The River Valley Series

by Tess Thompson

  “There are so many suspects in this case I hardly know where to start,” said Peter. “Do you think Graham’s capable of this, Bella?”

  She shook her head, vigorously. “He’s a coward and a worm but, no, I cannot believe he’s capable of murder. And there’s no motive. It’s better for him if the actress on his film remains alive.”

  “I think we should fly to Los Angeles tomorrow,” said Peter. “See if we can talk to Ms. Zinn.”

  Bella glanced at Ben, who had barely said two words to any of them since she’d arrived back from seeing Graham. He moved his spoon around his bowl of soup and didn’t look up.

  “How could we get her to speak to us?” Bella asked Peter.

  Cleo smiled, placing her hand on Peter’s arm. “You’re going to pretend to be a customer, aren’t you?”

  He grinned back at his wife. “Maybe. Unless we can think of something else. Pretending to be a customer is fraught with, um, danger.”

  Cleo, her face animated, poked at his chest. “You mean, like you’d have to figure out how to order a prostitute without actually ordering a prostitute.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Yikes. Yes.”

  Bella laughed. “Peter, you could tell her you just want to talk.”

  “Perfect,” added Cleo, patting the table playfully. “I know, tell her it’s because your heinous wife doesn’t understand you.”

  Peter, deadpan, nodded his head. “Maybe I can talk about my childhood, work through my father issues.”

  Cleo, her smile turning slightly melancholy, dropped her head onto Peter’s shoulder. “Honey, that’s not so funny.”

  He looked over at Bella and then Annie. “I really do have father issues, is what she means.”

  “Don’t we all,” said Bella. “Right, Drake?”

  But he seemed not to hear the question. He was frowning and playing with his knife. Thinking hard, thought Bella. He’d been this way all his life. Got the brains in the family, Bella always said, only half-joking. “What’s that, Bella?”

  “Oh, nothing,” she answered. “What’re you thinking about in that big fat head of yours? You’ve got an idea, don’t you?”

  He pointed his knife at her, still with the serious wrinkle in his brow. “Maybe. What about one of your Hollywood friends? Surely someone knows her.”

  “I could ask Stefan. He’s not the type, though. At least I don’t think he is,” said Bella. “But he might know someone who is.”

  Ben, looking at her for the first time that evening, pushed his plate aside. “What exactly do you hope to accomplish by talking to her?”

  Peter answered, catching Bella’s eyes for a moment, as if to say, I’ve got this. “Couple reasons. One, to see what she knows about Tiffany and the blackmail situation. And to rule her either in or out as a possible suspect.”

  “I’ll call Stefan from the kitchen,” said Bella, reaching for her phone and pretending not to notice Ben’s glare in her direction

  Stefan answered on the first ring. “Hey Bella. You okay?”

  Always the first to think of someone else, she thought. “Yeah, I’m fine. I have a weird question for you.” She relayed everything they’d learned that afternoon, asking at the end if he had any ties to Ms. Zinn.

  “Don’t take this the wrong way but, yeah, I do. Have ties, that is.” He chuckled. “It’s not what you think.”

  “Hey, no judgment here. A person has needs.”

  “No, really, it’s not what you think. I have an actor buddy from theatre school filming the television movie about her life—you know, from the autobiography she wrote a couple of years ago. Apparently she sold the studio the rights to her book with the caveat that she had some say in the script. She’s on set almost every day, driving the director crazy and giving notes to the actress playing her. He’s always texting me stuff about it—hilarious.”

  “You think she’d talk to us?”

  “I could call my friend, see what he thinks.”

  “Badass!”

  “Badass?”

  “That means good.” She chuckled. “You Canadians are so sweet.”

  “Whatever, Bellalicious. I’m totally badass. I know hookers and stuff.”

  She laughed out loud. “Yeah, total street cred, Stefan.”

  After they hung up, she went back to the living room. Annie and Drake were snuggled together on the couch, talking quietly. “Where is everyone?”

  “Peter and Cleo went out for a drink. Wanted some time alone, I think.”

  Annie looked up as she approached the couch. “Ben said he’d wait for you in the guesthouse.” She faltered, as if trying to think what to say next. “He’s a mess.”

