Walk Through the Valley (Psalm 23 Mysteries) (10 page)

Besides, he was a tourist on vacation. This wasn’t his jurisdiction. It wasn’t even his country. If the positions were reversed the last thing he would want was an outsider meddling in his investigation no matter who they were. The best and smartest move was to let the locals handle it.

“There are so few residents on this island,” Traci said softly. “Do you think the police have ever had to deal with a murder before?”

“I’m sure they have,” he said, trying to reassure both of them. “And if not, they could always bring out someone from one of the other islands.”

They weren’t on the most populous island, Tahiti, but were on Bora
Bora which he’d read about briefly on the plane. The island had one-tenth the number of residents as their hometown.

“I’m sure they don’t need my help,” he said.

Traci eyed him intently. “Because someone who’s brought hundreds of murderers to justice has no skills that would be helpful in this situation.”

“I’m on vacation,” he reiterated.

“The Mark that I know wouldn’t be able to stand being so close to a mystery and not trying to solve it,” she said.

He sighed. Whenever Traci wanted to prove a point and appeal to his better nature she always played
The Mark that I Know
card. How did he tell her that all the unsolved craziness in his life, much of it revolving around Paul, had burnt him out? Looking deep into her eyes he knew it was something he couldn’t tell her.

“Okay, I’ll just go and see what happened,” he said.

She gave him a dazzling smile as he stood up.

It wasn’t difficult to figure out where all the commotion was since everyone who had been in the vicinity seemed to be flocking toward the nearest hut. People were crowded on the pier, craning their necks to see what was happening.

A hotel employee, whom Mark guessed to be a manager from the way he carried himself, was trying to push his way through the crowd. Mark followed in his wake. Just outside the hut’s door, a bikini-clad woman in her early thirties was sobbing. She was probably the one who had screamed.

Next to her was the writer that Traci had been staring at during breakfast. She had her arm around the crying woman and was making soothing noises. Her eyes, though, were roving over the scene, clearly taking in every detail.

The manager moved past them to stand in the open doorway and look inside the hut. When he turned back a moment later he looked like he was going to be sick.

Mark stepped up to him. “I’m a homicide detective here on vacation. I’ll help in whatever way I can.”

“I’ve already called for the police,” the man said, eyes dazed. “What should I do?”

“Get these people back off the pier before they contaminate the crime scene,” Mark said.

The man nodded. “I can do that.” He turned to the crowd and lifted his arms. “Ladies and gentlemen, I need you all to move back onto the beach right now.”

“Is someone really dead?” a woman asked.

“What’s going on?” a man chimed in.

“Please, we will know more later. For now, I need everyone to move before I have to call security to make you move. For your cooperation, mixed drinks at the Terrace will be free for the next half hour.”

Mark had to hand it to the guy. He might be on the verge of losing his breakfast, but he knew how to disperse a crowd. They all turned and quickly headed for the bar and their free drinks.

“Nice work,” Mark said quietly.

The manager shrugged. “You’d be surprised what people will do to get something for free.”

“I’ll have to remember that trick.”

Mark turned and looked inside the hut. There, on the bed, was a man who looked to be in his late fifties. His face was bloated and blotchy looking. Mark scanned the area, looking for anything out of the ordinary. He didn’t want to disturb any evidence that might be present.

He turned to the woman who was still crying in the writer’s arms.

“Ma’am,” he said, gently tapping her on the shoulder.

She straightened slowly, wiping at her eyes. “Yes?”

“Can you tell me what happened here?”

“My husband Milt and I came here to get away. He said it would be like a second honeymoon.”

“How long have the two of you been married?”

“Six years,” she said with a sniff.

There was probably a twenty-year age gap or more between husband and wife, Mark realized.

“He’d been real stressed out lately. Things had been rough at work. He started talking about people being out to get him. He even got a threatening letter at home one day, but he wouldn’t talk to me about it,” she said, dabbing at her eyes.

“Then he sprung this vacation on me. It was so spur-of-the-moment that it took my breath away. I didn’t realize at that point that he was just trying to get away from...from...all the trouble.”

“And what happened today?”

“After brunch we came back to the room. I wanted to go for a swim and he wanted to take a nap. He works such long, terrible hours that just napping is his favorite thing to do on vacation,” she said with a sniffle. “I got changed and he was on the bed when I left. Then...when I came back...I found...found him...like that!” she ended with a wail.

“What did your husband do for a living?”

“He worked on Wall Street, financial investments.”

“Did he say who “they” were, the ones out to get him?”

She shook her head. “No. I knew there was trouble at work, but he’d never say who or what. He’d just tell me not to worry my pretty little head about it.”

He turned to the manager whose eyes were wide and panic-filled. “Nobody could have been poisoned at my resort,” he said.

Mark held up a hand to calm the man down. “We don’t know anything yet, and won’t until your police have done a toxin screen. For all we know he died of a heart attack and that was all there was to it.”

“This is a disaster,” the other man muttered. “If word gets out about this...”

“Listen to me and focus. There’s no need to spread panic and misinformation. All we know at the moment is that a man has died. How and why will be figured out later. Now, how long before the police arrive?”

“They should be here shortly.”

“Good. Let me know when they get here. For now, let’s get her someplace else where we can hopefully calm her down a bit.”

“There’s a couch in my office. She can lay down on that,” he said.

“Perfect. Take her there, then come back.”

“I’ll go with her,” the writer volunteered. “I’ll talk to her, try to make more sense of things.”

