Stranger on the Shore - lanyon Josh - Страница 59

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He said harshly, “That’s not the part I care about.”

“No.” Mrs. Truscott looked down at her work-roughened hands. “She used to come here sometimes and help out. When she was well, I mean.”

“And she was helping out that night? The night of the party?”

“No. No, but I always wondered, because the Mather children thought they saw me in the nursery when I couldn’t have been there. She knew her way around the house. And...”

“And what?”

Mrs. Truscott seemed to struggle with herself. “She tried it once before.”

“What?”

“Not here! I’m not saying that. But once before, a long time before, I was with her when she started to walk off with a baby carriage. The baby wasn’t in it, and at the time I didn’t think anything of it. But later...later I wondered.”

“But then you must have made the connection after Brian—” Griff stopped. He felt like his head was going to explode. He was still referring to Brian—himself—as though he were another person. He was still thinking of Brian in the third person.

Mrs. Truscott was running on. She sounded almost eager now, rushing to convince him, to make him believe. “When I tried to contact Amy, my mother said she had left a few days earlier, that she’d got a job and was moving out to New Mexico. She used to do that. She used to take off without any notice. I believed it.”

“You believed it? You were right here in the middle of a kidnapping and you never made any connection?”

“You’re forgetting that the ransom note came the next day. I knew that wasn’t Amy. Never. Never in a million years. Everyone believed Odell took Brian. I believed it too.”

“You didn’t believe it. When I asked you, you said you weren’t sure about Johnson’s guilt.”

“But I didn’t believe it was Amy.”

“You didn’t want to believe it was Amy.” It was so weird to say his mother’s name in this context. So weird to think this was his life, his past.

“Of course I didn’t want to believe it! But...” she stopped again.

“Why me? Why this family?”

“I don’t know. You were a friendly little thing. You liked her. You liked everyone. I don’t know why. Maybe it was just the opportunity presented itself.” She met his eyes, her own miserable with guilt and grief. “I’m sorry.”

Her face. So like his mother’s. How had he not instantly recognized the truth the moment she opened the door to him?

“Sorry. Wow. I don’t know what to say to that. For twenty years...” His voice gave out and he realized how close he was to breaking down. To breaking apart.

Why? He was all right. His mother—no, Amy Truscott—had loved him, taken care of him the best she could. He was whole and healthy and all that was in the past now anyway.

And if he didn’t get out of this room, this house, he was going to be sobbing like the lost little kid he had once been.

“Is she dead?” Mrs. Truscott asked.

He nodded. She began to cry, and he felt for the door, stepped through the blur into the hall.

“What are you going to do?” she asked, and the fear was back in her voice.

He couldn’t answer. He had no idea what the answer was. He kept walking.

She called something after him, but he didn’t hear it.

* * *

He had to talk to someone, needed desperately to talk to someone. Strangely, the only person he could think of was Pierce. And that really was strange given how furious he had been with Pierce. But that was a million years ago.

He walked through the kitchen, out the back door, and started down the path to the guest cottage. Clouds were gathering overhead. It was going to rain again. He could see Nels Newland in one of the distant sunken garden rooms, digging a hole for a new rose bush. Was there something he was supposed to ask Newland?

He turned off and took the steps down to the cool green and flowering rooms because he wanted to be alone, and because in a strange way it felt like this garden was where the story had begun on a long ago night of fairy lights flickering through the trees, and old jazz songs drifting up to the stars.

He dropped down on one of the marble benches, abruptly more tired than he had ever been in his life. A thousand miles from Wisconsin to Long Island couldn’t touch the distance he had traveled that morning. Numbly he watched the yellow butterflies flitting from flower to flower.

He didn’t remember dialing Pierce’s number, but suddenly Pierce spoke against his ear.

“Mather.” Pierce sounded brisk and distant and yet at the same time immediate and familiar. As though they’d known each other all their lives. But then he had known Pierce all his life. Or at least at the beginning of his life.

His eyes blurred. He opened his mouth but the words wouldn’t come. He couldn’t seem to pry them out, squeeze them past the blockage in his throat.

“Griff?” Pierce’s tone changed.

He got out a shaky breath. Poor Pierce probably wondered if he was getting an obscene phone call. No such luck.

“Are you okay, Griff?” Pierce’s voice was so uncharacteristically gentle, the tears dazzling Griff’s eyes spilled over.

He let out another of those shuddering sighs and said, “I think I was named for the stone statues in the front courtyard.”

“Where are you?”

“At the house. In the sunken garden.”

Pierce sucked in a sharp breath. “Okay, listen to me. You need to leave. Now. Don’t go down to the cottage, don’t go inside the house. Just turn around and leave. Go to my house. Or go to my office. Just go. Get out of there.”

“There are cops all over the place.”

That wasn’t true though. There had been cops at the gate but he hadn’t noticed a police presence in the house, and he wasn’t seeing any uniforms patrolling the grounds either. The cops had the murder weapon, the library was sealed off, and the raincoat apparently worn by the killer had been hanging in a closet in the main hall. Maybe they thought there was nothing else to look for.

“Griff, there was a house full of people last night. We’re talking about someone who was desperate enough to take that chance. And having gone that far, there’s no way he’s going to stand by and let you waltz in and scoop up all the marbles.”

That got through. Griff sat up straight. “No one knows about me.”

“You’re not hearing me. There is a real and immediate threat, and it is specific to you. To you. Michaela was here when I told Jarrett that you are Brian.”

“You did what?”

“Griff, we don’t have time for this. Leave the premises immediately.”

“You told Jarrett before I had a chance to even figure out things for myself?”

He could hear the effort Pierce was making. “I had to tell him. It was either me or Nassau P.D., and I thought it would be less of a shock coming from me.”

“What is it with you, Pierce? I’ve never met anyone more highhanded and—”

“I’m hanging up now and calling the cops.” Pierce clicked off.

Griff stared in disbelief at his phone. Anger had replaced his numbness. He rose and crossed the lawn, starting back up the moss-stained stairs. Overriding everything else was the need to get to Pierce Mather as soon as humanly possible and tell him to his face what a complete and total asshole he was.

He was halfway up the steps when a shadow fell across him. Someone was coming swiftly down the staircase. Griff looked up in time to see the incoming sole of a boot aimed directly at his face. Instinctively, he grabbed for the boot, locking arms around the attached jean-clad leg, and yanked sideways.

Momentum carried them both off the narrow staircase. It was only a six-foot drop, but it still knocked the wind out of Griff as he landed spread-eagled beneath his assailant. The other man’s boots bounced onto his chest. His fist landed in a vulnerable part of Griff’s anatomy.

Griff had been in the occasional scuffle, but no one had ever tried to kick him in the face before—let alone grab him by the nuts—and his reactions were not as fast as they should have been. He tried to slither away, hauling long, desperate drags of oxygen into his lungs. His bruised chest hurt like hell, but then suddenly he could breathe again. He attempted to block with his arms as the other man took another kick at his head. The blow that landed on his forearm felt like it fractured the bone. He tried to roll out of range.

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