In a final section, titled “West’s True Allies,” there were two pictures: one was of Camilla Graham, sitting at her familiar desk, looking at the camera with her no-nonsense expression. The caption read Novelist Camilla Graham never believed the hype about Sam West, whom she calls her “neighbor and close friend.”
The second picture was one of Sam and me, and I had to credit Elliott for capturing the nature of our relationship: Sam was seated, and I was behind him with my arms wrapped around him in a protective fashion. He in turn was clasping my hands against his chest and smiling contentedly. We looked utterly devoted to each other. The caption read West’s current love interest, Lena London, was the one who first determined that Victoria West was still alive. West credits her with getting him out of jail, where he had been incarcerated on a tenuous charge and with “saving my life in innumerable ways.” My face grew hot as I read the words. Then I turned my attention to Elliott’s words:
“Lena London first encountered Sam West on the day she moved to Blue Lake from Chicago. Recently out of a graduate school writing program, she had snagged a job as Camilla West’s assistant and collaborator. She did not like West initially, but when she learned of his reputation in town she found herself becoming his champion. She was shocked, she says, both by the intensity of feeling against West and by West’s quiet acceptance of the persecution. She began to look into things on her own computer, simply Googling queries now and then. Coincidentally, she had been researching yachts for a book in progress, and eventually her two searches came together. West describes her as ‘a remarkably determined person’ who believed in him even after he stopped believing in his own future. London was horrified when West was incarcerated in New York; when she found the photograph of a woman she believed to be Victoria West, she sought the help of Camilla Graham and Blue Lake police detective Doug Heller. Within twenty-four hours West was once again free, and the world suddenly owed him an apology.”
In a final section, titled “What Happened to Victoria West?” Elliott expanded on all of the ways that police could have followed a trail that was now cold. “Thanks to Lena London, authorities knew that West had been recently photographed on a Greek island, and were currently trying to determine her whereabouts. There was the possibility that she was being held against her will. If Sam West could ask his wife one thing, he says he would ask if she was all right. And that captures the essence of the man I met during this interview: a man of character and dignity who has no ill feeling toward the woman who disappeared so abruptly from his life, but for whom he has (along with the entire world) many, many questions.”
Elliott had one last paragraph with an update that included Taylor Brand’s murder. He hinted that people might jump to holding Sam responsible despite the clearly circumstantial evidence that pointed to a setup. A gray text box underneath this was titled “Full Disclosure.” It said, “In the spirit of full disclosure, I must say that I knew Taylor Brand, one of the people mentioned in this article. She once applied for a job at the New York newspaper where I worked, and I had lunch with her once or twice. She was a fun and interesting woman, and while I feel sad to hear of her untimely death, neither my editor nor I considered it a conflict of interest for covering this story about Sam West.”
I stared at this for a while, considering it. We had sat with Jake Elliott for hours, and he had never once mentioned that he knew Taylor Brand, had “had lunch with her once or twice.” And that casual language seemed to cloak the truth. Wouldn’t he, a reporter with an eye for detail, remember how many times he’d had lunch with Taylor?
I thought about this, clicking my tongue. Camilla came back in and said, “What did you think?”
“I’m relieved, and glad. It’s about time someone wrote the truth about Sam, and I’m happy that Jake Elliott saw things with clear eyes.”
“And good to know that there are still some reporters who care about getting to the truth.”
I pointed at the full disclosure box. “What did you think of this?”
She pursed her lips, then shrugged. “It’s a surprising little addition, but it doesn’t change my overall gratitude. Of course Elliott hasn’t even seen the biggest bombshell. Imagine what he would do with Victoria’s pregnancy. Doug doesn’t want it revealed to the press at this time. Hopefully no one will find out about it on their own, until we find Victoria. Poor girl. And that was months ago. Now we’re looking for a woman and a child.”
“Yes.” A little niggling doubt came creeping into my mind, and I tried to banish it, as I had many times since I had seen the photo of Victoria. “Camilla. Do you think—is there any way the baby could be Sam’s?”
