A Dark and Twisting Path

by Julia Buckley

  “Thanks. This is amazing work for only a day on the job.”

  She shook her head, dismissing this. “Okay. Now. I have something to show you about our friend Nikon. Check out this picture I found—this is like pure gold, because you just don’t find much personal stuff on him. I think this was taken at a relative’s wedding.”

  She handed me the photo and I saw that it was the entire Lazos clan, grouped around Nikon’s mother, Ariana, and his father, Aristotle. The two sat, proud and straight, while their eight children stood at attention around them; they all wore white.

  Nikon was obvious and the most arresting. As the oldest child he stood directly behind his parents, leaning forward slightly with the arrogant, amused expression of a man who would never want for anything. Next were two women, seemingly the next oldest, then two more boys, then another three girls. All of the children had dark hair and dark eyes.

  “They’re like weird clones of one another,” I said.

  “Strong family resemblance,” Belinda agreed. “Of course this is an old photo—about twenty years. Both parents are now dead. Lazos is fifty-three, but he was thirty when this picture was taken.”

  “Poor Victoria. I can’t imagine any woman who could resist that man if he applied all of his charm. And I say this as one who despises Nikon Lazos.”

  “Yeah, he’s handsome, all right. And look at the younger brothers—the Nikons junior. It’s like the parents kept using the same recipe for making children.”

  I studied the picture carefully. “What do all these other Lazos people do? Wouldn’t you think the Feds would be all over them?”

  “I think they are. All the brothers and sisters lead pretty low-key lives. They’re all rich, of course. But they’re a tight family. I read an article about them in the New York Times that said no gossip about the Lazos clan has ever made it out of Greece. They probably own the whole country.”

  I pointed at the photo. “Look at this sister—she’s holding a baby. They’re probably all married, right? With families of their own. Interesting that Nikon didn’t have children until Victoria.”

  “Yeah, I wondered about that. I mean, he seems like a giant playboy. But Doug said the woman he spoke to—his first wife—said that they had tried and couldn’t. I guess you all spoke to her, right? That’s how you knew you were on the right track about Victoria.”

  I sighed. “Yes, we spoke to Grace months ago. I wonder how she’s doing now. She seemed happy and serene with her new husband. But she did warn us about Nikon’s charisma and how he could get people to do things for him.” I looked back at the photo. “Anyway, this baby looks a lot like Athena. It could be Athena. Victoria’s baby really favors her father’s side in the looks department. That seems unfair to Victoria. It’s like he got absolutely everything, even the resemblance.”

  Our soup came, and we leaned back to let Carly set it down. When she left, Belinda said, “How is that going, anyway? Do they have any leads?”

  “I don’t know what Doug is doing, but I know that the other agencies don’t communicate with him. He’s just a small-town cop to them, and yet he broke literally every aspect of this case.”

  “Thanks to us,” Belinda said.

  “Yeah. Maybe the two of us should find Athena. Poor little kid must miss her mom.”

  Belinda smiled. “I’ve been working on it.”

  I leaned in. “Do tell.”

  “Everyone’s focused on Nikon and Victoria and the baby. But what about the driver? The man who stole the child? Who was he? How did Victoria happen to hire him? And how did he end up on Nikon’s payroll? So I’ve been looking into him.”

  “Wait—I remember his name from Jake Elliott’s article—Leonard Warren?”

  “Leonard Wilson. Known locally as Len. He’s from Indianapolis, and I guess he had started his own car company back in 2005. Nikon got to him, paid him off through one of his minions, and had someone follow Victoria West’s travel plans. When he learned she was flying to Indy, he figured she would be hiring a car to take her to Blue Lake. He planted Leonard Wilson at the airport and gave him money to pay off whatever other driver showed up for her. Lots of money, I’m guessing.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “Some of it was written up in the paper; some I hunted down through his contacts.”

  “Wow, Belinda! You should be a cop.”

  “That’s what Doug tells me.”

