by Anne Stuart
For purely recreational reasons, he reminded himself. And because he damned well wanted to.
Of course, if she decided to trust him he would be able to gain easy access to the house. That was all he needed, just a few short hours to make his way through the ruins of the old wing and see if he could remember what had happened there so long ago. If it didn’t work, he’d get the hell out of Colby, give up on trying to remember what he obviously wasn’t supposed to remember. He’d let go of it, as he should have long ago.
The rain had let up by the time he drove through the tiny picturesque town of Colby. Audley’s General Store was booming, as always, with cars cramming the street in front of it and the parking lot by the town green. People were crossing the street to get to the public beach, the country-club crowd in their tennis whites were mingling with the locals in their bathing suits. None of the summer people had to use the public beach—they all had cottages on the lake and their own private swimming area. It was only at Audley’s that the two classes ever mixed.
He didn’t stop. The old general store still unnerved him—he was happier using the supermarket in the next town over, where there was little chance he’d run into someone he’d known twenty years ago. Someone who’d testified against him.
The village cemetery was just past the center of town, on the way to the nursing home and the old dump, which he’d always found somehow fitting. This was a more sprawling affair, with no safe white picket fence to guard the departed. No view of the lake, either, but he imagined the residents didn’t particularly care. This was where the locals were planted, where Valette King’s and Alice Calderwood’s remains were buried. He didn’t know exactly where on the terraced levels of rolling green grass. He figured he’d start by looking for the yellow flowers.
The village graveyard went in more for plastic crosses than fresh flowers. He found Valette’s grave immediately. The yellow flowers sat next to a weather-beaten teddy bear. A slug was crawling across its matted tummy.
Unlike the others, Valette’s stone had an epitaph, courtesy, no doubt, of her rigid father. Lost to Satan, it read beneath her name. The stone itself was small, cheesy-looking. He wondered who left the teddy bear. Probably her slow-witted brother, who might not be as dim as everyone thought he was. Hell, he would have been fifteen when the girls died. Close to full grown, probably, and not too aware of right and wrong. Maybe he’d taken his father’s religion to heart and decided to punish the ungodly.
There were a hell of a lot more ungodly people in Colby than three teenage girls who liked to have fun. And Perley King had the innocence of a child in his eyes. As convenient as it would be, there was no way Griffin could make him into an easy scapegoat.
The hilly grass was slippery beneath his feet, and he moved through the graveyard carefully, keeping his eye out for the telltale splash of yellow. He had no doubt whatsoever that when he found those flowers he’d find Alice Calderwood’s grave. It might mean nothing—Zebulon King might have a fixation for girls who had died young, and he might be the one to bring the flowers. Or maybe he was driven by guilt.
Maybe.
Or maybe it was someone else. Whoever killed the three young women had killed others, as well, and maybe he still lived in town and visited the graves of his victims.
There were a hell of a lot of maybes.
Alice Calderwood’s grave was at the very top row of the cemetery, tucked beneath an apple tree. The flowers were fresh, the headstone scrubbed free of moss and bird droppings. Someone still mourned Alice, just as they mourned the other young women.
He didn’t know how long he stood there, looking at the stone, before he realized someone had joined him. He looked up into the kindly blue eyes of one of the people who had put him in jail. Doc Henley was the last person he wanted to run into—those eyes might be friendly but they were still bright with intelligence. Sooner or later he’d recognize Griffin.
Maybe sooner. “I thought I recognized you up here,” he said, genial as ever. He nodded toward the tombstone. “Sad, isn’t it? Did you know her?”
“I’ve never been to Vermont before,” Griffin said automatically, and Doc didn’t seem interested in arguing the point. Griffin had already planned his excuse if anyone asked him why he was visiting graveyards, and he presented it without Doc asking. “I’m doing a little genealogical research. There were rumors that a branch of my family lived in the area, and I thought I’d check it out while I’m on vacation.”
