Quiet as the Grave (12 page)

M
IKE WASN'T HUNGRY
.
He wasn't sleepy. He didn't want to talk. He damn sure didn't want to clean up the mess the cops had made of his bedroom.

So he'd decided to do the only thing he could. He was a physical man, so he got physical. He went running.

Suzie insisted on coming along, saying she needed to let off some steam, too. He believed her. She'd sat beside him through the search, and, though she hadn't spoken up, she'd crackled and popped with anger the whole time.

He gave her a pair of Gavin's sneakers, which were a little too big, but nothing a double pair of socks wouldn't cure. Locking the house behind them, they climbed down the jagged cedar staircase to the lake and began to run.

It was one in the morning, so they were the only ones out here. He rarely ran at night anymore, because of Gavin. He used to do it, back in Firefly Glen, and he remembered now how much he'd loved the feeling of being alone in a silent and mysterious world.

It was a warm night with a breeze that had picked up pine scents as it came down over the wooded cliff edge. The lake was like a black mirror under the nearly full moon.

He usually ran once around the lake, a loop of about four miles. He wasn't sure Suzie could keep up—she'd never been much into athletics, as he remembered—but those long, boyish legs surprised him. She kept pace with him, and though her breath came fast and hard by the halfway mark, it was no more labored than his.

They stopped there for a breather. It was near his old house, which was so dark it looked exactly like the ghost house it was. He paused, his hands on his knees, and stared at it. Even the gardener's wing, which was connected to the main house by a porte cochere, looked abandoned, though he knew Alton had kept Richie Graham on as caretaker and gardener.

Suzie pulled up beside him. She wore no makeup or jewelry. She'd scooped her hair back into a rubber band, and the contours of her naked face were exposed. So that's what natural beauty was, he thought. Her high, jutting cheekbones had the graceful strength of a water-smoothed rock. Her eyes had the liquid soul of the lake.

She was looking at the house, too, as she swabbed a sheen of perspiration from her neck. After a minute she grunted softly and bent to retie her sneaker.

“Well, I hate to be the one to tell you,” she said, “but that house is just plain creepy.”

“Yep,” he said. “That's what I always thought.”

Suddenly she straightened, frowning. “What was that?”

He looked around. “I don't see anything,” he said, though a frisson of discomfort skimmed across his spine.

Some of the cliff faces had large stromatolites, a kind of fossil that created pale designs in the rock, domes and
arches and stripes that seemed to glow if the moonlight struck them just right. Add to that the constant winking of the granite, and the cliffs could seem half-alive at night.

“No…it's voices.” She squinted, as if that could make her ears sharper. “Who lives in that house, that smaller one on the left?”

“The Stotts,” he said. “Phil and Judy. She's the principal at Gavin's school. They're a very nice—”

And then he heard them, too. Phil and Judy were outside, near the edge of their property where it sloped down to the lake, though the angle of the bluff rendered them invisible from the beach.

The breeze blew the voices toward the lake, or Mike and Suzie would never have heard them. As it was, only the occasional word came through—and the unmistakable tone of hurt and anger.

“Hate you”
and
“be ashamed,”
both in Judy's tones. And then, in Phil's voice,
“…love to a fish.”

Suzie wrinkled her nose. “Did you say
‘very nice'
?”

Mike shook his head. He'd never heard the Stotts argue before. But then, it had been four years since he'd lived here. Even a good marriage could go bad in that amount of time.

“You even care?”
floated toward them on an undercurrent of tears. And then
“my heart.”

Suzie made a disgusted sound, though she kept it low. “And
that,
my friend, is why I don't intend to get married. Ever.” She tilted her head in the direction of the voices. “You might as well just hire someone to come in daily and beat you with a stick.”

“Not all marriages are like that.”

“Some of them are worse.” She gave him a look, daring him to deny it.

He couldn't, of course.

“Okay. You're right. Some marriages are hell. Mine certainly was. And it looks as if there's trouble in the Stott paradise, too. But what about my folks? Or yours? What about Natalie and Matthew, for Pete's sake? They've been married ten years now, and I'll bet they still have sex on the roof.”