Camilla turned sharply, her face surprised, and then she laughed. “Oh, Lena. Your little face! Have you not looked at the numbers? Or is your jealous heart too blinded by fear?”
“I’m not jealous,” I said in a puny voice.
Camilla nodded. “Victoria disappeared in September. You located her in October of the following year. That means she had been gone for thirteen months. It is now January. Sixteen months. The picture we saw, when Victoria was clearly nine months pregnant, was taken in July.”
“Yes. September to July,” I said.
“Ten months,” Camilla said.
“Yes—except we don’t have exact dates. It could be nine months. And she could have gone a couple of weeks past her due date.”
“Lena—I don’t for a moment believe that is Sam’s child. The timing doesn’t work. But it doesn’t have to be a mystery. Ask Sam. He can clarify things for you. About whether he and Victoria were . . . intimate just before she disappeared. They were divorcing, remember.”
“Yes. You’re right, it’s not likely.”
“Don’t worry over it, Lena.”
The phone in Camilla’s office rang, and she excused herself to take it. I heard her answer, and then murmur into the phone for a while. Her tone was mainly one of surprise. I edged closer and heard her say “Yes, of course. Absolutely. I want to talk with her; Doug will want to, as well. Please encourage her to do so. Thank you, Gabby If you can set up the logistics, that would be wonderful. We’re open at our end. All right. Call me back when you know.”
She hung up, then saw me standing in the doorway and said, “The plot continues to twist. Gabrielle says that a woman contacted her this morning, asking if Gabby could put her in touch with me. She said she believes I have Sam West’s best interests at heart, and she needs to tell us something about his missing wife. She couldn’t figure out how to contact any of us except through my publicist. An enterprising woman. She was calling from Canada.”
“So . . . ?”
“Gabby is going to set up a Skype session for us. She’ll call back with the time. Meanwhile, we need to notify Doug and Sam, who will both want to be there.”
A floating feeling overtook me then, as though reality was opening up, unfolding on itself in a way that none of us could control any longer. “It’s happening now,” I said to Camilla.
Because she was Camilla, she knew exactly what I meant. “Yes. And not a moment too soon.”
• • •
WHEN HE ARRIVED, Doug looked a little irritated that we had called him again. I couldn’t blame him; we rarely left him alone. But once he was seated in Camilla’s office with the rest of us and the woman’s face appeared on the screen, we all seemed to feel the urgency of the moment. It was clear from the start that she wasn’t some crank caller or attention seeker. She was beautiful in a fragile way, with blonde hair turning silver at the temples, and dark green eyes. When the connection was made, she scanned the room, looking at each of us in turn.
“Thank you for meeting with me,” she said. “I am so glad to be able to speak with all of you. I assume you are Douglas Heller?” she asked, and Doug nodded. “And of course Camilla Graham—what an honor. I’ve read many of your books. And I am so glad to see you, Mr. West, and Len
a London. I read the article by Jake Elliott and I knew that I had to speak to all of you regarding Victoria West. I’m afraid you might not believe what I am telling you at first, and perhaps I am entirely off the beam. After all this time, I can’t always be sure myself. My life has some surreal elements . . .” She looked into the distance, seemingly uncertain. She was sitting in a small room with comfortable-looking furnishings. In the background I saw a window that revealed sun and trees, and perhaps the hint of a mountain in the distance.
Sam spoke first. “What made you want to contact us, Miss . . . ?”
She looked back into the camera. “Oh—I’m sorry. My name is Grace Palmer. I had been following your story, Mr. West, and a few months ago something occurred to me and I thought I must be going crazy. But then when I read the article in the Times, I thought again that it might be true, especially when they couldn’t find Mrs. West. I don’t think they will, not without help.”
Doug leaned forward. “Why is that, Miss Palmer?”
“I fear that Mrs. West might be, uh—detained—by a man named Nikon Lazos.”
