Page 17 of Tempest at Annabel's Lighthouse
Holt shifted in his chair. “Quoting fictional television characters won’t win you an argument.” He chuckled.
Shea tipped her head. “Sure, but it’s still true.”
“So your plan now is to tie Annabel’s and Jonathan Marks’s deaths to the lighthouse and solve both of their deaths?” Holt’s mouth was set in a teasing line, and Shea couldn’t help but laugh at herself.
“No. I’m just here to learn about Annabel and who she was. Iwant to feature the lighthouse and its lore. I just wasn’t expecting more current ‘lore’ to impact the story. It just makes me think, that’s all, nothing more, I guess. That being said, Annabel is an icon for this lighthouse, but I need more info than what I’ve got. I need to know her full name, where she was born, what brought her to the U.P., who she was attached to here, and so on. I still want to know more about why she’s associated with a lighthouse that wasn’t built until the 1860s, after her death.”
“That last part is easy.” Holt slid his feet off the chair and leaned forward, resting his arms on the table.
Shea waited, even as the teakettle began to whistle.
“This is where Annabel wanders. The shore out front of the lighthouse. It was right off this point that she’s said to have drowned. When the lighthouse was built, it wasn’t just the keeper who moved in and took over the quarters. Annabel did too.”
Shea curled up in the bed, its pillow-top mattress most assuredly not original to the lighthouse. With three bedrooms to choose from, Shea had opted for the keeper’s room, where she had a good view of the lake. And she wasn’t far from the bathroom, which had been added on in later years. Nor did she have to climb the metal stairs up to the attic with its claustrophobic rooms.
It was past midnight. Holt had stayed for tea, and their conversation soon deviated from Annabel and the lighthouse and the death of Jonathan Marks to more personal history. She’d learned Holt had grown up in the U.P. and later moved to Ontonagon, where he’d been able to put in a bid for the Silvertown Lighthouse—its official name. He’d spent the last two years fixing it up, making sure it met all the necessary requirements for a historical site, and prepping it for rentals. She also learned he’d been married to his high-school sweetheart but was nowdivorced. He was an only child who didn’t give details about his parents. He was just a good ol’ northern boy with dimples who could swallow her whole.
Shea gave her pillow a punch and tossed onto her side in a restless fit of energy. Her research instincts were in high gear. After the recent revelation about Jonathan Marks, she really wanted to investigate more—and she wanted to not think about the fact that a man had bled all over the floor just below the bedroom she was trying to sleep in.
If she could just sleep, then tomorrow morning she’d plan a trip into Ontonagon and look up Captain Gene, Edna Carraway, and—wasn’t there another person? Her mind was getting foggy, yet her muscles felt taut with energy.
Sleep was elusive.
The floor creaked.
Her eyes popped wide open.
The window rattled.
It was just the wind.
Right?
It had to be just the wind.
The floor creaked again, like the weight of footsteps.
Shea propped herself up on an elbow, narrowing her eyes to see through the darkness.
Silence.
Thirty seconds later, she lowered herself back onto her pillow.
The floor creaked.
“Go to sleep, Annabel,” Shea commanded out loud.
But it didn’t make her feel any better. Especially when she swore she’d heard a whispered “no” echo back from outside the keeper’s bedroom door.
9
THE ENGINE PROTESTED.Grinding and moaning as though she were asking it to drive to Alaska, not just to Ontonagon.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Shea caught a glimpse of her frustrated face in the rearview mirror. Shadows under her eyes marred her features. She blamed Annabel for that.
A glance at her phone and she eyed the signal. All was calm in nature today, so apparently it had decided to allow her to gather one bar of signal that was coming from some random, unseen cell tower.
She snatched it up and, out of habit, dialed Pete. The long pause before the phone even connected was long enough for her to rethink her instinctive impulse to call her husband. Shea yanked the phone from her ear and was just about to end the call when she heard Pete.
