Grace's eyes were surprisingly critical. "You consider that something sexy?"

Sophie glanced down at her flowered skirt. "I didn't say I was going to wear something sexy-that was your idea. It's not my particular style, anyway. I like flowery, flowing stuff."

Grace shook her head despairingly. "You'll never get a husband that way."

"Who says I want a husband?" Sophie replied. "You didn't enjoy yours much while you had him."

"You and I are very different, Sophie. You need a good-looking man to distract you from being so damned responsible all the time. You need to fall so much in love that you stop behaving yourself and go a little wild. You need children so you stop fussing over me and Marty. We'll be just fine."

"I'm not in any hurry," Sophie said, trying not to sound defensive.

"Dearie," Grace murmured in her soft, sweet voice. "You need to get laid."

Sophie tried to stifle her shocked laugh. Not that Grace had ever been shy about passion. She'd always been a free spirit, and during her years of travel she'd always been with one man or another. But with Gracey a ghost of her former vibrant self, the earthy suggestion sounded ludicrous.

"As you said, you and I are very different, Mama. I tend to keep my...libido under control."

"Straight-jacketed is more like it," Grace said with a sniff. "Are you so sure you know what you're doing?" She sounded surprisingly sharp.

"What do you mean? Doing without sex?"

"This course you've set your life on. You're not even thirty years old and you've moved to the back end of beyond to work like a dog on this old place. There are no eligible men around, no movies, no bookstores, nothing to do but work on this old house and take care of your family. Don't you deserve a better life than that?"

"There aren't any eligible men in New York-they're all either gay or married," Sophie said. "And I think this is a very nice life, indeed. I want to take care of you, Mama."

Grace shook her head. "I'm sixty years old, Sophie. I don't need taking care of. I think you should sell this place," she said. "Go find your own life."

"I wouldn't find a buyer-not at this point. Once I prove it's a going concern then maybe people would want to buy it, but right now I'm afraid we're stuck."

Grace's expression changed, slowly, as if a veil was being pulled over her mind. "Of course, love," she murmured in that vague tone. "Whatever you think is best."

Whatever you think is best. The words echoed in Sophie's ears as she wandered out onto the wide front porch. The moon had risen over the lake, and the night was clear and cool. The overstuffed, refurbished glider sat in one corner, beckoning her, and she wanted to go and curl up on it, tuck her hands beneath her head and stare at the night sky.

She had paperwork to do. She had bread dough to make, so that it would rise overnight in the refrigerator. She had laundry and menus and a column to write. She had to spend at least half an hour worrying about Grace and Marty, and she had to do it all without a cigarette.

She'd come to Vermont hoping to simplify her life. To get back to basics, to concentrate on day-to-day living. So how had it all gotten so incredibly complicated?

She looked down toward the Whitten house. From this vantage point she could barely see it in the woods, just a faint light shining through the trees. There was something about the mysterious Mr. Smith that didn't seem right. If he'd moved to Colby to set up some kind of year-round business he'd made a stupid move. There wasn't enough work to support him. And Mr. Smith didn't strike her as a particularly stupid man.

He didn't strike her as a Mr. Smith, either. There was something more going on, and unlike her mother, Sophie had never been fond of unsolved mysteries.

It was probably simple enough. He might have vacationed here when he was a child, or maybe he had a college friend who'd spent time in Colby. The small town was a closely guarded secret. Its pristine beauty depended on limiting the flow of tourists-locals had been known to jokingly suggest they put border guards on the Center Road to keep too many strangers from coming in. It had been sheer luck that Sophie had heard about the town from a writer friend.

Somehow or other Mr. Smith had found his way to Colby, to the Whitten house. It would be easy to find out what or who had brought him to town, to her very doorstep.

And she had every intention of finding out. Then maybe she wouldn't have to waste time standing on her front porch, staring out into the darkness, thinking about him and what secrets lay behind his cool, dark eyes.

For now she needed to concentrate on getting the inn up and running, and forget about the beautiful, mysterious stranger who'd moved practically into her backyard. In a month or so he'd be gone.

And she'd be here, taking care of her guests, running her inn. Being happy. Or at least serene. Sometimes that was the best she could hope for.

3.

Griffin didn't sleep well. Not that he'd expected to-being back in Colby was nerve-racking, and staring down at the lake gave him the creeps. Enough so that he couldn't quite bring himself to break into the old inn to look around while everyone slept. He was going to have to get over that, and fast, if he was going to accomplish what he needed to do.

