Presumed Guilty & Keeper of the Bride (10 page)

A twenty-minute drive brought them to the last stretch of paved road. The asphalt gave way to a dirt access road flanked by birch and pine. Rustic signs proclaimed the different camps hidden among the tress. Mom and Pop’s. Brandywine Cottage. Sanity Camp. Here and there, dirt tracks led off to the dozen or so summer retreats of prominent island families, most of whom had held their cottages for generations.

The access road began to climb, winding a half mile up the contours of the hillside. They passed a stone marker labeled St. John’s Wood. Then they came to the last sign, every bit as rustic as the others: Rose Hill. A final bend in the road took them through the last stand of trees, and then a broad, sloping field lay before them. It sat at the very crest of the hill—a weathered cottage facing north, to the sea. Vines of purple clematis clung lovingly about the veranda railings. Rosebushes, overgrown with weeds but still valiantly blooming, crouched like thorny sentinels beside the porch steps.

They parked in the gravel turnaround and stepped out into an afternoon fragrant with the scent of flowers and sun-warmed grass. For a moment Miranda stood motionless, her face turned to the sky. Not a cloud marred that perfect blue. A single gull, riding the wind off the hillside, drifted overhead.

“Come on,” said Chase. “Let me show you inside.”

He led her up the porch steps. “I haven’t seen the place in at least ten years. I’m almost afraid to go in.”

“Afraid of what?”

“The changes. Of what they might’ve done to it. But I guess that’s how it is with your childhood home.”

“Especially if you were happy there.”

He smiled. “Exactly.”

For a moment they stood and regarded the old porch swing, creaking back and forth in the breeze.

“Do you have a key?” she asked.

“There should be one under here.” He crouched down beneath one of the windowsills. “There’s this little crack in the wood where Mom always kept a spare key….” He sighed and straightened. “Not anymore. Well, if the door’s locked, maybe we can find a window open somewhere.” Tentatively he reached for the knob. “How do you like that?” He laughed, pushing open the door. “It’s not even locked.”

As the door creaked open, the front room swung into view—a faded Oriental carpet stretched across the threshold, a stone fireplace, wide pine floors. Miranda stepped inside and suddenly halted in surprise.

At her feet lay a jumble of papers. A rolltop desk stood in the corner, its drawers wide open, their contents strewn across the floor. Books had been pulled off a nearby shelf and tossed haphazardly among the papers.

Chase stepped inside and came to a halt beside her. The screen door slammed shut.

“What the hell?” he said.

Seven

I
n silence they took in the ransacked desk, the scattered papers. Without a word Chase moved quickly toward the next room.

Miranda followed him into the kitchen. There were no signs of disturbance here. The pots and pans were hung on a beam rack, the flour and sugar canisters lined up neatly on the butcher block counters.

She was right on his heels as he headed for the stairs. They ran up the steps and looked first in the small guest bedroom. Everything appeared in order. Quickly Chase circled the room, opening closets, glancing in drawers.

“What are you looking for?” she asked.

He didn’t answer. He moved across the hall, into the master bedroom.

Here double windows, flanked by lace curtains, faced the sea. A cream coverlet draped the four-poster bed. Motes of dust drifted in the sun-warmed stillness.

“Doesn’t look like they touched this room, either,” said Miranda.

Chase went to the dresser, picked up a silver hairbrush, and set it back down. “Obviously not.”

“What on earth is going on here, Chase?”

He turned and glanced in frustration about the room. “This is crazy. They left the paintings on the walls. The furniture…”

“Nothing’s missing?”

“Nothing valuable. At least, nothing your ordinary thief would go after.” He opened a dresser drawer and glanced through the contents. He opened a second drawer and paused, staring inside. Slowly he withdrew a pair of women’s panties. It was scarcely more than a few strips of black lace and silk. He pulled out a matching bra, equally skimpy, equally seductive.

He looked at Miranda, his gaze flat and unreadable. “Yours?” he asked quietly.

“I told you, I’ve never been here. They must belong to Evelyn.”

He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“How would you know?”

“She never comes out here. Despises the rustic life, or so she claims.”

“Well, they’re not mine. I don’t own anything like—like that.”

“There’s more inside here. Maybe you’ll recognize something else.”

She went to the dresser and pulled out an emerald-and-cream bra. “Well, it’s obvious this isn’t mine.”

“How so?”

“This is a 36C. I’m…” She cleared her throat. “Not that big.”

“Oh.”

Quickly she turned away, before he could confirm her statement. Not that he hadn’t had the chance to look. He had eyes, didn’t he?

And he sees too damn much,
she thought. She turned toward the window and stood with her back to Chase, all the while struggling to regain her composure. Outside, the fading light of day slanted across the treetops. A long summer dusk. In the field below there would be fireflies and the hum of insects in the grass. And the chill. Even on these August evenings there was always the chill that rose from the sea. She hugged herself and shivered.

His approach was gentle, silent. She couldn’t hear him, but she knew, without looking, that he was right behind her.

