Tess Gerritsen - Presumed Guilty

Chase turned and left the room.

Miranda, suddenly weak, leaned against the windowsill. She clutched it tightly, as though drawing strength from the wood. Too close, she thought. I let down my guard, let him slip right past my defenses.

She would have to be more careful. She would have to remind herself that Chase and Richard were variations on a theme, a theme that had already wreaked havoc on her life. She took a deep breath and slowly let it out, willing the turmoil, the confusion, to flow out of her body. Back in control, she thought. She released the sill. She stood straight. Then, with a new semblance of calmness, she followed Chase down the stairs.

He was in the front room with the visitor. Miranda recognized her old acquaintance from the garden club, Miss Lila St. John, local expert on flowering perennials. Miss St. John was dressed in her signature black dress. Summer or winter, she always wore black, set off with a touch of white lace here and there. Today it was a black walking dress of crinkled linen. It did not quite match her brown boots or her straw hat, but on Miss St. John it all seemed to look just right.

She turned at the sound of Miranda’s footsteps. If she was surprised to see Miranda she didn’t show it. She simply nodded, then turned her sharp gray eyes back to the ransacked desk. On the front porch a dog whined. Through the screen door Miranda saw what looked like a large black fur ball with a red tongue.

“It’s all my fault, you know,” said Miss St. John. “I can’t believe I was such an imbecile.”

“How is it your fault?” asked Chase.

“I sensed something was wrong last week. We were taking our walk, you see, Ozzie and I. We walk every evening around dusk. That’s when the deer come out, the pests, though I do love to see them. Anyway, I saw a light through the trees, somewhere in this direction. I came up to the cottage and knocked on the door. No one answered, so I left.” She shook her head. “I shouldn’t have, you know. I should have looked into it. I knew it didn’t feel right.”

“Did you see a car?”

“If you were coming to loot the joint, would you park your car out front? Of course not. I know I’d park down the road a bit, in the trees. Then I’d sneak up here on foot.”

It was hard to imagine Miss St. John doing any such thing.

“It’s a good thing you didn’t get involved,” said Chase. “You could have gotten yourself killed.”

“At my age, Chase, getting killed is not a major concern.” She used her walking stick, a knobby affair with a duck’s head handle, to prod among the papers on the floor. “Any idea what he was after?”

“Not a clue.”

“Not valuables, obviously. That’s a Limoges on that shelf over there, isn’t it?”

Chase glanced sheepishly at the hand-painted vase. “If you say so.”

Miss St. John turned to Miranda. “Have you any thoughts on the matter?”

Miranda found herself under the gaze of two very intense gray eyes. Miss St. John might be dismissed by many as little more than a charming eccentric, but Miranda could see the intelligence in that gaze. While their previous conversations had tended more toward delphiniums and daffodils, even then, Miss St. John had made her feel like some sort of new plant species under a magnifying glass. “I’m not sure I know what to think, Miss St. John,” she said.

“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.”