A Dark and Twisting Path

by Julia Buckley

  He slung an arm around me. “You would think. Let’s go face the authorities.” We walked in the house, where Allison was being comforted by a newly arrived John, and Doug was deep in conversation with someone from the coroner’s office.

  Cliff Blake approached us. “You can’t go beyond this point. Allison and John will be staying in a hotel after they answer our questions, and you’ll need to leave after Doug talks to you.”

  I nodded. “Cliff, this is Sam West.” Cliff turned stiffly toward Sam, as though just noticing him there, and said, “Mr. West.” They shook hands. I thought Cliff’s eyes held suspicion now, too, but maybe that was just the way his face looked. “Sam, this is Cliff Blake. He’s Doug’s new partner, from Saint Louis.”

  Sam said, “Lena tells me I have once again been involved in a crime against my will.”

  Cliff looked solemn. “I hope that is not true. Do you possess a silver letter opener with blue stones in the handle, Mr. West?”

  Sam sighed. “You can call me Sam. Yes, I do. Lena gave it to me last month.”

  Doug had finished his conversation, and now he approached us. “Sam,” he said.

  Sam held up a hand in greeting. “Do you have a photograph of the knife in question?”

  “It’s not a knife,” I said.

  Doug tapped his phone a few times and then held a close-up photo of the thing that I presumed was still in the dead man’s chest. “Here it is.”

  “It looks a lot like mine,” Sam said.

  Doug scratched his head with his phone. “Might you have dropped it somewhere, maybe in a place where someone else could have picked it up?”

  “I wish I could say yes,” Sam said. He sent me a helpless look, then switched his attention back to Doug and Cliff. “But it was a gift from Lena which I valued highly, so I kept it in a place of honor on the desk in my office. You’ve seen my desk.”

  Yes, Doug and I had seen it. It was a big, beautiful antique in a lovely room with a view of the woods on the bluff. The weapon had been safely inside Sam’s house.

  “This must be a replica,” I said. “It’s not one of a kind. Someone else could have ordered one.”

  Doug nodded. “We’ll need you to go home and see if yours is there. If not, we have some more questions to ask.”

  Sam shook his head. “I don’t have to go home. Lena mentioned it on the phone, and I went to check in my office. I kept it in a special holder. The holder is still there, but the letter opener is gone.”

  Doug and Cliff exchanged a glance—one of those inscrutable cop things. Then Cliff looked at us. “You have security? An alarm? A camera?”

  Sam brightened slightly. “I did install security, very soon after I got to Blue Lake. I got some—interesting calls and letters back then.”

  I squeezed his arm.

  Cliff persisted. “Any sign that the alarm went off while you were out of town?”

  Sam looked regretful. “I can usually check in with the system on my phone, but it malfunctioned about two days ago. To be honest, I didn’t think much of it. Foolishly I believed that life had quieted down here and I was looking at nothing more than a dead battery. I might have been wrong about that.”

  “What about cameras?” Doug asked.

  “We can check those. As far as I know they were working.”

  “I’ll come later today, if that’s all right,” Doug said.

  “Of course.”

  Doug puffed out his cheeks and consulted something on the screen of his phone before he said, “And just for the record—you didn’t know Eddie Stack?”

  “Is that the guy who’s dead? I’ve never heard the name. I assume I wouldn’t recognize the face, but it’s a small town, so I can’t guarantee that one. He’s not our mail carrier—Lena and I both have a very chatty fellow named Harvey who delivers our mail.” I nodded. This was true. “I’m sorry to hear about this Eddie’s death. I’m even sorrier that someone wanted to link me to it.”

  Cliff was studying Sam closely. Was he assessing the veracity of Sam’s words?

  It looked as though they were finished questioning him for the time being, so I said, “In any case, I’m going to invite Sam to Graham House for now. He can get away from the madness here, and we can talk about it in a safe and friendly environment.”

  “Fine,” Doug said. “We’ll be in touch.”

