A Dark and Stormy Murder (A Writer's Apprentice Mystery) (7 page)

“A million things, including your splendid move—and then a murder in your backyard.”

“Yes—that’s right at the top of the list of things we were going to discuss. Did you know him—the dead man?”

West nodded and squirted some ketchup on his hash browns. “I went to that restaurant now and again—Wheat Grass. He worked there. He was a good waiter, too, but kind of a zero as a person.”

“Meaning what?”

“Not much personality. At least not that I noticed.”

“Did he have any enemies that you knew of?”

West’s face was wry. “For obvious reasons, I don’t involve myself with the lives of people in this town. I came here to be exactly what I am—a recluse who enjoys his silence.”

“Yet you eat at places like this, and Wheat Grass, where you know everyone will stare at you.”

“True. But a man has to eat. This place has good food, as does Wheat Grass. You should go sometime. Preferably with me.”

I felt a blush rising on my face and wished that I could control that sort of thing. “Why with you?”

His eyes were wide and innocent. “Because I’m tired of eating alone.” He shifted in his chair, and I caught a whiff of smoke, probably lingering from his morning cigarette.

“You should stop smoking,” I said. It was utterly
inappropriate, but again West seemed amused. He gazed at me for a moment with his azure eyes.

“I have,” he said finally. “For the most part. I have one in the morning and one in the evening. And oh, how I look forward to them both.”

“Still unhealthy,” I said.

He pointed at my waffle, on which I had spread a ridiculous amount of butter, and I laughed. “Okay, okay. Point taken. Lung disease, heart disease—potato, potahto.”

“You’re a nice person, Lena,” he said suddenly.

“Uh—”

“And you’re so polite you would never ask, so I’m going to tell you something.” He leaned forward, clearly on the verge of an admission.

“You don’t have to—”

“I don’t know what happened to my wife,” he said in a low voice. “I’ve hired my own investigator to try to find her. I maintain a residence in New York City, and I go back from time to time to see if there are any new developments, and to check in with the neighbors who still speak to me. But for reasons that are probably obvious, I don’t like being there. In the meantime I am attempting to do my work in a quiet place that is extremely distant from New York. Despite my unpopular reputation, I find Blue Lake is working out quite well for me in that respect.”

“What is your work?”

“I’m an investor. I started out in banking and now I work with private clients. All I need is a phone and a computer to do my job well.”

“Well, that’s convenient—I mean, that you wanted to relocate and didn’t have to leave your job behind.”

“Yes, I suppose.”

“And how did you happen to choose Blue Lake?”

The doorbell jangled, and I looked up to see Douglas Heller entering and flashing a smile to Carly and saying something about wanting his usual. He was halfway to a table before he noticed me and West. He stopped in his tracks, his face unreadable, and then he walked toward us. “Hello, Lena.” Then he turned his face slightly to the right and said, “West.”

“Detective Heller,” said Sam with painful politeness.

“How are you and Camilla doing today?” Heller asked, his eyes back on me.

“Quite well, considering. Have you found out who shot that poor man?”

Heller shook his head. “We’re working on it. Meanwhile, since we can’t explain why there was a gunman on the beach, you might wish to refrain from going there, or from walking around unaccompanied. Did you walk here this morning?”

“I did. And I was unaccompanied.”

Sam West showed his teeth in what was meant to be a smile. “I was also
unaccompanied
. Perhaps Lena and I should walk back up the hill together.”

Heller did not look amused. “I suppose that, under the circumstances, it would be a good idea.” He looked tired today, and his gold-brown eyes were red-rimmed. I wondered what sort of hours one had to keep when investigating a crime. He focused back on me. “I thought you said that you found the men in Blue Lake rude and off-putting.”

I paused, surprised. Did he somehow resent the fact that I was sitting with Sam West? I sent him a pacifying smile. “I found you very friendly, and you were the first person I met.” I pointed at Sam with my fork. “I found him rude
and
unfriendly
, but he has made up for it this morning, I can only assume because he realized how unacceptable his behavior was. Would you like to join us for breakfast?”

West rustled in his seat but said nothing. Doug Heller’s eyebrows rose. “That’s kind of you, but I’m going to eat at the counter and then be on my way. Carly probably has my order ready as we speak.”

