Death in Dark Blue

by Julia Buckley

  Camilla sighed. “Doug, what have you learned in town? Someone must have seen her.”

  Doug looked back at his notes. “I talked with Janey Maxwell at the Red Cottage, and she said the lady paid up front and was very quiet. Said she was friendly and tended to overdress. When Janey commented it was a cold time to come to Blue Lake, Taylor Brand said she had come to deliver an important message.”

  “An important message?” Sam sat up. “To me?”

  “Sam,” I said, leaning forward. “Did you check your mail? Could Taylor have put anything in your mailbox?”

  He shook his head. “I went through the mail today. Just some letters and bills, and a parcel from you.” Sam took a moment to smile at me. “Congratulations, by the way.”

  Doug turned away, making a point of studying his phone. He had liked me once, when I came to Blue Lake, and he still seemed jealous of my feelings for Sam, and Sam’s for me. “Thanks.”

  Camilla was still in thinking mode. “A message. Assuming she wanted to deliver the message to Sam, that would explain why she was on his property. It doesn’t totally explain why she was up on the scenic overlook; why wouldn’t she have come directly to Sam’s house?”

  “Maybe someone lured her up there,” I said. “Clearly whoever did this had ill intentions. Perhaps they persuaded her to look at the view, and then pushed her off the bluff when they knew they were right above Sam’s property.”

  “They could have made her go up,” Doug said. “Held a gun on her, whatever. It’s just not clear why they did it. If they had a gun, why didn’t they shoot her? Falling doesn’t guarantee death.”

  “But guns make noise,” I said, “and they’re traceable. People wouldn’t suspect Sam if it wasn’t Sam’s gun. This way it seems much more connected to him.”

  Adam Rayburn seemed to have finally stopped thinking about his restaurant and focused in on what we were saying. “This is unbelievable!” he said. “And so soon after another murder in Blue Lake. What is happening in this town?”

  Camilla looked at him, her expression calculating. “Adam, she would have sought out the best restaurant. Did you happen to see this woman at Wheat Grass?”

  Doug pulled up a picture of Taylor on his phone, and Adam studied it.

  “I think I did see her, yes. With the lunch hour crowd, but later lunch. Perhaps around two or three o’clock. Must have been right when she got to town. She was sitting and doing a lot of texting.”

  We all turned back to Doug. “Do you have her phone?” I asked.

  He nodded. “It was in her purse, which was in her hotel room, apparently untouched. I have someone going over the text messages; I’ll meet with him tomorrow.”

  I looked past him to the tableau of cold night visible through Camilla’s window. The trees were tall black sentries against a dark blue sky; a few stars glimmered above the horizon, and the moon, a perfect half circle, was partially obscured by dark clouds. A thought occurred to me, and I brought my gaze back to the faces around me. “I met someone who’s staying at the Red Cottage. His name is—wait a second—Ted! He was climbing the hill this afternoon, and he asked why the road was blocked off. He said he wanted to see the scenic overlook.”

  “Hmm.” Doug said. He scrolled around on his phone and consulted some notes. “She has four guests staying there right now. And she’s expecting another tomorrow; Taylor’s brother is coming into town to meet with us and to make arrangements, I suppose. He’s made reservations at the Red Cottage, since that was where his sister stayed. I presume he’ll want to ask his own questions.”

  We were all silent for a moment. What a sad task to have to perform; I looked at Sam and wondered if he was thinking of his own family. Camilla had told me in the fall, when Sam had been arrested and things were looking extremely dark for him, that he’d already suffered greatly because his little family—mother, father, and sister—had been killed in a plane crash when Sam was just a young man.

  Sam had been forced to put up with too much, and none of it had been his fault. Yet now, somehow, he felt it was his destiny to be hated by the world.

  “Doug,” I said. “Will you talk to that man, Ted? In retrospect it seems like he was really eager to get up the hill, to find out what happened. Maybe he already knew and just wanted to get close to his work.”

  Doug cleared his throat. “Let’s not jump to conclusions. You know that we’ll be talking to everyone, looking at everything, before we close this case. Trust that we will do that, and focus on Victoria. Sam needs you to find her more than he needs to know anything about Taylor Brand.”

  Sam stared at the table. “That would be true if she hadn’t been found on my property. Tomorrow everyone will know that. Then what?” He looked up at Doug with a bleak expression.

  Camilla touched his hand. “Sam, we were approached by a reporter today. He’s with the Associated Press; I checked him out, and he’s legitimate. He had initially come out here to do a follow-up story on you, but then he heard about Taylor’s death, and he wants to talk to us. To you. I think it might be a good idea, Sam. He persuaded us that it might be better to have some authentic quoted responses from you and your friends than a lot of pointless chatter on the Internet. Nowadays people somehow believe gossip as news, and there’s more and more of it available. He said that we need to shape the narrative, and the more I think about it, the more I think he’s right.”

  To my surprise, Sam didn’t even protest. “All right,” he said with a shrug. “When does he want to do this?”

  “I suggested tomorrow at two.”

  “Fine,” he said. I could almost see the depression settling on him, heavy as the snow outside.

