Lakeside Mystery
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Carol Ericson
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21
Chapter One
A shiver snaked through Ashlynn’s body, even though the sun streamed through the branches of the trees, creating a dappled pattern on the ground. She hugged herself, clutching her pepper spray in one hand against her upper arm. Her brother, Sean, had agreed to meet someone near a lake...and it hadn’t ended well for him.
Of course, she wasn’t exactly meeting someone, and Sean had traipsed out in the dead of night. Unlike her foolish brother, she’d ventured out in the middle of the day with hikers panting along the trail and mountain bikers kicking up dirt as they trundled up the hill. Her nose tingled with tears and she wiped her sleeve across it. Nobody could tell Sean anything.
He had been a successful true crime blogger because he’d embraced danger, taken those necessary risks. She’d have to remold herself in his image if she hoped to keep his blog going strong. She didn’t want LA Confidential to die with her brother.
She puffed out her cheeks and trudged onward. She’d venture as far as the lake, have a look around, maybe take a few pictures, and wait for the next message—if there was a next message. If her anonymous contact didn’t send her another communication after the first one about a submerged car in Lake Kawayu, she’d look for another story to feature on the blog.
Stopping under a tree, she tapped her phone to bring up the trail map and had to lunge out of the way of oncoming runners. She called into their dust. “Where’s the turnoff for the lake?”
One of them yelled something unintelligible but pointed to his right. Another several yards and Ashlynn spotted the weathered sign pointing toward Lake Kawayu. How could a car possibly make its way down a trail like this to plunge into a lake?
She veered to the right between two oaks, their leaves dripping water from the rain the day before.
Ashlynn shuffled downhill through the debris of leaves, twigs and pebbles that littered the trail. Any minute she expected to see the lake through the branches of the trees, but spring had done its job and the forest bloomed and flourished around her so that she could barely see beyond the next bend.
When the foliage thinned, and a couple toting a fiberglass canoe squeezed past her, she knew she was close.
She rounded the next corner and caught her breath as a dark blue ripple appeared below. She had to scrabble down a small incline to reach the shore of the lake, and she placed her hands on her hips and took a deep breath of the pine and earthy muddy scent that assailed her.
She scanned the perimeter of the body of water, her gaze lingering on the north shore where a dirt parking lot boasted several cars belonging to people who knew they didn’t need to hike a mile and a half to reach the lake. She also realized that if a car were going to plunge into the water, that parking lot had to be its origination point.
Shading her eyes, she judged the distance to the parking lot to be another half mile. She glanced at the sturdy sneakers on her feet and pulled a bottle of water from her small daypack. She took a long gulp of water and watched the couple launch their canoe into the lake with a splash. She’d come prepared—and she needed a new story for the blog.
Her shoes crunched the coarse sand lakeside as she started walking the semicircle to the parking lot. She didn’t know why her anonymous tipster had contacted her—probably because LA Confidential still sported the sheen of her brother’s success—but she didn’t want to dismiss it. Sean had told her some of his best stories started as anonymous bits of information.
If this were just a submerged car, she’d blow it off, but the tipster had claimed there was a dead body in the car. The least she could do was check it out. It’s not like she had a lot on her plate. She’d quit her job at the magazine when Sean was...killed. She couldn’t go back to it now, and she didn’t want to. Sean had died just when his blog had hit peak popularity, and she felt an obligation to carry on with it. She’d had a modicum of success with her first story—an exposé of Reed Dufrain, addiction recovery guru turned drug dealer—but she couldn’t rest on her laurels.
A few families frolicked in the water, and Ashlynn shivered. Must be out-of-towners, because it was definitely too cold for thin-blooded Angelenos to take a dip. Summer was still a season away, and the sun starting to make its appearance every day lacked the wattage of an August or September in LA.
Still, Ashlynn had a one-piece on under her clothes and a towel rolled up in her pack. How else could she spot a submerged car? Maybe one of these swimmers would discover it first and save her the trouble of a chilly dip.
When she reached the parking lot, she downed more water from her bottle. She nodded at a group stoking the flames in a hibachi, paper plates of bratwurst and burgers standing by. She was pretty sure the city didn’t allow an open fire like that in Angeles Crest, but she wasn’t here to be Smokey the Bear’s helper.
She wandered to the edge of the dirt lot, facing the water. No barrier or lip separated the lot from the lakeshore, and plenty of tire tracks indicated that people drove right up to the water’s edge. Into the water?
