Death Waits in the Dark
Page 15
Geronimo was trying to climb Sam’s leg. Sam pulled the tiny claws from his pants and lifted the kitten, scratching its ears with a distracted expression. He said, “God, I hope Cliff gets him.”
Isabelle was distressed. “I didn’t realize. Lena, I’m so sorry. It never once dawned on me that it could be related to your accident. I’ve been here one day and I’ve already encountered several eccentric drivers, so—”
“Of course, you couldn’t know,” I said. “It was great that you even thought to mention it to Cliff.”
She nodded, thinking, and then she pointed at the black kitten, now dozing on her chest. “Have you named this one?”
Sam smiled. “Not yet. Waiting for inspiration. Hey, how is it that a little orange guy like this can have a sister with black fur?”
“They most likely had different fathers,” Isabelle said.
Sam stared at her. “What?”
“When a cat is in heat she can have multiple partners, and a litter of kittens can be composed of more than one sire. People don’t always know that.”
“I didn’t,” Sam said. He looked at Geronimo. “So he and she are half siblings. Like Cliff and me.”
“Oh, that’s right! You have a half brother! I read about your reunion in the paper. I guess I should have seen the resemblance,” Isabelle said.
For some reason I was thinking of the old hardback copies of Camilla’s books that sat on the desk in my room. “Do you know what? Camilla wrote a novel, back in the ’70s, in which the heroine had amnesia. She was wandering in the woods, just like these guys, and she was found by a local recluse, who took her in and tried to help her piece her story together.”
“That’s wonderful!” Isabelle said. “Life imitates art.”
Sam’s expression was wry. “I guess in this parallel I am the local recluse.”
“You should name her after that heroine, Sam.”
He smiled at me. “What name is that?”
“Arabella Martin.”
Isabelle peered at the little cat. “Oh, what a lovely name! But such a big name for a tiny girl.”
“She’ll grow into it,” said Sam. “I like it.”
We chatted with Isabelle for a bit longer, but Sam kept glancing at his watch, and I at the clock on his kitchen wall, and the tension generated by the unknown grew palpable. Thoughts were tumbling around in my mind as I struggled to make polite conversation. Would they find the man with the crumpled car? Would we actually learn who had tried to run Camilla and me off the road? And would we, at last, learn the secret behind Jane Wyland’s death and Carrie’s departure?
They were tantalizing thoughts, and by the time Isabelle said good-bye and left Sam’s house, my stomach was in painful knots.
12
Do you have an old friend, Camilla, who becomes your rock when times are hard? Who would defend you against a crowd, protect you in a storm, probably die for you if it came down to your life and his? I have such a friend, such a blessing, in Adam Rayburn.
—From the correspondence of James Graham and Camilla Easton, 1971
WE RETURNED TO Camilla’s and told her about the blue car and, when we had calmed down a bit, about Sam and Cliff’s new kittens, all four of whom Sam had locked into his office with food in one corner and a litter box in the other. When we left, they had all been asleep in a sun spot under the window, piled on top of each other with careless sibling affection.
“How sweet,” she said. “I want to come and visit them soon, when all this is over.” She looked at her watch, just as Adam and I had done. Perhaps there is no one human gesture that can convey at once the sense of impatience, urgency, helplessness, and tension as can a mere glance at a watch or a clock. Time, the enemy and the informant.
Sam saw this, too, and said, “Cliff knows what he’s looking for. A car like that is easy to spot, and there are security cameras here and there. Someone will have seen it. Every cop car will be looking for it.”
“Yes,” Camilla said, her expression absent. “Meanwhile, dear Adam has been laboring over these books, trying to sort people and events. Perhaps we should offer him some help.”
“Of course,” I said. “It will be good to do something constructive.”
We went to the sunroom, where Adam sat with a replenished pitcher of lemonade and a pair of cheaters on his nose. He looked like an elegant professor. He glanced up when we walked in and smiled his charming smile. “Oh, reinforcements! Thank goodness. At this point, one picture is blending into another.”
