Camilla wore a droll expression. “I won’t ask, then.”
I patted her arm. “Have you had dinner?”
“Oh yes, Adam has kept me well fed for our entire journey. I’m sure I’ve gained five pounds.”
“Well, you look gorgeous.” She did: her hair, soft and slightly windblown, framed her fine-boned face, bright now with the cold, and her aura was relaxed, rested, happy.
“Thank you, dear.” She studied me for a moment with an affectionate expression, then said, “I wonder if we should have some tea? You are clearly bursting to tell me things.”
“I am, yes.”
“Come in the kitchen, then. Oh, Adam, you don’t have to march those up right away! Just leave them by the stairs. Come have tea with Lena and me.”
Adam, with a shrewd glance at us, said, “I’ve been sitting too long. I think I’ll take the boys for a quick walk.” In seconds, he had found the leashes and clipped them onto the dogs’ collars.
I said, “Adam—the dogs were growling just before you arrived. I had halfway convinced myself that I saw someone prowling around out there. Maybe you shouldn’t go.”
My words had the opposite effect of what I intended. Adam looked almost eager to go now. “We didn’t see anyone when we pulled in. But all three of us will be vigilant.” His eyes were bright with the idea of a challenge. “You ladies do your catching up, and I’ll be back for the cookies.”
We waved, and he was gone.
I turned back to Camilla. “I love him,” I said.
“I’m glad.”
“He’s so brave. I still think of it all the time, Camilla—the way he confronted a murderer and rescued me.”
She nodded. “With his gun. I’ve tried to talk him out of keeping it, although I realize it was perhaps—necessary in that situation. And I know you and I have faced down malevolent people with weapons in the past year, and that’s why Adam wants to have it around. I can’t quite decide how I feel about it. What with this violent world.”
“I see the dilemma.” I patted her arm. “We have plenty of time to talk it through.”
“Yes.” She took off her coat, hung it on a rack near the door, and sighed contentedly.
“Let me boil the water. I just did this an hour ago for Sam. You should know he’s upstairs in my bed, sick with a fever.”
“Oh, poor boy!”
“Yes. I asked Allison to come and inspect him, and she says I shouldn’t worry, that it’s just a virus. But with everything else, I’ve been nervous.”
“I think I’ll go say hello. Just check on him,” she said. I followed her up the stairs and into my room. She saw the kittens first; they sat curled together on the windowsill, probably looking at nocturnal creatures. She whispered, “We have visitors!”
The room was dim, for I had left on only one corner lamp. Camilla strode to the bed and felt Sam’s forehead. “Hmm,” she said.
Sam rustled and looked up at her. “Welcome back,” he murmured. Then he closed his eyes again.
“Sam? Do you need water? Or something to eat?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Just sleep is fine.”
Camilla murmured, “He’s hot, still feverish, but not alarmingly so. Let him sleep, and with luck it will break by morning.”
She stroked his hair with a doting expression, then walked toward the door. I straightened Sam’s covers and followed her. In the hall she said, “How nice that his kittens are with him. He would worry about them in his house all alone.”
“Yes. I’m not sure how Lestrade will feel about being turned out.”
Camilla giggled. “We’ll give him lots of attention. Where is he, anyway?”
“I think he might be in your office. He’s been lurking there.”
“Ah.” We had reached the bottom of the stairs, and by unspoken consent we went into the kitchen and sat down at the table. She smiled at me and said, “Home again.”
“Yes, thank goodness.”
Camilla stretched out her jean-clad legs. “Now. Earlier you said that with ‘everything else’ you’ve been nervous. So now I need to hear about the ‘everything else.’ Of course, I know about this boy Carl who absconded with Belinda. He is, you tell me, her unpredictable yet sweet-natured brother.”
“Yes. Carl is worried—so worried he forgot to take his medication, which made him erratic. Because of the friend who has disappeared.”
“The Castellan man?”
“Yes. And I did visit his wife’s shop, after you mentioned her.”
