Linda Hall - On Thin Ice

“We’re back to work,” Steve said. “We’re checking on a threatening e-mail.”

Nori nodded. “You guys don’t need to stay. You go and take care of that e-mail. We can’t have this kind of crime around here.”

Megan asked, “Is there anything you need me for?”

It was Steve who answered her. “Not really. Not now. Alec said you didn’t see anything. Is that right?”

Megan said she hadn’t.

“The less we need to involve you the better,” Steve said.

Megan raised her eyebrows and stared hard at Alec. Imperceptibly, he shrugged. Obviously, he hadn’t told Steve about their previous relationship.

Later, after she got back to her cabin, all she felt was regret and a kind of deep sadness. It was as if she was being hurt all over again. She would bury herself in her work this evening, and try not to think about a boy from twenty years ago who had ridden her on the handlebars of his bicycle, down the hill while she laughed and yelled at him to go faster, faster, faster.

When she checked her e-mail, the message with the subject line, OUR HOUSE, barely registered. Since she got a lot of spam, she deleted the e-mail.

And then she didn’t know why—something about the subject line caught her attention—she retrieved the message from the trash folder.

The message simply read, WE WILL BE TOGETHER SOON. OUR HOUSE IS ALMOST READY. Attached was a photograph of a house. Normally she didn’t open strange attachments, but this one displayed automatically when she opened the e-mail. She studied the photo. The house looked vaguely familiar. Or maybe it was that tree in front of the house which she thought she recognized. Or did she?

Several hours later, she woke up. She had been dreaming about her son. Megan got up and sat at her little kitchen table and opened up her laptop. She looked at the picture of the house and read the e-mail again. Suddenly she realized that she knew that house. It was the house she lived in until she was five and her parents had died. The tree was the little sapling she and her father had planted so long ago. In the picture the tree had grown, the trunk thick and strong, the branches dense, profuse with the rich green of late summer.

This house, this tree was just an hour outside of Augusta in a town called Bath, Maine. When her parents died, she had moved in with her grandmother who lived in Augusta. In all the years she had lived in Augusta, she had never gone back to look at the house in Bath.

WE WILL BE TOGETHER SOON. OUR HOUSE IS ALMOST READY.

What did this mean? That she was going to die next? That soon she would be joining her parents? Did this whole thing have something to do with them?

Megan read the message again, studied the picture, looked at the e-mail address from which it was sent. The address was a series of numbers and letters.

She needed Alec on this. He was her only connection with the past. Even though it would be painful, they had to work together on this. She had come this far after all.

She called him.

“Alec here.” His voice was gravelly with sleep.

She looked at her watch. Maybe six-thirty was a bit early in the morning. “Did I wake you?” she asked.

“Who is this?”

How could he not know her voice? “It’s Megan.”

“Oh…Meggie…Megan. Oh.”

He seemed flustered.

She said, “I got an e-mail last night…”

A pause. “About the shooting?”

“No.”

“Megan?”

She held the receiver tightly to her ear. “It was a short, cryptic e-mail with an attachment. It was a picture of a house. Alec, it’s the house in Bath that I lived in until I was five. I recognize it!”

He said, “We should meet. We need to talk. About a lot of things. I’ve spoken with the investigating officers regarding the accidents in California and Augusta. Plus…I got an e-mail, too.”

“The same one?”

“Not exactly. I’ll show it to you. As much as Steve thinks we should keep you out of everything, you probably should know about this.”

She paused before asking, “Steve doesn’t know about us, does he?”

“No,” he said evenly. “Not yet. We should talk. We need to talk this through.”

“I agree,” she said.

“How about one hour? The Schooner Café for breakfast. I’ll see you there.”

“I’ll be there.”

“Can you forward me the e-mail and picture?”

She did.

When she got to the Schooner Café an hour later, it was busy. Alec, however, wasn’t there. She checked her watch. He was five minutes late. Not a lot. People could be five minutes late and nothing might be wrong. Then why did she feel so nervous? She scooted into a booth and a horrible déjà vu settled over her. Maybe he wouldn’t come. Maybe it would be like last time.

Marlene came over with the coffeepot and said, “Megan! I didn’t see you there in that booth or I would’ve come over sooner. I have a message from Alec. He was here around half an hour ago working on his computer and then he left. I think he got a phone message or something. He wants you to come over to the sheriff’s office and wait for him there. He shouldn’t be more than half an hour. He said it’s important, an emergency.”

“Did he tell you what the emergency was?” Megan asked, sliding back out of the booth.

“No, he didn’t. Could you wait for a minute? I was just in the middle of making a breakfast sandwich for him when he had to leave. Can you take it to him, if you wouldn’t mind?”

Megan said she would and also ordered a muffin and coffee to go for herself.

Since the sheriff’s office was just a block away from the Schooner Café, Megan decided to leave her car where it was and walk. She passed a small drugstore with an elaborate Valentine’s Day display in the window. She had to turn away.

A couple was walking toward her, arm in arm, up the cold, slippery street. The woman was slightly taller than the man was. She was skinny with long, straight hair down to her waist. This looked like the couple who was staying in a cabin down from her own at Trail’s End. The woman’s long hair swayed from side to side as she held on to the man’s arm and laughed. The woman looked a little older than Megan. A streak of pure white ran from her left temple and down through the length of her long hair.

The man was big, had white hair and a gray beard. He was jolly looking and wore sunglasses. Megan had seen this man last night when she had looked out of her cabin window. There was something about him even then which gave her a momentary pause. But this morning he looked like a harmless Santa Claus.

They struck her as a comfortable married couple on a little winter vacation. Megan looked back at the Valentine’s Day display and was suddenly envious. She wondered what it would have been like to have been married to Alec for twenty years.

As the couple made their way past her, the man nodded slightly in her direction. There was that feeling again. It was something she couldn’t put her finger on. When he caught her staring at him, and raised his eyebrows above his sunglasses, she quickly looked away.

Megan arrived at the sheriff’s office and Denise ushered her in to see Alec. His lips were pressed tightly together in a thin line. She set his coffee and bag of food on his desk. While she waited for him to speak, she sat down and unwrapped a muffin.

On his desk was a printout of the e-mail she had received and a color copy of the house picture.

“You got my e-mail, I see,” she said.

He nodded. “And this is the one I received.” He pushed a piece of paper across the desk at her. She read it.

“The shooting was a warning? A warning about what?” she asked.

He shook his head. “I don’t know.” Abruptly he said, “There’s been another death.”