Sinister Summer Read online

  “Hey, girl.” Ethan knelt to ruffle her thick fur, pulling the black lab’s face close to his. “Jean’s dead. Can you believe it? I sure can’t. I’m going to have words with Joe Cap about him not telling me. He could have at least texted me while I was gone.” A big pink tongue slathered his face, carefully avoiding his bristly beard, as Ethan sank to the floor and brooded.

  The last thing he’d heard from Jean was a voice mail on his office phone—she’d left it the day after he’d departed for his month-long trip. She asked him to call her as soon as he could; she had something to talk to him about. She must have forgotten when he was leaving the country.

  And now he’d never know what she wanted to tell him.

  He brooded and simmered and grieved, surprised at the depths of his emotions.

  Some time later, when the sun had dipped behind the fringe of trees spearing up from the edge of the lake, Ethan hoisted himself to his feet. His face was damp from Cady’s attentions as well as a narrow rivulet of tears that had settled in his thick beard.

  I really could go for a beer just now.

  He peered into the refrigerator, but the six-pack of B-Cubed IPA he’d gone to collect was still sitting in Jean’s fridge—at least, as far as he knew.

  At least Diana Iverson didn’t seem like a beer-drinker. She was probably someone who only sipped fifty-dollar bottles of French Bordeaux—which, he admitted, were stellar. But there was nothing like an ice-cold beer at the lake house.

  Ethan closed the fridge door with more force than necessary, sorrow welling inside him again.

  In her sleep, the niece had said. Jean had died in her sleep.

  He shook his head, pulling out a frozen pizza. Jean hadn’t ever mentioned her niece was beautiful—just that she was very smart, a little repressed, and a crazy workaholic. Mainly, she was screwed up because of her mother, who had been married to Jean’s brother, who was now dead.

  Jean had not liked the mother.

  Diana Iverson was lovely—in a classic way. With her elegant nose, oval face, dark blue eyes, and thick dark hair that curled in short, sexy waves, she put him in mind of Jackie Kennedy. Maybe because of the prim dress she’d been wearing. She looked like she’d just come from a board meeting.

  Apparently, she was an environmental lawyer back in Chicago, and was obviously used to working long hours for massive fees in prim suits and sensible heels.

  “Don’t know why anyone would be wearing a dress here in Wicks Hollow. Did she drive all the way from Chicago in it? And those heels too?” He only knew that sort of thing—driving in heels and a suit—was a consideration for women because his sister Fiona had lectured him about it once when he was in a hurry, and she wanted to change clothes for the drive to Wicks Hollow.

  She made him wait, of course.

  Cady flopped in a heap on the floor and groaned.

  “So sorry if I’m boring you.” Ethan grinned down at his best friend and lifted the lid from a glass jar on the counter that held dog biscuits. Instantly, Cady scrambled back to her feet, her soft ebony ears perked in anticipation. He lightly tossed his pet a treat and replaced the jar.

  Diana Iverson, he thought again, with a short laugh that turned bitter. He’d been delighted that the niece had finally come to visit—until he’d learned why. The too-busy, ass-kissing lawyer who couldn’t bother to visit her great-aunt in years had finally made the five-hour trip—just in time to collect her substantial inheritance. The beautiful farmhouse on Wicks Lake was worth a lot of money.

  And then there was the way she’d looked at him when he’d told her his title was doctor—like he was some sort of furry, crawly bug. As if she wanted to smash him with her pointed-toe heel.

  Just then, he caught sight of himself in the mirrored microwave door—spotless, thanks to his cleaning lady—and grimaced.

  Oh. Well, that might explain a little of her reaction.

  He’d forgotten about that god-awful beard and that he hadn’t trimmed anything in weeks. Ethan cheerfully admitted he looked like a mountain man. He’d kept the scraggly look during the academic year because it did the trick to keep the young things away from him on campus. And of course he hadn’t wanted to spend time shaving while he was in Macchu Picchu. But now he understood—maybe a little—why Diana Iverson had been so wary, and so intent upon getting rid of him.

