Jodi Thomas - Twisted Creek

“Luke was just telling me he lives next door.” Nana pointed toward the wooded area. “He says he can help out around the place if we need anything done.”

“We don’t need help.” More honestly, I couldn’t afford to pay anyone. I didn’t realize my words might seem unkind until they’d already exited my mouth.

The big man stood to go. His clothes hung around him. He was more tall than thick.

“I’ll be going then,” he said without looking at me as he slipped out the open back door and vanished.

“We don’t need help, Nana,” I repeated.

She nodded, understanding more what I hadn’t said than what I had. Without a word, she began cleaning the kitchen. The counters were worn, the sink had a chip the size of a quarter out of one side, the refrigerator light blinked on and off while the door was open, but other than that, the place looked better than most where we’d cooked. There was no food, but all the pots, pans, and knives seemed to be there along with a working double oven.

By late afternoon, we had both the kitchen and the two rooms upstairs at least livable. I tossed out all of Uncle Jefferson’s medicine bottles along with the fishing magazines. Guessing from the full bottles, it looked like he quit taking his pills about six months ago. My detective brain cells reasoned that a man not taking his medicine wouldn’t drive into town to pick up new prescriptions, so someone must have been bringing them to him. Someone who didn’t bother to make sure he took them.

Another fact nagged at the back of my mind while I worked. Why would a man who’d stopped taking medicine leave the bottles around?

Nana’s take on Uncle Jefferson was slightly different. She noticed that it appeared he didn’t leave a clean stitch of clothing. According to her, he hung on to life until everything was dirty, then he kicked the bucket rather than do laundry.

I suggested maybe Blue-Eyed Luke stole the clean clothes, but after a quick inventory we discovered my uncle Jefferson was a small man. His clothes would almost fit me so he couldn’t have stood over five-feet-five and, judging from the piles of dirty things, he owned no underwear or socks.

Once we found an old ringer-washer in a shed out back, Nana wanted to wash his clothes, but I convinced her to burn most of them. The fabric was too worn to even make good rags. I saved back the few flannel shirts in good condition for myself and dropped the rest out the window. We carried them down to a campfire pit close to the water and poured enough gasoline over the pile to get a good fire going.

An hour before sunset, Nana went to the kitchen to fix our supper. She’d had me move the two old wingback chairs down from the apartment. We shoved them into what must have been built as a breakfast nook in the kitchen. She added a table big enough for two and a little black-and-white TV. Then she pulled out her sewing basket that she hadn’t unpacked from the van for two moves and placed it in front of one of the chairs as a stool.

I hadn’t liked the idea, but once she’d spread a cloth over the table the little space seemed to welcome us, a private little parlor in the corner of the kitchen.

Climbing the stairs, I wished we had enough furniture to make the apartment above as livable. My grandmother might not ever be able to change her environment, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t rearrange it. I hoped the outbuildings we hadn’t gotten to yet contained furniture, otherwise we’d use boxes for nightstands by the beds.

“Allie,” she called up from the kitchen. “You want catfish for supper?”

“Sure,” I answered, thinking she was kidding.

A few minutes later I smelled fish frying. The aroma drew me down the stairs. I hadn’t had my grandmother’s catfish since we’d left the farm.

“Where’d you get fish?” I asked as I came into the kitchen.

“Found it in the sink, so fresh I swear it was still wiggling.” Nana giggled. “Maybe it swam up the drain.”

I wouldn’t have been surprised, but I wasn’t about to look a gift fish in the mouth. I carried in the box of cooking supplies and combined them with the few staples Nana discovered stored in the freezer near the back door. We had enough to serve fried potatoes and hush puppies with the fish.

After we were both so full we could eat no more, Nana covered the leftovers with a tea towel and set them in the oven as she’d done every night of my childhood. Grandpa’s supper left to warm.

I started to mention her mistake, but a forty-year-old habit must be hard to break. The year after he’d died, many a morning I’d scraped dishes that she’d left in the oven, but since we’d been traveling she’d stopped the practice. Maybe because we usually didn’t have leftovers. Or maybe because she never felt at home…until now.

She waved good night and headed upstairs without a word.

I cleaned up the kitchen and walked out back to make sure the fire I’d built with old clothes hadn’t gotten out of hand. It might not look too good to burn down the property on my first day at the lake.

I was almost to the campfire before I noticed a shadow sitting close to the dying flames, his back to the house, his shoulders rounded forward.

“Luke?” I whispered. If he planned to kill us, he’d had all day to do it.

Blue Eyes turned around and stared at me. In the smoky firelight I swear I saw an intelligence in his gaze that would miss little. “Allie Daniels,” he whispered as if testing his memory.

I moved closer. “Thanks for the fish.”

He nodded so slightly I wasn’t sure I’d seen it. “I figured Old Jefferson would have wanted you to have fish your first night on the lake.”

“You knew him?”

Luke nodded again. “I came out summers to fish as a kid. He served with my granddad in the army. They’d fish all day and tell war stories half the night.”

“Know much about him?”

Luke shook his head. “I hadn’t been out in years. After my grandfather died, I always planned to drop by, but I only made it once in the past ten years.”

He looked out over the lake and I waited him out.

Finally, he added, “I know his mother’s relatives founded this place over a hundred years ago. Worked a ferry service across the creek. He was named after them, and this dock has been called Jefferson’s Crossing since the first settlers passed by here.”