Suzie grinned. “Yeah, but they're going to have to cut it out. The last time, a helicopter flew over, and the pilot really got an eyeful. Apparently he darn near crashed into a tree.”

“It's disgusting…”
Judy Stott's voice was reaching high C.

Mike grimaced and decided to abandon the argument. What a joke for him to be standing here defending marriage, anyhow. Suzie was right. The institution was as appealing as life in a maximum security penitentiary.

“Let's get going,” he said, “before things really get ugly.”

Suzie nodded and began to run. He deliberately lagged behind for a few yards, enjoying the view. Sometimes he still found it hard to believe this was Suzie.

What had become of that gangly string bean he used to know? Nothing made him more aware of the lost years than looking at this graceful woman in front of him. They really had been just kids, hadn't they, back in Firefly Glen? She had been a puppy, cute and clumsy and falling over her own feet. Now she was a greyhound, long and lean and unconsciously elegant—

And then, without warning, she fell to the ground in a heap. She let loose a small cry, followed by a string of curses. So much for the purebred greyhound.

He hurried up to her. “Are you okay?”

“Damn it to hell,” she said, rubbing at her ankle and glaring up at him. “I can
not
tell you how much I did
not
want to do that.”

“Hey, it's okay—”

“It is
not
. Now I'm all muddy, and it's all your fault. I could tell you were watching me, and it made me nervous. Plus, there was this rock in the sand. And these shoes don't really fit—”

“Wow.” He laughed. “That's an impressive list of excuses for one little stumble.”

Ignoring him, she sat cross-legged on the sand for a minute, and then suddenly, she began untying her shoes. She took them off and set them side by side on the ground. She peeled off her socks, too, and stuffed them inside. He thought she'd decided to run barefoot, but when she stood, she gave him a grin and then turned and made a beeline for the lake.

“Hey,” he called softly. “What are you doing?”

She was thigh deep already. She splashed water out toward him with her palms. “What does it look like I'm doing, genius? Playing checkers?”

He shook his head. She really was a loose cannon. “Is it cold?”

“Not once you—” She shuddered as the water rose up around her hips. “Once you get used to it.”

While he watched, she lowered her body, inch by inch, grinning at him the whole time, until she was completely submerged. She stayed under for nearly a minute, and then she popped up about six yards to the right with a splashing whoop of excitement.

“It's wonderful! Come on in! It's the perfect cure for what ails you.”

He hesitated. It was doubtful that a midnight swim
could solve even one of his many problems, but on the other hand, could it hurt? He kicked off his sneakers, yanked off his socks and splashed in to join her.

For the next fifteen minutes they were kids again. They splashed each other sophomorically and grabbed each other's ankles underwater, creating hilarities of happy panic that were quickly smothered so that they didn't wake the neighbors. They jumped and dived like dolphins in the moonlight, and then competed for the breath-holding award.

Finally, they tired themselves out. They floated on their backs, counting stars.

He found Orion. She found a cluster of stars that looked like Elvis's ear.

Mike turned his head and found her profile, outlined in moonlight. “Hey,” he said. “Want to hear about my other house?”

She twisted her whole body toward him, which of course made her feet fall down. She got a mouthful of water, spit it out and grimaced. “What house?”

“The house I used to think I'd live in when I grew up.”

“In Firefly Glen?”

He shrugged. “Maybe. It could be anywhere. I was going to build it myself. Do you want to hear about it or not?”

“You bet I do,” she said. She situated herself back into the perfect floating position and shut her eyes. “Okay, I'm ready. Don't do that guy thing and say, ‘well, it's big and it's blue' and think that tells me anything. I need lots of details if my mental picture is going to be accurate.”

He smiled. She had floated into him, and her shoulder was touching his. “I wouldn't dream of short-
changing your mental picture. But I can't start if you won't shut up.”

She made a zipping motion across her mouth.

