Presumed Guilty

by Tess Gerritsen

  “Take a look at the mess. What does it tell you?”

  Miranda glanced at the papers, the scattered books. Then her gaze shifted to the bookcases. Only a top shelf had been emptied. Two full bookcases were undisturbed. “He didn’t look through all the books. So whoever broke in here must have been interrupted. By you, maybe.”

  “Or he found what he was looking for,” said Chase.

  Miss St. John turned to him. “And what might that be?”

  “A guess?” Chase and Miranda glanced at each other. “The file on Stone Coast Trust,” Chase ventured.

  “Ah.” Miss St. John’s eyes took on a gleam of interest. “Your brother’s little campaign against Tony Graffam. Yes, Richard seemed to do quite a bit of writing out here. At that desk, in fact. On my evening walks I’d see him through the window.”

  “Did you ever stop to talk to him? About what he was working on?”

  “Oh, no. That’s why we come out here, isn’t it? To get away from all those prying townies.” She glanced at Miranda. “I never saw you out here.”

  “I’ve never been here,” she said, shifting uneasily under that thoughtful gaze. This matter-of-fact reference to her link with Richard had taken her by surprise. And yet, Miss St. John’s bluntness was far preferable to the delicate avoidance with which so many others treated the subject.

  Miss St. John bent down for a closer look at the papers. “He must have done a prodigious amount of work here, judging by this mess. What is all this, anyway?”

  Chase bent and sifted through the papers. “Looks like a lot of old article files.... Financial records from the Herald... And here we’ve got a collection of local personality profiles. Why, here’s one of you, Miss St. John.”

  “Me? But I was never interviewed for anything.”

  Chase grinned. “Must be the unauthorized version, then.”

  “Does it mention all my sexy secrets?”

  “Well, let’s just take a good look here—”

  “Oh, give me the damn thing.” Miss St. John snatched the page out of his hands and scanned the typewritten notes. She read them aloud. “‘Age seventy-four...holds title to lot number two, St. John’s Wood, and cottage thereon...rabid member of local garden club.’” Here she glanced up huffily. “Rabid?” She continued reading. “‘Eccentric recluse, never married. Engaged once, to an Arthur Simoneau, killed in action...Normandy....’” Her voice trailed off. Slowly she sat down, still clutching the piece of paper in both hands.

  “Oh, Miss St. John,” said Miranda. “I’m sorry.”

  The elderly woman looked up, still shaken. “It...was a very long time ago.”

  “I can’t believe he went digging into your personal life, without you even knowing about it. Why would he do that?”

  “You’re saying it was Richard?” asked Miss St. John.

  “Well, these are his papers.”

  Miss St. John frowned at the page for a moment. “No,” she said slowly. “I don’t believe he wrote this. There’s an error in here. It says my cottage lies in St. John’s Wood. But it lies three feet over the line, on Tremain property. A surveyor’s mistake from seventy years past. Richard knew that.”

  Chase frowned. “I never heard that, about your cottage.”

  “Yes, your family land goes past the second stone wall. It includes the entire access road. So, technically, all the rest of us are trespassers on your private road. Not that it ever mattered. It always felt like a giant family out here. But now...” She shook her head. “So many strangers on the island. All those tourists from Massachusetts.” She made it sound like an invasion from hell.

  “Did Stone Coast Trust approach you?” Miranda asked her. “About selling St. John’s Wood?”

  “They approached everyone on this road. I, of course, refused. So did Richard. That effectively squelched the project. Without Rose Hill, Stone Coast would own a disconnected patchwork of little lots. But now...” Sadly she sighed. “I imagine Evelyn, at this very moment, has her pen poised over the sales contract.”

  “Actually, she does not,” said Chase. “Rose Hill didn’t go to Evelyn. Richard left the property to Miranda.”

  Miss St. John stared at them. “Now that,” she said after a long pause, “is an entirely unexpected development.”

  “For me, as well,” said Miranda.

