Death in Dark Blue Read online

  “Uh—I wish you could. I don’t actually know where to start. I have some things I need to research, but it’s kind of a big task, and I have no idea how to go about it. I’m sure that sounds ridiculous.”

  She smiled. “Not at all. And I have the solution to your problem.”

  I stared at her. “Um. Okay.”

  She was still smiling. “Not a physical solution—a human solution.” She pointed to a corner where a sign suspended from the ceiling said Research Desk. “You need Belinda. She’s magical. No one leaves here unhappy, that’s all I can tell you. She’s a research witch.”

  “That’s exactly what I need,” I told her, summoning a smile in return. “Thanks.”

  I walked across the slightly moldy-smelling carpet and approached the big brown desk. A blonde woman sat there, typing something on a laptop. She wore a caramel-colored knit dress and a red nametag that said “Belinda Frailey, Research Librarian.”

  I waited for her to notice me and ask “Can I help you?” as the nose-piercing woman had done. This seemed to be a very polite establishment. When her green eyes looked up to study me, they widened in surprise. “Oh, my! I know you. Wait—I’ll remember—you’re Lena London!”

  I stared for a moment, nonplussed. Then I said, “Yes, uh—?”

  She stood up and held out a hand. I shook it. “I’m the research librarian, so naturally I keep up with all the news, including local news. I read all about you in the Blue Lake Banner a couple of months ago. How you’re working with Mrs. Graham, our local celebrity, and how you confronted that horrible man who tried to kill you both in your own house.”

  “You make it sound very flattering. I did almost everything out of basic fear.”

  “You are modest, Lena.” She pushed her glasses up on her nose. She was my age, maybe a little older, certainly not even thirty yet. She was one of those women who looks good in glasses, although she didn’t seem to fuss with her appearance. Her hair was yanked back into a utilitarian ponytail, and she wore no makeup that I could discern. “Because I know something else about you. When the papers broke that story about Sam West’s wife and hinted that ‘a local woman’ had unearthed the photograph of her, I figured that was you.”

  “Why did you think that?”

  She shrugged. “A lot of things happened all at once. A man was found dead on the beach. Then the local police found a drug lab in a secret tunnel. Then they caught a murderer, and right after that it was revealed that the whole town had been maligning Sam West for no reason. Kind of a domino effect, right? And who came from the outside and started those dominos falling? You. I’m so excited to meet you, to be honest.”

  “Wow. Okay, thanks. I happened to believe in Sam West’s innocence from the start.”

  She leaned forward, looking conspiratorial. “Did it have anything to do with the fact that he’s dreamy?”

  My mouth opened, then closed, and she laughed. “I’m just kidding. He is good-looking, but I’m sure you noticed that there is someone far better-looking in town. And you had to work with him a lot. Janet and I call him Inspector Wonderful.”

  “What?”

  “Janet is the head librarian. You met her when you walked in, probably.”

  “No, I mean who is Inspector Wonderful?”

  “That cop that you helped solve the case. Detective Heller.”

  “Oh, Doug,” I said.

  She leaned even closer. “You call him Doug?”

  “Oh. Well, he’s friends with Camilla, and so we just became friends, too.”

  “Friends?” Her expression was almost childlike, as though I’d told her I met a Disney prince.

  “Yes. Anyway, back to the research.”

  She nodded and pushed up her glasses again. “What can I help you with, Miss London?”

  “Lena is fine.”

  “Great. I’m Belinda.”

  “Belinda, I don’t know where to start. This puzzle makes the crimes of a couple of months ago look sophomoric.”

  Her eyes gleamed with a new interest. “Let’s go in the research room. We can sit at the table and take some notes.” She lifted a little bell and put it on the counter. “If someone needs me, they can ring.”

  She led me to a small room behind the research desk, which contained a long wood-plank table and several chairs, along with shelves filled with boxes of periodicals. The lower shelves were lined with phone books from, as far as I could tell, everywhere in the world.

  “Have a seat there.” She sat across from me and set down her laptop. “Let me just open a little file. I’ll call it The London File. Doesn’t that sound like a spy novel? Like something your boss might write. Or you, correct? I saw the new book on Amazon, with your name on it. I preordered it for the library.”

  She talked very rapidly, I noticed. “Oh—thank you. That’s very nice.”

  “Okay. Shoot. Why is it that you don’t know where to begin?”

  There were certain things I was not going to tell her: that I was Sam’s new girlfriend, or that Taylor Brand was dead. That was classified information. I hesitated, choosing my words with care. “I found Sam West’s wife because I believed that he was innocent, and I happened to be doing research for Camilla on yachts. But as I was doing that research, I slipped some other search terms into my searching, and some of them had to do with Sam West. I guess I felt there was some kind of connection, and so I just combined words—”

  “In a Boolean Search,” she said.

  “Uh, I guess.”

  “A Boolean Search allows you to combine search terms with words like AND or NOT or OR and then to retrieve documents linked by those particular conjunctions.”

  “Oh. Okay, yes.”

  “So the search brought the unexpected result of this picture.”

  “Yes. But I didn’t know it was Sam West’s wife at first, not until I saw Taylor Brand’s blog.”

