Quiet as the Grave (7 page)

Also, it was a strike against him that he hadn't come from their ranks. Some district attorneys were former policemen who worked their way through law school—they got the best cooperation, of course.

But Keith had gone to law school first, and the people of Marston County had elected him district attorney two years ago, when he was only thirty-eight. He fully expected them to elect him again, in two years time.

Which was one reason he needed a conviction on the Justine Millner case, and soon.

This one had caught the public's imagination. Beautiful young mother disappears off the face of the earth. It was just the kind of thing they lapped up like kittens facedown in a saucer of milk.

They'd turned out to search the woods, back then, because it had been exciting. And they'd come to her memorial service for the same reason. They hadn't cared whether Justine was dead or alive, not really.

Not the way he did.

Which was why he'd come all this way tonight, following a lead that would probably turn out to be useless. He kept driving, leaving both Summer House and deLuca behind and clearing his mind for the meeting ahead.

It was a long drive. Summer House was not in the glen proper, but overlooked it from the mountainside. He followed Blue Pine Trail into the town, and when he finally arrived, the roads were nearly empty. Small towns were like that. He still had trouble believing that Justine had come from a place like this. She must have set the pavement on fire just by walking down these sleepy streets.

He knew where the cemetery was. Under the pretext of watching for any possible suspects, he had attended the funeral. He'd sent flowers, too, anonymously. His had been the most exotic offering of all, bigger even than the family's.

This time he parked under a hemlock with low, dense branches. The car was black, so from ten yards away you couldn't see it at all. The iron gates weren't locked, more small-town thinking. He shoved one side open a few inches and squeezed through.

Ignoring the paved path that wound through the gravestones, he cut across the grass, which was so thick from all the spring rain that his footsteps didn't make a sound. If the dead objected, they weren't able to say so.

The older half of the cemetery, with mossy head-stones tilting at quaint angles and scattered cherubs standing guard, was much more attractive than the new half, where Justine was buried. About fifty years ago, a bunch of anal-retentive councilmen had legislated grief moderation and had prohibited any markers except uniform granite rectangles sunk into the grass.

The result was that the crowded, eccentric land of the dead suddenly flattened and became the visual equivalent of a golf course.

He found Justine's marker somehow, and he stared at it a long time, his hands balled in his pockets, his shoes crushing the plush grass. In the moonlight, he could read the simple words, Justine Ariana Millner, and the dates.

It wasn't enough, wasn't nearly enough to capture her essence. It reduced Justine Ariana Millner to the same nonentity as Mary Jane Johannes, who stretched out above her head, or Susan Elaine Dalby, who slept at her feet.

You'd never know the truth—that Justine Ariana Millner had been magic. A witch with white-fire hair, and blue eyes that didn't care whether you looked like a toad, because she saw deeper. She saw inside you,
where you were as brilliant and driven and full of imaginative passion as she was.

She saw your dark, rotten places, too, and didn't find them repulsive. Sometimes, when she made love to you, you could feel her touching them. The more dangerous those places were, the more they excited her.

Everything excited her, because she was in love with life.

One harsh sob escaped him, and he clamped his lips shut. The guilty, poisonous toad had no right to weep over the princess's grave. She must hate being here, hate the uniformity, the anonymity, the obscurity. He was surprised her bones didn't reject it, didn't come bursting out, fleshless joints clicking, white and furious, and clutch him by the throat.

He heard a noise behind him. He took a moment to compose his face before he turned around.

“Is that you, Mayor Millner?”

The form that stepped out from the shadow of a newly planted elm was, in silhouette, not unlike Keith's own—short and pudgy, the kind of man who made cartoonists dream of toads. Justine's father had obviously contributed nothing to his amazing daughter.

She'd never mentioned her father, and yet Keith knew she had hated him. Fiercely. Every time she humiliated Keith, or any other of the older men she collected, he knew that she was really punishing her father.

But for what? Neglect? Abuse? Just being disappointingly human? He'd never been able to discover.

“You said you have something for me,” Keith said. He was suddenly impatient with Millner's broken
posture, his crumpled face. Millner didn't have the right to cry here, either.

“Yes.” The older man moved forward ponderously, as if he were confused, as if he'd just awakened from a long nap and found himself in a strange place. The choice of locations had been Keith's. He wanted an excuse to visit Justine one more time, and he didn't care squat about Millner's feelings, if he had them.

“Well?” Keith held out his hand.

Millner reached into the breast pocket of his jacket. He extracted a lumpy, two-inch stack of papers. “There are only about eight. A couple of them are from his neighbors. One is from—some other man. Only five are from Mike.”

