Page 76 of Echoes at Driftwood Cottage

“Yes, well, that information wasn’t mentioned in the incident report either. The report simply referred to them as the owners.”

“That’s convenient,” Rowan muttered. “This whole thing sounds like a cover-up.”

“Probably. But I can’t change the official report twenty-four years after the fact. As I was saying, somehow the press got wind of the party, thrown by an influential member of the community and someone invented the story about Tamsin saving the little girl from drowning. I seriously doubt that it’s true.”

“But what if I could describe this beach house? It had a huge indoor swimming pool, didn’t it? Tamsin drowned in a pool inside a huge aquatic room,” Rowan declared.

“She did. And that information was in the story you sent me. I looked up the address of the house online,” Eastlyn offered. “It’s one of those mansions with a three-sixty view of the beach. The property search yielded seventy-odd photos over the years each time the house hit the market. Images of the indoor pool were part of a January 2000 real estate listing. Anyone could’ve viewed the photos online at any time.”

“But I haven’t looked up the house or the photos,” Rowan proclaimed. “You told me to try and remember certain specifics about my childhood. I’ve been thinking back to those days. Gwynn was always taking me to parties. Some of them were in really nice houses. I vaguely remember running around in one with a spa-type room that had a big pool. In one corner was a fountain. On the opposite end was a hot tub. What if these witnesses didn’t make up the story about the little girl falling into the pool? What if it’s true? What if Tamsin really did jump into that pool thinking she could save a child from drowning? The little girl apparently couldn’t swim. Maybe someone made these witnesses change their story after the newspaper article came out.”

“That’s a lot of ifs and maybes,” Eastlyn pointed out. “I need facts.”

Rowan made a grunting noise from her throat. “Maybe if someone could hypnotize me or something I’d remember more. It would scare any child if they fell into a huge pool like that and couldn’t swim. It would explain why I’ve been dreaming about falling into water in a backyard pool at a fancy house, sinking, and screaming for help. Or trying to scream. But no one comes to save me. I have this memory of the strong odor and chemical taste of chlorine. Does that mean I remember falling into a large swimming pool into the deep end?”

“It would explain your phobia about water,” Daniel provided from the doorway.

Eastlyn shifted her feet to glare at Daniel. “Look, her memory is obviously faulty. We don’t even know she was this child. We don’t even know for sure if there was a child present at Tamsin’s drowning. And if she didn’t fall into a backyard pool, she would’ve fallen into a room with a huge glass ceiling.”

“Okay, maybe I got the facts wrong. I was four,” Rowan snapped. When Daniel made a move toward her, she realized how crazy it all sounded. “I’ll never know the truth, will I?”

“We could ask Marley Lennox to recommend someone to help you try and remember,” Daniel suggested, snaking his arm around her waist. “It couldn’t hurt.”

“You did mention Marley a while back.”

Eastlyn lifted a shoulder. “Look, I don’t have a degree in psychology. But my guess would be that your mind blanked out this traumatic event, whatever it was, and you pushed it out of your subconscious until now. You want to remember. You really do. Something about living here again has triggered that recessed memory about drowning. Maybe you’ve known all along that you really weren’t Rowan Eaton. And this drowning theory is a way to help you cope.”

“But is there any way to find out if Gwynn was at the same party? That would be the connection. I could live with knowing there’s a connection between Tamsin’s drowning and Gwynn being there. That would mean that my near-drowning was real. And that something else happened at that party. Why? Because the date on that headstone is significant. Who goes to the trouble of burying a phony child? You can’t possibly ignore the two events occurring on the same day.”

“If there’s a link, I haven’t found it yet,” Eastlyn admitted. “As for the rest, we’re still digging.”

“My memory of the water is too vivid not to be real,” Rowan pushed, refusing to give an inch. “Just because you can’t find the link between those two women doesn’t mean Gwynn wasn’t a guest at the Nichols’ party. It doesn’t mean I wasn’t there to fall into the pool.” Getting nowhere with Eastlyn, she decided to switch gears. “Have they finished the autopsy on Gwynn yet? Because I need to plan a funeral. It just so happens there’s already an empty grave waiting for her at Eternal Gardens.”

After Eastlyn had gone, Daniel held a summit meeting inside the shop’s dining area. “Just because the cops can’t find a link doesn’t mean there isn’t one.”

“Then you believe I’m the child in the story?” Rowan repeated. “You aren’t just saying that?”

“I think you’re afraid of water because of something that happened at that party. Yes. It’s not a coincidence that the date on the headstone was November 27th. I think something else happened at that party that ended up in the couple getting murdered. It doesn’t have to be a drowning that triggered your trauma.”

Will nodded. “But it’s hard to prove a negative. I know what I’m talking about. Nobody believed me when I said I wanted to find Hallie. They all thought I was nuts. Everyone told me she had probably been swept out to sea and that’s why her body hadn’t washed up on the shoreline. We were in the same cabin on the boat until it broke apart. How could I survive and Hallie not? Even if it takes me the rest of my life, I’ll keep looking. Why? Because until I get a definitive answer, I’ll believe she survived. So, I understand what you’re going through. I understand why you need to know what happened. The problem is that the scope of this thing means the people you trusted were likely involved in a string of sinister crimes.”

“If what we think is true,” Mamie began, sitting at one of the little tables munching on an ice cream cone, “then we’re talking about human trafficking, taking babies from their parents and passing them off as available children to adopt. That takes a horrible kind of individual. A double homicide is only part of this. And yet, I stood behind Daniel earlier and listened to the female officer try to put the pieces together. I don’t think the police have a clue what really happened at this party. How are they going to solve a double murder if the facts are wrong in the reports?”

“If Eastlyn can track down the people at the party, then so can we,” Daniel urged. “Maybe they’d be more likely to speak to us versus law enforcement.”

“I’ll send an email to Phoebe asking if she has anything on the influential people who used to hang out with Nichols.” Rowan leaned back in her chair, considering another possibility. “Maybe we’re thinking about this all wrong. We need to stick to the people we know were the main players.”

Daniel sat up straighter. “We’re approaching this all wrong, asking the wrong questions. Jim and Lynette are the obvious people we’ve overlooked. They had both a connection to Redwood City and the commune. They’re the main suspects in the double murders of a couple. We need to start over and talk to the people on that list about Jim and Lynette. Instead of asking about Gwynn, we need to know if Jim and Lynette were at that party on the 27th.”

After agreeing on the questions they should ask, they got to work, splitting up the list into four parts. It took almost four hours of phone banking before Will found anyone willing to talk. That person led them to yet another untapped group who knew Jim and Lynette better than most.

And the picture they painted was far from the rosy, cheery couple Rowan had grown to love.

Chapter Twenty-One

Will managed to dig deeper into Jim and Lynette’s background and uncover facts no one else had tapped into, let alone, were willing to reveal. It helped to have a reporter with savvy research skills on their side who could verify information from at least ten different sources.

After waiting two more agonizing days for Brent to summon them into his office, Rowan and Daniel showed up, carrying a thick folder with facts and figures they were sure would blow the case wide open.

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