  “Yes—I remember reading about this in the New York Times. Taylor was Victoria West’s friend, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “So why is this important now?”

  “For reasons I won’t go into, Camilla and I are still working hard to find Victoria West. Apparently the—authorities—recently had a yacht searched because it was named the Nikon.”

  She typed a few things into her word file. “And why is this important? Is it one of the terms you searched?”

  “Yes. It somehow brought up her image, but I don’t know why. It’s not the name of a yacht, as far as I know.”

  “Why search Nikon?” Her green eyes were curious and smart.

  “Because Sam West told . . . Camilla . . . that it was one of the last things he’d seen his wife type into her phone, and that she’d been defensive about it. This is classified, okay? Just between us.”

  “I am discretion. I am the quiddity of discretion.”

  “What’s quiddity? That game from Harry Potter?”

  She sniffed. “The quiddity of a thing is its very essence. You are the quiddity of intelligence: you write books, you solve mysteries, you delve into research.”

  “You’re full of compliments. I’m going to start suspecting you of a hidden agenda.”

  She shook her head and tucked a blonde strand of hair behind her left ear. “I just like people who dig research as much as I do. I get kind of euphoric. Sorry. The whole town thinks I’m weird.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Okay, Nikon. Interesting. So you are searching for—what? What it means, still?”

  “Yes—and how it relates to Victoria West in particular. We need to find her.”

  She raised her eyebrows, but said nothing. “And what else?”

  “Somehow Taylor Brand is connected to my puzzle, as well. She was Victoria’s good friend and she wrote that daily blog. So I need to look at that, but I also need connections. How is she c
onnected to Victoria? Were they always friends? Did they go to school together? Does she have any other connections to Sam West? How did they all end up in New York? I keep feeling that if I just ask the right question, I’ll get the right answer.”

  She typed for a moment. “So our bottom line is finding Victoria West, but we’re also looking for any background information we can find—kind of like a CIA file.”

  “Yes. In fact the CIA is looking for the very same stuff.”

  Her hands froze on her computer. “So why are we doing it, too?”

  “Camilla and I feel—well, it doesn’t matter who finds her first, it just matters that she’s found. We’re not totally convinced that poor Victoria is going to be allotted the resources that the police or the Bureau might give to a more high-profile crime. They may well be doing this case on an as-available basis. I really have no idea.”

  “So we’re all working toward the same goal, but we’re also sort of . . . racing each other?” Her expression was awed, as though she had seen an angel.

  “I guess so. You’re a little bit competitive, aren’t you?”

  She shook her head, dismissing this. “No. It won’t even be close. We’ll be the ones who find the answers.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  Belinda Frailey pushed her glasses up on her nose and sent me a bright green glance. “Because there is no one in any organization who can match the skills of a truly talented research librarian. And everyone underestimates the amount of information they can get in a library.”

  “You’re awfully confident.” I softened it with a smile.

  She grinned back. “I wouldn’t say it if it weren’t true. You mark my words. I will help you solve your research problem, and I’ll start right now. How about if we meet tomorrow, and I’ll give you everything I’ve found?”

  It felt so good, suddenly, to have an ally, especially an ally this optimistic. Belinda Frailey would apply her intellect to the problem; she would wield the library witchcraft that her colleague had said she possessed, and she would see the obvious answers that we somehow missed. “That sounds great. To be honest, I’ve been over it in my mind so many times, I think I’m just blind to the clues now, if they’re there.”

  “They are there. If there’s a connection, we can find it. I’m off duty soon, and then I can spend all my time on it and really get to work back here.”

  “Hey, I’m not asking you to work overtime.”

  She typed something else, then closed her laptop. “Work is like play to me, and you just gave me the biggest toy, I can’t even tell you.”

  She reminded me a little bit of my friend Allison, although she was a bit more intellectual and eccentric. Still, I liked her, and her confidence was alluring. “I’m glad I found you, Belinda. Right now I feel that if you can’t help me, no one can.”

  “You’re right about that.” Her ponytail had crept over her shoulder, and she flung it back with a careless gesture. “Would you like a library bookmark?”

  4

  When a man came to the door, she was tempted to hide. It was only with great reluctance that she turned the knob to let him in.

  —From Death on the Danube

  ON THE WAY back toward the dirt road that led up to the bluff I was passed by a hiker with a backpack who seemed bent on going to the scenic overlook—the one from which Taylor Brand had fallen to her death.

  “You can’t go that way,” I said. “It’s been blocked off by the police.” I pointed to the end of the street, where some orange cones and a couple of uniformed officers were visible.

  He stopped walking and turned toward me. He had thick brown hair and a brown mustache; he reminded me of Ned Flanders from The Simpsons. “Oh—it is? Darn it. I wanted to get some photos. This place looks amazing in winter.”

  “Doesn’t it? Are you vacationing here?”

  “For a short time, yes.” He stuck out his gloved hand. “I’m Ted.”

  “Hi. I’m Lena. I live in the house at the top of the bluff, so I think they’ll let me go by.”

  “Lucky you. So why is it blocked off? It seems like an obscure road.”

