So I stayed around, clearly not needed, and held her hand for much of the time. I never knew her name, and her husband, when he came in, shook my hand and introduced himself only as “Lee.” He was older than the woman but extremely dashing and charismatic. I was convinced by then that they were Hollywood types who were trying to escape the paparazzi. They looked vaguely familiar, and I wished my wife were there, because she knows the names of all the movie stars.
At about two in the morning she was ready to push, and I delivered a healthy and beautiful little girl to them; the woman named her Athena. She had been in significant pain, even with her epidural, but the child’s arrival seemed to bring a kind of euphoria, and she could not take her eyes from the baby. It was beautiful to see the mother and the child, and the immediate bond between them. The man stood at her side, stroking her hair but also occasionally looking at his watch. The medical staff brought me what seemed to be an official birth record, which I signed and dated, but I have not been able to trace it since that evening, and the local hospital has no record of the birth.
I wasn’t particularly concerned when I left that evening; the woman was healthy and happy, and clearly in love with her child. The baby had come with no serious complications, and she was truly lovely, with a full head of dark hair, and little dark eyes like stars. I was discreetly handed an envelope for my services, which I did not open until I arrived back at my hotel, and it contained a ridiculous amount of money for my evening’s work. I determined that I would give most of it back the next day, because it is my practice to visit the new mother the day after I deliver a baby, not just for a wellness check, but to answer questions. The woman had seemed a bit nervous, and I wanted to assuage any fears.
I set out the next morning, encouraged by my wife, who found the whole affair fascinating. I wound through the streets, a bit confused because things looked different in the daytime, but I managed to find the harbor, which had the same sign and the same iron bell on the dock that I recalled from the evening before.
But the yacht was gone. At first I thought it was impossible that something that huge could move through the water at all, but it was entirely gone, and one of the sailors at the dock told me it had left at first light.
I went back, oddly disappointed, because for some reason I had wanted to see the woman and the baby again.
That is probably my most compelling delivery story ever, and I’ve delivered a lot of babies in a lot of interesting places.
I stopped reading. My heart was still beating and I seemed to be unable to close my eyes, which felt huge in my head, especially because of the last line, in which Dr. Ian Foster provided the most beautiful word I had ever seen.
He had shared the name of the yacht.
• • •
AFTER SEVERAL MOMENTS of shock, I was out of my chair and shooting down the hall, screaming for Camilla. I took the stairs two at a time and actually fell down the last four; I landed on my butt at the bottom of the flight, and Camilla found me there, her eyes wide.
“Lena, are you all right? Are you crying? Or is that laughter?”
“No. Yes. Both. Camilla!” I shouted, wiping at my eyes.
She understood in an instant. “You’ve found them?”
“I’ve found them. I know I have. We need Doug and Sam, now!”
“Of course,” she said, reaching out a hand to help me off the floor. “I’ll call him this minute. Take a moment to calm down. Have a glass of water.”
“Yes, I will.” I watched her walk toward her office and yelled after her: “Camilla! Tell Doug to bring the postcard. The one from Taylor Brand.”
20
Joe, in his simple wisdom, warned her not to set her hopes high.
“There are no happy endings,” he said. “At best they are ambiguous.” Despite his warning, she felt sure that everything, at long last, would be all right.
—From Death on the Danube
DOUG AND SAM were there within half an hour; Camilla’s house was silent with anticipation. I had printed out the blog interview for everyone to read, and now I passed it out to my three friends at Camilla’s dining room table, where the winter light illuminated the hope on every face. “Read,” I said.
Sam was laughing halfway through, and Doug yelled “Yes!” while he read. They finished at the same time and slapped each other five; then Sam got up and kissed both Camilla and me on the lips. Laughter was bubbling out of us all and our relief threatened to become hysteria. Doug reined us in with a loud knock on the table. “Let’s look at this postcard,” he said, pulling out a folder and opening it to reveal the card tucked inside. He pulled it out by one corner with a policeman’s reverence for preserving evidence, even though he’d told us there were no fingerprints to find.
