized, was blood encircling her mother’s head. The back door to the house was standing open. She could see it all as if she was there. Or had been there. Everything except the face of the person who’d killed her mother.
Karine had all but given up on the police ever naming a suspect, much less convicting anyone, until a few weeks ago. That was when she’d received an email from Amber Burke Spindler, one of her mother’s closest friends.
She remembered Amber from when she was younger, even though Amber had made no attempt to reach out to Karine after she and her father had moved to Connecticut. No one from Carling Lake had made any effort to keep up with her or her father, except Omar and his parents.
She gave up on sleep and reached for her phone on the nightstand. She scrolled to the opened email chain from Amber.
Karine,
You may not remember me. My name is Amber Burke Spindler, and I was friends with your mother. Good friends at one point. There is something I need to speak to you about. It’s important. About your mother. It’s too much to type out and too dangerous to put on paper. I need to tell you in person. Please get back to me. And tell no one.
Amber Burke Spindler
