“Why would he let you get away?” Doug said.
“Because I couldn’t bear a child,” she said. “I wonder if Nikon was willing to give me up for a—more improved model. But as far as I knew he never married again. He had women, many women, but Victoria is the first one who reminds me of me.” She drank water again; her voice had become a bit husky with the telling of her story.
“Did you marry again?” I asked.
Her face brightened and softened into affection. “I did. My husband and our sons kindly took a walk so that I could make this phone call. And in case you are wondering, no, I did not need a fertility specialist to conceive my boys. I asked my doctor about this, and she said that women under extreme stress can have trouble conceiving. For a long time I didn’t know I was living under stress, but I think my body did.”
“I’m glad to hear about your family,” I said. “I hope you’re happy.”
She smiled. “I am.”
“Why do you think Victoria is with Nikon?” Doug said.
She nodded. “So many things seem to fit the pattern. Her sudden and inexplicable disappearance. Nikon was big on passionate, spontaneous gestures. Her photograph on a Greek island, but their inability to trace it. I looked that photo up online, and her face reminded me so much of the way mine once looked in the mirror. Happy on the surface, but so very sad and lonely in the eyes. And of course there is the unexplained fact of her blood in Mr. West’s apartment. That has Nikon written all over it.”
“Explain,” Sam said, his jaw tight.
“Nikon went to great lengths to preserve his illusions. Or in this case, an illusion he might want the world to believe, assuming Victoria West is his newest collector’s item.”
“Will he hurt her?” Doug asked.
She looked surprised. “Oh, no, he would never hurt her. He probably loves her very much. Nikon is full of emotion.”
Her eyes wandered the room, and she lingered on each of our faces in turn, making sure she had our attention. “But here is a testament to the power of his charisma: I left Nikon eighteen years ago, and I never looked back. But there is a part of me that is still in love with him, and always will be.”
12
Margot had never been more aware of her family, and her love for them, now that they were utterly out of reach. She could hear her mother’s soft voice in her head, her father’s hearty laugh. At night, when she climbed into her lonely bed, she sighed over all the moments she had taken for granted.
—From Death on the Danube
BEFORE GRACE SIGNED off, Doug asked her if she knew anyone named Acie, and she frowned. “Is that a first name or a last?”
“Last, we think.”
She shook her head. “Either way, I don’t know the name. It doesn’t even sound like a real name. More like a made-up one.”
It was a name, though. Sam and I had looked in the white pages and found many Acies across the United States and beyond.
“Thank you so much for your call,” Sam told her. “And for reaching out to help Victoria.”
She sent him an intense, green-eyed stare. “If Victoria is with Nikon, my wish for her is that she gets away as soon as possible. It’s been more than a year now, yes? The first few months, she probably didn’t realize that she was essentially a prisoner. He is wonderful at distractions. She probably didn’t even question his refusal to let her use the Internet on the yacht. He probably told her they had no access. I’m guessing now, because there was no Internet when I was with him. But I assume he has his own office with working Wi-Fi, and that his lovely Victoria is forced to do without, like a woman in another time. And she would accept this, because he would make it seem natural. That is his gift. He can sell anything and make it look beautiful.”
Doug was staring at her with an intense expression and occasionally texting notes into his phone. Now he said, “What was the name of the yacht you boarded, back when you married him?”
“It was called the Cassandra. Then later he bought a larger one called the Apollo. Is that helpful at all?”
We looked at Doug, who shook his head. “He sold that ship five years ago. We think he has purchased another one, perhaps secondhand, and that it may be registered in someone else’s name. Do you know of any friends who might have made this arrangement with him?”
She sighed. “I can’t help you, I’m afraid. Nikon had so many friends, and I got to know very few of them. But I wasn’t the only one under his spell. So many people who would do anything for him. The power of personality.”
Doug scowled at this, and Sam sniffed his disapproval.
Camilla lifted a hand. “Is there a chance that we’re looking in the wrong place, and that they’re not on the water at all?”
Grace didn’t even think about this. She shook her head. “Nikon can never be far away from the sea. He must have captained a ship in some past life, because he yearns for the water. Once in a while, when we would dock and find ourselves a house for a time, I’d beg Nikon to let us stay there, to live on land because I liked it so much better. He would get this look in his eyes—half disbelieving and half fearful—and then launch into his favorite speech about how ships were meant to be sailed, and he hadn’t spent millions on his yacht just to let it rust in harbor.”
Doug typed a couple more things into his phone and then stood up. “Grace, might I ask you to remain available for the foreseeable future?”
“Of course,” she said graciously.
“You have Camilla’s contact information—let me give you mine,” Doug said. He gave her his number, and then she said good-bye to all of us and ended the call.
Doug was still standing. He turned to us, his expression hard. “We know we’re right, and Grace has proven that we’re right. I’ve been feeling that our friends in the CIA have not been making this a priority. Maybe they figured they’d leave it to the NYPD, who obviously don’t have the resources to catch someone like Lazos. I need to make some calls. Camilla, thanks for contacting me. Someday I would like to come here just to eat Rhonda’s cooking and not to have to worry about crime.”
