Still Lake (14 page)

“Shit.” Oh, God, now she was going to be using his favorite curse word all the time. She was always getting after Marty for her language—there was no way she could get away with it herself. And every time she said the word she could see him, feel him, buried deep inside her tightly clenching body, his heart pounding against hers, his breath rasping, his hips moving, her body damp, wet, clinging, shaking…

She practically tumbled off the glider in her haste to get away from her own lascivious thoughts. What the hell kind of mess had she gotten herself into this time?

G
riffin laughed when Sophie slammed down the phone on him. His work here was done—she was so pissed off she wouldn't indulge in a weeping fit. She'd be so focused on her anger she wouldn't make the mistake of thinking she was in love with him. God knows, that was the last thing he wanted. He'd had women make that mistake in the past, and it only led to disillusionment and bad feelings. At least his former fiancée had been too hardheaded and practical to suffer from those kinds of delusions.

But Sophie wasn't hardheaded and practical, she was as soft and yielding as her luscious body, and she'd be just sentimental enough to read more into a good fuck than there was. And he didn't want that happening.

The Kings were already hard at work, tearing up the floorboards around the chimney where the dampness had set in. They'd started their morning with a group prayer, and the mutters about sinful ways seemed clearly directed at their employer. Griffin ignored them. He had a certain fondness for sin, particularly the sin he'd committed last night. The
Kings could pray over his soul all they wanted—as long as they didn't interfere in his life.

Mrs. King was scrubbing the same areas she'd scrubbed yesterday, probably with the vain hope that she could get them even cleaner, keeping her head bowed and her lips moving in silent prayer. She jumped every time he walked into the kitchen to get more coffee, and after a while he took pity on her and decided to take his supposedly satanic self off for a while. He needed a nap, and he wasn't going to get any peace in his own place.

He wasn't going to get it up at the inn, either, even though the thought was appealing. At the moment there was nothing he'd like better than to wrap himself around Sophie's lush frame and fall asleep, but she'd be more likely to stab him. Sophie's second lesson in the art of lovemaking would have to wait.

He got in his car and headed out, aimlessly. It was an overcast day, still warmish, with the threat of a storm in the air. He could remember those storms well—the pristine blue of the Vermont sky darkening with rage, the wind whipping through the trees, the hail that would destroy crops and even break windows. It usually took days to build up to a storm like that, but he'd long ago lost touch with nature and the weather, and for all he knew a hurricane might be approaching. And he didn't give a
damn, unless it got in the way of what he was trying to do.

His time was running out. He'd rented the Whitten cottage for six months, but he had no intention of staying more than a couple of weeks, three at the most. Time was passing, and he wasn't any closer to the truth than he had been before, with the possibility of other, earlier murders clouding the issue.

He didn't feel like a killer. He never had, but that proved just about nothing. The fact of the matter was, he didn't remember a thing about that night, not until he woke up with Lorelei's blood staining his body. For all he knew he could have been the one who killed her. Or he might have been passed out, unable to help her as she struggled for her life.

She'd fought her killer. He remembered that much from the trial. He'd brought the transcripts with him to remind him of what had happened. Twenty years ago DNA testing was in its infancy, and no one had bothered to see whether or not the skin and blood under Lorelei's fingernails matched his. Particularly when he had scratches down his back, anyway. Lorelei was fond of leaving her mark on her lovers, and it gave her a perverse thrill to see her scratches down his back.

The blood and skin beneath her fingernails were more than the remnants of faintly sadistic passion. Her nails, always her pride and joy, were broken from the struggle. Surely he would have had more
marks on his body if he'd done that in some kind of drug-hazed frenzy. But the important question was why? Lorelei had annoyed the hell out of him. She'd teased him and taunted him and cheated on him, and he'd been a horny kid, full of pride and testosterone. But he'd already made up his mind to leave. Why would he kill her?

Instinct and common sense weren't enough to put his mind at ease, though. Not when he couldn't remember, not when he'd been convicted of the crime. It didn't matter that the conviction had been overturned on a legal technicality—there was still enough doubt left in the back of his mind and he couldn't move on until he knew the answer.

What if it was the wrong answer? What if, when he got back into the deserted section of the inn, he remembered something he didn't want to remember? He'd been back in Colby for four days and all he'd accomplished so far was a quick midnight reconnoiter of the old grounds, looking for a way to break in. The windows were boarded up tight, and pulling off the planks would have made a hell of a racket. He was going to have to get in through the old kitchen door, which made things a little dicey since the queen of that particular kitchen hated his guts.

Hell, he had too many excuses. Maybe he didn't want to remember. Maybe he wasn't ready to live with the truth.

What if the truth about that night came back and
he didn't like it? What if he suddenly remembered killing Lorelei, and maybe even the others? How would he live with that knowledge?

He'd survive. There'd be no noble gesture of turning himself in and confessing. He'd done five years already, and he hadn't been in his right mind if he'd actually been the killer.

There were too many loose ends. What about the other women, if indeed there were any? He needed to find out more about the girl in the old McLaren graveyard, with the fresh yellow flowers. He needed to check the other graveyards, see if there were other young women with unusual yellow flowers on their graves. If he couldn't show his face at the inn right now he could at least do something to find the answers.

It wasn't the first time he'd visited Lorelei's grave. When he'd gotten out of prison he'd driven over here. He'd never been sure why—maybe he still couldn't really believe she was dead. It was raining that day, and he'd stood at her grave and wept. The last time he ever had. He couldn't remember if there were any flowers—the harsh words etched in granite wiped out everything else.

It was going to rain today. The clouds were scudding across the sky, ominous, depressing, and the first few drops were splashing down on the windscreen of his Jaguar when he pulled up to the tiny, picturesque graveyard by the edge of the lake.

Most of the year-round residents were buried in the village cemetery. This graveyard had mainly been populated by summer people for the last seventy years, but Lorelei's family had been burying their kin there since the early 1800s, and Lorelei had been buried there, as well.

He saw the yellow flowers first, a splash of color against the lichen-stained granite stone. He walked slowly, ignoring the rain, stopping in front of her grave to look down. Not that he was any expert on flowers, but he didn't recognize them among his spotty knowledge of various perennials. The one thing he knew was that they were identical to the ones at the McLaren graveyard, and they were fresh.

Lorelei's family was long gone. Her mother had died when she was young, and her father died of cancer a few years ago. She had no siblings, no one left to mourn her. So who would have brought fresh flowers to her grave, and why?

He looked out over the rows of gravestones toward the lake, blinking in the ever-increasing rain. At least half the graves had flowers, ranging from wild roses to freshly cut flowers to gaudy, artificial memorial sprays. He walked down the center row of the small cemetery, ignoring the rain, until he found what he was looking for. One small stone with the same yellow flowers.

Marsha Daniels, age sixteen, born in 1957, died
in 1973. No other information, just the telltale spray of flowers.

He scribbled the information on a scrap of paper, watching the ink run in the driving rain. And then he headed back to his car.

He'd felt uncharacteristically cheerful when he'd started out that morning. Sex tended to have that effect on him, even ill-advised sex, and he'd been celibate since he broke up with Annelise. Besides, he found Sophie oddly, irrationally appealing, with her frills and her cooking and her fierce determination to protect her family. By now his good mood had faded completely—graveyards had a habit of doing
that
to you, he thought. And he suspected he was going to have a hard time getting to Sophie for a while. She had to sulk, and fume, and be embarrassed first. Then she'd start to remember just how good it had felt, and her defenses would start to drop. Or he'd put a little effort into tearing them down.

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.”