Feehan have an alibi for the death of Portia Martinez in California?”
Scott shook his head. “Not going there, Nick.”
He didn’t give up. “Do you know for sure he was in Vermont when she was killed? Did he know this missing actor?”
“Feehan worked with a number of private students at various ski areas and didn’t keep good records,” Scott said. “It’ll take some time to sort everything out and work a timeline.”
“What about Marissa Neal?” Nick asked.
Scott clearly didn’t like Nick’s questions. “Not going there, either.” He shifted back to Rose, his expression blank, impassive. “Call me if you think of anything else.”
She watched him bypass an unsanded section of glare ice as he walked back to the cabins.
Nick pulled off a glove and zipped up her jacket. “Don’t let adrenaline fool you,” he said, his hand lingering at her collar. “It’s cold out here. You’ll cool off fast now that you’re still.” He smiled slightly. “Which I realize you know.”
“It’s easy to forget the basics when you’re emotionally involved. I don’t know why Dom’s cabin wasn’t set on fire.” She swallowed, her throat dry, tight. “Maybe because Robert didn’t get to it.”
She called Ranger and they went up the snow-covered stairs to Elijah’s deck. He had someone plow and shovel while he was away, but the three inches of snow that had fallen overnight could wait. She heard Nick on the stairs behind her and slipped inside through the slider. Snow fell off her boots onto the hardwood floor of the comfortable main room, but her brother wouldn’t care.
While Ranger sniffed out the place, Rose pulled off her hat and gloves and looked out the wall of sliding doors at the view of the lake. Nick entered the house through the slider next to her. She could feel his intensity, smelled the fire on him as he took in her brother’s house.
“Elijah loves this place,” she said. “He left home at nineteen. I was fourteen. I wrote to him almost every day that first year. I’d made it my goal. Three hundred sixty-five letters to my soldier brother.”
“Did he write back to you?”
“Some, but I didn’t expect an answer to every letter. Even if he hadn’t been a soldier, that would have been unrealistic. The long silences didn’t come until later, when he became a Green Beret.” The sky had cleared and was a bright winter blue against the white and gray landscape. “He bought this land three years ago and worked on this place whenever he was home.”
“He did a good job.”
“Pop would come down and help. He knew Elijah always wanted to return home to Black Falls. I think Pop left Jo the lakefront property because he believed she and Elijah were meant to be together. He discovered them in one of the cabins. Running off with Elijah was the only time Jo veered off the path she’d set for herself and did something crazy. Elijah says he’d have ended up in jail if he hadn’t gone into the army when he did.”
“But your father felt guilty,” Nick said.
“Not in the beginning. He came to believe he’d interfered with something that was meant to be. I think leaving Jo the cabins was a way for him to make amends. She wouldn’t have been here in November if he hadn’t. Who knows if or when she and Elijah would have gotten back together again.” Rose glanced at Nick, realized his gaze was on her, not the view. “Do you have a place you want to be? A place you think of as home?”
He shrugged as if he had never really considered such a question. “My father was career navy. We bounced around when I was growing up. I’m used to making a home where I am.” Humor played at the corners of his mouth. “I didn’t grow up in a small New England town where my family had lived for generations.”
“Not all Camerons stayed. For instance, some took off for Ohio after a brutal winter in the early nineteenth century.” Rose wasn’t letting him off the hook. “If you closed your eyes, clicked your heels together three times and whispered, ‘There’s no place like home,’ where would home be?”
“It’s not a place. It’s an attitude. It’s the people who’d be with me.”
His tone made her breath catch, but she saw more police cars arrive on the narrow lake road. “I should go check on Dominique. Nick, I was so scared. First Dom. Then…I thought it was Bowie in the burning cabin.”
“I know, sweetheart.” He slipped an arm around her. “I know.”
She leaned her head against him, his muscles taut, still tensed from wielding the splitter, carrying out first Dominique and then Robert. “I can’t imagine what Robert was thinking. None of this makes any sense. What about you? Are you okay?”
“No worries.” He drew her closer still and brushed his lips over the top of her head. She hadn’t even realized she’d pulled off her hat. “I’ll snowshoe back up to the lodge. I want to take another look at the campsite. The police are there now.”
“Dominique can’t be up to driving. I’ll take her back to town in her car. Someone there can give me a ride back to the lodge. Would you mind taking Ranger with you?”
“Sure. Ranger and I have bonded.”
“Say his name, then give a one-word command. Stick to basics.” Rose smiled. “Be the alpha dog. He’ll behave.”
“I love being the alpha dog.”
The humor helped her to absorb the events of the morning. “Nick…”
He slipped her hat out of her pocket and tucked it onto her head. “Soon, Rose,” he said softly. “We’ll figure all this out soon.”
Nineteen
D ominique put on an evergreen-colored canvas apron in the cafe kitchen. She’d wanted to go right back to work. Rose hadn’t argued and watched her friend hop onto a stool at the butcher-block worktable. Dominique was visibly trembling, still ashen from her ordeal at the lake.
Rose stood across the worktable from her. “Dom, what’s going on?”
“We’ll have a late lunch spurt because of the fire. It’ll bring people out.” She placed her hands on the clean wood and splayed her fingers, as if she weren’t sure what to do with herself. “I just have to think a minute.”
“The police want to talk to Bowie.”
She nodded. “Of course. It only makes sense.”
“Were you meeting him? Is that why you chose the lake for your run?”
Dominique looked up, her dark eyes clear, shining. “I wouldn’t say I was meeting him. I knew he’d be there. Excuse me, Rose. I really have to get busy.”
“Sure.”
As Rose started out of the kitchen, Dominique jumped off the stool and gave her a hug. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank Nick Martini for me, too.”
“Dom…”
She stood back, smiling, trembling even more. “Cooking’s my refuge.”
She returned to the worktable, and Rose went out through the swinging door to the dining room, where, in fact, business was picking up. Myrtle was behind the glass case, filling an order for fruit salad and house-made yogurt. “Dom’s back?”
“Yes,” Rose said. “Thankfully she wasn’t seriously injured. She’s more shaken up than anything.”
“She’ll make soup. It’ll be good for her.”
Rose noticed a coffee spill on the counter and grabbed a cloth and wiped it up. “Myrtle, did Dom tell you why she was going out to the lake?”
“She said she was going for a run.” Myrtle handed the fruit and yogurt to a teenager from town, took her money and turned back to Rose with a sigh. “If Andrei could see me now.”
Andrei Petrov was the Russian diplomat whose death Myrtle had looked into, bringing her to Lowell Whittaker’s attention. The result was the fire at her house—and, ultimately, her presence at Three Sisters Cafe on Main Street in Black Falls.
Myrtle fussed with the tie on her apron as she continued. “You’d think a serial arsonist who sets fires for his own pleasure
“Good points.” Rose helped herself to an apple from a plate on the counter. “Any idea what Dom’s
