Текст книги "Stranger on the Shore "

Автор книги: Josh lanyon

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

Chapter Five

“What do you think you’re doing?” The woman standing in the doorway to the library was small and slight with white-blond hair cut austerely short. Like all the Arlingtons her brows were black, her eyes a brilliant blue. She wore biker boots, skintight jeans, and one of those short motorcycle jackets. As Griff studied her weathered face, he thought the biker boots and jacket might not be just affectation. She looked like a woman who had traveled more than a few rough roads. He recognized her—barely—from the news photos taken around the time of Brian’s kidnapping. Michaela Arlington. Jarrett’s second daughter. The youngest of the Arlington offspring.

“I’m looking through these photo albums.” Griff had had the presence of mind to return the journal to the table when he’d heard footsteps coming his way. It wasn’t hard to guess how someone already hostile to the idea of his inquiries would react to the sight of him reading from her sister-in-law’s private journal.

“You have no right to be here.”

“Well, the thing is...” he began apologetically.

“If you had any decency, you wouldn’t be here.”

“I intend no disrespect, Miss Arlington.” It was a phrase he’d got a lot of use out of through the years. One person’s news story was another’s intimate secret—sometimes worth a punch or two in the nose. Or worse. Except Brian’s kidnapping and murder was not a secret. It had been big news from practically the moment it happened.

Michaela said, “You don’t think digging up the dead is disrespectful?”

“I don’t plan on—” The rest of Griff’s speech was lost as Chloe also appeared in the doorway. She wore an ice-blue dressing gown, and she looked tousle-haired and harassed.

“Mother, this isn’t helping. You’re just embarrassing yourself.”

“Hello to you too, Chloe. Nice to know you have my back.”

“Seriously?” Chloe raked her talons through her hair, ruffling it further. “Your back is all I’ve ever had.”

Michaela’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Don’t start with me.”

“Then don’t start with me!”

Griff wisely kept his mouth shut while they went at it.

“You’re just going to piss off Grandy.”

“Grandy deserves to be pissed off if this is the kind of thing he does when my back’s turned.” Michaela turned back to Griff, did a kind of double-take as though she’d only then really gotten a good look at him. Her lip curled. “Oh. I see now. I get it. Sorry, kid. It’s not going to work.”

“Miss Arlington—”

“Save your breath. And for your information, I am not Miss Arlington. Miss Arlington is my sister. I am Mrs. Shelton.”

What was the old quote attributed to P.T. Barnum? I don’t care what the newspapers say about me as long as they spell my name right. But maybe he was being unfairly cynical. She did seem sincerely and utterly pissed off.

“Of course. Sorry,” Griff said.

Chloe tried again to drag her mother away. Michaela shrugged her off. She pointed her finger at Griff. “Pack your bags. You’re going to be out of here by lunch. No way am I about to allow this to happen.” She turned and stalked away down the hall.

No sooner did she depart than a pair of bow-legged brown-and-white spaniel-type dogs appeared in her place and began barking at Griff. They seemed to be taking turns, one yapping furiously, then pausing to let the other get a few observations in.

Chloe shook her head. “I hate my mother,” she told Griff. She bent, scooped up the dogs, and also withdrew.

Griff waited, but when no further interruptions materialized, he picked up the nearest and smallest photo album and sat down again. He wasn’t sure if he was about to be booted out or not. He assumed not. He assumed Jarrett had a pretty good idea of what he was dealing with when he’d confidently said he’d deal with objections from his kinfolk, but families were tricky. Even Griff knew that much.

Either way, best not to waste any time. He opened the album. These were all photos of Brian. Baby photos looked pretty much the same—not hugely interesting, in Griff’s opinion. He flipped through pages of Brian the infant, Brian the toddler, Brian the scrawny little kid. Snub-nosed and tow-headed. Cute enough, if you liked kids. Griff had no strong feelings either way.

He made quick notes regarding photos he’d like copies of for the book, used his phone to snap a few pictures as reminders and reference, and put the album aside. Remembering Pierce’s theory on why Jarrett had agreed to cooperate with Griff’s project, he hunted for the album dated 1993.