“Ah?” Her eyes glittered a bit. “And how did that go?”
I told her about my clandestine excursion, and about Elena’s claim that Luis had cheated on her. About Elena’s dead-looking eyes. About my visit, with Belinda, to the game shop, where we heard Luis had been “disillusioned” about something at work. About our stop at the Plasti-Source site on the way home from Michigan, and about Belinda’s research regarding their possible lawsuits. About Carl’s face when he talked about his friend, and about the strangeness of people not acknowledging that a man was missing. Then, because I told her everything, I mentioned the dark car that had followed us (perhaps) up the rutted bluff road.
“That’s why I felt so nervous when the dogs growled,” I said.
“Hmm,” she said.
I got up to make the tea, and when I sat back down she said, “This all comes down to one thing for me, Lena. The boy, his friend, the wife, the car, the new plant in Blue Lake. It’s all Plasti-Source. That’s the reason Carl and Luis met. It’s the thing that links Blue Lake to Stafford. It’s the thing, apparently, that had Luis agitated before he disappeared and stopped communicating with Carl.”
“That makes sense. You always seem to—” I paused, arrested by something glittering on her left hand. “Camilla.”
I lifted her hand and studied the diamond ring. “Oh my gosh, this explains it all! Why Adam sounded so happy on the phone, and why you and he look so peaceful and mellow. You got engaged!”
Camilla shook her head at me; I was still clutching her wrist. “We didn’t get engaged, my dear girl.”
For some reason this disappointed me. “Oh.”
“We got married,” Camilla said.
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. I stood up, then sat back down again.
A huge smile bloomed on her face, and I felt an answering smile on my own. “Married?”
“Yes. We certainly didn’t want to take attention away from your impending nuptials with Sam, but we did think it was time. So we drove out to Hanover and had an engagement dinner, then had a simple little wedding this morning, and then we celebrated all day long. It was quiet and perfect.”
“Oh, Camilla! But—you didn’t want anyone to—be a witness, or—?”
“They had someone there, at the chapel. It was the loveliest church, Lena. Perched on a bluff, surrounded by trees. They took pictures for us; I’ll share them with you.”
“Camilla. I knew you loved Adam, but you never actually said those words out loud, and—”
“How lucky am I, really, to have loved two such wonderful men in one lifetime? Each one kind, and good, and dedicated to my happiness. Yes, I love him, and I’ve married him. So now we’ll have to weave him into our Graham House life.”
“Of course! He was already there. It’s just a matter of changing his title,” I said. “You’ll probably want me to move out—”
“I want no such thing. Adam knows that you and I are rather joined at the hip these days, and he understands.”
“So does Sam.”
“Good.”
I pulled her out of her chair and gave her a hearty hug. “Congratulations! You are a beautiful bride.”
“Thank you, dear.”
“We have to have a party! A huge, giant—”
She put a hand on my arm. “T
hat’s why we did things quietly, Lena. To avoid fuss.”
I sighed. “Well—can I at least call some people? Maybe arrange a little gathering of friends?”
“Of course. That sounds best.”
“I’m going to call Doug first because he goes back the furthest with you, doesn’t he? Your first Blue Lake son.”
Camilla looked surprised, then pleased. “Yes, I suppose so!”
I grabbed my phone from the counter and pressed a button.
“Doug Heller.”
“Doug! I have some amazing—”
Doug sounded harried. “Lena, I can’t talk right now, but listen. I just got off the phone with Blueville PD and then with Belinda, so I should probably tell you, too.”
“What?” My face and hands were suddenly numb.
“They found Luis Castellan’s car in a ditch off Route 47. He wasn’t inside, but there was blood. It doesn’t look good.”
11
They reached a dark, shadowy structure and pulled into an unwelcoming driveway. The woman who was not her aunt turned to smile at her, and Celia realized, in one nightmarish epiphany, that she was a prisoner.
