Stranger on the Shore - lanyon Josh (лучшие книги читать онлайн бесплатно TXT) 📗

Chapter Seven

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

That was the final line of The Great Gatsby, and it seemed only too appropriate to Griff as he sat in the library going through photo album after photo album of Arlingtons. Corrupted dreams, decadence, a lost generation...well, okay, maybe that was harsh. But certainly people who were preoccupied, even devoted, to all the wrong things.

They did like their boats, that was for sure. They liked all their toys. And they liked themselves too. A lot.

And maybe that wasn’t completely fair either.

As he studied their smiling, satisfied faces, he had to concede it was highly unlikely anyone had dispatched little Brian in a convoluted scheme to secure a share of inheritance. Such a plan would require a guarantee that Matthew would have no other offspring—ever. Meaning, even if someone knew for sure Gemma couldn’t have more children, the plot would have to somehow take into account the potential for Matthew remarrying and still not having more children. Further, the plot would have to guarantee Matthew’s early death as well, and if Matthew’s death was not an accident, why wait ten years to get rid of him? How would this mastermind ensure that Jarrett didn’t die first?

Even after Matthew’s death, there had been the likelihood, or at least the precedent that Jarrett would name Marcus, the surviving son, as his heir.

So it was either a really bad plan on the part of Marcus, a really, really bad plan on the part of someone else, or one of Griff’s flights of fancy. In all probability, the latter. Granted, he had not had much chance to study Marcus, but Jarrett’s second son just did not seem like the homicidal maniac type, and you’d have to be pretty damned psychotic to cold-bloodedly murder a toddler on the off-chance they might one day stand between you and a fortune.

Griff studied a photo of what appeared to be a slightly drunk Marcus dandling a giggling Brian. Marcus’s expression was one of fond foolishness. Griff relinquished his theory. No. In all likelihood, the situation was the one described by Pierce. Johnson had entered the Arlingtons’ employ with the ultimate aim of kidnapping Brian.

But there Griff differed from Pierce because he did not believe Brian had been deliberately killed. Something had gone wrong. The child had panicked or struggled or something. And Johnson couldn’t admit the truth without giving up any chance of parole, however slim that chance might be. It wasn’t hard to see how someone who maybe didn’t have a lot of empathy would reason it out. After all, telling the truth wouldn’t bring Brian back to life.

The chair across the library table was noisily dragged out. Chloe sat down. She folded her arms and smiled at him. Griff didn’t trust that smile.

“Are you dining with us tonight?”

Griff shook his head. He hoped she wasn’t planning to stay. The afternoon had been blessedly free of Muriel and all other distractions. He wanted it to stay that way.

“Oh you have to!” she protested, still smiling that funny smile. “I think Pierce is staying just to keep an eye on you.”

“Doesn’t he have a wife and a home to go to?”

Chloe laughed. “He’s not married. Yet. Anyway, you have to stay. I want to see your expression when you meet Loki.”

“Loki?” Griff had a pleasant if unlikely vision of Tom Hiddleston.

“My stepfather.”

“Your stepfather is named Loki?”

“His name is Ring, actually, but he’s a Viking. He looks like one anyway. He’s actually a biker. A former Hell’s Angel, he claims. And he’s a killer.”

“He’s...”

Chloe laughed. “I knew that would get your attention. I’m not joking either. He really is a killer. Well, technically it was self-defense, but it was a bar fight so right there.” She shrugged her skinny shoulders. Case closed.

“Your mother is married to a biker who killed someone in a bar fight?” She had to be pulling his leg because he’d never read anything about it when he first began researching the family. In fact, he hadn’t realized Michaela had remarried yet again until that morning.

“You got it.”

“I thought your stepfather owned a chain of restaurants?”

“I don’t know about a chain. He owns the Hell’s Kitchen restaurants in San Francisco. There’s one on Geary Boulevard and one in Petaluma, wherever that is.”

“And people say Chef Ramsay’s tough.”

Chloe laughed. “So? What do you think?”

He thought Michaela had a taste for bad boys. He said cautiously, “About what?”

“About coming to dinner. Don’t you want to meet the rest of the suspects?”

“You think your mom is a suspect in Brian’s disappearance?”

“She could have been, right?”

And Griff thought his relationship with his mother had been difficult? “That idea doesn’t bother you?”

“Sure.” But she shrugged.

“How long have your mom and your stepfather been together?”

“Awhile. A few years. He came to one of her art shows when he got out of prison. Isn’t that romantic?” Chloe’s smile was sarcastic. “Admit it. You’re dying of curiosity, aren’t you? Are you staying for dinner?”

Family gossip was always interesting, but in this case Michaela had not known Ring Shelton until many years after Brian’s disappearance. Interesting didn’t necessarily equal germane. “I really can’t. I’ve got a lot to do tonight to get ready for tomorrow’s interviews.”

Chloe wiggled her brows in what was likely supposed to be salacious interest. What she said was, “Beets with quinoa and arugula salad.”

“Yeah, it’s tempting but I don’t think so.”

“Mother will be sooo disappointed.”

And with that she was gone as quickly as she’d appeared.

* * *

The room turned golden in the late afternoon light. Retreating sunlight embroidered the outline of shelves and furniture in gleams and glints, stitched its way up the winding staircase, flashing off bronze leaves and varnished wood, and traced the gilt and leather and silk spines of old books.

Griff checked his phone. Five o’clock. He finished making notes and closed the last photo album. If he never saw another baby picture of Chloe or Brian kissing puppies or sniffing flowers, he would die a happy man.

A bird trilled loudly behind him, and he whirled, nearly knocking back his chair as he jumped to his feet. An ornate brass wire cage sat on a small inlaid table, and inside the cage, a blue-and-red automaton bird was singing sweetly.

A clock. A weird, beautiful clock.

Griff sat down again, staring at the bird, feeling lightheaded from the rush of blood to his brain. It had shaken him, that surprisingly lifelike burst of sound in his ear. He watched the tiny beak open and close, the blue-and-red tail feathers lift and lower. He couldn’t seem to look away.

Why hadn’t he heard the bird earlier? Did the bird only sing at five o’clock?

The bird warbled on, its leaf-twined stand rising up and down like the pole on a tiny merry-go-round. It made him feel dizzy.

Dizzy?

Maybe his nerves were more on edge than he’d realized. Lunch with Pierce and Jarrett had brought home to him what a monumental task he’d set himself. Not only that, there was also the pressure of Jarrett’s expectations. Jarrett was hoping that Griff was going to discover something, figure something out, make some kind of breakthrough. It didn’t matter how many times Griff said he wasn’t trying to solve the mystery of what had happened to Brian, Jarrett was still hoping for that very thing.

The bird stopped singing as abruptly as it had begun.

Griff stared at it and one tiny black bead of an eye stared back. He became aware that his heart was beating way too fast, that his breaths were growing shallow, that he was afraid. Terrified. He was about to have a full-blown anxiety attack. The first in years.