She scuffed through the sand and rocks up to the dark, oily water lapping the banks. No swimmers had ventured into the lake from the parking area. They most likely preferred the cleaner-looking water down from the trees, but that probably explained why nobody had found the car yet.
Sighing, Ashlynn swung the pack off her back and dropped it in the dirt. She fished out her towel, shook it and set it next to her daypack. Then she toed off her shoes and wriggled free of her clothes, quickly, kicking both onto the towel.
She waded into the water, her arms folded over her chest, goose bumps crawling across her bare flesh. When the water reached her hips, she pushed off the rocky bottom with her feet and paddled into the murky lake. The parking lot wasn’t that wide and a car launched from the banks couldn’t go that far. She did a breaststroke in a line horizontal to the shore, kicking her legs in a wide circle and peering into the water. She moved a little farther into the water and repeated her course back the other way.
A few people from the barbecuing bunch in the parking lot stood at its edge, staring at her. She supposed she must look a little crazy to people watching, but as she took another stroke, she muttered, “I’ll never see them again.”
The lake had gotten deep fast, and her toes no longer even skimmed the bottom. A whole car could definitely be submerged under the water and nobody would notice it from the shore.
As she circled into another wide turn, her fluttering feet made contact with something hard and smooth...and big. Holding her breath, she ducked beneath the water and opened her eyes. She flipped and swam downward for a few feet. Her hands met solid metal before she saw its glint.
Her lungs bursting, she propelled herself to the surface and gasped in a long breath. She’d found the car. Was there a body inside?
DETECTIVE DENVER HOLT stared over his clenched hands on the steering wheel at a knot of people gathered at the edge of the murky lake. The hoist to lift the car from the cloudy depths was already in place, and he could imagine the divers below hooking up the winches. His captain had sent him on another thrilling adventure to assist the traffic division with an accident or possible stolen while his name languished on the list for Robbery-Homicide.
He smacked the steering wheel with the heels of his hands. He’d sworn to protect and serve—even victims of auto theft. He exited his sedan and strode toward the commotion, his wing tips crunching the sand and gravel on the shore of the lake.
“Detective Holt.” Flashing his badge at the uniform, he asked, “Have the divers indicated yet if there’s anyone in the car?”
“Officer Brooks.” Brooks tapped his nametag and shrugged. “If they found anything, they haven’t told me about it. I’m here for crowd control.”
Denver scanned the smattering of people and smirked. Some crowd. “Who discovered the car?”
Brooks jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “The woman with the towel and the wet hair—Ashlynn Hughes.”
Denver lifted his sunglasses and squinted at a redhead wearing jeans, a wet T-shirt sticking to her body. She’d draped a striped towel over her shoulders.
He snorted. “What did she do, jump off her canoe to get a closer look?”
“She wasn’t in a canoe. She saw it while she was swimming.” The cop rolled his eyes and held up one hand. “I know, I know. Don’t ask me.”
“How close are they to hauling it out?” Denver dropped his sunglasses back over his eyes and fished his notebook from his jacket pocket.
“They’ve been at it for a while. Should be anytime now.”
“Thanks, man.” Denver picked his way across the rocky shoreline to the woman fluffing the towel through her red locks that glinted with fire every time they caught the sun.
“Ms. Hughes?” He thrust out his hand. Even in bare feet, this tall drink of water almost stood nose to nose with him. “I’m Detective Denver Holt. I understand you’re the one who spotted the car and called 9-1-1.”
She grasped his hand with a firm slightly damp grip. “I am. I mean it’s weird, right? A car in the lake? I wasn’t just going to swim on by without telling someone.”
His pulse jumped and his gaze behind his dark lenses sharpened. That was a lot of words for a simple yes. “Weird. Definitely weird. Could be an accident, stolen car, insurance fraud. Thanks for calling it in, Ms. Hughes.”
Her shoulders beneath the towel slumped as she nodded. “Yeah, I thought so. You can call me Ashlynn.”
“Okay... Ashlynn.” He flipped open his notebook. “What were you doing in the lake?”
Her blue eyes widened. “What?”
“The lake.” He leveled a finger at the body of water. “What were you doing?”
“Swimming.” She plucked her soggy T-shirt from her chest, revealing the outline of a one-piece suit beneath. “I went for a swim.”
Denver tipped his head back to take in the sky with a few clouds scudding across the sun and hunched into his suit jacket against the sudden breeze. “Not exactly swimming weather.”