“Thank you for bringing these, Adam. Was it a challenge to find them?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I did a lot of downsizing before I moved to my current apartment, so I am pretty streamlined. All the photo albums went in one cabinet.”
“What would you like us to do?” Sam asked.
Adam rubbed his gray head. “Well, let’s see. That stack over there are books I’ve looked through and not found anything striking. This stack here contains books with some photos you all might want to see—I marked them with bookmarks. And these last four are the ones I haven’t yet gone through. I have a fair number of albums because I fancied myself something of a photographer back then. I think I had the glamorous notion that I was the chronicler of our youth.”
“You’re still an excellent photographer!” Camilla said.
Adam smiled. “Thank you. I certainly have some lovely subjects to photograph in Graham House. Sam, would you like to take one of these? And Lena and Camilla, why don’t you look at the pictures I’ve marked, see what you make of them?”
“That sounds fine,” Camilla said. Sam nodded and took one of the photo albums that sat in front of Adam. I selected one of the books that Adam had pre-marked and set it on the table in front of me. Camilla waited until Adam made eye contact with her. “You’ll never guess what Lena and Sam found in the underbrush.”
She began to tell him about Geronimo and the others while we all turned pages and studied images. Adam laughed gently and asked Sam some questions, but I lost track of their conversation as I became absorbed by the faces in front of me. They were recognizable faces, almost, but they were different from the people I knew today or had met in the restaurant. Marge Bick, or Marjorie Allan as she was known then, was impossibly thin and somehow taller-looking. Karina Thibodeau looked like the pretty granddaughter of the woman I’d met at Wheat Grass, and the men were even less recognizable, barely more than teenagers, with sticklike legs and sheaves of dark hair.
I saw a picture of what looked like Horace Bick’s birthday; he sat at the head of a table in someone’s house, wearing a child’s birthday hat and laughing heartily while his friends sang to him. Marjorie hovered behind him, her look doting and slightly possessive.
In another picture at the same gathering, Karina chatted with Rusty Baxter, his hair flaming under the light of a chandelier. Karina was speaking animatedly but Rusty, whose expression was serious, was looking over her shoulder at someone else. I held the photo closer to my nose to study the people against one wall. It was a slightly blurry shot and the photographer had been focusing on the two people in the foreground, but I could just make out the other people against the wall: Travis Pace, James Graham, and Carrie Wyland. They all looked rather grim, and they were all staring at Rusty and Karina.
I pulled the picture out of the plastic. Adam was on my left, so I had to lean over, twisting my right hand, to touch his shoulder. “Was there something between Rusty and Karina at some point?”
“Hmm? Uh—not that I know of. Karina did like him, I think.”
“Might Travis have been jealous? Did he have a thing for Karina? Or was he a good friend of Rusty’s? He seems upset about something in this photo, doesn’t he?”
Adam studied the picture. “They all do, now that you mention it. Not one happy person in that picture except for Key. That’s what we called Karina.”
With a sudden wave of guilt, I sat up and stole a glance at Camilla. Could she read it on my face? It had just been a fleeting suspicion, a moment’s doubt—and surely it was nothing. I put the picture back in the plastic and, from this more normal distance and in the glare of the sun on the page protector, the picture seemed like what it was—a scene from a birthday party.
Camilla looked up, her eyes bright and alert. I knew she could read my mind, so I hastily averted my gaze and turned the page to the next one Adam had marked. This page had an attractive color picture of the Wyland sisters, Jane and Carrie, and it made me gasp.
“What is it?” Sam and Camilla said in unison.
“It’s Carrie and Jane. They look—so loving. So connected. Look how protective Jane seemed, even then.” I held up the picture so that everyone could see what I had seen. Carrie, sitting on a brick wall with the bright waves of Blue Lake behind her, and Jane, standing next to her with an arm slung around her sister. Carrie was looking at the camera, squinting in the sun and smiling shyly at the photographer, but Jane was looking at Carrie, her mouth curled into a fond and indulgent expression.