  Fiona had been giving him shit about the beard too, for months. “You look like a derelict,” his sister told him the last time they video-chatted. “And since the hipster look is in, I’m not sure the beard’s doing anything to keep the young girls—or guys,” she added with a grin, “let’s be inclusive—from being interested in your oh-so-hot self. You’re the epitome of a sexy college prof: tall, lanky, with long hair and a beard and fascinating stories. Not to mention being semi-famous on top of it.”

  “It’s a real trial being me, Fifi,” he’d replied modestly. “But I manage. Did you say semi-famous? I’d say I’m way past the semi- and into the fully famous.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Whatever. I’ll see you in a few weeks for Maxine Took’s birthday bash, and I hope like hell you’re clean-shaven before then.”

  The timer beeped that his pizza was ready, and Ethan returned to the moment.

  He and Fiona—she, who’d been described as airy-fairy more than once—could hardly be any different. At least on the surface.

  He was a popular and respected anthropology professor at the University of Chicago as well as a bestselling author who’d done the talk show circuit two years ago, and Fiona was…well the best way to describe his sister was that she enjoyed life and lived for the moment. Her myriad of employers over the years always loved her, but could rarely keep her for more than a year at a time. Fiona was as free-spirited as a sprite.

  Ethan settled in a heavy cedar lounge chair on his screened porch that overlooked Wicks Lake—a long, narrow lake that wound down along the eastern side of the county like an arm. Beyond the trees, to the southwest, he could see the last of the sunset sinking over Lake Michigan, which was less than four miles away.

  Ah. Summer in Michigan. Couldn’t ask for any better place. He wished he could live here year around, even with the winter weather. Not that Chicago was any better when it came to lake effect snow.

  Though the sky held only a pinkish-red glow near the horizon and the trees speared up into the graying darkness, there was still plenty to see. Lights winked along both lake shorelines in homes that were inhabited year-round. The tops of tall pines swayed with a faint breeze, brushing against each other high in the sky. A bold streak of pink in the western sky echoed the fading sunlight. There were the sounds of whippoorwills and crickets, the rustling of various wildlife in the forest that surrounded the lake, and, occasionally, the hoot of a lonely owl, the call of a loon.

  It was peaceful.

  Ethan looked through the trees along the lake and picked out Jean’s home. One faint light shone through a window in the old clapboard structure. Sadness washed over him.

  Abruptly, he decided he wasn’t hungry for cardboard food and flipped a piece of pizza to Cady, thinking, still, about Diana Iverson.

  Diana dragged herself awake into darkness, blind fear crushing lungs that dug deep for air. Struggling to push the weight of terror from her chest, she grappled with the tentacle-like sheets and pulled herself upright in the bed.

  Moonlight streamed into the room as she sat there, gasping, shaking, trying to push away the remnants of the black nightmare that twined around her, engulfing her with its heaviness. She saw the pale oval of her face reflected in the mirror on Aunt Jean’s bureau drawer and shrank from the vision made by the dark holes of her eyes and the stark terror on her face.

  She’d never had a dream so completely consuming, so mind-numbingly frightening—yet she didn’t know what it was about. There had been only blackness descending upon her, smothering her, pressing her down…down…down, into some dark, horrifying state.

  Diana dragged her shaking limbs out of
bed, glad she’d never had such an experience while sleeping next to Jonathan. Looking warily at the tussled bedclothes, she decided she didn’t trust herself to go back to sleep without falling into the dark pit again.

  She’d curl up on the settee in the den and sleep there. Maybe the cats—of whom she hadn’t yet caught a glimpse and she wondered if they really were even there—would deign to join her.

  She could use the comfort.

  Chapter Two

  The next morning, Diana awoke to sunshine. It glared from a crack between the den’s heavy velvet curtains and the windowpane, making a crooked line over the floor. She sat up and blinked a few times to clear her vision. Yesterday’s migraine was gone, as was the terrible dream. She felt relatively well rested, though a bit hollow.

  She caught sight of the digital clock on the desk—an anomaly in the lacy, Victorian room—and started. Nine o’clock? Could that be right?

