A Dark and Stormy Murder (A Writer's Apprentice Mystery)

by Julia Buckley

  I studied her attractive face, slightly freckled, and her wide and curious green eyes. I was being ridiculous; surely she had no connection to the mysterious Ray. Except that—Clay. Her husband’s name was Clay. Was that what I had heard whispered in the darkness? Had Clay Waldrop been there? Had Lane been there, as well? Had Martin Brill been reacting, not to the name Ray, but the fact that I had gotten it wrong? He had admitted he knew Clay, and also a Ray. What if Clay were indeed the mastermind?

  There on the gray and windy bluff, my suspicion trumped my budding friendship. I faced her with my hands on my hips. “They’re here because someone was trespassing last night. I ran into them and they knocked me down.” I pointed to my cheek, and Lane seemed to grow pale. “So I have to go talk to Doug Heller. I’ll catch up with you another time, Lane.”

  “Oh, that’s cool. I’m sorry to hear that, Lena. I’ll text you soon, okay?”

  I nodded, and she got back into her car, did a U-turn, and exited the driveway.

  Heller approached. “What did you find?” I asked.

  “Plenty. Are you okay?”

  “I think Lane there might be involved. Because I know Dave Brill is. I saw him at the coffee shop, and he smelled the same as he did last night. And then I mentioned that I lived at Camilla’s, and he got a panicky look on his face. Then he made a phone call, and ten minutes later Lane came tearing up here, asking if I could go somewhere with her.”

  Heller put a hand on my shoulder. “Take a deep breath, Lena. We’re on top of this. If they’re involved, we’ll get them.”

  “Why—what did you find?”

  “Another entrance, and another section of room that abuts your little hidden book room. This one has something special, though. And this is probably the real secret that everyone has been talking about. Come here, I’ll show you.”

  He led me to the side of the house and pointed out a nearly undetectable handle built into the gray siding. “Don’t touch,” he said. “They’re dusting for prints. You can just peek in there.” I peered into a narrow little room, similar in shape to the one inside. “So?” I said. “This is nothing special. And there’s not much in here, aside from what look like—what—gardening tools?”

  “Right. But look to your right. See that dark square on the floor? It’s a door.”

  “A door to what? The ground?” Then it hit me. “No! A tunnel?”

  “You got it. A little dirt path that goes right under your backyard and straight to the lake. Handy, right? Explains why the boat you saw Jonas board was right there. They could take their product, hop on the boat, and drive to whatever dock was closest to their customers.”

  “Customers for—?”

  “Drugs. That little tunnel houses a tiny laboratory for packaging and processing—mainly coke, we think. That’s what we found in plentiful amounts.”

  “Cocaine?”

  “Yes. And a backpack full of money. That might explain your wayward fifty-dollar bill.”

  “So—they’ve been coming here at night to run a drug ring?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh my God! This is why we didn’t hear them, whenever the dogs would react to something. They weren’t next door, they were underground!”

  “Pretty soundproof, as far as we can tell.”

  I shook my head in disbelief. “Is Camilla okay?”

  “She’s fine. She took the dogs in. She says she’s going to make some tea.”

  “So how are you going to catch them? If they know you found their stash, they’re all going to run.”

  “I’ll round them up right now. We want Brill, maybe Lane and Clayton Waldrop—but we need the big man. If that’s Clay, great. Then we might have everyone we need. Hang on, I have to send out some cruisers.” He walked away, talking into his phone.

  Still reeling, I walked into the kitchen, where Camilla stood pouring tea from a china pot into flowered cups. “Sit down, dear. I swear, when I hired you this was still a boring old house in which nothing much had ever happened. Your arrival was apparently like the shaking of a hornet’s nest. Or at least it happened parallel to the shaking.”

  I sighed and sat down in a chair. “I don’t blame you at all—but what a very strange week this has been,” I said. “I feel so tense, I find myself suspecting everyone of wrongdoing. Speak of the devil,” I said, as Adam Rayburn loomed up in the doorway.

