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“I’m Sophie Davis,” she said, and her voice matched her dress. Light, musical, annoyingly charming. “My family and I are running the old inn. I brought you some muffins to welcome you to Colby.”

He took them and set them on the railing in front of him. He needed to dredge up some semblance of charm, but something was stopping him. He didn’t want her thinking she could just drop in. He valued his privacy, especially when he wasn’t planning on being particularly public about who he was or why he was here.

“Thanks,” he said, then realized he sounded less than gracious. He glanced over at the old Niles place. “Seems like a strange time to open an inn.”

“We’ve been working hard to get it ready. The place was abandoned for years, and it’s taken us a while to get it in any kind of shape.”

Empty for years, he thought. He could have had a dozen chances to come back, find the answers he was looking for. He’d been too busy trying to forget.

“When did you say you opened?” he asked.

“Two weeks.”

Two weeks. Two weeks to get inside the old place before it was overrun with tourists. Two weeks to see if there were any secrets left.

ANNE STUART
STILL LAKE

STILL LAKE

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Prologue

Summer, 1982

Colby, Vermont

When he awoke there was blood on his hands. The sheets were tangled around his sweating, naked body, his mouth tasted like copper, and there was blood on his hands.

He sat up, cursing, pushed his long dark hair away from his face and looked blearily out into the morning sunshine. It was early—he hated waking up before noon.

And he sure as hell hated waking up covered in blood.

He stumbled out of bed, heading toward the back door to take a leak. He looked down and saw he had streaks of blood on his body. He leaned against the door and closed his eyes, groaning.

He slept in one of the tumbledown cabins by the lake, but it didn’t have a shower, and there was no way in hell he was going up to the big house like this. No way in hell he was going to stand around with some animal’s blood on him. He must have hit a deer last night, driving home, though for the life of him he couldn’t remember a goddamned thing.

He pulled on a pair of paint-spattered cutoffs and headed down to the lake, as fast as his pounding head would let him. He’d smoked too much, drunk too much, the night before, and he needed it to wear off, fast. The cold lake water would clear his head, bring his memory back. When he got back to his room he’d finish packing and get the hell out of there. He’d had enough of small-town Vermont.

Even in August the lake was icy cold, shocking the hell out of him. He let out a shriek as he dived beneath the surface, but he kept going, letting the frigid water flow around him, washing the blood from his hands, from his long hair, from his thick beard.

He surfaced twenty yards from shore, tossing his long wet hair over his shoulder, and squinted into the sunlight. There were more people than usual up at the inn—Peggy Niles must be in seventh heaven. She’d be wanting him to fetch and carry, even though he’d told her he was leaving. Maybe he’d just skirt around the back of his place, grab his stuff and get the hell out of there before he could change his mind. Lorelei had told him to get lost, and he wasn’t the kind of man who stayed in one place for too long. Winter was coming, jobs would be opening up in Colorado, and he was ready for the life of a ski bum.

He dove back under the water, heading toward shore with long, easy strokes, circling around past the small sandy beach and the long wooden dock he’d built a few months back.

When he surfaced again, he saw a pile of clothes floating at the edge of the water, among the cattails that he’d spent half the summer trying to get rid of. He recognized the garish striped shirt that was one of his favorites, and he wondered who the hell had taken his suitcase and thrown it in the lake. Probably Lorelei—she’d been pissed off big time when he told her he was leaving, but then, she hadn’t given him one good reason to stay. Not that he could even imagine one.

He moved closer, squinting. He was slightly nearsighted, but he never wore glasses except for his prescription sunglasses, and God knew where they were back in the mess of his room. The clothes were floating, half in, half out of the water, but he didn’t recognize the white shirt. He didn’t own any long-sleeved shirts.

He stopped moving, waist deep in the chilly water, and his skin froze. And then he moved, fast, running through the water till he reached her side, turning her over to see her pale, dead face, and the sliced throat, like a jester’s grin, curving beneath her jaw.

They loomed over him, coming out of nowhere, waiting for him, and he couldn’t move, frozen in the chilly water with Lorelei’s body in his arms.

“Thomas Ingram Griffin, alias Gram Thomas, alias Billy Gram, you’re under arrest for the willful murder of Alice Calderwood, Valette King and Lorelei Johnson. Anything you say…”

He didn’t listen to the words. He looked down at the girl in his arms, the girl he’d held last night, the girl whose blood had stained his hands.

And he began to cry.

1

There was only one major problem with trying to save the world, Sophie Davis decided as she stuffed half a blueberry muffin in her mouth. No one wanted her help.

The kitchen at Stonegate Farm was deserted, and Sophie perched on one of the stools, hiking her flowing chintz skirt around her legs as she devoured the rest of the muffin, no mean feat since it was one of those wickedly oversize ones, with enough fat to clog the arteries of a family of four. She was a firm believer in the tenet that calories consumed in private didn’t count. There had been three muffins left from breakfast. She reached for the second one.

