Death Waits in the Dark Read online

  “Probably.” Her eyes scanned the room casually, then focused in on something that made her shoulders tense. “Oh.”

  “What is it?”

  “No, don’t turn around, Lena. Just some members of the very group we were discussing yesterday—the old gang from the pub.”

  “What do you think they’re doing here?”

  “I don’t—oh, here comes Marge.”

  Marge Bick, dressed in a muted black pantsuit, appeared at our table. “Hello, Camilla. Hello, Lena.”

  “Marjorie,” Camilla said.

  “I don’t know if you knew, but there was a little memorial service for Jane this morning. There aren’t many Wylands left, that we know of, so Rusty just arranged something in town. Some of the old group came out for it. I thought you might want to talk to them. I know Lena said you had some questions. Maybe after you finish eating you’d like to join us? We’re over by the window there.”

  “Is that Travis Pace?” Camilla said. “And Karina?”

  “Yeah. And Rusty’s stopping by later, and Adam said he’ll sit with us for coffee. Horace had to work.”

  “Well, that’s kind of you, Marjorie. We will do that,” Camilla said, nodding toward her.

  Marge waved at me and went back to her table. She looked different in her attractive pantsuit, her face not framed by the window of her little post office. I realized, with a burst of shame, that I had a tendency to put people into figurative boxes and found it jarring when they proved to be more than I had thought them.

  “Marge looks different, doesn’t she?” Camilla asked. “More like the girl she once was, actually. It doesn’t seem that long ago. I can see all their young faces in my mind.”

  “What about the young faces you left behind? There must have been friends you were sorry to leave in England. Did they ever come to visit you?”

  She pulled her napkin out of its ring. “Once or twice. Back then the separations came naturally—we all seemed to get engaged or married at the same time. We were all moving on. But I have a few dear friends with whom I correspond to this day. Two of them have visited me here. One of them you met when we went to England. Do you recall the white-haired woman named Prue?”

  “Oh yes! She was lovely.”

  “She was my schoolfriend and confidant. Still is, sometimes. I call her now and then.”

  “Hmm. Okay, I’m looking in the menu because the bread didn’t do much for me. Oh, look at the special! Some sort of shrimp pasta. I think I’ll get that.”

  Camilla paged listlessly through the menu. “Just a salad for me, I think. Speaking of food, I heard from our dear Rhonda. They are loving Italy. She feels inspired by the Renaissance.”

  “Wonderful!”

  Thomas, a tall red-haired man, appeared at our table with his pad, and Camilla and I gave him our orders. He nodded and promised us they would be out soon. I stole a glance behind me at the group of James’s old friends: they seemed to be in a close and serious conversation, all leaning forward toward the center of the table.

  The woman named Karina had shoulder-length gray hair pulled back with barrettes. She wore a black dress with a white collar. It was surprisingly elegant.

  “She always was fashion-conscious,” Camilla said, reading my mind. “That’s what James said, anyway. They called her ‘Key’ sometimes as a nickname. He would say, ‘Everyone showed up in jeans except for Key, who seemed to be ready for the runway.’” She smiled at the memory.

  Thomas brought our lunches a few minutes later, and we ate, for the most part, in a companionable silence. Camilla and I, after months of cohabitation, often became lost in our thoughts together. Mine bounced around erratically, from Jane Wyland to Cliff and Doug to Sam and his deck to Belinda and Allison. I felt jumpy and unsettled, and, as a cloud passed over the sun and made the room significantly darker, I had a growing feeling of unease, as though something malignant had crossed our path. Startled by this sudden change in mood, I scanned the room for any sort of alteration; Wheat Grass was fairly crowded, but I noted few familiar faces aside from the people at the long central table who gathered to remember Jane. I did see Star Kelly and her father, Luke, sitting at a window table. Luke was texting, absorbed in some sort of exchange, and Star was looking listlessly out at the parking lot. She slouched in her seat, and when she dragged her eyes back to her plate she poked her French fry halfheartedly into some ketchup. Her seeming malaise made me think of Carrie Wyland. Had she, like Star, been lonely in Blue Lake? Had it been hard for her to work in a house with a sick old man and a serious, lovesick young one?

