Page 48 of The Souls of Lost Lake
“Thank you,” Meghan breathed. She ran her index finger around the rim of her mug. “Ben thinks I’m—well, I can’t blame him.” She laughed nervously. “I know my entire theory has more holes in it than a sieve, but I also know what my baby told me. And I know the stories of Ava Coons. I can’t explain how it relates to Jasmine, but I believe therehasto be a connection of some sort.”
Wren took a sip of her coffee. “And the police have followed up on it?”
Meghan nodded. “They have. Yes. To the degree they’ve searched for the woman Jasmine saw. But even though Tempter’s Creek is a small town, there’s still five thousand or more people—not counting the summer tourists.”
“We have a couple hundred at camp alone,” Wren acknowledged.
“Right. So my description could fit many people.”
“Can you run it by me again?” Wren was not a detective by any means, but she was curious now to see if what Meghan had to say aligned at all with the shadowy form she’d spotted last night in the Markhams’ driveway.
Meghan reached for her purse that was hanging from the back of her chair. She opened the quilted number with pink tassels and tugged out a spiral notebook. Paging through it, she set it onthe table and turned it for Wren to see. It was a pencil sketch of a woman’s face, not unlike an FBI artist’s sketch, which carried down to her shoulders. The woman was older, probably in her sixties. Her hair was parted down the middle and pulled into braids. She had overall straps over her shoulders. Her face was relatively nondescript, and outside of the overalls, there wasn’t anything particular to match to the vision Wren had seen the night before.
“I know it’s not much, but it’s based on what Jasmine told me. She said this woman came out of the woods at the park and talked to her for a few minutes. Somehow I missed it. I was on the phone with my mom, and I—” Meghan choked up and looked away quickly.
“But that wasn’t when Jasmine disappeared, was it?”
“No.”
“Yet you went back to the park the following day, and then Jasmine went missing?”
Meghan inhaled a shuddering breath. “Yes. I-I didn’t sense any danger. Tempter’s Creek is small, and I’m familiar with it. It’s not unusual for a stranger to say something to a child. Not here.”
Wren understood, though she realized many wouldn’t. Small northern towns were a bit like stepping back into time. “Why do you think this woman is Ava Coons?”
Meghan reached for her sketch pad and pulled it back toward herself. She rolled her eyes, either in exasperation that no one believed her or because she felt it was as irrational as it truly sounded. “BecauseJasminesaid it was Ava Coons.”
“Did Jasmine know the story of Ava Coons?” Wren found it hard to believe someone would have seen fit to terrify a six-year-old with the campfire tale of an ax-murdering woman.
Meghan blanched. “Yes. Last year, my older brother and his family joined us at our cabin here for a week during the summer. He thrives on those sorts of tales, so he was telling his own kids. Jasmine overheard it. She slept with Ben and I for three nights. She was so scared that Ava Coons was going to emerge from the woodsand drag her into them, making her vanish. Or worse, kill her.” Meghan’s voice hitched. She stifled a sob, pressing her fingertips to her mouth as if it would hold back the gale of tears brewing below the surface. The look she leveled on Wren was desperation at its worst. “When she saw this woman, she was sure of it, but she said thatthisAva Coons wasniceand nothing like Uncle Stone’s campfire story.”
“Did Jasmine say what she and the woman talked about?” Wren couldn’t fathom anyone being cruel enough toposeas Ava Coons for a child, but then crackpots weren’t as rare as they used to be these days.
Meghan’s lips worked back and forth, her chin dimpling from holding back tears. She shook her head. “Just—Jasmine’s shoes. They talked about her shoes.”
“Her shoes?”
Meghan nodded. “Jasmine had on her new purple tennis shoes. The woman kept telling Jasmine how pretty they were. How her favorite color was green, but purple was pretty too.”
Shoes.
A conversation with Jasmine about shoes. Leaving a child’s doll shoe on the Markhams’ stoop the night before?
No. Wren dismissed it, even though part of her didn’t want to. It was too circumstantial. Farfetched and definitely overreaching. She was getting ahead of herself. Ahead of Meghan. If Wren wasn’t careful,she’dbe to blame for taking Meghan into the dark imaginations of theories and make-believe stories. It wasn’t a place the mother of a missing girl belonged. It wasn’t a place where Wren belonged either.
They returned to the park from which Jasmine had disappeared. Meghan and Wren got out of Wren’s truck, Meghan wrapping her cardigan around her like a shield, even though it was nearing eighty degrees. Wren grabbed a baseball cap from the back seatand jammed it on her head, tugging her hair through the hole in the back. Mosquitoes swarmed the park, especially since there was so much shade here. To avoid getting eaten alive, Wren grabbed a can of bug spray and doused herself while Meghan waited.
“Want some?” She offered it to Jasmine’s mom.
Meghan shook her head. “I already have lemongrass and eucalyptus on.”
Essential oils. Any other time, Wren would have quipped back to the woman a few years her senior that “good luck” was in order. She’d never known any essential-oil brew to work against the Wisconsin bloodsucking vampires. One hundred percent DEET was most effective, even if it poisoned the rest of you.
Ready, Wren shut the car door and hit the locks. The seesaw was squeaking as two children kicked the ground in an opposite rhythm. The swing set was very occupied. A boy was trying the ever-so-popular attempt to swing oneself over the crossbar while his mother shouted “Too high, too high!” at him.
“It was over here.” Meghan interrupted Wren’s observation, pointing to a set of picnic tables underneath an oak tree. “I was there, talking to my mom on the phone. Jasmine had been on the slide there.” She pointed to a slide off to the side by its lonesome. “She saw Ava Coons there.” Meghan motioned to the edge of the woods, where a dirt trail appeared to be carved out of the earth and disappeared into the forest. Wren hiked toward it with Meghan on her heels.
“I don’t know why there’s a trail there,” Meghan said.
