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

by Julia Buckley

  “Good morning,” I said.

  She looked up and beamed at me. “Oh, good morning! My goodness, if this is what you call sleeping in, you could never be accused of self-indulgence.”

  “I couldn’t sleep. But I’m having a lovely morning. Look at the sky today! And Rhonda has already made me fat and complacent.”

  Camilla laughed. “Come in, come in, Lena. Pull up the purple chair. I have some questions to ask you. And we have work to do.”

  It was quite familiar now, sitting across from Camilla at her large desk, settling into the stuffed chair and readying myself for creative dialogue. “Of course. We need to talk about Victoria. And work on the book, too,” I added hastily.

  She nodded. “Let’s do book business first, because I have some pressing deadlines. I’ve gone over the scene you wrote in the Black Forest. I made my own changes, but it’s largely yours. I’m wondering if you might look over a few more scenes in the same way. Discussing them with me, giving me your own take on them.”

  I leaned forward. “Of course! I love collaborating with you.”

  She nodded, pleased. “I thought you would say that, and I made some decisions based on your past performance.”

  The words sounded flattering, yet I felt a stab of fear. This sounded like an assessment. Was I going to be reviewed? I had been distracted lately, worrying over Sam, badgering Doug, chasing ideas about Martin Jonas and Sam’s wife . . . I had never really had a chance to prove myself under normal conditions. Camilla had acknowledged that yesterday, though; she had told me that she feared I would think Blue Lake was always a place of conflict.

  “Uh—what . . . ?” I began.

  She pulled a document from a folder nearby. “I just printed this. They sent it from New York this morning and want to know if I need any changes. It’s the cover for The Salzburg Train.”

  “Oh, how exciting!” I said.

  She handed the paper to me. “Tell me what you think.”

  It was beautiful, and the colors were close to what I had imagined: a purpled, twilight view of a delightfully old-fashioned train emerging from a bricked tunnel with a backdrop of beautiful Austrian countryside. The sky was a mixture of blue, lavender, and orange—a poetic vision of day turning to night. The title was one line, spread across the sky, and Camilla’s name was stretched across the bottom, white letters against the dark terrain—

  “Oh my God,” I said.

  “Do you like it?”

  “Camilla—this isn’t right. I—this isn’t necessary.”

  “I think it is, Lena. I think we must make our collaboration clear; who knows how much more you’ll do, as the years pass? And you could be publishing your own books in a year or two. This will help with that, don’t you think?”

  I stared at her, my mouth open, my eyes warm with tears.

  My gaze dropped back to the cover, the beautiful cover, the bottom of which read “Camilla Graham,” and underneath that, in slightly smaller letters, “with Lena London.”

  I traced my name with one finger. “It’s beautiful. Wonderful. But you can’t do it. It will make people think that you need someone to help you write your books, and you don’t. This book was the best yet! People will get the wrong idea.”

  Camilla shook her head. “No. All sorts of writers work with collaborators. It doesn’t mean they’ve lost their gift. It means they’re open to nurturing new talent.” She leaned forward. “I have loved working with you, Lena. I hope you feel the same.”

  “I do! You know I do. I—I don’t know what to say.”

  “Will you approve the cover?”

  “If you think—”

  She shook her head.

  “I mean, of course I love the cover. I—I’ll try to earn that credit, Camilla.”

  “Of course you will earn it, and have earned it.”

  “Thank you.” I wiped at my eyes.

  “We will need to do some interviews together. Tour together, although not extensively. I’ve made it clear that I’m too old to travel the world on tours. Some select cities in the U.S. and England, mostly.”

  “I’ve never been to England.” My lips felt numb.

  “Oh, it’s lovely. I can show you my favorite places.”

  “Camilla.”

  “Yes.”

  I set the picture down on her desk. “I need to hug you now.”

  To my surprise, the cool and reserved Camilla Graham laughed, clapped her hands, and moved swiftly around her desk, her arms open.