  “Don’t tell me,” Sam said with a hint of bitterness. “I shouldn’t leave town, right?”

  Doug’s eyes wouldn’t meet ours. “It was my understanding that you just got back.”

  The saddest part of the whole exchange was the sudden look of resignation on Sam’s face.

  * * *

  * * *

  ALLISON AND JOHN joined us on the front porch. John touched my arm, his expression concerned. “Lena, I want to take Allie away from all this, but I have to go back in to work for a couple of hours. I have to make a presentation today.”

  Allison looked proud. “John is next in line to be promoted, and this presentation is important for him.”

  John sent me a beseeching look. “I know this is terrible timing, but—”

  “She can come back to Graham House with us. Camilla needs to hear what happened, and she’ll want to comfort Sam and Allison with some of Rhonda’s cooking. No problem—take as long as you need at work.”

  “Thanks, Lena,” John said. “Sam, I’ll see you later.”

  “John.” Sam nodded.

  John hugged his wife, then jogged off to his car. Allison sighed.

  “You’re still madly in love, aren’t you?” I asked her.

  “Yup. And thanks for saying I can come over. Shall we all ride together?”

  Sam pointed. “I have my car. I’ll meet you there.”

  “Don’t stop off at your house yet,” I said. “If someone’s been lurking around there, I don’t want you going in alone.”

  Sam looked amused, but he nodded. “All right, Lena.” He kissed my forehead gently and a few butterflies began to fly around in my midsection. “My protector.”

  “Yes, I am. And apparently you need one.”

  He gave me a wry look. “Meet you there.” He turned and headed for his car. Allison’s rude neighbor was staring at Sam while pretending to trim his perfectly trimmed hedges. I glared at him, but he refused to notice me.

  “What’s going on?” Allison said. “Why are you looking at Mr. Hendricks like you want to murder him?”

  “I’ll tell you in the car,” I said, grabbing her hand. For a moment I felt transported back to high school, when Allison and I had experienced many things hand in hand: walking through the doors of our first all-school dance; braving our first haunted house; moving on trembling legs toward the dreaded gym class balance beam.

  I squeezed her hand more tightly, and she sent me a grateful glance. “I’m glad you’re my friend, and I’m even gladder that you moved to Blue Lake,” she said. “I can’t imagine dealing with this without you.”

  “I’m glad I’m here, too,” I said. As we walked down the cobbled street to my car, I looked back at Allison’s house and saw Cliff’s face in the doorway, watching us as we left the scene of the crime.

  * * *

  * * *

  CAMILLA’S FACE WAS grim as we sat at her kitchen table and told her, over coffee and apple pie, about the body at Allison’s, the tiny sword, and the probable break-in at Sam’s.

  Her eyes were compassionate. “I’m so sorry, my dear. Lena and I know just how you feel, since we have seen a body in our backyard, as well. I can tell you that the memory doesn’t leave, but it does become bearable.”

  It was true; I could sometimes look at that particular stretch of sand at the foot of the bluff and not remember the dead man who had lain there.

  “I just can’t imagine who would kill Eddie, of all people,” Allison said. “I mea
n, he could be obnoxious sometimes, and gossipy, and he was really a terrible mailman . . .” Her eyes filled with tears and Sam patted her arm. “But he was just a regular person. We all have our flaws. And sometimes Eddie was really nice. When I was sick once he gave me some cough drops out of his bag because I didn’t have the energy to go to Bick’s and get my own. It was sweet. Oh, what his poor wife must be going through. They just married last year, did you know? One of those later-in-life marriages.”

  This silenced us all for a moment.

  I poured some more coffee into her cup, then Sam’s. “We need to put this out of our minds for a while,” I said.

  Sam clearly wasn’t ready to do that. “We seem to be overlooking the very obvious fact that this is the third murder this town has seen within a few months. Would it be so very unlikely to assume that this death could have something to do with one or both of the previous ones?”

  Camilla frowned down at her plate, but said nothing.

  Allison, wide-eyed, said, “But what possible link could there be? There were two separate murderers for two separate murders. There were individual motives. This seems like—something new.”

