Still Lake. Anne Stuart
so that it would rise overnight in the refrigerator. She had laundry and menus and a column to write. She had to spend at least half an hour worrying about Grace and Marty, and she had to do it all without a cigarette.
She’d come to Vermont hoping to simplify her life. To get back to basics, to concentrate on day-to-day living. So how had it all gotten so incredibly complicated?
She looked down toward the Whitten house. From this vantage point she could barely see it in the woods, just a faint light shining through the trees. There was something about the mysterious Mr. Smith that didn’t seem right. If he’d moved to Colby to set up some kind of year-round business he’d made a stupid move. There wasn’t enough work to support him. And Mr. Smith didn’t strike her as a particularly stupid man.
He didn’t strike her as a Mr. Smith, either. There was something more going on, and unlike her mother, Sophie had never been fond of unsolved mysteries.
It was probably simple enough. He might have vacationed here when he was a child, or maybe he had a college friend who’d spent time in Colby. The small town was a closely guarded secret. Its pristine beauty depended on limiting the flow of tourists—locals had been known to jokingly suggest they put border guards on the Center Road to keep too many strangers from coming in. It had been sheer luck that Sophie had heard about the town from a writer friend.
Somehow or other Mr. Smith had found his way to Colby, to the Whitten house. It would be easy to find out what or who had brought him to town, to her very doorstep.
And she had every intention of finding out. Then maybe she wouldn’t have to waste time standing on her front porch, staring out into the darkness, thinking about him and what secrets lay behind his cool, dark eyes.
For now she needed to concentrate on getting the inn up and running, and forget about the beautiful, mysterious stranger who’d moved practically into her backyard. In a month or so he’d be gone.
And she’d be here, taking care of her guests, running her inn. Being happy. Or at least serene. Sometimes that was the best she could hope for.
3
Griffin didn’t sleep well. Not that he’d expected to—being back in Colby was nerve-racking, and staring down at the lake gave him the creeps. Enough so that he couldn’t quite bring himself to break into the old inn to look around while everyone slept. He was going to have to get over that, and fast, if he was going to accomplish what he needed to do.
He opened the casement windows in the bedroom under the eaves. No screens, of course, but it was long after blackfly season, and with luck the mosquitoes wouldn’t be too bad. If worse came to worst he could go down to Audley’s and get some screening to tack up. But he’d lived through worse than a few mosquito bites—besides, insects tended to have the sense to leave him alone. He just wished he could say the same for people.
There was no coffeepot in the ramshackle kitchen. He found a stovetop percolator, but half the innards were missing. He should have just bought a jar of instant coffee, but he never considered the powdered stuff to be worth drinking. Right now he was ready to change his mind.
He knew where he could find coffee, of course. And probably more blueberry muffins like the ones his visitor had brought over last night. It would give him the perfect excuse to get his foot in the door. Surely a neighbor would be willing to share a cup of coffee with a desperate man? Maybe he should apologize for being so unfriendly yesterday, try to worm himself into her good graces. It wouldn’t hurt to try the easy way of getting inside the old building.
The only thing he could remember from the night that Lorelei died was being up at the inn. He and Lorelei used to sneak into the abandoned wing at the back and fuck like rabbits. They’d had too many close calls in the tumbledown cabin by the lake, and Peggy Niles considered it her duty to keep the girls virtuous. She’d had a fanatically religious streak, and Griffin had always figured it would be easier to just avoid her rather than arguing about his right to screw anything that would lie still long enough. He was counting on finding something—anything—in the old wing to jar his memory. If that didn’t work, he’d try something else, but it was the obvious place to start. And in order to get in there, he was going to have to get into Miss Sophie Davis’s good graces. Even if that was the last thing he wanted to do.
He didn’t like the thought of going up there without caffeine already fortifying his system, but he didn’t have much choice. It was that or head into the next town over to the old diner, and he wasn’t in the mood for grease and canned coffee. Two weeks until the place opened, she’d said. He hadn’t come for a vacation—he might as well start now.
The path between the houses was narrower than he remembered, overgrown in places. He tried not to think about the last time he’d walked the footpath, and who’d been with him. It was more than twenty years ago—why couldn’t he pick and choose what he remembered and what he forgot? He would have been perfectly happy not to remember Lorelei clinging to his arm, laughing up at him, stumbling along beside him. He would have given anything to remember what happened that final night in Colby, when he woke up and found himself covered in blood.
He’d forgotten the smell of the countryside, the clean, fresh scent of the lake, the sweet resin of the pine trees, the incense of growing things. He’d loved it here once—stayed here longer than he’d stayed anywhere after his father died and he’d been tall enough to pass himself off as an adult. In fact, he’d been much better off without dear old Dad, who’d been a little too fond of the bottle and belt. The old man spent his time either belligerent or mournful. Or passed out. Still, he’d been the only family Griffin had ever known with his mother long gone, and he’d loved him, anyway.
But it was easier to find work, a dry place to sleep, decent food, when you didn’t have an old boozer trailing after you.
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,