“Of course you need to talk! You haven’t seen her in a year and a half. Can you—would you call me when you know what’s going on? I mean, I won’t intrude, but—”
“I want her to meet you, of course. But let us talk first. Let me see her alone.”
“Yes, I understand, Sam. Just call when you need me, okay?”
“I will. I have to go—she’s just minutes away.”
“Bye.”
I clicked off as Camilla walked back in. “Shall we have a little book meeting?” she asked.
My head was buzzing with Sam’s information. There was no way I would be able to concentrate, to look at words on paper. “You know what? That was Sam. He had a quick question for me—something he wants help with in redesigning his kitchen.” I was shocked at how quickly the lie came. “Let me just run over there and give my opinion, and then I’ll come right back.”
Camilla’s voice was smooth. “Of course, dear.”
I knew that she was watching me as I donned my coat and boots. She was no fool, and she knew that something was happening. But Camilla, ever wise, said nothing.
I gave her a little wave as I left, and an imitation of a smile. Then I moved down the steps and toward the gravel road. Normally I would have simply marched down the bluff toward Sam’s, taking the road that led to his driveway. This time I moved into the trees, stealthy and quiet, staying away from the road even as I kept it in sight. I found eventual shelter under a large pine, just as I had when I saw Ted Strayer try to commit murder.
When the car pulled up I was in shadow. I refused to blink for fear that I might miss her—that after all this time I would be deprived of seeing Victoria West.
The car pulled to a stop next to Sam’s house, perpendicular to his driveway. The back seat door opened, and a woman stepped out. I had thought, from pictures and video, that she was very tall, but she seemed smaller in person. Her red hair was tucked partway under a green hat, and she wore a black winter coat with a green collar. She stepped out with booted feet and then turned to retrieve something from the car. She emerged with a baby carrier. I could hear her murmuring to the child, saying sweet nothings to it. In response I heard some happy gurgling. Even from my distance of perhaps fifteen feet I could see that little Athena was beautiful. At one point, as her mother marched toward Sam’s door, I thought the baby’s dark eyes looked right at me.
I leaned against the tree and heard Sam’s door open. “Victoria,” he said.
“Oh, Sammy,” she cried. I moved closer. She was hugging Sam and saying “I’m sorry—I’m so, so sorry!”
Sam patted her hair, looking slightly uncomfortable, and then she pulled away.
He pointed at the baby. “She’s beautiful. She looks like you,” he said.
Victoria picked up the carrier and said, “She’s much prettier than I am. She’s my sweet little goddess.”
Sam stepped back. “Come in out of the cold. I made some coffee.”
“Lovely,” she said. She stepped inside with her carrier, and Sam closed the door. A moment later her driver appeared at the door and knocked. Sam opened the door and I heard Victoria say, “Oh Sam, let him in—I need to pay him.”
Moments later the driver reappeared in Sam’s doorway; he paused briefly, clearly admiring Sam’s sturdy wood door, and then went back to his car, apparently to wait.
I needed to go back to Camilla’s, to return to life as usual, but that would have been as hard as pulling metal away from a magnet. Victoria West was just feet away. I wanted to see her up close, touch her hand, talk to her. I wanted her to tell me that she felt happy and free—but then I wanted her to say that she had moved on, that she had no interest in Sam anymore.
After about twenty minutes I decided that it was ridiculous to stand in the cold waiting. Sam had said he would call, and he would be embarrassed and disappointed to find his girlfriend lurking in the trees outside his house instead of waiting in her own warm residence. I eyed the driver who waited for Victoria; he was on the phone inside the car.
I took one tentative step forward, but stopped when I heard the driver get out again. He climbed the stairs and went back to the door. So it had been Victoria on the phone. It had been a short meeting. Was that good or bad?
