by Anne Stuart
Funny thing was, he couldn’t remember where his father was buried. His mother was buried with her family in Minnesota, but he couldn’t remember where he’d ended up laying the old man to rest. That bothered him.
His father had died in Kansas or Nebraska. One of those big, flat states, in a small town, and Griffin had just managed to beg, borrow and steal the money for the funeral expenses. He never could afford a stone, but it didn’t matter. He was never going back.
He hated returning to places, especially this particular one. There’d been one point when he was fool enough to think he could spend the rest of his life in Colby. He’d been young, with just a trace of innocence left. The Vermont legal system had knocked that out of him, fast.
Of course, that was before he and Lorelei had gotten involved. Back then he’d never had much sense when it came to women. Lorelei was trouble from the word go. She was thin, lithe and sexually voracious. So voracious, in fact, that one man hadn’t been enough for her, and probably not two, either. He’d known he was sharing her, and he’d told himself he didn’t mind. He would have liked to know where she went on the nights she didn’t creep into the decrepit cottage down by the lake, but she wouldn’t tell him and he stopped asking. He didn’t want to care enough to feel jealous, but he’d been a kid, and sooner or later it had all boiled over.
He remembered that much. Remembered the screaming fight they’d had, which too many people had overheard. But he couldn’t remember anything else. If she told him who else she was seeing. If she’d said anything that would lead him to the truth.
And he couldn’t remember if, in his adolescent outrage, he’d put his hands on her and killed her.
That’s what a jury had believed, no matter what he’d said. That he’d killed her, and his so-called blackout was only a convenient ploy to get off the hook. But no one knew he’d been in the old wing that night. Hell, even he hadn’t remembered until five years later, and by then all he wanted to do was forget.
Now he was ready to remember, ready for the truth. No matter how ugly.
He’d had no reason to kill the other two girls. He’d barely known them, just managed to flirt with them at the Wednesday night square dances. Well, there had been a one-night stand with Valette, but that hadn’t amounted to anything, and most people didn’t even know about it. Valette had certainly managed to forget it in short order.
In the end the police hadn’t even bothered trying to pin the other two murders on him, satisfied that they could tie him to Lorelei and put him away for the rest of his life. They’d been found far enough away—Valette in a cornfield and Alice by the side of the road. The police never bothered to wonder how unlikely it would be to have two killers in a town the size of Colby. Two who preyed on pretty teenage girls. They’d been happy enough to railroad Thomas Ingram Griffin. It was just a good thing the death penalty was outlawed in Vermont. And there hadn’t been enough energy for a lynch mob.
He’d worried someone would recognize him once he came back, but he decided they probably wouldn’t. It had been easy enough to track down the twenty-year-old newspapers, to look at the grainy photograph of the boy he once was. Hair past his shoulders, a beard covering half his face, a James Dean kind of squint that obscured the fact that he needed glasses. The picture they’d regularly run was a doozy—taken when they’d slapped handcuffs on him at the edge of the lake. He was wearing cutoffs, and you could see his tattoo quite clearly if you bothered to look. He was going to have to remember to keep his shirt on. The snake coiling over one hip would be a dead giveaway.
Without that, no one would be likely to connect the reclusive, bespectacled Mr. Smith with the murdering teenage vagrant. He wore khakis and cotton now, without rips. His beard, something he’d cultivated quite assiduously to hide his too-pretty face, was long gone, and the face that was now exposed was too full of character to be called angelic. His hair was shorter, with streaks of premature gray, and if anyone could still remember the troubled kid they’d locked up, they’d see only a passing resemblance in the face of Mr. Smith. If they bothered to look at all.
He was counting on them to not look. And to not remember. Over the years he’d discovered that people pretty much saw what they wanted to see, and no one would be looking for the lost soul of a once-convicted murderer in a well-heeled tourist.
