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