  “Hello, all. Doug Heller said I could come in. Camilla, are you all right?”

  “I’m fine, Adam. I’m learning that I am more of a resilient person than I once imagined. But of course I have a strong young roommate who inspires me.” She handed me a cup of tea, and I added milk and sugar. “What brings you here?” Camilla asked. “And would you like tea?”

  “No, not today. I have to get to work, but I just wanted to check in on you because of the, uh—proximity of Martin’s murder to your place. But here I find that Doug is making great strides in finding the perpetrators, is that right?”

  Rayburn leaned forward, his eyes wide and curious. He was making me feel as paranoid as Lane had done.

  “He seems to be on the right track,” I said. “I’m not sure how much we’re at liberty to disclose right now.”

  “Of course. Of course.” Rayburn grew brisk. “Camilla, you promised you would come out to the restaurant this week for a meal. Would Thursday suit you?”

  “Oh, my. Yes, I think so. I’ll check my calendar and call you. Thank you so much for the invitation, Adam.” She poured her own tea, holding the pot gracefully in her slender hands.

  He gave her a long and rather strange look, then nodded at me. “Well, good-bye, then. Let me know if you need anything.”

  After he was gone, I took a sip of tea and looked at Camilla, whose face grew thoughtful. “Camilla, is it just me, or does everyone in town seem to be showing up in your yard lately?”

  “Day and night,” she added.

  “I think I need a distraction. I’m going back to my yacht research.”

  “Wonderful. If you ever need the library for that, it’s less than a mile away. Turn right at the foot of the bluff instead of left, and right again on Elderberry.”

  “Thanks. I’ll start with my laptop, but I might just go there to clear my head.” I finished my tea, thanked Camilla, and made my way upstairs.

  Back in my haven of a room, which felt toasty warm today—perhaps Camilla had cranked up the heat—I found no Lestrade, but a welcoming desk and a magical genie known as a laptop computer.

  I opened my notes folder, where I had already started several files for yachts of different eras and for general observations about yachting culture, as well as the speeds at which yachts could travel on the navigable inland waterways of Europe. Generally, yachts were not fast. For Camilla’s purposes, however, the yacht didn’t need to be—it just had to provide an avenue of escape, of traveling to a new world.

  I tapped a fingernail on my keyboard for a minute, trying to think of specific search terms. I had already tried “yachts of the 60s” and “yachting culture past and present.” I had also simply Googled “yachts” and “yachtsmen.” The latter had provided a colorful list of names and faces from the early twentieth century to the present—names like Vladislav Bogomolov, Zephyr Kalahalios, N. Leandros Lazos, Albrecht Iverson. It was like reading names of Olympics participants. I had found only one woman yacht owner of note—Helen “Flip” Flannery—who had struck oil on her tiny retirement property in 1974 and promptly cashed in for a life on the water.

  I typed in “yachting life” and then clicked “Images.” More of the same: big yachts, small yachts, old and new yachts. On a sudden whim I typed “yachts” and “Nikon.” If I expected some amazing solution to the disappearance of Sam’s wife, I was disappointed. What I got were yachts. I scrolled through these, noting down the ones that seemed vintage and the ones that seemed to be from the present day.
A large and colorful picture caught my eye; I clicked it and saw that it was from a magazine called Yachting Life. The article was about a yacht festival in the Greek Islands at which people adorned themselves and their boats and sailed from place to place, eating and drinking and making merry. As bacchanals went, it looked to be as carnal as Mardi Gras and as flamboyant as Carnival. The pictures, though, were beautiful to observe, and I clicked through a slideshow of them, drawn in despite the ridiculous display of wealth. Here were men and women sharing champagne in the moonlight, surrounded by tiny Italian lights; here was a man leaping into the water in the briefest of bathing suits, looking fit, tanned, and trim. Here was a woman sitting on the edge of a yacht, her thick hair blowing in the wind, her summery smile lazy and indulged. She was lovely and exotic, from her cloud of hair to the mole on her chin, which almost seemed drawn on to add an aura of distinction.

