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“True enough,” he said. “But that wasn’t quite my point. The matriarch, Elizabeth Winthrop...well, to hear people tell it, she rules the family. Has done for years. Melanie would have been the daughter of her only son, who died in a plane crash along with his wife, leaving Melanie to be raised by her grandmother, her aunt and uncle.”
She wasn’t particularly interested in all this family detail, not now. “How did Melanie die?”
“According to my dad, she had left town abruptly some months before her death.” Trey seemed to be choosing his words. “Apparently she was pregnant, only seventeen.”
Pregnant. The odds were growing that this girl had been her mother. “They kicked her out?” Anger cut through Amanda.
“No, nothing like that. They sent her away to have the baby and give it up for adoption. Then she was supposed to come home and pretend it hadn’t happened.”
That didn’t seem much better to Amanda. “That’s...barbaric.”
“Old-fashioned. Conservative. Proud. That’s the Winthrop family. Or Elizabeth, anyway.”
“I’m surprised Melanie ever wanted to see them again.” Focus. Don’t think of her as your mother, not yet, or you won’t be thinking straight.
Trey took her arm as she climbed over a tree trunk on the path. “Maybe she didn’t. According to my dad, she didn’t go through with their plans for her. She disappeared, and nothing more was heard of her until her body was found at the base of the falls.”
For several minutes, Amanda had been aware of a faint roaring noise, growing louder as they walked. Now they stepped into a cleared area as the path ended at a stream. And above them loomed the falls.
For a moment Amanda couldn’t speak. She’d lived with the painting for years, and she’d seen numerous photos since she’d identified the location. But nothing had prepared her for the overpowering force of the water rushing down the steep face of rock.
“She fell from up there?” She finally found her voice. “It must be close to a hundred feet.”
“Ninety-some,” he said. “I don’t think they know how high up she was when she fell. It wouldn’t have needed to be all the way to the top to be fatal.”
The story Esther had told her, that if you climbed up the trail by the falls alone, you’d hear something following you, coming after you, slid into Amanda’s mind like a snake. She chased it out again. The trail was a faint, almost impassable-looking line winding up along the right side of the rushing water.
Amanda gave herself a mental shake. There had been nothing eerie about what happened to the girl. Just tragic.
“What was she doing here, of all places? If she came back, it must have been to see her family, wasn’t it?”
“Apparently not,” Trey said. He was staring at the falls, too. “At least they claim to have heard nothing from her. I haven’t had a chance to talk with the police chief yet, but I will. Still, I’m not sure how forthcoming he’s going to be.”
Amanda registered his words without really taking them in. She felt drawn nearer the base of the falls, her eyes on the jagged rocks. The girl who might have been her mother died there.
She tried the words out, but they seemed meaningless. Juliet was still the person she pictured as her mother, and Juliet had died in a spate of meaningless gunfire on a city street.
“Are you okay?” Trey clasped her arm, his hand warm even through the sleeve of her shirt and the sweater she wore.
“Yes.” She clipped off the word. “Can you actually get to the top from here? It looks impossible.”
“It’s actually not that bad.” He pointed to the small opening between two boulders. “Look, there’s a path that winds up through the rocks. Once you get started, it’s pretty easy to follow, but the rocks are slippery, especially when it’s windy and the spray is carried onto the path.”
“I see.” The safe thing would be to stand back and feel...whatever it was she’d thought she’d feel when she came here. But she felt compelled to see what it was like to climb up.
Would Juliet have climbed to the top when she was here? Maybe not—the painting had been done from the bottom. But the unknown Melanie might have.
Amanda clambered over the intervening rocks and took the first few steps up before Trey reached her.
“Hey, wait a second.” He caught her arm. “Always take a buddy with you when you climb. That’s what our scoutmaster told us.”
“I won’t go far. I just want to see...” That quickly, she hit a wet patch on the rock, and her foot slid.
Trey grabbed her in an instant, holding her steady against his solid body. “Take it easy. You don’t want to add to the accident count.”
She tilted her head back so she could see his face and nearly lost track of what she was going to say. He was so close she could see the small scar at the corner of his eyebrow, close enough to smell the faint, clean scent of him.
“I couldn’t kill myself falling from here,” she said, annoyed with herself for sounding breathless.
“No, but you could easily break an ankle on the rocks.” He looked away, as if he found their closeness uncomfortable.
She had to ask the question that had filled her mind. “Was it really an accident? How could they know if no one saw it?”
“You mean it might have been suicide?” His eyes narrowed, considering. “I don’t know how the police came to that decision. The police chief may have some ideas about it, if he’s willing to talk to me.”
“If I ask him...” she began.
“He’d freeze you out at the first implication that the police hadn’t done their job properly, especially where the Winthrop family is concerned.”
She suddenly needed to distance herself from him. She stepped down, then down again, well aware of his steadying hand on her arm. When they reached the bottom, Barney stopped running back and forth in agitation and nuzzled her hand. She patted him and then turned to face Trey as he jumped lightly down the last step.