  I barreled into them, resting my chin on her shoulder. “You are everything I ever dreamed you would be,” I said. “And you have no idea how much I fantasized about meeting you, the person who created so many beautiful worlds for me.”

  Camilla kissed my cheek. “You are such a sweet child.”

  I stepped away from her. “Will we be working today? Or will we be sleuthing?”

  She nodded. “A bit of both. We need to go back over this new edited version—see what we find, and what we might want to change. My editor needs the changes back within the next two weeks.”

  “Of course. I’ll spend all day on it, every day. It’s been—a little distracting around here.”

  “Yes, indeed. But you can’t work on the book all day. As we established, Mrs. West is in danger. Doug will be involving the police, one hopes, and yet I fear they don’t have the imagination for it. That’s where we come in.”

  I nodded, accepting this even as I worried that it wasn’t true, that we wouldn’t be able to help them find Victoria.

  “But first, I have one more thing for you.”

  “Camilla, really,” I protested. “You’ve already given me a gift I can’t repay.”

  She went back to her desk and opened a drawer. She pulled out a book, which she held out to me. It was a hardback copy of The Lost Child; it looked like a first edition. “I was signing some books for that waiter from Wheat Grass; Adam brought them over for me, and I did promise, didn’t I? While I was doing it, I thought it made sense to sign this one for you. No one understands my characters as you do, Lena, especially Colin, my sweet boy. You saw him best of all.”

  She handed the book to me, and I accepted it with reverent hands. “Thank you,” I said. It was all I could muster.

  “You’re welcome.”

  “I’ll be ready to work in just a minute. I just want to put this in my room,” I managed. I escaped upstairs and leaped on my bed, clutching the book like a talisman. I lay for a while, staring at the ceiling, trying to absorb all that had happened.

  Then, tenderly, while Lestrade purred beside me with his eyes closed like some wise sphinx, I opened the cover. “To Lena,” it said. “In some ways, you are like the child I never had.” It was signed “Camilla.”

  Surely I would wake up and it would all have been a dream: coming to Blue Lake, meeting Camilla, confronting a murderer, meeting Sam West, finding the image of Victoria West, meeting Doug Heller, finding a hidden tunnel. Befriending my idol and finding that I had become as important to her life as she was to mine.

  With a sigh, I took the book to my desk and laid it down carefully. I would have to find some beautiful bookends, or a display rack, for something so precious.

  On a whim, I picked up my phone. I had a return text from Sam. It said: Me, too. Keep texting me—it brightens my day.

  I wrote back: Camilla just told me she’ll put my name on her next cover.

  Then I dialed my father; there was no answer, so I left him the same message, with a bit more detail, in a voice too high-pitched to hide my excitement. My father would understand; although it was my mother and I who had shared a love for Graham novels, my dad was the one who had always remembered to buy them as birthday and Christmas gifts for us both. He would understand the significance of seeing his daughter’s name on one of those book covers.

  * * *<
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  HOURS LATER CAMILLA and I sat at the dining room table, poring over corrections and making notes. It was painstaking work, but we had found that we could work well together, mainly in a companionable silence, occasionally consulting each other with questions or ideas.

  Finally Camilla sat back and removed her glasses, rubbing her eyes. “Oh, my. That might be all I can do until I take a break.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Would you like to walk the dogs? Head down to the lake? Hike in the woods, maybe?”

  She put her glasses back on; her eyes were still bright, despite the bleary work of editing.

  “I’ll let the dogs into the yard for now. We can walk them later. Right now, Miss London, we have some different work to do.” She pushed her manuscript away and leaned toward me, her expression conspiratorial. “We have a real-life mystery to solve.”

  “Yes,” I said, thinking of the man down the bluff whose future depended on resolving his past. “We do.”

  Camilla Graham placed her hands on the table, palms down, and directed her intelligent gaze at me. “So, Lena. Let’s put our heads together and find Victoria West.”

  Keep reading for an excerpt of Julia Buckley’s Undercover Dish Mystery . . .

  THE BIG CHILI

  Available in paperback from Berkley Prime Crime!