She flapped her hand toward a few kids paddling and splashing in the water beyond the parking lot. “Tell them that. Some of us aren’t as...sensitive as you are, Detective.”
He cracked a smile. He should’ve expected feisty with that hair. “So, you decided to drive down to Lake Kawayu and head straight from the parking lot to the water for a swim, and while paddling through the...crystal-clear water you notice a car below you?”
She jutted out one slim hip and wedged a fist on the curve. “Don’t put words in my mouth, Detective Holt. I hiked down the trail to get here and jumped in the lake to cool off. While I was swimming, I went vertical to make sure I wasn’t going too far out, and my feet skimmed a slab of metal—not what you’d expect to find in a lake.”
“Not what I’d expect.” He tapped his pen against the notebook. “You ducked down to see what you could see?”
“Yes, and even though the water was cloudy, it was evident that I was floating above a car. I swam back to the shore and called 9-1-1.”
“Did you see anything inside the car?” He glanced over his shoulder at the beeping sound from the tow truck. They’d find out soon enough anyway.
She clasped her hands in front of her, knotting her fingers, her sassy demeanor fading as fast as the sun overhead. “I—I didn’t get a good look. I didn’t want to dive down any deeper, and it was dark and murky.”
“Good decision. Did anyone else go into the water after you to take a look?” He made a half-turn to watch the progress of the car as the roof broke the surface of the lake and the water sluiced over the metal.
“I didn’t tell anyone what I’d found. I called 9-1-1 and waited for the police. These other people started gathering when the cop car showed up, and then the officer wouldn’t let anyone in the water after that.” She bit her bottom lip as the dark sedan cleared the water and swung from the pulleys like a bloated fish on the line.
Denver shaded his eyes against the sun glinting off the lake. “Doesn’t look like it’s been sitting there too long.”
She shivered and rubbed her arms. “No, it doesn’t.”
“Thanks for the information, Ms. Hughes.” He stuffed his notebook into his pocket. As he turned, she covered her mouth with both hands.
He stopped. “You don’t recognize the car, do you?”
“No, no, of course not.”
He strode toward the tow truck, grabbing his cell phone from his pocket. He took several pictures of the car as it dangled above the lake.
He stood back as the winch settled the vehicle on the shore with a groan, water pouring from its orifices. He borrowed a flashlight from Brooks and crept toward the waterlogged car, which was still hissing and weeping. He leaned toward the windows and aimed the beam of light inside. It illuminated the empty front seat He shifted the focus to the back seat and saw nothing.
He let out a breath and called to one of the divers emerging from the lake, removing his mask. “Anything or...anyone around the car down there?”
“Nope, but the doors were closed and no broken windows, as you can see, so it doesn’t look like anyone escaped from the vehicle, either.”
“But the water pressure could’ve closed an open door, right?”
“Could happen.”
“Key fob’s in the cup holder.” Denver pulled on a pair of gloves and tugged on the door handle. The door opened with a whooshing sound. More water gushed from the car, soaking his shoes. He leaned inside and snatched the key fob from the cup holder.
He almost bumped into Ashlynn Hughes as he backed out of the vehicle. She’d followed him beyond the yellow tape.
“Nothing in the car?” Her breathless voice matched her wide eyes and wayward hair.
It was like the shock of finding a submerged car was just hitting her.
“Nothing.” He cupped her elbow. “You can move back, Ms. Hughes.”
She shuffled back a few steps as he raised his phone to take pictures of the California license plate and the interior. He’d call it in. They still might be able to read the vehicle registration if it hadn’t gotten too soggy. The car looked new. Maybe someone had stolen it or abandoned it for insurance fraud. Different scenarios popped into his head as he took pictures. They’d have to get into that trunk, too.
“Are you going to check the trunk?”
The redhead was still hovering, and he swung around, phone in hand. “You really need to step away, Ms. Hughes.”
“Ashlynn, and don’t you usually open the trunk?” Her shirt had dried, but her teeth chattered, and she pulled the towel tighter around her body.
Officer Brooks huddled close to the rear of the car with a crowbar in his hand. “Do you want me to do the honors?”
“The key fob was in the cup holder.” Denver dangled it from his finger. His thumb trembled slightly as he smoothed it across the trunk button on the fob. Then he stabbed it.
The lock clicked and one of the divers, who was standing behind Brooks, let out a sigh. Denver held his breath as he nudged up the trunk with two gloved fingers.
The lid swung high, and Denver’s heart slammed against his chest. Looked like he’d got his homicide, after all.