Camilla patted his arm. “Thank goodness you’re on the job, Doug. Let me walk you to the door.”
Sam and I sat together, thinking our thoughts, and his phone buzzed. He looked down at it, read a text message, and laughed. Then he clicked it off and put his arm around me. “Doug seems disturbed, but you know what? I feel good. They’ll find Lazos soon, I can feel it. I could be in jail right now, and instead I’m with you.” He squeezed me hard and kissed my cheek. “And thanks to Jake Elliott’s story, I am getting the most interesting calls and text messages—literally from all over the world. I have to say it is refreshing to have people praising me instead of sending me death threats.”
“They sent you death threats?”
He patted my hair. “This is the twenty-first century, Lena. People send death threats even when you don’t agree with their politics, never mind when they think you’ve killed your wife. It’s a strange world.”
“Yes.” I sighed, not really feeling Sam’s euphoria.
“Hey.” He waited until I looked into his eyes. “I want to throw a little party. At my house. Invite some people who have been supportive. My social instincts are returning at long last. Will you help me?”
“Um—of course I will. Aren’t you afraid of what people will say—since Taylor was so recently found, and since Victoria hasn’t been? Aren’t you afraid you’ll get more death threats?”
Sam sat up straighter. “No. I really want to do this. I’m sick of being depressed. It’s time to let people in again. And you can wear a pretty dress and stand by my side, and we’ll share some good wine and good food with our friends. Doesn’t that sound nice?”
Now his mood was rubbing off on me, just a little. “Yes, okay.”
“Great. We’ll plan it soon. What do you have to do no
w?”
I glanced at the doorway. “I have to work. Camilla is always so accommodating of these other things in our lives, but she pays me generously, and I haven’t made much progress on her new book. I need to get up to my computer.”
He leaned in and kissed me softly. “Okay. I’ll work, too. Since we’re being industrious.”
He stood up. “I’ll go say my good-byes, too. Call me if you get lonely.” He flashed me one of his surprising smiles; it made him look dangerous and sexy.
I waved and watched him walk away.
• • •
UPSTAIRS I WORKED for two hours, reading Camilla’s book and making my notes, then typing reports. Her story was as suspenseful as always, but I felt that some scenes were slightly too long, and I had ideas for ways to keep the pace more rapid.
When my eyes grew tired, I leaned back in my chair. My head was immediately invaded by some of the worries I had been keeping to the background. I had forgotten to ask Doug about Ted Strayer. Was he in jail? Or would his paper, supposedly so enraptured with his nosy reporting, have bailed him out so that he could continue with his muckraking? And what about Taylor’s brother, Caden? He had put on quite an act at the Red Cottage, managing to suggest he was a grieving brother who half suspected that Sam had something to do with his sister’s death. And yet, the more I thought about it, the less I believed in the performance. Caden Brand had struck me as insincere and rather obnoxious, and if, as Sam had suggested, he hated his sister, might he himself have had something to do with her murder?
And then there had been Janet Baskin. She had appeared outside the Red Cottage, but had frozen there while all the chaos went on—Doug had taken Ted Strayer away and Caden Brand had arrived with his bluster and bellow. Something about her expression had been strange. Had she seen something that bothered her? Had she felt frightened? Guilty? Whatever the case, she had disappeared quickly rather than staying to talk to any of us.
My thoughts disturbed me enough to propel me out of my chair, seeking a view out my window, where the white, snowy world and the cold expanse of Blue Lake calmed my mind. Lestrade jumped on the windowsill and started purring. I picked him up and cuddled him for a while. It’s true that animals make you feel better. It was impossible to hug my fuzzy cat and not experience a lifting of the spirits. “Thanks,” I said into his fur. He wiggled, and I let him go. He hopped back onto the windowsill, his eyes intent on some creature I could not see. Did mice ever hop along the snow, or did they hibernate? This was a question I had never contemplated.
My phone rang, interrupting my racing thoughts. I clicked it without looking, assuming it was Sam. “Did you give up on working?” I said.
“I’m retired, but I think you’ve been pretty busy,” said a familiar voice.
“Dad!”
“Hey, sweetie. I thought I should check in.”
“I’m so sorry I haven’t called in a while. Things have been crazy here. I suppose you’ve . . . seen some stuff in the paper.”
“I saw that there’s been another murder. And that you discovered the body.”
“Yes.” For the thousandth time, I tried not to picture Taylor Brand.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes. In and out. I try not to think about the bad stuff. There are good things, too, and I distract myself with them.”
“I saw some pictures of that, as well. Your stepmother happened to find them online.”
“Sorry about that.”
“Why? They’re very nice photographs. That’s a dashing young man that you’ve found for yourself.”
“He’s a good man, Dad. Did you read the piece in the New York Times today? Or maybe it was in your Florida paper? It was a profile by a writer named Jake Elliott.”
“Yes, we read it. Tabitha Googles your name each day, just looking for updates on our girl.”
