“Not by yourself, you’re not,” I said. “Should we turn on a light?”
“Yes, yes. Let’s illuminate the situation.”
I felt the wall for a switch and filled the hall with a speckled gold light. Camilla was wearing a long flannel nightgown with a cream-colored, fluffy robe. Her glasses were gone, and her hair shimmered silver as she moved toward me.
The dogs suddenly lunged away from us and rushed through the hall and down the stairs. Camilla hesitated. “I guess we need to go down.” She didn’t seem particularly eager to do so.
I realized that she felt intimidated, and that I was the younger and stronger person here. “I’ll go first,” I said, moving down the shadowy hall with a sense of the surreal. I flipped on another light at the stair landing; this made part of the main hallway visible, along with the door to Camilla’s study. The dogs were not in view.
Down the stairs I went, Camilla close behind me, and I paused at the bottom to get my bearings. The house was dark and quiet; I didn’t have the sense that evildoers lurked in the corners. “Maybe the dogs just heard a car backfiring or something,” I said, my voice hopeful. I was still clutching my cow doorstop.
“They’ve never done something like this before—at least not recently. And at this ungodly hour! It’s strange,” she said.
I walked to the door of her study and peered in. Both dogs stood in front of her desk, their faces vigilant, their bodies as still as lawn ornaments. “They’re reacting to something,” I said. “Camilla, I think we should call the police.”
“At this hour? I would feel terrible bothering them . . . but perhaps you’re right. Just to have them check the place out.” She hesitated, then walked to her desk, where an old-fashioned rotary-dial phone sat on top. It was her preferred method of calling; her cell phone was something she used as little as possible. “Lena, would you run and turn on some more lights? Be sure to turn on the outer porch, too. Thank you, dear.”
I did as she asked, feeling slightly nervous, but less so with each corner I illuminated. When I returned to her study, she was in the center of the room, her expression distracted.
“Everything all right?” I asked, setting the cow down on her desk.
“Hmm? Oh, yes—yes, I think so. They’re sending someone out. Just a few minutes, the dispatcher said.”
“Wonderful. How was your dinner with Adam?”
“Oh, quite nice. He appreciated the invitation. I realized I had never invited him for a meal before—quite remiss of me, since I’ve known him for years. I’m sure he enjoyed the change of scenery; most nights he eats dinner in the kitchen at Wheat Grass.”
“Ah.”
“You’re right about this house fascinating people. Adam insisted on the full tour.”
“Is that so?” I thought about this for a moment, frowning.
“And how was your evening with Allison?”
“Oh—a bit complicated. She insisted on bringing a man for me to meet, and it ended up being Doug Heller.”
Camilla clapped her hands, smiling. “Oh, how funny. But he was a good choice, really. He’s probably the most sought-after bachelor in this town.”
“Yes, well. I’m not seeking any bachelors at this point. I need to concentrate on your book, and here I am swanning around making all these social plans. In fact, I have to dart out again in the morning; Sam West was kind enough to look at the contract for me, so I’m going to pick it up at his house. And then, as you recall, I invited Lane Waldrop for lunch.”
Camilla shrugged. “Sometimes you have to pay your social dues. And I’ll be gone at the doctor anyway, remember? We can work on the book when I return.”
“Yes, all right. Oh—someone’s at the door!”
It was not Doug Heller—I wasn’t sure whether I felt relief or disappointment about that fact—but the nervous, Chihuahua-like man who had wanted to push Camilla and me off the beach on the day of the murder. At his side was a younger officer in uniform, a sandy-haired man with a baby face. I wondered if there were any women on the Blue Lake Police Force.
“You say you heard sounds?” said the nervous officer that Doug Heller had called Chip, and whose nametag said “Officer Johnson.”
Camilla yawned, then nodded. “Thanks to the dogs, we were alerted to something—I’m not sure what. The dogs never get up in the night, but they are both trained to ward off intruders.”
I had not known this; I looked at Rochester and Heathcliff, who sat nearby, posing and panting, and sent them a look of respect. They seemed to acknowledge the attention with a slight raising of their chins.
Chip Johnson and the younger policeman spoke to each other in low tones; then the younger one went outside, murmuring into his radio.
“May I look around the house?” Chip asked.
“Feel free,” Camilla told him. “It has a great many nooks and crannies, but we’ve tried to turn on enough lights.”
He moved importantly past us and marched up the stairs to the second floor.
I made a face at Camilla, my impression of Chip Johnson’s officious expression, and she giggled. “Oh, Lena, you make me laugh. You’ve brought new life into this house.” She reached out and patted my hand. “You must promise never to leave.”
She said this last sentence lightly, ironically, and I chuckled. “If you promise to never stop writing.”
The outside man returned, holding something small in his hand. “Where’s Chip?” he asked.
“He’s checking the place out—currently upstairs,” Camilla said.
The young officer went bounding up the stairs after Chip, and we moved to a small couch in the corner of the study, to rest our bones, as Camilla rather mordantly put it. After about twenty minutes, Chip came in with his companion and cleared his throat, ready to make a report.