There was the scrawled message: .R.Acie.
Doug pointed with the tip of his pencil. “So let’s assume those are not periods. That the first one is a tiny letter ‘o,’ and that the second one is merely there for obfuscation—to throw people off in case her husband or one of his lackeys found her writing it. And the final letter ‘i’ is in fact not an ‘i’ at all, but an ‘l’ that was damaged in the mail, and therefore looks like a dotted ‘i.’ Then what we would have is—
“Oracle,” I said.
“And Oracle is the name of the yacht visited by Dr. Ian Foster,” said Camilla thoughtfully.
“It’s Victoria,” Sam said. “You read the description. Reddish hair, green eyes. It’s Vic, and now she has a daughter.”
“Surely you can find him now, Doug? With the name of the yacht?”
Doug stood up, still looking a bit shocked. “If this doesn’t do the trick, Lena, I don’t know what will. I will be on the phone before I leave your driveway. But listen—this might take a while. There are various agencies involved, and other countries and their laws. Don’t hold your breath.”
“Okay,” I said, not really paying attention. “Be sure to tell Belinda,” I said. “She helped us get on the right track at the very start.”
Doug smiled. “I will. She’ll want to celebrate with us when this all gets resolved.”
“No celebrating yet,” said Camilla with some reserve. “Let’s find the poor girl. Then we celebrate.”
Doug gave us a thumbs-up and jogged out of the house.
The three of us who remained stared at each other, uncertain what to do with ourselves. “Should I go back home?” Sam said, his eyes blank.
Camilla clapped her hands. “No. In cases like this, when people are forced to do some agonizing waiting, they must stick together and distract each other.”
“What sort of distraction should we choose?” I said.
“That’s the game,” Camilla said. “I’ll choose our first task, which is to take the dogs for a nice brisk walk. We’ll feel better after exercise in the cold air.”
We followed her advice because, as always, it was good. When we returned an hour later with two tired German shepherds, we all felt invigorated and slightly less nervous. We sprawled in Camilla’s living room and Sam put on the television, where we found an old Grace Kelly movie and watched it for about fifteen minutes before the phone rang and made us all jump. Camilla went to her office, and Sam and I followed. She answered and said, “Oh, yes, Doug. Just a moment—let me put you on speaker phone.” She pressed a button and we heard Doug’s voice.
“We’re all feeling good about the chances right now,” Doug said loudly. “Oracle is registered to his friend Jon Demetrios; the Feds think that Lazos bought the yacht two years ago and convinced Demetrios to keep the yacht in his own name. Our investigations have told us that there are any number of friends and hangers-on who would be willing to do this sort of thing for Lazos. He’s a persuasive man, and he would always have convincing reasons. Demetrios probably didn’t think twice.”
“So are they questioning Demetrios?” Sam asked.
Sam’s hand was suddenly clutching mine. I looked at him and was reminded of a long-ago day when I and my fifth grade best friend Andrea Lord were about to go on a rollercoaster for the first time. Andrea had talked me into it, but when we were buckled into our seats, it was Andrea who was terrified. Her face grew white and her expression was one of terror within an existential acceptance. That was how Sam looked now: he was facing the inevitable, but he was afraid.
I slipped an arm around him and said, “It’s okay. It’s what we want, Sam.”
Someone spoke to Doug in the background. He said, “I have to go. I’ll call when I can.” And then the call ended.
Camilla sent us a bright look. “It’s just the waiting, Sam. Waiting is limbo, waiting is purgatory. But eventually you can get into heaven. That’s a rather Catholic analogy, but it works here.”
Sam nodded. “I could use a dose of God. I’ve spent the last many months thinking he turned his back on me. Maybe it was the other way around. In any case, whose turn is it to distract us from our waiting?”
“Mine,” I said. “And you know what I think you would enjoy? Camilla’s new book. Camilla, do I have your permission to read it aloud? It’s spellbinding.”
