Still Lake - Anne Stuart [27]
There were times when she wanted to just toss everything to the winds, fling off her responsibilities and run wild.
But she hadn’t, and if the result of sowing wild oats was to have your throat cut, then she was very happy the way she was, thank you very much. The only thirty-year-old virgin on the face of the planet.
That wasn’t particularly something she liked to waste her time thinking about, but the oblique tragedy of Colby’s wild daughters made it unavoidable. She glanced down at the lake, to her sister’s skinny, bikini-clad form soaking up the northern Vermont sunshine. Maybe she was being too hard on Marty. Maybe her surliness was only normal.
She looked past her, to the calm, clean crescent of the beach, and then to the cattails beyond. That’s where they’d found Lorelei. Where Thomas Griffin had found her, in fact. He was holding her body in his arms when they’d arrested him, and her blood had stained his body.
Sophie shivered, putting the paper down again. Where in the world had this come from, anyway? She didn’t particularly want to dwell in the past, or even think about the tragedies that had occurred long ago. She wanted the bucolic peace that Colby offered, not the memories of murders disturbing her peaceful afternoon.
But then, Mr. Smith had arrived on her doorstep and suddenly the past was alive. If Grace had been her old self Sophie would have asked her about it. Grace devoured true-crime stories as if they were delicate canapés—she would have known the details of the Still Lake murders, and if anyone had written a book about them, Grace would have read it.
But Grace had lost interest in everything. She was almost a caricature of senility, sitting in her rocking chair, humming softly, that dreamy expression in her eyes. At least out here they could keep an eye on her, make sure she didn’t wander into trouble. And if Sophie had errands, she could always count on Doc to stop in and make sure Grace was all right.
Richard Henley had been a gift from God. Colby was his town, and he knew each and every one of the year-round residents and most of the summer people, and he took care of all of them, as well as his quiet, unassuming wife, Rima.
Sophie glanced down at the crumbling yellow newspaper beside her. Maybe Doc had left it, in hopes that it might revive Grace’s fascination with old crimes. Even a morbid interest was better than no interest at all.
He would have known all of them. He was even quoted extensively in the article, describing the causes of death in unemotional terms, adding gentle words of comfort for the grieving parents and the whole town. His kind, wise presence was probably the main reason such an awful tragedy hadn’t pulled the entire town apart. That, and the fact that the murderer had been caught so swiftly.
Sophie picked up the paper again, flipping it over, but there was nothing else. No follow-up. She needed to know what had happened. Why had the killer’s conviction been overturned?
She set it down. Not what she wanted to be thinking about on a beautiful late summer day, when she had more important things on her mind, like the future of her sister, the safety of her mother, the financial viability of running a bed-and-breakfast, and expecting it to support the three of them. She was worried enough—she didn’t want death and horror intruding on her perfect future, her every thought. But she couldn’t dismiss it.
Because if the killer wasn’t really the killer, then who had murdered three teenage girls some twenty years ago, one at her very doorstep? And who was to say he wouldn’t kill again? Now that another teenage girl had taken up residence. Marty had the sense of a white rabbit—like most teenagers she considered herself invulnerable and immortal. She wouldn’t listen to warnings, especially vague, unfounded ones.
If they were unfounded.
Hell, she was borrowing trouble. She wasn’t going to brood on old murders—peach pie was a much better concern on a hot summer day. Even if she did end up eating it all.
Better to concentrate on peach pie than murder.