Chase was standing so close, in fact, that he could smell the scent of her hair—clean and sweet and intoxicating. The fading daylight from the window brought out its glorious chestnut hues. He wanted to reach out and run his fingers through those shimmering strands, to bury his face in the tangled silk. A mistake, a mistake. He knew it before it happened, and yet he couldn’t help himself.

She shivered at his touch. Just the tiniest tremble, the softest sigh. He ran his hands down her shoulders, down the cool smoothness of her bare arms. She didn’t pull away. No, she leaned back, as though melting against him. He wrapped his arms around her, enfolding her in their warmth.

“When I was a boy,” he whispered, “I used to think there were magical creatures in that field down there. Elves and fairies hiding among the toadstools. I’d see their lights flitting about at night. It was only fireflies, of course. But to a kid, they might have been anything. Elvish lanterns, Dragon lights. I wish…”

“What do you wish, Chase?”

He sighed. “That I still had some of that child inside me. That we could have known each other then. Before all this happened. Before…”

“Richard.”

Chase fell silent. His brother would always be there, his life and his death like a darkness hovering over them. What could possibly thrive in such shadow? Not friendship; certainly not love.
Love?
No, what Chase felt, standing there behind her, hugging her slim, warm body to his, had far more to do with lust.
Well, what the hell. Maybe it runs in my family,
he thought,
in my tainted bloodline. This propensity for reckless, hopeless affairs. Richard had it. My mother had it. Is it my turn to succumb?

Miranda shifted in his embrace, turned to face him. One look at that soft, upturned mouth and he was lost.

She tasted of summer and warmth and sweet amber honey. At the first touch of their lips he wanted more, more. He felt like a man who has fallen drunk at his first sip of nectar and now craves nothing else. His hands found their way into that silken mass of hair, were buried in it, lost in it. He heard her murmur, “please,” and was too fevered to think it anything but a request for more. Only when she said it again, and then, “Chase, no,” did he finally pull away.

They stared at each other. The confusion he felt was mirrored in her eyes. She retreated a step, nervously shoving back her hair.

“I shouldn’t have let you do that,” she said. “It was a mistake.”

“Why?”

“Because you—you’ll say I led you on. That’s what you’ll tell Evelyn, isn’t it? You think it’s how I got hold of Richard. Temptation. Seduction. It’s what everyone else believes.”

“But is it true?”

“You’ve just proved it. Get me alone in a room and look what happens! Another Tremain male bites the dust.” Her voice took on a cold edge. “What I want to know is, who’s really seducing whom?”

She’s all motion, all skittishness,
he thought. In another moment she would shatter and fly into pieces.

“Neither of us did any seducing, any tempting. It just happened, Miranda. The way it usually happens. Nature tugs on our strings and we can’t always resist.”

“This time I will. This time I know better. Your brother taught me a few things. The most important thing is not to be so damn gullible when it comes to men.”

That last word was still hanging in the air between them when they heard footsteps thump onto the porch below. Someone rapped on the front door.

Chase turned and left the room.

Miranda, suddenly weak, leaned against the window-sill. She clutched it tightly, as though drawing strength from the wood.
Too close,
she thought.
I let down my guard, let him slip right past my defenses.

She would have to be more careful. She would have to remind herself that Chase and Richard were variations on a theme, a theme that had already wreaked havoc on her life. She took a deep breath and slowly let it out, willing the turmoil, the confusion, to flow out of her body.
Back in control,
she thought. She released the sill. She stood straight. Then, with a new semblance of calmness, she followed Chase down the stairs.

He was in the front room with the visitor. Miranda recognized her old acquaintance from the garden club, Miss Lila St. John, local expert on flowering perennials. Miss St. John was dressed in her signature black dress. Summer or winter, she always wore black, set off with a touch of white lace here and there. Today it was a black walking dress of crinkled linen. It did not quite match her brown boots or her straw hat, but on Miss St. John it all seemed to look just right.

She turned at the sound of Miranda’s footsteps. If she was surprised to see Miranda she didn’t show it. She simply nodded, then turned her sharp gray eyes back to the ransacked desk. On the front porch a dog whined. Through the screen door Miranda saw what looked like a large black fur ball with a red tongue.

“It’s all my fault, you know,” said Miss St. John. “I can’t believe I was such an imbecile.”

“How is it your fault?” asked Chase.

“I sensed something was wrong last week. We were taking our walk, you see, Ozzie and I. We walk every evening around dusk. That’s when the deer come out, the pests, though I do love to see them. Anyway, I saw a light through the trees, somewhere in this direction. I came up to the cottage and knocked on the door. No one answered, so I left.” She shook her head. “I shouldn’t have, you know. I should have looked into it. I
knew
it didn’t feel right.”

“Did you see a car?”

“If you were coming to loot the joint, would
you
park your car out front? Of course not. I know I’d park down the road a bit, in the trees. Then I’d sneak up here on foot.”

It was hard to imagine Miss St. John doing any such thing.

“It’s a good thing you didn’t get involved,” said Chase. “You could have gotten yourself killed.”