“Have a good day, then,” I said. “Good luck with finding—the perpetrator.”

“Thanks,” Heller said. He turned to West briefly. “West.”

Sam grunted out an acknowledgment, and Heller moved back to the counter after one last inscrutable glance at me.

“Wow,” I whispered when he was far enough away. “Why don’t you guys just challenge each other to a duel?”

West grinned at me, then put his palms down on the table. “I’m getting tired of this place. Finish your waffle and I’ll walk you home. Or did you have errands to run?”

“Not this morning. And I should probably walk the dogs. They were bummed out when I left without them.”

“So thoughtful,” West murmured. He signaled for the bill, which Carly brought in her quick and efficient manner. West insisted upon paying for us both, despite my protestations.

“I owe you this and more, for brightening my morning the way you did.”

I let him pay after all, which seemed to agitate the people in the diner even more. Once the door of the place was shut behind us, I could only imagine how rapidly the wheels of gossip were turning.

West read my mind and said, “I’m afraid you’ve committed yourself to the local rumor mill. By the end of the day everyone will know your name, or at least that you
were the dark-haired beauty who had breakfast with the murderer.”

I felt a sudden chill, and it wasn’t just the October air, but the way West said that word with a smile, as though it didn’t have a terrible rhetorical power. “People should mind their own business.”

“Yes.” His smile disappeared. We walked back up the bluff in relative silence, but it was a comfortable quiet. As we neared his driveway, he said, “I’ll stop off here, but I’ll watch until you get to your place. Make sure no boogeymen jump out of the bushes.”

“Thanks. And thanks for breakfast, Sam.” I waved at him. For an instant, there was a strange expression on his face, one that I couldn’t decipher, but he quickly masked it with a polite expression. He returned my wave, and I made my way back to Camilla’s place unmolested.

Bob Dawkins and his horrible son were gone, but there were two new stair treads that smelled like fresh-cut wood.

6

His name was Gerhard, and though he had done nothing but scowl at her from the time of her arrival, she found she couldn’t stop thinking about him.

—from
The Salzburg Train

I
DID TAKE
the dogs for a walk, but Doug Heller had made me just paranoid enough that I stayed close to the house. Then I returned to Graham House and saw, to my great consternation, that Lestrade had escaped and was pawing tentatively down the grand staircase. “Uh-oh,” I said, and then, in a cacophony of barking, the two dogs went leaping up the stairs, and Lestrade yowled once before scrabbling back the way he had come, the fur on his back standing comically straight and his tail puffed to twice its normal size.

Camilla peered out of her office. “Is everything all right?”

“My cat got out, and the dogs are chasing him.”

I must have looked upset, because she moved forward and patted my arm. “He can’t get out of the house, so there’s no danger of him running down the hill and getting
lost. Once the dogs lose interest, he’ll come out from wherever he’s hiding. They had to meet at some point, didn’t they?”

“Yes, I guess so.” Still, I was worried about Lestrade. What if he found some obscure cubbyhole and got trapped in there? What if he found his way into the attic or the basement and simply never reappeared?

I frowned up the staircase. Camilla called the dogs and they came loping back down, but Lestrade did not. “I guess I’ll go up and look around. And then I’ll return to the book.”

“Excellent. I’m just working on your last notes. They’re so very helpful,” Camilla said. “Oh, before you go—let me introduce you to Rhonda. She’s the one making that delicious aroma that will eventually be our lunch.”

“I just had a huge breakfast,” I confessed. “But my appetite seems to be constant here. I don’t know if the air is fresher, or—”

“A good appetite is a sign of good health,” Camilla said. “Come into the kitchen for a moment.”

Rhonda was a plump woman with caramel-colored hair that she had pulled up into a sort of waterfall with a couple of side combs. She wore a white Fawlty Towers sweatshirt and a pair of blue jeans, as well as an apron that bore signs of her having wiped her hands on it while she cooked. “Hello, nice to meet you,” Rhonda said, tossing the remark over her shoulder as she strained some noodles at the sink.

“The dinner you made last night was just delicious,” I said.

She shrugged and dumped the noodles into a pot. “Oh, that was just some backup food.”

“It was divine. Rhonda is an artist, but she downplays
her skill. Her cooking is innate,” Camilla said. “I was lucky to find her.”