A moment later the driver went inside the house. He emerged thirty seconds later holding the baby carrier; little Athena, eyes still bright, seemed to find me again in the trees, and she smiled. I smiled back, though she couldn’t see me. So Victoria was leaving; had Sam gotten all the closure he needed? Had Victoria signed the papers he spoke of?
Idly, I watched the driver stow the baby into the back seat. He hadn’t bothered to buckle in the carrier; apparently Victoria wanted to do that herself.
He ran back to his side, and that was when I heard the first scream from inside the house. “No,” I said, and I moved toward the car, which was already pulling away.
I noted the license number: 2B0NJ7.
Victoria West slammed out of the house, her feet pounding down the porch stairs. “My baby!” she cried. She looked at me without recognition. “What did you see?”
For a second that lasted centuries, we stared at each other. Her beautiful green eyes were wide with terror, but even in my overwhelming pity I felt a spurt of resentment.
I pointed. “The driver. I thought he was carrying her for you.”
She looked wildly down the road, and then she ran, screaming her daughter’s name as she chased after the car that was gone. Later Camilla would tell me that she heard the screams, and the name “Athena,” and that she had known the truth immediately.
In that instant I felt a terrible wrenching inside me, as I watched the mother’s grief at being torn away from her daughter. My longing for my own mother welled up so strongly that my eyes filled with tears.
Sam was close behind Victoria; he had a cell phone in his hand. Now he joined me in the driveway, sparing me a look of mild surprise before sending a worried glance toward Victoria, crying pitifully for her child, still running down the gravel road toward Wentworth Street.
“Doug’s putting out an Amber Alert,” he said. “He won’t get far.” He shook his head. “That guy taped the door latch. I never thought to—I don’t know why, but I assumed we were safe.”
“The driver got a call just before he went in; I thought it was Victoria calling. I got a license number. I can give them that,” I said.
Our words seemed to blow away on the cold wind, and after several hours, so did our confidence.
Athena Lazos, four months old, had been kidnapped.
22
In the end, it was misfortune, not happiness, which gave her life a clear direction.
—From Death on the Danube
CAMILLA SAT WITH Sam and me that evening, watching the fire crackle in her grate. It warmed not just our cold bodies, but our weary hearts. “We know the child is in good hands. Victoria knows, too,” she said. “So she won’t have to be tormented with images of evil abductors.”
Sam nodded. “She does know. She’s convinced it’s Nikon. Doug says they found the car, deserted in a corn field. Clearly the driver was picked up by someone else. This was an orchestrated abduction.”
“But Nikon is evil,” I protested. “His first wife Grace defended him, and Victoria downplays what he did, as well. And he continues to get away with things. How dare he just steal his own daughter? Poor Victoria. She was just starting over. She called the baby the love of her life.”
“And she will have the child back quickly enough. All of the authorities are on the case,” Camilla said.
We avoided looking at one another as these hollow words hit home. The “authorities” had been looking for Victoria, too, and it had taken more than a year. Where would Nikon be holed up this time? What friends would he employ to protect him? How long would it be before Victoria would see her little girl?
Sam stood up and stretched briefly, his face solemn. “I want to call and check on Vic. See how she’s holding up,” he said. He looked at me, and I nodded. I wanted to know how she was, as well.
“Of course, dear,” Camilla said. “Lena, I’m getting some more tea. Would you like some?”
“Yes, please.” I watched her walk out of the room, and my eyes returned to the fire as my mind returned to the thoughts that had been circling in my head ever since the car had driven away.
In one sense, our drama was over. Life in Blue Lake would return to normal, and Sam had been exonerated once and for all. He was no longer “the murderer” on the hill. He was free, and I was free. Camilla and I would resume our writing, and go on book tours. We would cease to be distracted by real life mysteries. Much as I hated the thought of little Athena’s absence from her mother’s life, that was not a mystery that Camilla and I, or Doug or Sam, could solve.
