Still Lake - Anne Stuart [39]
“He? Your father?”
Perley shook his head slowly. “Nope. Satan. He goes to visit those girls and he leaves flowers on their graves. He was real sorry to take them, I know he was. He leaves them on other graves, too. That’s how I know which ones were taken by Satan and which ones by the Almighty.”
Griffin managed to keep the excitement out of his voice. “So someone leaves flowers on the graves of the three murdered girls?”
Perley didn’t stop his stabbing, didn’t stop to wonder how a stranger would know about the three girls. “More’n three. He took them,” Perley said patiently. “I didn’t say he killed them. And he leaves flowers on their graves. All of them. By the lake, in the village. I seen him there, sometimes, in the dawn, when he thinks no one is around.”
A cold shiver ran across Griffin. “What does he look like?”
Perley’s long screwdriver sank deep into the rotten ceiling, and he let out a visceral grunt of satisfaction. “Found it,” he muttered. He moved to the casement windows and called out. “Pa, I found the rot!”
“Coming, boy!” Zeb King was already on his way up the stairs, and it wouldn’t do for him to catch Griffin interrogating his slow-witted son. But he couldn’t just leave without getting the answer to his question.
“What does Satan look like, Perley?” he asked again.
Perley turned his innocent face to him. “Just like God, only different.”
Great, Griffin thought, plastering a tight smile on his face as he scooped the papers from his bed, moving them out of sight just as Zebulon King walked in the room.
“You bothering Mr. Smith, boy?” he demanded, eyeing them both suspiciously. “I told you you were here to work, not to flap your jaw.”
“I wasn’t, Pa,” Perley said, hanging his head. “I was just telling him about some things.”
“What things?”
Shit, Griffin thought, steeling himself for disaster.
“I told him about the fishing. He wanted to know where the best place was to catch a rainbow trout, and I told him.” Perley looked as guileless as a puppy. He might be simple-minded, but he could lie with the ease of an expert.
“Takes more than the right spot to catch a rainbow,” Zeb muttered, making it more than apparent that he thought Griffin didn’t have the right stuff for such a task. “A man shouldn’t hunt for something he’s not ready to eat, and I reckon you don’t know much about dressing a rainbow, now do you?” His contempt was almost genial.
As a matter of fact Griffin had caught many a rainbow trout during the last summer of his youth, and he was more than adept at cleaning and cooking them. “Just a thought,” he said. “I probably won’t get around to it, anyway.”
“Too busy being on vacation,” Zebulon said with a barely disguised sneer. “We’ll be out of your way as soon as we can. In the meantime, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t talk to my boy. He’s a mite slow, and he can’t concentrate with someone yammering at him.”
There was no mistaking the warning in Zebulon King’s flinty eyes, and Griffin gave him a slight nod. “No more yammering,” he said. “Maybe I’ll just get out of your way for now. Go for a drive, maybe find a place to eat.”
“The Village Diner is open in Waybury,” Zeb said, suggesting the next town over.
“Maybe I’ll just take a picnic and go wander through the town. I’m particularly interested in old graveyards.” It was deliberate, and he half expected Zeb to react.
He’d underestimated the man. If Perley looked distressed, Zeb just shrugged. “Suit yourself. Can’t imagine what a grown man would find interesting about a bunch of tombstones, but there’s many who find them of interest. Just be careful.”
“Careful?”
“The one on the lake road gets a bit swampy at the edge. That old rattletrap of a car wouldn’t have too good a time in the mud. Wouldn’t want you to get stuck.”
Like hell, Griffin thought. “Nice of you to warn me,” he said.
“Doesn’t hurt to be too careful,” he said in his iron-hard voice. “You take your time, and we’ll be finished for the day by three.”
It wasn’t even eight-thirty in the morning, which made for a long, empty day, but Griffin couldn