  “Yeah, I know,” said Bella. “We got in a fight this afternoon, to make matters worse. He didn’t want me to be alone with Graham.”

  Just then her phone rang. It was Stefan. “You’re in,” he said. “My buddy—Chris Weaver is his name—said he’d introduce you guys to her if you come to the set. And the director is a guy I’ve worked with before. I’ll call and tell him to let you guys in. He’s a good guy—I’ll tell him the truth about why you’re there so he can help you out if needed.”

  “That’s great,” said Bella. “Thank you.”

  “Told you I’m badass.”

  “Totally badass.”

  Bella took off her shoes and tiptoed up the stairs in case Ben was asleep. He’d looked dreadful at dinner and he had to work in the morning. Perhaps he’d fallen asleep already? But he was awake, sitting up in bed with an unopened book on his lap.

  “Where have you been?”

  “Talking to Stefan. He figured out a way for us to interview Jocelyn Zinn.”

  “I don’t know what you’re doing here.” He tossed his book onto the bedside table.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Running around acting like Miss Marple.” His voice was almost scornful and definitely accusatory.

  She couldn’t think of what to say. A painful lump formed at the back of her throat. “Why’re you mad at me?”

  “You were in Graham’s room for a long time. What was I supposed to think you were doing over there?”

  “I, literally, cannot believe you just said that. Do you know how humiliating it was to have to talk to the lying prick? I did it for you. And this is what I get? Accusations? Jealousy? How long until you trust me? Or will you ever trust me?”

  She wanted to cry but held it in, watching his face turn from stony to angry.

  “If you’re so innocent, why didn’t you answer your phone?”

  “I didn’t know you called.” She glanced at her bag on the easy chair. “I had the ringer off when I was with him.” She went to the bag and pulled out her phone. There were five missed calls. “Are you these all from you?”

  “Probably,” he mumbled. “I called you four times.” He ran both hands through his hair. “Bella, please tell me you didn’t sleep with him.”

  “The man was sleeping with Tiffany. He’s a freaking murder suspect. And you actually think I was over there having sex with him?”

  “I’m a murder suspect.”

  It hung there in the room then, suspended between them.

  Then, he spoke. “You have no reason to believe I didn’t do this.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “You don’t know me that well, Bella. Yet you’re running around town trying to figure out who did this like an Agatha Christie heroine.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “That maybe you have some doubt about me and you’re trying a little too hard to figure this out.”

  She stared at him. This was ridiculous. Of course he didn’t do it. She was running around, as he put it, in order to prove his innocence to the world, not to herself.

  He went on. “You’ve been on a dead run on this thing since it happened. And there’s no reason for it. Peter’s a real detective. He doesn’t need you on the case. You’re acting like a woman with something to prove. What are you trying to prove? That I’
m not a murderer? How do you not know that already? You know that about Louse, apparently. What was it you said at dinner—there’s no way he’s capable of murder—how is it you don’t know the same thing about me?”

  “But I do.”

  “And Louse is so trustworthy.” His voice dripped with sarcasm. “It’s not like he’s a liar or a cheater or anything. Yeah, he has way better odds of not being a murderer than me.”

  “Regardless of his questionable character, a cheater and a murderer are not even close to the same thing.”

  “They bring up the question of moral integrity, Bella. Have you lived in Hollywood for so long now you’ve lost sight of that?”

  “Jeez, you sound like my brother.”

  He continued without pause, his speech rapid, almost manic. Had he heard anything she said? “How can I blame you, really? You had a relationship with Louse for three years. You’ve known me for three months.”

  She squared her shoulders and tossed her head, hot and angry and hurt now. “You can say whatever you want, Benjamin Fleck. Or think whatever you want. Doesn’t change the fact that I love you. Or that I believe in you.” The tears were scratching at the insides of her lids, threatening to explode forth like those of a hurt little girl. Dammit. Do not cry in front of him. How she hated crying. She took in deep breaths. Just pack your things. You can cry in the house. She turned away and began tossing her clothes, neatly folded in the bureau by the ever-efficient but elusive housekeeper, into her suitcase.

