Still Lake by Anne Stuart

toward the door, trying to be as quiet as he could so he wouldn’t scare away his intruder, but the old house wasn’t made for stealth, and the floorboards creaked beneath his weight. He paused, half expecting his unexpected guest to go crashing out of the house, but the quiet thumps continued, undeterred by the sound of his approach.
    Someone had turned on a couple of the lights. Theliving room was filled with shadows when he reached the bottom of the stairs, but he could see something moving in the kitchen. He switched on the bright overhead light, but whoever it was didn’t react.
    It took him a moment to recognize her. The crazy old lady from next door had wandered into his house, into his kitchen, and she was rummaging around, singing beneath her breath, totally at home.
    â€œMrs….” Shit, he couldn’t remember her name. “Grace?”
    She looked up at him with those disarmingly vague eyes. She was dressed in a bathrobe, and her feet were muddy and bare. “Hello there,” she said gaily. “I’m so glad you’ve come back. I’ve missed you.”
    He felt a frisson of horror run down his spine, and then he remembered who he was talking to. “This is the first time I’ve been here, Grace,” he corrected her patiently.
    She frowned. “Is it? I didn’t realize. Do you want some ice cream?”
    â€œNo, thanks,” he said. As a matter of fact, he didn’t have any ice cream in the house, not even Vermont’s own Ben & Jerry’s. “Were you looking for something in particular?”
    â€œOh, no. I just thought I’d come visit.” She let out a cry of triumph and emerged from the refrigerator with a can of Coke. “You don’t mind, do you?”
    â€œI don’t mind,” he said. “But don’t you think your daughters will be worried about you?”
    â€œDaughter,” Grace corrected him amiably, handing him a can of soda as she waltzed past him. “Marty’s mother is that wretched club woman Morris married after I left him. I don’t blame the girl for rebelling against Eloise, though in the end they were fine parents. A tragedy they died, but Marty dealt with it quite well. I just wish Sophie wouldn’t worry so much. She’ll be fine.”
    She’d lost him. “Who will be?”
    â€œBoth of them,” Grace said firmly. “I won’t have it any other way. So tell me, young man,” she continued with one of her rapid shifts of conversation, “why did you come here? It’s the murders, isn’t it?”
    She’d ensconced herself on the old sofa, her fluttery garments draped around her, giving him time to school his answer.
    â€œWhat murders?”
    Grace’s cackle verged on the macabre. “You know as well as I do what murders. You saw him.”
    â€œSaw who?”
    â€œSaw whom,” she corrected him, sounding like his seventh-grade English teacher. “The killer. You saw him.”
    â€œWhat makes you think it was a him?”
    â€œHe,” she corrected him again in her daft, cordial voice. “Semen.”
    He blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
    â€œSemen. The girls had just had sex. Women don’t produce semen.” She smiled sweetly.
    â€œNo, they don’t,” he agreed, rattled. “Grace, it’s the middle of the night. I really think I ought to take you back home.”
    â€œOh, would you? That would be so kind. I’m sure Sophie is terribly worried about me. She does worry, poor girl. She needs a man.” She eyed him speculatively. “I’m not sure you’d do, though.”
    â€œI wasn’t offering.”
    â€œYou don’t need to,” Grace said. “You’re an intelligent man—I can tell as much from a glance, and any intelligent man would find my Sophie worth the effort.”
    â€œEffort?”
    â€œBut I don’t think you’ll do. I think