Death in Dark Blue

by Julia Buckley

  “Okay. I guess that’s the best I can hope for. And I’m ending it. We were just sort of—reconnecting for old times’ sake. It made me appreciate what I have and realize that I don’t want to lose it, even though I risked losing it. I hope you’ll be discreet.”

  I sighed. “I have no business prying into your private life. I know what it feels like to have your secrets exposed.”

  “Yeah, I saw that online. Sorry about that.”

  “But if need be—if the police contacted you about identifying Caden Brand—you’d be willing to do that? It’s very important. As you said, he might be the last person who saw her alive. Maybe even the person who caused her death.”

  “This is heavy stuff. But yeah, I would look at a line-up or whatever they do. Hopefully they could contact me discreetly—maybe at the library—and I could come down to the station.”

  A gust of sadness went through me; I wasn’t sure if it was because of Janet Baskin’s duplicity or because of Taylor Brand’s murder or some combination of the two, but suddenly I wanted to be off the phone. “All right. Thanks, Janet. I’m sure Doug Heller will be in touch.”

  We said good-bye and ended the call. Sam came in, his brows raised, and I told him as much as I could remember, some of it verbatim.

  “Ah. Does every person in this town have secrets?”

  “I’m guessing every person in every town has secrets. But it’s still depressing. It would be nice to know that some people are exactly what they seem to be.”

  Sam leaned against the couch. “Do you think I am what I seem?”

  “For the most part. When you surprise me, it’s usually in a good way.”

  “Okay.” He thought about this for a moment. Then he said, “We should probably tell this to Doug.”

  “Yeah. What if Caden tries to leave town?”

  Sam nodded. “I’m on it. Hand me that phone.” I gave it to him and then leaned back, trying to relax and not think about the shooting, the murder, the number of times we’d had to call the police in the last few weeks.

  Before he could dial a number, the phone rang in his hand. He clicked it on, brows raised, and said, “Hello.”

  Then he listened, and his face remained surprised, with a touch of anger. “I don’t see why that would be necessary, Caden. It seems to me you’ve done plenty of talking to the police about me.”

  He was quiet, listening again, and then he shrugged. “Fine. I’m here with Lena London, and I’m sure she’d like to be a witness to our conversation.”

  He said a few more words, then clicked off the phone. “Caden Brand wants to know if he can come by to talk with me. He says he regrets going to Doug—that he was acting on emotion.”

  “Which suddenly he doesn’t feel anymore? This sounds fishy to me.”

  “And to me, but I’m far too curious to send him away.”

  “Doug should be here.”

  “No. But I think I’ll take the liberty of taping it for Doug. Hang on while I get my iPhone.” He left the room briefly and I leaned my head back on the couch, studying Sam’s ceiling and wondering at how many things had changed in a few months’ time. How much would be different in another three?

  Sam returned, tucking his phone behind a flower arrangement on the side table. When Caden Brand knocked at the door a few minutes later, Sam asked me to answer it, and when I ushered Brand into the room, Sam seemed to be putting the last minute touches on a flower arrangement. Then he turned around and stared at Brand.

  “Caden,” he said, without offering his hand.

  “Sam. Thanks for seeing me. I know you’ve probably heard an earful from your pal Doug Heller.”

  “What makes you think we’re friends?”

  “People gossip, even to strangers.”

  Sam shrugged. “Very recently Doug Heller was convinced I killed my wife, just as you seem convinced I am guilty of a different crime.”

  Brand, still in his coat, looked over at the furniture, but Sam did not invite him to sit, or to hand over his outerwear. “Listen. You have to know where I was coming from. I was just told my sister, my only sibling, was dead. You’d go a little nuts, too.” He ran a hand through his hair. I noticed that he still looked well-fed, despite his supposed trauma. Sam had grown quite thin in the midst of his.

  Sam put his hands on his hips. “Why don’t we tell it like it is, Caden? You and Taylor hated each other. That goes way back, and it lasted up until she was killed, didn’t it?”