  After she collected her toiletries from the bathroom, she headed toward the bedroom door. Ben stood at the window now. He turned as she came out of the bathroom. “So this is it, huh? Just leave when things get tough, when the hard questions get asked? Glad to know this now because I have a feeling I’m getting arrested tomorrow. Good to know I still can’t count on you.”

  She held her toiletry bag close to her chest. “When I first met you I thought I was the crazy, self-destructive one. I guess I had that figured wrong. When you wake up out of this delusional madness you’ve created in order to protect yourself from hurt, you’ll see how ridiculous it is to push me away.” She turned and grabbed her suitcase. At the bottom of the stairs, she stumbled and had to grab the handrail to keep from falling. Her mind was spinning; she felt as if she might vomit. She opened the door and burst out into the breezy night air that smelled faintly of wood-burning smoke. It was dark except for the porch light, which Annie insisted remain on, regardless that they never had any visitors not announced at the gate.

  Instead of going inside, she went around to the deck, careful not to slip on the wet stone that made a path to the back of the house. The kitchen light was on, shedding light onto the deck. The night was cold but she barely felt it, her anger and confusion a cloak against the late autumn night. Where was she going to sleep tonight? The couch? She set her suitcase near the kitchen door and sat on the steps. Just sit for a moment. Have a good cry, she thought. And then make some notes of everything they learned today. Perhaps something would come to her that she and Peter hadn’t thought of. No matter that Ben was angry with her—she would not rest until they figured out who really did this. For Tiffany and Sabrina—and for stubborn, bull-headed Ben.

  Ben. Ben. Why do you have to be like this? They could be wrapped up in one another’s arms right now.

  Was it too much to ask, she wondered, to be held in the night by someone you loved? To feel the warmth of someone else when you awakened in the dark night, the demons that come in the hours before dawn tugging at you, wanting to pull you into the abyss where despair and doubt and fear all waited to say, we got you this time, your friends’ hope and love and persistence are no match for us? Just to be held in the night by a man who loved her? This, apparently, was too much to ask for.

  But the tears that had threatened to come earlier were dry now. She felt numb. And exhausted. What right did Ben have to act so crazy? She believed in him, was trying to help him, and she was repaid with this? Why did she always choose the wrong men? Just give up on this, on him, she thought. Just accept the fact that she’d picked another one too damaged to have anything resembling a healthy relationship.

  Suddenly she felt the cold. She pulled her sweater tighter around her and blew out a long breath that was a puff of white reflected in the light from the kitchen. She turned her gaze upward towards the sky. A cloud shifted, revealing a skinny moon. Then she heard a noise coming from the yard, beyond Drake’s rose garden with its dormant bushes waiting for the spring sun that would remind them of their future blooms. It was just a rustling in the leaves and fallen branches. Perhaps footsteps? Was it a person? No, no one could get into the property. Drake kept it locked up with the electric fence, ever diligent against outside danger, given what had happened to his wife and daughter. One’s scars remained intact, despite our ability to move forward.

  Then, a doe appeared in the grass, a half-dozen feet from where Bella sat. She gazed at Bella with soft brown eyes. They looked like Alder’s eyes, she thought, not for the first time. Your kiddo has the same gentle eyes as deer, she’d said to Annie last summer.