  I sipped some soup out of my spoon. “So poor Victoria walked into another trap. She’s not a foolish woman, and yet people tricked her twice in her life, and both times she lost something valuable. First her freedom, then her child.”

  “I’m going to keep looking into Leonard Wilson. There might be something there, some connection, that can help us find out where they took Athena.”

  “It’s a good idea. You never know what the authorities are pursuing. Maybe they think some of these things are unimportant.”

  For a time we were quiet. I stared at the hypnotic fountain, and Belinda absently studied a pot of marigolds. We finished our soup, and Carly brought our sandwiches. I took a few bites of my sandwich and then said, “So what was the present?”

  Belinda had been about to take another bite of her sandwich, but she paused. “What present?”

  “That Doug left under your windshield wiper. What was in it?”

  She laughed, then batted her lashes at me. “It was a notebook that said ‘Investigator’s Journal.’ I’ve been using it, too.”

  “How perfect,” I said, and we laughed while Cupid smiled at us with a whimsical, carefree expression.

  * * *

  * * *

  WHEN I DROPPED Belinda back at the library, Darla was in front, helping a patron with a cane walk down the ramp. She waved at Belinda, then saw me in my car and waved eagerly. I waved back, summoning up a smile. I wasn’t sure why I couldn’t be friendlier to Darla; something about her just made me feel defensive, and yet I felt sorry for her, as well.

  As I was about to pull out, I got a phone call. I slid the screen over and said, “Hello?”

  “Hey, honey,” said my father. “Tabby and I think Meridien Springs is terrific! But we’ll be home by dinner and we want to take you to Adam’s restaurant to pay you back for last night. You and Sam treated us to a really nice evening.”

  “Dinner at Wheat Grass? That sounds nice. I was just telling—I was just saying that all I seem to do is go to restaurants.” No need to tell my father I had dialogues with my cat.

  “Nonsense. You can ask Camilla to join us, if you want. Wear something really nice—we’re going to make it a fancy evening.”

  This made me laugh. My mother and father and I had invented “fancy evenings” back when I was a little girl and saw a Grace Kelly movie. I had decided that I wanted to wear a dress like one of the many she wore in the film, so my parents decided we would be fancy once a month. The idea had died out long ago, but apparently my father was going to resurrect it as a form of nostalgia.

  “Okay, you’re on,” I said. After I hung up, though, I remembered I really had nothing that would allow for this sort of dress-up game. As I had realized with some chagrin the previous evening, I was a casual-wardrobe person, and as someone who had only recently started getting a regular salary, I still had a limited number of items in my closet.

  But I did have some money now, and suddenly I was yearning for a Grace Kelly dress the way I had when I was a kid. My car started turning onto Violet Street before I had even made the conscious decision to visit a realm I had never previously entered.

  I was going to venture into Sasha’s.

  Sasha’s, Allison assured me, was the place to get elegant clothing in Blue Lake. She said it was mainly for the country club set (and Blue Lake did have a country club), and that she had only gone there to look for bridesmaids’ dresses.

  “It’s great,
but kind of scary, and Sasha looks and acts like royalty, so you feel like you should be bowing to her all the time. I don’t even know what country she’s from. She sounds like a fortune-teller from the movies,” Allison had enthused in one of our Saturday talk sessions.

  Now I looked at the front of Sasha’s, a brick building with a blue door, and summoned my courage. “I can be a country club person. I can talk to royalty,” I said.

  I got out and climbed the steps to find my Grace Kelly dress.

  10

  They went to the museum gala in Athens, convinced they would find their nemesis and the answers to their questions. As they moved among the glittering gowns and costly champagne, they felt a growing sense of menace.

  —From Death at Delphi

  THE INTERIOR OF Sasha’s smelled like new clothes and expensive perfume. I moved tentatively across the polished wood floor and tried to look as though I belonged with the two glamorous-looking women who expertly flipped through the hanging dresses.

