Still Lake. Anne Stuart
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 around 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