All four of us gasped, and Sam stood up, then sat down.
Grace Palmer’s face was equally surprised. “You’ve heard of Nikon?”
Camilla gathered her wits first. “Mr. Lazos’s name has come up in this group, as we pursued our own research. Actually a local librarian found him for us. And we believe that Mrs. West is with him, yes. Can you tell us what you know about him?”
She looked down at her hands. “I was married to Nikon almost twenty-five years ago.”
Again we reacted loudly, shocked and somehow jubilant to have our suspicions confirmed.
Sam made eye contact with the woman on the screen. “Miss—Can I call you Grace?”
“Yes, please. And may I call you Sam?”
“Of course. Grace, would you be willing to tell us your story?”
She nodded and took a sip of water from a bottle on the table beside her. “In a way, you might be the only people in the world who would understand what I’m about to tell you. If you’ve been investigating this, then some of it might sound familiar.” She brushed back her hair in an unconscious gesture and said “I was twenty-five when I met Nikon. We were both in Vienna for an art festival, and he was older and, to me, very worldly, and sophisticated. Oh, and he was rich and handsome, and I fell in love very quickly. And he fell in love with me. I do believe he fell in love.”
I realized I was holding my breath, and I forced myself to relax. Sam seemed to realize this, and he took my hand in his.
“We were married one month later. What you call a whirlwind romance,” she said with a small smile. “We flew to Paris for our honeymoon, and then we traveled to Italy, where we went to the coast and boarded his yacht. It was blissful. It was heaven. I sent letters to everyone in my family with gorgeous pictures and romantic tales. We all believed that I was about to experience happily-ever-after.”
She paused again, and I sensed the tension of everyone in the room. We were like coiled springs, and I wanted to scream at her to get on with it. She sipped her water again, and I saw that she was struggling with some emotion. There might have been tears in her eyes.
“From the start he was possessive, which I, in my naïveté, found wildly exciting. Nikon wanted to keep me from the press, so there was no formal announcement of our wedding. First we lived in Italy, in a little room we rented there. Very sweet. But then we moved onto his yacht, which was really larger than I could have imagined, and was absolutely a lovely place to live. We went from Italy to the Greek Islands, and for a year we were moored off Corfu. It was a wonderful, exciting time, but I found myself growing lonely and wanting to make friends with the locals. Nikon discouraged this, saying we wouldn’t be staying long, and I would just end up missing my new friends. When I would feel disappointed, he would make some grand gesture, or buy me an amazing gift to distract me. I was sad not to meet women my age on Corfu, so Nikon bought me a puppy. A delightful dog that I named Dassia, after a town we visited. She was my special girl, and I was lucky enough to have her for a long time. She learned to live on the ship; she was a born sailor.” She looked up and sensed our tension. I spared a glance at Camilla’s beautiful German shepherds, who leaned against her as she sat in her chair. Rochester, catching my glance, walked over to me and butted his head against my leg. I scratched his ears and hugged him against me. Grace continued, her voice almost hypnotic.
“This became a pattern; we would stay only until he saw I was getting restless, and then we would lift anchor and go somewhere else. Sometimes we were on the yacht, other times we were in foreign cities—rarely in the States. If Nikon was off on business, he would assign his friend Mike to ‘protect me,’ but I eventually realized that this meant Mike must watch me. Oh, he was always friendly—I’d like to believe we were friends, in a way—but he had to do what Nikon said. So if I went to town, Mike went too, and followed me everywhere. After years of this, I felt the oppression so strongly it made me depressed. I felt I had to get away or die.”
“That’s terrible,” I said, feeling angry on her behalf.
