Killing Bliss (2 page)

She went to work. Spreading the topsoil loosely, she formed the base of the flower bed around Cabin Four. A half hour later, she stretched, hitched up the straps on her overalls, and headed for the motel office that sat on the top of a gentle slope near the entrance to the property.

She'd plant the tulip bulbs sometime in the next couple of days.

"Hi, Addy," Toby called from the doorstep of Cabin Three. "Warm one today, huh?"

"Uh-huh. Some kind of record for this time of year, according to the weather guy."

"Late October, and it still feels like summer," he said, shaking his gray head.

Addy nodded, smiled, and dropped the thread of her and Toby's daily weather conversation.

Toby was a regular, a crony of Lund's who came for a month's stay every year in the fall, had ever since Addy arrived. Her guess was he and Lund shared a past of the criminal kind, but she never asked. The way she saw it, you ask a question, someone asked one right back.

"I have some iced tea in the fridge, Toby," she said. "How about I give you a call when I've cleaned up, and you can come up to the house and have some?"

"That'd be dandy, sweetums." Toby smiled.

She waved at him, opened the office door, and stepped inside. As she lifted the hinged section of the counter separating what Lund always called the "back office" from reception, she glanced at the pile of mail sitting at the far end of the counter and grimaced. So far, she'd done a fine job of ignoring it, which would be a whole lot easier if the motel office didn't form the front of her house.

Her house. Her motel. Her lake.

Her life was so perfect, she owed whoever was in charge up there a thank-you note and giant box of chocolates.

It had been six months now, and Addy still couldn't believe the Star Lake Resort was hers, all hers. Maybe she had almost paid it off before Lund passed on, and for sure all the years of work without pay had to count for something, but in her wildest dreams she hadn't expected him to forgive the balance in his will and deed the place to her. Likely he figured he had to do something, and she'd been handy—like that ancient wheelbarrow of his she'd stowed in the maintenance shed minutes ago.

She smiled now, thinking about him, how he'd hated it when she poked at his delusions of grandeur by calling the place a motel.

"It's a resort, girl," he'd growl. "Can't you get that through your mule-stubborn head?" Cranky as usual.

"Resort, my skinny butt, Lund Baylor," she'd say. "It's a crappy old motel on a pockmarked bypass road, and you darn well know it." Then she'd watch him mutter and stomp off to tackle some project he'd been fussing over for years and never finished. Never would finish.

He may have been cranky and as chilly as an Alaskan sleigh ride, but darned if he hadn't come through in the end and done the right thing. For that she'd be forever grateful.

Star Lake was all hers.

She took off her dirty sneakers and sport socks on the tile she'd installed inside the house door and walked barefoot across her new carpet. Pale pecan, the saleswoman called it. Addy called it builder's beige, but whatever color it was, it didn't matter. It was fresh, it was new, it was her choice, and when she walked on it, she felt as if she were a princess walking on mink. Before she left the carpet's soft nap for the scarred hardwood floor of her bedroom, she wiggled her toes in it and rolled her head to ease the tension in her neck in a most unprincess-like way.

Another six months, if business stayed okay, she'd have this place looking like the resort Lund Baylor claimed it was. She'd already spruced up the office and some of the cabins, and if the new sign she'd put up on Kite Road near the highway brought in more business—maybe some of the skiers heading for Mount Baker—she'd soon have the money she needed. Then all it would take was hard work, and she was no stranger to that.

A few minutes later, she stepped into the shower. She soaped herself, quickly shampooed, then let the water course over her back and between her sweaty breasts. Heaven.

Out of the shower, she toweled off and dragged a comb through her short brown hair, glad she'd taken the time to lop more of it off yesterday. A bit ragged maybe, but it was easy, and she sure as heck didn't have the time to fuss with it. There was that mess of paperwork to do. Then some accounting.

Her stomach seized up, always did when she had a problem and not a solution in sight.

She went to her bureau, opened a drawer, and rifled for some underwear. What she found was a thought.

Toby could lend a hand.

He used to help Lund, she remembered. She brightened. Maybe he'd do the books the whole month he was here, and she'd give him a break on his cabin rate.

The knot slipped loose in her stomach, and she hastily finished dressing, donning clean jeans and a yellow T-shirt.

With the idea of Toby doing the book work afloat in her mind, it was as if the New York Public Library had been hoisted off her back. Hungry, she went into the kitchen, planning to eat a horse—or maybe a small herd of them.

She studied the packaged dinner she pulled from the freezer. What the hell was a Salisbury steak, anyway? Didn't matter. It was edible, and it was fast. She tossed it in the microwave.

With dinner in progress, she walked to the kitchen window. Across the lake, the autumn sun was settling contentedly into evening, its brilliance turning the placid lake a deep sapphire, the gold yet to come.

It was too beautiful.

Life was beautiful...

Addy Michaels had been given more than she deserved. Her eyes watered, and she brushed at them with the back of her hands and smiled.

She always was a sap for sunsets.

It didn't get any better than this—the sun going down all lazy and slow, the spicy smell of cedar and freshly cut grass drifting in with the breezy evening air.

Star Lake. Her world, her safe harbor...

Addy's heart fluttered, then expanded to fill her chest with ease and gratitude.

So much more than she deserved...