“Really?” Doc raised one of his bushy white eyebrows. He was as tall as Griffin, only slightly stooped with age, and their eyes were level. “What’s the family name?”
“Smith.”
“That’s going to make research a little tough,” Doc said wryly. “We’ve got a lot of Smiths in town.”
Griffin shrugged. “It’s not important. Just something I thought I’d look into while I’m here.” He glanced back at the grave. “What happened to her? She was awfully young to have died. Car accident?”
“She was murdered,” Doc said, not hiding the pain in his voice. “She and two of her friends. I’m surprised you haven’t heard of the Colby murders since you’ve been here. People still talk about them.”
“I haven’t been socializing much.”
“Just Sophie,” Doc said.
Griffin hid his reaction with admirable control. He shrugged. “Can you blame me? She’s available, she’s pretty, and I’m bored. A little fling will do us both good. She’s too straight-laced. She needs to loosen up a little.”
“I don’t think she needs a stranger coming into her life, disrupting it, and then leaving,” Doc said. “I’m assuming your intentions aren’t particularly honorable?”
Griffin laughed. “Hardly. What are you, her guardian?”
“Just a friend,” Doc said, his disapproval tempered with understanding. “She’s a wonderful young woman, hardworking, decent, responsible. I don’t want her to throw it all away.”
“Sleeping with me doesn’t constitute throwing a responsible life down the drain. Life hurts,” Griffin said. “At least she’s doing better than that poor soul.” He nodded at Alice’s grave.
“Is that where Sophie was last night? With you?”
For a moment Griffin wondered whether Doc, with his stately, old-fashioned manners, was going to challenge him to a duel, or at the very least horsewhip him. “What makes you think she spent the night with anyone?” he hedged.
“Marty was worried about her. She said Sophie called her from your place, and then didn’t come home for hours.” Doc hesitated. “I don’t want to see her hurt.”
“I think if you want to know about who Sophie’s having sex with, you better ask her yourself,” Griffin said.
Doc looked at him. “I don’t need to do that, do I?”
Griffin shrugged. He never considered himself a particularly decent man, but Doc was making him uncomfortable with his questions. He changed the subject. “Those yellow flowers are pretty. Ever seen them before?”
Doc didn’t bother trying to pursue the subject of Sophie. “They’re not very common around here,” he said dismissively. “You don’t strike me as someone who’s interested in gardening, Mr. Smith. Any more than you seem the type to care about genealogy. Why don’t you tell me why you’re really here.”
“Why does everyone think I have an ulterior motive?” Griffin said. “I’m here on vacation, nothing else.”
“Then leave Sophie alone,” Doc said.
There was something in his voice that made Griffin jerk his head away from his contemplation of Alice’s grave. “Is that a warning?” he asked in a calm voice.
For a moment Doc’s eyes met his. And then he simply shook his head. “Only a request. She’s got a tough row to hoe, with her mother and sister and trying to make a go of the inn. She doesn’t need complications. I’m sure you don’t, either.”
“You’re right about that,” Griffin said easily. “At heart I’m a simple man.”
“Oh, I don’
t think so, Mr. Smith. I don’t think so at all.”
They walked down the hill to the road in a companionable-enough silence. Doc had issued his warning like a protective father, and Griffin had received the message. Whether or not he had any intention of listening was another matter entirely.
He’d have to come back. Doc was already getting too suspicious, and if he figured out who Griffin was it might very well put an end to any answers he might find. Hell, he might even end up at the wrong end of that lynch mob he’d avoided twenty years ago, if the good citizens of Colby were really convinced he’d gotten away with murder.
So he walked back to his car with Doc by his side. Keeping his secrets.
“I think my sister had sex last night.”
Patrick looked up from the chain saw he was sharpening. “And I care because…?”
“I don’t know if she’s ever had sex before,” Marty said, swinging her long legs. She had nice legs, she knew, and she wanted to make sure Patrick knew it, too.