  While Miss St. John sat back in thought, Miranda and Chase gathered up the rest of the papers. They found more article files, a few miscellaneous clippings, an old financial report from the Herald. Obviously Richard had used the cottage as another office. Was this where he had stored his most sensitive papers? Miranda wondered about this when she came across a whole bundle of personality profiles. Like the page on Miss St. John, the information contained in these files was highly private.

  In some cases it was downright shocking. She was startled to read that Forrest Mayhew, the local bank president, had been arrested for drunk driving in Boston. That town selectman George LaPierre, married thirty years, had been treated last year for syphilis. That Dr. Steiner—her doctor—was under investigation for Medicare fraud.

  She handed the papers to Chase. “Look at these! Richard was collecting dirt on everyone in town!”

  “Here, what’s this?” he asked. There was a yellow adhesive note attached to the back cover of the folder. On it was the handwritten scrawl, “Mr. T., do you want more? Let me know.” It was signed “W.B.R.”

  “So Richard didn’t write these,” said Miranda. “This person W.B.R.—whoever he was—must’ve done the reporting.”

  “You have anyone on staff with those initials?”

  “No. At least, not at the moment.” She reached for a manila folder lying on the floor. “Look, there’s another note from W.B.R.” This time the note was paper-clipped to the top cover. “All I could get. Sorry—W.B.R.”

  “What’s inside?” asked Miss St. John.

  Miranda opened the file and stared. “This is it! The file on Stone Coast Trust!”

  “Jackpot,” said Chase.

  “There’s no profile of Tony Graffam. But here’s his tax return. A list of bank account numbers and assets...” She nodded. “We hit pay dirt.”

  “I think not,” said Miss St. John.

  They both looked at her.

  “If that file is so important, why did the burglar leave it here?”

  In silence they considered that question.

  “Maybe our burglar wasn’t interested in Stone Coast Trust at all,” said Miss St. John. “I mean, look at all this nasty information Richard’s been gathering. Snoopy reports on drunk driving. Medicare fraud. Syphilis. George LaPierre, of all people! And at his age, too. These files could destroy some fine reputations. Now, I tell you, isn’t that a motive for burglary?”

  Or murder, thought Miranda. Why had Richard gathered such information in the first place? Was he planning an exposé on island residents? Or was there some darker reason? Coercion, for instance. Blackmail.

  “If someone broke in to steal his own file, then we can assume it’s now gone,” said Chase. “Which means George LaPierre, Dr. Steiner, all the others in this pile didn’t do it.”

  “Not necessarily,” said Miss St. John. “What if he broke in and simply substituted a milder version? Mine, for instance. There’s not a thing in my profile that qualifies as scandalous. How do you know I didn’t come in here and destroy a far more venomous version?”

  Chase smiled. “I will duly place you on the list of suspects, Miss St. John.”

  “Don’t you discount me, Chase Tremain. Age alone does not take one out of the running. I have more up here—” she tapped her head “—than that imbecile George LaPierre had in his prime. If he ever had a prime.”

  “What you’re saying, Miss St. John,” said Miranda, “is that we can’t count out any name in th
is pile. Or any name not in this pile.”

  “Correct.”

  Miranda frowned at the books. “One thing doesn’t make sense. First, our burglar searches the desk. He throws around some papers, looking for some incriminating file. Why would he then search the bookcase? That’s not the sort of place Richard would keep papers.”

  After a pause Miss St. John said, “You’re right, of course. That doesn’t make sense.”

  “Well,” said Chase, “I guess we should call Lorne. Though I’m not sure he’d be much help at this point.” He turned to the phone.

  He’d already picked up the receiver when Miss St. John suddenly said, “Wait. Perhaps you should hold off on that call.” She was staring at a loose page near her feet. Thoughtfully she picked up the paper and smoothed it across her knee.

  Frowning, Chase hung up the receiver. “Why?”

