After Caroline Read online

  Griffin nodded and got to his feet. He realized with annoyance that he was ending the interview not because he had no more questions and was satisfied with Cain’s answers, but because he was uncomfortable beneath the other man’s perceptive scrutiny. Heart on my sleeve. The son of a bitch.

  “Griff?” Holly hesitated, then went on carefully. “I came up behind Joanna the other day, and until she turned around, I thought she was Amber.”

  It didn’t surprise Griffin. When he had first glimpsed that broken body on the jagged rocks, blond hair streaming out…

  “Something else to add to your equation?” Cain mused soberly.

  “Yeah,” Griffin said. “Something else.” And it’s not adding up, Goddammit, it’s just not adding up. “If either of you remembers anything that might be important, let me know.”

  “We will,” Holly said. She watched him turn away and walk out toward the end of the veranda, obviously heading toward the cliffs directly behind The Inn, where Joanna stood alone at the railing and looked out to sea.

  “Do you really think somebody might have thought they were pushing Joanna to her death?” Cain asked her.

  She looked at him and sighed. “It hardly makes sense either way, does it? I can’t imagine why anyone would have wanted to murder Amber—or Joanna.”

  “But you think Joanna would be more likely?”

  “I don’t know.” Holly frowned. “Maybe. It’s just … well, Amber was only a tourist, a kid who hadn’t really lived long enough to make enemies, if you know what I mean. She might have jumped, but who would have pushed her? Joanna, on the other hand…”

  When her voice trailed off, Cain continued in a reflective tone. “Joanna turns up here, apparently just another tourist. But she looks eerily like a woman who was killed here a few months ago. And she’s been asking a lot of questions about that woman. And maybe … somebody didn’t like her questions?”

  Holly felt a little chill at hearing her own reluctant thoughts voiced aloud. “Which would indicate—what? That Caroline’s death wasn’t an accident?”

  Cain was frowning now, his gaze turned inward in a way Holly recognized; he always wore that look, she had learned, when he was listening to whatever inner voice drove him to paint.

  “Maybe so,” he said at last, slowly. “If Joanna was the intended victim rather than Amber, then it almost has to be connected to Caroline in some way. Because Joanna hasn’t been making enemies around here, not that I know of. Certainly nobody’s expressed the desire to get rid of her. So … what’s wrong with this picture?” He brooded a moment. “What stands out in all this, what can’t really be explained away, is Joanna’s resemblance to Caroline, and the way she’s been asking questions about her. As if she came here specifically to find out about Caroline.”

  “Did you hear about Dylan and Lyssa?” Holly asked him.

  Cain nodded. “About them seeing Joanna in Atlanta, yeah. Very odd that she turned up here not long after that. Difficult to explain away as coincidence.”

  “How could it be anything else? Dylan said she couldn’t have found out where he and Lyssa were from.”

  “Sure she could have,” Cain objected. “If she was curious enough, she probably could have followed one or the other of them back to their hotel without being seen. And desk clerks have been known to provide information for enough bucks.”

  “I never thought of that, but you’re right, of course. Do you think Griffin’s thought of it?”

  “Of course he has. Our small-town sheriff is nobody’s fool—and he’s a born cop, even setting aside his well-known trait of hating unanswered questions. I don’t know what Joanna’s told him, but you can bet he doesn’t believe in the seeming coincidence of her showing up here when she looks so much like Caroline. And I can’t say I’d blame him for wondering. It’s beginning to bother me a lot.”

  Holly considered the question for a moment. “Why would she have come all this way if it was deliberate? Just out of curiosity? Because two strangers called her by another woman’s name?”

  “No, there has to be more to it.” Cain frowned. “Maybe I should ask her to pose for me. People talk about the damnedest things while they’re being painted.”

  What did Caroline talk about? Holly wanted to ask the question, but didn’t. Instead, she said, “Griff won’t be happy with either one of us if we stick our noses into his investigation.”