“Yes, clearly a sister who doted on her younger sibling. Almost as though she were her child. Yet there were only a few years between them, right Adam?” Camilla asked.
Adam had been studying the picture, too, with a rather odd expression. “Hmm? Oh yes, yes, a couple of years.”
Now Camilla’s clever gaze was on him. She always seemed to know where the secrets were. “Adam? Is everything all right?”
“Yes—I had a memory. It’s vague and fuzzy right now. Let me wait until it bobs to the surface.”
This I could certainly understand. My own elusive memory of the murderous driver, if indeed I had such a memory, had not returned.
We all went back to studying our pictures. Sam turned a page in his album and pulled something from the plastic sheath. “Adam? This is a letter or a note. It has your name on it.”
“Oh? I didn’t realize I had put anything like that in there. Let’s see.”
Sam handed it to him, and Adam pulled the missive from its envelope. He read a few lines and his face turned red and rather miserable. I had seen him look this way once before, more than nine months ago, when he’d been forced to admit his love for Camilla in front of me and a restaurant full of people.
Camilla’s voice was gentle. “Adam? Are you all right?”
“Yes.” He folded the letter and tucked it into his shirt pocket. “That shouldn’t have been in the photo album. I’ll file it with my papers later on.”
We went back to our work, but stolen glances at Camilla and Sam told me they were just as curious as I was about the letter, and even more so about Adam’s reaction to it.
I turned another page and found myself looking at some pictures from the Lumberjack or the Mill Wheel. There was Paul Graves with a man I assumed was his father (and he was in fact wearing an apron that said “Timber!” on it). Young Graves was smiling vaguely and seemed to be avoiding eye contact with his father, who was saying something to him. I wondered who had snapped the photo of what seemed to be a private conversation. In another picture was James Graham, handsome and grinning at a young Adam Rayburn. They stood beside a bar full of glistening bottles. James was wearing a button-down shirt and a pair of jeans, and across his chest was a sash that read “Fool for Love.” Young Adam was pointing at the sash and grinning. The picture, perhaps even more so than the one of the Wyland sisters, conveyed the strong bond between the two people who stood so easily together, happy in each other’s company.
Wordlessly I held it up to Adam, who chuckled. “Ah yes. James was so busy then, and he and Camilla were both being so practical about the wedding, that he claimed he wanted no bachelor party at all. I had to surprise him one night at the Mill Wheel. I had one of the girls make that sash, and we had a cake and drinks and such. It wasn’t a very big endeavor, but I think James liked it. As I recall, Camilla arrived the next day.” His eyes grazed Camilla and then looked away again.
Now I was extremely curious. Normally Adam couldn’t get enough of gazing at her, or of drinking in her attention. Today, sorting through the records of his past, he seemed to have struck a vein that caused discomfort. For the second time I had a moment of doubt. Was my image of Adam an illusion? My image of James? Surely Camilla was the person I believed her to be? I cast a quick glance at her, studying her face as she peered at a picture in her hand. She looked elegant, as always, but a bit tired today. She would be turning seventy in October, and I was in the process of planning an extravaganza of a birthday party (in conjunction with Adam). Despite this milestone birthday, I had never thought Camilla looked her age. Her face had few visible wrinkles, and her energy generally matched mine. Since Jane’s visit, though, she hadn’t looked herself, and the summer light harshly delineated the lines around her eyes and mouth.
She looked up at me and narrowed her eyes slightly. She was reading me.
I focused on my work, turning pages and studying faces. I felt Sam stiffening before I heard him gasp. “Camilla,” he said.
“What is it?” She was on her feet and moving toward his chair before Adam and I had finished exchanging a surprised glance. Then we stood as well and moved behind Sam.