  “This is a profile of Valerie Everhard. You remember her, Chase. Our local librarian. And a married lady. According to this, Valerie has taken on a lover.”

  “So?”

  “The man she’s seeing is our chief of police.” Miss St. John looked up and her eyes had lost all trace of humor. “Lorne Tibbetts.”

  * * *

  “Why did he have these awful reports?” asked Miranda. “What was he planning to do with them?”

  They were driving through darkness back to town. The fog had rolled in from the sea and curtained off all view beyond the dim haze of their headlights. Nothing seemed real in this mist, nothing seemed familiar. They were driving through a strange land, through a swirling cloud that seemed as if it would never lift.

  “It doesn’t sound like Richard,” said Chase. “Snooping around in his neighbors’ private lives. He committed enough sins of his own. If anyone was vulnerable to blackmail, it was Richard. Besides, who cares if Lorne is having a little fling with the librarian?”

  “The librarian’s husband?”

  “Okay, but why would Richard care?”

  She shook her head, unable to come up with an answer. “I wonder if any of these people knew about these files. Miss St. John didn’t.” She looked down at the papers on her lap and thought of the terrible secrets they contained. She had the sudden urge to shove the pile away, to throw off that unclean burden. “Chase?” she asked. “How do we know any of this is true?”

  “We don’t.” He gave a short laugh. “And we can’t exactly knock on George LaPierre’s door and ask if he’s had syphilis.”

  Miranda frowned at the note clipped to the folder. “I wonder who this is. This W.B.R. who got the information.”

  “The initials don’t ring any bells?”

  “None at all.”

  As the darkness flew past their windshield, Miranda thought of all the secrets revealed in these files. The banker’s weakness for whiskey. The doctor’s white-collar fraud. The husband and wife who conversed with their fists. All of it concealed beneath the glaze of respectability. What private pains we nurse in silence.

  “Why these particular people?” she asked suddenly.

  “Because they have the most to lose?” Chase suggested. “We’re talking old island families here. LaPierre, Everhard, St. John. All of them respected names.”

  “Except for Tony Graffam.”

  “That’s true. I guess he has a file in there, too...” He paused. “Wait. There’s our link.”

  “What?”

  “The north shore. You haven’t lived here long enough to know all these families. But I grew up with them. I remember the summers I used to play with Toby LaPierre. And Daniel Steiner. And Valerie Everhard. Their families all have summer cottages out there.”

  “It could be coincidental.”

  “Or it could mean everything.”

  Chase frowned at the highway. The fog was thinning. “When we get back to your house,” he said, “let’s take a good look at those names. See if my hunch holds up.”

  An hour and a half later they sat at Miranda’s dining table, the pages spread out before them. The remains of a hastily prepared supper—mushroom omelets and toast—had been pushed aside and they were now on their second cup of coffee. It was such a domestic scene, she thought with a twinge of longing, almost like newlyweds lingering at the dinner table. Except that the man sitting across from her could never, would never, fit into the picture. He was a temporary apparition, a visitor passing through her dining room.

  She forced herself to focus on the sheet of paper, where he’d just checked off the final name.

  “Okay, here’s the list,” said Chase. “Everyone in Richard’s file. I’m almost certain they all own property on the north shore.”

  “Are any names missing?”

  Chase sat back and mentally ticked off the camps along the access road. “There’s Richard, of course. Then there’s old man Sulaway’s property, down the road. He’s a retired lobsterman, sort of a recluse. And then there’s Frenchman’s Cottage. I think it was sold some years back. To hippies, I heard. They come up for the summers.”

  “So they’d be living there now.”

  “If they still own the place. But they’re not from this area. I can’t see Richard bothering to dig up information on them. And as for old Sully, well, an eighty-five-year-old sounds like a pretty unlikely victim for blackmail.”

  Blackmail. Miranda gazed at the papers on the table. “What was Richard thinking of?” she wondered. “What did he have against these people?”

  “Something to do with the rezoning? Were any of these names on the land commission?”