Rhonda blushed slightly with the compliment. “And I was lucky to find you,” she said. “I used to work at a public school, doing those horrible mass-produced lunches. Didn’t pay as well, and it was soulless work. Graham House—well, it’s like cooking for the people in Downton Abbey.”

Camilla laughed. “Hardly.”

“No, I just mean—it’s classy. Not that you’re snobby, or anything.”

Camilla patted Rhonda’s arm and said, “Well, this ‘grande dame’ is going back to work.” She left the room, shaking her head at the very idea.

“She’s a great boss,” Rhonda said to me. She lifted the strainer full of noodles and poured them into a pot on the stove. Some sort of sauce was already simmering there, and it smelled wonderful.

“She’s an amazing person,” I said. “My idol. I still can’t believe I’m here. I was just saying that to Sam West at breakfast.”

Rhonda turned and faced me, surprised. “You had breakfast with Sam West?”

“I was supposed to have breakfast with my friend, but she had to cancel. He was there, too, so we just sort of sat together.”

“I wonder about that guy,” she said. “He has such a bad reputation in this town.”

“I don’t think it’s deserved.” I wasn’t about to tell her what West had confided in me about his wife.

“I hope not,” she said. “I don’t like to think some murderer is walking around town.”

“There
is
a murderer walking around—whoever killed Martin Jonas. Camilla and I saw his body, and the police say he was murdered. Sam West had nothing to do with that, because he looked really surprised when he found out.”

Rhonda shrugged. “It’s a strange world. We don’t know who the hell we can trust. But I’ll tell you this. I’ve got two kids, and I thought Blue Lake was a great place to raise them. Now I’m not so sure.”

“Every town has bad people in it. It seems to me that, in general, Blue Lake is just what you think it is.” I seemed to have said that a lot since I got here—assuring people that the town they lived in was not an illusion.

“I hope so.”

“It was nice meeting you, Rhonda. I have to go check on my cat. The dogs chased him upstairs.”

“Oh, poor thing.” She was back to her pot now, mixing the noodles and sauce and sprinkling in some salt. “I hope you find him. Lunch is at noon.”

I thanked her again and went toward the stairs; I peeked into Camilla’s study and saw that Rochester was resting at her feet with his eyes closed. Clearly he had tired of stalking Lestrade. Heathcliff was not in the room.

I moved up the stairs with some trepidation, half fearing that I’d find the shepherd with my poor cat in his mouth. The door of my room was slightly open—had Lestrade picked at the door? Had I not shut it all the way? But of course—Lestrade had somehow pried it open and escaped. I pushed on the door, peering around the edge. Then I almost laughed right out loud.

Lestrade was lounging in a large sun spot on the carpet to the left of my bed, his head pillowed on the belly of Heathcliff, who lay like a dead thing behind him. I knew
the dog was fine, because I could hear him snoring, and in between those rather loud sleep sounds I could hear Lestrade purring.

“Hilarious,” I murmured. I went to the desk, retrieved the manuscript, and sat down to read some more before lunch. My laptop distracted me, though, and on an impulse I pulled it toward me, opened an Internet browser, and Googled “missing wife of Sam West New York.” Articles related to Sam West sprang up instantly, and with them the pictures.

I clicked on a picture labeled “Victoria West,” and there was her face, filling the screen. She was attractive, with a long graceful neck and reddish hair that was swept up into a gold clasp. Her face was not quite perfect—her eyes were a bit too far apart and her mouth was narrow and made her look disapproving—and yet she was a stunning woman. I stared at the picture for a long time, then clicked back to the story, which had been reported the previous year. It was an objective piece, a rarity these days on news blogs, and it said merely that Victoria West, a New York designer married to investor Samuel West, had been missing for two weeks, and police had no leads as to her whereabouts. The last line suggested that Sam West was “a person of interest” in the disappearance, but that he had not been arrested.

Assuming Sam West was telling the truth and he really didn’t know where his wife was, this must have been terrible for him—he must have been worried for his wife and disturbed about the implications. Had this affected his job? His friendships? His family life? How did one recover from something like this, especially when there had been no resolution? And where in the world was Victoria West?

