House of Secrets - v4 Read Free

approached. As Ben and Christine skirted to the side to let it pass, Christine noted the anxious expression on her stepfather’s face. “Is everything okay, Ben?”
    Ben’s gaze trailed after the receding cart. “I probably shouldn’t be bringing this up. But… I just wanted to say that it was really good of you to visit, Chrissie. Seriously. I know your mother can be a handful sometimes.”
    “Sometimes?” Christine could not contain her laugh. “Good Lord, Ben,
you
should be the one in politics. You said that with a completely straight face! Yeah. I most certainly do know how she is.”
    “Your mother misses the East. Denver is just not Lillian’s speed.”
    Christine scoffed. “Neither was Albany. And apparently neither was Greenwich. In fact, even London didn’t seem to float her boat. I’m not sure that anywhere is Miss Lillian’s speed. You’re amazingly sweet to put up with her, Ben. Daddy used to say that governing the state of New York was the simple part. It was governing his wife that took all his real skills.”
    Ben’s nervous laugh betrayed his discomfort. The poor man, Christine thought. I’m not telling him anything he doesn’t know.
     
     
    S mallwood spotted the ferry carrying his cousin Joy within a minute of its leaving Greenport.
    He watched as it crossed the bay and disappeared from sight on the other side of the wooded point that jutted into the water. Smallwood’s insights about Cousin Joy had been surging through his mind for months now, his large brain gathering and processing and gathering and processing with prodigious efficiency. He had her nailed, pegged, analyzed, dissected. Gone was the sweet little girl with whom he used to spend summers out on the island. In her place was a creature Smallwood barely recognized and had come to despise.
    Smallwood had taken the train out from the city and then “borrowed” the rowboat to travel over to the island. He had come to confront his cousin with the results of his analyses. There could be no more avoiding it. Lately Joy had been refusing to even answer the phone when he called. It had been a pure fluke that she had refused his most recent request to get together by letting him know — angrily — that she was heading out that night to the house on Shelter Island.
    Or possibly not a fluke. Possibly it was all in the stars.
    The temperature had dropped in the past hour. Some fifteen minutes after the ferry docked, a car’s headlights had appeared on the hill, stopping at the very last house. Through the magic of sound on water, Smallwood had heard a pair of doors closing, followed by the tiny buzzing sounds of conversation. A man. A woman.
    Smallwood rose. Stretching his arms out from his sides for balance, he stepped from the lifeguard chair and landed softly in the sand, cushioning the drop with his knees. Lifting his feet decorously — like a slow prancing Andalusian horse — large and determined Robert Smallwood marched along the sand toward the road, feeling extremely goddamned noble.
     
     
    A s Christine stepped onto the down escalator, her attention was drawn to an elderly man standing at the bottom, edging onto the moving stairs using a wooden cane. He was dressed in a plaid jacket and a red bow tie, and was stooped with age. His hair was wavy and cotton white, with salt-and-pepper eyebrows that flared at the ends. He looked like a lost vaudevillian.
    Instinctively, Christine reached for her camera and began firing off shots of the man, at the same time taking methodical steps backward so that she might stay in place near the top of the escalator. Each foot landed seamlessly on the next descending stair. Ben continued down toward the bottom.
    The man in the bow tie was hesitating at the bottom of the escalator, poking tremulously at the moving stairs with the tip of his cane, but finally he committed. Christine captured a dozen images in the space of five seconds. Then she paused, ceasing her backpedaling, and squeezed