Stonegate Farm had improved in the last twenty years, though he found that hard to believe. The peeling white clapboard had been painted a cheerful yellow, and baskets of flowering plants, not too many, not too few, hung from the porch. The windows were spotless, shining in the sunlight, the once-wild lawn was tamed into obedience, and even the old barn looked like it was being worked on. The old wing stretched out back, spruced up with a fresh coat of paint, but he couldn’t see past the smoky windows. It looked boarded up, impregnable, a mixed blessing. At least the new owner hadn’t gotten around to messing with that part of the place, thank God. There was still a chance he might find something that could lead him to the answers he needed to find.
Someone was sitting on the porch, watching him, and he saw a pair of long, bare legs swinging back and forth.
“Who are you?” It was a teenage girl, probably not much older than Lorelei when she died. She had fuchsia-streaked black hair, a ring through her eyebrow, a skimpy bathing suit showing off a too-thin body, and a belligerent expression on her face. Presumably this was Sophie Davis’s sister. No wonder the older sister looked worn out.
“John Smith. I’m renting the house in the woods.” He deliberately didn’t call it the old Whitten place—there was no reason a stranger would know its name. “I wondered if you happened to have a spare cup of coffee?”
The girl shrugged her thin shoulders. “Sophie usually makes a pot—go on in and help yourself. I’m Marthe. With an e. Like the French.”
“You sure your sister wouldn’t mind?”
The girl’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “How do you know she’s my sister?”
“Logic,” he said, climbing up onto the porch. The decking had been painted a fresh gray, while the porch ceiling was sky blue with fleecy white clouds stenciled on it. “She told me she was living here with her mother and her sister, and I’m assuming if you were hired help to run the bed-and-breakfast you wouldn’t be sitting on your butt.”
“Maybe I’m taking a break. You don’t happen to have a cigarette, do you?”
“I gave them up. How old are you?”
“Twenty-one.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Eighteen,” she said.
“Uh-huh.”
“Next January.”
“Sorry, I’m not about to contribute to your bad habits.”
She leaned back, surveying him slowly. “Oh, I can think of much better ways for you to lead me astray.”
He laughed, without humor. “Honey, I’m much too old for you.”
“I’m willing to overlook a few drawbacks,” she said in a sultry voice. “How’d you meet my sister?”
“She brought me some muffins to welcome me to the neighborhood.”
The girl’s laugh was mirthless. “Watch your back. She wants the Whitten place, and she doesn’t care how she gets it. You don’t want to end up floating facedown in the lake.”
The macabre suggestion was like a blow to the stomach, but Sophie’s sister seemed blissfully unaware of the effect she’d had on him. Or the imperfect memories she’d resurrected, of another body floating facedown in Still Lake.
“She doesn’t strike me as the murderous type,” he said carefully, leaning against the porch railing.
“Things aren’t always what they seem,” the girl said cheerfully. “For instance, does this place look like the scene of a savage murder? Not likely. You’d be more likely to die of boredom than having your throat cut. Perfect peace and quiet.”
“That’s what I’m looking for.”
“You wouldn’t have found it twenty years ago,” she said with ghoulish enthusiasm. “There was a serial killer a
round here, and he murdered three teenage girls. Raped them and cut apart their bodies. It was really gruesome.”
“It sounds it,” he said in a bored voice. His memory wasn’t that bad—there’d been no rape, and only Alice had been mutilated, though the autopsy had revealed that all three girls had had sexual relations within twenty-four hours prior to their deaths. “Did they ever find the guy who did it?”
“How’d you know it was a guy?” Marthe said suspiciously.
“Most serial killers are men. Besides, you said they were raped.”
Marthe shrugged her thin shoulders. “Gracey would know the details—there’s nothing she loves more than true-crime thrillers. Of course, she’s gotten so addled she doesn’t even remember her own name, but if you’re curious maybe she might come up with some details.”
“Not particularly,” he said, lying. “I was more interested in coffee.”