  I pushed my computer away with a sigh. Why had I typed “Nikon”? It was a separate issue, a problem for the police, and certainly not a part of my research for Camilla. The fact that I had done so was evidence of my distraction.

  I took out my phone and checked my messages; perhaps Sam had answered my text from the previous night. I had two messages: one from my father, and one from Sam West. I read my father’s first, suddenly afraid to read Sam’s. My dad was simply checking in, asking me to call when I got a chance. Tabitha had loved my card.

  I clicked on Sam’s message and read: My lawyer tells me that my arrest is imminent. Don’t stop believing in me, Lena.

  Stunned, I sat for a moment, listening to the wind hurl itself against the pane. Lestrade pushed my door all the way open and wandered in to wash his paws in a single beam of sunlight.

  How could they arrest him when it wasn’t clear what had happened? How could they haul a man in for murder when there was no body? But of course it had been done before, and the public was seemingly clamoring for Sam West’s punishment. What a monster society could become when it concentrated its hate on one individual.

  “Dammit,” I said. I ran to my bed and leaped on it, then lay facedown, defeated. I felt absolutely helpless. What, really, could I do for him, except believe him?

  I recalled the last moment I had seen him, right before Doug Heller and his associate had barged into the house. He had been on the verge of telling me something; he had said, “Lena,” with an urgent look. What had he been about to say?

  A phone rang in a distant part of the house; it was Camilla’s landline. Curious, I moved away from my desk and went downstairs, leaving Lestrade to his bath. Camilla stood at her desk, nodding as she listened to the caller. “Yes, I understand. Wonderful. That will be quite a relief. No—I’ll ask Bob Dawkins and his son to take care of it today, before night falls.” She listened, then laughed. “Yes, his son is horrible,” she agreed.

  Then she turned to me. “Doug says that Clayton and Lane Waldrop both have an alibi for last night. They were at a family wedding party until two in the morning. They were quite surprised to be called in, but are cooperating fully.”

  “Huh,” I said. I was relieved, because I had not wanted to believe that Lane was involved, and yet somehow I still felt suspicious. The timing of Dave Brill’s phone call and her careening ride up the hill had been more than coincidental, I was sure. What was Lane hiding? Was it only the “secret” that kept her returning to Graham House?

  Camilla didn’t seem to notice my hesitation. “Dave Brill is another story. Doug is convinced that he is involved, and he is detaining him at the station, but Brill won’t say a word and has summoned a lawyer.”

  “How’s he paying for the lawyer?” I asked.

  “A good question. Maybe whoever is still at large will be helping with that.”

  “Huh,” I said again.

  Camilla leaned back on her desk. “Meanwhile, I need to call Bob Dawkins and arrange to have the disgusting drug facility sealed off. Or padlocked or some such thing. Doug’s people are confident that there are only two entrances—one at each end of the tunnel. My husband would be horrified to know his house had been used for something so sordid.”

  “It’s terrible—and unbelievable—that they could do it right under our noses. With the dogs inside, your well-trained dogs, and yet somehow they barely ever made a sound. Until the last couple of nights. Maybe they usually entered the tunnel from the lake side, in which case you wouldn’t hear anything and the dogs wouldn’t be awakened. For whatever reason, in the last couple of weeks they must have occasionally entered from the side of your house. Or exited there. Something that would make enough noise that the dogs would be alerted.”

  “Are you suspicious of something in particular?”

  “No—it just all seems strange, starting with the death of Martin Jonas. Assuming he was a member of this group, this drug gang, why would they choose to kill him? I mean, what motive would they have? Was he about to turn them in?”

  “Or could he have somehow cheated someone out of their purchase, and so they hunted him down and killed him?” Camilla said.

  “He was so close to the house, and to the boat. So of course they must have confronted him either going into the tunnel or coming out of it.”