I had never gotten to know Tabitha very well, but I was flattered by her devotion to me. She had no children of her own, so I think she found it exciting to have earned a daughter late in life, even if I was not authentically hers.
My eyes were back on the snow outside. “I want you both to know that Sam is a good man, and if he had his way he would not be the center of this media circus.”
My father took a sip of something—perhaps a cup of coffee. “Honey, we trust that anyone you choose as a friend is a person of value.”
“I love you, Dad.”
“However, we do not plan to wait much longer before we meet this gentleman for ourselves. We’ve been waiting since October, as you may recall.”
“I know. If you can just hold off until it’s not quite so cold—then hopefully they’ll have found Victoria, and solved the murder of Taylor Brand, and cleared Sam’s name once and for all. We’ll be so ready to celebrate!”
“Or maybe you two would like to come down to Florida. It’s nice and warm here, honey. We can’t even imagine snow. It’s a distant memory.”
“That sounds great, Dad.” I had a sudden image of a sandy beach and a blue sky beyond it, dotted with white scudding clouds. In the forefront of this fantasy stood a new and different Sam West: bare-chested, carefree, smiling like a boy. “It really sounds wonderful. But it will have to wait until spring. I’m sure I can work it out with Camilla.”
“Bring her along,” said my ever-amiable father. “I’d love to meet her. Tabby and I have been reading her books—they’re really something. Oh, and Tab blew up that cover you sent us to poster size and we had it framed. It’s in the office. It’s gorgeous, hon. I always knew I’d see your name on the cover of a book, but I didn’t think you’d shoot to fame this fast, I must say.”
For some reason my eyes were spiked with tears. I had needed my father’s voice, but I hadn’t known that until right now. And despite the congratulations of some acquaintances in Blue Lake, I felt I had not really been acknowledged until this very moment. “I miss you, Dad.”
“I miss you, too, angel. I want you to call me within the week, calendar in hand, to make these arrangements we’re speaking about. It’s no good to just say someday. Tabby and I aren’t getting younger.”
I laughed; my father didn’t normally deal in clichés. “I know. I promise.”
We talked some more, mostly about lighthearted things like the dogs he and Tabby had been looking at in the humane society. “She’s pushing me to get one, but I don’t know. You can’t go anywhere once you have a dog at home. It’s like having a baby.”
“But you don’t go anywhere. And a dog is a good companion and good protection.”
“That’s what Tabby says. And we all know she’ll win. I’m thinking I like the German shepherds.”
“Well, now you really have to come and visit. Camilla has two of them, and they’re gorgeous.”
“That’s a promise. Whether you want me or not. I want to give my girl a big hug.”
“I want that, too, Dad. Love you.”
We finally ended our call, but the feeling of comfort stayed with me, and I was smiling when I left my room.
• • •
I GAVE MY notes to Camilla, who thanked me. “These are lovely, and quite timely, because I’m just finishing with the previous corrections. I’ll have to look at them later, though, because I’m going out for dinner.”
She had changed her clothes, I realized now, and donned an attractive knit dress of deep purple, which she wore with black boots and a long jet necklace. Her hair, normally in a demure bun, was gathered into an elegant clasp. “Wow. Camilla, you look beautiful.”
The slight blush on her face could have been a trick of the light, but I thought she was pleased with the compliment. “You are kind to say so. Adam is picking me up early so that we can make the drive.”
“Oh—you’re not going to Wheat Grass?”
“No, no. He’d be too distracted there. The proprietor can’t relax in his ow
n domain. No, he’s taking me to some sort of surprise destination. Adam loves surprises.”
I had a feeling Camilla was starting to like them, too. “I hope you have a wonderful time. It’s been so crazy around here—you probably wish you could have your quiet house back, and that you could go back in time to last fall, before so many crazy things happened.”
She stood in front of me and held my arms—a rare moment of physical contact. “I would not go back. If I did, I would not have you in my life, or Adam, or this new, happier Sam. This is the time that I like best.”
“Good. I wouldn’t go back, either.” I hugged her before she could resist. When we first met, Camilla had been surprised by my huggy affection, but she seemed to be growing to like that, too. “Okay, I know you have to get ready. I can’t wait to hear where he takes you.”
“Yes. I’ll be happy to fill in the details later. Let me just go comb my hair.”
“It looks perfect. I love that silver clasp.”
“What time is it?”
I looked at my watch. “It’s four thirty.”
“Oh, goodness. He’ll be here any moment.”
With a start, I realized that Camilla was nervous. I wondered why. She had been dating Adam for a couple of months now, and it seemed like an easygoing and serene relationship. What would make her anxious today?
The doorbell rang, and Camilla’s eyes widened. “That will be Adam.”
“I’ll get it, if you’d like.”
“Thank you, dear.”
I went to the front door, accompanied by a frisky Rochester and Heathcliff, and opened it to find Adam, looking more handsome than I had ever seen him. His glasses were gone, and his eyes, I noted for the first time, were green. He held flowers, as he so often did. “Hello, Adam. You look so nice! This must be a great place that you’re taking Camilla to.”
Death in Dark Blue Page 13