The girl hopped up from her perch on the railing, twitching her flat little rump in what she obviously hoped was a provocative fashion. “I’ll show you,” she offered. “We’ll just have to hope we can avoid Sophie.”
The kitchen of the old place had been completely redone. The painted cabinets had been stripped back to bare oak, the floor was a rough-hewn tile, the stove was one of those huge restaurant-style-things, and the countertops were butcher block and granite. A far cry from Peggy Niles’s fanatically clean surroundings—he always thought her kitchen was like an operating room. Spotless and scrubbed, even the homey smells of cooking hadn’t dared linger in its pristine environs. Only the door to the old hospital wing remained the same. Locked, probably nailed shut as it had been back then, albeit it was covered with a fresh coat of paint.
This room was far more welcoming than its original incarnation. Or maybe it was just the smell of fresh coffee and muffins that gave him a deceptive sense of peace. Smells were one thing that could always betray you, make you vulnerable to old emotions. He’d fought against them all his life.
There was no sign of Sophie Davis, and he didn’t know whether that was a consolation or a regret. She wouldn’t like her nubile little sister twitching her underclad butt around him, and he wasn’t any too fond of it, either. He was as healthy as the next man, but Miss Marthe Davis left him completely cold. Maybe because he’d never been particularly interested in teenagers.
“So what are you doing today, John?” she asked in an artless voice.
Like a fool, it took him a moment to remember that was the name he’d given her. “Cleaning up the house I rented. I didn’t give them any warning when I was coming, and the place is a mess.”
“I could help. If there’s one thing I know how to do nowadays, it’s clean houses,” she said with a moue. “I’m sure you could do with a little company.”
“Actually I’m fine….” he began, but she’d already twitched her way out of the kitchen.
“I’ll just go put something on,” she called back to him. “I know Sophie wouldn’t miss me.”
“Hell,” he muttered. There were hand-thrown pottery mugs on the counter, and he took one, filling it with coffee. He drank it black, and he almost snarled when he took his first sip. He should have known that Sophie Davis would make the kind of coffee most men would die for.
He should have poured the rest out, left the deserted kitchen and headed straight for Audley’s General Store and the instant coffee section. He didn’t usually succumb to temptation, but for some reason being back in the place where he’d let his appetites run wild seemed to be doing a number on his iron self-control. The least he could do was drain the mug and get the hell out of there, before Martha Stewart found him.
Too late. Just outside the kitchen, he heard footsteps coming from the old hallway, and he froze.
The last thing Sophie Davis expected to see when she walked into her kitchen was the enigmatic Mr. Smith. He was leaning against the kitchen counter, his long, elegant fingers wrapped around a huge mug of coffee, and the dark eyes behind his wire-rimmed glasses were cool and assessing.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded, too startled to remember her manners.
“Your sister offered me a cup of coffee,” he said. She didn’t like his voice. It was slow and deep and sexy, at complete odds with his cool manner. And then his words sank in.
“You met Marty?” She tried to keep the note of suspicion and worry out of her voice. For a brief moment she’d thought Mr. Smith would provide a harmless distraction for her younger sister. In the full light of day, in her bright and airy kitchen, she knew instinctively that Mr. Smith was far more dangerous than she’d ever imagined.
“Yes,” he said, giving nothing away. He seemed entirely at ease, drinking her coffee and watching her.
“She’s not even eighteen years old, Mr. Smith,” she said sternly.
“So she told me. Not that I was interested. Nubile nymphets aren’t exactly my style.”
She wasn’t sure she believed him. “What is your style, Mr. Smith?”
He cocked his head. “Is your interest personal or academic?”
The question startled her, but she met his gaze stonily. “I’m trying to look out for my little sister.”
“And who looks out for you?”
No one at all, she wanted to say, but she kept her mouth shut. If this was John Smith’s idea of making small talk she preferred his taciturn persona. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I have a lot of work to do today, and I don’t have time to spend socializing.”