And yet, my brain persisted, Nikon Lazos was going to disappear into obscurity once again, and he had arranged to take his daughter with him. I clenched my fists on the arms of my chair, angry about the little dark-eyed baby, about the weeping Victoria, about poor Sam, who was ever present in the center of drama. I thought again of my mother, my beloved mother, long gone but never forgotten. Love between a mother and her child was a bond that could not be broken—not by death, not by distance.
For the third time in my life I found myself vowing that I would find Nikon Lazos, but this time, I fantasized, it would be different.
Someday soon I would meet him face-to-face.
Someday soon I would tell him how many people he had harmed.
Someday soon I would make him answer for it all.
When Camilla came in with my tea, she found that I was smiling.
Keep reading for an excerpt from the first book in the Undercover Dish Mysteries
THE BIG CHILI
Available now from Berkley Prime Crime!
MY CHOCOLATE LABRADOR watched me as I parked my previously loved Volvo wagon and took my covered pan out of the backseat; the autumn wind buffeted my face and made a mess of my hair. “I’ll be right back, Mick,” I said. “I know that pot in the back smells good, but I’m counting on you to behave and wait for your treat.”
He nodded at me. Mick was a remarkable dog for many reasons, but one of his best talents was that he had trained himself to nod while I was talking. He was my dream companion: a handsome male who listened attentively and never interrupted or condescended. He also made me feel safe when I did my clandestine duties all over Pine Haven.
I shut the car door and moved up the walkway of Ellie Parker’s house. She usually kept the door unlocked, though I had begged her to reconsider that idea. We had an agreement; if she wasn’t there, or if she was out back puttering around in her garden, I could just leave the casserole on the table and take the money she left out for me. I charged fifty dollars, which included the price of ingredients. Ellie said I could charge more, but for now this little sideline of a job was helping me pay the bills, and that was good enough.
“Ellie?” I called. I went into her kitchen, where I’d been several times before, and found it neat, as always; Ellie was not inside. Disappointed, I left the dish on her scrubbed wooden table. I had made a lovely mac and cheese casserole with a twist: finely sliced onion and prosciutto baked in with three different cheeses for a show-stopping event of a main course . It was delicious and very close to the way Ellie prepared it before her arthritis had made it too difficult to cook for her visiting friends and family. She didn’t want her loved ones to know this, which was where I came in. We’d had an agreement for almost a year, and it served us both well.
She knew how long to bake the dish, so I didn’t bother with writing down any directions. Normally she would invite Mick in, and she and I would have some tea and shoot the breeze while my canine lounged under the table, but today, for whatever reason, she had made other plans. She hadn’t set out the money, either, so I went to the cookie jar where she had told me to find my payment in the past: a ceramic cylinder in the shape of a chubby monkey. I claimed my money and turned around to find a man looming in the doorway.
“Ah!” I screamed, clutching the cash in front of my waist like a weird bouquet.
“Hello,” he said, his eyes narrowed. “May I ask who you are?”
“I’m a friend of Ellie’s. Who are you?” I fired back. Ellie had never suggested that a man—a sort of good-looking, youngish man—would appear in her house. For all I knew he could be a burglar.
“I am Ellie’s son. Jay Parker.” He wore reading glasses, and he peered at me over these like a stern teacher. It was a good look for him. “And I didn’t expect to find a strange woman dipping into Mom’s cash jar while she wasn’t in the house.”
A little bead of perspiration worked its way down my back. “First of all, I am not a strange woman. In any sense. Ellie and I are friends, and I—”
I what? What could I tell him? My little covered-dish business was an under-the-table operation, and the people who ordered my food wanted it to appear that they had made it themselves. That, and the deliciousness of my cooking, was what they paid me for. “I did a job for her, and she told me to take payment.”
“Is that so?” He leaned against the door frame, a man with all the time in the world. All he needed was a piece of hay to chew on. “And what job did you do for her?” He clearly didn’t believe me. With a pang I realized that this man thought I was a thief.