He opened the casement windows in the bedroom under the eaves. No screens, of course, but it was long after blackfly season, and with luck the mosquitoes wouldn't be too bad. If worse came to worst he could go down to Audley's and get some screening to tack up. But he'd lived through worse than a few mosquito bites-besides, insects tended to have the sense to leave him alone. He just wished he could say the same for people.

There was no coffeepot in the ramshackle kitchen. He found a stovetop percolator, but half the innards were missing. He should have just bought a jar of instant coffee, but he never considered the powdered stuff to be worth drinking. Right now he was ready to change his mind.

He knew where he could find coffee, of course. And probably more blueberry muffins like the ones his visitor had brought over last night. It would give him the perfect excuse to get his foot in the door. Surely a neighbor would be willing to share a cup of coffee with a desperate man? Maybe he should apologize for being so unfriendly yesterday, try to worm himself into her good graces. It wouldn't hurt to try the easy way of getting inside the old building.

The only thing he could remember from the night that Lorelei died was being up at the inn. He and Lorelei used to sneak into the abandoned wing at the back and fuck like rabbits. They'd had too many close calls in the tumbledown cabin by the lake, and Peggy Niles considered it her duty to keep the girls virtuous. She'd had a fanatically religious streak, and Griffin had always figured it would be easier to just avoid her rather than arguing about his right to screw anything that would lie still long enough. He was counting on finding something-anything-in the old wing to jar his memory. If that didn't work, he'd try something else, but it was the obvious place to start. And in order to get in there, he was going to have to get into Miss Sophie Davis's good graces. Even if that was the last thing he wanted to do.

He didn't like the thought of going up there without caffeine already fortifying his system, but he didn't have much choice. It was that or head into the next town over to the old diner, and he wasn't in the mood for grease and canned coffee. Two weeks until the place opened, she'd said. He hadn't come for a vacation-he might as well start now.

The path between the houses was narrower than he remembered, overgrown in places. He tried not to think about the last time he'd walked the footpath, and who'd been with him. It was more than twenty years ago-why couldn't he pick and choose what he remembered and what he forgot? He would have been perfectly happy not to remember Lorelei clinging to his arm, laughing up at him, stumbling along beside him. He would have given anything to remember what happened that final night in Colby, when he woke up and found himself covered in blood.

He'd forgotten the smell of the countryside, the clean, fresh scent of the lake, the sweet resin of the pine trees, the incense of growing things. He'd loved it here once-stayed here longer than he'd stayed anywhere after his father died and he'd been tall enough to pass himself off as an adult. In fact, he'd been much better off without dear old Dad, who'd been a little too fond of the bottle and belt. The old man spent his time either belligerent or mournful. Or passed out. Still, he'd been the only family Griffin had ever known with his mother long gone, and he'd loved him, anyway.

But it was easier to find work, a dry place to sleep, decent food, when you didn't have an old boozer trailing after you.

Funny thing was, he couldn't remember where his father was buried. His mother was buried with her family in Minnesota, but he couldn't remember where he'd ended up laying the old man to rest. That bothered him.

His father had died in Kansas or Nebraska. One of those big, flat states, in a small town, and Griffin had just managed to beg, borrow and steal the money for the funeral expenses. He never could afford a stone, but it didn't matter. He was never going back.

He hated returning to places, especially this particular one. There'd been one point when he was fool enough to think he could spend the rest of his life in Colby. He'd been young, with just a trace of innocence left. The Vermont legal system had knocked that out of him, fast.

Of course, that was before he and Lorelei had gotten involved. Back then he'd never had much sense when it came to women. Lorelei was trouble from the word go. She was thin, lithe and sexually voracious. So voracious, in fact, that one man hadn't been enough for her, and probably not two, either. He'd known he was sharing her, and he'd told himself he didn't mind. He would have liked to know where she went on the nights she didn't creep into the decrepit cottage down by the lake, but she wouldn't tell him and he stopped asking. He didn't want to care enough to feel jealous, but he'd been a kid, and sooner or later it had all boiled over.

He remembered that much. Remembered the screaming fight they'd had, which too many people had overheard. But he couldn't remember anything else. If she told him who else she was seeing. If she'd said anything that would lead him to the truth.

And he couldn't remember if, in his adolescent outrage, he'd put his hands on her and killed her.

That's what a jury had believed, no matter what he'd said. That he'd killed her, and his so-called blackout was only a convenient ploy to get off the hook. But no one knew he'd been in the old wing that night. Hell, even he hadn't remembered until five years later, and by then all he wanted to do was forget.

Now he was ready to remember, ready for the truth. No matter how ugly.

