The Samantha Papers

By Charlene Langfur

The SAMANTHA PAPERS is a literary mystery about Samantha Howe,how she rethinks her life at the same time as she solves a mystery forced on her by her husband, a defense attorney. It takes place in New Jersey, New York City, Key West, St. Marten.

The story is moved forward by a stream of consciousness narrative and references to a journal that has disappeared. The story is in part about how intelligence sometimes keeps people from moving forward, especially in families. Unhappy families are not all alike. This one isn't. Secrets and lies run deep, become habit.

Another message of the book is about persistence, how the need for love transforms people. Samantha fights the emptiness of a difficult marriage and in the throes of a murder and family betrayal, she fights to find her way to a new way of living.A second Samantha Howe mystery will follow.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Charlene Langfur
• Release date: Jul 19, 2011
• ISBN: 9781466015418

Charlene Langfur

Charlene Langfur lives in California. She is an organic gardener, a rescued dog lover, a teacher, a graduate fellow in the Syracuse Graduate Writing Program. Her writing has appeared in many journals and magazines, THE ADIRONDACK REVIEW, LITERAL LATTE, THE STONE CANOE,THE TORONTO QUARTERLY and many others.

Book preview

The Samantha Papers by Charlene Langfur—Smashworks Edition—Copyright 2011 Charlene Langfur

Smashworks Edition License Notes—the ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only, The ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or if not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashworks.com and publish your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Not all those who wander are lost. J.R.R Tolkien

Chapter One – Dead Ends

Samantha Jean Howe pressed a strand of hair behind her fleshy ear and she poured herself a cup of cinnamon flavored coffee and sighed. It was two o’clock in the afternoon and no one had called. She walked over to the casement window and looked out at the garden where she and Elliott had their tea the day before in chairs next to the giant hibiscus. Samantha always went to places with gardens in them on her vacations.

Gardens were places where she could meditate and find her center.

Phillipsburg was quiet. The small hotel which they had chosen for its charm was at a standstill. The heat and the slowness of the place made the air and light around her seem more orange to the eye than it was. She was worried again.

At two-thirty she had called up the desk as she had done every hour for the last four hours. She waited several minutes for an answer. She placed the small black alarm clock in front of her as she listened to the rings.

"Oui."

This is Mrs. Howe again. Any messages?

No, madam. No messages.

"I tell you no, again. Jean’s been here with the cat all morning. Like she is here everyday watching the beach at this time. She watches for ships and small boat with colorful sails. This is what she likes to do. She always has. She would know about any messages. She has to know, you see? Oui?"

I don’t think you see, Joseph.

I do. I have very good eyes. Good blue eyes. Joseph sees everything.

Where is Mr. Howe, Joseph?

I don’t know. I tell you many, many times. I don’t know.

"Are you trying to find him?’

"Yes, madam."

Thank you. Thank you so very much.

Samantha hung up the phone without saying goodbye. She lit one of her husband’s French cigarettes which were still lying on the mahogany night table, and she leaned back on the pillow. Her fingers gripped at the edges of the sheet where they had made love the night before. He had made love to her like he did when they were first married. His touch was soft. He seemed sensitive to the movements of her body. He said it was her night. Her time.

They had dinner at La Chat at her suggestion. He ordered champagne without asking for the wine list as he usually did. She had worn her green silk dress because he had always been fond of it. He had held her hand in a way he hadn’t in years. They danced a slow dance on the veranda in a way they hadn’t danced before. Slower in their dancing. He was closer to her. They were more together in their beat. She was surprised, almost thrown off by how good she felt with him.

You are actually with me tonight, Elliott, she said to him.

But I am always with you, my love. I’ve always been with you–but because you’ve mistaken me for the man I’m not, I will always be with you. Elliott responded to her almost too quickly and methodically as if he had memorized the answer to an unasked question ahead of time. It was a lawyer’s practice. A pretend Q& A.

