Camera Never Lies (2 page)

He apparently had no idea that I still held him responsible for the accident that killed my best friend in high school. Believing his next question would be about having dinner together, I took a step back, putting space between us. No sense giving him the wrong idea. The vibes he gave off made me think he knew I’d officially declared my husband dead last year.

“Actually, I’m here for a wedding and expecting my friends to arrive at any time. I’ll be pretty busy for the next few days.” There. That should take care of Alec Gordon. I’d been forceful yet gentle.

Alec looked disappointed, but I was relieved. This wasn’t the place to drag up ghosts from the past, even if I’d been dragging one around with me for years.

He nodded, the space between his strawlike eyebrows shrinking as he frowned. “I understand. Well, maybe I’ll see you around.” He pulled a card from his pocket and gave it to me. “It was great to see you, Polly. You look terrific.” Then he left.

Concerned over Mom’s departure, I took off in the opposite direction from Alec and looked for her in the lobby. My cell phone was devoid of a signal, and Mom’s probably fared no better. Not that it mattered, because Mom was one of those people who either forgot to carry her cell or forgot to charge it. She never checked her messages, claiming it was too complicated.

I rang her room from the lobby phone. After several rings and no answer, I hung up then searched the grounds without success. I knew what she was up to, because we’d done this many times before. She wanted me to imagine something had happened to her so that when I found her, I’d be so relieved I wouldn’t be angry about whatever mess she’d gotten herself into. Well, I was in no frame of mind to play that game. She could find me when she tired of it. I returned to the lake rim to take more snapshots.

The lens needed adjusting to snatch photos of tourists as they stared at the water-filled caldera, their expressions betraying unspeakable awe. Capturing human life on film was in my blood, such that even the surrounding beauty couldn’t completely pull me away. A short, thin woman wearing large, dark sunglasses leaned against the stone wall that bordered the drop of the rim. She turned in my direction and glared directly at me through my camera lens, or so it seemed. It unsettled me. I turned my attention back to nature.

After a full hour spent photographing the scenery and its inhabitants, the sense of accomplishment satisfied me. Before Mom arrived, I’d e-mailed a few photos, along with a query letter about photographing national park historic lodges, to a magazine editor. Should she give me the assignment, I hoped to have plenty of pictures to work with. Eager to download the images to my computer and examine the fruits of my labor, I refused to give in to the nagging concern over Mom and headed to my room.

Surely the Royals would arrive soon—a reference I’d given to Rene and her fiancé, Conrad, as a joke, because he was British and looked like an older version of Prince William.

I was happy that she was finally getting married. I’d heard that a forty-year-old woman has a greater chance of being killed by a terrorist than finding love and getting married. I suspected those odds increased daily. Though not quite forty, Rene was fortunate to have beaten them. However, I believe it had more to do with trusting God than with fortune.

While strolling the hallway on the second floor, anxiety needled its way up my spine. This weekend would be a trial for me. I could feel it, as though I had a rare bone disease and a winter storm had blown in, exacerbating my symptoms. When I stood in front of the door to my room and reached for the knob, a woman’s scream stopped my hand in midair. I froze, the sound curdling the contents of my stomach.

The screaming came from the room next to mine, and as abruptly as it started, it stopped. All manner of murderous images filled my mind. My knees turned to jelly. I took the few steps over to my neighbor’s door and knocked gently. When that produced no answer, I pounded.

“Are you all right? Please, open the door. What’s happened in there?” I jiggled the knob and pounded some more, begging for the screamer to let me in, while hoping I’d made a horrible mistake and someone simply had the television turned up too loud. The door opened slowly, sending fear and embarrassment through me.

But I had to know.

A red-haired woman appeared, her face stricken with terror. As she backed up, allowing me entrance, I recognized her uniform. She was one of the lodge housekeepers. I was hesitant about crossing the threshold, but then instinct took over, and I rushed to her side. “What happened?”