“Is that what we’re doing?” he said. There was an undercurrent of amusement in his rough voice. She didn’t like it when men found her amusing.
“I’ll be happy to send you home with a thermos of coffee. We’re set up to offer them to our guests.”
“You mean you’ll be happy to send me home and you don’t care what you have to do to get me there,” he corrected her. “Trust me, Ms. Davis, I’m absolutely harmless.”
“Sure you are,” she muttered. “You underestimate the effect of those brooding Byronic looks on an impressionable teenager.”
“Brooding Byronic looks?” he echoed, his horror unfeigned.
“I’m ready!” Marty appeared in the kitchen door, dressed in a micro skirt and tube top.
“Ready for what?” Sophie demanded.
“I’m going to help John open up the house,” she said with sunny ingenuousness. It was almost enough to make Sophie waver—there were times when she thought she’d do anything if Marty would just smile.
But that didn’t include sending her off with a good-looking stranger. “No, you’re not,” she said flatly. “I need your help around here, and I’m sure Mr. Smith is entirely capable of handling the Whitten house on his own. If he needs any help I can give him the names of a couple of people who work out of the village.”
“I don’t need help…” he began, but Marty broke in, stamping her foot like a spoiled child.
“You’re always trying to stop me from doing anything I want. You don’t want me to have any fun! You’d just as soon lock me up in a convent and throw away the key.”
Sophie took a deep breath. “When did you decide that cleaning old houses was fun? You’ve been complaining since the day we got here—why in heaven’s name would you want to volunteer to do any more than you’ve grudgingly agreed to do here?”
“Maybe because I want to?”
“And what’s a convent got to do with it? Were you planning on helping him open the house or having sex with him?”
Smith choked on his coffee.
“You hate me!” Marty cried in a fury. “Well, I hate you, too!” And she stormed out of the kitchen, slamming the door behind her.
Sophie didn’t want to face her unwelcome guest. She should have gotten used to Marty’s scenes by now, but she hadn’t slept well the night before, and for some reason Mr. Smith made her uncomfortable. “I’m sorry about that,” she said, heading for the coffee and pouring herself a mug, determined not to look at him. “My sister is at a difficult a
ge. She’s got a lot of problems to work through.”
“Does she? She seems fairly typical to me. All teenagers are a pain in the butt.”
She glanced over at him. “You’re a father, Mr. Smith?”
“No. I just remember what it was like. Don’t you?”
“Not particularly. I was too busy being responsible to behave like a selfish adolescent. I didn’t have time to rebel.”
“Maybe you should try it when you get a chance,” he said evenly.
“I’m just as happy to have skipped that part of growing up.” She glanced out the kitchen window toward the lake, not wanting to look at him any longer.
“I’ve found that you can’t really skip parts of the process. Sooner or later they catch up with you and you have to go through them, anyway.”
“Let’s just hope I’m immune to that particular theory. I don’t have the time or the inclination to act like a giddy, lovesick brat.”
“Maybe you don’t know what you’re missing,” the man said, setting his empty coffee mug down on the counter. He’d chosen her favorite mug—the teal blue one shaped like a bean pot. She had the gloomy feeling that she’d never be able to drink from it again without picturing his long, elegant fingers wrapped around it. His mouth on it. There was no way around it, the man had the sexiest mouth she’d ever seen.
“I’m better off that way,” she said. Wondering why the hell she was even discussing this with him. She knew he was watching her out of his cool, dark eyes, even though she was determined not to meet his gaze.
“Maybe,” he said. “In the meantime, since your sister’s otherwise occupied, would you consider coming over to the house and taking a look? Give me some idea what kind of help I’ll need, maybe give me a few names?”
She stared at him in shock. Yesterday afternoon he’d looked as if he’d be more welcoming to a horde of Vikings rather than his neighbor. Now he was suddenly being relatively pleasant, asking her for help.
The problem was, she didn’t trust him. “I can give you the names, anyway….”