If she had one wish, it would be to hold this feeling in her heart forever.

Chapter 2

Cade Harding pulled his Cherokee to a stop, looked out the driver's side window, then up. Way up.

Susan Moore's house, with its three stories and expansive footprint, was massive.

Odd, though, it had seemed larger still when he'd come here as a boy. But then, when you're a kid, everything is on a grand scale—houses, monsters... passions.

He let his truck idle, and one memory surged back, made him wince—his mother towing him along to visit his Aunt Susan, the woman she privately referred to as her "rich-bitch cousin," her hand out for yet another "small loan."

"Begging trips" he'd come to call them, until he'd put his sneaker-clad, ten-year-old foot down and refused to go.

He'd loved his mother, but she hadn't made it easy.

But all that was years ago, and this was no begging trip.

This time, it was Susan Moore who wanted something. A favor, she'd said on the phone. He couldn't imagine what that favor would be. Hell, he hadn't laid eyes on her since his mother's funeral three years ago.

Cade turned the truck off, stepped out, and headed for the house. Before he cleared the first stair, the door opened, and an extremely tall, extremely thin man greeted him. Cade pegged him for sixty, maybe more.

"Harding?" he asked.

"Yes." When Cade took the last step and gained equal footing, he saw the man was at least four inches taller than Cade's own six-foot stature. A novel experience, being minimized. "I'm here to see Aunt... Susan Moore. I'm a few minutes early."

"Stan Brenton, Susan's official gofer." He stuck out a hand the size of a dinner plate. "Come in. She's waiting in the sunroom."

Stan led Cade to the rear of the house. More greenhouse than sunroom, it was alive with plants, the air humid and sultry with flower scents. Susan Moore sat on a wicker sofa, a row of miniature rosebushes spread across the coffee table in front of her. She held a delicate pair of pruning shears.

"Cade, thank you so much for coming," she said.

He bent to kiss her cheek. "Nice to see you again, Susan." If she missed the "aunt" part of his address, she said nothing.

Setting her shears aside, she patted the empty spot beside her on the sofa. "Sit by me."

When he took the seat, she immediately looked up at Stan. "Would you get the coffee, please"—she broke off, glanced at Cade—"unless you'd like something stronger."

"Coffee's fine. Black. Thanks." He sat back.

Stan left the room, and she picked up the fine shears again, turned them over in her hand. "I understand you're moving to Seattle. That you've left the university. Washington State, wasn't it? In Pullman?"

He nodded.

"Am I being presumptuous if I ask why?"

"It was time. I never planned to grow old in the land of academia." He smiled, touched the hair above his ear, where the occasional white shaft supported his logic.

"You must be, what... thirty-six now?"

"Thirty-eight."

She paused as if to consider her next words. "I suppose you have plans?"

Cade had the sense that she had a destination in mind with her questions, but lacked a road map. "Everyone has plans," he said, choosing not to embellish. No doubt his were stupider than most, but it was time he left Pullman, WSU, and the rolling wheat fields of southeast Washington. The students deserved someone with more fire in his belly.

She hesitated a moment, then said, "I was sorry to hear about your wife, Cade. I met Dana briefly at your mother's funeral. She was lovely... so young."

His brain stilled in that queer way it did when Dana's name came up. "Yes, she was." Dana had been dead fifteen months.
Plus one week and two days.
About as long as it took her to die. The cancer took its time and its loathsome measure of pain.

Susan reached across the sofa between them, touched his shoulder. "I wanted to attend the service, but I was out of the country at the time. I regret that."

"I understand. Not a problem." He shifted his position on the sofa, rested an ankle on his knee, and laid a hand on it. He hated, but was accustomed to, these awkward moments.

"You don't like to talk about it." She nodded. "God knows I understand... grief. I was just trying to find a—"

"She was trying to find a place to start." Stan reentered the sunroom, carrying a full tray. "The woman's having trouble getting to the point." He set the tray down, moved a couple of the rosebushes out of the way, and poured three strong coffees before taking a seat opposite them.

"And you're a lot more than her gofer." Cade took a coffee, eased back in his seat. Stan Brenton provided a welcome detour around further talk about Dana.

Stan pulled out his wallet, flipped it open, and passed it to Cade.

"A private investigator. The plot thickens," Cade said, returning his wallet.

Stan shoved it back in his pocket, shot Susan an encouraging look. "Just ask, dear. All he can do is say no."

"That's what I'm afraid of."

"Susan." A hint of admonishment colored his tone.

She let out a breath. "Cade, I assume your mother told you what happened to Mariah, my daughter?"

"Yes." He didn't repeat the details, or his sense that his mother had somehow relished the tragedy as some kind of overdue bad luck for the cousin she envied so much. "I was in college at the time." His memories of Mariah were sketchy at best. He'd met her during the begging trips, of course, but her being older—and cooler—required that she treat him as a lower life-form.

"It was a drug overdose. She was twenty-five." She met his gaze and, although the tragedy was long past, it bloomed in her eyes—a drug-death memory, dripping in residual pain.

"I'm sorry, Susan." The standard words. How often he'd heard them. So little to appease so much, but all there was.

"Yes." She looked away as if to gather up her lost poise, then added, "So long ago, yet it feels like yesterday."

Cade thought of Dana, his thinking going gray. He said nothing.