He'd had no reason to kill the other two girls. He'd barely known them, just managed to flirt with them at the Wednesday night square dances. Well, there had been a one-night stand with Valette, but that hadn't amounted to anything, and most people didn't even know about it. Valette had certainly managed to forget it in short order.

In the end the police hadn't even bothered trying to pin the other two murders on him, satisfied that they could tie him to Lorelei and put him away for the rest of his life. They'd been found far enough away-Valette in a cornfield and Alice by the side of the road. The police never bothered to wonder how unlikely it would be to have two killers in a town the size of Colby. Two who preyed on pretty teenage girls. They'd been happy enough to railroad Thomas Ingram Griffin. It was just a good thing the death penalty was outlawed in Vermont. And there hadn't been enough energy for a lynch mob.

He'd worried someone would recognize him once he came back, but he decided they probably wouldn't. It had been easy enough to track down the twenty-year-old newspapers, to look at the grainy photograph of the boy he once was. Hair past his shoulders, a beard covering half his face, a James Dean kind of squint that obscured the fact that he needed glasses. The picture they'd regularly run was a doozy-taken when they'd slapped handcuffs on him at the edge of the lake. He was wearing cutoffs, and you could see his tattoo quite clearly if you bothered to look. He was going to have to remember to keep his shirt on. The snake coiling over one hip would be a dead giveaway.

Without that, no one would be likely to connect the reclusive, bespectacled Mr. Smith with the murdering teenage vagrant. He wore khakis and cotton now, without rips. His beard, something he'd cultivated quite assiduously to hide his too-pretty face, was long gone, and the face that was now exposed was too full of character to be called angelic. His hair was shorter, with streaks of premature gray, and if anyone could still remember the troubled kid they'd locked up, they'd see only a passing resemblance in the face of Mr. Smith. If they bothered to look at all.

He was counting on them to not look. And to not remember. Over the years he'd discovered that people pretty much saw what they wanted to see, and no one would be looking for the lost soul of a once-convicted murderer in a well-heeled tourist.

Stonegate Farm had improved in the last twenty years, though he found that hard to believe. The peeling white clapboard had been painted a cheerful yellow, and baskets of flowering plants, not too many, not too few, hung from the porch. The windows were spotless, shining in the sunlight, the once-wild lawn was tamed into obedience, and even the old barn looked like it was being worked on. The old wing stretched out back, spruced up with a fresh coat of paint, but he couldn't see past the smoky windows. It looked boarded up, impregnable, a mixed blessing. At least the new owner hadn't gotten around to messing with that part of the place, thank God. There was still a chance he might find something that could lead him to the answers he needed to find.

Someone was sitting on the porch, watching him, and he saw a pair of long, bare legs swinging back and forth.

"Who are you?" It was a teenage girl, probably not much older than Lorelei when she died. She had fuchsia-streaked black hair, a ring through her eyebrow, a skimpy bathing suit showing off a too-thin body, and a belligerent expression on her face. Presumably this was Sophie Davis's sister. No wonder the older sister looked worn out.

"John Smith. I'm renting the house in the woods." He deliberately didn't call it the old Whitten place-there was no reason a stranger would know its name. "I wondered if you happened to have a spare cup of coffee?"

The girl shrugged her thin shoulders. "Sophie usually makes a pot-go on in and help yourself. I'm Marthe. With an e. Like the French."

"You sure your sister wouldn't mind?"

The girl's eyes narrowed in suspicion. "How do you know she's my sister?"

"Logic," he said, climbing up onto the porch. The decking had been painted a fresh gray, while the porch ceiling was sky blue with fleecy white clouds stenciled on it. "She told me she was living here with her mother and her sister, and I'm assuming if you were hired help to run the bed-and-breakfast you wouldn't be sitting on your butt."

"Maybe I'm taking a break. You don't happen to have a cigarette, do you?"

"I gave them up. How old are you?"

"Twenty-one."

"Yeah, sure."

"Eighteen," she said.

"Uh-huh."

"Next January."

"Sorry, I'm not about to contribute to your bad habits."

She leaned back, surveying him slowly. "Oh, I can think of much better ways for you to lead me astray."

He laughed, without humor. "Honey, I'm much too old for you."

"I'm willing to overlook a few drawbacks," she said in a sultry voice. "How'd you meet my sister?"

"She brought me some muffins to welcome me to the neighborhood."

The girl's laugh was mirthless. "Watch your back. She wants the Whitten place, and she doesn't care how she gets it. You don't want to end up floating facedown in the lake."

