The Deepest Water by Kate Wilhelm

him. Then she must have heard someone dock and started barking at an intruder in the middle of the night. Jud could have admitted someone, put Spook out, then gone back upstairs. She shook her head. In the middle of the night? How? She kept coming back to it. How had anyone crossed without launching a boat from Coop’s ramp? And his dogs had not barked.
    “Someone must have been there already, all evening,” she whispered. Had Spook barked because she wanted in, not because an intruder had come? She stared at the shaggy gray dog whose ears kept twitching. That was the only scenario that made any sense. Someone must have gone to the cabin early, before dark, and stayed overnight, left as soon as there was enough light to get through the narrow passage back to the park ramps. Or to one of the cottages.
    She was still at the table, sipping coffee, when suddenly Spook jumped up and began to bark, and now Abby heard it, too. A car in the driveway, then the garage door opening.
    “Quiet, Spook,” she said. “It’s Brice.” The dog stopped barking, still on full alert, but quiet. Abby hurried to the front door before Brice reached it, and opened it to await him.
    “Hi,” she said when he entered. “Hi.” She stretched out both arms to him, and he grabbed her and held her so hard it hurt.
    “Oh, God!” he whispered into her hair. “God, I’ve been so scared. Abby, you’re okay? You’re okay!”
    She nodded against his chest. “I’m okay.”
    Spook sat down and watched them; her tail swept back and forth, back and forth.
    A little later, sitting on the couch with her head on his shoulder, Abby began to tell Brice about her day, why the murderer couldn’t have been a stranger, a camper or anyone like that. She stopped talking when he drew away in order to watch her face, as if he didn’t yet believe she had come out of the stupor that had benumbed her all week.
    “You don’t know how it made me feel,” she said, “knowing that I could have been there, might have prevented it somehow. But it had to be someone Spook knows, not a stranger. If I’d been there when she came in, she would have stayed for a while probably, then left, the way they do up there. She could have gone back the next day, or any other day, when I wasn’t there.”
    Brice nodded. “I think you’re right, honey. You realize you kept saying she ?”
    “I know,” she said. “But a man wouldn’t have been invited to spend the night. Dad would have taken him across the finger, and driven him home, to the cottage or wherever. Dr. Beardwell stayed too late a couple of times, and that’s what happened.”
    Brice took her hand. “Abby, don’t breathe a word of what you think about this. Oh, you can tell the cop your theory, but no one else. Okay? Will you keep mum about what you think happened?”
    Surprised, she said, “Who would I tell?”
    “I don’t know. The Halburtsons. That old gossip, Felicia Shaeffer. Someone. I just don’t think you should let it be known that you might have seen something, noticed something, or even suspect something.” He tightened the pressure on her hand.
    “I’d have no reason to mention anything to them,” she said. Then very slowly she added, “You really mean Willa, don’t you?”
    “I’d include her in the people you shouldn’t say much to,” he admitted.
    “She had nothing to do with it,” Abby said. “You don’t know how much she loved him. She would never have done anything to hurt him.” She pulled her hand away. “You just don’t realize how she felt about him.”
    “I think I do,” he said soberly. “Today I had a talk with Harvey Durham about the cashier’s checks.” Durham had been her father’s attorney, and was the executor of his estate. “He should know something,” Brice said, “but he claims he doesn’t have a clue about them. Who they were for, anything. But, Abby, it smacks of blackmail, extortion, something like that. Why the secret otherwise? Why not just