It wasn’t hard to pick Matthew Arlington out from all the other fading images, and yes, there was a superficial resemblance. At Griff’s age, Matthew had also been tall and fair, slight and boyish. But it wasn’t doppelganger time or anything. It probably hadn’t hurt Griff’s petition that he was the same general physical type as Matthew had been, but Jarrett seemed like a shrewd old duck. His decision to work with Griff had probably been based on a number of factors, including the supposition that being inexperienced, Griff might be easier to control. Even manipulate.

You didn’t work the crime beat, even in a little town like Janesville, without developing a mildly jaded outlook. Griffin grimaced inwardly and went back to looking for suitable photos for his book.

Thinking of which, sooner or later he was going to have to come up with a title. He’d been toying with a couple of possibilities. Little Boy Lost was his current favorite, although a quote from A Midsummer’s Night Dream might work too. It would be nice to work in something from Fitzgerald, but no. Probably not. He was sincere about not intending to deliberately cast the Arlingtons in a bad light. Of course, it might work out that way in the end, depending on what he learned over the next few days. Assuming he learned anything.

Griff continued to scrutinize pages of photos. It was like looking at magazine advertising. Lots of shots of beautiful people amusing themselves in expensive ways. Didn’t these people ever take a bad picture? Or a candid picture? Of course this was before the days of Instagram and selfies. Heck, it was before the days of cell phone cameras. Even so, it seemed like Matthew and Gemma might have kept a stash of private photos. He and Levi certainly had. Griff wasn’t looking for anything sensational, just something more...human.

But if it came down to it, these photos would do, and almost none of them had ever made it into any of the news reports or articles of the day, so that would be a coup right there. Assuming Michaela did not prevail and he would shortly be packing his bags. Bag.

He studied photographs, took more copies, made additional notes.

“There you are.”

Griff’s head jerked up as Muriel Arlington sailed into the room. Today she wore a tweed skirt and a yellow sweater set. Her pearls looked real. Not that he would know.

“Do you plan on dining with us tonight, Mr. Hadley?”

“I...hadn’t thought about it. Do you need an answer now?”

“It would certainly be helpful.” She gave him a tight smile.

Griff weighed the value of more face-to-face time with the Arlingtons against the strain of more face-to-face time with the Arlingtons. “I’ll probably be working through dinner,” he said. “But thank you.”

“Oh, you’re to come and go as you please, Mr. Hadley,” she said with that brittle friendliness. “Daddy made that clear.”

“Even so I’ll try to stay out of everyone’s way,” he promised her.

Her gaze fell on the photo album Griff had been studying, moved to the stack to the right of him. “You see, this is the very thing I was afraid of.”

“I’m sorry?” Griff asked. So much for the notion of being able to work in private. Were the Arlingtons taking shifts?

“This. This. You.” Her small, plump hand indicated Griff and the collection of albums. “Is anyone supervising you?”

“Supervising me? I...no.”

Muriel pulled out the chair across from him and plopped down. She regarded Gemma’s journal for a long, long moment. Then, as though hypnotized, she reached for it. She opened it—and then just as quickly closed it again. Griff did not know what to make of the expression that fleeted across her face. Pain? Embarrassment? Remembrance? Whatever that emotion was, it was gone as she stared at him from across the table.

Griff stared back at her.

“Go on,” Muriel said. She nodded at the album he had been studying. “If you have questions, I’ll answer them.”

“Uh, thank you.” Was she really going to sit there and watch his every move? What did she think he might do? Steal photos? Pocket objets d’art? Or was this something else entirely?

“I met Mrs. Shelton,” Griff said slowly.

Muriel’s mouth pursed in a quickly repressed smile. “So I heard.”

He smiled too. “It’s not like Brian’s kidnapping is a secret. I don’t understand why everyone is so against this book.”

“That is because you’re young and unsophisticated.”