  “No doubt about that,” Cain agreed. “And especially if we focus our attention on Joanna. He’s a bit touchy about her.”

  Holly smiled. “I thought he was going to hit you when you made that crack about the heart on his sleeve.”

  “I thought he was going to hit me too.” Cain chuckled briefly, but added, “I shouldn’t be amused. Men like Griff, when they fall, fall hard. It’s probably driving him nuts if he believes she hasn’t told him the truth. And even without those questions, it can’t be easy for him, with Joanna looking so much like Caroline.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Obviously surprised, Cain said, “I would have thought you knew, living here year-round. I mean, I knew years ago, even though I only spent summers here.”

  “Knew what?”

  “That Caroline was in love with Griff at one time. She even considered leaving Scott.”

  Holly stared at him. Could she have been so wrapped up in her work that she’d been blind to what was happening all around her? Surely not. Even if she hadn’t been close to Caroline, surely she would have noticed something if her employer’s marriage had been on the verge of ending. Wouldn’t she? “I never saw a sign of anything like that,” she objected. “It must have been just gossip, Cain.”

  “No.”

  “How can you be so sure? I mean—”

  “Holly, I know it was the truth because Caroline told me herself. Said she felt things for Griff she’d never felt for Scott.” He shook his head. “Don’t know why she confided in me, except that people tend to. They see me out painting somewhere and stop by to watch—which doesn’t bother me, you know that—and they talk. You’d probably be surprised at some of the things I know about this town.”

  “It would seem so,” Holly said.

  Cain smiled at her. “Look, I wouldn’t tell anyone but you what Caroline confided, especially since I don’t think it was ever common knowledge. Caroline wasn’t one to show her feelings in public, and she was too conscious of her good name to do anything to risk her reputation. Besides, they didn’t end up together, so it was nobody’s business but theirs.”

  “Did Scott know?” Holly asked.

  “Caroline never told him, she said, and she believed he never guessed, that’s all I know. It happened years ago, before Regan was born.”

  “I wonder what else I don’t know about this place,” Holly murmured, more than a little shaken.

  “You’ve been busy,” Cain said.

  She looked at him, getting the point even though his voice had been offhand. “I guess I have. But I have been trying, you know. Since we made our little deal.”

  “I know you have.” He smiled at her. “And it’s much appreciated, believe me. But, Holly, the next time I ask you to spend the night at the cottage, do us both a favor and say yes even if you do have an important meeting the next day. Cops may well distrust an alibi provided by a lover, but it’s better than no alibi at all.”

  “I could have lied to Griff and said I was with you,” she observed.

  “You could have. And that would have told me that you thought I could have had something to do with Amber’s death.”

  Holly was surprised, but only for a moment. He was right. If she’d been worried about his whereabouts last night, she might well have leaped to his defense and claimed to have been with him. But since she knew he could never have harmed that poor girl, it had never entered her head that he might need help in proving his innocence.

  “It’s the nicest thing you’ve never said to me,” Cain said, smiling.

  Holly couldn’t help but s
mile in return, and when he reached out to take her hand, she allowed her fingers to twine with his even though she knew they were being watched by several guests and staff members.

  It was the first time she hadn’t felt self-conscious touching him in public; progress of a sort, she supposed. Or maybe not. Because she wasn’t really thinking about watching eyes. She wasn’t even thinking about poor Amber’s death and what it might mean.

  Holly was thinking about Caroline. She was wondering if Caroline had gotten over her feelings for Griff in the years since their affair, or if she had merely transferred those feelings to someone else. Someone other than her remote husband. Someone who, perhaps, had listened sympathetically, who had offered a shoulder now and then. Someone who had admired Caroline’s seemingly fragile femininity and had certainly appreciated her beauty and elegance.

  Maybe someone like Cain.

