Stranger on the Shore Page 2

  “Hmm.” Arlington continued to appraise him with that keen blue gaze.

  It wasn’t his imagination, right? This was a strange interview.

  Arlington seemed to come to a decision. He said briskly, “I’d better tell you, the rest of the family is none too pleased about our arrangement and this book you’re going to write.”

  Here it comes. Griff opened his mouth, though he wasn’t sure what he could say to convince Arlington over the protests of his nearest and dearest.

  But Arlington made a dismissive gesture. “Don’t worry. I’ll handle them. I want this book. I want this case reopened. If anybody gives you any trouble, you refer them to me. I’ve instructed them all you’re to have complete access, complete cooperation.”

  “Thank you.” Arlington made it sound like he’d given orders to his corporate staff rather than his children.

  “How long do you think it’ll take you to write the book?”

  Was Arlington imagining Griff would write the book this week? “I don’t—I’m not sure.” He stopped himself from admitting that he’d never written a book before. Not that Arlington didn’t already know that, but there was no point in emphasizing Griff’s lack of experience.

  “Merely curious. It doesn’t matter,” Arlington said.

  “I’ll do my best to bring the case back to public attention.”

  A light kindled in Arlington’s eyes. “If Brian is out there somewhere, I want him to know we haven’t forgotten him. We haven’t given up.”

  “Uh...right.” Brian was dead. Odell Johnson was sitting in prison right now, convicted of Brian’s kidnapping and murder.

  “Either way, I want the truth. I don’t care how painful it is.”

  Griff liked the courage of that. One of the theories was that the kidnapping had been an inside job. He said, “I’ll do my best to get the truth for you.”

  Arlington smiled. “I know you will, my boy. Do you have any questions for me? I mean, before you settle in and start dragging out the family skeletons?” The warmth of that smile transformed him. Griff could see the shade of the heartbreaker Arlington had reportedly been in his youth.

  “Is it okay if I take photos?”

  “Take all the photos you want. Pierce will have to approve everything anyway.”

  Griff repeated uncertainly, “Pierce?”

  “Pierce Mather. My, er, man of affairs.”

  Man of affairs? Did people really say that?

  “The family lawyer.” Arlington chuckled, so maybe it was supposed to be a joke.

  “Oh, that Pierce,” Griff said. “The one who told me not to write the book.”

  “That’s the one.” Arlington was definitely amused. “Yes, Pierce can be a bit overbearing. He means well. Pierce will look everything over just to make sure nothing damaging or defamatory is inadvertently published.”

  Griff had been waiting for the other shoe to drop, and here it was, right on schedule, delivering a hard, swift kick to his ass. “Pierce is going to have final approval of my work?”

  “I wouldn’t put it that way,” Arlington said.

  “Because we didn’t agree to that. I can’t—won’t—work under that kind of restriction.”

  The disappointment was sickening, but no way was Griff going to write some kind of corporate-approved publicity piece or whatever it was the Arlingtons had in mind. If staying on the estate and having access to these people meant he couldn’t write the book he wanted to write, then he’d rent a room in town and get his interviews the regular way, the way he’d planned on writing the book before Arlington had proposed this too-good-to-be-true idea of staying at the estate.

  He should have known. Should have realized a wealthy, powerful family like the Arlingtons would try to control the spin of a book like his. He was stupid not to have seen this coming.

  “No, no,” Arlington was saying hurriedly in answer to whatever he read in Griff’s expression. “It’s not what you’re thinking. No one is going to censor what you write or attempt to...to restrict the freedom of the press. It isn’t anything like that. Nothing related to Brian’s kidnapping will be off-limits to you, but staying on the estate you’ll be privy to potentially sensitive information that has no bearing on the case or your story. That’s the sort of thing Pierce will be looking for.”