  Diana rolled quickly off the velvet-upholstered settee, her feet landing on the rug with a profound thump. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept past seven. Even on the one vacation they’d taken, she and Jonathan rose early to golf.

  As she started out of the library, her attention fell on the silk-nested mahogany box. It was still sitting on the floor with the cards in a haphazard pile next to Aunt Jean's chair. For one absurd moment, the thought struck her: had that been the reason for her wrenching dream?

  No. Why on earth would it have? She began to gather up the cards, arranging them in the box on top of the Fool.

  But suddenly a flash of memory—a dream?—snapped into her mind. The vision was so abrupt and so vivid she sank back onto the chair.

  He—the Fool—was alive in the image that presented itself, cavorting and mingling with obscure images of Aunt Jean and Jonathan, as well as a dark-haired man she didn’t recognize. Papers fluttered about, along with wide-eyed cats and all sorts of strange, shadowy images.

  It was weird—almost as if she were dreaming, right here in the middle of wakefulness.

  The Fool is the Number Zero, and is the beginning of the Major Arcana, she heard Aunt Jean say. As clearly as if she were standing next to her. He is also as we are at the beginning of any journey—gay, innocent, inexperienced, artless, and open-minded.

  Diana squeezed her eyes closed hard. The vision snapped and the voice disappeared. She realized she was clutching the arm of the chair and breathing heavily. Her body felt clammy and strange.

  What the hell was that?

  When she finally opened her eyes, she found herself the object of four green feline ones.

  “Well,” she managed to say when she caught her breath. “There you are, you naughty kitties.”

  The two black and white cats—for some obscure reason named Motto (the skinny one) and Arty (the fat one)—stared at her unblinkingly. Accusation burned strong in their twin expressions, as if to say, “Took you long enough to get here.”

  “I’m sure you were just fine having the run of the house,” she told them firmly. “Though maybe a little lonely, without Aunt Jean. And, yes, it’s been a while since I’ve been here. I’m sorry. I really am,” she added, looking up at the ceiling as if Aunt Jean was listening—which of course she wasn’t. “I promise I’ll pick up some catnip for you when I go into town to make up for whatever abuse you might have suffered. After all, you must be missing Aunt Jean.” Her voice softened with compassion, and she reached out to give each of them a brief stroke on the head.

  Then she stooped once more to gather up the Tarot cards. They were oversized and awkward for her to straighten into a neat stack. She had just wrapped the cards in the black silk and placed them in the box when she noticed Motto sitting on the floor near the dark green, floor length curtains. The cat’s paw was placed on one of the Tarot cards, as if holding it in place.

  Or drawing Diana’s attention to it.

  Now how had that card gotten way over there?

  Motto deigned to allow Diana to remove it from beneath her paw, then stalked away as if bored with the whole process.

  The card was titled The High Priestess. A Roman numeral two identified it as the second numeric card of the Major Arcana.

  The High Priestess was crowned and seated on a throne behind which were pomegranates and palms. She held a scroll in the lap of her blue gown, and seemed to be tucking it under her cloak. On the left of the throne was a black column labeled B, and on the right was a second column—white—labeled J. A crescent sat on the floor in the trailing pool of her gown.

  Diana studied the card for a long moment as she became aware of a strange sense of unease. She couldn’t help but wonder what the High Priestess signified to one who believed in the Tarot.

  Not that she bought into any of that metaphysical stuff, but Aunt Jean and her friends Maxine and Iva certainly had.

  With a sudden tsk of irritation, she returned the card to its place in the stack and replaced it once again in the smooth wrapping of black silk and mellow mahogany. She set the box of cards on the back in its place on the piecrust table and, after an (ignored) invitation to the cats to join her, Diana headed to the grocery store.

  An hour later, Diana stumbled back into the house, arms hooked through plastic bags filled with groceries and hands filled with mail from the post office. She dumped the whole pile on the kitchen counter with a sigh of relief and went back out to make another trip.