Camilla shrugged. “I don’t know if Sam wants to—”
“I do,” Sam said quickly. “I would love to. Lena, I haven’t told you yet, but I just finished The Salzburg Train. I loved it. What a talented duo you are.”
“It’s all Camilla,” I said. “I just gave her ideas after the fact. She generated an entire manuscript first.”
“In any case, I would be honored to hear the new one.”
With Camilla’s blessing, I opened the document on my laptop and began to read it aloud. It was something I had never done, and it was surprisingly fun hearing Camilla’s narrator talking to us. Camilla liked it, too. “I’m going to jot some notes while you read, Lena.”
We all became lost in it for a time: the Budapest night, the waiting boat, the girl in danger, the brooding man with a family secret. Sam actually leaned forward as I reached the end of chapter one. “This is great,” he said.
I read chapter two, and part of chapter three, before the phone rang again.
Doug told us, in a clipped tone, that authorities had boarded the Oracle. “Somehow the press got wind of it, and there was a horde of them there, like buzzing bees, right at the gangplank. God knows how they knew. Someone blabbed, obviously. But this means you’ll see it all on the news, because they were filming as it happened.”
“Did they find Victoria?” Sam asked, his voice trembling slightly.
“Yes, Sam,” Doug said. “And she’s all right. I have to go, but I’ll call back.”
The line went dead, and Camilla and I, seeing the real distress that had come with what must have been Sam’s huge wave of relief, found reasons to leave the room so that Sam could be alone.
I went back after a few minutes, and Sam had composed himself. “My God,” he said, reaching for me. “It’s like letting air out of a tire. I feel entirely deflated. I hope I don’t have to go home, because I don’t think I’d make it down the road.”
I sat in his lap and kissed his cheek. “You stay right here with the people who love you.” I stroked his hair for a while, then said, “You know what? I feel sorry for Jake Elliott. He championed you through all of this, and now he can’t be in on the big story.”
Sam thought about this and said, “You’re right. Hand me the phone, Lena.”
He dialed a number that he found written on a scrap of paper in his wallet, and said, “Jake? It’s Sam West. I’ve got some information for you.” He told Elliott what had happened, and that he’d probably see it on the news. “But I want you to know that I won’t talk to anyone but you about the whole thing. I don’t know a damn thing now, but I assume I will eventually, and then you can give me a call. And if I end up seeing Victoria, I’ll recommend that she talk to you, as well.”
I could hear the loudness of Elliott’s joy and gratitude coming through the receiver, and I gave Sam a thumbs-up.
When he hung up, I said, “That was really nice of you.”
“It feels good to have control over something,” Sam said. “The rest is still all helplessness.”
• • •
ON THE FIVE o’clock news it was merely called a “breaking story,” but they had no real news or footage. But by the six o’clock news broadcast, we got to see it all.
The headline on the screen said Victoria West Found, and there was a picture of her next to the lettering. Then the reporter, a striking woman named Callie Forsyth, read a brief statement: “Victoria West, once thought to have been murdered by her husband Sam, has turned up in the Mediterranean on a yacht called Oracle. West has been with a wealthy Greek-American tycoon named Nikon Lazos, and it is unclear whether or not she was being held against her will. Authorities are still investigating Lazos and his ties to Ms. West, and police are currently questioning everyone involved. Ms. West did not speak to reporters as authorities led her from the yacht; she was reported to be unharmed, and the mother of a four-month-old child, who was with her as she disembarked.”
And as Forsyth spoke, we saw it for ourselves: the gangplank, crowded with reporters and jostling microphones. A woman with a cloud of red hair, wearing a sea-green blouse and a pair of black pants, taking tentative steps out of the yacht. She blinked in the sun and looked almost frightened. At one point, distracted, she looked directly into a camera, her eyes wide and confused, but then, in response to some sound or gesture made by the baby in her arms, she smiled down at it with absolute joy, and Sam said, “Oh, my God. Vic.”