“I mowed her lawn,” I blurted. We both turned to look out the window at Ellie’s remarkably high grass. “Wow. That really was not a good choice,” I murmured.
Now his face grew alert, wary, as though he were ready to employ some sort of martial art if necessary. I may as well have been facing a cop. “What exactly is your relationship to my mother? And how did you even get in here, if my mom isn’t home?”
At least I could tell the truth about that. “I’m Lilah Drake. Ellie left the door unlocked for me because she was expecting me. As I said, we are friends.”
This did not please him. “I think she was actually expecting me,” he said. “So you could potentially have just gotten lucky when you tried the doorknob.”
“Oh my God!” My face felt hot with embarrassment. “I’m not stealing Ellie’s money. She and I have an—arrangement. I can’t actually discuss it with you. Maybe if you asked your mother . . . ?” Ellie was creative; she could come up with a good lie for her son, and he’d have to believe her.
There was a silence, as though he were weighing evidence. It felt condescending and weirdly terrifying. “Listen, I have to get going. My dog is waiting—”
He brightened for the first time. “That’s your dog, huh? I figured. He’s pretty awesome. What is he, a chocolate Lab?”
“Yes, he is.” I shifted on my feet, not sure how to extricate myself from the situation. My brother said I had a knack for getting into weird predicaments.
I sighed, and he said, “So what do we do now?” He patted his shirt pocket, as though looking for a pack of cigarettes, then grimaced and produced a piece of gum. He unwrapped it while still watching me. His glasses had slid down even farther on his nose, and I felt like plucking them off. He popped the gum into his mouth and took off the glasses himself, then beamed a blue gaze at me. Wow. “How about if we just wait here together and see what my mom has to say? She’s probably out back in the garden, picking pumpkins or harvesting the last of her tomatoes.”
I put the money on Ellie’s table. “You know what? Ellie can pay me later. I won’t have you—casting aspersions on my character.”
“Fancy words,” said Ellie’s son. He moved a little closer to me, until I could smell spearmint on his breath. “I still think you should hang around.”
I put my hands on my hips, the way my mother used to do when Cam or I forgot to do the dishes. “I have thi
ngs to do. Please tell Ellie I said hello.”
I whisked past him, out to my car, where Mick sat waiting, a picture of patience. I climbed in and started confiding. “Do you believe that guy? Now I’m going to have to come back here later to get paid. I don’t have time for this, Mick!”
Mick nodded with what seemed like sympathy.
I reversed out of Ellie’s driveway, still fuming. But halfway home, encouraged by Mick’s stolid support, and enjoying the Mary Poppins sound track in my CD player, I calmed down slightly. These things could happen in the business world, I told myself. There was no need to give another thought to tall Jay Parker and his accusations and his blue eyes.
I began to sing along with the music, assuring Mick melodically that I would find the perfect nanny. Something in the look he gave me made me respond aloud. “And another thing. I’m a grown woman. I’m twenty-seven years old, Mick. I don’t need some condescending man treating me like a child. Am I right?”
Mick was distracted by a Chihuahua on the sidewalk, so I didn’t get a nod.
“Huh. She’s pretty cute, right?”
No response. I sighed and went back to my singing, flicking forward on the cd and testing my upper range with “Feed the Birds.” I started squeaking by the time I reached the middle. “It’s tricky, Mick. It starts low, and then you get nailed on the refrain. We can’t all be Julie Andrews.” Mick’s expression was benevolent.
I drove to Caldwell Street and St. Bartholomew Church, where I headed to the back parking lot behind the rectory. I took out my phone and texted I’m here to Pet Grandy, a member of St. Bart’s Altar and Rosary Guild, a scion of the church, and a go-to person for church social events. Pet was popular, and she had a burning desire to be all things to all people. This included her wish to make food for every church event—good food that earned her praise and adulation. Since Pet was actually a terrible cook, I was the answer to her prayers. I had made a lot of money off Pet Grandy in the last year.
Death in Dark Blue Page 24