She looked up at me with her lovely green eyes. “You should know he was never unkind. He was so attentive, so loving. Every woman’s dream lover. That’s what confused me—I told myself I was ungrateful, I was terrible. I told myself it was all my fault. Boo hoo, poor little rich girl, and she finds problems for herself. But I rarely had a chance to consult anyone for advice. It was hard to contact my family without someone there. They were always listening, and if I asked for privacy, my husband would hug me and kiss me and say, ‘We’re married! There’s no need for secrets.’ Except he had them; I knew he did. He made late-night phone calls on the deck, and he told me it was business. Perhaps it was. I found myself growing envious of those calls. I wanted to wander up on the deck, under the moon, and call someone, anyone, and have them listen to me. I wanted them to tell me to meet them somewhere away from the yacht, where I could walk and walk and know I would never have to return.”
“You left him at some point?” Sam said.
“I really didn’t think I ever could. And then once, late in summer, after we had been together seven years, Nikon went away. He said it might be a week. And of course he asked Mike to ‘protect me’ as always. I’d been feeling sad, because Nikon wanted a son, and I had been unable to get pregnant. We had argued about it; he wanted me to try insemination, and I was reluctant; I don’t know why. Maybe I knew, deep down, that I would leave him.
“We were moored at Kavala, which is a large port, and I convinced Mike to let me go into the city and visit some shops. I couldn’t take much with me, but I packed as much as I could into my largest bag—money, a change of clothes, my passport, some food. I put a leash on Dassia and persuaded Mike that the poor dog never got to stand on solid ground, and she should be allowed to go with us. He agreed, and we set off down the gangplank.”
Sam’s hand tightened on mine; Doug kept changing position in his chair. Camilla sat still and serene, as though her soul had left her body, but her eyes were locked on the screen. Grace smiled ruefully.
“Poor Mike never guessed I would betray him. We laughed and talked as we walked down a main street, and then I saw an alley full of outdoor vendors; I asked if I could buy a shawl, and he said yes, he would have a cigarette and wait for me. I walked into the alley at a leisurely pace, but by midway through I was running, with Dassia at my side, running as hard as I could, and then I was out the other side and twisting through the streets until I was sure I had lost him. But I knew I had very little time. I found an outdoor bar where it seemed many of the sailors were gathering. I sat at a table and ordered some ouzo and some bread for my dog, and I listened. I picked out a couple of voices that were American, and one of them spoke of getting back to his ship, which was ready to sail. He said he would be back in New York, and back to his wife and children, by morn
ing. I waited until his friends left, and then I went to his table. I still remember the surprised look on his face. I asked him how much money it would take for me to get a ride to New York for my dog and me, no questions asked. The saddest thing is, I could tell he felt sorry for me. And it was that compassion that made me want to cry.
“He had no idea how rich I was. I had twenty thousand dollars in my bag, but he asked me for two hundred. He said he wanted to buy something nice for his wife and his daughters. I said I’d give him that and more when we got there safely. He agreed. I followed him to his boat, which was just a cargo ship, but it was more beautiful to me than the yacht had ever been. He made a makeshift seat for Dassia and me against some pallets, and we sat together and waited to start our new life.”
“You were very brave, Grace,” Doug said.
She shook her head, her expression mystified. “To this day, I don’t know exactly what motivated me, or how I felt. I called my parents when I got to New York and said I wanted a divorce. They were relieved. They had been troubled by the lack of communication, and they’d missed me, as had my siblings and friends. I had many joyful reunions.”
“Did Lazos contest it?”
“Oh, Nikon.” She wiped at her eyes. “You have to understand. He is a collector. He had many beautiful art collections on his yacht and in his various homes. He liked to keep things to himself, and that was true of me, as well. He loves all of his collections passionately. But once I was gone, he saw that I had been tainted, I suppose, by the outside world. I think it was that which made him more willing to let me go. He granted the divorce. I never spoke to him again.”
“What happened to Mike?” Camilla asked.
“Yes, I was worried about that. I feared Nikon might punish him in some way. But I followed stories about him in the news, when they were there, and I saw Mike in the pictures at his side, as always. The two of them still seem to be the great confidants they always were. And there is a part of me that wonders if Mike knew I was trying to get away. If he let me do so.”
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