Kathleen O'Brien - Quiet as the Grave

He smiled wryly. “I think that’s my point.”

Slowly she lowered her hands, but she still looked terrified.

He wiggled his gun. “It’s not real, Mrs. Cready. It’s a toy. Gavin and I are playing paintball.”

She drew herself up, and her scowl deepened, as if the fact that it wasn’t real was somehow an insult. “A fine thing to be teaching your son.” She ended with a sniff.

He sighed. Was there some law that said a man’s next-door neighbor had to be an old bat?

“Well, anyway,” she said haughtily, “I wouldn’t have come down here at all, except that you have a visitor. A woman. She’s trying to find your house and got confused. Perhaps because you don’t have one.”

Yeah, that had always ticked Mrs. Cready off, too. Clearly, she thought, only a hopeless degenerate would live in a boathouse. She didn’t seem to think it mattered that, at 2,100 square feet, the boathouse was as big as most regular houses.

Not the Tuxedo Lake houses, of course. And that’s what snobs like Mrs. Cready considered the standard of respectability.

“Okay, thanks, just send her on down.” Mike would have asked who it was, but he didn’t really care. It was probably a reporter, or maybe a lawyer looking for business, or maybe even a plainclothes police officer.

Mrs. Cready sniffed again and walked away, her back as erect as a pylon. Mike called Gavin and explained that the game was over. They began pulling off equipment.

When he again heard footsteps and looked up, he saw a young brunette walking toward him. An eye-catching woman, who moved with a natural, unaffected grace. She wore a simple blue skirt and brown hemp sandals. Her glossy brown hair bounced on her shoulders.

Not a policewoman. Way too feminine, in spite of her thin, boyish figure. Her body language too open and free to be a cop. Too casually dressed for a lawyer, too outdoorsy for a reporter.

Still…he had a fleeting sense that he knew this woman, but before he could catch it the wispy image was gone.

He stared at her as she picked her way across tree roots and fallen branches. He realized suddenly that the perfect paintball field might actually look kind of scruffy as a lawn.

But she didn’t seem to mind. She didn’t tiptoe in exaggerated horror and scrunch up her nose, as Justine would have done.

Who was it? Even when she got close enough to see her features, he had no idea. Whoever she was, he decided he liked her. She had great cheekbones, a jaw that said she didn’t take any shit, and a mouth that knew how to laugh.

Finally, when she got close enough for him to see her eyes, he knew.

It was impossible. This graceful, good-looking woman was…

Mike’s heart began to race, and then it skidded in his chest, as if he were trying to throw on the brakes. He didn’t want this pretty woman to be Suzie. He wanted Suzie to stay geeky and smart-mouthed and purple…and permanently pissed at the world.

He needed her to stay the same. Something in this godforsaken world ought to.

Gavin didn’t have any such ambivalence. He threw down his paintball gun and began to run toward the woman, laughing.

“Suzie,” he said. “It’s me, Gavin. Do you remember me?”

Mike watched as the woman bent over and hugged his son. He waited until she lifted her gaze over Gavin’s head and met his eyes.

“Hi, Suzie. It’s me, Mike.” He tilted his head. “Remember me?”

“Yeah, I think I do,” she said, laughing, and when her eyes crinkled like that his heart stopped thumping quite so hard. It was still Suzie. In spite of the long, glossy hair, the contact lenses and the mind-boggling sexiness, the old Suzie, the real Suzie, was still in there.

She’d been a good friend to him once. Maybe she still could be.

He smiled. “How can you be so sure it’s me? You’ve changed. Haven’t I?”

“Not a bit,” she said. “You’re still the only dork dumb enough to be roaming around at a time like this holding a goddamn gun.”

She whisked her hands up over Gavin’s ears. “Ooops. Sorry.”

Mike laughed out loud.

“Don’t be,” he said. “I’m not. Come on, let’s go inside. I think I’m about ten years overdue for a good Suzie Strickland thrashing.”

SHE KNEW IT WAS CONSIDERED bad form to speak ill of the dead, but Suzie had always thought Justine Millner was trash, and she hadn’t ever disliked her as much as she did right now.

Look what Justine had done to Mike. Suzie didn’t know whether it was marrying Justine or losing Justine that had done it, but Mike Frome was a different man.

Ten years ago, he’d been one of the most infuriatingly smug boys in their high school. He’d also been one of the most attractive. Just being around him had been like chugging caffeine. He gave off this exciting zing of vitality that was addictive, even for Suzie, who ordinarily avoided the preppy crowd like poison.

The zing was gone.

Of course, he was still too handsome for his own good, she thought as he politely led her on a tour of his boathouse. On the outside, it was charming, white trim over dark wood, with dormers that overlooked the lake. Inside, it was large and surprisingly homey for a bachelor pad.

Following behind him, she realized that he still had the sexiest back she’d ever seen, though now she looked at it purely with an artist’s eye. If she were to paint it, she’d start with a long triangle—she always reduced a face or body to its underlying geometric basics first. Then she’d add finely cut, fluid musculature, no artificial steroid bulk here, just a genetically blessed body that worked for a living.