  Put like that, it sounded reasonable. Griff still felt wary. He had spoken to Pierce Mather once on the phone—for as long as it had taken Mather to shut him up and shoot him down. The words sue your ass had featured prominently. Griff had a gut feeling he and Mather might not see eye to eye on what constituted information with “no bearing.”

  As if reading his thoughts, Arlington said almost coaxingly, “Mr. Hadley—Griffin—you have my word you won’t be asked to sign a non-disclosure nor any kind of contract. This is a gentlemen’s agreement between you and me. Agreed?” He held out his hand.

  Griff studied Arlington’s face, considered that charming, part-rueful, part-willful smile. Arlington was a man used to getting what he wanted, no question. But there was something almost kind in his gaze, and he seemed sincere.

  Nothing easier than convincing someone who wanted to believe you. Griff grimaced inwardly and reached out to shake hands.

  Chapter Two

  “That’s right,” Nels Newland said. “I was working on the estate back then. Been working for the Arlingtons since I was a boy. I wasn’t here that night, though. Nothing I can tell you.”

  Newland led the way down a wide brick path shaded by tall rhododendrons wreathed in pale peach-colored blossoms. He was a big man with sparse gray hair and broad, badly stooped shoulders that made him look like he was carrying Griff’s bag against a strong headwind. He had insisted on carrying the bag, and short of wrestling it away from him, Griff had no choice but to give in. Apparently it was not possible to drive to the guest cottage, which was located behind the main house. It seemed inconvenient and impractical and just the kind of idea rich people came up with for the hell of it.

  “Partly I’m trying to get a sense for what it was like then,” Griff said to Newland’s wide back. “You know, just getting an overall feel of the place and the people.”

  Newland grunted and continued to plow down the pathway. Arlington hadn’t been kidding about the cottage being behind the main house. Well behind the main house, in fact. But that suited Griff fine. He liked his privacy and his space. Too much so, according to Levi.

  No point thinking of Levi now. That was over.

  He glanced over his shoulder, but his view of the villa was blocked by the clouds of pastel flowers. The rhododendrons must be fifty feet tall. They’d probably been planted when the house foundation was first laid.

  “It’s no good digging up the past,” Newland said. “Leave sleeping dogs lie, I say.”

  Judging by Newland and Mrs. Truscott, it was what a lot of people said.

  “Mr. Arlington wants this book,” Griff felt obliged to point out. “It was his idea that I stay here and talk to people on the estate.”

  Newland gave another of those disapproving grunts that was probably the poor relation to Jarrett Arlington’s Hmm. His boots thudded down the trail in solid, stubborn cadence.

  Griff persisted, “There are still questions about what happened that night. Who was Odell’s accomplice? Was there even an accomplice? Where is Brian’s body? Why did they kill him when the ransom was paid?”

  “Answers to none of that’s going to change anything.”

  “It will give Mr. Arlington closure.” That was something Griff had learned working the crime beat, even on a small paper in a small town like Janesville. As bad as knowing what the worst was, not knowing, not having answers, not having certainty, was worse.

  The sea breeze rustled the blossoms. Bees droned high overhead. They passed a small bronze statu
e of a stag and, farther down the shaded path, a low marble bench. Parks in Janesville weren’t as big as the Arlingtons’ backyard. Not that the Arlingtons would refer to all this cultivated acreage as a “backyard.”

  Newland lifted his head and said abruptly, “There’s the cottage.”

  Griff stopped walking.

  The guest cottage stood on the other side of a wide and rocky stream which pooled into a series of large green ponds ringed by ornamental grasses, boulders and classical statuary. Black-faced swans glided serenely across the pond surfaces. A wooden bridge, balustrades painted white to look like stone, offered safe passage across the water.

  Griff said, “It looks like a doll house.”

  A doll house or maybe a piece of wedding cake. A pretty, two-story slice of columns and cornices and arched windows. Three small stairs led to a pale pink door.

  Newland had not paused. Griff recovered from his astonishment and sped up to follow him across the bridge and up the narrow stone walkway to the cottage door with its stained-glass oval of ivy and swans.