  I touched a black gown with silver piping, and a woman appeared next to me like a genie. She was tall, blonde, and perfect, with hair that curved around her head in a smooth helmet. “You are looking for what?” she asked, smiling at me while her eyes assessed me.

  “Oh—uh. Something fancy. I don’t normally wear dresses, but I’m going to something elegant tonight, and I wanted to—branch out.”

  “Mm-hmm.” She nodded with a wise expression, as though she and I both knew a secret. “Don’t even touch that. Black is not your color. It would wash you out, terrible.” She had an accent, but I couldn’t determine what kind.

  “I never really thought about—” I started, but she had clamped a hand on my arm and started leading me across the floor, trailing the scent of her lovely perfume.

  “Here we go. I have your size—six, yes? Maybe eight. And your colors. You are gold tones. Gold, bronze, brown, tangerine, taupe, yes? Even cream and caramel. Oh yes!” She was gathering dresses and putting them over one arm. “I have you all figured out. Your name is?”

  “Lena.”

  “Lena, lovely. Your brown silky hair, and this pale skin. We can draw out the color with these looks.” She led me to a fitting room and hung the dresses on a hook. “You try on, then come out to me, then we decide.”

  I went in, half hypnotized by her strong scent and even stronger personality, and she closed the curtain with a swoosh. The first dress was a soft knit in a cream color, and it clung to my curves in a flattering way. I liked it, but it didn’t seem the type of dress I’d wear for dinner with my father. The second dress was a one-piece knee-length gown with a chocolate brown slip and a gold scalloped sheath overlay. It was elegant, beautiful, and somehow perfect. I wanted a second opinion, so I opened the curtain and walked out, only to be swooped upon by Sasha. “Oh yes! You see? Look in this mirror here. Much bigger glass. Look at your face. See how this color brings out the rich skin tone? See how the silk hugs your form? And the scalloped gold neckline—you don’t need jewelry! This is like Cleopatra. Just wear gold earrings. You have shoes?”

  “Yes. Well, no.”

  “What size?”

  “Six.”

  “You are so tiny.” She walked away into an anteroom I couldn’t see. The women in the store had stopped shopping and were simply watching. I would have done it, too. Sasha was fascinating.

  “It does look great,” one of the women said. “You should buy it.”

  “I’m going to,” I said.

  Sasha returned with a few pairs of shoes, and I tried them on. We settled on a pair of bronze sandals that suited the style of the dress and made my legs look somehow longer. “Ah,” I said.

  Sasha smiled at me smugly. “You take dress and shoes. You want more dresses?”

  I thought about this. I had never had a professional stylist at my disposal. “I think I would like to try on the rest. And”—I looked at the women, who quickly turned away and feigned disinterest—“do you have any lingerie?”

  * * *

  * * *

  I LEFT SASHA’S feeling both euphoria and guilt. I had spent more on clothing than I had ever done in my life, but I also had a nice new wardrobe and a better sense of what looked good on me.

  The Blue Lake sidewalks were bright and sunny today, and I admired the storefronts and flowerpots on this block that I rarely visited. I was passing a little bookstore called The Hidden Cellar, which had an outside rack displaying newspapers, magazines, and paperbacks. A headline jumped out at me from the front row, and I gasped. It said, “West and London Forge Their Future.” I moved closer; it was a tabloid paper, but one with a wide readership. The byline of the story belonged to someone named Joseph Williams. Not only had I never heard of this person, it sounded distinctly like a pseudonym to me. Doug was right: there were reporters hiding in this town, trying to cash in on the whole Sam West story. There was a picture of Sam and me with the headline—we were standing on Sam’s front lawn and looking into each other’s eyes. I recognized it as a moment that had occurred two days earlier, on his private property. Fuming, I went to my car.

  I unlocked the driver’s door with my remote control, but before I even got to the car I saw the envelope under the windshield wiper. My first thought was that Doug had decided to leave some sort of gift for me, as he had done for Belinda, and I was alarmed. Belinda would get the wrong idea! I moved closer and then the truth hit me: it was the same kind of envelope, the same inky black scrawl on the front, with the word “Lena” dominating the envelope.