We remained sitting, but Camilla sat a bit straighter. “Did you find anyone?”
“No people, no, ma’am, but I am concerned that someone might have been here. No footprints to speak of, but the ground’s pretty dry right now.”
“But?”
“But we found this scarf.” He held up a gray knitted thing. “It’s not wet or dirty, which makes it seem it may have been dropped quite recently. And we found this fluttering against your trellis.”
He held up a fifty-dollar bill. “Have you lost money recently, Ms. Graham?” he drawled.
Camilla snorted. “I am not in the habit of carrying large sums of cash, and I don’t deal in big bills like an American gangster. For the most part I write checks.”
“This money ain’t been affected by the weather, either,” said the young officer, looking pleased.
“It hasn’t been affected,” Chip corrected ostentatiously, looking at Camilla out of the corner of his eye; he seemed to be standing on his tiptoes. I almost laughed; apparently I wasn’t the only one in this town who felt the need to impress Camilla Graham.
Camilla sighed. “I confess I am at a loss to imagine what might have occurred out there, or what visitor might be lurking in the shadows with pockets full of money. It does sound intriguing, though.”
I could see that if she had ever been frightened, that feeling had passed. Now she looked tired.
“Thank you so much for coming out,” I told the two officers, both of whom seemed rather curious about the house and its pajama-clad occupants. The baby-faced officer pointed at my flannel night attire.
“Are those flying books?” he asked.
I assured him that it was merely a pattern on the material, and that the books were simply open and ready to be read. This made me want to be in my bed, reading a book.
“You give us a call if you have any other visitors,” Chip said. “Right now I’m guessing it was just someone taking a shortcut, or some kids on a lark.”
We thanked them again and ushered them out the door, which Camilla locked w
ith a firm click.
I turned to her. “A shortcut?”
“To what, I wonder?” she asked. “We’re at the top of the bluff.”
We thought about this for a moment.
“Lena?”
“Yes?”
“Do you like cupcakes?” Camilla Graham asked me with a mischievous expression.
“Who doesn’t?”
“Rhonda made us some delightful ones for our dinner, but goodness. As if two old people are going to eat six large cupcakes after a full meal!”
I shrugged.
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s have a midnight snack at three in the morning.”
We went to the kitchen, where, through the dark window, I could see a glimmer of Blue Lake on the horizon. Camilla flipped on the light over the sink and rummaged in the refrigerator. She took out a little cake plate, removed the cover, and revealed that Rhonda was a genius at desserts. Each cupcake was uniquely decorated and piled high with a different color of frosting.
I sat down and Camilla set the plate before me. She saw my face and said, “Yes. I am trying to encourage her to write a cookbook. She has a gift and doesn’t fully realize it.” She pointed at a cake piled high with a froth of cream-colored frosting. “That one is a carrot cake. This one?” She pointed at another, frosted blue with a little sailboat on top. “Has jam inside. Surprisingly delicious.”
I moaned softly. “And that coffee-colored one?”
“Chocolate cake with hazelnut frosting.”
“Sinful. Yes, Rhonda needs to be recognized by the world.”
Camilla poured us each a glass of milk and returned to the table. She sat across from me and took a pink cupcake covered in red glitter and a red frosted heart.
“A romantic choice,” I said.
She shrugged. “You’ve read my books. You know I’m a romantic at heart.” She took a bite and pointed at the cupcakes. I selected the chocolate one and bit into it. It was a perfect moment of blissful flavor that exceeded expectations.
“Mmmm!”
“Yes. I’ve thought about a way to hook a publisher. What if she called it The Blue Lake Cookbook? Is that too vague? They could market the small-town appeal.”
“I think it’s great. I would buy it, and I know Allison would. All the Martha Stewart types would. It’s all about the visuals. If you put these cupcakes on the cover, it would sell like crazy. But even one of her salads or casseroles would make people buy. She has a visual flair.”
“Here we are planning Rhonda’s success; perhaps we should also focus on our own,” Camilla said with an almost conspiratorial tone.
“Yes.” I took another bite and closed my eyes to enjoy it. When I opened them, I was surprised by the look on Camilla’s face. For the first time since I had met her, she looked happy; not just quietly amused or laughing at me, but happy. I wondered why.
“How is the chocolate?”
“As good as you’d imagine.”
We grinned at each other, and the dogs snuffled at our feet, half asleep now that their job was over.
“Camilla?”
“Yes.”
“I really love The Salzburg Train. I love all your books so much.”
“Thank you, dear.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“When I interviewed with you, over the phone—it seemed that you decided to hire me after that one answer—when I said my favorite character in The Lost Child was Colin, the boy. I wondered—I’m not sure how to put this—if Colin was important to you because he was perhaps based on a boy you knew?”
Camilla licked some frosting from her finger and smiled down at her plate. It was a sad smile. “You really do understand me, so much better than even my editors do. They wanted me to make changes to Colin, to his character and the overall plot, and I had to refuse.”
I sat up straight in my chair. The thought that someone had wanted to tamper with the perfect plot of that book was shocking. “Of course you did.”