  “I’m not so sure,” Sam said, his brow wrinkled with thought.

  “What bothers me even more than the dead body is Sam’s knife at the scene,” Camilla said. “That speaks of intention. Of premeditation.”

  “Doug will get to the bottom of this,” I said. “For sure. We need to let him and Cliff go after this psycho and put him in jail, and then we’ll all feel safer and happier.”

  This did not affect the generally morose mood around the table, so I changed the subject. “Listen, everyone. My dad is coming to town.”

  Allison brightened, and Sam came out of his reverie.

  “Your dad? Oh my gosh, I haven’t seen him in years!” Allison cried. “When is he coming?”

  “In a couple of days. He wants to see you, Allie, and he wants to meet Camilla and Sam. And he’s going to throw a birthday party for me. That hasn’t happened since I was a girl, but I don’t care. It will be nice to have something happy to celebrate. Between poor Baby Athena and this murder, Blue Lake is under a terrible dark cloud. I want to see the sun again.”

  Sam studied me in surprise. “When is your birthday? I never even asked. I didn’t miss it, did I?”

  “No. It’s on May thirteenth. I share a birthday with Daphne du Maurier—one of Camilla’s heroes.”

  Camilla clapped. “Oh, Lena, that is perfect!! You have Gothic fiction in your blood.”

  “I take it this Daphne woman is a writer?” Sam asked.

  I stared at him. “She wrote Rebecca? The House on the Strand? Jamaica Inn?”

  Sam and Allison exchanged a wry glance, and Sam said, “Clearly I am a philistine. But I am very glad I haven’t missed your special day.”

  I slid my hand into his. “I know your birthday, because you have a Wikipedia entry that I happened to read when I first met you and became obsessed with your story.”

  “You and the whole world.”

  I turned to Allison and Camilla. “Sam is a summer boy. He was born on June twenty-first.”

  “I share a birthday with a famous writer, too,” Sam said, sipping his coffee.

  “Oh? Who?”

  “Sartre.” Sam grinned at me.

  Allison looked disappointed. “You mean that French guy that always wrote about life being meaningless and stuff?”

  “Yes. Lena and I discussed Sartre on the day I met her.” Sam’s eyes held affection and something more.

  “We did,” I agreed. “And at the time I thought Sam was just about the rudest man I had ever met.”

  Camilla laughed. “You two were destined to fall in love. It’s as predictable as the novels that we read.”

  The doorbell rang just as Sam’s phone buzzed on the table.

  Allison said, “That will be John,” and she got up to answer the door. I studied Sam’s face as he glanced at his phone; his brow furrowed, and then he looked at me and said, “I have to take this.”

  He slipped out of the room and walked down Camilla’s long hallway.

  I pursed my lips at Camilla. “Ten bucks says that’s Victoria on the phone. I know she calls him all the time.”

  Camilla’s eyes were sympathetic. “He wants to be supportive. He’s in a difficult position.”

  “I know.” I sighed noisily. “He’s always in a difficult position.”

  She leaned in. “Listen. Before Allison comes back, we need to talk about this dead man.”

  I shook my head. “Doug is on it. For all we know, it’s some drug deal gone wrong.”

  “A drug deal in which a random criminal decided to frame Sam West?”

  That silenced me.

  Camilla’s expression was hard. “We know who this is, don’t we, Lena?”

  “What?” I could feel my eyes bulging with surprise. Allison was coming back, chatting with her husband, so I leaned in and hissed, “You think this is Nikon?”

  Then Allison and John were with us, and Allison was talking brightly. She was visibly happier than when she had left her house and the terrible scene there. “Camilla, thank you so much for hosting me. Let me help to clear away some of this coffee stuff.” She gathered some empty mugs and brought them to the sink.

  “You and John are welcome to spend the night,” Camilla said. “Sometimes a bit of distance helps.”