It wasn’t as if anyone else wanted them. Her mother, Grace, barely ate enough to keep alive, and when her half sister, Marty, finally dragged herself out into the daylight she’d refuse everything but coffee and cigarettes.

Sophie could sympathize with the cigarettes. She’d given them up four months ago, and in return she’d added fifteen pounds to her already generous frame. And she never spent a day without thinking longingly of one last smoke.

She broke the second muffin in half, putting the rest back on the English stoneware plate in the vain hope she wouldn’t succumb to temptation. Sugar and butter were an entirely satisfactory substitute for nicotine, but unfortunately she could see what they were doing to her body. The cigarettes had been turning her lungs black, but no one was looking at her lungs. If she kept on at this rate she’d be out of size twelves before long and into fourteens. She took the second half of the muffin and shoved it into her mouth.

She needed to get her life back under control. The first year of a new business was always bound to be a bit shaky, but Stonegate Farm was the perfect location for a country inn, and Sophie had energy and enthusiasm to spare. For years most of her decorating and baking had been only in theory, research for the syndicated column she wrote while she lived in a small apartment in New York. Marty called her the poor woman’s Martha Stewart, which Sophie would have taken as a compliment if Marty hadn’t been sneering when she said it.

And now she had this early nineteenth-century farmhouse on the edge of the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, a dream location for a dream profession. It was a huge, rambling old house, with half a dozen bedrooms and an extra wing off the back that might be salvaged and eventually turned into even more guest rooms. Everything had seemed so simple when she’d mortgaged her life and her soul to bring Marty and Grace up here.

Not that Grace was particularly thrilled. She’d never been the bucolic type, but her last bout with breast cancer had left her surprisingly weak, and for the first time she admitted she needed help. She’d accompanied them, reluctantly, insisting that as soon as she regained her strength she’d be off on her endless travels. Four months later Sophie knew she wasn’t going anywhere.

This time it wasn’t the cancer. As far as she could tell Grace had made it through this second reoccurrence with flying colors. But in the past few months her mother had gotten more and more forgetful. Grace had never been much of a deep thinker—Marty and Sophie’s mutual father had called her Spacey Gracey with equal parts malice and affection. But her current situation was serious enough that Sophie had gotten worried.

Not that there was anything she could do about it. Doc had been her best friend and confidant since she arrived there, and he’d basically shaken his head. “I don’t know whether she’s having tiny strokes or if it’s early-onset Alzheimer’s disease,” he’d said. Grace had flatly refused to go into the hospital for testing, and Doc had told her there’d be time enough if things progressed.

Marty, with typical teenage charm, resented everything about the inn, including the fact she was expected to help out. She resented her older sister even more, but then, that was nothing new. And Grace was getting more and more forgetful, so that she drifted through their lives like a ghostly stranger, old before her time. Which suited Marty just fine. It was bad enough that Sophie had dragged her to the back end of beyond—why did she have to bring the old lady along, as well? Wasn’t this torture enough? she’d demanded.

Sophie eyed the last muffin. If she ate three of them she’d feel sick, not immediately, but soon enough. It didn’t matter, she wanted that muffin, and no one was around to watch her.

She was just about to reach for it when she heard someone outside the kitchen, and she pulled her hand back guiltily.

Grace wandered into the room, her gaunt figure dressed in mismatched clothing, the buttons on the raveling sweater awry. Grace, who’d always been so particular about her designer clothing and her hair. She looked twenty years older than her actual age of sixty. Marty came in behind her, not looking particularly pleased.

“I made muffins,” Sophie said cheerfully, ignoring the fact that only one remained.

“How nice, love,” Grace said in her soft voice. She had made a vain attempt at putting her long, graying hair in a bun, but strands of it stuck out at strange angles, and Sophie knew it would come down in a matter of minutes, leaving Grace looking even more disheveled. “I think I’ll just have some coffee.”

“You need to eat, Mama,” Sophie said. “You know what Doc said.”

Grace stopped to look at her, an odd expression in her hazy blue eyes. “Don’t believe everything everybody tells you, Sophie. People aren’t always what they seem.”

“I’m not…” Sophie began, used to Grace’s increasing paranoia, but her mother had already poured herself a mug of black coffee and wandered off, leaving Sophie alone with her sister.

Marty headed straight for the coffeemaker without a word.

“Good morning to you, too,” Sophie said, then could have slapped herself. Sarcasm didn’t make anything better.

Marty didn’t even bother glancing at her. She poured her coffee and took a deep gulp of it, studiously ignoring her.

“Did you put the new towels in the closet?” Sophie tried to keep her voice light and nonconfrontational. God knows Marty could find something to take offense at in the most innocuous of conversations, but Sophie did her best to avoid conflict whenever she could.