  Holly wasn’t quite ready to ask that question, and she wasn’t entirely sure why. Because it would be difficult to fight a dead rival, perhaps, or maybe just because she didn’t want to hear that Cain had loved Caroline. All she knew for sure was what she hadn’t known. She hadn’t known Caroline nearly as well as she had believed.

  She couldn’t help wondering if any of them had ever really known Caroline McKenna.

  When Griffin reached Joanna, she was standing with both hands gripping the rail in front of her, her unfocused gaze directed somewhere toward the horizon. The strong, chill breeze whipped her long pale hair out behind her and drove color into her cheeks. When she spoke, her voice was a bit distant.

  “You don’t really think Cain killed that girl?”

  “I’d be very surprised if he did,” Griffin admitted. “But I’ve been surprised before. I can’t take anything for granted, Joanna. He said you were with him when Amber showed up—unexpectedly—at the cottage on Friday.”

  Joanna nodded. “He didn’t encourage her, if that’s what you want to know. He was careful not to hurt her feelings, but he did what he could to show her she was way too young for him.”

  “What did he do?” Griffin asked.

  Joanna turned her head and looked at him, smiling faintly. “He got into a political discussion with me, for one thing. The poor kid was leagues out of her depth and knew it.”

  “And you’re sure that’s what he was trying to do—show Amber she was too young for him?”

  “Of course. What else?”

  Griffin decided not to give himself away twice in one day. Especially when he wasn’t certain what it was he was feeling about this woman. All he was certain of was that she hadn’t told him the whole story, and those unanswered questions nagged at him. How could he think about anything else where she was concerned?

  Dragging his attention back to the matter at hand, he said, “Cain doesn’t have an alibi for last night.”

  “Neither do I,” Joanna pointed out. “And I’ll bet the same could be said of most of the people in this town. You said between eleven last night and seven this morning, right? It was a stormy night and most everyone was probably in bed or curled up with a good book. Without an alibi.”

  “I know, I know.” Griffin leaned a hip against the railing and looked at her. The scenery of Cliffside, breathtaking though it was, was familiar to him, but she was still unfamiliar—and fascinating. And she had an unnerving habit of stealing his breath more suddenly and completely than even the most splendid scenery could ever do, as well as drawing his attention away from the things he was supposed to be concentrating on.

  Don’t think about her. Don’t. Not now. Not yet.

  “Maybe nobody pushed her,” Joanna said. “Maybe she jumped.”

  “It’s possible.” He forced himself to concentrate. “But … a girl like her, dramatic and self-important, isn’t really the type. I could see her doing something destructive to Holly out of jealousy, or even striking out at Cain if he rejected her, but—”

  “I don’t think he did reject her,” Joanna interrupted. “In fact, he went out of his way not to. He was more subtle than that, Griffin. He was sort of … indifferently friendly. He behaved as if he simply didn’t notice she had a crush on him.”

  “She might have interpreted that as a rejection,” Griffin said.

  “The last time I saw her,” Joanna said, “she was frustrated and feeling out of her depth, but she didn’t seem angry or jealous—or despondent.”

  “Friday was the last time you saw her?”

  Joanna nodded.

  “Something might have changed over the weekend,” Griffin mused. “Must have, in fact. I don’t think she fell, so either she jumped or she was pushed. Suicide is probably more likely.”

  “But you don’t believe that. Only because of the kind of girl she was?”

  He hesitated, then sighed. “It’s difficult to be sure because of all the rain we’ve had, and I could never prove it in court, but I found several faint marks at the edge of the cliff where she went over.”

  “What kind of marks?”

  “Flattened grass, churned up bits of grass and mud. The kind of marks that might be made by two people, one of them much heavier than the other—and the lighter one struggling.”

  Joanna got a vivid mental image of two figures grappling with each other at the edge of the cliff, the wind and rain lashing them, lightning flashing, and she shivered. “It doesn’t make sense. She was just a kid, a baby. Who could have wanted to kill Amber?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “No one saw anything?”

