Page 57 of The Souls of Lost Lake
Wren still couldn’t find words.
Meghan filled the silence. “I know they found blood, but I refuse...” Her voice caught, and she held her fingers to her lips. “I won’t go there. Not yet.”
“There’s no reason to. Results haven’t come in yet, and it may be nothing.” That might have been the lamest thing she’d ever said.Blood was never nothing. Wren winced and adjusted her grip on the steering wheel. Distract. They needed to distract from the idea of death.
“This is why we need to go chat with Wayne Sanderson. His family has been in Tempter’s Creek for over a hundred years. If anyone knows the true story of the Coons family, I’d think it would be him.”
Meghan was rustling through her purse. She found her ChapStick and uncapped it, swiping it across her lips. Wren noticed the mother’s hand had a definitive tremor to it. Suppressed nerves, emotion, and terror. She pushed the cap back on. “Is he a historian for the town?”
Wren shook her head. “No. But Gary—my friend Eddie’s dad—told me this morning that Wayne used to help at the camp years ago. He’s one who has invested himself into the people of this area—the town’s history and such.”
“Why does his name, Sanderson, sound so familiar to me?” Meghan dropped the ChapStick back into her purse.
Wren steered her truck onto a side road. “Because the Sanderson name is what Tempter’s Creek is built on. Logging. They owned the sawmill that used to run this town.”
“They don’t anymore?” Meghan zipped her purse shut.
Wren shrugged. “Logging isn’t as big around here as it was back then, especially with so much of the forest being state or federal land now. A lot of folks work outside of Tempter’s Creek. At the medical facilities in the bigger surrounding towns, or there’s a plastic manufacturing plant about forty-five minutes from here that many work at.”
The street was lined with oak and maple. Little boxy houses with well-maintained flower beds dotted the neighborhood, their badly cracked walks evidence the people here lived on low-to-moderate incomes. Wren strained to see the house numbers, and when she spotted Wayne Sanderson’s house, she parked on the street alongside it and killed the engine.
“Ready?”
Meghan nodded, and they both exited the truck. Wren led the way to the front door. She had called Wayne earlier, dropped Gary Markham’s name for a mutual tie, and received an invitation from the older man.
Wayne answered the door looking every bit the part of a Northwoodsman. His buffalo plaid flannel shirt seemed far too warm for the late-spring sun, but the sleeves were rolled up and it was unbuttoned at the neckline to reveal a clean white undershirt. Wire-framed glasses were propped on his nose, his gray hair parted on the side and combed neatly into place. He was clean-shaven. For a man who was sixty-something, he showed the remnants of being quite handsome in his younger years.
“Wren? Mrs. Riviera? Come in! Come in!” His smile warmed Wren’s insides and made her instantly feel like she could ask the man anything. He also seemed very aware of Meghan’s delicate mental state, muttering immediately that he’d been praying for Jasmine and offering her a beverage.
They walked through the front room, the kitchen, and to a back door that led onto a small deck. An umbrella table was waiting, with four cushioned patio chairs positioned around it. On the table were a pitcher of ice water and mismatched glasses, even a plate of cookies. Nutter Butters, if Wren’s guess was accurate.
“Have a seat!” Wayne’s smile reached his eyes. He pulled out a chair for Meghan, who took the offer graciously. “There’re cookies and some ice water, if you like?”
Wren nodded. She never turned down a cookie.
Once they were settled, Wayne leaned back in his chair and hooked his ankle over his opposite leg. “So, you’re wanting to learn about Ava Coons?” He smiled. “I haven’t told that story for some time.”
Wren returned his smile politely. “We’re actually less interested in the campfire story than what really happened to the Coons family. Where they ended up. Did Ava marry, have children? That sortof thing.” She didn’t explain—nor did she intend to—the notion that little Jasmine had seen Ava Coons in the woods.
“Yes, well, so much of the history gets shrouded with story and lore. It’s sometimes hard to know what is accurate and what’s not.”
“I guess we’re more interested in the Coons family after the story.”
“Ahhh.” Wayne nodded and took a sip of his water. “Well, that is a bit of a question.” He leaned forward and set the glass on the table with aclinkof glass on glass. “You see, the story goes that Ava Coons vanished in the woods, and no one saw her again after the murders.”
Wren glanced at Meghan, praying this would not upset her more than help her.
Wayne continued. “Her family’s murders, of course, when Ava was a child, but then there were also two killings in Tempter’s Creek in the 1930s. Similar fashion to how they assume her family was killed.”
“By an ax?” Meghan inserted.
It relieved Wren to hear Meghan’s investment in the conversation and that she wasn’t going to melt down. Yet anyway.
“That’s what they say. A man named Hubbard and then some other woman. Folks felt Ava Coons was to blame for it—I suppose ’cause the M.O. was like her own family’s passing. But shortly after, that’s when she disappeared, and no one ever saw her again.”
“So, no one knows if she ever married, or had children, or—?” Wren wasn’t even sure where she was going with that theory.
Wayne lifted his shoulders in an apologetic shrug. “Don’t know. If she did, I suppose her offspring moved far away from Tempter’s Creek. She probably did too. This wasn’t a place where Ava Coons was going to settle and get any peace. And if she married, we’ve no idea what her last name changed to.”
