A Dark and Stormy Murder (A Writer's Apprentice Mystery) (16 page)

I jumped up to make her a cup, and she saw my disheveled appearance and dirty clothes. “What’s happened? Is that a bruise on your face? Lena, what’s going on?”

Doug Heller leaned against the counter and folded his arms. “Lena called 911 about an hour ago. She went out after the dogs and got body slammed by a person or persons unknown. She ended up on her back and they took off.”

“Oh, no! Lena, are you all right?”

“Yes, I’m fine. I was just shocked and frightened, but I’m okay now. Doug investigated. Camilla, I have a confession.”

“Oh? No, sit down, I’ll make my own tea.”

I returned to my chair, not knowing how to approach the topic of the secret room, and Doug Heller snorted with impatience.

“Camilla, this is an assault and possibly a case of breaking and entering. It might also relate to the death of Martin Jonas. So I persuaded Lena to tell me about your secret room.”

“I’m sorry, Camilla,” I said.

She turned to me, her face creased with worry. “Oh, who cares about that stupid room? Lena, you could have been killed! What if they had been carrying knives, or guns?”

Doug Heller looked pleased. “Exactly. Which is why I’ll be back early in the morning with a team. We’ll comb that yard for any evidence, and we’ll look for another secret
entrance from the outside. Based on the view from the backyard, Camilla, there is no logical way that room can exist unless there are other hidden spaces against that back wall. Did you ever consider that?”

Camilla blinked at him, an Earl Gray tea bag dangling from her hand. “I’m afraid I have no sense of spatial reasoning. I never have had. Rooms are rooms.”

Now he was impatient. “Lena, is there anything else you need to tell me about tonight? Anything else you noticed?”

“No—except—wait.” I thought back to the whispering, urgent voices. One calling to the other, both making a quick retreat. “I think I heard the name Ray.”

Heller’s brows creased. “I don’t know of any Rays who hung out with Martin Jonas.”

“But this doesn’t have to have anything to do with Martin Jonas.”

“True. We’ll look into it.”

“Well, whatever. That’s all I can remember.”

Heller sprang away from the counter and clapped his hands. “Well, then. You two can go back to bed. We’ll be here early tomorrow—you can rest assured we will get to the bottom of this.”

“Thanks, Doug,” Camilla said.

“Is there any word on Sam West?” I asked.

He turned to scowl at me. “It’s not my job to keep track of Sam West. We escorted him to New York, and now I assume they are questioning him. What’s your obsession with that guy?”

Camilla looked shocked. “He’s our friend, Doug. This has all been very stressful for him.”

Heller looked from one of us to the other and shook his
head. “You ladies might be making some dangerous assumptions. For my part, I’m glad he’s safely out of town and not right down the bluff from you.”

I stood up, tired of looking up at them from my chair. “And yet the one time I get attacked is when Sam West is not here. So I guess he’s not the only person in town that you should be suspicious of.”

“Excuse me for caring about your safety,” Heller said, his eyes on me, his voice cold. “And Sam West can thank me for giving him a heads-up and letting him walk into that police station under his own steam rather than being hauled out of here and becoming a sound bite on the ten o’clock news.”

“Yeah—why did you do that for him, if you suspect him of murder?” I asked.

Heller said nothing.

Camilla touched his arm. “We appreciate all that you do, Doug, including coming out here at this ungodly hour. We are lucky to have you, and so is the town of Blue Lake.”

Heller nodded, still looking at me, and then turned and walked to the door. “Thanks, Camilla. I’ll be here in the morning. Lock this door after I leave.”

He left quietly, and Camilla re-latched the glass door. Then she turned to me. “He’s a good man,” she said.

“So is Sam,” I told her.

“Agreed. Don’t you ever wonder why Doug gets so angry about Sam West?”

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe his anger is partly defensiveness.”

“You mean—because he knows West isn’t guilty?”

“Doug has to keep an eye on Sam. That’s his job. But I think there might be some questions in his own mind about
the whole thing, and yet it’s not his case, when all is said and done.”

“No, I guess not.”

Camilla looked at the tea bag that still dangled from her hand. “Do you want more tea?”

“No, thank you—one was enough to calm me down. I’m going back to bed. I’m sorry we woke you up.”

“You didn’t. I think I sensed that the dogs were gone, and then I looked up and saw that my door was open. I had to investigate after that.”

The dogs in question were sitting in the doorway, their heads drooping. It seemed we were free of intruders at the moment, and the canines were standing down.

I moved toward the door, and Camilla said, “Lena?”

“Yes?”