  Newland set Griff’s extra bag down, unlocked the pink door, and pushed it open. He handed the old-fashioned key over to Griff. “It’s all ready for you. If you do need something, there’s a phone to the main house.”

  “Thanks. I’m sure I’ve got all I’ll need.” Griff patted his laptop case.

  Newland, a man of few words—unless you counted the grunts—looked unconvinced but took himself off without further ado, leaving Griff to explore the cottage on his own.

  Five rooms didn’t take long to explore. Every room but the kitchen and two bathrooms—two bathrooms in a guest cottage!—had some variation on parquet floors and old-fashioned blue-and-silver wallpaper. The draperies and upholstery were slate-gray silk, vintage but still functional. There wasn’t a lot of furniture, but any one of those antiques probably cost as much as the rent on Griff’s apartment. How ridiculously wasteful. An average-size family could have lived here easily.

  Okay. Maybe an average-size family of elves, because no average family of Griff’s acquaintance would know what to do with silk upholstery or a cottage in the middle of the Enchanted Forest. He smothered a yawn as he paused to inspect a painting of two Gibson girls playing croquet.

  It was like looking through a window at the past. A gracious past that most people had only ever experienced through newsreels and art books. How weird would it be to live surrounded by priceless antiques and original paintings? He couldn’t even imagine not having to worry about money. Not having to worry about paying rent and saving up for, well, everything.

  Wow. Not. Judging. Of course. But...the rich were really different.

  And yet for all their money and power and position, the Arlingtons hadn’t been able to recover their lost child. Had no more luck in discovering what had happened to Brian than some poor family in Boscobel.

  Griff yawned again and his jaw cracked. What he needed now was a shower and sleep. After that he’d go over his notes so he’d be prepped and ready for dinner that night. Mr. Arlington had invited him to dine with the family so that he could meet the cast of players. And, he gathered, so that Arlington could again warn everyone to cooperate fully.

  Griff picked out one of the rear bedrooms with a view of the distant ocean and carried his luggage—if you could call a battered suitcase and a laptop “luggage”—upstairs.

  He tried to hang on to his Midwestern skepticism, but there was no squelching that sense of elation as he gazed out the window at the azure haze behind the wall of trees. He was really here, here on the very shore of what F. Scott Fitzgerald had called “a fresh, green breast of the new world.” He thought of the tattered copy of The Great Gatsby in his suitcase. He was going to do it. He was doing it. He was going to write this book. The first of many books, hopefully.

  “Hey!” someone called from downstairs, snapping him out of his pleasant daydream. “Where are you?”

  The voice was female, young, and at this moment, unwelcome. Griff left the bedroom to cross the hall and lean over the wrought-iron banister. He had a foreshortened view of a young woman, maybe his age, very thin with brown hair cut in elaborate layers. She wore skinny jeans—that actually fit—and a long plum-colored leather jacket.

  “There you are,” she said. She smiled, her teeth very white, her lipstick very red.

  “Who are you?” Griff asked blankly.

  “Chloe.”

  “Chloe who?”

  “Chloe Kloppel.” It sounded like a knock-knock joke gone bad. Chloe clarified, “I’m the daughter of the house. Well, granddaughter.”

  Okay. Now he had her. Chloe was the only child of Michaela, Jarrett’s youngest daughter. She had been on the estate the night Brian disappeared, but she’d been an infant. Probably not going to have a lot to offer in the way of insight or information.

  Griff said, “Nice to meet you, Chloe Kloppel.”

  She shook her hair back, tilting her face up toward him in an unconsciously provocative pose. “Nice to meet you, Griffin Hadley. You look younger than your photo. Cuter too.”

  Or...maybe not unconsciously provocative.

  Griff asked warily, “What photo?”