Marty kept her head buried in the crossword puzzle she was perusing. This week her short-cropped, spiky hair was black, tinged with fuchsia at the tips. She’d need to bleach it again when she went to her next phase. Sooner or later she wouldn’t have any hair at all, a prospect that Sophie regarded with mixed feelings. At least she could hope that not too many incipient bad boys would want to impregnate a bald-headed seventeen-year old. “You told me to, didn’t you?” Marty said in a hostile voice.

Sophie sighed, controlling her frustration. “I need your help, Marty. You need to contribute your share to the running of this place if we’re going to make a go of it. It’s nearing the end of summer, and you know we need to open by foliage season if we’re going to recover some of the renovation costs. I’ve already got reservations for September….”

“Why should I care? It was your idea to drag me off into the middle of nowhere, away from my friends. I’m not interested in running a bed-and-breakfast, I’m not interested in being locked up in the country with you and that crazy old bat, and I’m not interested in helping you.”

It was a good thing she hadn’t gone for that third muffin, Sophie thought—the second one was already doing a number on her stomach. “That crazy old bat is my mother,” she said. “I know she’s not yours, but I have a responsibility to her. Do we have to go over this every single day, Marty? Why don’t you go find someone else to harass?”

“I don’t have a problem with anyone but you, and I’ll keep after you until you listen.”

“I listen,” she said patiently. “I know you miss your friends, but, Marty, those people are no friends to you.”

“How would you know? I haven’t noticed anyone flocking around you. Face it, Sophie, you don’t know how to make friends and you’re jealous that I have so many.”

“Your so-called friends are nothing but trouble.” Another mistake, Sophie thought the moment the words were out. It just gave Marty more reason to fight back. How did her little sister always manage to get her back up?

Marty gave her a sour smile. “Then I fit right in with them, don’t I?”

“Please, Marty…”

“The goddamned towels are in the goddamned linen closet. Teal and beige and ivory and lavender and every other damned color you seem to think is necessary,” she snapped. “All set for your goddamned guests. Now, leave me alone.”

She slammed out of the room, taking her coffee and the paper with her. Sophie watched her go, a tight hand clamping around her heart. She reached for the third muffin.

It didn’t look as if things were going to get any better in the near future. Marty had been sullen and depressed for the last few months, ever since they’d arrived in Colby. Sophie had hoped and prayed that getting her away from the city would give her a new start. That sunshine and country air and hard work would start to make the difference.

So far things hadn’t improved noticeably. While Sophie did her best to manage a strained smile and ignore Marty’s sullen hostility, she wasn’t really made for sainthood. Tough love, she reminded herself, like a litany.

They were a mismatched family, the three of them. Grace had divorced her stodgy, Midwestern husband when Sophie was just nine, put her only child in boarding school and taken off for parts unknown. Sophie’s father, Morris, had quickly remarried, sired another daughter, Marty, providing a stifled, antiseptic existence for Sophie on her vacations. All that had changed when Marty was nine and her parents died in a car accident. Family was family, and Sophie, fresh out of Columbia, had taken her sister under her wing and provided a home for her in Grace’s rambling old apartment on East Sixty-sixth Street. Losing her parents at a young age had been bound to have an effect on Marty, but globe-trotting Grace and stay-at-home Sophie had done their best to fill that void, and succeeded marginally well. Until the last year and a half, when Marty had gone from one disastrous incident to a worse one, and Grace had been diagnosed with a recurrence of breast cancer. It had been downhill from there.

She finished the muffin, then pushed away from the table before she could go searching for more comfort food. She’d been working nonstop for the last few months. Stonegate Farm hadn’t been run as an inn since the early 1980s and the entire place had been abandoned for the last five years. Just clearing out the debris had been a massive undertaking, and the decorating and painting—not to mention structural repairs that had taken what little money Sophie had left—were a Herculean effort. She’d finished the main building, but the wing off the back was outright dangerous, and she’d boarded it up until she could decide whether to try to salvage it or to tear it down completely.

For the time being she had enough on her plate with the main part of the farm. She couldn’t afford much help—and Grace was too scattered and Marty was almost more trouble than she was worth to be of much use. The inn was close to being ready for its grand opening, and Sophie’s nerves were stretched to the breaking point. Every room was booked for the foliage season, and if she managed to carry this off then her worries would be over. Wouldn’t they?

She moved to the multipaned window over the sink, glancing down to the lake. The cool stillness of it called to her, and she tried to resist.

She ought to get to work, she knew it, but for some reason she couldn’t quite manage to exert herself. It was a beautiful morning in late summer—the windows were open, letting in a soft breeze, and overhead the sugar maples stirred and whispered. She’d been working so damned hard in the six months they’d been in Vermont—surely she deserved a day off? A day where she could lie around and do crossword puzzles and smoke cigarettes as Marty spent her days when Sophie wasn’t hassling her.

Scratch that, no more cigarettes. And she’d really rather curl up in a hammock with a stack of cookbooks and another muffin….