—From Danger at Debenham Station, a work in progress
CAMILLA WAS QUIET after I gave her this news. Adam, who had encountered no intruders and had finished unpacking the car, joined us in time to hear about poor Luis.
“I’ll root around and make us a snack,” he said. “Food is comfort.”
I was going to protest, since we were removed from the circle of potential grievers, but the reality was that Camilla and I were both sad, not only because a young man might have been killed, but also because it would hurt Belinda’s brother to know it, and by association that would hurt Belinda.
Adam rustled around behind us, looking through Camilla’s fridge, and she tapped her fingers together. I was on the verge of asking her what was wrong, but then she looked up at me with her brilliant violet eyes.
“Uriah Heep,” she said.
“What?”
“That’s the clue. Uriah Heep. He said that to the young men at the game store, yes?”
“Yes. The guy said they were talking about classic rock, and—”
“Were they? If there is a band named Uriah Heep, then that band takes its name from the Dickens character from David Copperfield. And Luis Castellan loved the classics. Isn’t that what you said? That your library book group read and discussed the classics.”
“Yes.”
“Did your group read Copperfield?”
“No, we read Great Expectations. But he said something, I think, about how he had read all of the Dickens novels.”
“All right.” She sat up in her chair. “So let’s review some things about Uriah. He is a horrible toady, a slimy sycophant.”
“Yes. And a corrupt embezzler.”
We locked eyes. I folded and unfolded my hands, thinking. “Luis came straight from work to the game store, said he was disillusioned, and asked if anyone knew of Uriah Heep.”
Camilla took up my line of thought. “The clerk at the store misunderstood and took the conversation in another direction. Luis accepted this but was distracted and, what did you say? ‘Pacing like a tiger.’”
A chill ran through me. “He found something out at Plasti-Source. And they killed him for it.”
Adam set little sandwiches and potato chips down in front of us, then pulled out a third chair. “I know you two have amazing instincts, but I wouldn’t rush right into an accusation of murder in the absence of a body.”
I smiled, slightly embarrassed. “You’ll keep us grounded, Adam. And this tiny sandwich looks amazing. I should have thought to have made something for you.”
“I like making things, and I really did need to stretch my legs,” he said. “It was a long ride, but it seemed to fly by since I was seated beside my bride.”
His face, as he pulled off a piece of his sandwich, held love and devotion. I leaped up and moved behind his chair so that I could hug him around the neck. “I haven’t said congratulations to you, dear Adam. I’m so happy for you both.”
“Thank you, Lena. Oh my goodness,” he said, as I planted sloppy kisses on his cheek.
Camilla laughed. “Perhaps Lena is initiating you into our club.”
Adam shook his head. “I don’t meet the criteria for membership. But I can be your mascot. And sometime chef.”
“Lovely,” Camilla said. She reached toward him, and he clasped her hand in his. A small gesture, but an intimate one. I felt like a voyeur, but I couldn’t look away. They were beautiful.
The spell was broken a moment later, and Adam took a bite of his sandwich with a placid expression. Camilla picked up a potato chip and studied it. “Here is my question, though. If someone at work wanted Luis out of the way, it would explain why they made up the whole ‘Luis is unreliable, we don’t expect him back,’ story. But why would his wife say the same thing?”
We ruminated about this while we ate. Adam’s sandwiches were delicious despite the minimal ingredients he had found in our refrigerator. Finally, I said, “Let’s consider the possibilities. One—that Luis really was an unreliable husband, that he really had cheated on his wife, as she told the man in the coffee shop, and therefore she was telling the police the truth.”
Camilla nodded.
“Two, Luis is a good husband, but they had a fight about something else and she told him not to come back. Which would mean she was still sort of telling the truth.”
Adam said, “But if the police came to your door, no matter how upset you were with your husband, wouldn’t you want to work with them to find him? Maybe offer up some places that he could be?”
