Quiet as the Grave

“Still. Promise me,” she said. “He’s not right in the head. Two wrongs don’t make a right, you know. And they damn sure won’t bring Justine back.”

Judy Stott backed away, clearly uncomfortable.

Hell, Suzie thought. She was acting as crazy as Millner. Besides, nothing was going to stop him. Even if this Judy Stott person had enough character to tell him no, he’d just move on to the next person.

What about that trashy gardener? He looked as if he’d tell a few lies for the right number of zeroes.

She turned the key to her car, which started up with a nice thrum, as if it understood that they were now on a mission.

She knew exactly where she had to go next.

MIKE AND GAVIN were playing paintball in the big empty Tuxedo Lake lot that he’d bought four years ago, intending someday to build a house. With one thing and another, someday had never come. He and Gavin were still living in the boathouse.

But the wooded lot made a great paintball field.

Today was the first time in two weeks that Gavin had expressed any interest in playing paintball—or anything else, either. When Justine’s body had been found, Gavin had simply shut down. He must have known Justine was dead. God knows Mike had talked to him about it often enough.

But “knowing” it and knowing it were two different things.

So when Gavin had suggested they play a little paintball, no matter how odd the choice sounded, Mike had said yes with enthusiasm. Maybe they could both work off some of this pain and anger.

Mike stood sideways behind a fifty-year-old hemlock and tried to peek around the trunk without getting nailed by a yellow paintball. Gavin’s aim was lethal. He’d hit Mike in the kneecap ten minutes ago, and those suckers hurt.

His mask didn’t fit quite right, and he considered taking it off, but he darn sure didn’t want a paintball in the eye. He could never be a bank robber. He didn’t like being all bundled up. He liked the sun on his skin and the wind in his face.

Maybe he’d ask Gavin if he wanted to move to Malibu and they’d become a couple of beach bums. As soon as the police would let him move anywhere, that is. Murder suspects weren’t allowed much mobility, as he’d learned over the past two years.

“I see you!”

He heard Gavin’s footsteps running toward him. He lunged out from behind the hemlock and, dropping to a squat to provide a smaller target, he pointed his gun in the direction of the sounds.

But the body he pointed at didn’t belong to his son. It belonged to Mrs. Cready, his ninety-year-old neighbor who had put her house up for sale the day they found Justine’s body. She told everyone who’d listen that she had no intention of living next door to a murderer.

Mike had considered warning her that comments like that wouldn’t exactly help her find a buyer, but then he thought, to hell with it. She’d treated him like a leper ever since Justine disappeared. If she liked the adrenaline rush of believing the guy next door was a murderer, who was he to spoil her fun?

She must be loving this, standing here at gunpoint. She let out a shrill “eeek” and threw her hands into the air, a move she learned on television, no doubt.

He lifted his mask and propped it on his forehead.

“Hello, Mrs. Cready,” he said. “You can put your hands down. I’m not worried that you might go for your six-guns.”

She frowned. “You’re the one with the gun. I don’t have any guns.”

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.”