  The doe remained, perfectly still except for the flicker of her ears. What did she hear? Did she have babies, near but out of sight? She thought of her mother then, for no reason and without warning. Her mother. Mommy. Bella had slept with her every night after their father left for the last time. Until she was ten years old she’d fallen asleep with her backside next to the heat of her mother’s slender form as she read, usually a paperback novel from the library. She’d read at least a book a week, never television, only novels, all different kinds. As long as it has a good story, she’d told Bella again and again, encouraging her to read more, like her brother did. Her mother, Bella understood now, had so few moments of relaxation or peace and must have lived in the pages of those books. The only travels she’d ever had, the only love story she’d ever known, the only victory and redemption. And in the morning, Alice Webber had risen again and again, her feet still aching from the day before, and gotten dressed and fed them breakfast, washed dishes, packed lunches, and hurried them out the door to the bus all before going to her job as a clerk at the local drugstore. On the weekends she worked the breakfast shift at the local chain diner. Free meals for the two of them as an added bonus, which Bella had found delightful (she’d stuffed herself on all-you-could-eat pancakes every Saturday and Sunday morning for years) but that Drake found humiliating. How generous they give Mom a barely edible $2.99 breakfast as part of her pay as if that’s something that actually helps us. Maybe they should try paying their staff better than minimum wage and we could buy our own damn breakfast. Drake was fourteen when he said this, and Bella, eight at the time, was awestruck by not only his understanding of minimum wage, which apparently was not enough to live on or mom wouldn’t need two jobs in the first place, but that he’d said a curse word. She’d put her finger over her mouth and made a shushing sound, so their mother wouldn’t hear. Nothing mattered more to Bella than making sure neither of them ever did or said anything to hurt her. Their mother hated curse words, or any harsh words at all, for that matter. You can attract more bees with honey than with vinegar, she always told Bella.

  It does help us, Drake, Bella had said to her brother. Two meals she doesn’t have to cook for us or pay for.

  Someday, little sister, I’m going to be worth so much we can buy fifty crappy diners if we want to.

  Fifty breakfasts?

  No, fifty damn stores.

  But why would we want fifty stores?

  We won’t. I’m just saying we could if we wanted to. Trust me, Bellybear, someday I’m going to give you and Mom anything and everything you ever wanted.

  And he could have. Unfortunately, their mother hadn’t lived to see this come to be. Bella shivered, tears coming now. Sixteen was too young to have to say goodbye to her mother. Mommy.

  Died of the flu because they didn’t have insurance.

  No fucking insurance, Drake had shouted the
night after her funeral. That’s what did this.

  And she’d shriveled up then, in her angry brother’s presence, in the humiliation it felt to be poor, in the indelible sadness that felt like a cavern in the middle of her chest. The ache had begun in that moment and remained tonight, even as she watched the deer watching her.

  That’s right, she had shouted back to Drake that night. No fucking insurance. The first curse word she’d ever said. This was the beginning of her potty mouth. Because if her mother wasn’t around to care anymore, why should she? And it felt good to say the bad words. And to take tequila shots at parties. And to kiss boys her mother wouldn’t have approved of.

  Out of desperation after Esther and Chloe were killed she’d made the first appointment with Valerie Short. She hadn’t slept more than a couple of hours a night for a month and she hoped the shrink could give her something to help her sleep. That was all, really, because she didn’t actually believe in therapy—what could a shrink do to help you? Talk over all the old hurts? Fine. But it wouldn’t mean they’d go away. Her mother was still dead. Her sister-in-law and her precious little niece were still buried side-by-side in a cemetery in Seattle.

  But she went. And to her surprise, she found the therapy sessions helpful, more so than she could have ever imagined. Every week for two months she went to see Valerie and sat in the chair that looked out on the blue water. She sat in the chair next to the miniature Zen garden with the tiny rake and polished rocks and talked about her grief. Nothing was solved but she had an hour in which to cry and shout and sometimes just stare out the window into the waves that crashed onto the shore again and again and again. And she wondered, why. Why all the suffering? Why all the pain? Why was life nothing but a series of losses? She’d asked Valerie these questions, none of which the poor woman dressed in long silky skirts and soft cotton blouses and wrap dresses could explain. At the end of two months, Bella accepted a gig for a movie shoot in New Mexico and she’d stopped going. She met Graham a month later, on that movie and, well, then it was the waiting game. For three years. Until finally, she’d had enough and escaped to Oregon, to this little town no had ever heard of and she’d fallen in love with it and her brother all over again and his new family and the river. The river that teaches you your name. Bella Webber. Bella Webber it had called to her when she floated on its surface or sunned on a rock with only her hand dipped there in the cool green of the water. Bella Webber, your mother’s daughter. And in the ripples there were whispers. You are not a girl who gives her life away to a married man. You are a girl that deserves to be loved properly. A badass chick. Alder’s Auntie Bella and he should admire you and hold you up to the women of his future. You are not someone who leads a compromised life.