  “So far, no one’s admitted seeing anything. A couple of my deputies are going door-to-door questioning hotel guests, but I doubt anything will come of that. Like you said, it was a stormy night.”

  “Who found her?” Joanna asked.

  “One of the hotel groundskeepers. He was about to go down and check the beach for storm damage, something he always does after a storm.”

  “So no help there.”

  Griffin shook his head.

  Joanna looked at him, debating silently for a moment, then sighed. “I don’t imagine this will help either, but … do you remember when I asked about the person who’d been killed here earlier this year? I thought it had been a woman, and you told me it was a man?”

  “I remember. So?”

  “So, the reason I thought it was a woman was because of another dream I’d had.” She described the dream briefly, unable to tell from his expressionless face whether or not he believed her, but reasonably sure he’d put no more faith in dreams now than he had before. “I connected the dream with the other one I’d been having about this place and just assumed it had something to do with Caroline. That maybe she had seen a woman pushed off the cliffs; I even wondered if the dark man had wanted her dead because of what she’d seen. Then you told me a man had been killed instead of a woman, and I didn’t know what to think. But when they brought up Amber’s body and I saw her hair hanging out of the stretcher, I wondered if maybe it was her death I’d seen. Before it happened.”

  “A prophetic dream?” His voice was detached.

  “I know, I know—you don’t believe in them. But it is well-documented that people who survive serious trauma, especially something like a head injury, sometimes find themselves coping with extrasensory perception in one form or another when they recover. Maybe that’s what happened to me. Maybe all that electricity blasted open a door to a room I never knew I had inside me.”

  He might easily have pointed out that what the electricity might actually have done was scramble or short-circuit the normal function of her brain, leaving her with weird dreams and illogical impulses. But Griffin didn’t say that. He merely said, “I’ve seen too many strange things in my life to say it isn’t possible, but it doesn’t seem to help us any. You say you didn’t see the man’s face in your dream.”

  Joanna knew he didn’t believe her, but at least he wasn’t openly scoffing. “No, I didn’t. I woke up just as he began to turn toward me.”

  “You noticed nothing special abo
ut him?”

  She conjured a smile. “He didn’t have red hair. That seems to let Cain out.”

  “If it was raining,” Griffin said, “and you weren’t close, how could you tell what color his hair was?”

  Joanna’s smile faded and she shook her head. “It … wasn’t raining. I mean, the sky seemed overcast and everything was sort of gray and dreary, but there was no rain falling and definitely no storm.”

  Griffin frowned. “Amber was probably dead at least a few hours when we found her; that means she was killed before dawn. It was black as pitch outside last night, Joanna.”

  She drew a breath, conscious of another chill. “Well. I guess I didn’t see Amber killed after all. You don’t suppose…”

  “What?”

  Joanna made her voice light. “You don’t suppose I saw myself take a flying leap off the cliffs, do you?”

  Griffin reached out to grasp her shoulders. “No. Even if what you dreamed meant anything at all, Joanna, according to everything I’ve read and heard, dreams are almost always symbolic. Whatever you saw, it wasn’t your own death.”

  “You sound so sure. How could you be so sure when you don’t even believe the dream means anything?” She knew that she sounded shaken.

  He shook his head slightly. “I didn’t say I didn’t believe it’s possible that your dreams mean something. Maybe they do—how can I know? I have my doubts, natural doubts. But whatever I think about dreams, I’m absolutely certain that none of us can see our own death.”

  She wondered why he was so sure of that, but didn’t feel much like having a philosophical discussion at the moment. It was easier and more comforting to just accept his certainty. “Okay. Then what could that dream symbolize?”

  “Did you actually see the man push her?” Griffin asked.

  “No. In fact, when I first turned in the dream, I didn’t even see him. Just her, soaring off the cliff as if she were trying to fly. But then I saw him standing where she must have been, and when he began to turn toward me, I felt … absolutely terrified.”

  “And you thought—in the dream—that he had pushed her?”