Murder at Sunrise Lake

“I was imagining what it must be like to be a fish.” She had to improvise fast. “One minute, swimming along peacefully, looking for a meal, and then the next, some asshole sends a hook down and jabs you in the throat with it. Now you’re fighting for your life. If you have a nice little fish family, you’re never going to see them again. Bruce looks like a nice enough guy, but under all that niceness lurks an evil fish killer. I have to warn Zahra.”

Denver stared at her as if she’d grown two heads. Stella couldn’t blame him. She was not cut out to be a detective. She wasn’t all that clever. The expression on his face made her want to laugh.

“Nice fish family? Evil fish killer? Good grief, Stella, you have a terrible imagination.”

“No, I have a vivid imagination,” she corrected. “It’s why I don’t fish. Or hunt. I will kill the occasional spider, but I mostly practice the capture-and-release program. I trap them and put them outside.”

Denver groaned and dropped his head into his hand. “You don’t.”

“I do. My very healthy imagination tells me all the spiders in the house that are related will rise up in an army and come after me while I’m sleeping. I’ll develop an allergy in that single night and it will be a horrible way to go, choking on my own vomit or something equally unpleasant and unwomanly.”

Denver burst out laughing. “Unwomanly?”

“Well, yes. When I go, I want to at least look good. Not all covered in red splotches from allergies. That wouldn’t be very dignified. If you’re going to find me, Denver, I have to look somewhat decent. Vienna is always telling me about these horrible-looking bodies when you find them. I refuse to go out that way. If an army of spiders gets me in the middle of the night and poisons me and I break out in horrid allergy splotches, then I can at least know my corpse isn’t going to look hideous. Well, I mean it will if I get attacked and bitten and die that way.”

He shoved the coffee mug back at her. “Drink. You’re not making any sense.” He looked at the dog. “Is she always like this in the morning, Bailey?”

Stella wrapped her hands around the coffee mug, glad she’d diverted his attention again. She took another healthy drink of the bitter brew. “Does Bruce really like this coffee, Denver? Zahra is a coffee fanatic, just like me. I think she might keel over if she drank this, not that I think the two of them are ever going to happen.”

The laughter faded from Denver’s face, leaving him with that rough exterior that put most people off. There were pock marks on his left side, faint but there, marring the weathered skin. Up close she could see a strange scarring over the pocks, much like a skid mark, as if his cheek and jaw had slid along the pavement.

“Why do you say that, Stella?”

“Bruce is so shy around Zahra and can’t bring himself to ask her out. She was raised in a very small village in Azerbaijan. She’s been here a long time and she’s a citizen, but she spent her life as a child there. Our childhood shapes us, Denver, you know that. She’s not going to suddenly be bold and ask Bruce out. She might flirt with him, especially if she drinks a bit, but she won’t go any further than that. She might be an American now, but she will never be that bold woman who just asks him out first. Bruce isn’t going to take charge like she needs him to. They are, unfortunately, at a stalemate.”

Denver stretched his legs out in front of him, his smile back. “That’s why she drinks so much. I have to tell you, I was a little worried and kept my eye on her, afraid she might be an alcoholic. I even cautioned him about it once, which didn’t go over well.”

His smile turned into a grin. He had extremely light-colored brown eyes, almost more amber than brown. His hair was very thick and a light brown with streaks of blond from all the time he spent in the sun. When he gave her that grin, his eyes took on the color of a burnt whiskey.

“Maybe we should lock the two of them in one of your smallest cabins for a weekend and see what happens,” he ventured.

Stella burst out laughing, but there was a small part of her contemplating the idea. “If only we could get away with it.”

“Does she really like him?” Denver asked, his tone suddenly serious.

“She really likes him.” Stella matched his tone.

CHAPTER THREE

Bruce trudged up to Denver and Stella, frowning at them, one hand on Bailey’s head as he cast a giant shadow over them. “You’re sitting in my chair, Denver, and you gave Stella my favorite coffee mug.”