Still Lake - Anne Stuart [66]
He’d felt uncharacteristically cheerful when he’d started out that morning. Sex tended to have that effect on him, even ill-advised sex, and he’d been celibate since he broke up with Annelise. Besides, he found Sophie oddly, irrationally appealing, with her frills and her cooking and her fierce determination to protect her family. By now his good mood had faded completely—graveyards had a habit of doing that to you, he thought. And he suspected he was going to have a hard time getting to Sophie for a while. She had to sulk, and fume, and be embarrassed first. Then she’d start to remember just how good it had felt, and her defenses would start to drop. Or he’d put a little effort into tearing them down.
For purely recreational reasons, he reminded himself. And because he damned well wanted to.
Of course, if she decided to trust him he would be able to gain easy access to the house. That was all he needed, just a few short hours to make his way through the ruins of the old wing and see if he could remember what had happened there so long ago. If it didn’t work, he’d get the hell out of Colby, give up on trying to remember what he obviously wasn’t supposed to remember. He’d let go of it, as he should have long ago.
The rain had let up by the time he drove through the tiny picturesque town of Colby. Audley’s General Store was booming, as always, with cars cramming the street in front of it and the parking lot by the town green. People were crossing the street to get to the public beach, the country-club crowd in their tennis whites were mingling with the locals in their bathing suits. None of the summer people had to use the public beach—they all had cottages on the lake and their own private swimming area. It was only at Audley’s that the two classes ever mixed.
He didn’t stop. The old general store still unnerved him—he was happier using the supermarket in the next town over, where there was little chance he’d run into someone he’d known twenty years ago. Someone who’d testified against him.
The village cemetery was just past the center of town, on the way to the nursing home and the old dump, which he’d always found somehow fitting. This was a more sprawling affair, with no safe white picket fence to guard the departed. No view of the lake, either, but he imagined the residents didn’t particularly care. This was where the locals were planted, where Valette King’s and Alice Calderwood’s remains were buried. He didn’t know exactly where on the terraced levels of rolling green grass. He figured he’d start by looking for the yellow flowers.
The village graveyard went in more for plastic crosses than fresh flowers. He found Valette’s grave immediately. The yellow flowers sat next to a weather-beaten teddy bear. A slug was crawling across its matted tummy.
Unlike the others, Valette’s stone had an epitaph, courtesy, no doubt, of her rigid father. Lost to Satan, it read beneath her name. The stone itself was small, cheesy-looking. He wondered who left the teddy bear. Probably her slow-witted brother, who might not be as dim as everyone thought he was. Hell, he would have been fifteen when the girls died. Close to full grown, probably, and not too aware of right and wrong. Maybe he’d taken his father’s religion to heart and decided to punish the ungodly.
There were a hell of a lot more ungodly people in Colby than three teenage girls who liked to have fun. And Perley King had the innocence of a child in his eyes. As convenient as it would be, there was no way Griffin could make him into an easy scapegoat.
The hilly grass was slippery beneath his feet, and he moved through the graveyard carefully, keeping his eye out for the telltale splash of yellow. He had no doubt whatsoever that when he found those flowers he’d find Alice Calderwood’s grave. It might mean nothing—Zebulon King might have a fixation for girls who had died young, and he might be the one to bring the flowers. Or maybe he was driven by guilt.
Maybe.
Or maybe it was someone else. Whoever killed the three young women had killed others, as