After Caroline (41 page)

“Or an exact duplicate. The question is, where’s the box this key fits?”

“And what did she put
in
the box?”

Scott looked between them for a moment, then fixed his gaze on Joanna. “What makes you believe she had anything
to
hide like that?”

Since Griffin didn’t seem disposed to object, Joanna
said, “It’s a guess, Scott. We think Caroline knew something that was dangerous to someone. And she was scared. She tried to talk to a few people here in town in the days before the accident, people she thought she could trust, but for one reason or another, she wasn’t able to confide in any of them.”

“Why didn’t she tell me?” he asked flatly.

Joanna shook her head. “’I can’t answer that. But we’re reasonably sure she was ready to confide in Griffin when she was killed.”

Scott looked at the other man. “How are you sure?” he asked.

“She sent me a note, asking me to meet her,” Griffin answered readily enough. “I got tied up here and didn’t make it. That was the day she died.”

Scott’s face tightened slightly. “So for once, you weren’t Johnnie-on-the-spot.”

There was a moment of icy silence. Then, with precise emphasis, Griffin demanded, “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Scott shrugged, a smile that was ugly curving his lips. “Why, nothing, Sheriff. I just assumed you were always at the ready when my wife needed something.”

Joanna winced slightly, wondering silently how long the tension had been building toward this confrontation. It had to happen, of course, sooner or later. She had known that the day these two men had faced each other on the peaceful sidewalk of Cliffside.

“Look, I don’t know what your problem is,” Griffin snapped, surging to his feet behind the desk, “but I’ve had about enough of your bullshit. You want to say something to me? Say it straight out. You want to take me on? Name a time and place outside this office and I’ll be there. But in the meantime, why don’t you go home and spend some time with that sad little kid of yours. She needs a father a lot worse than I need this hassle from you.”

“Then maybe
you’d
better go,” Scott muttered, turning away from the desk.

“What?”

He had taken no more than a step, when Scott turned back, the pain on his face so raw that Joanna wanted to flinch away from it, and his voice was ragged.

“I said maybe you should go comfort Regan.
Goddamn
you, she isn’t my daughter.
She’s yours”

O
N SOME LEVEL
of her mind, Joanna had been preparing herself for Scott’s stark words ever since she had learned of his sudden change of attitude toward Regan years before. It was the only thing that made sense, the only reason to explain a father’s sudden coldness to a small and innocent child. And given Caroline’s history, it was certainly possible.

What Joanna hadn’t prepared herself for was her own pain when she heard that accusation leveled at Griffin.

“No,” Griffin said. He hadn’t glanced at Joanna, but kept his gaze fixed on Scott.

“You think I’d make up something like this? Caroline told me. She
told
me, years ago.”

Griffin put his hands on his desk and leaned forward, his eyes unwavering on Scott, and his voice was very quiet. “Listen to me. She lied to you. I don’t know why, but she did. There was no affair. We never had sex, not once. There is no possibility that Regan could be mine.”

Joanna began to breathe again.

“I don’t believe you.” Scott’s voice was still ragged. “She wouldn’t have lied to me about that. Not
that.”

“You want me to take a paternity test to prove it? Gladly. But you take one too. She’s your daughter, Scott.”

Into the thick silence, Joanna said quietly, “I know you think she looks like Caroline, Scott, but look at her more closely. The shape of her eyes is yours, and her ears. Many of her expressions. And her hands, they’re a feminine duplicate of yours. The first time I saw you two together, I thought she resembled you more than Caroline.”

Scott stepped back toward the desk and reached out to grip the back of the other visitor’s chair. He was looking past Griffin, past everything except his own anguish. His face was white, but his voice was steadier when he said, “I can’t have been that blind.”

“She blinded you,” Joanna told him. “After what she told you, you had to look at Regan with doubt. And once you did that, the damage was done. Caroline must have wanted to hurt you very badly.”

After a moment, Scott shook his head, still with that blind expression. “No, not hurt me. She wanted Regan all to herself, and I was in her way. So she said what she knew would make me turn away from the child, what she knew I wouldn’t be able to bear.”

Doc was right—she had to get what she wanted, no matter what
. It rang true to Joanna, that Caroline would have taken that drastic, incredibly selfish and cruel action to have her child’s entire focus and love. And it had probably never occurred to her that she would be hurting Regan by depriving her of a father’s love; in her mind, her love was enough for Regan. And, to be fair, she had been an excellent mother, devoting herself to her child with lavish attention. But at what cost to Regan?

At what cost to Scott?

Neither Joanna nor Griffin said anything else, waiting silently for Scott to return from whatever distant hell he had been thrown into so suddenly. He did come back,
slowly, his eyes gradually focusing on the here and now. And it must have been painfully difficult for such a proud and reserved man to realize how much of himself had been stripped bare in this small office.

He looked at them both, then turned and went to the door. He paused after he’d opened it, and looked back at Joanna. “You were right,” he said, and then left the office, closing the door very quietly behind him.

“Right about what?” Griffin asked.

Still gazing after Scott, Joanna murmured, “He was in love with Caroline. No matter what she did, all these years he’s been in love with her.”

“Jesus Christ,” Griffin said, sitting down rather heavily in his chair. “No wonder he’s hated my guts for years.”

Joanna drew a breath and looked at him. “I guess it never crossed your mind that he might think Regan was your child?”

“God, no. If it had, I would have faced him about it long ago.” He shook his head. “Since there was no possibility of that, and since, to me, Regan was so obviously Scott’s daughter, I just never considered it. He didn’t seem close to the child, but, hell, he didn’t seem close to anyone.”