  But Carrie had been much loved—that’s what Marge Bick said. She was a part of the group that included James Graham and Jane Wyland. And she had a best friend named Sandy.

  My gaze covered the rest of the room without any further recognition.

  Camilla seemed to feel my restlessness, even to share it. I was about to ask her if she had felt the sudden tension in the room, but Adam appeared in the doorway of the kitchen. It took him only seconds to find Camilla and to walk swiftly to our table. He bent to kiss Camilla’s cheek and to give my hand an affectionate pat. “Good, here you are. Are you enjoying your lunch?”

  “It’s delicious,” I said.

  Camilla nodded. “Adam, did you see your old friends there?” She indicated the group with a subtle dip of her head.

  Adam studied her for a moment; he could read Camilla even better than I could, and his tone was apologetic. “I didn’t know they were coming; apparently there was some sort of memorial service for Jane. I didn’t attend.”

  Camilla shrugged. “You could have attended. I suppose I should have as well. But I’m curious to know what they all have to say about Jane. Lena and I will join them shortly. Will you come, too? You might have insights that I don’t regarding some of their comments.”

  “Of course! I would have been out earlier, but our chef needed some help until his lunchtime assistant arrived.”

  Camilla was clearly ready to start her interrogations. “Wonderful. Lena, are you finished with your pasta?”

  I was not, but I was also full. “For now, I think. Adam, can Thomas wrap this up for me?”

  “Yes, of course.” Adam lifted a finger to get Thomas’s attention, and the waiter glided to our table with a smile. He took my plate and promised to return; Camilla informed him that we would be moving to the large table, and he nodded.

  I followed Camilla and Adam to Marge Bick’s table, where she sat in close conversation with the woman named Karina. Travis Pace was talking to a man I didn’t know; Adam shook his hand and said, “Hello, Paul.”

  Marge said, “Adam, Camilla, thanks for joining us. Soon we’ll have the whole gang back together. Or what’s left of it,” she said. I don’t think she meant to be morbid, but her comment made everyone briefly avert their eyes.

  Adam, ever the gentleman, said, “Camilla, I think you remember Karina?” Camilla nodded at the gray-haired woman, who nodded back and murmured a greeting. “And of course you know Travis?”

  Camilla nodded to Travis, who said, “Long time, no see, Cammy.”

  The man called Paul looked to be slightly younger than the rest; he had gray hair with dark strands and lively eyes. He was perhaps in his early sixties. His eyes were on Camilla. Adam said, “Camilla, I don’t know if you remember Paul Graves? His father was David Graves, the owner of the Lumberjack. You’ll recall him as the man who walked around wiping tables and wearing a red apron that said ‘Timber!’”

  “Oh—yes, I do remember. I think I saw you in the pub now and then. Weren’t you studying for some sort of exam?”

  Paul Graves smiled and nodded. “Yeah—while you all were starting your careers and marriages, I was still in college, trying to get my MBA.”

  Camilla sat in a chair that Adam pulled up for her. He did the same for me, and I sat beside her. “So did you end
up taking over the family business?” she asked.

  Graves looked away. “No, I ended up selling it when my dad died. The new owner didn’t maintain it the way my dad had, and it went under. I made a mistake there.”

  “What did you do instead?” I asked. Thomas approached in silence and handed me a plastic to-go bag. I thanked him, my eyes on Paul Graves.

  He looked back at me with pale green eyes. “I left town for a while, started a business with a friend. That died after a couple of years, so I came back to Blue Lake and started a landscaping company. By then—I was ready to come back.”

  Camilla rustled in her seat; she was eager to talk about Jane. Marge seemed to notice this, and she lifted a hand. “Listen, while we have you all here for the first time in decades, I want to ask you all something. Oh, look—here’s Rusty!”