She pointed to the closet. I looked at the clothes on the hangers, then my gaze traveled to the floor.

A body lay on the mushroom gray carpet, looking like it had been shoved into the small closet.

Not just any body.

Alec Gordon’s body.

CHAPTER
TWO

I
gasped.

“No! Alec!” I dropped to my knees and shook his lifeless form. His unresponsive eyes stared back. It was then that I saw the blood on the carpet and noticed more was crusted on the top of his head where his toupee should have been. Nausea gripped me.

I stood and moved away from him. There wasn’t enough air in the room. I’d never been to DEFCON 2, but this had to be it. The reality of someone lying dead on the floor, someone I’d once wished dead, overwhelmed me.

I felt for my crutch, my fingers gripping the Nikon’s cool surface. Camera in position, I took picture after picture, even turning the lens on the helpless woman before I realized how completely insensitive and rude I was being.

Horrified by the situation, by my own reaction to it, I sank to my knees as furious tears blurred my vision. I wanted to defend myself and admit to the woman that I’d only wished him dead in my friend’s place, many years ago, but what would she think of me? Still, God knew the inner workings of my heart. And He knew this would happen. Had He allowed me to speak to Alec one last time? Had God given me the opportunity to forgive Alec and I’d failed?

A couple entered through the open door, wanting to know what had happened. I moved away from Alec so they could see for themselves. Though itching to start my photo frenzy again, I didn’t want to feel like Lois Lane or some cheesy newspaper photographer. I tucked my camera behind me. Someone must have called the park rangers, because one finally appeared in the room, assessed the situation, then questioned us about how we found the body.

After taking my statement that I’d responded to the housekeeper’s scream and seen the body in the closet, the park ranger released me with a warning that I would be called upon soon to give an official statement. I trudged down the hall away from the scene, away from my room, too stunned to do anything but drag one foot in front of the other. I felt like a zombie in one of those old black-and-white
Dialing for Dollars
monster flicks. The last few years, I had spent most of my evenings at home eating popcorn and watching movies with Murphy, my Jack Russell terrier. So my frame of reference relied heavily on movies.

Mom
. I wanted Mom. Where was she? With a murderer on the loose, maybe I’d been wrong to ignore her disappearance. I hastened my way to her room on the third floor and pummeled the door.

“Mom, are you in there? Stop playing games with me. Something’s happened.” My voice cracked. “I need you.” Then the tears came.

The door opened, and she appeared, arms wide. I went to her, breathing in the light scent of one of her knockoff perfumes, careful not to crush my camera between us.

“There, there. What’s this all about?”

Relieved to find her safe in her room, I plopped onto the edge of one of the floral-covered beds, which smelled of lavender—too much lavender. The sneezes came as expected. After I wiped my eyes, I looked up at her then remembered her predicament. She stood haggard in a green velvet robe. Though in light of Alec’s death—or his murder, given what I’d seen—her problems might be trivial, I wasn’t sure that telling her about Alec was the best thing at the moment. I forced a smile to my face. She would find out soon enough.

“Sorry, Mom. It’s nothing after all. It’s just been…a hard week. Fortunately, I have Bridget to take care of the business for a few days.”

“That flibbertigibbet?” Mom waved her hand, dismissing the idea that Bridget could handle things.

“Bridget may be scatterbrained, but she can hold down the fort for one extended weekend.” Though Bridget had worked for me at Polly Perkins’ Photography since its inception, I spoke with a confidence I didn’t feel.

“How’s Murphy?” she asked.

We’d now taken to discussing the mundane in order to avoid the urgent. “With Bridget.” I knew what was next.

“Why didn’t you bring him?” Mom examined her manicure, the action sending me back to parental interrogations from my childhood.

“I don’t think he’s allowed on the trails, for one.” Nor did I want to split my support between a needy dog and the bride-to-be. “You can have him back if you want him.” I didn’t mean a word of that and held my breath.