Griff’s eyes widened, but before he could respond, Muriel said, “You have no concept of what it was like for us. The police were bad enough. The reporters were worse. We had sightseers. Can you imagine how difficult that was for a family like ours?”

“I guess it would be difficult for any family.”

“Of course. But we are private people. This book you propose to write is going to start it all up again.”

He said neutrally, “I don’t think that’s true.”

“As I said, you’re young and unsophisticated.”

“You know, I’m not that young. And I’ve been working as a reporter my entire adult life. It’s true that my book will remind people of the case, but I don’t think you’re going to have out-of-towners tramping through the flowerbeds.”

Muriel’s eyes met his with surprising directness. “You think my concerns are superficial, shallow. I know. You have no idea what it is to be someone whom everyone else watches, looks up to.”

“That’s true,” Griff said, disliking her more with every passing minute.

“Our family tragedy was exploited for national entertainment. And now when it’s mostly forgotten, you want to stir it all up again. Not, as you’ve said yourself, because you think you can shed any new light on the case. You’re simply interested in the human drama.”

“I didn’t mean I couldn’t bring a fresh perspective. It’s been twenty years after all. I just meant I don’t believe I can crack the case—a cold case—when the FBI failed.” As he said it, Griff wondered if he was being entirely honest. Didn’t he maybe hope just a bit that given time and distance, he might be able to uncover some telling bit of information, something that might make it possible to know for sure what had happened that night?

Of course he did. He was trying to keep his expectations in check, but yes. Any writer would hope the same.

“What questions do you have for me?” Muriel asked.

“None yet. It’s hard to know what to ask before I’ve had a chance to—”

“I’d rather get them out of the way.”

What a difficult woman. Was she deliberately being as awkward as possible? Griff grimly considered her pale, bland features.

“You must have some idea of what questions you want to ask,” Muriel prompted. “You said you’ve been doing this your entire adult life.”

Yes and no. This wasn’t like some of the other crimes Griff had written about. With an adult casualty there were always plenty of questions, starting with the character of the victim. But in this case, What was Brian like? Did Brian have any enemies? wasn’t relevant. Brian’s character was not a factor. Brian had been a target strictly because of the family he had been born into.

“Did you enjoy the party that night?”

She looked at him in disbelief. “Isn’t that like asking Mrs. Lincoln how she enjoyed the play?”

“I don’t think so. I think sometimes it’s easier to remember details when you’re focused on something tangential to the thing you’re trying to recall.”

Muriel’s pale eyes narrowed. “What exactly do you think I’m trying to recall?”

“Everything. Anything. Anything that might be useful now. Did you enjoy the party? It was supposed to be costume, right? The theme was A Midsummer’s Night Dream.”

“No,” Muriel said. “No, I didn’t particularly enjoy the party. And yes, the theme was A Midsummer’s Night Dream, but our costumes weren’t supposed to be based on the play. How ridiculous. That was something else the papers got wrong. The décor was based on A Midsummer’s Night Dream. The costumes were supposed to be from the 1920s. It was typical of Gemma’s ideas.”

“It sounds imaginative.”

“Oh, Gemma was very imaginative. She hired a projectionist to show the movie, the 1935 movie, using the small woodland area in the garden as a screen. It was ridiculous. No one could see anything. It was just flickering black-and-white shadows against the trees.”

“Did you want to see the movie?”

“Of course not. No one wanted to see an old movie like that.”

Griff wouldn’t have minded. He liked old movies. Even old movies of Shakespeare’s plays.

“Why didn’t you enjoy the party?”

“As I said, it was Gemma’s kind of thing, not mine. It wasn’t really Matthew’s kind of thing either, but she could always wind him around her little finger.”

Griff smiled sympathetically. “Did you dress up?”

“Yes,” Muriel said reluctantly. “Gemma dragged Mike and me to a shop in Chelsea that sold vintage clothing.”

“Mike is your sister Michaela?”

“Yes.”

“And you all lived here in this house?”

“It’s not as though there’s a shortage of room.”

“No. True.”