  Allison returned to the table and gave her a spontaneous hug. “You are so sweet! But John’s mom and dad have a house here in town that they rent out to summer visitors. It’s not open for the season yet, so we’re welcome to use it whenever. We’ll stay there until things are . . . resolved.”

  John put a protective arm around her. “It will be nice, like a little vacation. We haven’t had one of those since our honeymoon.”

  “You must come again,” Camilla said, rising and extending her hand. “I still get to see Allison at our monthly knitting group, but John, I rarely get to talk to you.”

  “We’ll be back for sure,” John said, clasping her hand in his. “When things settle down.”

  Camilla looked at me. “Poor Lena. We’ve been telling her that since she got here last October. As soon as things settle down. And then something else happens.”

  Allison’s smile dimmed. “I guess that’s what life is. Just one thing after another.”

  I forced a smile of my own. “Good things, too, Allie. Put the bad out of your mind. Go have a nice dinner with your husband and stay in your resort home. That doesn’t sound terrible at all.”

  Allison’s expression was vulnerable; she was still in her pink nurse’s scrubs, and her blonde ponytail was looking a bit scruffy. “No, I guess not,” she said.

  John kissed the top of his wife’s head and said, “Thanks again, Camilla and Lena. We’ll see you soon.”

  We went to the door with them and waved as they moved down the steps. Then I turned back to Camilla. “Why do you think it’s Nikon?”

  Sam appeared at the end of the hallway; he reached us in a few long strides. “Why do you think what is Nikon?”

  Camilla waved us back into her office, where we took our familiar spots: Camilla behind her desk, I in my purple chair, and Sam in a green armchair that he pulled over from its place under the window. Camilla folded her hands and looked at us both in turn. “Sam, you must have noticed the particular personality of this crime. It’s almost—petulant. Taking something of yours and shoving it into a dead body. Yes, I am assuming the body was already dead, because I saw that letter opener when Lena bought it for you; it would be a very small and imprecise murder weapon. Look at the crime, either way: it’s horrible, it’s cruel, but it’s also petty.”

  “And his motive would be . . . ?”

  “In his mind, you’ve taken his wife away.”

  Sam�
�s eyes widened. “How could anyone, even an insane man, think that I did anything to Nikon? I am the victim and always have been.”

  I shook my head. “Camilla’s right. That’s not how he thinks. Sam, the man tried once before to frame you for murder! Why? Because he didn’t want anyone looking for Victoria. He traveled here, planted evidence, went to a whole lot of trouble—just to make sure you were put behind bars.”

  “Doesn’t this look similar?” Camilla said. “Nikon is at large. He could be anywhere, including here. He could also have someone in Blue Lake who is willing to do his bidding. He has a whole lot of money.”

  Sam shook his head. “I guess I was harboring an illusion, despite Vic’s sufferings. I just didn’t think he was my problem anymore.”

  “Maybe he’s not,” I said. “Maybe it isn’t him.” But now that Camilla had said it out loud, I couldn’t imagine anyone but Nikon Leandros Lazos being behind this murder.

  “It’s him,” said Camilla, studying her desk blotter with a thoughtful expression.

  Sam thought about it for a moment. “Why the mailman, then? Why that poor guy?”

  “Maybe he just needed a body to put the knife in,” I said, horrifying myself.

  “You need to tell Doug,” Camilla said. “He may already be thinking these thoughts, but we need to compare notes.”

  I thought about Doug Heller and the crime scene and Cliff Blake. “Cliff seemed suspicious,” I said. “I don’t know why. At first he seemed very sympathetic about your whole story.”

  “I’m used to suspicion,” Sam said. “I’ve learned not to take it personally.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, but he held up a hand. “I have to go back to my place and look at my security footage. Will you come along?”

  I looked at Camilla, who waved me on. “Go. We’re not going to get any writing done while we’re worrying over this new death. Let me know what you find.”

  Sam and I stood, and Camilla said, “Do tell Doug our suspicions. And if Cliff is there—well, just tell Doug. We don’t know Cliff. He’ll have to earn his way into our inner circle.”