She’d eaten the last one, without even realizing it. It was a good thing she favored loose-fitting clothing that covered a multitude of dietary sins. Unlike her skinny sister, who liked to show as much skin as she could.

Lazing in a hammock on a warm summer day wasn’t for the likes of her, not this summer. Maybe by next year, when the inn was flourishing and she could afford to hire more help, she could take the occasional day off and enjoy the peaceful country existence she’d been fantasizing about all her life. In the meantime, there was work to be done if she was ever going to get the place ready for the invasion of guests in two weeks’ time. Not only that, but she had a column due on Friday, and she hadn’t even started it.

She probably ought to give up the writing, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Letters from Stonegate Farm, the column she wrote for the small Long Island magazine, kept her grounded, reminded her that she was living her dream. After years of telling bored women how to make their own pasta, how to turn empty milk jugs into elegant plant containers, how to turn a tract home into a rural charmer or a fairy-tale palace, she was finally able to put it all into practice. And before long she’d have an appreciative audience, instead of a moody teenage sister and a mother who didn’t seem to notice anything at all.

The day was going to be unseasonably warm for mid-August. The sun was already bright overhead, and Sophie pushed the sleeves of her dress up past her elbows. Maybe she’d take just a short walk, down to the edge of the lake, soak up the last bit of quiet. Here, at the north end of Still Lake it was relatively secluded, even at the height of summer. The only other house nearby was the old Whitten cottage, and it had been closed up and deserted for years. Sophie owned the rest of the area, as well as the outbuildings, which included the sagging barn and the old cabins. Those were past saving, and when she could afford it she’d have them torn down. Eventually this place would be pristine and perfect, teeming with paying customers. For now it was a silent oasis amid the summer bustle.

Whether or not she actually wanted crowds of people here was something she didn’t allow herself to consider. It was the only way she could afford to live here, and she always tried hard to be a realist. If taking care of hordes of strangers meant she could live in the country, then she’d accept the price, willingly. Besides, it would be nice to have an appreciative audience for a change.

She pushed open the door, heading down the sloping lawn to the lake, feeling momentarily peaceful. The water was still and dark, seemingly untouched by the frenzied activity at the busy south end. Still Lake was a large, meandering body of water, and if one came upon the north end one might think the peacefulness of Whitten’s Cove was all that existed. It wasn’t until you got near the end that you saw the wide fingers of water that stretched off toward the west and the south, out of sight of Sophie’s quiet expanse of lakefront.

This was the least populated area around Colby. Years ago Stonegate Farm had been a prosperous dairy concern, but no cows had grazed on the wide green fields for forty years now. She’d bought the place from the last of Peggy Niles’s drunken sons, who seemed more than happy to get rid of it. It didn’t take her long to figure out why. Most people weren’t attracted to the site of a famous murder.

Then again, the Niles family had always been a shiftless lot, according to Marge Averill, her good friend. The husband had run off, the drunken sons had bled their mother dry, selling off pieces of the old place while their mother tried to make a go of it, renting rooms to the summer people. She made a decent living until the murders.

It was almost unbelievable that this perfect New England village had been witness to such violence, but Sophie wasn’t that naive. Any old town with a long history would have violent stories attached to it, and the Northeast Kingdom murders were far from the most colorful. A tragedy, of course, that three teenage girls had been murdered, but the case had been solved, a drugged-out teenage drifter had been convicted and sent off to jail, and if, twenty years later, some parents still mourned their lost daughters, then that was only to be expected. The very thought of losing Marty was enough to send Sophie into a mindless panic, no matter how determinedly obnoxious she was. Reality must be so much worse.

But the town of Colby had gotten over it, and it no longer mattered that one of the girls had been found down by the lake, the other two close by, or that all three girls had helped out Peggy Niles at the inn. Doc had even suggested, with ghoulish humor, that Sophie could capitalize on the inn’s morbid history and advertise it as haunted.

She could never do that, not in such a small town. And Doc Henley hadn’t been serious. He was the essence of a kindly, old-fashioned GP—he’d brought half the town, including the three murdered girls, into the world, and he’d pronounced a goodly number of them dead when their time had come.

Sophie sat down on one of the Adirondack chairs, resting her feet against a large boulder as she looked out over the stillness. Waiting for that elusive sense of peace to envelop her.

Something wasn’t right.

She heard the car on the graveled driveway, so attuned to the sounds of Vermont that she even recognized the irregular rhythm of Marge Averill’s aging Saab. She waved a lazy hand, not bothering to rise. Marge was middle-aged, friendly, with a ruthless streak beneath her sturdy exterior, and she’d been particularly solicitous to Sophie since she’d sold her the old Niles farm and its various decrepit outbuildings, probably because, Sophie suspected, she’d paid too much.

“Glorious morning!” she greeted Sophie, striding toward the edge of the lake with her usual determination. “How’s your mother doing?”