“Doug wants very much to impress you.”

“I know. Good night, Camilla.”

She waved at me, and I left the room. Upstairs I headed for my bed, but a thought came to me, unbidden, and sent me to my laptop. Sam had mentioned, in our last conversation, a woman named Taylor who had been his wife’s best friend. She had a blog, he had said.

Quickly I searched for “Taylor Brand blog” and got an immediate result: a web diary called
A Fashionable Life
, which featured a header picture of a tall, dark-haired woman—clad in a strange, asymmetrical gown and sporting Cleopatra eye makeup—leaning against a brick wall with a disinterested expression.

Lestrade leaped up to sniff the computer. “Blech,” I said to him.

I scrolled through the blog entries, noting that Taylor enjoyed talking about Taylor, and that she also talked a
great deal about her friend’s disappearance. On the side of her blog was a little virtual badge that said “Justice for Victoria” over a strikingly beautiful picture of Sam’s wife.

I clicked back to the week that Victoria West had disappeared and found that her friend Taylor had much to say on the matter. Her September 28 post said, “I am still reeling from the disappearance of my good friend Vic, and wondering if anyone has any information about her. The last time I saw her we were having lunch in Chelsea. She was upbeat and hyper as always, full of plans and ideas for her business and her future. She said she needed a break from it all, but she never would have taken a break without telling me where she was going, or leaving me contact information. That’s how I know Vic has met with foul play.”

While I sensed that Taylor Brand did in fact miss her friend, I found it strange that she had posted a sad picture of herself with the entry about the missing Victoria. I glanced down at the comments section; there were 115 responses to the post. I began to scroll through them. Many were just a few words: “Sorry to hear this, Taylor,” or “We’re thinking of you, hon.”

Some were critical of her post. “Why don’t you spend your time looking for her instead of feeling sorry for yourself?” one rude poster had written. Another wrote, “You look terrible in that picture.”

I wondered why Brand hadn’t deleted the obnoxious comments—maybe she hadn’t read any of them; but wasn’t the point of the post to see if anyone had news about Victoria?

I kept reading. The seventy-fourth post, from
“Anonymous,” said, “If the cops want to find Vic West, they should follow the money and the drugs.”

What money? Sam had said that his wife had declared bankruptcy before she disappeared. And what anonymous person would know anything about it? Had the police investigated this claim? Or was this poster just another malcontent, an Internet troll who liked posting negative things for the fun of it, and who assumed that all famous people were wealthy and addicted?

And what drugs? Had Mrs. West truly been forming an addiction? What did it all have to do with the word “Nikon”? Had someone photographed her taking drugs? Or perhaps she had photographed someone, and was blackmailing them! What if Victoria West had gotten herself in danger, perhaps for money to fuel a drug habit?

A wave of exhaustion suddenly washed over me, and I dragged myself back to bed. Lestrade followed. As I lay inert, he sniffed at my face, purring loudly.

“Stop purring. You’re keeping me awake,” I complained, and then I fell deeply asleep.

13

On the first night, they stayed in a small tent, deep in the silent forest. Gerhard promised her that she would not have to hide forever—just until they had a plan.

“I don’t mind,” she said. “There are things that I prefer about this existence.”

His smile flashed white in the darkness. “Yes? What is preferable about this gypsy life?”

“You,” she said.

When he leaned in to kiss her, she thought for the first time that her dream might be resurrected.

—from
The Salzburg Train

I
WOKE AT
eight the next morning and stayed under the covers for a while, not liking the blustery sound of the wind against my window, but preferring the soft, purring mass that was Lestrade, who was warming my left side. I looked around the room, with its watery sunbeams and its bright white walls. I had come to love it in a very short time—my special space inside Camilla Graham’s home—but today it brought me no comfort. Too many conflicts dominated life here in Blue Lake, and I needed to find some resolution.

In a sudden burst of remembrance, I realized that Doug Heller and his team were probably downstairs at that very
moment, and that propelled me out of the comfortable bed. I showered and dressed quickly; before I ran downstairs I sent another text to Sam West.
Are you all right?
I didn’t know if he’d answer, or if he even had leisure time to read his messages, but I felt, especially after reading Taylor Brand’s critical rhetoric, that he might benefit from hearing a friendly voice.

Doug Heller continually warned me against Sam West, and yet my own instincts about the man, aside from my first rather unpleasant encounter with him, were that he was innocent. Could I be missing some glaring reality? Could it really be that West was a sociopath who could smile at me and feed me waffles while knowing the location of his dead wife’s body?