“At my age, Chase, getting killed is not a major concern.” She used her walking stick, a knobby affair with a duck’s head handle, to prod among the papers on the floor. “Any idea what he was after?”

“Not a clue.”

“Not valuables, obviously. That’s a Limoges on that shelf over there, isn’t it?”

Chase glanced sheepishly at the hand-painted vase. “If you say so.”

Miss St. John turned to Miranda. “Have you any thoughts on the matter?”

Miranda found herself under the gaze of two very intense gray eyes. Miss St. John might be dismissed by many as little more than a charming eccentric, but Miranda could see the intelligence in that gaze. While their previous conversations had tended more toward delphiniums and daffodils, even then, Miss St. John had made her feel like some sort of new plant species under a magnifying glass. “I’m not sure I know what to think, Miss St. John,” she said.

“Take a look at the mess. What does it tell you?”

Miranda glanced at the papers, the scattered books. Then her gaze shifted to the bookcases. Only a top shelf had been emptied. Two full bookcases were undisturbed.

“He didn’t look through all the books. So whoever broke in here must have been interrupted. By you, maybe.”

“Or he found what he was looking for,” said Chase.

Miss St. John turned to him. “And what might that be?”

“A guess?” Chase and Miranda glanced at each other. “The file on Stone Coast Trust,” Chase ventured.

“Ah.” Miss St. John’s eyes took on a gleam of interest. “Your brother’s little campaign against Tony Graffam. Yes, Richard seemed to do quite a bit of writing out here. At that desk, in fact. On my evening walks I’d see him through the window.”

“Did you ever stop to talk to him? About what he was working on?”

“Oh, no. That’s why we come out here, isn’t it? To get away from all those prying townies.” She glanced at Miranda. “I never saw
you
out here.”

“I’ve never been here,” she said, shifting uneasily under that thoughtful gaze. This matter-of-fact reference to her link with Richard had taken her by surprise. And yet, Miss St. John’s bluntness was far preferable to the delicate avoidance with which so many others treated the subject.

Miss St. John bent down for a closer look at the papers. “He must have done a prodigious amount of work here, judging by this mess. What is all this, anyway?”

Chase bent and sifted through the papers. “Looks like a lot of old article files…. Financial records from the
Herald…
And here we’ve got a collection of local personality profiles. Why, here’s one of you, Miss St. John.”

“Me? But I was never interviewed for anything.”

Chase grinned. “Must be the unauthorized version, then.”

“Does it mention all my sexy secrets?”

“Well, let’s just take a good look here—”

“Oh,
give
me the damn thing.” Miss St. John snatched the page out of his hands and scanned the typewritten notes. She read them aloud. “Age seventy-four…holds title to lot number two, St. John’s Wood, and cottage thereon…rabid member of local garden club.” Here she glanced up huffily.
“Rabid?”
She continued reading. “Eccentric recluse, never married. Engaged once, to an Arthur Simoneau, killed in action…Normandy….” Her voice trailed off. Slowly she sat down, still clutching the piece of paper in both hands.

“Oh, Miss St. John,” said Miranda. “I’m sorry.”

The elderly woman looked up, still shaken. “It…was a very long time ago.”

“I can’t believe he went digging into your personal life, without you even knowing about it. Why would he do that?”

“You’re saying it was Richard?” asked Miss St. John.

“Well, these are his papers.”

Miss St. John frowned at the page for a moment. “No,” she said slowly. “I don’t believe he wrote this. There’s an error in here. It says my cottage lies in St. John’s Wood. But it lies three feet over the line, on Tremain property. A surveyor’s mistake from seventy years past. Richard knew that.”

Chase frowned. “I never heard that, about your cottage.”

“Yes, your family land goes past the second stone wall. It includes the entire access road. So, technically, all the rest of us are trespassers on your private road. Not that it ever mattered. It always felt like a giant family out here. But now…” She shook her head. “So many strangers on the island. All those tourists from
Massachusetts.
” She made it sound like an invasion from hell.

“Did Stone Coast Trust approach you?” Miranda asked her. “About selling St. John’s Wood?”

“They approached everyone on this road. I, of course, refused. So did Richard. That effectively squelched the project. Without Rose Hill, Stone Coast would own a disconnected patchwork of little lots. But now…” Sadly she sighed. “I imagine Evelyn, at this very moment, has her pen poised over the sales contract.”

“Actually, she does not,” said Chase. “Rose Hill didn’t go to Evelyn. Richard left the property to Miranda.”

Miss St. John stared at them. “Now that,” she said after a long pause, “is an entirely unexpected development.”

“For me, as well,” said Miranda.

While Miss St. John sat back in thought, Miranda and Chase gathered up the rest of the papers. They found more article files, a few miscellaneous clippings, an old financial report from the
Herald.
Obviously Richard had used the cottage as another office. Was this where he had stored his most sensitive papers? Miranda wondered about this when she came across a whole bundle of personality profiles. Like the page on Miss St. John, the information contained in these files was highly private.