So far he’d seemed remarkably unimpressed, but then, she was trying to get used to his laconic Vermont ways. She couldn’t figure out whether he was interested or not. Her instincts told her yes, his behavior made it more murky.
Patrick said nothing, concentrating on the chain saw. “Even if she has,” Marty went on, “I doubt she’s as experienced as I am.”
He didn’t bother to look up. “That’s something to brag about?”
“Sure,” she said, nonplussed. “I’ve had lots of boyfriends. I don’t even remember how many lovers I’ve had.” Which wasn’t strictly true. There had only been Jeff, who’d been fast and messy and rough, and Nate, who really didn’t care who he stuck it into. Sooner or later she’d find the kind of lover she deserved. Looking at the care Patrick was giving to the stupid chain saw, she suspected he was a good candidate.
He was certainly gorgeous enough. All lean muscle, tanned skin, big, strong hands. So gorgeous, in fact, that he probably already had a girlfriend. Not necessarily a problem—she’d stolen Jeff from her best friend, Sally, only to find it wasn’t worth it. This time she wouldn’t be betraying anyone she knew.
Patrick grunted, unimpressed. “Don’t you like sex?” she persisted, swinging her long legs. She was sitting on the stone fence beside the chain saw, but he seemed more interested in filing the damned thing than in talking to her.
He looked up. “I like sex well enough,” he said evenly. “If I care about someone. If I don’t, I can do without it.”
“So how many lovers have you had?” she persisted. For a second she thought he wasn’t going to answer, but eventually he spoke.
“Just my girlfriend, Abby,” he said.
Damn. “What is she? A childhood sweetheart? You going to marry her when you graduate from college?”
“She died.”
That shut her up, at least for a moment. It was hard to compete with a dead girl. On the other hand, she was here and the girlfriend was gone. Advantage, Marty.
First, though, she’d better figure out how strong her dead competition was. “How’d she die? Unless you’d rather not talk about it.”
“I don’t mind talking about it,” he said evenly. “She died in a car accident three years ago.”
“Were you driving?”
He shot her a sharp glance. “No. She was with someone else.”
“Another boy?”
“Yes.” He shrugged. “We were breaking up. She was going to California to college, I was going to UVM. She wanted to get away from here, I wanted to stay. She got away for good.”
A stray shiver crossed Marty’s exposed spine. There were too many dead girls in Colby, that was for sure. And she didn’t want to talk about death anymore—sex was a lot more interesting.
“How old are you?” she asked lazily.
“Twenty.”
“I’m nineteen.”
“You’re seventeen,” he corrected her. “Too young to be having sex.”
“Eighteen in three weeks,” she shot back. “How old were you when you started having sex with your lost true love?”
He looked at her, and she was suddenly ashamed of her flippancy. “Sorry,” she muttered. “I didn’t mean it the way it sounded.”
He nodded, accepting her apology. It might have been a full five minutes before he spoke. “We were in love. I’m not interested in sleeping with someone I don’t care about.”
“Then I guess I’m wasting my time here,” she said, sliding off the fence.
He set the file down on the fence by the chain saw. “Is that what you’re looking for?” he asked in his grave, calm voice.
“Isn’t everyone? Oh, except you with your high standards,” she mocked. “I just want someone to…” The words trailed away.
“Want someone to what? Treat you like a whore? Screw you silly and then dump you? I don’t think so, Marthe.”
“Then what do I want?”
“Someone to love you.”
For some crazy reason she wanted to cry. “So?” she said, defiant. “I told you I was wasting my time here.”
“Not necessarily.” He said it so quietly she wasn’t sure she heard right.
She stood there, feeling oddly vulnerable, not sure what to say. “I’d better go find Sophie. See if she needs anything,” she said finally.
“Yeah, maybe you’d better,” he said, picking up the chain saw with a practiced grace. It was heavy, and he handled it as if it weighed no more than a few pounds.