I shook my head and ran down the stairs. Camilla was there in the kitchen, eating some fruit and drinking tea. “Good morning,” she said brightly. She wore a crisp white blouse with a pair of blue wool slacks. “I hope you were able to go back to sleep last night.”

“I was.”

She studied my face. “Your injury is less noticeable today, but it still makes me cringe. To think that someone was just outside, rushing out of the darkness to protect—what? What would prompt that sort of violence?”

“I assume Doug’s people are out investigating?”

“Yes. They’ve been there for about an hour, tapping and pounding and putting things in evidence bags. I haven’t heard a report yet.”

My eyes wandered around the room; my legs felt jumpy. “I think I’ll walk the dogs. Is that all right? I might go into town.”

“Fine, dear. They’ll enjoy it, and I’m sure you’ll like the fresh air.”

“Yes. Thanks, Camilla. Just let me know when you want to meet again—I’ve already started on my yacht research, but I need to do more.”

“I’m still going through your last notes. You can call today a research day, and a recovery day. I feel somehow responsible . . .”

“You’re not. Only one person is—or maybe two. I’m confident Doug will figure this out soon.”

“Go walk and enjoy it, and I’ll have a warm drink ready when you return.”

I bundled up against the cold, then wrestled with the dogs, who started leaping around when they saw the leashes, and finally clipped the leads into place. “Okay, geez. Help a person out,” I told them. They did not seem repentant.

We made our way down the bluff; we stopped at Sam West’s house. I entered with his key and checked on all of his plants, watering the ones that seemed too dry. I brought in his mail and set it on his kitchen table while the dogs roamed around his house, sniffing and snuffling.

I checked all of his locks and made sure that the timers on his lamps were set properly; if someone was lurking around Camilla’s property, they might be more than tempted to do some damage to a beautiful empty house like Sam’s. Better that they not know it was empty, although all they had to do was watch the news to know of Sam’s plight. It had been a top story that morning, both on television news and online: “New York Investor Sam West Returns for Questioning,” said one website’s headline, while another said, “West Confronted with Blood Evidence in New Twist.”

I looked around, satisfied that, at least in West’s peaceful, lovely home, all was well. The dogs and I went back outside, and they dragged me the rest of the way down the hill, where we started making our normal trek down Wentworth Street. As I had been on my first visit, I was lured by the delicious aroma of Blue Lake Coffee. Camilla had promised me a hot drink, but suddenly I really wanted the store-bought kind. I tied the dogs up to a “No Parking” sign near a hydrant. They sat peacefully even as the cold wind ruffled their thick fur. “Be right back,” I said. “I want some java.”

I went inside, where it was delightfully warm and fragrant, and got into a line of about four people. Some customers sat at oaken tables, chatting peacefully while they sipped coffee and munched on muffins or scones. A few others sat in corner booths under a sign that said “Free Wi-Fi” and tapped away at laptops while occasionally guzzling their caffeinated beverages.

I shifted my gaze to the menu above the counter, which had a surprising variety of choices for coffee. Someone had walked up behind me; I decided to ask for a recommendation. I turned, ready to confide my confusion, and came face-to-face with the man that I had suspected of killing Martin Jonas—the red-haired man that Heller had called Dave Brill. “Hello,” I said, but my voice didn’t come out friendly, as I had initially intended.

He looked surprised that I was speaking to him. “Hey,” he said.

“I know you, don’t I?” I asked, feeling bold.

“I don’t think so.” He looked around, as though for an exit.

“I do. I saw you a week or so ago, talking to Martin Jonas in Bick’s Hardware. You were telling him he needed to do something for you.”

“Who
are
you?” he asked. He had the bleary eyes of a man who had not slept well.

“My name is Lena London. What’s yours?”

He narrowed his eyes at me. “Are you a cop or something?”

“No. Just a Blue Lake resident.”

“Huh. I don’t remember seeing you.”

“You were there, though. With Martin Jonas. I understand you sell comic books.”

His eyebrows shot up. “What?”

“Don’t you sell comic books? I was interested in buying some.”

“You?” he asked, almost jeering. “I’m guessing you couldn’t even name a comic book.”

He was wrong there. My brilliant former boyfriend had been obsessed with them, and I had learned more than I’d wanted to. “I could name plenty. Not so much in DC, although I’ve read my share of those. I’m more of a Marvel person.”

“Huh,” he said. He was not a good conversationalist. He was looking restless again, as though he might try to make a run for it if I looked away.

“I’m looking for the Daredevil series from 1964.”

A slight beam of interest glowed in his eyes. “That’s kind of rare. Are you looking to start with number one? Those first ten are hard to keep in stock.”