“Are you saying the Winthrop family owns the police force as well as everything else in this town?”
“No.” Trey’s face darkened, and he seemed to make an effort to speak evenly. “I mean that a man in the chief’s position isn’t going to speak to an outsider about a police case to begin with. And if there was any question about whether Melanie’s death was accident or suicide, the kindest thing would be to opt for accident and spare the family that added pain.”
She thought of the seventeen-year-old, sent away at what had probably been the most difficult time of her life. “Maybe they deserved it.”
“That wouldn’t be for the police to judge. Or you either, for that matter, at least not without knowing more than you do now.”
She had a sneaking suspicion he was right about that, but she wasn’t about to admit it. Trey Alter had too self-satisfied an opinion of himself already.
“If the police chief won’t talk to me, what makes you think he’ll talk to you?” She recognized an edge to her voice. He probably heard it as well, but he didn’t react.
“Well, for one thing, he’s known me all my life. And for another, I’m an officer of the court, which gives me some status with him.” Trey took a few steps past her. “Let’s get away from the falls so we can hear ourselves think.”
Amanda had almost become used to the roar, the way they said people who lived in Niagara Falls no longer heard the sound. But she had been straining to speak above it, so she nodded, following him back away from the rocks.
“Is there anything else you want to see here?” Trey didn’t sound impatient, she’d give him that, but he might well want to get back to work.
“I’d like to find my mother’s vantage point of the falls, if I can.” She felt herself getting defensive. “And no, I don’t think it’s going to tell me anything after all these years. I’d just like to see it.”
He nodded as if it was perfectly reasonable. If he’d been annoyed with her, he had himself well under control. “Sure thing. It shouldn’t be hard to find. Did you bring the photo with you?”
Amanda retrieved it from the pocket where she’d stowed it for safety. Drat the man—why did he never react the way she expected?
Holding the photo, Trey paced slowly along the bank of the stream, looking up repeatedly to compare the view to the image. On the opposite side of the rushing stream, the thick growth of rhododendrons made an impenetrable barrier. The painting had to have been done from this side.
Trey reached a point at which a slight curve in the streambed had left a little spit of sand and gravel. He stopped, making the comparison again.
“Got it. I thought it might have been about here. Take a look.”
Amanda stepped out onto the sandy spot and looked from the photo to the falls. “You’re right. What made you think it might be here?”
He shrugged. “I’ve tried to get a good photo of the falls a few times. This is the only vantage point that lets you get in both the top and the bottom.”
Amanda stood where she was for a moment. She could so easily imagine Juliet on this spot, the legs of the easel shoved into the sand, a brush behind her ear and another in her hand, brooding over the canvas as she so often did.
As for the other person Juliet might have been imagining in the scene...to Amanda’s disappointment she could see nothing at all. Didn’t they say that blood called to blood? If so, either hers was deaf or she was on the wrong track entirely.
Then it hit her. “This whole thing started because the autopsy on my mother—on Juliet Curtiss—showed she’d never had a child. So wouldn’t the postmortem have shown, at least, whether Melanie Winthrop had carried a child to term? If so...”
Trey seized on the fragment of provable fact. “I’m no expert, but I’d think it would. If they bothered to do a full autopsy in a case of accident. But if they did, the results should be in the coroner’s records, and I ought to be able to access those.”
“So, you’re going to check the coroner’s records.” She surveyed him. “You’re going to talk to the police chief. What am I going to do?”
She could swear there was a twinkle in Trey’s eyes. “I suppose it’s too much to hope you’ll go back to your motel and wait for answers. Or better yet, back to Boston.”
“You sound like Robert McKinley,” she said sourly. “I can’t do nothing.”
“I suppose not.” He sounded regretful. “What about the newspaper accounts from the time? I don’t know how much they’d have reported, but it might give you a fuller picture of the events.”
“That was going to be my first stop before you sidetracked me. I suppose the newspaper has the files? I’ve already checked online, but the archives of the paper don’t go back that far.”
Trey bent to ruffle Barney’s ears absentmindedly. “They haven’t been in a rush to digitize them. There’s not that much call for old copies. The historical society has some, but they wouldn’t have digitized anything that recent.”
“There must be some way of finding them.”
He nodded. “The library has all the back issues on microfiche. It’ll turn you cross-eyed searching, as I know from experience, but you should be able to find what you want there.”
“Good.” Something she could do, at least. “I’ll work on that this afternoon and check back with you. I just wish I could find a place to stay in town. That drive back and forth to the motel is getting old already.”
Trey frowned, looking down at Barney. “I just might be able to find a place that wouldn’t mind a well-trained dog around.” He grinned. “Even if he did flunk out of service dog school.”
The tension involved in being on this spot slid away as she smiled in return. “Where? Lead me to it.”
“There’s an Amish farm near here that takes farm-stay guests in the summer. They recently added a cottage, complete with gas heating and lighting. They don’t normally take guests this time of year, but they might be persuaded to accommodate a friend of mine.”