He couldn’t touch her if he was holding the chain saw, and she wasn’t sure anymore she was ready to have him touch her. Wasn’t sure if she was ready to have anyone love her, particularly a somber, beautiful creature like Patrick.
“I’d better go,” she said again, not moving.
A slow smile spread across his face. “If I’d known that would scare you away I would have tried it a lot sooner.”
“I’m not scared.”
“Yup, you are,” he said confidently. “You think about it, Marthe Davis. I’m not someone you can come and play with when you’re bored. I make commitments, and I stick to them. If you want casual sex you’ll have to look somewhere else.” And he walked off before she could come up with a suitable answer.
The best she could manage was to stick her tongue out at him, but since he was walking away he didn’t get the benefit of the gesture. She had no choice but to head back to the house and her strangely unsettled sister. Maybe she could get rid of some of her restlessness by baiting Sophie. But for some reason she wasn’t really in the mood.
Maybe she’d find something to do. There were three bedrooms left to be painted, and while she hated to seem compliant, activity was better than boredom. And then maybe she’d find out exactly what her straight-laced sister had been doing in the middle of the night with that mysterious stranger.
Sophie was not in a good mood. They were all watching her, and it was driving her absolutely crazy. By the time they’d finished dinner she was ready to bite everyone’s head off. She resisted the impulse. Grace would dissolve into tears, Marty would jump into the fray with an energetic belligerence, and things would go from awful to god-awful in seconds.
She finally couldn’t take it anymore, and once dinner was finished she walked out of the house into the warm night air. They’d either do the dishes or not—she wasn’t going to worry about it. As a matter of fact, Marty had been surprisingly industrious today, putting a primer coat on the three back bedrooms. Her black-and-fuchsia hair now had a streak or two of white from the paint, but the effect was impish rather than bizarre. And for all Doc’s worries, Grace seemed uncharacteristically peaceful, even calling out after Sophie as she stomped from the kitchen.
“Have fun, love. Make him use a condom.”
It wasn’t enough to make her turn back. She repressed the urge to snarl, continuing out into the gathering dusk. She wasn’t going anywhere near the Whitten place, anywhere near John Smith. She was going to get in the car and drive, maybe even as far as
Montpelier and find a movie. Hell, she could even go to a bar and see if she could pick up some sexy young bureaucrat. Maybe it would turn out that she just liked sex, and John Smith happened to be the first to demonstrate it. Maybe he was only adequate.
And maybe pigs could fly. It didn’t matter—she was getting out of here, all by herself, for a few hours. She’d play the stereo in her car very loud, something upbeat and cheerful like the Beach Boys, and she wouldn’t think about Grace, or Marty, or murdered women, or sex, or how strangers were going to come and take over her house. She wouldn’t think about going upstairs to that big rumpled bed in the Whitten house and just hiding there. With him.
And most of all, she wouldn’t think about the damned tingle in her body that had haunted her the whole goddamned day.
Shit.
15
He followed her. The rain had begun again, no more than a fine misting that coated his windshield. The roads were wet, even a bit slick. It would be simple enough. She was an out-of-stater, not used to the peculiarities of Vermont roads. It wouldn’t surprise anyone if she had an accident. After all, she’d been working too hard, worrying about her mother and sister. She’d been distracted. Could happen to anyone.
He hated to do it. He was starting to repeat himself, and he knew that was dangerous. As long as he used a different method each time the police were helpless. Most of the time they didn’t even realize there was anything suspicious about it. Just another tragic accident.
But he’d already done a car accident, just three years ago, in the same area. The victim had been a teenage wanton, and she’d died with her lover. This time it would be a presumably virtuous newcomer, old enough to know better. There’d be nothing to connect the two. Only the fact that he knew them both. But then, everyone in Colby knew everyone else—there was nothing suspicious about that. God spoke to him, told him what he must do. And if he was directed toward a stranger, he had no choice but to listen to the Word and act accordingly. Faith was a lost virtue. He took the Word on faith, and dispensed justice and God’s wrath without compunction.