  The chief of police was indeed walking toward us at a brisk pace. He glanced at his watch before he greeted everyone and sat down. “Thanks to all of you for attending the service. Jane would have liked it, I know.”

  I studied Bill “Rusty” Baxter. Upon close examination, I could still see some red strands of hair beneath the gray, and in his weathered face, partially covered now by a large gray mustache, I saw traces of the handsome man he was said to have been. I made a mental note to look for him in Adam’s photo albums.

  Marge said, “We were just talking about her. Or we were about to. Do you all remember when Jane got everyone fighting at the Lumberjack? It was sometime in September. I’ve been trying to think of the timeline, because Carrie left at the end of summer, and then Camilla came to town in October, didn’t you, Camilla?”

  “Yes,” Camilla said. “The end of September, actually. And I never met Carrie.”

  “Why does this matter?” Travis asked, spearing a piece of pie and shoving it into his mouth.

  Camilla leaned forward. “Because Jane came to see me the day before she died. I hadn’t seen her or spoken to her in decades. She was—highly agitated and talking of stirring up some memories from the past.”

  The people at the table exchanged glances. I watched them for any odd behavior, but they mostly seemed surprised. Paul Graves didn’t look at anyone else, but down at a napkin that he was shredding on his plate. He said, “So? Jane was always melodramatic.”

  Camilla shook her head. “She was most insistent. She was going to bring something to light the following day. Her words were ominous and threatening. By the next morning she was dead. Murdered. I think that is more than a coincidence.”

  Karina looked at us with wide blue eyes. “You think someone killed her because of some old secret? Something to do with us?”

  Marge leaned in. “Carrie died just a couple of months ago. Jane told me so when she came to the post office last month. Jane wasn’t taking it well; she was brooding over something. Whatever it was finally exploded out of her, and she ended up confronting poor Camilla there.”

  Everyone turned to stare at Camilla. Rusty Baxter looked up from his menu and frowned. “In any case, the police are looking into Jane Wyland’s death. It does no one any good to speculate about it—we’ll get to the bottom of it. We have our best detective on the case.”

  He meant Doug Heller; I had no doubt that he was right, and that Doug would find the person responsible, but it was a bit more complicated than that.

  Camilla met Rusty’s gaze and held it. “Chief Baxter, I have no intention of impeding a police investigation, but I am curious about Jane Wyland’s verbal attack on me. It was quite upsetting, and I only met her three or four times in my life. I think this group would know better than anyone why she might have been so upset.”

  Marge leaned in again. “And I told Lena, I think this all goes back to Carrie. Right around the time she left there was that huge fight at the Lumberjack. I know you all remember. What was it about? Was it something to do with Carrie? Horace didn’t say much about it later. I can’t remember why, but I wasn’t there when it all went down.”

  “This is ridiculous,” said Travis. “It’s all water under the bridge.”

  Adam sent him a cool glance. “It is not. A woman has been murdered—a woman who was a friend to us all. The police will have to examine that water very closely. So you had all better start dredging up your memories. I also have a personal stake in this. Jane maligned the family of my best friend, and she had no right to do so. Obviously, somewhere along the line, she was told lies.”

  Camilla sent him a look of love and gratitude—the sort of thing the doting Adam normally longed for—but he barely looked her way. He said, “Marge, what did Horace tell you that night?”

  Marge was obviously pleased to have been questioned. “I just remember he said Jane showed up and almost immediately got confrontational. She said her sister had left town because she hated Blue Lake and certain people in town had made it unbearable for her.”

  Karina sent an apologetic glance toward Camilla when she said, “I remember that. I think she said her sister didn’t like working for the Grahams. That they made her life miserable, or something.”

  Rusty nodded. “I do recall her saying something of the sort, but I also remember that James told me Carrie had been very happy with them, had actually asked to expand her work hours, but then abruptly decided to leave.”