Keith took the letters. He didn't flip through them. There wasn't enough moonlight, and besides, he wanted to be alone when he read them.

“Remember, you can't use them, not officially.” Millner's voice was plaintive. “I promised my wife I wouldn't stir up trouble. She doesn't believe that Mike—” He swallowed. “She's weak. She always had a soft spot for him, just because he's good-looking, and he's a Frome.”

He'd promised his wife? Keith wondered if Millner had always been this spineless. “Yes, of course. They're just for background. I won't use anything unless I can confirm it independently.”

Millner nodded. He looked vaguely around the cemetery, as if he were trying to orient himself. The wind had picked up, and it blew limp, greasy strands of his hair across his sweaty brow.

“How can this, this
place
, be where my baby is? My little girl.”

She wasn't a little girl, you fool, you toad
. Keith
wanted to scream it across this cursed lawn, scream it until the cherubs on the old tombstones covered their ears in fear.
She was a beautiful, passionate woman
.

“You'll get him, won't you?” Millner's eyes bulged strangely, as if grief were a tumor, swelling up from the inside, stretching him beyond endurance. “You were her friend, I remember that. She said she liked you.”

“I liked her, too.”

“Then promise me. You won't let anything stop you? You won't let any other case come first? Promise me you'll get him.”

If only he knew. Keith's reasons for wanting to get Mike Frome were more powerful than Alton Millner, with his popping red eyes and his pathetic memories of a little girl who hadn't existed for more than a decade, could ever imagine.

“I'll get him,” he said.

And for a minute, in the wind, he thought he heard Justine laugh.

D
EBRA HAD BEEN WANDERING
the aisles of the jewelry store for twenty minutes, waiting for her friend Judy Stott, who was arranging to have her new eternity ring resized.

Judy was frustrated about having put on a few pounds, but since she'd been happily married to Phil Stott for ten secure years, Debra figured Judy could be excused. The eternity band had been her surprise anniversary present. Paul obviously still saw his wife as a svelte eighteen…hence the too-small ring.

Lucky Judy
. As the debate continued over whether to go slightly tight, in case Judy lost weight, or slightly loose, in case she didn't, Debra found herself idling past the glittering displays of diamond solitaires.

The very sight of all these gorgeous chips of rain-bowed ice lying here, untouched, made her ache. Though she knew it was stupid, she couldn't help herself. She wanted one so bad. She ran her fingers along the glass countertop, trailing a haze of embarrassed longing.

Finally she heard the chatter of a receipt printing. Judy signed a piece of paper, then came Debra's way.

“All done.” Tucking her receipt in her purse, Judy glanced at the diamonds. “Are you shopping? Or just dreaming?”

Debra flushed. She knew Judy didn't mean to be unkind, but the comment stung. Judy had always said any woman would be crazy to pin her hopes on Rutledge Coffee. She had a point. How far could a relationship go when the man had already announced that marriage is the ultimate trap, and all women are just waiting to clamp their lethal teeth around his helpless heart?

Of course, he'd been drunk at the time.

“Neither. Just enjoying,” Debra said, turning away from the case. “They're pretty.”

Judy looked sympathetic, but skeptical. Debra felt a flash of annoyance. Honestly, sometimes married people could be so smug. But it quickly turned into a wave of self-disgust. What kind of sap was she becoming, falling for the whole lace and flowers and happily-ever-after package?

“Truly,” she said, taking Judy's arm. “I was just admiring the view. I know Ledge isn't ready for marriage. He starts twitching if he even hears the word on TV.”

“And you wouldn't say yes even if he did ask, right?” Judy had said this about a million times. “You know he's definitely not good husband material, right?”

Debra sighed. “Of course I do. But who is? Frankly, you and Phil have the only happy marriage I've ever seen.”

It was true. Her own parents had a sick servant-master arrangement. And though many of Debra's college friends had married in the past few years, some with diamond solitaires so big they could blind you, look at them now! The lucky ones had already escaped in divorce. The others just seemed to be settling in for lifelong misery.

So why did Debra persist in thinking of herself as somehow inferior?
Unwanted
.

“Anyhow, that eternity ring is fantastic.” She shook off the self-pitying mood and grinned. “Did I ever tell you about the time I found a jewelry box in Rutledge's sock drawer?”

“I don't think so. When?”

“Two years ago. I was putting away laundry, and—”

She caught Judy's wry expression. “I wasn't prying. It was early in the relationship—things hadn't deteriorated to the prying point yet.”

They both laughed. Debra didn't have many secrets from Judy these days. Everyone needed a confidante, and over the past few months Judy had become hers.