  Brand narrowed his eyes. “You shouldn’t make assumptions, Sam.”

  “Okay. Then what were you screaming at her about on the night before she died?”

  He paled slightly. “What are you talking about?”

  “We know it was you. There’s a witness.”

  “The police didn’t mention it,” he said, his mouth twitching slightly.

  “They will.”

  He sighed, then shrugged. “Whatever. Yes, Taylor and I fought all the time. A lot of siblings do. It didn’t mean I didn’t love her. And I needed to know why she was here—what she wanted. It was complicated. She told me she was here to talk to you and only you. So I need to ask you, Sam. What did Taylor tell you?”

  Sam blinked. “As you know, Taylor never made it to a meeting with me.”

  “But she must have contacted you. She said she was going to, in order to make an appointment and to be sure you’d receive her. She said she had to apologize first, then meet with you later. So you must have heard from her. She was going to do it right after I left.”

  “And that’s why you suspected me of killing her?”

  “I don’t know.” He looked at the furniture again, as though he were tired of standing. Sam refused to get the hint. “Listen—if she contacted you, I need to know what she said. You don’t have to tell the cops if you don’t want to, but I need to know if she mentioned anything . . . sensitive. Confidential.”

  “Like what?” Sam said. He was clearly trying to gather evidence for Doug.

  “Nothing that concerns you.”

  “And yet here you are.”

  “Just—Taylor had some issues with me over some financial things related to our dad. She and I did tend to bicker over money, and him.”

  “I’m guessing she wanted you to stop stealing it.”

  Caden Brand’s face was so surprised and horrified, his body language so over-acted, that it was clear Sam had hit a nerve. “Don’t be ridiculous. We just had disagreements about certain accounts of Dad’s that he had given us control over.”

  “And why, Caden, do you think your sister would come all the way to Blue Lake, Indiana, to talk to me about some of your father’s finances?”

  Brand’s eyes darted around. He was hiding something. “I don’t know. Who knows why Taylor did what she did? But as you pointed out, we had just experienced a blowout fight, and she might have wanted to vent to you.”

  “And even if she did, who cares? What would it matter now?”

  To my surprise, Brand looked relieved. Perhaps he realized, by Sam’s ignorance of whatever he feared he had learned, that he would not be in trouble. This was going to interest Doug.

  Brand made a big show of sighing and drooping his shoulders. “I guess you’re right. I guess it doesn’t matter now.”

  “What does matter is that you’ve been demanding my arrest, and yet you were the last one seen with your sister, in a towering rage, from what the witness says.”

  “And who exactly is this witness?” Brand said, his face red.

  “The person prefers to remain anonymous,” Sam said. “But I’m guessing there must be at least about six of them, since you were yelling so very loudly.”

  Brand was back to his sneering self. “You’ve got it all wrong, Sam, and I’ll tell the police that if they ask. I would never hurt my sister.”

  Perhaps I was overr
eacting, but it bothered me that Brand didn’t look Sam in the eye when he said that. The men said their good-byes soon afterward, and Sam ushered him out, then went to his phone and stopped the recording. “Doug will most likely be at the station. I’m going to drive this over,” he said.

  “Drop me off at Camilla’s? I don’t want to risk any gunman shooting or reporters stalking.”

  “You’ve got it. Don’t worry—we’ve still got a cop out there. And if the paparazzi try to take a picture, I’ll be sure to give you a really wet kiss.”

  • • •

  CAMILLA AND I worked for the rest of the day, and between my notes and her editor’s, she felt she had made some valuable progress. We ate a quiet dinner, served by Rhonda, who was still glowing with the compliments she had received after Sam’s party. It was nice to sit with Camilla in her quiet, warm kitchen, enjoying good food and good company and contemplating the book that would be sent to New York in a matter of months.