“Fine,” Sophie said. This was one of the real estate agent’s busiest times of year, and she wasn’t the sort who came calling if she didn’t have a damned good reason. “What brings you out here?”

“You’re not going to like it,” Marge said flatly, throwing herself down on another chair and shoving her gray hair away from her flushed face.

Sophie groaned. “What did Marty do this time?”

“Absolutely nothing, as far as I know,” Marge said, momentarily distracted. “No, it’s something I did, I’m afraid. I rented out the Whitten place.”

Sophie swiveled around, squinting in the bright sunlight across the shallow cove. That’s what was different. The old house was no longer deserted. The shutters were open, and so was the front door, even though there wasn’t a vehicle or a person in sight.

“Damn,” she said.

“You can’t blame me. We haven’t had any interest in the place for half a dozen years, and then suddenly the lawyers handling the estate call to tell me they’ve rented the place out from under me, and he might be wanting to buy. I couldn’t very well come back with a higher offer from you without talking to you, and there was no keeping the guy from showing up.”

“I’m not in any position to buy it right now and you know it,” Sophie said. The third muffin was sitting like a rock in the pit of her stomach. “Everything I have is tied up in Stonegate Farm.”

“Look, chances are this deal will fall through. No one has stayed on at the Whitten house for more than a few weeks, and there’s no reason this man will be any different. Just be patient. He’ll hear about the murders and get spooked.”

“I didn’t,” Sophie said.

“And we both know that women are much tougher than men,” Marge replied. She squinted into the bright sunlight toward the old house. “Look at it this way—you can’t even see the Whitten house unless you’re down here by the lake. And besides, he’s not bad-looking, to put it mildly. We don’t get that many single men around here over the age of thirty.”

Sophie followed her gaze. In the dazzling sunlight she could now see someone moving around at the side of the old house, but he was too far away to get a good look. Besides, he was the enemy. She wanted the Whitten house, almost more than she’d wanted Stonegate Farm. It was part of her plan, to turn the north end of Still Lake into a serene little enclave that would soothe the body and soul. She didn’t want strangers around, getting in the way of her plans. She most particularly didn’t want ostensibly good-looking male strangers, not when she had a vulnerable younger sister around.

She turned back, frowning. “Who is he?”

“He says his name is John Smith, believe it or not. Someone thought he might be a computer nerd, planning on setting up business around here. Someone else thought he might be some kind of financial consultant. That should last about six months, max. No one can make a living around here unless they’re independently wealthy.”

“I’m planning to.”

“That’s different,” Marge said blithely. “You and I live off the tourist industry. We’ll make out just fine. Now, if Mr. Smith were a carpenter or a plumber it would be a different matter. Not that we haven’t got more than our share of carpenters around here. Anyway, I wanted to warn you in case you decided to go wandering around the place. He’s got a year’s lease with an option to buy, but I bet he’ll be out once the snow flies. Or once he hears about the murders.”

He’d disappeared behind the old house, leaving Sophie to look after him thoughtfully. “Maybe,” she said. “Or maybe he already knows.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Sophie shrugged. “I don’t know. It just seems funny he’d rent at this end of the lake, when you’ve told me there are several places open around the south end, including some places that haven’t been abandoned for years. Why would someone want to come to a decrepit old cottage, sight unseen?”

“Beats me. I just take the rent check,” Marge said. She rose, brushing a stray leaf off her twill pants. “Tell you what, maybe I’ll do a little investigating. He’s too young for me, but I never let a little thing like a decade or two stand in my way, and I’m getting tired of sleeping alone. Unless you’re interested.”

“No,” Sophie said flatly.

“You haven’t even had a good look at him.”

“Not interested. I’m having a hard enough time keeping my own life under control—I don’t need complications and neither does Marty.”

She didn’t miss Marge’s brief expression of sheer frustration. Marge had made no secret of the fact that she didn’t approve of Marty or the way Sophie treated her.

“Marty can take care of herself if you’d just let her,” Marge said.

“She’s done a piss-poor job of it so far.” She waited for Marge to tell her she’d done a piss-poor job, as well, but Marge said nothing. She knew she didn’t have to.

“I gotta get back to work,” Marge said, pushing herself off the bench. “Doc said he might come by later. Bet he’s curious about your neighbor, even if you aren’t.”

Sophie smiled reluctantly. “Doc’s an old gossip and we both know it. If the man has any secrets, Doc will ferret them out.”

Marge cast a final, longing look toward the old cottage. “He’s a fine figure of a man, I’ll say that much,” she said, smacking her lips. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”

“Short of evicting him, I don’t think so.”

“Just keep Marty away and everything should be fine,” Marge said. “In another few weeks you’ll be too busy to worry about unwanted neighbors and so will your little sister.”

“I always manage to find time to worry.”

“Well, stop it,” Marge ordered.