  Travis grew animated. “That’s right. Jane said something about Camilla, didn’t she? Like, Wait until your pretty British fiancée is trapped in your Gothic nightmare, or something like that. I always remembered that because I didn’t know what ‘Gothic’ meant, and I had to look it up.”

  Marge said, “Yes, this matches what Horace told me. That when Jane mentioned Camilla, James got angry.”

  Everyone turned to look at Camilla, who looked exasperated. “Does anyone remember what James said?”

  Paul Graves said, “I do. I was there; I was always in the pub back then, trying to study in one of the booths, but their fight made a way better distraction. He told her that when people didn’t know what they were talking about they should hold their tongues. I thought it was a great line.”

  “And what did Jane say?”

  Paul Graves looked at me with his pale eyes. “She didn’t have a chance to say anything, because James walked out. The way I remember it, he was angry at everyone. At all of you,” he said, looking around the table. “He went home and, as I recall, he never really hung around at the Lumberjack again.”

  Adam looked stern, like a teacher who has caught the students cheating. “There was a lot of gossiping going on. I didn’t hear much that night because I went chasing after James to make sure he was all right. But I know that you had all been making some snide comments about James . . . and Carrie.”

  Camilla, to her credit, changed not one thing in her expression, but I noted the sudden paleness of her skin.

  Rusty cleared his throat. “There was some gossip, Camilla. But it was just that—gossip. Some of us probably talked about it at the bar.”

  Adam sat up straighter. “Any of you who were true friends of James Graham knew that he wouldn’t have been interested in any woman other than Camilla, and certainly not someone who was barely more than a teenager and worked for his family.”

  Everyone nodded solemnly, but no one was looking at Adam. Finally, Karina slapped the table. “Oh, all right, I’m just going to say it. We all know what people were saying back then—not just our group but lots of people in Blue Lake. Carrie Wyland seemed to disappear overnight, and Jane told us she had gone to Chicago, where she didn’t know a soul. Jane missed her; the two of them confided in each other all the time, and it was like Jane lost her best friend.”

  She waited for someone to take up the story, but no one did. She sighed and said, “So people around town said, What would make a kid like that suddenly relocate? If she didn’t like it at the Grahams’, she could just quit.” She took a sip of her water and cleared her throat. “So the goss
ip was, she must have been pregnant, and James Graham must have paid to send her out of town because he had a fiancée coming soon.”

  The table grew silent. The muted chatter and the clinking of silverware from other tables were all we heard for a time. Adam wisely did not try to hug Camilla or draw any attention to her. Camilla studied her hands, obviously thinking through the information. Finally she said, “And how many of you, I wonder, stood up for James at the time? How many of you said, James Graham would never mistreat a young woman in that way, and even if he had made her pregnant he certainly wouldn’t have hidden it and pushed her out of town like a coward?”

  No one spoke. Camilla said, “I know Adam defended him, because he was a loyal friend. And you, Rusty? Did you stand up for James?”

  Rusty looked uncomfortable. “It was just gossip, Camilla. No one actually believed it.”

  “Did Jane believe it?” she asked.

  Travis was almost sneering. “Let’s not forget we’re talking about the Wyland girls. They were always grasping around for money and men. If Carrie got pregnant, James would make a great scapegoat.”

  Marge Bick glared at him. “That’s an awfully uncharitable thing to say!”

  The table erupted in defenses and recriminations; people were almost hissing in their attempt to keep their voices low.

  Camilla sighed. “And does anyone know if Carrie actually did have a child after she went to Chicago?”

  The table grew silent. Camilla stood up. “That would certainly be a place to start, wouldn’t it, Chief? Meanwhile, Lena and I will do all we can to find out what really happened to Carrie Wyland and to clear her name and James Graham’s.”

  The restaurant, too, had become quiet. I looked up to find that both Luke and Star Kelly were staring over, openmouthed, apparently having heard the last part of the conversation.

  Camilla picked up her purse and nodded to the assembled group. “Thank you all for sharing your memories.” She walked to the door, regal as a queen, and I followed. Adam caught me in the doorway, when Camilla was already outside.