“Colin is not exactly a boy I knew. None of my characters are anything but amalgams of other people. But—when my husband and I had been married for two years—long, long ago—I became pregnant. We were quite excited, and made plans to raise the baby in England with summer visits here, to Blue Lake, where his (or her) father would teach him to fish and sail. We had many happy times, imagining it.”
I couldn’t look at her. I had read every biography of Camilla ever written, and I knew that she had no children.
“In the fifth month, I developed complications. I ended up in the hospital, and we were eventually told that our child was not meant to be—that no child was meant to be.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said.
She picked up a crumb with one finger, then brushed it back off again. “It was a boy—my lost child.”
“Oh, Camilla.”
“He stayed with me—the boy who might have been. He is my child, in many ways, and he appears in a variety of books, at different ages. In The Lost Child, he is Colin, aged nine. In Twilight in Daventry, he is Maximillian, aged sixteen.”
“And in Stars, Hide Your Fires, he is Ian, aged six,” I said.
“Yes. He is my boy in all his possible incarnations. In my books, I can give him life—the best life I can imagine for him.”
“That’s beautiful. Thank you for telling me, Camilla.”
“I’ve never told anyone, as a matter of fact.”
She must have seen my surprise, because she gave a Gallic shrug and said, “No one ever asked.”
I nodded, suddenly speechless. I tried to picture Camilla when she was twenty-something and awaiting a child with her husband. She had been quite young when she published her first book—only twenty-four. How old had she been when she became pregnant?
Camilla yawned. “I’ve enjoyed our culinary tryst, but I must get back to bed. Please eat all that you want, and then just pop the plate back in the refrigerator. We can let Rhonda snack on her own creations tomorrow.”
“Of course.”
I watched her walk out of the room and heard her slow tread on the stairs. I stared at the brightly colored cupcakes on the plate and wondered about Camilla’s lost child. If he had been born, would she ever have written all those wonderful books?
Her life, to me, had been a study in glamour—from London editorial offices to European book tours to speeches before screaming fans—and yet I was sure she would give it up in a second for a chance to go back, to somehow save her boy.
For a moment, the idea of loss overwhelmed me: Camilla and her lost child; Sam West and his lost spouse; Martin Jonas and his lost life.
With a sigh I wrapped up the remaining food and put it back in the fridge. I looked back out at the glimmering lake, so mysterious and cruel in its relationship to nature and fate.
Lestrade wandered into the kitchen, his night eyes glowing. He blinked at me in the dark, clearly surprised to see a human up at this hour.
“You’re the one who woke me up, remember?”
He licked his paw. I scooped him up and walked up the staircase. “Sometimes life is funny, Lestrade. And sometimes it is terribly unfair,” I whispered in his ear.
By the time I climbed back into bed, Lestrade was purring and half asleep. No cat had ever lain awake worrying over some external drama. I vowed to live my life in a more catlike manner.
It worked; I was asleep in minutes, and the next morning I woke refreshed.
10
How quickly the sweet can turn bitter, Johanna mused as she read the note Frau Albrecht had given her with a pitying expression. Perhaps she had always known that disappointment awaited her, from the moment she stepped off the train and into her new life.
—from The Salzburg Train
I GOT TO Sam West’s place at nine o’clock and was surpris
ed to find he was not smoking at the end of his property. I walked farther, realizing that I had never even seen the entrance to his house. The driveway curved, and around the bend I beheld a grand brick and stone structure—not a Gothic-looking home, but a modern, Wright-inspired building that seemed at one with the bluff. The landscaping was minimal but meticulous; I wondered if West had done it himself. That was one way to fritter away the hours while one avoided humanity. I remembered him quoting Sartre to me on the day I met him: “Hell is other people.”
I reached the large wooden entrance door and rang the bell embedded in the brick on the right-hand side. West’s voice came over an invisible intercom: “Come on in, Lena—it’s open.”
It was. I stepped into a hall with rust-colored tiles and sandstone walls. It was refined and masculine; I’m not sure what I had expected to see in Sam West’s house—perhaps an empty building with an open suitcase and minimal furniture?—but what I found was a well-appointed home with sophisticated décor. The painting above his hallway table looked expensive, and if I knew anything about art (which I didn’t, really), I would have guessed it was an original Remington—a Native American with an elaborate tribal headdress sitting proudly on a beautiful palomino.
“Hello?” Sam called.
“Hello. Where are you?”
“End of the hall. Turn right. That’s the kitchen.”
I followed these directions and turned into a big, bright space dominated by floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out onto the forested bluff. “Wow,” I said.
“Great view, right? I do a lot of philosophizing in here. Look what I have for you.”
I turned to his kitchen—surprisingly cozy, considering its size—and saw that he had set a plate of waffles on his antique wood dining table, and that he was making more with a homemade waffle press.
“You made me waffles,” I said in disbelief.
“You clearly loved them. I also ordered a vat of butter,” he joked with a crooked smile. In the bright light of his kitchen, his eyes were impossibly blue.
“I am overwhelmed. This is lovely. Are those fresh flowers?”
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