“Yes, ma’am. Maybe I’ll bring Mr. Smith some muffins to welcome him to the neighborhood. That way I can see whether or not I can find out how long he really plans to stay.”

“You bring him some of your muffins and he won’t want to leave,” Marge said blithely. “My cooking would drive him clear back to…to wherever it is he came from.”

“I suppose I could poison him,” Sophie said thoughtfully. “That’s one way to get rid of him.”

“Don’t joke about murder, Sophie. Not here.” There was no missing the seriousness in Marge’s voice. “People have long memories.”

“Do they?” She glanced back over at the Whitten house, looking for her unwanted neighbor.

He was nowhere to be seen.

2

The place hadn’t changed much in almost twenty years, Griffin thought. A few more tourists crowding into the general store, fewer parking spaces on the town common. There was a gift shop in the once-deserted mill, and a new Scottish woolens store was opening up in the center of town, catering to the wealthy summer folk. And there was a new owner out at Stonegate Farm, planning to open as an inn in September, just in time for the leaf peepers.

No, it hadn’t changed. They were still the same overbred, overeducated scions of Harvard and Yale and Princeton, still the same locals who smiled and waited on them and despised them behind their backs. Except there were more of them.

Why the hell had he come back here? He hated this place, with its bucolic charm and small-town nosiness. Twenty years ago it was the first place that had ever felt like home in his rootless life. He’d found out just how hospitable a place it was when he’d ended up railroaded for a murder he wouldn’t believe he’d committed.

No, he didn’t give a damn about Colby, Vermont, or the people who lived there. He only cared about the truth.

He wasn’t interested in running into any old acquaintances who might happen to remember him, but he’d managed to avoid almost everyone when he picked up a few necessities in town and headed out to the Whitten place. That was another change—two decades ago you couldn’t walk out of Audley’s General Store without being quizzed as to where you were renting, what brought you to Colby, how long you were planning to stay, and who you were related to. The summer people added where you went to college to their list of questions, and he’d had his answers primed. But they’d taken his money without even glancing at his face, and he’d left the old-fashioned country store with a six-pack of Coke and a block of Cabot cheese and no one paid the slightest bit of attention. He was almost disappointed.

The woman at the real estate office had looked flustered when she handed him the key, and he got the feeling she wasn’t too happy about his renting the place. Tough shit. He knew exactly what he was doing, and he didn’t give a damn if the place had been cleaned, if the water was on, or if squirrels had taken up residence in the chimney. He just wanted to get there and lock the doors behind him, so he could feel safe once more.

It was an annoying weakness, and he hated it, but all the will in the world couldn’t make it go away. He always felt that way when he came to a new place. Maybe someday he’d get over it, but for now he locked the doors and windows and kept the world at bay. It was better that way.

It didn’t take him long to get settled. The road to the Whitten house was rutted and overgrown, discouraging the curious, and the house looked abandoned. He pried open the shutters, then opened the windows to the fresh mountain air. The water had been turned on, after all, and if the living room cushions showed recent evidence of mice he could live with it. He swept the place out, cleared off a dusty harvest table in the living room and carried in his laptop computer before he bothered with groceries and suitcases. At least he’d learned to keep his priorities straight in the last twenty years.

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, still wary, as she climbed the short flight of steps onto the front porch.

He didn’t like pretty women, he liked women with character. He liked them sleek and smart like his former fiancée, Annelise. No nonsense, no sentiment. This one had stepped out of a house-and-garden magazine, smelling of flowers and fresh-baked bread, sweet and soft and warm. He just looked at her, deliberately unwelcoming.

“I’m Sophie Davis,” she said, and her voice matched her dress. Light, musical, annoyingly charming. “My family and I are running the old inn—I’m afraid we’re your only neighbors for the time being until the place opens up this fall. I brought you some muffins to welcome you to Colby.”

He took them and set them on the railing in front of him. He needed to dredge up some semblance of charm, but something was stopping him. Maybe it was the complacent normalcy of the young woman standing there. She belonged in a different world from the rootless one he had always lived in—hers was a land of tidy homes and secure families. He was big, rough, sweaty from opening up the house. She was smaller and irritatingly perfect.

He also didn’t want her thinking she could just drop in. He valued his privacy, especially when he wasn’t planning on being particularly public about who he was and why he was here.

“Thanks,” he said, then realized he sounded less than gracious. He glanced over at the old Niles place. “Seems like a strange time to open an inn.”

“We’ve been working hard to get it ready. The place was abandoned for years, and it’s taken us a while to get it in any kind of shape.”

Empty for years, he thought. He could have had a dozen chances to come back, find the answers he was looking for. He’d been too busy trying to forget.

“Besides,” she added, “autumn is the busiest time around here. Even more than summer or skiing season. We’re already completely booked for September and half of October.”

“When did you say you opened?”

“Two weeks.”

Two weeks. Two weeks to get inside the old place before it was overrun with tourists. Two weeks to see if there were any secrets left.

