Denver stared at her as if she’d grown two heads. Stella couldn’t blame him. She was not cut out to be a detective. She wasn’t all that clever. The expression on his face made her want to laugh.
“Nice fish family? Evil fish killer? Good grief, Stella, you have a terrible imagination.”
“No, I have a vivid imagination,” she corrected. “It’s why I don’t fish. Or hunt. I will kill the occasional spider, but I mostly practice the capture-and-release program. I trap them and put them outside.”
Denver groaned and dropped his head into his hand. “You don’t.”
“I do. My very healthy imagination tells me all the spiders in the house that are related will rise up in an army and come after me while I’m sleeping. I’ll develop an allergy in that single night and it will be a horrible way to go, choking on my own vomit or something equally unpleasant and unwomanly.”
Denver burst out laughing. “Unwomanly?”
“Well, yes. When I go, I want to at least look good. Not all covered in red splotches from allergies. That wouldn’t be very dignified. If you’re going to find me, Denver, I have to look somewhat decent. Vienna is always telling me about these horrible-looking bodies when you find them. I refuse to go out that way. If an army of spiders gets me in the middle of the night and poisons me and I break out in horrid allergy splotches, then I can at least know my corpse isn’t going to look hideous. Well, I mean it will if I get attacked and bitten and die that way.”
He shoved the coffee mug back at her. “Drink. You’re not making any sense.” He looked at the dog. “Is she always like this in the morning, Bailey?”
Stella wrapped her hands around the coffee mug, glad she’d diverted his attention again. She took another healthy drink of the bitter brew. “Does Bruce really like this coffee, Denver? Zahra is a coffee fanatic, just like me. I think she might keel over if she drank this, not that I think the two of them are ever going to happen.”
The laughter faded from Denver’s face, leaving him with that rough exterior that put most people off. There were pock marks on his left side, faint but there, marring the weathered skin. Up close she could see a strange scarring over the pocks, much like a skid mark, as if his cheek and jaw had slid along the pavement.
“Why do you say that, Stella?”
“Bruce is so shy around Zahra and can’t bring himself to ask her out. She was raised in a very small village in Azerbaijan. She’s been here a long time and she’s a citizen, but she spent her life as a child there. Our childhood shapes us, Denver, you know that. She’s not going to suddenly be bold and ask Bruce out. She might flirt with him, especially if she drinks a bit, but she won’t go any further than that. She might be an American now, but she will never be that bold woman who just asks him out first. Bruce isn’t going to take charge like she needs him to. They are, unfortunately, at a stalemate.”
Denver stretched his legs out in front of him, his smile back. “That’s why she drinks so much. I have to tell you, I was a little worried and kept my eye on her, afraid she might be an alcoholic. I even cautioned him about it once, which didn’t go over well.”
His smile turned into a grin. He had extremely light-colored brown eyes, almost more amber than brown. His hair was very thick and a light brown with streaks of blond from all the time he spent in the sun. When he gave her that grin, his eyes took on the color of a burnt whiskey.
“Maybe we should lock the two of them in one of your smallest cabins for a weekend and see what happens,” he ventured.
Stella burst out laughing, but there was a small part of her contemplating the idea. “If only we could get away with it.”
“Does she really like him?” Denver asked, his tone suddenly serious.
“She really likes him.” Stella matched his tone.
CHAPTER THREE
Bruce trudged up to Denver and Stella, frowning at them, one hand on Bailey’s head as he cast a giant shadow over them. “You’re sitting in my chair, Denver, and you gave Stella my favorite coffee mug.”
Stella looked him over carefully. The waders were that same olive color that were in her nightmare. She told herself it didn’t mean anything. Many of the fishermen wore those same exact waders. It was just that the man in her nightmare wore bibbed denim overalls tucked into the waders. Denver had the waders on but not the overalls, which didn’t mean he didn’t own a pair. Neither man was wearing a hat, but it was early enough that the sun’s rays weren’t that strong yet.
“I’m kidding, Stella,” Bruce said. “Don’t look so upset.”
“I was about to tell him to go get another chair out of his truck. He has ten of them in there,” Denver said. “Really, Stella, he couldn’t care less.”
Was she looking upset again? Her nightmares had really thrown her. She’d promised herself she’d get a handle on her behavior. These were her friends. If she was going to save them, she needed to do better. Much better.
“Sorry, I was just thinking about spiders and fish families.” She waved one hand dismissively. “Don’t ask, Bruce. Denver already thinks I’m crazy. Were the fish biting this morning?”
Denver stood up and Bruce immediately sank into the vacated chair. Denver flipped him off but walked over to Bruce’s truck and yanked out another chair.
“Not really,” Bruce answered. “I didn’t really care if I caught anything this morning or not. I just wanted to come out here and relax. It gets hectic sometimes and my brain can’t take the chaos after a while. I need the reset.”
Stella thought it was interesting that he thought in the same terms she did. Every morning the sunrise “reset” her. “We all need that once in a while, don’t we?”
Bruce nodded. He looked around. “You came on your own?”
Stella kept a straight face. Denver set his chair across from them, looking at her with a little grin that told her he knew exactly what Bruce was fishing for.
“Who did you think was hiding in her rig, Bruce?” Denver asked.
Bruce glared at him. “You’re such a pain in the ass, Denver.”
Stella pushed out of the chair. “I’m going to look at the water and try to figure out the colors and what I’m doing wrong when I’m mixing my paints. I’ve been trying to get the colors right for so long and I just can’t seem to do it when I’m painting the lake. You two can argue without me.” Her art was her best cover, the best reason she had for examining the rocks and grasses so carefully.
She hurried down to the water’s edge, doing a careful sweep of the shoreline. She wanted to view it from every direction, the way the camera’s lens had done in her dreams each night. She’d gotten multiple views of the lake and the boulders and trees. She should be able to identify if this was the exact location of the upcoming murder. She doubted it. It would be far too much luck to have it be the very first secluded place she checked. This was remote, not known to outsiders, and only a few locals ever went here, which actually made it the perfect place for murder.
She was very glad she’d told Denver she painted, although only a few of her friends knew she did and she was much more comfortable with that. Having told him provided a good reason for her to be studying the shore and trees from every angle. She could commit every detail to memory. Her brain catalogued images for her. Sometimes that was a good thing, but not always. There were things in her past she wanted to forget.