  “There was—some kind of accident. I don’t really know a lot about it.” I felt strange lying to a tourist, but I wasn’t going to be indiscreet after Doug had trusted me with certain details.

  His gaze wandered back to the police officers, standing sentry in their uniform coats. “Huh. Well, not to be overly curious, but did you see anything? You must have passed whatever it was on the way down.”

  “Not really. Just the police.”

  “Hopefully all your neighbors are okay,” he said with a concerned expression.

  “Yes—I hope so, too. I actually haven’t talked to any of them today.”

  “I really wanted to get to the overlook—the lady in the hardware store told me it had the best view of the lake. I don’t suppose I could walk up with you? Maybe they’d let me by if I was your companion.”

  This seemed highly presumptuous, and yet his expression was friendly and slightly conspiratorial. His nose was red from the cold.

  “Are you a photographer or something?” I asked.

  “Just an amateur. But I like to think I’m pretty good. Tomorrow I’m going to head over to Westvale and get some shots of their coastline.”

  “Ah. Well, I’m afraid you’ll have to try your luck with the officers up there. I don’t want to break any rules.”

  He shrugged, his face still cheerful. “Fair enough. Have you lived here all your life?”

  “No. I’m a relative newcomer, but I do live here now. My employer lives at the top of the hill; I live with her.”

  He laughed. “You live with your boss? That could be a really bad scene. I would jump off a cliff before I lived with mine. Sorry—was that a bad thing to say?”

  “No, I—it just reminded me of something. It was nice meeting you, Ted.”

  “You too. Maybe we can have a drink sometime and you can tell me about your job.”

  “Maybe. I’m sure I’ll see you around town.”

  “Yeah—I’m staying at the Red Cottage Guest House.”

  “That’s a nice place. Very homey. I’ve got to get back.”

  “See you around, Lena.” He gave me a friendly wave and crossed the street.

  I walked toward the bluff and the police officers consulted their list of residents on the hill. I showed them my identification, and they let me pass. I looked back once over my shoulder, but Ted had not tried to get permission to come up after all. Apparently he planned to take his picture after the commotion died down.

  Camilla had been reading the blog while I was gone, and she had jotted down some notes. “All right, I have some things to share.”

  “Good. I think now I will have some hot chocolate. Would you like any more?”

  “No, thank you. Go get some; it will warm you up.”

  “Hang on.” I went into the kitchen, where a big coffee pot had been filled with the sweeter beverage. I poured some into a mug and warmed it up in the microwave. Then, in a fit of self-indulgence, I found canned whipped cream in the fridge and squirted some on top of my drink. Then I went back to Camilla. I sat in the purple chair across from her desk, and she sat behind it; we had done this all through our working relationship, and I had come to love the dynamic. These were our spots, and we never opted to sit on a couch or at the dining room table. When we were working, we sat like this.

  “Ah.” I took a careful sip. “That hits the spot.”

  “Warm beverages soothe the soul.” She pulled her sweater more tightly around her. “I fear it’s a bit drafty in this old place.”

  I took another bracing sip. “Okay, shoot.”

  She consulted a legal pad in front of her, where she had jotted notes in her graceful handwriting. “I have learned the following things after rea
ding about three months of blog posts, starting before Victoria went missing: first, Taylor Brand is—was—thirty-four years old.”

  This silenced us for a moment. I sighed. “What else?”

  “She had never been married, but she seems to have gone through several relationships, some with high-profile people. She last dated the son of Philip Winters, the New York banker. Alexander is his name. But that appears to have ended months ago.”

  “That might be interesting; I don’t know why, exactly. But when money enters the picture, it’s always noteworthy, right?”

  She nodded. “At least in a mystery novel.” She consulted her notes. “She and Victoria West had been friends for about ten years. At one point she was a model for West’s fashion line.”

  “That makes sense. She looked like a model on her blog. And there were so many pictures of her.” She had been a model-tall woman, but I hadn’t realized that until I’d seen her poor broken body in the snow.

  Camilla tapped a finger on her pad. “She mentions a brother in several of her posts. It seems he was also in New York or near there. His name is . . . Caden. Perhaps we can reach out to him, if we ever come up with concrete questions.”

  “We should tell Doug. He’ll need to notify her family.” I sighed. “I don’t know how he does it. Why would anyone want to be a cop? So many grim obligations.”

  “You’re right. I prefer to keep those things in the pages of my fiction.” She watched as I took some bracing sips of hot chocolate. “What did you find out at the library?”

  “Well—nothing. But the librarian in charge told me that all my problems could be solved by some amazing research wizard named Belinda Frailey.”

  Camilla sat up even straighter. “Oh, yes! I haven’t met her—she’s fairly new—but Adam mentioned her once. She researched the history of his building—the one that Wheat Grass is in.”

  Adam Rayburn had been one of the first people I met when I arrived in Blue Lake. He was the proprietor of the nicest restaurant in town, Wheat Grass, and he had recently revealed his secret feelings for Camilla—feelings he had kept hidden since the death of her husband, who had once been his friend. Now Camilla and Adam were dating, and they seemed happy. “What did she find out?”