Death in Dark Blue

by Julia Buckley

  “It was then I realized he wasn’t quite right; maybe the endless pursuit of the story has just twisted him. But I determined that I would keep an eye on him, which is why I followed him this morning.”

  “I hear the sirens, Jake. Stay with me—they’re almost here. They’ll stabilize that leg and get you on an IV. Hopefully the worst of the pain will end right here in the snow.”

  “Where Taylor died. God, that poor kid. Tricked by a jackal like Ted Strayer, when she just wanted to find her friend. Ah, shoot.” He was close to fainting.

  I turned in desperation to see Sam West, holding a paper grocery bag, walking up the steps to his house.

  “Sam!” I cried.

  He looked up, dropped the bag, and ran to us. In a moment he was kneeling in the snow at my side, taking in Elliott’s injuries. “What happened?” he asked.

  Elliott closed his eyes, so I answered. “Strayer pushed him off the bluff. He pushed Taylor, too. Strayer’s insane, Sam.”

  Sam looked at Elliott’s white face. “He’s going into shock, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s bleeding internally. That leg—”

  Jake Elliott opened his eyes. “Ted Strayer is dangerous,” he said, “And he’s still at large. Focus on him.”

  “We will. Jake, hold on. Here’s the ambulance. You’re going to be okay.”

  “Good to know,” Elliott said with a sickly smile, and then he fainted.

  • • •

  THE AMBULANCE LEFT quickly, lights flashing, after the attendants carefully stabilized Elliott on a stretcher. I felt grateful that he was unconscious, because the pain of being moved would have been horrifying. Doug appeared and spoke briefly with the EMTs before they left with Elliott. Then he walked over to us.

  “I’ve got men looking for Strayer, including two officers combing the bluff path. What happened, Lena?”

  I told them, as succinctly as I could, why I had followed the two men. “It was surreal, the whole experience. This weird white world, and Strayer’s blank eyes. He’s lost all sense of morality. He said that he fought with Taylor because she accused him of stealing her postcard. She didn’t give it to him; they didn’t consult over it. He just took it, and she suspected it, and so I’m guessing he returned it and offered then and there to make it up to her by showing her this amazing view. Or maybe he convinced her that someone else took it. I don’t know why Taylor agreed; I think Strayer is a good actor, and probably pretended to be all sorry and regretful, and she fell for his ‘aw shucks, I’m a struggling reporter’ act. Then he pushed her off the bluff. If he had given back the postcard, he must have taken it just before or . . . after.” This last option seemed so ghoulish I couldn’t even imagine Strayer doing it. And yet . . .

  Sam touched my arm. “Lena, I can’t believe I chose this time to get a few groceries. I’m so sorry I wasn’t there when you called.”

  “It was scary,” I said. “But I got angry—so angry for Taylor and Jake and all of his victims that he’s destroyed for the sake of a story. I punched him in the face.”

  Both men turned to study me, surprised. “As in, you made contact?”

  “I knocked his glasses off, which is how I was able to get away from him. Otherwise I might be lying there where Jake was.”

  This thought seemed to horrify all of us, and we avoided each other’s eyes for a while. “Lena, do you have any idea where Strayer would go?”

  I shook my head. “I have no clue. I just wanted to get away from him. Oh—Jake Elliott accused him of looking for something. That’s how he figured out what Strayer had done. He asked Ted what he had dropped, and then he remembered that Ted had worn a press ID on an orange lanyard. I saw that lanyard, too, when we were in his room. It was sitting by his computer. But Elliott realized that the ID was gone, and he asked if that’s what Strayer was looking for. He asked if Taylor ripped it off as she was falling.”

  Doug’s eyes grew wide, and he said, “Excuse me. I need to tell my guys up there to hunt for that ID.” He took out his phone and walked away from us, speaking rapidly.

  A fair distance from Sam’s house, emerging like weird zombies from the white wall of snow, were a few dark-clad members of the press, staggering forward to find the story. For once I wasn’t angry to see them. They would talk to Doug, and eventually to Jake Elliott; they would learn the truth about Taylor’s death and Sam’s innocence, and at least one problem would finally be solved.

  Sam took my hand. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I wish I had been.”

  I held his glove against my face. “You were there in spirit. I was thinking of you up there, and all that you’ve been through because of people like Strayer. And it worked out for the best, because I got to punch him right in the face. I was afraid, and then my fear turned inside out and I was so angry I couldn’t resist doing him violence. Now I know how men feel, with all their testosterone.”

  Sam laughed; for an instant he looked like a teenager, and all the stress of his life was wiped away by relief and amusement.

  Doug waved to us from the road. “I’ll check in later,” he called, and then he got in his car and drove away, speaking tersely to the reporters before he left.

  “Quick. Into my house before they accost us,” Sam said. We moved swiftly to his porch and up the stairs to his door.

  “Mr. West,” they were calling. “Lena!”

  Sam waved a vague hand. “Another time,” he said. We closed his door and collapsed, weary, on his couch.

  “Just think,” I said. “We thought we just hated Strayer because he was a slimy reporter. Now I’m wondering if our instincts were trying to tell us something.”