  MY CHOCOLATE LABRADOR watched me as I parked my previously loved Volvo wagon and took my covered pan out of the backseat; the autumn wind buffeted my face and made a mess of my hair. “I’ll be right back, Mick,” I said. “I know that pot in the back smells good, but I’m counting on you to behave and wait for your treat.”

  He nodded at me. Mick was a remarkable dog for many reasons, but one of his best talents was that he had trained himself to nod while I was talking. He was my dream companion: a handsome male who listened attentively and never interrupted or condescended. He also made me feel safe when I did my clandestine duties all over Pine Haven.

  I shut the car door and moved up the walkway of Ellie Parker’s house. She usually kept the door unlocked, though I had begged her to reconsider that idea. We had an agreement; if she wasn’t there, or if she was out back puttering around in her garden, I could just leave the casserole on the table and take the money she left out for me. I charged fifty dollars, which included the price of ingredients. Ellie said I could charge more, but for now this little sideline of a job was helping me pay the bills, and that was good enough.

  “Ellie?” I called. I went into her kitchen, where I’d been several times before, and found it neat, as always; Ellie was not inside. Disappointed, I left the dish on her scrubbed wooden table. I had made a lovely mac and cheese casserole with a twist: finely sliced onion and prosciutto baked in with three different cheeses for a showstopping event of a main course. It was delicious and very close to the way Ellie prepared it before her arthritis had made it too difficult to cook for her visiting friends and family. She didn’t want her loved ones to know this, which was where I came in. We’d had an agreement for almost a year, and it served us both well.

  She knew how long to bake the dish, so I didn’t bother with writing down any directions. Normally she would invite Mick in, and she and I would have some tea and shoot the breeze while my canine lounged under the table, but today, for whatever reason, she had made other plans. She hadn’t set out the money, either, so I went to the cookie jar where she had told me to find my payment in the past: a ceramic cylinder in the shape of a chubby monkey. I claimed my money and turned around to find a man looming in the doorway.

  “Ah!” I screamed, clutching the cash in front of my waist like a weird bouquet.

  “Hello,” he said, his eyes narrowed. “May I ask who you are?”

  “I’m a friend of Ellie’s. Who are you?” I fired back. Ellie had never suggested that a man—a sort of good-looking, youngish man—would appear in her house. For all I knew he could be a burglar.

  “I am Ellie’s son. Jay Parker.” He wore reading glasses, and he peered at me over these like a stern teacher. It was a good look for him. “And I didn’t expect to find a strange woman dipping into Mom’s cash jar while she wasn’t in the house.”

  A little bead of perspiration worked its way down my back. “First of all, I am not a strange woman. In any sense. Ellie and I are friends, and I—”

  I what? What could I tell him? My little covered-dish business was an under-the-table operation, and the people who ordered my food wanted it to appear that they had made it themselves. That, and the deliciousness of my cooking, was what they paid me for. “I did a job for her, and she told me to take payment.”

  “Is that so?” He leaned against the door frame, a man with all the time in the world. All he needed was a piece of hay to chew on. “And what job did you do for her?” He clearly didn’t believe me. With a pang I realized that this man thought I was a thief.

  “I mowed her lawn,” I blurted. We both turned to look out the window at Ellie’s remarkably high grass. “Wow. That really was not a good choice,” I murmured.

  Now his face grew alert, wary, as though he were ready to employ some sort of martial art if necessary. I may as well have been facing a cop. “What exactly is your relationship to my mother? And how did you even get in here, if my mom isn’t home?”

  At least I could tell the truth about that. “I’m Lilah Drake. Ellie left the door unlocked for me because she was expecting me. As I said, we are friends.”

  This did not please him. “I think she was actually expecting me,” he said. “So you could potentially have just gotten lucky when you tried the doorknob.”

  “Oh my God!” My face felt hot with embarrassment. “I’m not stealing Ellie’s money. She and I have an—arrangement. I can’t actually discuss it with you. Maybe if you asked your mother . . . ?” Ellie was creative; she could come up with a good lie for her son, and he’d have to believe her.

