Stella allowed Bailey to go onto the wide wraparound porch first, watching the dog carefully for any signs that a stranger might have come near her home. There were security gates one had to get through to come to this side of the property, and usually the security guards were “dragons” keeping everyone away unless they had an appointment with Stella. That didn’t mean there weren’t many other ways to access this side of the property.
She opened her door and went inside with much more confidence when Bailey didn’t show alarm. Art supplies were kept in the studio upstairs. She loved the room with its view of the lake. One side was nearly all glass, a thick sliding wall that allowed her to step outside onto the balcony, where she kept a comfortable chair and small table during most of the months. During winter, when the snow came, she brought the furniture inside.
The studio was bright and sunny, perfect light for sketching and painting. It wasn’t like she was immensely talented, but she liked to think she was fairly good. She wasn’t ever going to sell her work. Like her aerial silks, and bouldering, painting relaxed her. She’d taken quite a few art classes along with her business classes in college.
She kept the journal on her nightmares and the sketchbooks locked up in a drawer beside her bed. She never wanted anyone else to find them. They were the real things of terror. She didn’t look at any of the older entries or drawings. In fact, she deliberately began to scrub her mind clean as she’d taught herself to do. She pictured her brain as a chalkboard and erased it over and over until there was nothing on the board. Once it was empty, she pulled up the details of the nightmare. The boulders. The plants. The reeds. Every detail she could remember. She looked at the sky. At the ground. At the edges of the lake itself. She tried to see past the fisherman, past her own terror of what was to come, so she could focus on details and widen her scope of what she could draw. Even the shape of the boulders in the water and the algae covering them might give her clues to where the scene was.
Once Stella was satisfied she had as much detail as possible of the surroundings, she concentrated on the man fishing, trying to see as much about him as she could. His clothing. His shape. His height. As much of his hair as she could see with his hat pulled down the way it was. His hands on his fishing rod. The rod itself. She wrote it all down, everything she could possibly remember, and she was good at pulling up details.
The lake came next, and every tiny bit she could possibly decipher about the surface, the shape, the colors and even what was under the surface. Last was everything about the killer. The way he moved. His body structure. His strength. The way he moved in the water. His wet suit. His gloves. The belt he had around his waist with all kinds of weapons in it.
After she wrote it down in her journal, she took out her sketchbook and began to draw each separate scene, just as she’d written it, making certain of the details. She didn’t hurry, wanting to get every fact right. When she finally straightened, her back aching a little, she was satisfied she had reproduced the potential murder scene in her nightmare to the best of her ability.
She flipped back to the first entry five nights earlier to compare drawings. The first one had little detail because it was the least she had gotten, the camera lens shuttered, allowing only a tiny portion of the unfolding horror to be seen.
Her cell played a few notes of a jazz song, jerking her out of her intense contemplation. She dragged the phone out of her pocket, frowning down at it with utter guilt.
“Harlow. I’m so sorry. I know. I know. I stood you and Shabina up. I got caught up in something …” She trailed off, knowing Harlow would be sweet about it.
Harlow Frye had grown up in a political family and was used to adjusting to whatever was happening around her. She “went with the flow,” so to speak, with grace and elegance. She never got upset over small things, especially when she would assume Stella was busy fixing some problem at the resort.
“We’ll try again another time. I’m hoping to come into town tonight. Maybe I can text you to see if you’re available to meet up,” Stella offered, knowing both women had to work. That was why they had planned to meet for morning coffee.
“Working a night shift tonight. So is Shabina,” Harlow said. “We’ll meet up though, no worries.”
Stella felt terrible for lying. This was how it started. Lying to her friends. Suspecting Sam just because he walked like a predator. Did she suspect him? Not really, but she couldn’t just dismiss the fact that he was capable of murder. But wasn’t everyone? No, she didn’t think so. Not everyone.
She hung up after apologizing again and then texted Zahra, asking her if she had time for lunch. Zahra Metcalf worked at the hospital as an administrator, so she spent most of her time in meetings, figuring out where to spend any money they managed to get their hands on. Stella knew grants were exceedingly important to the hospital. Grants, donations and fund-raising bought up-to-date equipment for the hospital and ensured they had enough doctors and nurses for the emergency room as well as the hospital itself. It was small, but the hospital was very well-equipped. It had to be. They were a good distance from any other help. Zahra was the administrator who ensured the money flowed to the hospital. She was astute and incredible at finding grants and securing them for their hospital. She was very good at thinking up fund-raisers and oversaw executing them, getting the entire county involved.
Harlow had a hand in those as well, although there was something between Zahra and Harlow that neither woman ever talked about. They were always friendly but not super close, which didn’t make sense. Harlow had helped Zahra escape from an arranged marriage in her country. Her mother had gotten Zahra a visa and a good job and then eventually citizenship. Zahra never talked about any problems with Harlow, and Harlow never talked about a problem with Zahra. Stella had too many secrets of her own to pry.
Zahra could meet her for lunch, which was perfect. Stella glanced at her watch. She had plenty of time to drive around the lake and look for any spot that might resemble what she’d drawn. She had been around Sunrise Lake numerous times, but it was a big lake and there was no way she could remember every single section of it.
When the snowpack melted, it fed the river and creeks that ran into the lake, which was why it was so cold. The main road leading around the lake was narrow and two laned, paved but chewed up with potholes all year round. The snow and ice kept the asphalt from staying smooth. No matter what was done to protect it, the road disintegrated into mostly a dirty, muddy mess.
Stella tossed a few water bottles into her 4Runner, opened the back for Bailey, waited for the Airedale to leap in and then went around to the driver’s side. Her 4Runner was a working vehicle, equipped for every kind of weather. She had enough money to ensure her rig was going to perform no matter what she ran into.
She had the sketchpad with her, although she was fairly certain the murder scene was etched into her brain, never to be erased. She took the main road leading around the lake, but there were a few dozen small dirt roads that branched off, leading down to the shore, and she explored the first six in a row that were the most well traveled. If the fisherman was camping at her resort, he might stick close to the main resort, but if he was a local, or one of the regulars who came often and fished the various lakes, who knew where he would have his favorite spots?