Shroud of Fog: (A Cape Trouble Romantic Suspense Novel) Read Online Free Page A

other side.  She had become quite good on her occasional visits
here to Cape Trouble at not seeing the old resort, the pier, the
driftwood-tumbled banks of the river or the roll of sand dunes that, who knows
why, had been formed by the Pacific ocean only on the south side of the river. 
Tourists, of course, made their way onto the dunes even though the land was
marked No Trespassing out by the highway, but when had that ever stopped
anyone?  These were puny compared to the  magnificent dunes by Florence, but
were fun nonetheless for kids to slide down on pieces of cardboard or plastic
disks.  According to Aunt Doreen, the dunes and the native reeds that grew
around them were sometimes torn up by ATVs.  Sophie doubted the Cape Trouble
patrol officers paid much attention to the long-abandoned resort, cut off as it
was by the river from the rest of the town.
    Another of those shivers rattled Sophie’s teeth and she rose
to get a sweater.  She’d forgotten how cold the ocean air was.  Ninety degree
days in Portland were likely to be seventy here on the coast.
    She’d already pored over the file of information Doreen had
given her last night.  She’d have liked to have gone by her aunt’s cottage to
see what else she could find, but suspected Chief Colburn wouldn’t appreciate
her using the key Doreen kept under a plant pot.
    When she kept shivering even after she’d pulled the sweater
over her long-sleeved T-shirt, Sophie realized she was in shock.  That must be
why she felt so peculiar.  Or, more accurately, why she didn’t feel what she
knew she should be.
    Her mind shied from remembering her aunt’s body, the pool of
congealed blood, or the one, awful glimpse she’d had of Aunt Doreen’s staring
eyes.  It didn’t shy quite fast enough, though, and her teeth gave a quick
clatter.
    She was the only person in the world I truly loved.  The
only person who truly loved me.
    The knowledge was stark, too big for her to face yet.  She’d
never let herself think about what it would be like when Doreen was gone.  How
could she, without accepting how alone she was?
    Her father was alive, but he’d abandoned her emotionally
from the moment her mother died.  If it had only been grief, she might have
forgiven him later, but then he’d remarried less than a year later.  Julie, the
woman he married, hadn’t displayed any interest in mothering the shocked,
withdrawn little girl Sophie had been.  The only positive of acquiring a
stepmother was Julie’s sister, brisk, brusque, odd but somehow comforting.
    And now Doreen was gone.  And so horribly.
    What she ought to do, Sophie thought, was head straight back
to Portland, as soon as that police officer said she could go.  Let the land be
sold to developers.  Let their bulldozers smash down the cabins and the lodge, obliterate
the landscape Sophie remembered in her dreams, tinted sepia.  Let two-hundred
room resorts with concrete balconies rise in place of the grass and wildflowers
and shrubby coastal growth that had, so long ago, been Sophie’s playground.
    But however powerful the yearning, she realized she couldn’t
do that.  She’d meant what she said to the police chief.  She owed more to
Doreen Stedmann than she could ever repay, but this would be a start. 
Besides…once she saved Misty Beach, she never had to see it again.
    In the meantime – she picked up the inadequate listing of
donated items – she was going to have to work harder than she’d ever worked in
her life to pull off this auction, scheduled for the second Saturday in July.
    Chief Colburn didn’t show up until two o’clock.  Not until
she opened the door to him did Sophie realize she’d been a little bit nervous
about his reappearance.  Even through her shock and nausea that morning, she
had felt a startled moment of awareness that left her unnerved.
    He was maybe six feet, not enormous but a great deal taller
than her own five foot four.  Broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped,