Читать книгу Still Lake - Anne Stuart - Страница 6

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.