  I took out my phone and dialed Doug. I got his voice mail. I swore under my breath and looked in my contacts for Cliff’s number; Sam had made me put it in after his conference with Cliff in Camilla’s driveway. I dialed. “Detective Blake,” he said.

  “Cliff. It’s Lena London. I wonder if you—I got another note.”

  His voice was alert, wary. “Where are you, Lena?”

  “On Violet Street, outside Sasha’s clothing store.”

  “I know where that is. Give me five minutes.”

  He hung up, and I stared at the thing under my windshield wiper. Cliff would show up with an evidence bag and tweezers and take it away, but suddenly I wanted to know what was inside; I couldn’t wait a moment longer. I leaned in and grabbed one corner of the envelope between two fingernails. I got into my car and set the letter in my lap, slipping my longest nail under the flap to work it away from the envelope. I slid out the paper and opened it, still managing not to touch anything but the edges.

  The message inside, once again on Sam West’s stationery, made my stomach lurch:

  Hey, Sweetheart!

  Did you ever have a dream?

  Did anyone ever destroy it?

  I took the paper by the edges and put it on the passenger seat. What was this about? What dream were they speaking of? Were they suggesting I had destroyed something? Was this about Nikon and his idyll with Victoria?

  A few minutes later a noise on my window made me jump and scream. I looked up to see Cliff standing there. I lowered my window. “I opened it. I didn’t touch it with my fingers.”

  He nodded. “Where is it?”

  “Here.” I pointed to the seat. “It was under my wiper.”

  Cliff came around the car and opened my passenger door. As I predicted, he took out tweezers and put the note inside a bag. He disappeared, probably to stow it into his car, but he left my door open. A moment later he was back. He climbed into my car and sat in the passenger seat, turning to look at me.

  “Are you okay, Lena?”

  “Not really,” I said. “It’s weird. The wording, and the Sam West stationery. It’s like they’re reminding me, not just that they broke into his house, but that they’re following me around. That they always seem to know where I am. I’m scared.”

  His face was calm. “I get it. It’s a weird situation. But they’re not going to
do a darn thing to you, because Doug and I have stepped up patrols overall, and especially around Graham House, and around you. Have you noticed more cop cars?”

  I thought about it; now that he mentioned it, I had seen those familiar white and blue vehicles quite a bit lately. I looked up, and one of them passed us where we sat, making me feel the truth of his words. “I guess so,” I said.

  “That’s Officer Connolly,” he said. “He’s particularly good at spotting things that don’t look right. He caught that purse snatcher that was running around last summer, I heard.”

  “I wasn’t here then,” I said.

  Cliff patted my arm. “You drive home now; I’ll be right behind you in my car. Nothing can harm you when I’m right there.”

  “Okay.” I did want to be home, with Camilla, so that I could tell her about this and get her ever-wise interpretation of events. “Thanks, Cliff.”

  He left with the letter, sealed in the evidence bag, and I started my car. I waited for Cliff’s car to appear behind me, and then I drove back to Graham House. Cliff came all the way to the driveway with me, then waited while I went to the door. I waved, and he waved back, and then he drove away.

  I went into the house with my bags from Sasha’s. I had felt so euphoric about the new clothing, but now it was the last thing on my mind as I locked the door behind me. I moved swiftly to Camilla, ready to lay my burdens upon her. She would know what to do about the note, the article in the newspaper, the general feeling of chaos that was descending upon me—but when I walked into her office I saw that she was in some distress. She sat with her hands pressed against her temples, her face creased in pain.

  “Camilla! Are you all right?”

  “Oh, Lena. I wonder if I could trouble you for a glass of water?”

  “Of course.” I went to the kitchen and ran some Blue Lake water—“most delicious in the U.S.,” Doug always said—into a glass and moved swiftly back to her. “Is it a headache? Or do you think you have the flu?” I asked, putting the back of my hand against her cheek, which was cool.