“No, thank you.” Mom dropped her nail inspection and went into the bathroom. I heard water gush from the faucet.

Mom had left Murphy with me five years ago, when she’d taken a cruise after her second husband died. She’d never taken Murphy back, and he’d since made a new home with me. He’d been named after Murphy’s Law, because it wasn’t long after she got him that everything that could go wrong, had.

In her mind anyway.

But, in the present case, he would have been better named after Murphy’s Syndrome, if there were such a thing—multiple symptoms or events that formed an undesirable pattern—and it looked like Murphy didn’t even have to be around for the syndrome to be in effect. Still, I missed him. I glanced at the phone, tempted to call Bridget to ask after him. Water stopped gushing in the bathroom sink, reminding me that I had more serious matters to deal with.

Mom came out of the bathroom and sighed when she plopped onto the other bed. I took a long breath and pushed back images of Alec’s body. I needed to hear about Mom’s problems first. Then I would decide how to tell her. She seemed so…fragile.

“Let’s get back to our earlier discussion. Tell me what’s happened to you. About the scam.” I tried to soften my expression, letting her know that I loved her no matter what. It seemed funny, like I was the mother and she the child.

Mom moved to the window, pushing a curtain back to look out. “I’m sorry for abandoning you this morning. I just couldn’t face that man.”

My brows furrowed. “What man? Mom, please don’t speak in riddles. Start from the beginning.”

She turned to face me, her skin ashen. “It was that Alec Gordon. He’s the real estate man who scammed me out of thousands.” She put her hands to her face and sobbed. “Oh Polly, what am I going

to do?”

Alec Gordon?
My thoughts swarmed like bees in a beehive that had been sprayed with Raid. Utter chaos reigned. I even heard a loud buzzing noise in my head. “What? What are you talking about? You can’t be serious.” I grabbed her wrists, pulling her hands down. “Look me in the eyes, and tell me exactly what you mean.”

Red-eyed, Mom stared at me as she spoke. “I gave your Alec Gordon fifty thousand dollars cash for a down payment on a real estate deal he brokered. It was meant to be an investment for the future. For
your
future. I don’t think he remembered me from the funeral years ago. But I thought I could trust him because you knew him.”

Fifty thousand dollars?
Mom wasn’t a wealthy woman, and I didn’t even want to think about what her retirement fund looked like now. “First of all, he was never
my
Alec Gordon. And second, knowing someone does not equal trusting them.” I couldn’t suck in enough air and walked to the other end of the room, but, no surprise, there wasn’t any more air there. After taking photos of Alec’s body, holding my camera-crutch no longer held appeal.

I stood as tall as I could, expanding my lungs and gasping for air. Mom’s sobbing grew louder, and she hadn’t even heard the worst yet. She managed to dump prescription bottles out of a small paper bag then hand it to me.

Bag to my mouth, I sucked in a few breaths to minimize the hyperventilating. “Of course he remembers you. That’s why it doesn’t make sense. You don’t scam someone you know. How could he get away with that?” He couldn’t get away with it, and he didn’t. It was obvious Mom hadn’t been the only one he’d cheated.

“Well I’m sure I don’t know, but he did.”

The gravity of the situation hit me, draining all the energy from my body. How could I tell her about Alec? Suddenly gruesome images accosted me. Mom standing over Alec’s body after… killing—no, I wouldn’t go there. Yes, she’d had a motive. But probably so did plenty of other people. Yes, she’d been missing for hours. But that was only because I hadn’t looked for her hard enough, right? But no matter how I tried, I couldn’t argue away the morbid thoughts. Had Mom gone temporarily insane when she’d seen Alec?

I had no choice but to tell her. Swiping my hand over my face, I blurted the words. “There’s something you should know.”

Her expression made me think of a train barreling forward with no one in control. She had no idea what lay ahead but simply waited to hear how I would take care of her predicament—the small part of it that she knew. This was our pattern.