  Chloe gave another of those very white, very red smiles. “The photo of you in a Santa hat at the Banner Chronicle Christmas party. After Grandy announced you were coming to stay, I googled you.” She shrugged, hands spread wide in a kind of what-can-you-do? The blue beaded bracelets on her wrists made a clicking sound. “What kind of a name is Griffin?”

  “What kind of a name is Chloe?”

  “Sexy. Stylish.”

  Uh-oh.

  “Well—” Griff awkwardly gestured behind him, “—it was nice of you to—I was just unpacking.”

  “Leave that,” Chloe told him. “I was thinking we could grab a late lunch and I’ll show you around town.”

  Maybe she didn’t realize how she sounded, like she was telling the under butler to give the fish forks another polish.

  “Thanks, but I already had lunch.”

  Chloe frowned. “Where?”

  “Muttontown.” Syosset, actually. And it had been coffee and a bear claw at Dunkin’ Donuts, but he wasn’t hungry. Still too keyed up. He got like that when he was working.

  She thought this over. “You can come and keep me company.”

  “That’s really kind of you, but I want to get settled in and go over my notes. I’ve only got a couple of days here and there’s a lot of ground to cover.”

  “Oh my God. The famous book.” She shook her head.

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  “I know. We all know. It’s all we’ve been hearing about for the last two weeks. But it’s been twenty years. No one cares anymore.”

  “Your grandfather cares.”

  “Yeah, and you care. We know. But Brian was four when he disappeared. I’m sure he was adorable and I’m sure it was horrible at the time, but it’s not like he had developed a personality. I think everybody missed the idea of him more than him. Anyway, his parents aren’t even alive now.”

  “Jeez. You’re all heart,” Griff said.

  “I’m just being honest. I’m telling you what everyone else will be too polite to say to your face. How is finding Brian buried under the floorboards of one of these cottages going to make things better?”

  His expression must have given him away. Chloe added, “I don’t mean literally under the floorboards. Though who knows? Maybe. I just mean, twenty years is too late to do anyone any good.”

  “Your grandfather wants to know the full story. He has a right to know.”

  She tipped her head sideways, her expression puzzled. “Are you really going to keep skulking up there?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Are you coming down here or do I have to go
up there?”

  Griff straightened. “I’ll—”

  Too late. Chloe was already on her way up the staircase.

  What the heck? Was he going to have members of the family traipsing through the cottage while he was trying to work? Maybe a motel would have been a better idea.

  “Anyway, it’s not like I care,” Chloe assured him as she reached the top of the stairs and sauntered toward him. “We can still have fun even if you are wasting your time.”

  “Fun?” he said cautiously.

  Up close, she was very thin. Too thin. And tall. She was as tall as he was, and he was just over medium height. She was wearing a spicy, exotic perfume. She did not smell—or look—like girls in Wisconsin, let alone Janesville, though it was hard to pinpoint what exactly was so different about her. Maybe it was just attitude.

  “Sure. Fun.” She was crowding into his space, her face tilted challengingly, and he realized uncomfortably where she thought this was going.

  “Uh...hey,” Griff said feebly, trying to step back without looking like he was retreating.

  Was this really how it worked for girls like her? Did it work like this for the boys of her social strata too?

  After a couple of seconds the sparkle died out of her blue eyes. Her knowing smile faded. Another second passed and realization dawned on her face.

  “Are you kidding me?” she demanded. “You’re gay?”

  Now that, illogical or not, was really irritating. “Is that the only reason a guy might turn you down?”

  Chloe glared, hands on her hips now. “Are you gay or not?”

  Griff glared back. “Yeah, I’m gay.”

  She relaxed. Sort of. She still frowned as she eyed him. “It’s becoming an epidemic.” Before Griff could respond to that, assuming he had a suitable response, she gave a short laugh. “It’s not going to do you any good with Pierce.”

  Pierce. Right. The lawyer. The apparently homophobic lawyer. Great.

  “I’m not worried about Pierce,” Griff said.