  “Now if only our instincts would tell us one last secret,” he said. “Come on—we need to call Camilla and get you into some warm clothes.”

  I changed into a pair of his sweats and he poured me some hot coffee. Sam called Camilla and filled her in, saying that I would stay with him for the present. He ended the call and said, “She sounded grim, but satisfied. Lena? Are you okay?”

  “Something’s not fitting. Janet Baskin said that Taylor fought with Caden Brand on the morning she died. But Strayer just said that it was him, and they fought because he stole her postcard.”

  Sam leaned back on his couch and looked up at the ceiling while he thought. “What did Janet say? Something like, ‘She was fighting with the guy I saw you with.’ But if Janet was staying with someone in one of the cabins, then she could have seen us with Strayer when we went to his place. She was probably talking about Strayer all along, and we just assumed she meant Brand.”

  “This is all so confusing, like a tangled thread. How did we get caught up in all of this, Sam?”

  He pulled me against him and said, “We just got one of the knots untangled. Things are looking up.” I leaned back on his chest and we looked at the snow which came down soft as lace now, filling in the footprints made by recent visitors, and effacing all evidence of conflict on the cliff path above us.

  18

  Later she would look back in awe at the events of that part of her life and wonder anew at the things she had been willing to do for the sake of love.

  —From Death on the Danube

  BY MORNING THE whole world knew the truth about Ted Strayer, and he was perhaps the most wanted man in the country. Caden Brand appeared on the news, his face looking as pompous as ever, talking about how much he loved his sister and how much Ted Strayer had taken away from him. He even worked up some insincere tears, which made Camilla sniff and turn off the television.

  “Let’s walk the dogs,” she said with a bright expression.

  “Doug said not to walk around until Strayer is caught.”

  Camilla gave me her regal look. “I do not intend to be a prisoner in my own home; my dogs know what to do to anyone who threatens us.”

  It was true; Heathcliff and Rochester, though gentle a
s lambs with the people who loved them, were particularly ferocious to those who might be perceived as a threat to Camilla. “All right. I’d like that. And then I suppose we should take a stab at chapter eleven. I have some questions about the scene by the cathedral.”

  “Yes, good idea. This book has made halting progress at best, thanks to all of our distractions, but I do think it will end up being good.”

  “I know it will. You have such an amazing talent, Camilla.”

  “You are sweet to say so. I have a remarkable collaborator.”

  We donned our winter gear and went outside, each of us holding a dog on a leash. The pups were pleased to be in the snow, and eventually we let them run back and forth to work off some of their winter doldrums.

  I told Camilla the story of Ted Strayer in a bit more detail, and she gasped at the end. “Lena. It was brave of you to follow them. You’re like me, and you need answers above all else. You like writing mysteries, not living them.”

  “So true.”

  “I am not happy with the risks you took—confronting Strayer, staring down a madman like that.” Her voice wobbled slightly.

  “Camilla? Are you all right?”

  “I just don’t know what I’d do, Lena, if you weren’t in my life. You’ve become a part of my daily reality, and I don’t want to be without you ever again.”

  This was the most emotional thing I had ever heard Camilla say. I stopped in my tracks, turned to her, and pulled her into an embrace. “You know I feel the same way. But I didn’t know I was taking a risk at the time. I thought I was just spying from a safe location. Things went—a bit haywire.”

  Camilla, more composed now and smiling at me, shook her head. “Perhaps I’m an egotist, and I only love you because you remind me so much of myself. But I do love you, Lena.”

  I hoped that she would think my hot cheeks were red from the cold, and not from the intense joy of hearing those words from my lifelong idol. “I love you, too, Camilla.”

  We walked for a while in silence; I occasionally took her arm to help her over an icy patch, but Camilla was generally a sturdier walker than I was.

  “Does Adam know about everything?” I asked.

  She paused and studied the sky, which was a gentle blue today and filled with fluffy clouds, seemingly unconnected to the bitter gray sky that had spit out a blizzard with nearly deadly results. “He knows the basics. He’s coming by today for coffee; he wants to hear your harrowing tale; Lord knows he’ll be able to process it better than I could.”

  “I like Adam. He’s very sweet, and he’s handsome.”

  “I agree.”

  “How long have you known him?”

  She snapped for the dogs, who returned to us, panting and playful. We picked up their leashes and resumed our walk. “James and Adam were actually childhood friends here in Blue Lake. When we lived in London, we would get the occasional letter or Christmas card from Adam, but he was just a name to me. When we moved to Blue Lake, Adam simply became a part of our lives. We would all do things together—James and I, Adam and his wife. Her name was Vera. He lost her years before I lost James, to cancer.”

  “The most evil disease.”

  “Yes. And then Adam and I remained friends; he was very comforting after James died, and we would get together now and again to share our memories. He truly loved James like a brother.”

  “So did you avoid his advances at first because it felt like a betrayal of James?”

  “Not really. As you know, I didn’t pick up on the fact that Adam was making advances. That seemed like something from another life—the whole notion of romance and wooing.”

  “Wooing!” I said, giggling. “There’s a word you don’t hear too often.”

  Camilla lifted her chin. “Adam is very good at wooing. I’ll bet Sam is, too.”

