Still Lake - Anne Stuart [8]
He put the Coke and the cheese in the warm refrigerator, plugged it in and went out onto the front porch. The chairs were stored in a corner, so he sat on the railing, looking down the weedy lawn to the lake. His last sight of Colby, Vermont.
He glanced up at Stonegate Farm across the stretch of water. It looked prosperous—the new owners must have put a great deal of money and energy into it. Now he had to figure out a way to get inside without arousing any suspicions.
It would have been a hell of a lot easier if he had the faintest idea what he was looking for. He didn’t remember much about that night, and twenty years hadn’t improved his memory.
But he’d been up at the house—he knew that much. Back in the closed-off wing that had once served as the town hospital. And he hadn’t been alone.
Maybe that was the last time he’d seen Lorelei alive. Or maybe he’d been the one to kill her—cut her throat and carry her down to the water.
If so, there’d still be traces of blood somewhere. Something, anything that could tell him what happened that night. Maybe just being there would jar his stubborn memory.
Being back in Colby had done zip so far, except make him feel unsettled. If he couldn’t sneak his way into the old inn he’d try talking his way in. If worse came to worst, he’d break in.
If that didn’t do any good, he’d start taking a look at the rest of the town. How many of the same people still lived there? How many remembered the murders?
Sooner or later he’d find the answers he needed. The good people of Colby might think it was over and done with, the chapter closed.
It wasn’t closed, and he knew it better than anyone. By the time he left there’d be answers. An ending. All the questions answered, the dead buried, the ghosts settled.
By the time he left he’d know the truth. He’d know who killed Alice Calderwood, Lorelei Johnson and Valette King. He’d know whether or not it was him.
It was early evening when he saw the woman coming across the stretch of rough lawn beside the house, and for a moment he thought he was imagining things. He’d spent the rest of the afternoon airing out the old place, tossing mouse-eaten cushions and ancient newspapers into the trash, making a stab at the cobwebs. He’d found two chairs that managed to survive the years of storage and pulled them onto the porch, and he was sitting there, a can of Coke in one hand, his feet propped up on the railing, when she appeared out of the woods.
His emotions were mixed. On the one hand, he sure as hell didn’t want people walking in, unannounced, particularly women like this one. She was pretty in a pink-and-gold sort of way, dressed in a flowery thing that was too long and too loose on her body. All she needed was a huge hat and white gloves and she’d belong at a goddamn garden party.
Except that, instead of a teacup, she carried a plate of what looked very much like muffins. And he, a man who needed nothing and nobody, decided not to scare her off. He had his priorities, and food was definitely one of them.
Besides, she was coming from the old inn. Maybe he wouldn’t have to make much effort to gain access at all. Maybe the answers would be delivered, like a plate of muffins, right to his doorstep.
Griffin knew well enough he should rise from his indolent position and greet her. He hadn’t had a stern mother to teach him any manners, there’d been just his father and him, moving from place to place until he was fifteen and his father died. After that he’d been on his own, but he knew what was proper, anyway. He stayed put, though,