She was staring at him oddly. No wonder. She was probably used to men fawning all over her. He roused himself. If he only had two weeks, then he’d better make the most of every opportunity, whether he was in the mood to or not, and it wouldn’t do to rouse her suspicions.

“Can I get you something to drink, Mrs. Davis?” he asked politely, rising from his chair. He towered over her. He didn’t like short women, but then, she wasn’t really that short. It was just the damned sense of femininity about her that bugged him. She probably wasn’t even thirty yet, but she had an old-fashioned air that annoyed him. He didn’t want her staying, he hadn’t had time to get acclimatized yet. But if she owned the inn then he’d be a fool to drive her away so quickly.

She didn’t look too happy to be here, either—she was looking for a chance to escape. “It’s Sophie,” she said. “I’m not married. And I really need to get back to the inn. I just wanted to welcome you to the neighborhood. When we open you should come by for dinner.”

She looked as if she’d rather eat worms than feed him. He’d failed to charm her, which was no surprise. She was looking at him as if she were Little Red Riding Hood and he, the Big Bad Wolf. She wasn’t far off.

“Sure,” he said. Lying. In two weeks’ time he’d be gone. With or without the answers he needed. “Thanks for the muffins.” It was a curt dismissal, one she couldn’t fail to notice.

Her smile was brittle. “Anytime,” she said, turning her back on him and heading off his porch, out of his life. Her flowered skirts flounced in the breeze.

He sat back down in his chair, watching her go, and his eyes narrowed. He didn’t trust her, but then, he wasn’t in the habit of trusting anyone. No one could be that squeaky clean. She said they’d been working on the place for months. What kind of secrets had she uncovered? What had she obliterated? He’d waited too damned long to face his past. He wasn’t going to wait any longer, and no pink-and-pretty hausfrau was going to get in his way. No matter how tempting she was.

“Bastard,” Sophie muttered beneath her breath, making her way through the overgrown path to the inn. There was nothing worse than a good-looking bastard in the bargain. Sophie had to admit Marge was right about that. He was tall, with the rangy kind of body she’d always found particularly appealing in men. His features were interesting rather than pretty—a bony nose, high cheekbones and a strong chin gave him the look of an ancient Roman bust. He was about as animated. His eyes were dark behind the wire-rimmed glasses, and his mouth would have been sexy if it had been employed in something other than a frown. His hair was too long—a tangle of gray-streaked dark curls, and he had the personality of a python.

There was a watchful stillness about him that made her nervous, and she’d never been the paranoid type. But she couldn’t rid herself of the notion that John Smith was looking for trouble.

It was just as well he was unfriendly, because when it came to good-looking men Marty didn’t particularly care about age differences. She’d probably take one look at Mr. Smith’s elegant, classical face and fall madly in love. Sophie could only hope he was equally unwelcoming to Marty.

In the best of all possible worlds he’d provide enough distraction for Marty to cheer up. She was still mourning the loss of her latest boyfriend, an unpleasantly tattooed young man known as “Snake,” and so far her seclusion at the north end of the lake had kept her away from any possible substitutes. Sophie wasn’t naive enough to think country boys were any safer than city boys, but if Marty developed a harmless crush on their unwelcoming new neighbor it might manage to keep her energized and out of trouble.

Assuming Mr. Smith would be just as unwelcoming to a nubile young woman as he was to her.

Sophie had no delusions about her own charms. She was nothing above ordinary—average height, average weight verging dangerously toward plumpness, average features, ordinary hair. She’d never been one to inflame men’s passions, and given Mr. Smith’s reaction, that wasn’t about to change. Which was fine with her—right now she was far too busy with the inn and her motley family to be distracted by an unfriendly stranger with the face of a renaissance angel. She’d done her duty, baked him muffins, and with any luck she wouldn’t have to see him again. The solitude of the Whitten place and the stories about the murders would drive him away, fast.

There was no sign of Marty when she got back to the inn, though she could hear the muffled thump of music Marty seemed to prefer. At least she was keeping the volume down so the tender musings of Limp Bizkit and company didn’t spew out over the tranquillity of the lake.

Grace was sitting in her room, rocking back and forth in the old wicker chair, that too-familiar vacant expression on her face, and a new wave of guilt assailed Sophie. Her mother’s deterioration had been rapid once they’d come to Vermont—she’d even stopped reading her beloved true-crime books. They lay piled in the corner, heaped on tables, and not even the newest, most gruesome entries into the field could entice Grace’s once-avid mind. She simply sat and rocked, a sweet smile on her face, looking decades older than her actual years.

“You didn’t eat much,” Sophie said, taking a seat beside her.

Grace turned to look at her. “I wasn’t hungry, love. You shouldn’t worry so much about me—I’m fine.”

“Did you take your medicine? I bought you some ginkgo biloba that’s supposed to help with memory.”

“What’s wrong with my memory?” Grace asked.