  I nodded. “He woos with waffles.”

  Camilla laughed, sounding like a girl. “We’d better get back. If Doug catches a glimpse of us out here, we’ll get a long sermon. But I am convinced Ted Strayer is as far from Blue Lake as he can possibly get.”

  • • •

  CAMILLA WAS WRONG about that—perhaps for the first time. We tucked back into her house and did a bit of work while drinking hot tea, the dogs sleeping practically on our feet. I was reading a line about an evil man in Camilla’s book and the secret lover who hides him, temporarily, from the police, and an image popped into my head. The more I studied it, the more I couldn’t sit still. The dogs rustled below me.

  “Camilla.”

  “Hmm?”

  “A few days ago I saw Jake Elliott and Ted Strayer talking in Bick’s Hardware.”

  “How is Elliott today, do you know?”

  “Sam said he’s stable after surgery, and high on pain medication.”

  “Oh, good. I feel so bad for that man, when I think—”

  “Camilla!”

  “Yes?”

  “I saw them in Bick’s Hardware, and then I talked to Elliott, and Strayer started talking to some local woman, who I think tends bar on Kelter Street. The more I think back—the more I feel like her expression was kind of—familiar.”

  “As in you’d seen it before, or as in she was familiar with Strayer?”

  “B.”

  “Call Doug.”

  I did, using Camilla’s speakerphone. “Doug Heller,” he said, and I blessed him for always, always answering his phone.

  “Doug, it’s Lena.”

  “Are you okay?”

  I blessed him for that, too. “Yes, thanks. I might have a link to Strayer.”

  “What is it?” I could tell he was sitting up straight now, wearing his alert cop face.

  I told him about Carrie from the bar.

  “It’s Carla,” he said. “And thank you for the tip.”

  He said good-bye and hung up, and I stared at my lap for a while, knowing that Camilla’s sharp gaze was on me. “He confuses me sometimes,” I said. “I know I love Sam, but . . .” I met her eyes. “You must think I’m crazy. But when Doug showed up with Belinda the other day, I was jealous. What is that all about?”

  “I wonder,” Camilla said. “This is a theory—tell me what you think. She’s taking away his time, and you want to know that he’ll still be in your life. You don’t recognize these feelings because you’ve never had a sibling. From the start you have loved him like one—like a big, handsome, protective older brother. Sometimes that’s a bit like hero worship, and sometimes we can be sort of in love, platonically, with our siblings, or any members of our families.”

  “A brother,” I said. “That makes sense. Doug is like my brother. And I do love him. He’s always there when I need him.”

  “He always will be. For the same reason.”

  “You should charge me money for all the wisdom you’ve doled out.”

  She laughed and sipped her tea. “I have enough money,” she said.

  • • •

  THAT NIGHT SAM and I visited Allison and John Branch again; Allison had almost recovered from the news about Sam’s family, but she was still trying to compensate by overfeeding him, and Sam was moaning when we left their house. He looked woefully at me in the car. “She is such a good cook,” he said. “But I think she’s trying to kill me.”

  We were driving through town, on our way to the bluff road. “Pull over here,” I said. “We’ll walk up and down the streets and breathe some crisp winter air, and it will help you digest your food.”

  “Good. Maybe we can get some coffee somewhere, too.”

  We got out and began walking down Wentworth Street, hand in hand. Blue Lake is always pretty at night, with the water sparkling dark blue in the distance and store lights dotting the darkness with various cozy hues. A scent of wood smoke permeated the cold air, adding to the lonely loveliness of the night. “I can see why Camilla s
tayed here, even though it’s not a glamorous place,” I said. “It has its own special allure.” I squeezed his hand. “I can even see why you stayed here.”

  He nodded. “Yes, despite my status as a pariah, I always liked the view, and my house. It’s a great house.”

  “It is. Can you imagine ever finding something like it in New York?”

  “No. Especially not at that price.”

  We turned onto Sabre Street, heading for Yeats. Suddenly a car screeched up next to us, blue and red lights flashing. Another pulled up behind that one, and for a terrible moment I feared they were there to arrest Sam once again. My hand tightened on his, ready to hold on at all costs.

  But the police officers leaped out and ran right past us, their guns drawn and held low.

  “That was scary,” Sam said, his voice shaking slightly. I touched his face.

  “Never again,” I said.

  We had only moved forward about three yards when I saw a figure running toward us on the dark sidewalk. He materialized into Ted Strayer, moving at top speed. He had managed to find his glasses on the bluff, but they looked a bit mangled, and they added to his overall unbalanced look.

  I had no time to wonder why he was heading our way; he looked to his right to see that police cars barred his passage. He was clearly going to try to pass on the left, where the storefronts met the sidewalk. As he approached he said, “Out of my way!” and started to fly past us.

  Sam put out a casual arm at the level of Strayer’s neck and effectively clotheslined him. Strayer landed on his back, the wind knocked totally out of him. Another figure pelted toward us; we eventually recognized him as Doug Heller. He looked from Strayer to Sam to me and smiled. “Good tip, Lena. We’ve been watching Carla all day, and she managed to lead us to Ted there.”