The macabre suggestion was like a blow to the stomach, but Sophie's sister seemed blissfully unaware of the effect she'd had on him. Or the imperfect memories she'd resurrected, of another body floating facedown in Still Lake.

"She doesn't strike me as the murderous type," he said carefully, leaning against the porch railing.

"Things aren't always what they seem," the girl said cheerfully. "For instance, does this place look like the scene of a savage murder? Not likely. You'd be more likely to die of boredom than having your throat cut. Perfect peace and quiet."

"That's what I'm looking for."

"You wouldn't have found it twenty years ago," she said with ghoulish enthusiasm. "There was a serial killer around here, and he murdered three teenage girls. Raped them and cut apart their bodies. It was really gruesome."

"It sounds it," he said in a bored voice. His memory wasn't that bad-there'd been no rape, and only Alice had been mutilated, though the autopsy had revealed that all three girls had had sexual relations within twenty-four hours prior to their deaths. "Did they ever find the guy who did it?"

"How'd you know it was a guy?" Marthe said suspiciously.

"Most serial killers are men. Besides, you said they were raped."

Marthe shrugged her thin shoulders. "Gracey would know the details-there's nothing she loves more than true-crime thrillers. Of course, she's gotten so addled she doesn't even remember her own name, but if you're curious maybe she might come up with some details."

"Not particularly," he said, lying. "I was more interested in coffee."

The girl hopped up from her perch on the railing, twitching her flat little rump in what she obviously hoped was a provocative fashion. "I'll show you," she offered. "We'll just have to hope we can avoid Sophie."

The kitchen of the old place had been completely redone. The painted cabinets had been stripped back to bare oak, the floor was a rough-hewn tile, the stove was one of those huge restaurant-style-things, and the countertops were butcher block and granite. A far cry from Peggy Niles's fanatically clean surroundings-he always thought her kitchen was like an operating room. Spotless and scrubbed, even the homey smells of cooking hadn't dared linger in its pristine environs. Only the door to the old hospital wing remained the same. Locked, probably nailed shut as it had been back then, albeit it was covered with a fresh coat of paint.

This room was far more welcoming than its original incarnation. Or maybe it was just the smell of fresh coffee and muffins that gave him a deceptive sense of peace. Smells were one thing that could always betray you, make you vulnerable to old emotions. He'd fought against them all his life.

There was no sign of Sophie Davis, and he didn't know whether that was a consolation or a regret. She wouldn't like her nubile little sister twitching her underclad butt around him, and he wasn't any too fond of it, either. He was as healthy as the next man, but Miss Marthe Davis left him completely cold. Maybe because he'd never been particularly interested in teenagers.

"So what are you doing today, John?" she asked in an artless voice.

Like a fool, it took him a moment to remember that was the name he'd given her. "Cleaning up the house I rented. I didn't give them any warning when I was coming, and the place is a mess."

"I could help. If there's one thing I know how to do nowadays, it's clean houses," she said with a moue. "I'm sure you could do with a little company."

"Actually I'm fine...." he began, but she'd already twitched her way out of the kitchen.

"I'll just go put something on," she called back to him. "I know Sophie wouldn't miss me."

"Hell," he muttered. There were hand-thrown pottery mugs on the counter, and he took one, filling it with coffee. He drank it black, and he almost snarled when he took his first sip. He should have known that Sophie Davis would make the kind of coffee most men would die for.

He should have poured the rest out, left the deserted kitchen and headed straight for Audley's General Store and the instant coffee section. He didn't usually succumb to temptation, but for some reason being back in the place where he'd let his appetites run wild seemed to be doing a number on his iron self-control. The least he could do was drain the mug and get the hell out of there, before Martha Stewart found him.

Too late. Just outside the kitchen, he heard footsteps coming from the old hallway, and he froze.

The last thing Sophie Davis expected to see when she walked into her kitchen was the enigmatic Mr. Smith. He was leaning against the kitchen counter, his long, elegant fingers wrapped around a huge mug of coffee, and the dark eyes behind his wire-rimmed glasses were cool and assessing.

"What are you doing here?" she demanded, too startled to remember her manners.

"Your sister offered me a cup of coffee," he said. She didn't like his voice. It was slow and deep and sexy, at complete odds with his cool manner. And then his words sank in.

"You met Marty?" She tried to keep the note of suspicion and worry out of her voice. For a brief moment she'd thought Mr. Smith would provide a harmless distraction for her younger sister. In the full light of day, in her bright and airy kitchen, she knew instinctively that Mr. Smith was far more dangerous than she'd ever imagined.