  “They couldn’t have voted, anyway. They would’ve been disqualified. You know, conflict of interest.” She sat back. “Maybe our burglar was looking for something entirely different.”

  “Then the question is, did he—or she—find it?”

  From somewhere in the house came a sound that made them both glance up. It was the soft tinkle of breaking glass.

  Miranda jerked to her feet in alarm. At once Chase grabbed her hand, signaled her to be silent. Together they moved from the dining room into the living room. A quick glance around told them the windows were all intact. They paused for a moment, listening, but heard no other sounds. Chase started toward the bedrooms.

  They were moving up the hall when they heard, louder this time, the distinct crash of shattering glass.

  “That came from the cellar!” said Miranda.

  Chase wheeled and headed back into the kitchen. He flicked on a wall switch and yanked open the cellar door. A single bare bulb shone over the narrow stairway. A strange mist seemed to swirl in the shadows, obscuring the bottom of the stairs. They had taken only two steps down when they both smelled smoke.

  “You’ve got a fire in here!” said Chase, moving down the steps. “Where’s your extinguisher?”

  “I’ll get it!” Miranda scrambled into the kitchen, pulled the extinguisher from the pantry shelf and dashed back down the cellar steps.

  By now the smoke was thick enough to make her eyes burn. Through the whirling haze she saw the source: a bundle of flaming rags. Nearby, just beneath a shattered basement window, lay a red brick. At once she understood what had happened, and her panic gave way to fury. How dare they smash my window? How dare they attack me in my own home?

  “Stay back!” Chase yelled, plunging forward through the smoke. His shoes crunched over broken glass as he crossed the concrete floor. He aimed the extinguisher; a stream of white shot out and hissed over the flames. A few sweeps of the nozzle and the fire faltered and died under a smothering blanket of powder. Only the smoke remained, a stinking pall that hung like a cloud around the bare light bulb.

  “It’s out!” said Chase. He was prowling the basement now, searching for new flames. He didn’t notice that Miranda had gone rigid with fury, didn’t see that she was staring, white-faced, at the broken g
lass on the floor.

  “Why can’t they leave me alone?” she cried.

  Chase turned and looked at her with sudden intensity. He said, dead quiet, “You mean this has happened before?”

  “Not—not this. But phone calls, really cruel ones. Again and again. And messages, written on my window.”

  “What sort of messages?”

  “What you’d expect.” She swallowed and looked away. “You know, to the local murderess.”

  He took a step toward her. “You know who’s doing it?”

  “I told myself it was just—just some kids. But kids, they wouldn’t set fire to my house....”

  Chase glanced down at the brick, then up at the shattered window. “It’s a crazy way to burn down a house,” he said. He went to her, took her by the shoulders, gently rubbed her arms. She felt warmth in his touch, and strength. Courage. He framed her face with his hands and said quietly, “I’m going to call the police.”

  She nodded. Together they started up the steps to the kitchen. They were halfway up the stairs when the door above them suddenly slammed shut. An instant later the bolt squealed home.

  “They’ve shut us in!” cried Miranda.

  He dashed past her up the stairs and began pounding on the door. In frustration he threw himself against it. His shoulder slammed into the wood.

  “It’s solid!” said Miranda. “You can’t break it down.”

  Chase groaned. “I think I just found that out.”

  Footsteps creaked across the floor overhead. Miranda froze, tracing with her gaze the intruder’s movements.

  “What’s he doing?” she whispered.

  As if in answer to her question, the single light bulb suddenly went out. The basement was plunged into darkness.

  “Chase?” she cried.

  “I’m here! Right here. Give me your hand.”

  She reached up blindly toward him; at once he found her wrist. “It’s all right,” he murmured, pulling her toward him, gathering her tightly against his chest. Just the unyielding support of that embrace was enough to take the edge off her panic. “We’ll be okay,” he murmured. “We just have to find a way out. We can’t make it through the window. You have a cellar door? A coal hatch?”