  Doug drummed his fingers on the table. “I have to go,” he said. “But I assume that you will all still be focused on finding Victoria, or any facts about her that we may so far have missed.”

  “We’re on it,” I said. “And I’ve got a research librarian on it, too. I didn’t go into any specific detail—just gave her some topics to research for me. I’m meeting with her tomorrow.”

  “Great.” Doug stood up. “I haven’t heard any updates from the New York police, and the FBI isn’t going to update anyone. So we have to just plug along and assume we’re on our own unless they break something first. No matter who finds something, we win.”

  Adam held up a hand. “Sarah Jemmison, one of my waitresses, waited on this woman yesterday. I assume you’ll want to talk to her.”

  Doug nodded. “I’ll be around tomorrow morning. Thanks, Adam.” He moved past Sam on the way to the door and patted him on the shoulder. “Hang in there, Sam,” he said. Then he paused. We had all been waiting for this; we understood that Doug didn’t have to speak to us at all, not while he was investigating a crime. “You will stay in town, right?”

  “I will,” said Sam grimly.

  Doug thanked him and left the room. Moments later we heard the front door open and felt a blast of cold air make its way down the hall and into the room where we sat. “I should go, too,” Adam said. He stood up, and Camilla did, too. “Let me get your coat, Adam.”

  They left the room, and Sam and I sat alone. “We’ll deal with this,” I said. “We did before, against all odds.”

  He smiled at me, but his expression was distracted. He was thinking private thoughts, and I realized with a pang how little I really knew about him.

  “Sam? You don’t have to retreat into some lonely place. You’re not in it alone this time, not like before.”

  “I know.” He pushed his chair backward; it scraped against the floor with a raw sound. “I need to find my coat, as well.” He was up and almost out of the room before I realized that he didn’t intend to say good-bye to me. I sat, stunned, and let him walk away. When I heard the door close behind him, I shook my head.

  “No. I don’t care if you are having a rough day—no.” I grabbed my jacket off a nail
near Camilla’s door, slid into my snow boots, and moved swiftly past Camilla and Adam, who were saying their gentle and sweet good-byes.

  I blinked in the shock of the sudden cold. Sam was halfway down the driveway. I ran until I caught up with him, and I grabbed his arm. “What was that?”

  “Lena, go back inside. It’s got to be five degrees out here.”

  “Sam!”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know what to think, or how to deal with this. I feel like I need to go lick my wounds for a while.”

  “Stop it!” I said. Now I clasped both of his arms and shook him. “You want me in your life? Then let me be in it. Don’t retreat into your solitary habits because you don’t know how to let somebody care about you!”

  He sighed, and his breath made a vapor cloud visible in the halo of light that came from Camilla’s motion response security lamps. Every time the lights went off, one of us would make some slight movement that would cause them to flash back on; it had a strange and unnerving strobe effect.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t be in my life. Not for a while. Not until we figure out what’s going on.”

  “Oh, sure. Let’s wait another year, or maybe two years. Let’s wait for a few more mysteries to crop up in the meantime. Whatever malignant force is eating away at your life is going to win, because you’re letting it win.” I studied his face, shadowy in the darkness, then illuminated by the ridiculous lights, its hard lines etched in the previous year giving him a closed-off look.

  He didn’t respond, so I said, “Fine,” and turned away. I took one step and found myself spun around and facing him again. This time his face showed feeling: surprise and a bit of fear. He clutched my shoulders and put his face close to mine.

  “Lena, don’t be angry with me. You’re the one person whose disapproval I cannot bear.”

  “Then fight. Fight against this. Talk to the reporter, go on television, talk to people in town, whatever action you want to take. As long as that action isn’t sitting in your house and brooding about how your life went wrong. It didn’t go wrong. It’s started to turn back in the right direction, and you just don’t see it yet.”

  The lights had gone off, and we read each other’s faces in the darkness. Then with a jerking movement he pulled my head toward his and kissed me, hard. I sensed that the lights had flashed back on but I barely took notice because this kiss was more passionate than any we had yet experienced. I leaned into him, seeking his warmth, and touched his face with bare hands. “Let me come home with you.”

  His jaw tightened. “Not yet,” he said. He saw my expression and said, “I want you there; you don’t know how much I want you in my house, in my bed, Lena. I think about it every night. But they’ll find us, and they’ll photograph you walking out some morning, and they’ll ruin it. I won’t let them ruin this. You’re all I have.”

  His stark words silenced me. The simplicity of his request was something that I had to honor, much as I wanted to comfort him, and myself, with physical affection. “Okay. But I’m here when you need me. Whenever you need me, Sam. This will all be worked out.”

  “Of course it will. Now go in; your hands are freezing.”

  I gave him another kiss, and a hard hug. Then I turned and ran back toward Camilla’s in the weird lamplight. At the stairs I turned back to see Sam’s silhouette, hunched against the cold and outside of the halo of light, trudging down the rocky road that led to his house.

  6

  The day after she ran away, her name appeared in newspaper headlines. She became a convenient scapegoat for the crimes of her oppressors, and her absence, to the press, became an eloquent argument for her guilt.

