rolled onto his side and lifted his body on his elbow, squinting against the sunlight that filled the room and searching for his watch. He found it and checked the time—ten till eight.
The birds were still going at it with shrill screams. He shoved the covers back and stood up, the floorboards cool on his feet. Wearing nothing but his boxers, Frank walked through the cabin, unlocked the door, and stepped out into a cloudless morning. The sun shone bright but cool, the lake glittering beneath it, pushed by a gentler version of the previous night’s wind. The sky was so bright, particularly to eyes that had just left sleep behind, that he didn’t see the osprey until it completed its dive.
The bird came tearing down toward its nest, then redirected at the last second and shot skyward again, releasing another shriek. There were osprey nests all over the lake, constructed on posts out over the water. What made this one so angry?
He figured it out when the osprey made its second dive. Just as it neared the nest, another bird spread its wings and bobbed up on the thick piles of sticks, matching the osprey’s scream with one of its one. This bird was larger, and unlike the osprey its head was pure white. There was a bald eagle in the osprey’s nest. No wonder the other bird was pissed.
He was watching the osprey circle, no doubt plotting another dive, when an engine came into hearing range, a car approaching down the gravel drive from the main road. He turned back toward the sound as a pickup truck rumbled into view. Nora Stafford.
No real surprise. He’d expected her to call, but maybe she had; cell phone reception was sporadic out here, even with that damn tower disrupting the night sky. As he watched, she pulled in beside the cabin, shut off the truck, and stepped outside. Too bad he wasn’t wearing any clothes. On the plus side, at least his underwear was clean.
She was walking toward him when the osprey dove again, announcing it with the loudest scream yet, and he turned away from Nora to watch.
The bird folded its wings, turning itself into a compact little missile, and hurled down, pulled off without hitting the nest. This time the eagle, perhaps bored with the dispute, took to the air with a shout of its own. Frank could actually hear the sound the eagle’s wings made when they flapped; there was lot of wingspan there. Then both birds were airborne. As the eagle flew away from the nest, out toward open water, the osprey followed, buzzing the bigger bird like a fighter pilot before pulling away for good, the eagle headed toward the opposite shore, the nest empty again.
“I didn’t think eagles fought with each other.”
Until Nora said that, Frank had almost forgotten she was there. He’d been that entranced by the brief aerial battle. Now he turned back to her.
“One was an osprey. I think it took exception to the eagle using the nest.”
“I guess so.” Nora looked away from him again. “I’m here because of your message. It was awfully cryptic.”
“I’ll explain,” Frank said, “but do you mind if I put on some pants first?”
“I was going to suggest that.”
He went into the bedroom and pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt while she waited at the kitchen table, then stopped by the bathroom to rinse his face with cold water and brush his teeth. Not yet eight on a Saturday, and Nora was already in motion. Either she was an early riser or his message had scared her.
When he came back out of the bathroom she’d left the kitchen table and was standing in the living room, looking at the framed Silver Star and the letter. She turned to him and pointed at the medal.
“Your grandfather’s?”
“Uh-huh.”
“So they gave him the medal after he was dead? That’s so sad. I can’t imagine what your grandmother thought about that. Proud among other things, I suppose.”
“I suppose.” There were a couple of ways to approach this conversation, and ordinarily Frank would have favored the less-is-more variation. While Nora was due a warning, a sense of what sort of trouble had arrived with that Lexus, she didn’t need to know any information about Frank or his father. But there was something in the way she was studying the medal that twisted him away from that instinct, made him want to tell her the whole damn story.
It shook him, this sudden desire to open up. He’d spent a long time working to avoid anything like it, perfecting that flat gaze that was designed to say,
Now it was different with Nora just because she was staring at the damn medal? Was that it? No, there was something else, something in the way she talked and held his eyes and how she’d handled herself in the heat of it all yesterday that suggested a quality of . . . what? Judgment withheld, that was it. Consideration before conclusion.
“I’m surprised you got the message so early,” he said and walked out of the living room and into the kitchen, got the coffeemaker running just so he could have a task to engage in instead of standing there with her, staring up at the starting point of the legacy.
“I checked it last night.” She returned to her seat at the table. Today she was dressed less like a mechanic, having traded in the heavy denim shirt for a blue tank top worn over loose white linen pants. These clothes showed much more of her body, a very nice body, and taking that in Frank understood why she probably went for the shapeless look at work.
“I’m going to be honest,” she said, dropping the friendliness, her words cool, “I thought about showing up here with the police. In the end, I decided I’d give you what you asked for, the chance to talk through this, but I also didn’t like what you said on that message last night. You made it sound as if you knew more than you told me yesterday.”
“I might know more than I told you yesterday,” Frank said, pouring the water into the coffeemaker, “but I didn’t at the time. Everything you—and the police—heard from me was accurate. I’d never seen that guy before, Nora. That’s the truth.”
“You said you knew where my car was.”
“That’s right.”
“How can you possibly—”
“Ezra Ballard found it.”
“Where?”
“Hidden in the woods about two miles up the shoreline.”
She pulled her head back. “On the Willow?”
“Yes.” He finished setting the coffeemaker and turned to face her, leaning against the counter. “That guy, Vaughn, he drove it down there as soon as he left your shop yesterday, tried to hide the car in the trees. Ezra was out on the lake, watching.”
“You’re sure it’s my car?”
“I’m sure. He took me to see it last night.”
“So Vaughn dumped it.”
Frank shook his head.
“No?”
“No. He’s staying here. Ezra saw him go out to an island. There’s a cabin on it, has been for years. Apparently this guy is with a woman out there. Just the two of them.”
She took that in, nodded. “Okay. Well, that’s good news, isn’t it? I can get my car back, and we can tell the police where to find this guy.”
Frank didn’t answer.
“What else do you know?” she said, watching his face carefully. “Frank? What else do you know about him?”
“About him? Nothing. I know something about the cabin he’s staying in, that’s all. Something about the man who owns it.”
“And what’s that?”