“That’s about it. The bedrooms are on the second floor, well, third floor if you count the boat slips beneath, but they’re both too disgusting to show anyone right now.” Mike lifted one eyebrow. “I think we’re going to have to fire the upstairs maid.”

He winked at his son, who grimaced back. Must be a running joke.

They had made it to the kitchen, an efficient space, not too big, but somehow airy and comfortable. Suzie caught Mike looking at her speculatively as she admired the cabinets. Under his polite exterior, he must be wondering what the heck she was doing here, after all these years.

She smiled back and cut a subtle glance toward Gavin. She couldn’t explain herself until they were alone.

She didn’t know whether he actually got the message, or if it was just a coincidence, but Mike immediately turned to his son.

“I’m going to show Suzie the porch. Any chance you could toss in a load of towels and fold the ones in the dryer? We’re just about out.”

Gavin looked as if he’d like to complain, but he didn’t. “Okay,” he said. He turned to Suzie. “You won’t leave right away?”

“I’ll be here a few more minutes,” she said. “If you’re not back when I’ve got to go, I’ll come say goodbye.”

Gavin grinned, and for the first time Suzie could see Mike in the boy. “Well, better not actually come into the laundry room,” he said. “Our downstairs maid isn’t all that great, either.”

Mike dismissed Gavin with a shooing motion. He grabbed a plastic container of store-bought cookies from the counter, and then he led Suzie through a pair of large, glass-paned French doors.

As she stepped out onto the porch, she caught her breath. It was absolutely gorgeous, a wraparound deal with an amazing view. Out here, with water on three sides, you were intensely aware that this house was actually built right on the lake.

Mike held out one of two white wicker armchairs, and she took it, appreciating its soft old cushions, and the companionable creak when she leaned back.

Mike sat, too, and for a minute they were silent, just watching the afternoon sunlight play on the water. It bounced off and danced against the walls of the porch, too. It would be a challenge, she thought, to capture this living light on a canvas.

It probably had been a happy place, once. Mike and Gavin had probably spent hours out here, watching the breeze ripple the blue lake. But it was clear that they had pretty much forgotten what happiness tasted like.

God only knew what they saw when they looked out at the water now. Somewhere on the other side of that lake was Justine’s mansion. And the muddy spot where her body had been buried.

She glanced at Mike, and she realized he was smiling at her, a hint of that old smile. She couldn’t quite meet it. It was still strong stuff, and even after all this time she wasn’t completely immune.

“God, Suzie-freaka, it’s good to see you. It’s been a long, long time.”

His voice, and his smile, were strangely unsettling, like haunted echoes from the past, from way back when she hated herself almost as much as she hated him. Suddenly the air felt tight, even though the breeze was cool and fresh, fingering her hair and ruffling the sleeves of her dress.

She was irked with herself for reacting like this. The past wasn’t the issue, damn it. She wasn’t here to reminisce about the bad old days. She was only here out of common humanity. She was here to give an old friend—no, an old acquaintance—a heads-up.

Mike held out the cookies. “So, want to tell me what’s happening?” He pulled in one corner of his mouth, creating that annoyingly attractive dimple. “Somehow I don’t think you just woke up this morning and said, ‘hey, I wonder how that obnoxious boy I hated in high school is doing?’”

The boy she hated in high school… He must have read her mind. But was that all he was? Maybe. She had definitely hated him. Even when she…didn’t.

“No,” she said, waving away the cookies, which were hard and sandy, typical grocery store pseudo food. “It’s something more serious, I’m afraid. It’s about Justine. Well, about Justine’s father, anyhow.”

Mike set the container down slowly. “What about him?”

“He asked me to visit him this morning, at Justine’s house.”

She watched Mike’s face, wondering how he could stay so impassive. Where had all those quicksilver emotions gone? The easy laughter, the twitching frown, the worried squint, the sarcastic eyebrow? The restless, young-animal body.

The zing.

He was so still now. So controlled. It was like looking at a picture of Mike instead of the real thing.

“Oh, yeah?” Mike flipped a cookie between his fingers, keeping his eyes on the water. “What did he want?”

She took a breath. This was it.

“He wants me to help him pin Justine’s murder on you.”

That got his attention. But it didn’t completely surprise him. As he slowly faced Suzie, she saw anger but not shock behind his dark brown eyes.

“Pin it…how would you be able to do that?”

“He hoped I might have seen something while I was painting Gavin’s portrait. Something between you and Justine. An argument, maybe.”

“But you couldn’t have. I was never at the house when you were there.”

“I know.” She chewed on her lower lip, wishing she could stop herself from asking the next question but knowing she probably couldn’t. She’d never had very good impulse control. “I always thought I might run into you, but I never did. Was that deliberate? Were you avoiding me on purpose?”

“Yes.”

She frowned. “Well, that’s a hell of a note,” she said. “Just ‘yes’?”

“Well, what do you want me to say? Yes, it was deliberate. Yes, I was avoiding you on purpose.”

“Why?”

He shrugged, and it, too, held the echo of the old days. He always did have a large, infuriating repertoire of smug-jock mannerisms. “I thought you’d prefer it that way.”