  Camilla paled and held up her hand. “Doug did tell me something about that. Apparently they found blood inside the tunnel, near the lake doorway—entrance—whatever one might call it. The theory is that perhaps Martin was shot in the tunnel, but that he escaped long enough to run a few yards down the beach.”

  “Poor guy. And yet he chose to hang out with those people—Brill and whomever else might have been involved. He made bad choices; deadly choices.”

  With a sigh, Camilla nodded her agreement. “What surprises me is that they’re having such trouble tracing the boat. The people involved in this don’t seem smart enough to make those kinds of arrangements—an elaborate computer trail and an alias.”

  “No, they don’t,” I agreed. “So who could have been their connection? Are you thinking there’s some kind of local mastermind? Or at least some friend or family member pulling the strings?”

  “I don’t know that Martin had many friends or acquaintances in this town. His family is in Boone Lake—about an hour from here.”

  “There’s the restaurant, though. He worked there, so he knows people there. Waiters, waitresses—”

  “And Adam,” Camilla said.

  The room was silent as we both thought about this.

  I said, “Adam does come over here fairly often, doesn’t he?”

  Camilla nodded. “And he wanted that special tour of the house. He even jokingly asked me if it had any secret passageways.”

  “And yet—it couldn’t be Adam—could it?”

  Camilla’s face looked briefly sad and vulnerable, then determined. “He invited me for dinner at the restaurant. I think I’ll go tonight. You shall be my guest, Lena. Let’s ask Adam Rayburn some questions.”

  “I’m with you. Let me run upstairs and change.”

  14

  “Hans is coming with a car. He’ll leave it at the place with the twelve pines. Then you must run.”

  “Not you?”

  “I’ll take you to the border, and we’ll contact the police.”

  “You won’t come with me?”

  He studied her face as though memorizing its features. “If only I could, Johanna.”

  —from The Salzburg Train

  GREEN GLASS HIGHWAY seemed to glitter in the last rays of the setting sun, and Wheat Grass stood like a stylized piece of driftwood on the shores of Blue Lake, its beige walls glowing artfully with landscaping lights, its tall windows glinting. Pots of purple mums sat in each window well, and as we walked through the large doorway, I spied a stone fireplace in the back of the large main room, flames crackling behind diners who were focusing on their plates and their generous glasses of wine.

  “Nice place,” I murmu
red to Camilla.

  “Yes. It’s been a Blue Lake staple for years. James and I used to come here once a week.”

  “So you’ve known Adam a long time,” I said. A waiter appeared to claim Camilla’s attention.

  “Two for dinner?” he asked smoothly.

  Camilla nodded, and the white-shirted man led us to a table by a window, blue now with night and flickering with candles that sat on the ledge. “This is beautiful, Camilla. I don’t recall ever being in a restaurant like this.”

  “It’s refined, but not so expensive that an average family can’t eat out here. I never know how Adam does it.” We settled into our chairs, and she said, “Or maybe I do. I don’t know anymore. Everyone in town seems sinister to me these days.”

  “I was thinking that same thing this afternoon! Perhaps we are paranoid.” I looked around at the other diners. They were strangers; who knew what secrets lurked behind their doors? The idea cast a pall over my thoughts, and the room seemed to grow darker.

  Camilla was clearly in a similar frame of mind. “And yet a man is dead, and his body was in our backyard. We didn’t imagine poor Martin lying out there in the rain.”

  The waiter appeared again. “Good evening, ladies. I’m Grant, and I’ll be your waiter this evening. Here’s a pitcher of our famous cucumber water. Try it and you’ll be gasping for more.” He grinned at us with extremely white teeth, and I wondered if he were an aspiring actor.

  “Thank you,” I said. “May I also have a Diet Coke?”

  “Sure thing. And for you, Ms. Graham?”

  “Oh, my, you know my name. Just the water is fine. Have I met you, Grant?”

  “No, ma’am, but I’ve read all your books and I am a fan! I recognized you from the book jacket.”

  I leaned toward him slightly, pleased to find another Graham fan. “What’s your favorite book?”