  We talked about The Salzburg Train, which was to hit shelves in a few weeks, and about some appearances Camilla and I were committed to make. It was fascinating to contemplate—like the promise of entering a far-off, glittering world. “Hopefully all our work here will be done,” Camilla said. “Victoria will be found, and there will be nothing to distract us from our publicity obligations.”

  “I do hope so. It’s very hard to concentrate with so many unknowns.”

  “Poor Lena. Little did you know, when you came to this town, what all awaited you. I’ll bet you thought it would be boring here.”

  “I did!”

  She smiled and patted my hand. “Life will fool you that way.”

  After dinner we shared some coffee and Camilla said she would go back to her office for an hour or so. “Go ahead and watch television or whatever you’d like to do,” she said.

  “You know what? I’m really tired. I think I’ll turn in early. Good night, Camilla.”

  “Good night, dear.” She smiled and wandered off toward her office, her dogs at her heels.

  Up in my room, I hunted down my long-lost friend Lestrade, who seemed a bit cool to me now that I’d spent a couple of nights away from him. I lay on the bed and tucked him against me; eventually, with some petting and persuading, he was purring as loudly as usual, and he watched while I rolled over on my stomach, grabbed my laptop, and logged on to check my e-mail and various social media accounts. After I answered all the necessary correspondence, I typed in the address of Ted Strayer’s blog. Surely he would have posted more obnoxious things by now, and I wanted to keep track of them.

  I gasped when I read the headline: “Sam West Visited by Dead Woman’s Brother.”

  Mouth agape, I read the ridiculous article, which said nothing of note, but insinuated plenty, both about Sam and Caden Brand. As usual, Strayer was relying on the idea that a tantalizing headline would be enough to justify a non-story.

  “Unbelievable,” I said to Lestrade. He purred and licked his paw.

  I clicked out of the offensive blog, but grabbed my phone and sent a quick text to both Doug and Sam with a link to the story.

  Before I turned out the light, I Googled “Nikon Lazos has child” and “Nikon Lazos becomes a father.” The only things that turned up were in Greek, and when I asked Google to translate them, they were unrelated to the man I searched for. Disappointed but not surprised, I set my computer aside and went to my little bathroom to get ready for bed.

  As I brushed my teeth I contemplated the idea that every person in my circle of friends was focused, for one reason or another, on finding Victoria West. I wondered if Victoria, wherever she was, ever sensed that so many people were looking for her. Was she so isolated in her own Nikon-fashioned world that she really had no sense of the outside? Was she too distracted by her child to think much about what was happening away from her yacht?

  I wondered who had shot at Sam and me, and if Doug was any closer to finding them.

  I wondered where Nikon Lazos was.

  I wondered who had killed Taylor Brand, and why.

  And I wondered if Taylor, before she died, had figured out the meaning of that postcard on her own. If she had, was it that knowledge that had gotten her killed?

  16

  Margot had never before believed in Fate, but she did now.

  —From Death on the Danube

  THE NEXT MORNING, I spoke to Sam on the phone, but told him I would work with Camilla for as long as she needed. “Then maybe I can sneak out and see you,” I said.

  “Good. Call me when you’re finished; I’ll come and get you.”

  “Okay. So you’ll be around?”

  “Just waiting for you.”

  “Your voice is sexy,” I said.

  Sam said something very intimate in response to that, and I blushed in the privacy of my own bedroom. Lestrade was unimpressed; he looked at me briefly from his windowsill, then went back to studying a bird.

  “You are very good at that,” I said to Sam, my voice breathless. “I’ll call you soon.”

  • • •

  AFTER BREAKFAST I joined Camilla in her office, and we worked. We had developed a graceful style of interaction that involved very little talking—just some pointed questions and then, depending on our task, some shared reading, writing, or jotting of notes. At the end, we compared and discussed.

  Today Camilla seemed less able to concentrate, and her eyes kept straying to the window, where a tentative snowfall had begun. “It’s supposed to turn into quite a blizzard,” she said. “I’m so glad none of you has to travel far—you, Sam, Adam, Doug. All my little chickens safe in the coop.” She smiled at me. “You must think I sound silly.”