She made her way down, flanked by what were clearly Federal agents, and her eyes were on her child alone. The agents batted away any reporters who got too close, and Victoria West, tall and beautiful and intact, got into a black car parked at the dock and was whisked away.
Certain members of Lazos’s staff were being detained for questioning, and they indicated that Lazos was away on business. Police were pursuing those leads.
Callie Forsyth, all fake tan and white teeth and blonde hair, grinned at the camera. “Ms. West did not wish to speak to reporters, but we did learn that her child was a girl, and that her name is Athena. Steve?”
Steve looked like a male version of Forsyth. “Thanks, Callie. We tried to reach Sam West for his reaction, but were unable to make contact. West, as you may recall, had long been a suspect in his wife’s disappearance, and was only recently exonerated when it was determined that Victoria West was still alive.”
Callie looked interested. “And Steve, wasn’t the woman who found Victoria West actually Sam West’s new love interest?”
“It’s true, Callie. The woman’s name is Lena London, and she is actually a suspense novelist who has cowritten a book with the famous Camilla Graham. We don’t know if it’s this special skill that enabled her to find West, but it certainly is an interesting coincidence. My contacts tell me that London was also instrumental in helping to find the yacht, along with an Indiana police detective named Doug Heller, who has been working on the case for a full year.”
Callie’s face was a picture of fake amazement. “This story just gets more and more complicated, Steve!”
“It does, Callie, and I’m sure we will continue to learn of its complexities over the next days and weeks. West may not wish to talk with reporters, but she will realize soon enough that the world is clamoring for details of how she spent her year, the nature of her relationship with Lazos, and if, in fact, he is the father of her child.”
“It’s a beautiful baby, Steve.”
“It is indeed. We asked our reporter at our sister station in Athens what might be significan
t about the name Athena, and—” With a flick of the remote, Sam turned off the television.
“That’s about all I can take of Steve and Callie,” he said lightly.
Camilla studied him. “Sam, are you all right? You can tell us the truth.”
Sam shrugged. “The truth is I don’t know. The truth is, now that I see her, and she’s fine, I am reminded of all I endured as her alleged murderer, and I’m wondering, if she was able to send a postcard to Taylor—why not send one to me? All she had to say was ‘I’m alive.’ But she didn’t. I guess that hurts more than I realized.”
With a smile of apology, he got up from the couch and left the room.
• • •
WE SHARED A quiet dinner, and then Camilla made us some coffee. “I don’t know that we can expect to hear anything more tonight,” Sam said. “I mean, what are we waiting for? It might take weeks for them to debrief her or whatever it is they do. She’ll need time to assimilate. God knows what her mental state is. So—should we just go our separate ways?”
Camilla poured his coffee and pushed it toward him. “She’s safe now, and she has ceased to be my concern. This isn’t about Victoria, Sam, it’s about you. You’ve been through a great deal, and for a year you couldn’t let your guard down because you always had to be ready for the next assault, whatever form it might take. Now, for the first time, you can admit what you feel about it all. You should be around friends during this time. You are, whether you want to think it or not, vulnerable right now. And Lena and I want to take care of you.”
He pulled his coffee toward him and took a sip. Then he smiled. “I’m okay with that. Do you have any cookies?”
Camilla laughed, and then said, “You do know Rhonda, don’t you? She dropped off a whole congratulatory tray about an hour ago, along with a little note.” Camilla brought it to the table—an extravaganza of cookies, tiny cupcakes, fruit breads, mini pies, and chocolate-dipped strawberries. Sam moaned with pleasure as he opened the card from Rhonda. Then he read it and shook his head. “You’re right, Camilla, I’ve had my armor on for a year. And I was pretty sure I hated everyone in Blue Lake. Now I’m being forced to reassess everything. Suddenly the people in this town are looking more positive. But of course I knew Rhonda was great. She’s been feeding me here for months without any sign of prejudice.”
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