“Anyhow, it was only a couple of days from the anniversary of our first date. Not that I'd expected Rutledge to remember that. So how could I have resisted looking?”

“You couldn't have,” Judy agreed immediately. “And…”

“And inside was the tackiest ankle bracelet I've ever seen. It had a nice chain, I guess, but dangling from the chain was this charm shaped like a huge, revolting pair of puckered lips.”

Judy stopped in her tracks. “
What
?”

“I'm serious. It was the ugliest thing I ever saw in my life.”

“What did you do?”

“Well, what could I do? I wouldn't have been caught dead in it, so I slipped it back under the socks. Then I made a couple of strategic comments about how I preferred understated jewelry. Ledge isn't the most subtle guy in the world, but I guess he got it. The jewelry box disappeared.”

“He never gave it to you?”

“Nope. I guess he took it back, but he must have been offended, because he sure didn't exchange it for anything. The anniversary came and went.
Nothing.
”

Judy looked even more appalled. Though Debra nudged her arm, she didn't start walking again. They were just frozen there on the sidewalk in front of the jewelry store.

Debra scanned her friend's face, beginning to wish she hadn't shared this particular Rutledge story. Judy was a great friend, but she was a little bit of a prude, and she already hated Rutledge enough. Perversely, Debra felt herself getting defensive for him.

“Hey, it's not like a mortal sin, you know. Most guys have rotten taste in jewelry. You're lucky Phil is so—”

“No.” Judy's eyes were stretched so wide they quivered slightly from the strain. “That's not what—
Oh, Deb
…Deb, look. Across the street.”

Debra turned curiously. They were in the middle of downtown Albany, thirty miles from home in Tuxedo Lake. She wasn't even sure what else was around here. A sandwich shop, a bookstore. A small hotel.

“What?”

But then she saw it.

Saw
him
.

Rutledge stood on the opposite sidewalk, looking extremely happy and handsome, his white shirt crisp and clean, his blond hair shining in the sunlight. He obviously hadn't been working on anybody's boathouse today.

She thought at first he was alone. She was just about to raise her hand and call to him when he suddenly let out a happy laugh, the way he sometimes did when he
played basketball at their apartment complex and sank an impossible shot.

He turned and grabbed the woman walking next to him, an incredibly beautiful brunette. Like a fool, until that very moment, Debra had thought she was just a stranger coincidentally strolling nearby.

Don't, don't, don't
….

Debra's mind was empty of anything that could be called thoughts. Just the one word, cycling over and over, as if she were trying to communicate to him telepathically.
Don't…don't break my heart
.

But of course, nothing went through. Rutledge was an action man, not an empathizer. He never noticed nuance. He could see her crying over her checkbook and still ask to borrow money. He would pronounce their lovemaking “the best ever” when she'd felt nothing at all.

So why would he hear her silently begging now?

He didn't. He wrapped his muscular arms around the woman, who was laughing, and twirled her around triumphantly. And then he kissed her, so long and hard and sexy that people passing by started to stare and grin.

Finally, Debra's mind formed a real thought.

But wasn't it just so typical? Out of the hundreds of outraged, furious, scathing things she could have,
should have
, thought, she chose this pathetic doormat's lament.

You'll never get that diamond ring now.

 

“O
H
, S
UZIE
, I
LOVE IT
.” Isabel, who had been Suzie's best friend, roommate and biggest fan during the years they attended art classes together, turned around with tears in her eyes. “It's…it's poetry.”

Well, that was an exaggeration, but Suzie had to admit the portrait had come out okay. She'd painted Isabel lying on Suzie's sofa, with the light from the window pouring over her. Isabel's infant daughter, Phoebe, was stretched across her stomach, sleeping.

Painting babies was tricky. It could go wrong in so many ways…they could be blobby, or way too cute, or just generic.

But she'd nailed this one. It was all about the light, about the halftones that made mother and infant seem to be separate, and yet not separate. Two bodies, but still, for a little while, at least, one spirit.

“You always were the best,” Isabel said without any apparent resentment. “Guess that's why you can make a living at it, and I can't.”

Suzie laughed. Isabel's postmodern cubist canvases hadn't yet caught on, but they were beautiful, like the inside of a kaleidoscope.

“No, I can make a living at it because I've sold out. I paint what people want. You've stuck to your own vision. And besides—” She extended a finger and let Phoebe grab it. “You've been busy creating some other cool stuff.”

In the month since Suzie had last seen Phoebe, the baby had changed so much. She seemed to be growing every minute, features sharpening, consciousness dawning. Someday, Suzie realized, Isabel would be awfully glad to have this painting, which had captured a sacred but painfully ephemeral moment.