“Okay. When I was sixteen,” he said, “I decided I wanted to be an architect. So I sat down and drew myself the perfect house.”

The water ebbed and flowed gently against his body. Her fingers drifted against his, then slipped away. He blinked water from his eyes and fixed his gaze on Orion. “It was just a kid's fantasy, really. I knew exactly zilch about houses. It was kind of a mishmash of movies I'd seen and books I'd read.”

“Like The Great Gatsby's house,” she said.

“No, not like that. Hush up and listen. It had three stories. It was covered in gray shingles, with dark green shutters and two brick chimneys puffing out marshmallow-colored smoke. It was big, but not too big—just big enough that, when the whole family was home, every room would be filled with laughter. It had an old-fashioned blue kitchen, a large, sunny family room where everyone would always want to gather, and bedrooms for at least four kids.”

“Four kids!” Suzie twitched, sending ripples of lake water over him. She immediately grew contrite and zipped her lips shut again.

“Sorry,” she mumbled through clenched teeth. “Go on.”

“At the top I put a light-filled attic room. That was where I would design my skyscrapers, I thought, when I became an architect. And there were windows everywhere, big windows that always glistened—”

“Hope there's a maid in this picture. Do you know what it takes to keep a million windows glist—”

“Suzie.”

“Sorry.”

“Windows that always glistened, and porches with views of the mountains. A green lawn that stretched out for acres and wild climbing roses that went up trellises and tried to grow right in through the open windows.”

“What color are the roses?”

He turned his head. “Are you making fun of my house?”

She scowled indignantly and fanned her feet to keep them up. “No. It's just that I think in color. I have to know what the roses look like, or I'll have this big canvas-colored spot in the picture.”

He thought for a minute. He'd never seen the roses as any particular color. He knew what they smelled like, though. They smelled like the sweet spot under his imaginary wife's ear, and the powder beside Gavin's crib.

They smelled like love. What color was that?

“White,” he said. That had been the color of Gavin's crib. “The roses are white.”

She was silent, finally, and he wondered if she could see it. He had, once. He'd seen it so clearly he hadn't even considered the possibility that the dream might not come true. Of course, back then he'd assumed he was eternally golden, the beloved son of the influential Frome family. He had assumed that life would just hand him whatever he wanted, gift wrapped.

He felt the swish of cool currents as she let her feet drop. She stood quite still, just inches away, and looked at him.

“Why didn't you ever build it, Mike? What happened to that lovely dream?”

He let his feet fall, too. They touched the muddy
lake bottom, and he knew that, once again, the respite was over. He wasn't golden anymore. He didn't always get what he wanted.

What he wanted right now was to kiss Suzie Strickland, who looked like a water fairy, with her long dark hair pouring down her back and her dark eyes reflecting silver shards of moonlight.

But he wasn't going to get that, either.

“You know what happened,” he said. “Justine happened.”

 

D
EBRA LET HERSELF
into the apartment quietly. She'd seen Ledge's car in the parking lot, so she knew he must be here clearing out his things.

They hadn't spoken since the paintball episode at the office. She'd left with Suzie, and her last words had been, “Be out of the apartment by Friday.”

She'd stayed the past two nights with her sister in Albany, after making her sister promise not to tell their mother. She neither knew nor cared where Ledge had stayed.

Her sister, Lizzie, who had six kids and called her husband
pookie
, nonetheless always turned into a raging man-hater where Rutledge was concerned. When Lizzie heard the paintball story, she'd toasted Super Suzie with a baby bottle, and then spent twenty minutes waxing creative about where Ledge's various body parts should be placed.

When Debra announced that she was going back to Tuxedo Lake, Lizzie had shaken her head, murmured the words
hopeless case
, and offered Debra her choice of a can of pepper spray or a shotgun.

Debra had taken the pepper spray. But she was starting to think she should have chosen the gun. She'd
just received a cell phone call from a reporter at the Albany newspaper. Because Debra had found the body, the reporter hoped she could confirm a rumor going around about something the police had found on Justine Millner's body.