“Is that how everything around here operates?” She couldn’t help but ask the question. “Based on the good old boys’ network?”
He shrugged. “You might be able to ignore your neighbors in the city, but not in a place like Echo Falls. If you’re done here, we can check it out now.”
Her spirits lifted. “Great. Thanks, Trey.” Impulsively she put out her hand.
He took it in both of his, and in that instant the mood changed abruptly. A not-so-lighthearted connection grabbed her, skittering along her nerves from their clasped hands. Their gazes caught, arrested as the attraction ricocheted between them.
The moment seemed to last forever. Then Trey dropped her hand as if he’d seized something hot. His breathing came as fast as if he’d been running, and hers was about as bad.
Well. That was unexpected. Unwelcome, she added defiantly. She didn’t have room for complications right now, so this had to stop before it started. Didn’t it?
* * *
BY THE TIME they’d gotten back to the car, Trey had given himself the lecture of the day—namely, don’t get involved. Relationships were difficult no matter where you lived, but in a small town, they could lead too easily to disaster, as he knew from experience.
Like the situation with Marcie Hampton last year, the then-new teacher at the high school. They’d gone out three times...count ’em, three...and the town had had them all but married.
Worse, Marcie had been infected by the assumptions, thinking their relationship more serious than it was. It had led to a messy breakup that he was determined not to repeat. Since then, he’d been considerably more circumspect.
Trey darted a sidelong glance at Amanda as they reached the main road. She seemed as reluctant to recognize that blast of attraction between them as he was. That should make it easier to keep their relationship strictly business.
He glanced in the rearview mirror to find that Barney was watching him with what seemed like skepticism in his eyes.
“Is the farm with the cottage far from town?” Amanda broke the silence between them.
“Not far. About three miles. Amos and Sarah Burkhalter took over his parents’ dairy farm a few years ago, and they added the farm-stay business to make a little extra in the summer. Sarah and the kids handle most of it. With eight kids between five and nineteen, the extra income is welcome.”
“Eight.” She shook her head. “I know the Amish have big families, but I’m still amazed at how well they manage. I have friends with one or two who can’t seem to keep up.”
“Everybody works on the farm. It keeps them busy and out of trouble, for the most part.”
“I’m sure that boggles the minds of their English farm-stay visitors. I remember the first time I saw a barefoot Amish boy chasing a gigantic Holstein into the barn for me to examine. I wanted to run to the rescue, but luckily I had better sense.”
He frowned, remembering her business card. “I thought your practice was with small animals.”
“Yes.” Amanda clipped off the word, and he saw her hands clench. After a moment, she went on. “I was originally a partner in a large animal practice in Lancaster County. But it...didn’t work out.” Trey had a sense of something suppressed. “So I went back to Boston.”
Her lips closed firmly. Obviously time for another subject of conversation. Luckily, they were coming up on the Burkhalter place.
“Here it is, on the right.” He nodded to where twin silos and a windmill loomed over a cluster of white frame buildings. “Like I said, the Burkhalters don’t usually take guests this time of the year, but I’ll sound them out.”
“Fine.” She looked back at Barney. “We’ll be on our best behavior, right, Barney?”
The dog whined in response to his name, and his muzzle poked between the seats as he attempted to lick Amanda’s face. They both chuckled, and the tension between them seemed to disappear.
When Trey pulled up at the back door of the farmhouse, Sarah was already coming outside with a welcoming wave, her youngest hurrying to keep up. When little Mary Elizabeth saw that Trey wasn’t alone, she took up a hiding place behind her mamm’s skirts.
“Trey, wilkom. We weren’t looking to see you today.” Sarah must be around forty, he knew, but she had a rosy, youthful face, and her brown hair didn’t yet show any signs of gray. She smiled at Amanda. “You’ve brought company. Komm, the coffee is hot and there’s apple pie.”
“Whoa, slow down.” He grinned at Mary Elizabeth, for whom he had a soft spot. “Sarah, this is Amanda Curtiss. She’s visiting Echo Falls for a while. Amanda, Sarah Burkhalter. And that pretty girl is Mary Elizabeth.”
“Sarah, it’s nice to meet you.” Amanda didn’t attempt to shake hands, probably knowing that might make Sarah uncomfortable. She knelt and smiled at the little girl. “I’m Amanda. Would you like to meet my friend?” She pointed to Barney, looking out the car window at them.
When Mary Elizabeth nodded, Amanda opened the door, and Barney leaped out lightly. At a command, he sat at her side, ears cocked, head on one side as he looked at the child. She edged out from behind her mother and petted him tentatively.
While the two of them were getting acquainted, Trey explained Amanda’s predicament. “I thought you might want to rent out the cottage to her.”
Sarah’s question showed in her face as she looked from Amanda to the dog.
“Barney is well trained,” Amanda said quickly. “I can promise he won’t go off chasing the stock. I’d be grateful for the chance to stay here, if you agree.”