  —From Death on the Danube

  SAM WAS BACK in the headlines the next morning; Camilla had pulled up the front pages of papers from Chicago, New York, and Indianapolis, and they all led with the death of Taylor Brand. The Chicago Tribune headline read “Woman Found Murdered in Sam West’s Backyard,” while the New York Times said “Sam West Linked to Another Murder.”

  “That’s unfair—it’s libelous!” I shouted to Camilla as we ate a small breakfast together. “It implies there was a first murder, when we all know that Sam didn’t kill anyone and that Victoria is alive. This is absurd! It makes Sam seem like some kind of serial killer.”

  Camilla patted my hand in a comforting gesture, but her own expression was just short of murderous. “It is ridiculous. I think I will send letters to their editors, suggesting irresponsible journalism.”

  “Poor Sam. What must he be thinking? You know he’s reading this stuff in his own house. We need to bring him over here so that he doesn’t stew over it for too long.”

  “He said he’ll be here around one thirty. He had some business to conduct before then. Many of his clients have returned since the Victoria story came out, and they will certainly not leave him over hearsay again. He’s always been a good investment counselor, and now he’s rather busy with his job, which is good. That will keep his mind off this circus of coverage.”

  I nodded. “Camilla, I thought it was all over. And now here we go again.”

  She sat up straight and put on her practical face. “And just like last time, we will soldier through. We really do need to talk about books today, Lena. You can mail out those copies to your father and friends, and you can mail some for me, as well. And then perhaps we can talk about the new book after we meet with the reporter. Which means we will have part of the morning for our investigation. Do you want to go back to the library and see what your friend found out?”

  “Good idea. I don’t know if she’s had enough time, but it’s worth checking. At this point something—anything—is better than what we’ve got.”

  “Don’t look so downhearted, Lena.”

  “This is killing Sam.”

  Camilla shook her head. “Don’t underestimate that man. Did you ever hear that line by Hemingway? ‘The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.’ Sam has a few broken places, but they’ve made him stronger. He’s not the type to wilt and pine. Believe in him, Lena.”

  I nodded, staring down at the table. “You’re right. Of course you’re right.” I finished eating my eggs, took a final sip of tea, and stood up. “I’ll just run upstairs to get some things and check on Lestrade, and then I’ll go to the library.”

  Camilla smiled. “You don’t need to look for your cat. He’s right there.” She pointed to the windowsill, warm with the morning sun. Lestrade lay right in the middle of the ledge, his white belly bright with sunlight. His eyes were closed, and his paws lay limp at his sides.

  “Wow. He knows how to relax, doesn’t he? Maybe I should take a page from his book.”

  Camilla nodded. “I’ve grown very fond of that cat. He is rather a day brightener. I might have to write him into the next book.”

  I laughed. “I think he would highly approve.”

  It was snowing when I reached the library. Blue Lake in winter was picturesque; if I hadn’t been so worried, I would have marveled at the fat white flakes that fell like shredded paper on the old brick building nestled into a hill. I had again walked to the library, and thanks to a large, lined hood and a warm scarf tied snugly around it, I wasn’t at all wet.

  I marched up the stairs feeling energized by the cold air and long walk. Inside, I spent a moment breathing in the warm, book-scented air while I took off my winter gear and hung it on a coat tree near the door.

  The tall librarian wasn’t behind the main desk. Today a red-haired man with black-rimmed glasses stood there, staring down into some kind of catalog. As I approached, he said, “May I help you?”

  “No, thanks. I need to speak with Belinda.”

  He gave me a thumbs-up. “Got it.” Then he went back to perusing his catalog.

  I walked to the back of the library and the desk at which I had first met Belinda Frailey. There w
as no sign of her, so I went behind the desk and peered into the research room where we’d discussed my search. Belinda sat there, dressed today in black pants and a pale pink turtleneck sweater that accentuated her blonde hair.

  “Hey,” I said. “Am I interrupting?”

  She looked up and her face brightened. “Oh my gosh, have I got things to tell you!”

  “That would be great. I need to hear some good news.”

  “Have a seat. Would you like a soda or something?”

  “No, I’m fine.”

  “Okay.” She stood up and went to one corner, where a small briefcase sat on a bench. From this she pulled a red file folder, which she carried back to the table. “I just printed a bunch of stuff out and put it in here. Check out the name.”

  A white label centered on the front of the folder read “The London File.”

  I nodded, smiling slightly.

  She leaned in, a picture of enthusiasm. “You have the greatest name ever. If I ever wrote a book, I’d name the main character Lena London. It’s so awesome—it could belong to some super spy or a woman on a cable cooking show or a singer. What kind of music would Lena London sing? I’m thinking something soft and bluesy. Sort of like Norah Jones or Diana Krall or something.”

  Normally I might have felt flattered that Belinda wanted to spend time praising my name, but my fingers were itching to open the red file, and this finally dawned on her. She swept some blonde hair behind her shoulder and pushed her glasses up on her nose.

  “Okay, I get it. You want info. Well, I do have good news. First off, I have a theory about your Nikon. I think it’s a man.”