  There was a silence, as though he were weighing evidence. It felt condescending and weirdly terrifying. “Listen, I have to get going. My dog is waiting—”

  He brightened for the first time. “That’s your dog, huh? I figured. He’s pretty awesome. What is he, a chocolate Lab?”

  “Yes, he is.” I shifted on my feet, not sure how to extricate myself from the situation. My brother said I had a knack for getting into weird predicaments.

  I sighed, and he said, “So what do we do now?” He patted his shirt pocket, as though looking for a pack of cigarettes, then grimaced and produced a piece of gum. He unwrapped it while still watching me. His glasses had slid down even farther on his nose, and I felt like plucking them off. He popped the gum into his mouth and took off the glasses himself, then beamed a blue gaze at me. Wow. “How about if we just wait here together and see what my mom has to say? She’s probably out back in the garden, picking pumpkins or harvesting the last of her tomatoes.”

  I put the money on Ellie’s table. “You know what? Ellie can pay me later. I won’t have you—casting aspersions on my character.”

  “Fancy words,” said Ellie’s son. He moved a little closer to me, until I could smell spearmint on his breath. “I still think you should hang around.”

  I put my hands on my hips, the way my mother used to do when Cam or I forgot to do the dishes. “I have things to do. Please tell Ellie I said hello.”

  I whisked past him, out to my car, where Mick sat waiting, a picture of patience. I climbed in and started confiding. “Do you believe that guy? Now I’m going to have to come back here later to get paid. I don’t have time for this, Mick!”

  Mick nodded with what seemed like sympathy.

  I reversed out of Ellie’s driveway, still fuming. But halfway home, encouraged by Mick’s stolid support, and enjoying the Mary Poppins sound track in my CD player, I calmed down slightly. These things could happen in the business world, I told myself. There was no need to give another thought to tall Jay Parker and his a
ccusations and his blue eyes.

  I began to sing along with the music, assuring Mick melodically that I would find the perfect nanny. Something in the look he gave me made me respond aloud. “And another thing. I’m a grown woman. I’m twenty-seven years old, Mick. I don’t need some condescending man treating me like a child. Am I right?”

  Mick was distracted by a Chihuahua on the sidewalk, so I didn’t get a nod.

  “Huh. She’s pretty cute, right?”

  No response. I sighed and went back to my singing, flicking forward on the CD and testing my upper range with “Feed the Birds.” I started squeaking by the time I reached the middle. “It’s tricky, Mick. It starts low, and then you get nailed on the refrain. We can’t all be Julie Andrews.” Mick’s expression was benevolent.

  I drove to Caldwell Street and St. Bartholomew Church, where I headed to the back parking lot behind the rectory. I took out my phone and texted I’m here to Pet Grandy, a member of St. Bart’s Altar and Rosary Guild, a scion of the church, and a go-to person for church social events. Pet was popular, and she had a burning desire to be all things to all people. This included her wish to make food for every church event—good food that earned her praise and adulation. Since Pet was actually a terrible cook, I was the answer to her prayers. I had made a lot of money off Pet Grandy in the last year.

  “She’ll be out here within thirty seconds,” I told Mick, and sure enough, he had barely started nodding before Pet burst out of the back door of the church social hall and made a beeline for the adjoining rectory lot. Pet’s full name was Perpetua; her mother had named her for some nun who had once taught at the parish school. Pet basically lived at the church; she was always running one event or another, and Father Schmidt was her gangly other half. They made a hilarious duo: he, tall and thin in his priestly black, and she, short and plump as a tomato and sporting one of her many velour sweat suits—often in offensively bright colors. In fall, you could often spot them tending to the autumnal flower beds outside St. Bart’s. At Christmastime, one of them would hold the ladder while the other swayed in front of the giant pine outside the church, clutching strings of white Christmas lights. Pet was utterly devoted to Father Schmidt; they were like a platonic married couple.