Page 40 of Tempest at Annabel's Lighthouse
“Sure!” Shea perked up, a little surprised Pete was still engaging in their conversation. “Or some elusive truth someone wanted kept buried. Apparently, he was researching another bit of history surrounding the lighthouse. A woman named Rebecca who showed up here in the late 1870s, and she didn’t know who she was. It sounds like she had amnesia or something.”
“I’d start there then.” Pete sniffed, balling up the paper towel his sandwich had been wrapped in.
“And look for what?” Shea knew Pete wouldn’t have a clue, but she asked rhetorically, more to herself than to him.
“I don’t know.” Pete surprised her with an answer as he pushed himself off the table. “But the bigger question, if you opt for the murder theory, is why Jonathan Marks digging into all of this would have any effect on someone wanting to kill him?” Pete shoved the wadded paper towel into the pocket ofhis jeans. “I’m going to go patch up that woodpecker hole in the trim over the back door.”
The swift change of subject whiplashed Shea from her investigative thoughts, and she frowned. “Holt will do that. This is his property.”
Pete shrugged. “I don’t mind helping. Gives me something to do. I’ll give him a call and make sure he’s okay with it.”
“Ope!” Shea’s voice squeaked.
Pete shot her a quick look. “Is that all right?”
“Yeah. Yeah, that’s fine.” She answered too quickly, and she knew it. Pete’s eyes narrowed, and then his expression normalized.
“Great.”
“Have fun.” She was still too cheery.
Pete lifted his hand in a backward wave as he hiked back toward the lighthouse.
Shea spun around to face Lake Superior again, noting how it blended with the sky at the horizon. She had to pull herself together. She hadn’t done anything wrong by sharing a pastie—which had been better than she’d expected—with Holt. It hardly equated to an affair.
She hated to admit it, but Pete was right. What had Jonathan Marks stumbled upon that would be worth someone killing him over? Or had he truly just lost himself in it all—Annabel’s ghost notwithstanding—and was driven to end his life? Pete had made sense. If she found nothing, then it made the argument that there might be a hidden motive for murder a moot point—at least in relation to Annabel’s Lighthouse. But in the process, she might find something intriguing to add to her book. And if digging into this bit of the lighthouse’s history really had driven Jonathan Marks crazy, then—well, that added some spice to the story as well.
Shea shoved off the picnic table. Best get to it, she determined, before Annabel decided to break another window—or worse.
17
SHE PROBABLY HAD INSOMNIA.Shea stared at the ceiling, knowing even as she thought this, that there was an entirely different reason for her not sleeping. The fact that Pete’s snoring could be heard an entire floor above in the attic was part of it. The other part was because to get to the bathroom, he had to come down the metal spiral stairs of the lighthouse, through her room—the lightkeeper’s room—into the hallway beyond. Horribly distracting, considering Pete went to the bathroom twice a night, and because the last time she’d bothered to see him past eleven o’clock at night was at least a year ago. And during that time, he had for some reason decided to start sleeping without a shirt.
He might be the most boring man alive, but there was something to be said about naked broad shoulders in the moonlight.
With a growl, Shea rolled over in the bed, punching her pillow. The podcast on her phone had long since expired, and now she was conjuring upfeelingsfor her husband. The heart was fickle, but at least she didn’t have to feel guilty about these thoughts since Petewasher husband after all.
Nevertheless, she had no intention of a midnight jaunt to the bedroom upstairs. Seduction was the furthest thing fromher mind. She had come here tobe alone. She snatched up her phone and thumbed through a few bookmarked sites that were inspirational and meant to help encourage self-care. She needed to remember that despite her book research, her other reason for coming here was to get back in touch with herself. To heal. To rest. To bandage her tired, sore heart.
What was it her favorite women’s retreat speaker from church had said when she’d attended last year?“Until you take care of your inner self, your whole being, and find yourself grounded firmly where you need to stand, you can’t take care of anyone else. Even Jesus went off to be alone. So should you.”
That was all Shea had needed to hear, even though she wasn’t fond of the chic and cute speaker, who claimed to be forty-seven but looked to be twenty-three. Well, if becoming self-grounded was church-approved and helped her stay young, then sign her up!
Except life was creeping in already. Pete. The broken windshield. The convoluted murder-suicide or whatever it was that had happened. Wasn’t self-care about reflection, coffee, quilts, a sepia-toned filter with neutral colors that inspired a hygge lifestyle beautiful enough for the socials? Not to mention, it seemed like the more she focused on her own self-care, the more she tended to push Pete away. To push others away. To disconnect from those around her.
Shea sat up. She needed something to drink. Water. Cranberry juice. Fruit punch. Anything. She hadn’t explored her inner self much, let alone her faith, and being raised in a traditional Christian home had made her bored by the time she reached her late twenties. Enter marriage with Pete and ... maybe that was the issue! Was she simply bored?
The low ceilings of the building attached to the lighthouse made the cramped rooms even darker as Shea made her way from the lightkeeper’s room on the second floor down to the kitchen. She opened the small fridge—which Holt had calledthe “icebox”—and observed the few groceries she’d stocked it with. Cranberry juice it was.
After pouring a glass, Shea wandered the first floor aimlessly, stopping to look out the windows and catch different nighttime views of the property, the lake, the woods, the dark outline of the Porcupine Mountains in the distance. It was all so primal. So wild. So beautiful at night. The moon was a thumbnail, but the sky was clear, reflecting off the lake.
There was a small room off the kitchen and sitting area that Shea recalled had originally been the oil room. Having read up on the lighthouse before she’d come, Shea knew it was in this room where the keepers had stored the oil for the light, until lighthouses made the switch to kerosene instead of colza oil. Kerosene’s fumes were far too toxic to store in the lighthouse. It would be unhealthy for those living in the lighthouse. Shea peered out the window in the now empty oil room, whose shelves bore vintage books and knickknacks as decor instead of for function. Across the yard, closer to the woods, was a small shed, built strong to weather the fierce Upper Peninsula winters. That had been the oil shed where the kerosene had been stored during the later lighthouse years.
Shea leaned toward the glass, brushing her forehead against the windowpane. She hadn’t explored the shed yet, although it didn’t appear all that interesting. But maybe there was something there she should log in her research. Old cans of kerosene or even a scent might still linger that she could include in her book to capture the essence—
Two hands slammed against the outside of the window in front of Shea’s face. A dark, hooded figure blocked her view of the shed, and an even blacker liquid mashed between the skin of the hands and the windowpane. It ran down the wrists and the glass. The window trembled from the force of the hands, and Shea flung her glass of cranberry juice, a scream ripping from her throat as the hands smeared down the window. The figure seemed to sink to the ground, vanishing below the window.
Shea scrambled away, her shoulder colliding with a shelf that sent a bookend flying and a line of books toppling like dominoes. She spun wildly and charged from the oil room, her arms stretched out ahead of her to avoid running into anything. Her hands slapped against a bare chest, and Shea careened backward, managing a terrified fall onto her backside. She tried to scurry away as the figure drew near, bending over her.