Reluctantly, Muriel said, “Gemma and Matthew talked about getting a place of their own, but Daddy couldn’t bear the idea of being separated from his first grandchild. And then afterwards...I don’t think Gemma cared enough about anything to worry where she lived.”

“They didn’t have any more children, Matthew and Gemma?” He knew they hadn’t; he was simply giving voice to his curiosity. “Maybe it would have helped.”

“You don’t replace a child as though it were a puppy with distemper.”

“I know. I just meant...” Yeah, it had probably been a dumb comment. Griff changed tack. “Had there ever been any previous attempts at kidnapping a member of your family? Threats?”

“Threats, yes. Threats are common for people like us.”

Griff swallowed the first smartass comment that came to mind. “So you don’t take that kind of thing seriously?” He had noticed and wondered about the fact that there was no apparent security presence on the estate.

“We take serious threats seriously. Mostly what we get are letters from cranks. People asking for money and threatening to kill us if we don’t give it to them. Those are turned over to the detectives at the Nassau County Police Department.”

“Were you surprised when Odell Johnson turned out to be Brian’s kidnapper?”

“Surprised? Hardly. I’m the one who pointed the police to Johnson. I thought of him instantly. And of course I was correct. They found the ransom money underneath the floor of the toolshed in the house where he was renting a room. He admitted everything.”

That wasn’t accurate. Johnson admitted writing the ransom note and picking up the money, but he staunchly denied actually kidnapping Brian, which maybe made sense if he had killed Brian. Any chance for leniency, clemency, would be kaput from the minute Johnson admitted to killing a four-year-old, whether by accident or not.

“That’s helpful, thank you.”

“That’s it? Those are all the questions you have?”

“For now.”

“All right. If anything occurs to you, I’m right here.” She did not mean it figuratively. She picked up another album and began to flip through the pages.

Griff said, “Well, but I don’t want to keep you from—you probably have a million things to do.”

“This is more important,” Muriel assured him.

It seemed she meant it, because she did not leave the table once. Not in three hours. Hoping to discourage her, Griff determinedly looked through the albums, not responding to her sighs or murmurs from across the table as she also browsed. She was driving him nuts though.

Especially aggravating was the way she kept Gemma’s journal in her own personal space. She didn’t open the journal, though every now and then she absently straightened it or traced a finger across the cover. He couldn’t tell if the possessiveness was conscious on her part or not. He wanted to ask her to pass the journal to him, but that was equally irrational possessiveness on his part. Plus he was leery of precipitating another family drama. He wondered if Michaela had had a chance to present her case to Jarrett yet, and how that had gone.

He was still here, so maybe that was the answer.

Finally, just as Griff was seriously considering leaping across the table to throttle her, Muriel looked at the delicate silver watch on her meaty wrist. “It’s time for luncheon.” She looked at Griff expectantly.

“Sure, go ahead,” Griff told her, trying not to sound relieved.

“You’ll be taking your break as well?”

“I don’t eat lunch usually.”

“You’re welcome to lunch with us, you know.”

“Yes. But I should probably work.”

Muriel tried to insist, but Griff remained politely obstinate, and in the end her desire for lunch proved stronger than her need to keep him under surveillance.

He watched her consider taking the journal with her—she actually picked it up—but then she returned it to its place on the table. He exhaled a long sigh of relief as she left the room and vanished down the long hallway.

While the morning was not a write-off, he certainly wasn’t making the progress he’d hoped. Although that was partly his fault for letting Muriel get to him.

He half rose, reaching across the wide table for Gemma’s journal, dropping it as someone behind him cleared their throat. It took a second or two to spot Jarrett Arlington standing on the landing above him.

Jarrett was smiling, but there was something odd in his expression as he gazed down at Griff. “I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said apologetically, and now his expression was ordinary enough. “I wondered if you’d like to stop for lunch? I was thinking we could dine in my study.”

How. The. Hell? There was no way Jarrett could have come through the hall entrance. There was a small door to the right of the fireplace, but it was in Griff’s line of sight, and anyway, he wasn’t so preoccupied he could have missed Jarrett walking up that narrow circular staircase. There had to be a door leading onto the second tier of the library, but he couldn’t see one.