I liked the name. I liked having a place with a name and not just an address. Before I thought to stop, my fears babbled out. “I think he made a mistake leaving it to me.”

Luke didn’t answer. He just stirred the rags around as the last of Jefferson’s old clothes burned. He was as easy to read as a billboard. Plain and simple. A loner who didn’t like people. Every inch of his body seemed to be telling me to leave.

“How far do you live from here?” I said, sounding more like an interrogator than a neighbor.

“Not far,” he answered, staring at me. “You finished growing?”

I hated comments about my height, or lack of it, but since I’d asked a personal question I guess he thought he had a right. I raised an eyebrow in challenge. “Which way?”

His blue eyes glanced down at my chest and I felt like I was back in junior high when I’d first developed. Then, I swear, he blushed when he finally met my gaze. A slow smile lifted the corner of his mouth. “Sorry, maybe I should have said, ‘How old are you?’ With those pigtails you could be fifteen.”

“I’m twenty-six.”

He nodded and moved away from the fire as if that was all he needed to know about me.

Feeling a chill, I watched the fire glowing in the night and tried to think of something to say. But I didn’t really want company and I guess he didn’t either. Every bone in my body hurt from cleaning, and a part of my mind was still mourning the “might have been” part of inheriting this place. I’d hoped for a cottage, not a big, old building that looked like it was put together with spare supplies. The store was empty, the café old and useless, and the apartment barely livable.

Trying to think positive, I listed as likes the big windows facing the lake and the huge rock wall that made the place seem like it had been part of this land forever. Also, if I was listing, I’d have to add Nana’s joy. She’d been humming gospel songs all day.

The moon came out and the air chilled, but I kept staring at the fire, forgetting Luke. I closed my eyes and listened to the sounds of the lake. A bird called somewhere on the other side. Every few minutes the splash of a fish or frog rippled the water now black in the night. A low buzz of summer’s last surviving insects stuttered in the air like a faraway telegraph. I could feel my heart slow to the rhythm.

The creak of wood along the dock ten yards away sounded and I looked up. Luke was gone.

It took a few minutes for my eyes to focus enough to see his form moving slowly along the dock over the water. He walked, removing his clothes fluidly as if he’d done it a thousand times.

His last stitch of clothing fell just before he dove into the water, slicing through with barely a ripple.

I stood, making out powerful arms reflecting in moonlight as he swam in long strokes toward the center of the lake. I could still hear his movements even after I lost sight of him in the inky water.

If it had been a normal day, I might have reacted to a strange man stripping and diving off my dock, but I hadn’t had a normal day in so long I wouldn’t recognize one if it came along.

I walked back to the house, locked the doors, and went up to bed.

2300 hours

Twisted Creek

Luke swam the lake trying to clear his mind. The strange woman unnerved him. She had an innocence about her, but at twenty-six, it had to be an act. He’d long ago given up taking people at face value. In his line of work everyone had secrets. Everyone had a past.

She was a rare mix though. A shy honesty about her blended with a body that would haunt his dreams. When he’d met her, he was sure he saw fear in her eyes, but tonight Allie had wandered out to the fire as if she trusted him. She hadn’t flirted at all, but she had to have known he was watching her. He decided the safest way to handle Allie Daniels was not to handle her at all…friendship, that’s what he’d offer, and nothing more until he knew who he was dealing with.

When he returned to the dock, she was gone. He wasn’t sure if he was glad or disappointed. The fire had died, leaving the dock so dark that he had to feel for his clothes.

He tugged on his jeans and carried the rest. Dropping off the side of the dock, he walked in the ankle-deep water until he circled onto his property, then crossed into the blackness of the trees. Scolding himself, he decided to be more withdrawn around her, telling her nothing. Despite her innocent act, if Jefferson’s death was not from natural causes, she was the most likely suspect.

Forcing his brain to look at only the facts, he reasoned: She had the most to gain from Jefferson’s death. For all he knew, the outdated tags on her van were stolen and she lived somewhere around here. Allie could have somehow worked her way into Jefferson’s good graces in the five years since Luke had visited the old man and talked him into leaving her the place. Then, she couldn’t wait for him to die naturally, so she helped him along. Even if she was small, how hard could it be to push an old man off the dock?

He laughed as he stepped onto the porch of his one-room log cabin. His theory didn’t hold water. Nana and Allie didn’t fit any profile of any kind of criminals. Allie didn’t seem the type to murder and he couldn’t imagine Nana driving the getaway van.

But that didn’t clear the fact that something was going on out here at the lake. Luke had seen signs. If someone had killed Jefferson, they might have done so because he noticed something he shouldn’t have seen. When he’d circled the lake on foot yesterday, Luke swore he smelled meth cooking, even if he couldn’t find it. Half the cabins out here, including his own, weren’t on any map anywhere.

A chilling thought crossed his mind. If someone killed Jefferson Platt, he might go after Allie and Nana next.

Luke locked his door, then walked past his couch and swung up to a tiny loft in the rafters of his cabin. He’d slept there as a kid and now the space barely accommodated his six-foot height, but if someone came through the door, he’d be wide awake before they could spot him.

In his line of work it paid to be where people did not expect him to be.

Sometime after dawn, I smelled biscuits baking. Without bothering to open my eyes, I took a deep breath knowing the aroma was just a hangover from my dreams. I wanted to enjoy it as long as possible. Last night I’d planned to stay awake and worry about which bed Uncle Jefferson spent his last night on, but I’d fallen asleep before I could get all my worries organized.