“Thank you, I would appreciate that.”

She nodded.

“Follow me, ladies,” the manager said, turning and heading toward the resort lobby. They followed, the widow leaning heavily on the romance novelist. Mark shook his head. There was irony there somewhere.

Now all he had to do was keep everyone out of the hut and wait for the police to show up and take charge of the scene. This was so not the way he had intended to spend his relaxing getaway with Traci.

Jeremiah had given up on sleep around three a.m. and had been back on the computer searching for more information about Henry White and the dead girl, Lydia Jenkins. When he found Lydia’s
Facebook page, the first thing that jumped out at him was that she didn’t care about privacy, either hers or other people’s. The second thing that struck him was that she had been a fan of Henry’s. As he began scrolling through page after page of pictures he amended that. She wasn’t just a fan. She appeared to be a full-fledged stalker. She had gathered an impressive number of pictures of him, both official press release photos and some incredibly candid ones that looked like they had been taken with him unaware that he was being photographed.

He wondered if the politician had known that Lydia was stalking him. He would have to ask Liam if the man had taken out any restraining orders against her. He found one album of photographs that was entirely dedicated to his walk across California campaign. There were pictures of her posing with Henry White in a dozen different locations.

So, she had been stalking him on the campaign trail. He wondered how many of the stops she had been there for.

He was just about to close the browser when one last picture caught his eye. It was of Lydia proudly showing off a Vote Henry White for California bumper sticker. It was on what looked like a green Honda. He was fairly certain he had seen that car in the First Shepherd parking lot the evening before. It had to be Lydia’s. He wondered if the police had searched it yet.

He glanced at the clock. It was too early to call Liam. He was sure the detective would not thank him for rousing him out of sleep.

Jeremiah quickly got dressed and drove over to the church. Out of force of habit he parked at the synagogue. A minute later he was crossing through one of the paths in the hedge that separated the two lots. He was right. There was a green Honda sitting in the back third of the lot.

He approached it cautiously, walking slowly around it. There, on the back bumper, was the tell-tale political sticker from the picture. He was itching to get inside the car and see what he could find. He had gloves in the pocket of his jacket, and he could break in without leaving so much as a fingerprint.

If the car held real evidence, though, it was better to do this right. He pulled his phone out. Liam would just have to cope with the early wake-up call.

“Hello?” the detective said, clearly half-asleep.

“Hi, it’s Jeremiah. Did you guys search Lydia’s car yesterday at the church?”

“What? No. Is her car there?”

“Yeah, it is. I think you better come down here so we can open it and see what might be inside before someone else gets curious and comes to look.”

“I’ll be right there.”

Twenty minutes later Liam pulled into the parking lot. He got out of his car, a coffee mug in one hand. He looked alert enough but the fact that his shirt was
misbuttoned said otherwise. Jeremiah decided to point it out later.

“So, you’re sure this is her car?” Liam asked.

Jeremiah nodded. “There was a picture of her showing off the bumper sticker on her Facebook page.”

Liam nodded and took a sip of his coffee.

“So, what have you found out about Lydia?” Jeremiah asked.

“She was a grad student, getting a Masters in Political Science up at Sacramento State. Which explains how she came to be interested in Henry White.”

“Obsessed with him is more like it,” Jeremiah said. “There were hundreds of pictures of him on her Facebook page. A lot were quite intimate and he didn’t appear to know he was being photographed.”

“A stalker, huh? Her roommate said that she was following the campaign very closely and that she had gone to a lot of the rallies. I guess she didn’t know just how deep the obsession ran.”

“Or she was trying not to say anything negative about her,” Jeremiah said.

“When I talked to the roommate last night she said Lydia was pretty upset Saturday morning when she showed up to grab some clean clothes and then left, presumably to drive down here. She just kept muttering ‘not right’ and ‘needs to know’.”

“She didn’t happen to say what wasn’t right or who needed to know, did she?”

“Unfortunately no.”

“Well, let’s take a look inside her car,” Jeremiah suggested. “Maybe there’s a clue in there as to what she was talking about or who killed her or why.”

“Not so fast. I’ve got one of the crime scene guys coming to go over it.”

Jeremiah was frustrated and feeling impatient. He should have just checked out the car himself before calling Liam.

Fortunately a car pulled into the parking lot five minutes later with the techs who proceeded to unlock the
Honda and go over every square inch of it. Jeremiah and Liam watched the progress silently.

When at last they had finished Jeremiah turned to Liam. “You know what they didn’t find?”

“What?”

“A cell phone or a camera.”

“Neither of those were at the crime scene,” Liam said.

“Strange, don’t you think?”

“I guess. Why?”

“Lydia took hundreds of pictures of White and about a dozen with him. In fact, everywhere the man went she seemed to have some sort of camera trained on him. So, what happened to it?”

“That’s a very good question.”

Jeremiah nodded. “I’m guessing if you find her camera, you’ll find your killer.”

“The question is why take the camera or the phone or whatever it was?”

“I’d be willing to bet Lydia took a picture someone never wanted the world to see, and that picture is what got her killed.”

9

Cindy woke up feeling almost worse than she had the night before. She hadn’t slept well; her dreams had been plagued by dark, shadowy figures that seemed to mock her at every turn. She sat up slowly and looked around. Her parents had already left. Pajamas had been flung on the other bed haphazardly. She wondered how long ago her parents had gotten up as she forced herself out of bed.