Anne Stuart - Still Lake

He didn’t know whether or not he’d imagined the intelligence in her eyes—it was at sharp odds with her wispy voice and manner. If she was Sophie’s mother she couldn’t be much older than her mid-sixties, maybe even younger. She looked more like a candidate for a nursing home.

“Looking for peace and quiet, Mrs. Davis,” he said. “I thought this seemed like a nice, boring place to spend a few months.”

“The snow will fly in three months’ time,” Gracey said in a singsong voice. “I don’t think you’ll want to be here then.”

“Why not? I’m not afraid of a little snow.”

“Probably because the old Whitten place isn’t really winterized,” Doc said in his genial voice. “If you’re planning to stay on past the frost you’ll need to find someplace a little more habitable—you surely wouldn’t want to put that kind of money into a rented house. Though I can’t imagine why you would want to stay—jobs are scarce around here in the off-season. Most folks have to commute to Montpelier or Burlington.”

Griffin smiled faintly, not about to offer any more information despite Doc’s careful prying. “I’ll deal with that when I have to,” he said easily. “In the meantime I’m just here for the serenity.”

Doc turned to look out over the lake, his eyes narrowing in the sunlight. “Looks can be deceptive, my boy. This town isn’t nearly as quiet as it seems. Most places aren’t.”

It was a perfect opportunity, and he’d be a fool to let it pass him by. “What do you mean?”

“Murders,” Gracey announced with ghoulish delight, pushing her flyaway gray hair away from her face. “Lots of unsolved crimes in the Northeast Kingdom, including peaceful little Colby.”

Griffin shrugged. “You mean the teenage girls who were murdered twenty-five years ago? Someone mentioned it to me. But they told me they caught the killer.”

“Twenty years ago,” Doc corrected him. Griffin knew exactly how long it had been since Lorelei, Valette and Alice died. To the day. “And they caught the boy, all right. Sent him to jail, but he got out a few years later on a technicality. There are some who say he wasn’t the killer, anyway—that he got railroaded.”

That was the first Griffin had heard of it—it had seemed as if the town was out for his blood. He was lucky the Northeast Kingdom didn’t go in for lynching, or he wouldn’t be here right now. “Really?”

“Then there are others who believe he killed those three girls and more besides, and sooner or later he’ll come back here, to finish up what he started,” Doc said.

Griffin didn’t even blink. “Well, what’s taking him so long? He’s probably dead himself by now.”

“Not that boy,” Doc said. “He’s a survivor. Nothing was gonna get that boy down, not prison, not nothing.”

“Do you think he did it?” Griffin asked. The moment the words were out of his mouth he realized it was a mistake.

Doc focused his pale blue eyes on him for a long, unsettling moment. “I don’t know. There were times when I thought that boy was pure evil. Then there were other times when I thought he was just a lost soul. I suppose he could have killed them. But I think he would have had to have been out of his mind on drugs or something to have done it.”

Not much help, Griffin thought grimly. And now Doc was staring at him with an odd expression on his face, as if he could see past the wire-rimmed glasses and the curly hair and the clean-shaven face, see past twenty years into the face of a boy who might be a killer.

Doc shook his head. “One of life’s little mysteries, I guess. Just like Sara Ann Whitten.”

“Whitten?” Griffin echoed uneasily.

“Seventeen-year-old daughter of the folks who owned the place you’re renting,” Doc explained. “She took off a couple of years after the murders. Just up and disappeared one day, and no one’s ever found a trace of her. If it weren’t for that boy being locked up they would have thought she’d been murdered, as well.”

“But you said some people didn’t think he did it,” Griffin said.

Doc just looked sorrowful. “No one knows what happened. Whether the boy was a mass murderer or just a jealous lover. Or maybe just an innocent caught up in a mess bigger than he could handle. It doesn’t matter—it was long ago, and folks around here don’t like to think about it. Let the past rest in peace.”

Griffin said nothing. The past wasn’t resting peacefully, it was haunting him. And he wasn’t going to stop until he laid it to rest himself. No matter what the price.

Sophie didn’t plan to waste any time—the sooner she got him off the property and away from Marty the happier she’d be. Not that Mr. Smith was Marty’s type—her sister tended to go for young and buff and brainless. Smith had gray in his hair, for heaven’s sake, and he wore wire-rimmed glasses. Hardly the stuff teenage dreams were made of.

And yet Sophie knew with a gut-sure instinct that Mr. John Smith would be just about irresistible to any impressionable young woman. Even she, armored and totally, determinedly uninterested, could feel the inevitable pull. All that mysterious, brooding beauty, even the hint of danger, was ridiculously tempting. Fortunately she wasn’t the sort to be tempted.

He hadn’t waited for her on the porch, which didn’t surprise her in the least. He’d wandered down the lawn to the edge of the lake, and he was staring across the shimmering blue expanse toward the unseen village, his back straight and tall. And he was no longer alone.

At least it wasn’t Marty this time, though the alternative wasn’t much more reassuring. Gracey was looking up at him, her gray hair tumbling to her shoulders, her mismatched clothing drooping around her too-thin body. Doc was there, as well, a small buffer, but Sophie almost took a header off the wide front porch in her haste to get down to the water’s edge.

“You didn’t tell me we had a new neighbor,” Gracey said as she approached.

Sophie bit her lip in frustration. “Yes, I did, Mama. We already discussed this yesterday, remember?”

Gracey’s eyes brightened for a moment. “Oh, yes, love,” she said. “I remember now. I told you you needed to get laid.”

Mr. Smith’s choking sound didn’t make the hideous situation any better. Doc had jumped in quickly, taking Gracey’s thin hand. “Now, Gracey, you know you’re not supposed to say things like that.”

“But it’s true. Sex is very healthy for a young woman like Sophie. Besides, he’s very attractive. Isn’t he, Sophie?”

Sophie tried not to cringe. “He’s not my type, Mama. Why don’t you go back to the house with Doc and…”

“What do you mean, he’s not your type? You’re too picky.” She swung her wicked gaze to the silent stranger. “Tell me, Mr. Smith, are you married?”

“No.”

“Involved? Gay?”

“No,” he said. The monosyllable was delivered entirely without inflection, and Sophie refused to look at him to see his reaction to her mother’s outrageousness.

“You see!” her mother said triumphantly. “He’d be perfect. You go off and have sex with him and I’ll look after the inn. Marty can help me.”

“Come along, Gracey,” Doc said kindly. “I’ll make you a cup of tea.”

Sophie didn’t wait any longer. She headed toward the narrow path through the woods, not stopping to see if John Smith was following. If he wasn’t, just as well. She’d keep going, hike out to the main road and circle back to the inn.

He was close behind her—there was no escape. He waited until they were out of sight of the inn, almost at the edge of the Whitten place, before he spoke.

“Why are the women in your family so interested in my sex life?” He sounded no more than vaguely curious, but Sophie wasn’t fooled.