The answers don’t have to matter as much as we think, do they Elliott? Maybe we’ve cared too much for the answers. Maybe only actions make sense sometimes. She paused and saw he wanted her to explain. The fact is, she went on, I can always count on you. I should thank God for small favors. To happiness, she said as she poured the last of the champagne into their glasses and waited for him to lift the glass and drink with her.

Always, you always remember so much of what doesn’t matter, Samantha. Now you’ll remember everything always. He repeated himself. Had he repeated himself more times last night or is that how she remembered it? The last night. If he had repeated himself, she couldn’t remember any of the specific details each time he did.

What was the point?

Now the green dress was gone. The green dress gone. Her luggage. Elliott’s luggage. Elliott’s clothes. All the items she had packed for the trip to St. Marten were gone except for the traveling suit which still hung neatly on a wooden hanger in the closet. And her slip, her nylons, her black lace underwear were all folded neatly on the top of the dresser as if she had placed them there herself. She stared at the items as if she could see something special about them. About the arrangement.

And her pocketbook? She picked up her blue canvas pocketbook again and checked it to make sure its contents were complete. They were. Including her wallet with three hundred dollars in it. As complete as the night before except for the typewritten note she found in the side pocket the second time she looked through the bag early in the morning.

She read the note again, The beginning is always now. Always. Pick up your package tonight behind the Phillipsburg courthouse at 9 P.M.

Out of the ordinary. Nuts. Life wasn’t like this. At least her life wasn’t like this. She was used to separations from Elliott especially now after she and Elliott were both working and rarely together even for at a single mealtime. When they were together, they didn’t speak to each other much. Elliott talked to her less and less, and she had gradually gone along with his lack of response to what she said. They went to social events together and pretended to have a lively relationship, but when they were out, more often than not they spoke to other people and not to each other. This had been going on for years.

But a note? Elliott hadn’t written her a note in years. Or maybe he had never written her a note. Which may have been why she began to write herself notes in a journal.

Actually she had never set out to write the journal. She began the first one for use in a household column which she wrote for several small newspapers. Elliott was never pleased with her success with writing. But it pleased her. Even though the success was small, it was exactly enough. The writing saved her. Because of it, she learned how rugs were made. How clocks worked. In it she was making discoveries on her own. And although the discoveries weren’t important in their own right, they were her discoveries.

That was the point. And now there was the other journal. The second of the journals. About Elliott. About herself. About the people in her house, the house that was the subject of the first journal really. And what was the purpose of a house without the people in it? She hadn’t told Elliott about the second journal because she knew he didn’t like the first one, and the first one was simpler. He didn’t want her to write things down at all. He didn’t want her to analyze life, his life, her life. A life lived, Samantha, that’s all you need. He told her this again and again, and she was supposed to understand what he wanted her to do by now, how he wanted her to do it. After all these years.

If you think you know how things work better than I do, just fix them, he said. Don’t tell me. You hear?

And later he said, this is the only way that you and I will get on, Samantha. It’s not difficult. It’s not rocket science. The only way you and I will make it is if we sweep all the physical things under the rug. And don’t tell me.

If she had played Elliott’s game to his pleasure for so many years, why was he playing a game with her now? Why had he changed the rules?

Samantha listened as the carpet sweeper moved along in the hallway outside of her room. She sat up on the bed quickly, stood up and opened the door of her room to face Jean, the frail woman who Joseph ordered about day and night. She was wearing a red smock, and the tightest bun Samantha had ever seen fixed on top of a woman’s head.

Excuse me, Jean, Jean stopped using the sweeper as Samantha moved closer to her. Don’t you think that you might have been watching the fisherman on the pier when he left? Early in the morning? Very early. Five or six o’clock?

But no, Mrs. Howe. I would have heard.

Then why didn’t you hear the luggage? The luggage must have been carried down the stairs at some time. It’s not here now. She pointed to the closet which was now empty. How could he have carried the luggage past you if you must have heard the luggage? Don’t you understand. Everything is gone.

Coffee, Mrs. Howe? I’ll get you more coffee with hot milk. Okay?