  “Not at all. I know how hazardous those Blue Lake roads can be. I watch the news. And even though I’ve only lived here for a few months, I kind of feel like a townie.”

  “You are one. It doesn’t take long to feel at home in this place. And I came from much farther away than you did.”

  “Camilla,” I started, but her desk phone rang and she picked it up, holding up her pointer finger.

  “This is Camilla Graham,” she said. She listened, and then her eyes widened and she gestured to me to pay attention. “Just a moment, please. I want to put you on speaker phone so that Lena can listen, too.”

  She covered the receiver and said, “It’s Grace Palmer. She said she thought of something she wanted to tell me.”

  My heart was beating rapidly by the time Grace’s voice greeted me. “Hello, Lena. I’m sorry if I’m disturbing you two. It’s just that I thought of something else about Nikon. I really probably should have made arrangements to come out there and answer the questions the police might have, but—well, I have a family, and I don’t really feel equipped to leave them right now.”

  “Do you think Nikon knows you have a husband and—you said you have children?”

  “Yes. Two sons. There’s no way that he could know, and yet I think he does.”

  “Why?” Camilla asked, her voice sharp.

  “When my oldest was born, I received a huge sheaf of flowers at the hospital—just giant. It must have cost hundreds of dollars. The card said, “Best wishes always.” But there was no signature. My husband thought it might be from one of his coworkers, but I always sensed it was from Nikon. And since it seemed to be a blessing and not a warning, I was content to let it go.”

  Camilla was thinking hard. She visibly pulled herself out of a reverie and said, “But what was it you wanted to tell us?”

  There was a small sigh. “I feel that I made you all think Nikon was some sort of terrible criminal. Maybe he is. Maybe I have something like Stockholm syndrome. But I wanted to tell you that wherever he has Victoria, he’s not hurting her. I doubt she has ever felt more loved. It’s just—he loves things too hard.”

  “And she is not a thing,” Camilla said crisply. “No
r were you.”

  “No. No, you are right about that. Nikon is at best old-fashioned and patriarchal. And at worst—well, you know.”

  “Grace, when you were with him, did he ever mention some of his favorite places to go with his yacht? Out-of-the-way mooring spots?” I asked.

  “Maybe. Nikon didn’t tend to confide his routes to me, or even the next place we were headed. Once in a while I probably overheard the names of places—islands, ports. But I confess I never really paid attention. It didn’t seem important, back then.” She sighed again, but then made a startled sound in her throat. “Oh—oh. Wait. I do remember that when we talked about having a child—so many years ago—he told me that not all of the Greek Islands had good medical care, but that we would be fine if we went to Athens or Thessaloniki. Yes, those were the two.”

  “That’s terrific! We can definitely work with that,” I said, feeling excited for the first time in a while.

  Camilla asked a follow-up question, but my mind was racing away, trying to remember what I knew of those two cities from the research we had already done. Athens was easy, of course—a capital city and the oldest in existence, filled with art and culture and history. Certainly Athens would be a likely place to have the child. It was the most populated area in all of Greece.

  But Thessaloniki—that I knew less about. It was large, I knew, and culturally important. It had a bustling commercial port, named for Thessalonike, the half sister of Alexander the Great. I vaguely remembered pictures I had seen of Thessaloniki at night—glittering gold and reflected in the water of the bay under a large round moon.

  “. . . do you think?” Camilla was asking me.

  “Oh? I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you.”

  “I was asking if you think that Nikon would take her off the yacht when it was time to deliver the baby.”

  “I don’t know—Grace, what do you think?”

  Grace Palmer was silent, and for a moment I thought the connection had been broken. Then she said, “If his relationship with Victoria is anything like his marriage to me, he would be reluctant to let her off the yacht for any reason, unless he or someone else could watch her very closely. And don’t forget Nikon has vast amounts of money. If he wanted a whole hospital unit to set up shop on board, he has the resources to do so.”