“Which is why I’m looking for them. Love that Matt Murdock,” I said with a fake smile.

“It’s a pretty good series. I’ve got big Hulk and
Spider-Man collections, but not much Daredevil right now. You have anything to sell?”

“Not here in town. I have stuff back in storage in Chicago,” I lied.

“I’m always looking for new series. What all have you got?” he asked.

“Next,” said the person at the counter. It was a teenage girl with an eyebrow piercing and a friendly grin. “What can I get you?” she asked.

“Hang on,” I told Dave Brill. I gave my order for a standard Colombian roast, nothing fancy, and the young barista looked disappointed. She nodded, though, and set about getting my order ready.

Dave Brill was lingering behind me, perhaps dreaming of finding that elusive comic book that might be in my possession. “So was Martin a part of your comic book business?” I asked him.

“How do you know Marty?” he asked.

“Just through mutual friends.”

“Like who?” He looked downright suspicious now.

“Lane and Clayton Waldrop,” I said.

This surprised him; he thought about it, then nodded a few times. “Okay, that’s cool. I know Marty went to school with them and everything.”

“So how do you know Marty?”

He shrugged. “We met down at Terry’s Bowling Alley.”

Of course. The legendary bowling alley that Marge Bick had called “unsavory.”

The barista put my coffee on the counter and I paid her. Then I turned and Dave Brill moved up to the counter. As he did, I got a whiff of his scent—Old Spice, with something else underneath it. A bolt of fear had me
remembering the night before—the terror of being knocked to the ground by an unknown force.

I stared at the side of his face while he ordered a complicated latte. He needed a shave. “So you and Martin probably know Ray, right?”

His head turned swiftly toward me, his eyes wary. “How do you know Ray?”

Oh, boy. “Just another set of mutual friends.”

This he clearly did not believe. Perhaps Ray didn’t have any friends. He narrowed his eyes at me. “What’s your name again?”

“Lena.”

He nodded. “You want to buy some comic books, you can find me online. Dave Brill. I have a website called Small Town Comics. Meanwhile, I’ll tell Ray you said hi.”

“You do that. Thanks, Dave!” I waved and started toward the door.

He called after me, his voice nervous. “Whose dogs are those?”

I turned and met his eyes, which were strangely pale. “They’re mine,” I said. “Or at least they belong to my employer, Camilla Graham. You probably know her—she lives at the top of the bluff.”

His eyes widened just enough, and his nostrils flared just enough, that I knew I’d hit the bull’s-eye. I managed to walk steadily toward the door and to appear cool and unconcerned while I set my coffee on a blue bench and untied the dogs, then reclaimed my drink and walked—oh so casually—toward the hill. I had been planning to investigate the town, but now I intended to go straight back to Graham House, find Doug Heller, and tell him my instincts
had been correct—the red-haired man had probably killed Martin Jonas, and he had been at Camilla’s last night.

By the time I got to the end of the street I was running; I looked back once to see that Dave Brill was on his phone and talking animatedly. I turned back and kept up my pace. The dogs were happy as could be; they rarely got to run, and they tore up the hill as though they were chasing a particularly elusive squirrel.

When I finally got to Camilla’s I was out of breath and perspiring. I let go of the leashes so the dogs could wander in the yard. Doug Heller was standing near the front porch, pushing some hair out of his face; the wind seemed bent on obscuring one of his eyes. Now that I had arrived, I realized how very cold it was. My mind had been occupied with other things.

I made eye contact with Heller and held up a hand, indicating that I wanted to speak with him. I heard a car coming up the bluff, speeding and careening. I had almost reached Heller when it pulled into Camilla’s yard. I turned to see the anxious face of Lane Waldrop peering out of her station wagon.

“Lena,” said Doug.

“Lena,” Lane called, stepping out of her car and smiling in a tentative way. “Can you talk for a minute?”

Camilla appeared and gathered up the dogs; she glanced from Doug to Lane to me, looking bemused. The wind lashed against us; I took a bracing sip of my coffee and walked toward Lane. “What’s up?” I said.

Again, her smile seemed hesitant. “I got a break from the kids and I thought I’d check to see if you want to do something. See a movie or whatever.” Her eyes flicked past
my shoulder to Doug Heller, who answered a ringing phone with a brusque “Heller” while uniformed officers milled back and forth behind him.

I was distracted, wondering what the call was about, and Lane said, “Is everything okay? You look like you could use a break.”

“Uh—I actually can’t right now. I have to talk to Detective Heller about something, and then I’m committed to working with Camilla today.”