I looked back at the list of headlines and scrolled to one
that had appeared two months later: “Police say Victoria West had filed for divorce from her husband.”

“Oh, my,” I said. I clicked on the story. According to an AP reporter named Wallace Brent, Victoria West had indeed filed for divorce a month before she disappeared, and Sam West had not contested it. The paperwork had been supplied by both parties, and the lawyers had been processing the file when Mrs. West disappeared.

This seemed to be a good sign for Sam West. If he and his wife had amicably agreed to a divorce, then surely he had no motive for killing her? Assuming, as the world seemed to do, that she had been killed.

Most of the headlines that popped up seemed to have an implied judgment of West and his guilt, despite their supposed objectivity. I did find one article, written by a Jeremiah Tolson, which suggested that West was being railroaded by the press. The part that interested me said “It seems odd that West, 35, and his missing wife Victoria, 33, had already split before her disappearance, and there is not a sizeable insurance policy, investigators say, for either party, yet the press is content to push West into the role of murderer rather than to investigate what might actually have happened to his wife. Perhaps the media is jumping too quickly into tawdry assumptions because of the elements of the story they already have: the beautiful woman, the reportedly distant man, and the wealthy set of New York. In this respect the press is forgetting its function of telling the truth at all costs, to the detriment of the much-maligned Mr. West.”

I clicked out of the story and drummed my fingers on the desk. Why was this the only person who had defended West? Perhaps he was right in his contention that people
wanted to jump to the most evil conclusions because it made for readable news.

I needed to get to work, but my curiosity was still working. I Googled “Douglas Heller, Blue Lake Police.” Up popped all sorts of articles related to Detective Doug Heller, including one about him taking the job in Blue Lake and another about him solving a cold case in 2011 and receiving a commendation. Some further investigation allowed me to pull up his college graduation program; Douglas Heller had been salutatorian of his class at Indiana University.

“Overachiever,” I said, and Lestrade mewed in apparent agreement. Seemingly tired of Heathcliff, he wandered to the desk and jumped on it and began to play with a pencil that was lying there. He deliberately knocked it on the floor, then looked at me.

I scratched his ears. “Google is our friend, Lestrade. What do you want to know?”

He squinted at me, perhaps surprised that I wasn’t going to get upset about the whole pencil thing. Sometimes Lestrade just wanted a reaction. In that way I supposed he was just like any person. I had a sudden inspiration and Googled “Martin Jonas.” This brought only a few results: one was a crime report from five years earlier, when Martin Jonas had been a senior in high school. Jonas and two other boys were arrested after “significant vandalism” of their school. They had been caught in the act by a passing patrol car. All three of them had spent some time in jail.

I found an older article about Jonas winning an art award; apparently he had been a promising painter. So why had he stopped going to school and gotten a job as a waiter? Surely his jail record hadn’t kept him from pursuing more
education? Or maybe Jonas was just one of those kids who couldn’t wait to get out of high school and had no intention of going any further. I sighed. One day in Blue Lake, and I was surrounded by mysteries—and not just Camilla Graham’s, which I had been avoiding in order to follow my curiosity about the locals.

I had accomplished very little on Camilla’s manuscript by the time I wandered down for lunch. I amused Camilla and Rhonda with the tale of Heathcliff and Lestrade. Rhonda stood in the doorway, holding a dish towel, and chatted with us a bit while we ate another delicious salad.

“Where do you get such fresh greens?” I said. “Salads in the city are nothing like this.”

She grew pink with pleasure. “Sometimes they’re from my own garden. But we have a little farm stand here in Blue Lake called Dooley’s. It’s on Green Glass Highway—you probably passed it when you drove into town.”

I had seen it—it was visible when I pulled over to get Lestrade off the ceiling of my car. That’s when I had met Doug Heller without knowing who he was . . .

“It’s delicious as always, Rhonda,” Camilla said in her quiet way.

Rhonda shrugged. “I’ll get started on the main dish.” She moved back into the kitchen, and I turned back to Camilla.

“I was doing a little research upstairs. I happened to see that Sam West and his wife were in the process of divorcing when she disappeared.”

Camilla’s eyebrows rose as she speared some greens with her salad fork. What seemed like a smile flitted across her lips and was gone. “That’s true. It was over for all intents and purposes.”