Sophie bit her lip in frustration. “You’ve just been more forgetful recently.”

“Maybe some things are better off forgotten,” Grace murmured. “Now, don’t you worry about me, Sophie. I hear there’s a gorgeous young man down at the Whitten place. You should be thinking about him.”

Her mother never failed to surprise her. “How did you hear about him?”

“Oh, there’s not much I don’t know about this place, even if it seems like I’m not paying attention,” Grace said. “So why don’t you put on something sexy and go welcome him to the neighborhood?”

“I already did. I just came back. I have to tell you he wasn’t particularly pleased to see me.”

Grace’s eyes were surprisingly critical. “You consider that something sexy?”

Sophie glanced down at her flowered skirt. “I didn’t say I was going to wear something sexy—that was your idea. It’s not my particular style, anyway. I like flowery, flowing stuff.”

Grace shook her head despairingly. “You’ll never get a husband that way.”

“Who says I want a husband?” Sophie replied. “You didn’t enjoy yours much while you had him.”

“You and I are very different, Sophie. You need a good-looking man to distract you from being so damned responsible all the time. You need to fall so much in love that you stop behaving yourself and go a little wild. You need children so you stop fussing over me and Marty. We’ll be just fine.”

“I’m not in any hurry,” Sophie said, trying not to sound defensive.

“Dearie,” Grace murmured in her soft, sweet voice. “You need to get laid.”

Sophie tried to stifle her shocked laugh. Not that Grace had ever been shy about passion. She’d always been a free spirit, and during her years of travel she’d always been with one man or another. But with Gracey a ghost of her former vibrant self, the earthy suggestion sounded ludicrous.

“As you said, you and I are very different, Mama. I tend to keep my…libido under control.”

“Straight-jacketed is more like it,” Grace said with a sniff. “Are you so sure you know what you’re doing?” She sounded surprisingly sharp.

“What do you mean? Doing without sex?”

“This course you’ve set your life on. You’re not even thirty years old and you’ve moved to the back end of beyond to work like a dog on this old place. There are no eligible men around, no movies, no bookstores, nothing to do but work on this old house and take care of your family. Don’t you deserve a better life than that?”

“There aren’t any eligible men in New York—they’re all either gay or married,” Sophie said. “And I think this is a very nice life, indeed. I want to take care of you, Mama.”

Grace shook her head. “I’m sixty years old, Sophie. I don’t need taking care of. I think you should sell this place,” she said. “Go find your own life.”

“I wouldn’t find a buyer—not at this point. Once I prove it’s a going concern then maybe people would want to buy it, but right now I’m afraid we’re stuck.”

Grace’s expression changed, slowly, as if a veil was being pulled over her mind. “Of course, love,” she murmured in that vague tone. “Whatever you think is best.”

Whatever you think is best. The words echoed in Sophie’s ears as she wandered out onto the wide front porch. The moon had risen over the lake, and the night was clear and cool. The overstuffed, refurbished glider sat in one corner, beckoning her, and she wanted to go and curl up on it, tuck her hands beneath her head and stare at the night sky.

She had paperwork to do. She had bread dough to make, so that it would rise overnight in the refrigerator. She had laundry and menus and a column to write. She had to spend at least half an hour worrying about Grace and Marty, and she had to do it all without a cigarette.

She’d come to Vermont hoping to simplify her life. To get back to basics, to concentrate on day-to-day living. So how had it all gotten so incredibly complicated?

She looked down toward the Whitten house. From this vantage point she could barely see it in the woods, just a faint light shining through the trees. There was something about the mysterious Mr. Smith that didn’t seem right. If he’d moved to Colby to set up some kind of year-round business he’d made a stupid move. There wasn’t enough work to support him. And Mr. Smith didn’t strike her as a particularly stupid man.

He didn’t strike her as a Mr. Smith, either. There was something more going on, and unlike her mother, Sophie had never been fond of unsolved mysteries.

It was probably simple enough. He might have vacationed here when he was a child, or maybe he had a college friend who’d spent time in Colby. The small town was a closely guarded secret. Its pristine beauty depended on limiting the flow of tourists—locals had been known to jokingly suggest they put border guards on the Center Road to keep too many strangers from coming in. It had been sheer luck that Sophie had heard about the town from a writer friend.

Somehow or other Mr. Smith had found his way to Colby, to the Whitten house. It would be easy to find out what or who had brought him to town, to her very doorstep.

And she had every intention of finding out. Then maybe she wouldn’t have to waste time standing on her front porch, staring out into the darkness, thinking about him and what secrets lay behind his cool, dark eyes.

For now she needed to concentrate on getting the inn up and running, and forget about the beautiful, mysterious stranger who’d moved practically into her backyard. In a month or so he’d be gone.

And she’d be here, taking care of her guests, running her inn. Being happy. Or at least serene. Sometimes that was the best she could hope for.