“Is there a hidden door up there?” Griff asked.

“Yes,” Jarrett answered easily. “One of the bookshelves swings out.”

How long had Jarrett been standing there watching him? Had he listened in on Griff’s conversation with Muriel? Not that there was any reason he shouldn’t, but it left Griff feeling uncomfortable and unhappy knowing he could be spied upon. Maybe a dramatic way of putting it, but that was what it amounted to.

“Are there a lot of secret passages or secret doors in the house?”

“One or two. But they’re not secret.” Jarrett smiled tolerantly down on him. “Lunch?”

He actually was hungry, now that he thought about it. Besides, lunch with Jarrett was an opportunity too valuable to miss. “Yes, thanks.”

Griff swiftly climbed the circular stairs to the second landing.

“Is Muriel making a nuisance of herself?”

Griff remembered that heavy sigh he’d given when Muriel left the room, and his face warmed. “Er...I know she’s trying to be helpful.”

“Then that’s more than I know,” Jarrett said. “How is your investigation going? Are you finding what you need?”

“Yes. Thank you. I was just about to start reading Gemma’s journal.”

“Ah.”

“Did she keep other journals?” Griff reached Jarrett, who had moved to stand next to a section of the bookcase which did indeed swing out to offer a view of a long dark hallway.

Jarrett hesitated. “She did, yes. All her life Gemma kept a journal. But losing Brian changed her. She never really got over it. I don’t believe she would have wished for those thoughts to be shared with anyone. Except Brian, of course.”

“Of course.”

Jarrett smiled, ushering Griff into the passageway. Surprisingly, the interior hall was carpeted and paneled. Light fixtures with frosted glass globes were positioned every few feet although they were not lit, perhaps because an oblong of daylight fell across the open end of the passage, offering watery illumination.

“Does everyone have access to this passage?” Griff asked. Was this how Brian’s kidnapper had avoided discovery within the house? It made sense.

“No. This passage only leads to the master bedroom and the master study. I’m the only one who uses it.”

“But if someone knew it was here?”

“Only the family and the household staff know about these walkways.”

In other words everyone on Long Island knew.

Jarrett said, “I should probably warn you that Pierce is joining us for lunch.”

“I just lost my appetite.”

Jarrett laughed. “That’s why I waited to tell you. I think you and Pierce got off on the wrong foot.”

Griff threw a look over his shoulder. “Is there any other possibility with that guy? He tried to buy me off last night. Did he happen to mention that?”

“Yes, he told me.” Jarrett sounded as untroubled as ever. “He really is trying to do the right thing, Griffin. He believes he’s protecting us. That’s his job.”

Griff said nothing. He believed Pierce Mather to be an arrogant and obstructive ass, but he wasn’t the first arrogant and obstructive ass he’d had to deal with, and he wouldn’t be the last.

“Pierce has always been a bit of an overachiever.” Jarrett’s voice floated from behind. Jarrett was beginning to remind Griff of the Cheshire Cat with his mysterious comings and goings and oblique pronouncements. Did anything shake him?

What had Jarrett been like twenty years ago? How had he handled Brian’s disappearance? How long had he remained confident of Brian’s return? Would that certainty have been reassuring or infuriating for Gemma and Matthew, especially as the years passed?

Griff’s speculations were derailed as Jarrett said, “Through the years, we’ve occasionally had young men show up claiming to be Brian.”

“I didn’t realize that.”

“Of course none of them had anything but the most superficial resemblance to Brian. They weren’t even well-thought-out scams, just hungry young hustlers trying their luck. Pierce made short work of them, as you might imagine. But I’m afraid the result is that Pierce has become cynical toward his fellow man in his old age.”

“He’s not that old.”

“The Pierces of this world are born old. But don’t let him scare you away, my boy.”

“I’m not that easily scared.”

“I know,” Jarrett said. “That’s what I’m counting on.”