Joanna didn’t wonder that Scott’s indifference to Regan had passed virtually unremarked upon by Griffin and others. Only someone who had spent a great deal of time closer to the family—like Dylan, for instance—was likely to have noticed what had been, in effect, a sudden and drastic change, and to wonder at it.

“But you must have wondered why he suddenly began hating you,” she said.

“I just thought—”

“Thought what?”

Griffin hesitated, then swore under his breath. “You said once that there had obviously been
something
between Caroline and me at some time in the past. You were right, in a way. There was something between us.”

Joanna waited silently, hoping that she would at last be
able to understand what effect that seductive and destructive woman had had on Griffin—and what baggage he carried now as a result of it.

“I hadn’t been in Cliffside long,” he said slowly. “I had left Chicago because I was on the verge of burnout, sick to death of all the violent crime I saw day after day. The idea of being a small-town sheriff sounded like heaven, so when I heard about the job when I was in Portland, I didn’t hesitate to apply. My credentials suited the town council, and within a couple of weeks, I was moving into the cottage here.”

He shrugged. “The first few weeks were almost like a vacation, at least after Chicago. Not one crime reported the whole time. It gave me a chance to catch my breath. I was settling in and getting to know the people here. Caroline was one of the town’s leading ladies. Oh, she was young, only married a couple of years, but she seemed to be involved in most everything around here. She seemed shy and a bit fragile, at least to me—and I guess I paid more attention to her than I should have.”

“She fell in love with you,” Joanna murmured.

Griffin nodded. “Took me completely by surprise when she blurted it out one day when we were alone together at my place. She was out walking, she said, and stopped by to ask me about something—I forget what. Anyway, when she said she loved me, I didn’t know what to say to her. I didn’t feel that way about her, not at all. To me, she was Scott’s wife and way out of my league—and she’d always seemed more child than woman to me.”

All that sweet innocence cost you one, Caroline
, Joanna couldn’t help but think.

“I tried to let her down easily,” Griffin went on. “Told her I was to blame for her misunderstanding my feelings. Then I added a few asinine clichés, like she’d realize she had been mistaken, and that we could still be friends.”

“How did she take it?”

Griffin rubbed the back of his neck and looked rueful.
“She cried buckets, and the next thing I knew, we were on the couch and I was holding her.”

Tears. Jeez, Caroline, was there a trick you
didn’t
pull on him?

“Nothing happened,” Griffin added a bit hastily, perhaps reading something in Joanna’s face. “But at some point I realized that she—wasn’t crying anymore. She took my hand and put it—never mind.”

“Thank you,” Joanna said.

He grinned at her. “All right, all right. But you did ask. Anyway, I managed to get her off my couch and out of the house. After that, things were a little strained between us for a while, but she never mentioned the subject again. And neither did I.” His amusement faded, and he added, “She always turned to me if she had some problem, though—and I guess Scott noticed.”

“His Johnnie-on-the-spot remark?”

“Yeah. In a way, I guess I got into the habit of making things easier for Caroline whenever I could. Little things, mostly, like getting her permits quickly if she wanted the kids at the school to have a parade, or helping convince the town council her ideas for the community theater were workable. That sort of thing.”

“So when you realized Scott hated you…”

“I just assumed he knew or suspected that Caroline had been in love with me, and that he resented the time we spent together. I knew it was completely innocent, though, and I made damned sure there were no more private meetings between us. And since I hardly saw Scott, how he felt about me wasn’t on my mind very often.”

Joanna nodded. “I see. So you felt guilty for not meeting Caroline that last day mostly because you’d gotten in the habit of taking care of her.”

“Was that bothering you?” Griffin asked her.

“A little. Caroline had such a strong effect on the men in her life, even long after relationships ended, and I couldn’t help wondering…”

“If I’d been in love with her.”

“It crossed my mind,” Joanna confessed. “Even though you denied involvement, I couldn’t get past the feeling that there had been something between you. It seemed more than possible. And since the other men who’d cared about her couldn’t seem to let go … Well. A living rival is one thing—it’s hard to fight a ghost.”
Especially one haunting you as well as the man you love
.

Griffin rose from his chair and came around the desk to pull her up into his arms. “I thought I’d made myself clear,” he said dryly, “but obviously not. Sweetheart, I’d never been in love with anyone until I met you. And I sure as hell didn’t fall for you because you faintly resemble Caroline—or anyone else. I’ve never met anyone with big golden eyes like yours, or that sweet, lazy voice, or the knack you have of pushing everything else out of my mind until all I can think of is you.”

A bit dazed, Joanna said, “But … it’s barely been a week since we met.”

“Does that matter?” he asked steadily.

After a moment, she shook her head. “No. Griffin—”

She was interrupted rudely by a sharp rap on the door and then the quick entrance into the office of one of the deputies, who was carrying a thick sheaf of papers.

“Uh, sorry,” he said stolidly. “But you wanted the info on Butler as soon as it came in, Griff, and we just got a stack of stuff via fax from San Francisco.”

“Casey,” Griffin said, “I can’t begin to tell you how rotten your timing is.”

Joanna couldn’t help but laugh a little as she eased out of his embrace. “It’s all right, we can talk later,” she told him. “Listen, I have a few things to do, so why don’t I go back to the hotel and leave you with this stuff.”

“It’s lunchtime,” Griffin protested, the look in his eyes indicating a hunger for something other than food.

“Why don’t we have a late lunch,” she suggested. “You can pick me up at the hotel at two, okay?”

Griffin’s gaze cut to Casey, who was still waiting imperturbably.
“I guess it’ll have to be. But don’t forget where we left off.”

“Not a chance,” she murmured.