  As soon as she walked back in, Motto and Arty decided it was the perfect time to make an appearance—directly underfoot, of course—and she nearly landed on her face trying to avoid Arty’s bottlebrush tail.

  By the time she dropped the bags onto the counter, the cats had disappeared again. No surprise.

  Against her better judgment (after all, when did cats actually do what you wanted them to?), she called for them, singing the silly song to the Munchkins from The Wizard of Oz in a gay falsetto: “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

  Of course they didn’t come. Even when she opened a package of catnip and wafted its aroma around near the floor, neither deigned to show a whisker.

  Diana shrugged and turned back to the bags of groceries sprawled on the counter. It was then that she noticed the note.

  Note?

  Diana snatched it up, eyebrows furrowing. “Just dropped by to pick up a book I loaned Jean, and my beer,” the bold, black letters read. “Hope you don’t mind I let myself in. Sorry to have missed you—since we’re neighbors, maybe we’ll run into each other on the lake. Call me if I can be of any help. Ethan Murphy.”

  A little shiver raced down her back. He’d been in the house again. But her twinge of discomfort was abruptly replaced by a wave of irritation. Hope you don’t mind I let myself in?!?!

  Of course she minded.

  People didn’t just let themselves into other peoples’ houses. Not where she came from, anyway. They might do it in Wicks Hollow, but she wasn’t a resident of the town and wouldn’t be here long enough to get to know the residents that well.

  And what if he’d still been there when she got home and was singing and talking in that silly voice to the cats? Her cheeks burned at the very thought. That’s just like you, Diana—making a fool out of yourself, came her mother’s voice as if in a memory.

  She shoved it away, suddenly angry with herself for allowing her mother to intrude so often in the last few days—even though she hadn’t talked to her for over three months, and even then it had been just a brief call to wish her a happy birthday.

  It was as if Melanie had planted herself and her caustic voice firmly in Diana’s mind all of a sudden—after months of silence. She hadn’t even come to Aunt Jean’s funeral—though, Diana realized, it was probably better that she hadn’t. The two women never liked each other, and once Diana’s father had died, they had no reason to interact. And having Melanie at the funeral would have been just another stress for her to deal with.

  But what was more important than the imagined criticisms of her mother was the fact that a str
ange man had let himself into Diana’s house twice in the last two days.

  How good of friends had Dr. Murphy been with Aunt Jean? Was he exaggerating now that the elderly woman was dead? Maybe they’d hardly been friends at all, and he was just—

  She crumpled up his note and flung it into the trash can, then picked up her cell phone to search for a number. But the data connection was being wonky, and the browser didn’t connect, so, fuming, she yanked open the drawer beneath the behemoth of a black telephone—wired, and attached to the wall!—and found a very skinny local telephone book. Laundromats, liquor stores, locksmiths.

  “I’ll fix Doctor Ethan Murphy,” she muttered as she dialed the number.

  After she arranged for a locksmith to come and change all the locks later that afternoon, Diana strolled through the house just to make sure he hadn’t disturbed anything.

  The library, furnished as it was with heavy, dark antiques and bookshelves groaning with hundreds of volumes, didn’t appear to have been disturbed. The mahogany Tarot card box sat in its place next to the African violet on the piecrust table. She noticed some thick white cat fur on Aunt Jean’s chair and paused to brush it off.

  Diana moved on down the hall to the office. A heavy oak desk dominated one wall, and stacks of magazines, papers, and books littered its top. She flipped on the light and glanced at the papers on the desk. Even if Murphy had rummaged through the contents of the room, she doubted she’d be able to tell.

  Aunt Jean’s bedroom—the only one on the first floor—was next. The sense of something Diana had felt earlier still hung in the air here, as though a fine fog hovered. This room also seemed undisturbed, but she was distracted from a thorough search when she heard her cell phone ring from where she’d left it on the kitchen counter.

  The ringtone was Mickey’s, and so she hurried to take the call. Just as they were finishing their conversation—a brief update on the literal boxes of evidence her assistant was marking and categorizing for AXT vs. LavertPiper—Diana heard a thunk from the library.