“Yeah, it does, doesn’t it?”
They crunched along the gravel walk that linked the lodge’s twelve individual log cabins. Or rather, she crunched in her fashionable high-heeled black leather boots.
Luke wore running shoes. She couldn’t even hear his footsteps although he was right beside her.
Through the trees she caught glimpses of silver on the broad black mirror that was the lake. But the glow of the moon did not penetrate the tall stands of pine and fir that loomed over the grounds of Sunrise on the Lake Lodge. She could hear ghosts whispering in the boughs overhead. Her hand tightened convulsively around the grip of the penlight.
She would never admit it to him, she thought, but she was glad that Luke was with her. Night was neve good time. It would be worse than usual tonight because she was spending it in the town that haunted her dreams. She knew she probably would not sleep until dawn.
The gravel crunching and the eerie sounds of the wind in the trees feathered her nerves. She suddenly wanted to talk; to make casual, reassuring conversation. She needed the comfort of the company of another person. But judging from his earlier silence while they watched the news together, she had a hunch that polite, meaningless, social chitchat was not Luke Danner’s thing. Dinner dates were probabl major ordeal for him.
She glanced at the first cabin, the one Luke evidently used as his personal residence.
The porch light was on in front but the windows were dark. There were no lights on in any of the other cabins with the glaring exception of the one she had been assigned. Lights blazed in every window of Cabin Number Five as well as on the front and back porches. She had left the place fully illuminated earlier when she decided to make the trek to the lobby and the only available TV.
“It looks like I’m your only guest tonight,” she said.
“Off-season.”
She reminded herself that the tiny resort communities that ringed Ventana Lake acknowledged only two seasons, off and high. Still it seemed strange that the lodge was so empty.
“Mind if I ask why you turned on the No Vacancy sign?” she asked.
“Don’t like to be bothered in the evening,” Luke said. “Bad enough having people turn up at all hours during the day wanting to rent a room. A real pain.”
“I see.” She cleared her throat. “Are you new to the hospitality business?”
“I don’t think of it as selling hospitality,” he said. “More like a necessity. Someone needs a room for the night, fine, I’ll rent one to him. But if the customer can’t be bothered to arrive at a reasonable hour, he can damn well drive on around the lake to Kirbyville and find himself a motel there.”
“That’s certainly one way to run a lodging establishment,” she said. “Although maybe not the most profitable approach. When did you take over the lodge?”
“About five months ago.”
“What happened to the man who used to run this place?”
She sensed immediately that the question had aroused Luke’s curiosity.
“You knew Charlie Gibbs?” he asked neutrally.
She regretted the query. True, she wanted to talk tonight, but the last thing she intended to discuss was her past in this town. Still, she was the one who had invited him down this particular conversational byway.
“I knew Charlie,” she said carefully. “But it’s been several years since I last saw him.
How is he, by the way?”
“Real estate agent who sold the lodge to me said he died last year.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
And she was, she realized. Charlie had been getting on in years when she lived here in town. She was not surprised to learn that he was gone. But the news elicited another of the small, unsettling twinges of loss that she had been experiencing since she arrived a few hours ago.
She had not known Charlie Gibbs well, but, like the monument of a library in the park, he and the dilapidated old lodge had been a feature of the landscape of her youth.
“I’m told business will pick up around here right after Memorial Day” Luke said in a tone that lacked any semblance of enthusiasm. “I hear it runs pretty hot and heavy through Labor Day.”
“That’s the way it is in summer resort towns.” She paused briefly. “You don’t sound overly thrilled with the prospect of increased business.”
He shrugged. “I like it nice and quiet. Main reason I bought the place. That and the fact that I figured I couldn’t go wrong with waterfront property.”
“Isn’t it a little difficult to make a living with your approach to the business?”
“I get by. Come summer, I’ll jack up the rates. Make up for the slow months.”
She thought about the SUV parked in front of his cabin. The vehicle was big, expensive and new. Charlie Gibbs had never been able to afford such high-end transportation. Nor had Charlie ever worn a watc ike the one Luke was wearing, she reflected. Titanium chronographs that looked as though they coul e submerged to a depth of three hundred feet and keep track of several different time zones did not come cheap.
Her curiosity was growing by the second, but she sensed that Luke would not welcome an in-depth discussion of his household finances. She groped for another subject.
“What did you do before you bought the lodge?” she asked.
“Got out of the Marines about six months back,” he said. “Tried the corporate world for a while. Things didn’t work out.”
She could well believe that he had spent time in the military, she thought. It wasn’t just the way he held himself, as though he were dressed in a uniform instead of a casual shirt and jeans; rather it was the aura of confidence, authority and command.
Alpha male through and through. She knew the type well. Her father had been a Marine before he became a cop.
Luke was the guy who would keep his head and lead you through the smoke and flames to safety when everyone else was running around in a mindless panic. Men like this certainly had their uses, but they were not the easiest sort to live with. Her mother had explained that to her on more than one occasion in tones of great exasperation.
“The lodge must have been in bad shape by the time you bought it,” she said. “It was practically falling apart the last time I saw it, and that was quite a while ago.”
“Been working on the infrastructure a bit.” He looked toward her cabin, perched on the edge of the lake amid a stand of tall trees. “Maybe you didn’t notice the little card in the room that suggested you might want to help the management of the Sunrise on the Lake Lodge save the environment by making sure