“Yes, that’s the part I can’t get over,” I said. “So then there’s three. For reasons unknown, Luis’s wife knows that he is in danger, even that he might be dead. She tells the police that he’s terrible and probably won’t return because he’s a bad husband, because—why? She’s hoping they won’t investigate? She’s hoping they’ll take her word for it that he simply ran off but is fine?”
Camilla, finished eating, pushed her plate away and leaned back in her chair. “How would she know he was in danger? Unless she put him there? Maybe we’re barking up the wrong tree. Maybe he wasn’t ‘disillusioned’ about work. Maybe it was about his wife. Maybe he went home that night, got into a fight with her, and she killed him.”
Adam held up a finger. “Doug didn’t mention a body, did he?”
Camilla and I viewed him with slight disapproval. He was putting a wrench into our theories.
I pointed my finger at his finger. “Let’s say that, hypothetically, Luis has been murdered. But Doug said they found his car off Route 47, and I assume they’ll find it’s his blood inside. That means Luis was in the car, and alive when he was shot or stabbed, right? Doug said it didn’t look good. He implied it looked like a crime scene.”
“Oh dear,” Camilla said.
“And if Elena had killed him in their house, she would have blood evidence to deal with. If it was a bloodless murder—let’s say she poisoned him or hit him over the head—then his blood couldn’t be in the car. Plus, how would she transfer the body? She’s not a big woman.”
“Good questions,” Adam said.
Camilla tapped the table with a fingernail. “On the other hand, Elena could have talked him into a drive, had him pull over for one thing or another, and killed him or shot him to take the suspicion off her. To make it look like a random assault, perhaps.”
“I’m sure Doug can tell whether he was shot in the car or put there later. We can ask him.”
“Except that it’s not Doug’s case. It would be a case for the Blueville PD,” Camilla said.
I pondered this. “But Luis is from Blue Lake. Surely they’ll work together, right? To find Luis or his—body?”
Ad
am said, “Hopefully Luis himself. There’s always the possibility that someone tried to attack him, but it went wrong, and he ran away.”
“For Carl’s sake, I hope there are possibilities other than murder,” I said.
There was a moment of quiet, a peaceful lull, during which Adam cleared our plates and rustled around at the sink. I looked over to see him gazing out at Blue Lake through Camilla’s kitchen window. I had stared dreamily at the same view many times. I wondered what was going through his mind; he had loved Camilla for more than forty years, and now he was married to her. Judging by the look on his face, it must have felt as though a star had fallen from the heavens into his hands.
My gaze moved furtively to Camilla, and I saw that she was watching him, too.
I was about to leave, to give them their privacy and check on Sam, when the doorbell rang. I looked at my watch; it was eight o’clock.
“I’ll get it,” I said, darting down the main hall to the front door. I opened it to find Belinda and Carl, the latter of whom looked particularly distressed. “Hi,” I said, uncertain. “Carl, I’m so sorry about your friend.”
“Oh—you know?” Belinda said.
“I called Doug to tell him something and he said he couldn’t talk because—he was busy. And that he had told you.”
“Is this a bad time?” Belinda asked, looking past me. “I told Carl we should come tomorrow, but—”
“We had to come now,” Carl said. He looked sad, but not agitated as he had at the cabin. His eyes were calm when they met mine, but they glinted with determination. “I have to talk to her.”
I heard Camilla coming down the hall behind me. Carl looked at her and said, “Are you Camilla Graham? The mystery writer?”
Belinda looked chagrined. “Camilla, I’m so sorry to burst in on you like this.”
Camilla came forward and held out her hand. “You must be Carl Frailey. Lena told me she met you yesterday.”
Carl shook her hand and nodded, his face grave. “Yes. She said she knew you, and I realized tonight that you were the person I had to talk to. The police didn’t do anything to help Luis, and now it might be too late.” Carl’s chin jutted out in a fierce attempt to cover his grief. “I need someone smart to figure out what happened. I need you to solve the mystery, like you do in your books, before the killer gets away.”
Death with a Dark Red Rose Page 10