He held up a photo that Adam had taken, once more of a group, seemingly at a gathering. Adam leaned in, squinting. “That was the same day. Horace Bick’s birthday. We went out to the pub after the party at someone’s house—Marge’s, maybe.”
“It looks like everyone is having fun,” I said, noting that Marge and Horace were dancing with hilarious expressions, and Travis Pace was deep in conversation with James and Paul Graves.
“Look behind them,” Sam said. “In the booth.”
I peered in and said, “Is that Rusty? And Jane?”
“No,” Camilla said. “It’s Carrie. And she’s crying.”
13
Remember that line in Shakespeare, Camilla? “That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain.”
—From the correspondence of James Graham and Camilla Easton, 1971
DOUG WAS BACK at Graham House, studying the photos that we had found so significant. “There’s something here,” he said. “The question is how to decipher these images.” He looked at Adam, who had seemed unlike himself for the last half hour or so. “There’s nothing you can remember about this day? This event?”
Adam shook his head. “I know it was a party for Horace. I don’t really recall the dramas of those days—who liked whom or who upset whom. Would anyone remember, after forty-odd years?”
Doug’s face looked wise, and a bit worried. “I think someone does.”
I pointed at the picture in his hand, the one in which Rusty sat across from a crying Carrie Wyland. “What about Rusty? He told Camilla that he had special feelings for Carrie. That she was different from the other girls. It would have made a big impression on him if she sat in a private booth with him and told him something that made her cry.”
“You’re right.” Doug tucked the picture carefully into a file folder Camilla had offered him and removed his keys from his pocket. “Time for me to have a chat with the chief.” He started to head for the door, then turned back. “Do you feel well enough to come to Belinda’s party tomorrow? She really wants you there, all of you. But especially you, Lena.”
“I know. I’ll be there.”
Sam came in, holding a bottled water. He and Camilla had been talking in low tones in the kitchen. It had started to bother me how many conversations were conducted out of my hearing range, how many people seemed to be avoiding my gaze.
“We’ll both be there,” Sam said.
Doug turned to Adam. “How about you and Camilla?”
Adam looked up, his expression far aw
ay. “Hmm? Yes. Of course, we’ll attend. Looking forward to the party and the fireworks.”
“Blue Lake does us proud with the fireworks,” Doug said. “You’ve never seen them, have you, Lena? You’ll be amazed.”
“I’m ready to be amazed,” I said, forcing a smile.
Why, in one horrifying moment, had I felt as though I hated them all, every person in that room? The feeling disappeared almost immediately, and then I was left with a horrible, hollow remorse.
Doug waved at all of us and walked to the front door, the tools in his police belt jostling and jangling. I turned away from him in time to see Sam and Camilla exchanging an inscrutable glance. Then Camilla saw my face and said brightly, “I don’t think I can wait any longer—I need to meet these new kittens.”
* * *
• • •
JULY 4TH BROUGHT more hot weather and a slightly overcast sky. Camilla insisted that I rest for most of the day. I did my best to take a makeshift bath, then spent much of the time brooding in my room, petting Lestrade and answering the calls and e-mails of concerned friends and relatives who had just heard about my accident. I was relieved when Sam arrived, late in the afternoon, to drive me over to Belinda’s. Camilla and Adam followed in their own car since they expected to leave the party earlier than “you young people,” as Adam put it.
Belinda’s house actually belonged to her parents, but they had retired in San Diego and they now rented it to her for a reasonable rate. It was a lovely home, not on the lake but with a distant lake view and a multitude of windows, making it feel both airy and bright. She had decorated with a whimsical but elegant style, and we were led on a tour of the place, starting in her plush bedroom, where the queen-sized bed was covered with a white coverlet and pink and red pillows and surrounded (of course) with white wood bookshelves; this room felt like the most comfortable library ever.
“I would spend all my time up here,” I said.