That was the real reason people spent thousands getting their children's portraits painted. They weren't driven by vanity, as she'd originally thought, but by a wistful awareness that this child, this day, would never exist again.

The phone rang. Since she didn't have any commissions right now—and this picture of Isabel and Phoebe had been a gift—Suzie couldn't afford not to answer it. Nor could she afford to open with one of the grouchy joke greetings she used to employ back when she was a teenager working at the sheriff's department in Firefly Glen.

Snaking her finger free from Phoebe's little fist, she clicked the “talk” button of the cordless phone and said, “Strickland Studios!” in her most welcoming, professional voice.

The pause on the other end had a distinctly nervous quality.

“Umm.” The voice was male, and quite young. “This is Gavin Frome. Is this Suzie?”

Well, that was a surprise. “Hey, Gavin,” she said, putting a genuine smile in her voice. “How are things?”

“Pretty good,” he said. “I'm sorry to bother you at work. I found your number in the phone book.”

“It's okay.” She tossed an apologetic smile to Isabel, who waved it away and began prowling through the studio, checking out the stacks of paintings and sketches tilted against every wall. “I've got a few free minutes. What's up?”

“I just—I wanted to ask if you would do me a favor.”

“Sure, if I can.”

“Um, I don't know where you live, really. Is it very far away from here? From the boathouse?”

“About half an hour. It's not a big deal, as long as my car is actually running.” She and Isabel exchanged a grin. Isabel knew all about Flattery. It used to let them down on the way to class all the time. “Do you need me to come over there?”

“Well, maybe. If you can. My dad, his birthday is pretty soon, and I want to buy him a picture. I was hoping you'd help me pick it out. I don't have any lessons or anything after school tomorrow. If you're not too busy, that is.”

Suzie hesitated. She knew a fork in the road when she saw one. She could let Gavin down easily, pleading too much work, too little time. He'd be hurt, but he'd get over it, and he'd probably never call her studio again. It might well be the last time she ever saw him.

Or she could say
yes, I'll be there, just tell me what time
. She could commit to being his friend.

The only problem was, Gavin was the ten-year-old center of his father's universe. She couldn't very well agree to be his friend without agreeing to be Mike's friend, too.

Once, ten years ago, Mike's life had been falling apart, and he had asked for her friendship. She'd said no. Did she really want to get involved now, when his life was falling apart all over again?

She looked at Isabel, who represented everything that had happened to Suzie since she marched out of the oppressive Sugar Plum Fairyland of Firefly Glen, with a scholarship in her hand and an eat-my-dust skip in her step.

Ten years of education, experience, independence, risks, lovers, clients, friends, self-discipline, maturity…even a home and a business of her own.

Isabel had never heard of Mike Frome—that's how far Suzie had come. Right now Isabel was looking at a pencil sketch of him, and she had no idea who it was.

That particular sketch was one of Suzie's favorites. It had captured the rare flash of sweetness that sometimes played over Mike's rugged, rich-boy features.
Suzie must have drawn it on one of her softhearted days. Or was it soft
headed?
She had quite a few less flattering Mike pictures buried in that stack somewhere, too.

Isabel held out the sketch, smiling with lifted brows and shaking her fingers in the universal
hot-hot-hot
sign.

Suzie stared at the sketch, though she knew Gavin was waiting for an answer. It might be nice to find out which was the real Mike. Once and for all.

“Okay,” she heard herself saying, planting her foot squarely onto the path less traveled. “Tomorrow it is.”

 

F
OR A TEN-YEAR-OLD
, the kid had pretty good taste.

After only about half an hour of prowling through Tuxedo Lake's artsy district, Suzie and Gavin had narrowed the choice down to two pictures.

They were both prints, of course. Gavin had saved up a hundred and twenty-two dollars and ninety-three cents by working on weekends with his dad, a sum that impressed the heck out of Suzie, who at that age had never met a nickel she wasn't dying to spend. But he was determined to buy a framed picture, and frames cost a lot.

The whole expedition had almost ended right at the first gallery, where the owners specialized in flowers and cottages and still-life fruits. Gavin had glared at the walls with an expression so horrified Suzie had nearly laughed out loud.

“Maybe we'd better think of something else to give him,” he'd whispered to her, edging toward the door. But she'd assured him that not all pictures were dumb and mushy, and they had finally found this little framing shop, which had some wonderful nautical
things, rugged seascapes, and lighthouses, and boats with strong masts. All that subliminal manly stuff.