Still Lake - Anne Stuart [36]
“You Mr. Smith?” The question was terse, couched in the kind of thick Vermont accent that was rarely heard outside the Northeast Kingdom.
“Yeah. Who wants to know?” He could be just as surly as his unwanted visitor. He could see a small elderly woman standing just behind the man, but neither of them were carrying a Bible, so maybe he was jumping to the wrong conclusion. Someone else hovered behind them, just off the porch.
“Zebulon King,” he said. “That’s my wife and my boy. Marge Averill sent us out to work on the place. Seems you had some complaints.”
Shit. He wasn’t sure anymore if he wanted locals prowling around his domain. And then something clicked in his brain—Zeb King was the father of one of the murdered girls. He’d testified at his trial some twenty years ago, all hearsay evidence that had been struck from the record but had done its share of damage, nonetheless. He remembered the man’s daughter, as well. Valette King had rebelled against her parents’ strict religious upbringing and slept with anything in pants. He’d spent a couple of nights with her, but she’d been too voracious even for his strong appetites, and he’d hooked up with the more pliant Lorelei. Valette hadn’t liked it, not one tiny bit, and even her father had known there was bad blood between them. And so he’d testified at the trial.
It was twenty years ago, and Griffin hadn’t even recognized the man. He was in his sixties now, with that leathery, ageless look that came from working long, hard hours in the sun, buoyed by an unswerving, rigid faith in right and wrong. There was no way Zeb King could recognize him. But he still hesitated.
“You gonna let us get to work?” King said, impatient. “We waited till a decent hour to come over here, but time’s awasting.”
Griffin glanced at his watch. He’d traded his Rolex for a cheap Timex as part of his cover. Zebulon King considered eight o’clock in the morning a decent hour.
Griffin unlatched the screen door and pushed it open. If he had any sense he would have sent them away, but the opportunity was too good to miss. Two people intimately connected with the murders had shown up on his doorstep, the only surviving relatives still in Colby. How could he refuse such an offering from the gods?
Zebulon King strode into the living room, an old-fashioned wooden toolbox in one huge hand. His wife scurried after him, head down, dressed in some kind of faded dress with an equally faded apron covering her lumpish body. The apron was crisply starched.
“You start in the kitchen, Addy,” Zebulon ordered. “Perley and I will see what’s up with the roof. Miz Averill says there might be water damage.” He made it sound like the plague had struck.
Griffin didn’t bother to enlighten him. He’d spent the last truly free summer of his life doing carpentry and yard work for Peggy Niles—he knew one end of a hammer from another and knew just how bad the water damage was. Nothing that a skilled carpenter couldn’t fix in a day or so.
He’d spent the first year in prison in the wood shop, as well. At one point he’d been good, damned good. He’d built a picnic table and a fanciful gazebo for Peggy just before he’d been arrested, and it had been some of his best pieces—more art than lawn furniture. The day he got out of jail he turned his back on woodworking and never picked up a hammer again. It was too deeply ingrained in the nightmare that had been his life.
There were times when he missed it. Since he’d taken up residence in the ramshackle Whitten house he’d been itching to work on it—to replace a rotting windowsill, reglaze the windows before the panes of glass fell out. He hadn’t touched anything, though. He could hire