Did Mr. Howe give you money? Did he say anything to you? When is he coming back?

But I didn’t see him.

Samantha’s head hurt, and she massaged her forehead with her fingers as she spoke.

Do you want us to report your husband to the police as a missing person? Joseph said. He was looking at her methodically again as he stood on the top step of the stairway that led to her room, the honey moon suite was what he called it on and off.

How can I? How can he be missing without any of us seeing him leave? Isn’t that the problem? When we should have seen him leave. I don’t buy any of this, Joseph. I know it’s a little game of some sort. I’m savvy. There is no air of trouble and yet there is trouble. What I’m trying to say is the game isn’t funny anymore. Since you must be part of the game, you can help me call it off. She said this with as much authority as she could muster. She smiled. Okay?

A game, like checkers, madam? he smiled back at her.

We were supposed to be having our first holiday here together in a decade. The Windward islands. The moonlit beach at St. Tropez. A little gambling at the casino and wine in the moonlight. This game is inappropriate to the setting. It doesn’t follow. Do you understand me?

I don’t. Not at all.

How could you? Then let’s suppose you don’t understand. Do you have a typewriter here at the inn?

We do but only Mr. Bas used it when he is here, but he is in New York.

And what does Mr. Bas do for a living?

He owns the hotel, of course. This place. And he does his businesses.

And where does he do his businesses?

Pan Am buildings. This is where he is. In New York. Why do you never listen to what I say and believe it? You make me say everything twice. Three times maybe. He held his short overly tanned arms up in the air in frustration.

She remembered what Elliott told her so many times. You’re beginning to analyze things to death again, Samantha. Lawyers know never to look in places they shouldn’t. They know how to not look and they know when. Some day someone will teach you a lesson about not looking into places you shouldn’t see. He always said this to her in a cautionary way. She usually ignored him when he said things like this. Courtroom stuff. Flourish.

Thank you, Joseph. And I’ll have that coffee on the terrace when you have time, Jean. You are both very kind.

After washing up and changing into her blue cotton bathrobe from the hotel, she changed into her one suit of clothing and moved out onto the terrace with her coffee. She pinched a leaf on the Ficus tree next to her chair and rubbed it with her fingers until it fell a part. She believed she would not fall apart that way. She was used to holding herself together no matter what Elliott thought, did, said. More accustomed than Elliott knew she was.

She walked to the railing on the terrace and looked out at the sweeping half shell of a bay which was now deserted except for a row of umbrellas which dotted down the middle of the white beach like perfect buttons on one of Elliott’s shirts. For a moment, she desperately wanted to put on her bathing suit which she no longer had and run down to the water. She wanted to sit on the white sand beach alone watching the blue waves roll out over each other and over each other. She wanted to be out there in this beach world. Silent. Sun heated. To stretch out like the moony person inside her. She understood, the silence of an empty life. She had made friends with silence years earlier.

Years earlier? A long time ago? Was it? No, Elliott had told her the night before, you’ll spend your whole life remembering. But he was wrong. Hadn’t she spent her whole life trying to forget? How could he turn all that forgetting around now? It was too late.

She very slowly sipped her coffee out of the round glass mug. She remembered back to when Elliott had phoned her at home a month earlier even though he rarely phoned her in the middle of the day. I want to take you to the Caribbean, Samantha, he said. I want to show you what life can be like if you want it to be. Like all the years between us. What could have been. I think we can turn our lives around, my dear. She had listened to Elliott then and remembered what he said, but she hadn’t paid attention. What did he mean turn their lives around? She wasn’t sure if she had remembered the wording carefully. She kept going over and over it as if there was a clue in it. The fact was she ignored his deeper meanings for many years. Now, she had no idea what the nuance was.

Samantha’s daughter, Marie, was vacationing in New Hampshire with her husband and her two children, and she was not reachable by phone. They were camping around Lake Sunapee.

This was why against her own better judgment, she phoned her son Stephen in New York, a few hours earlier. She left a message for him, but he hadn’t phoned her back yet. Maybe because she didn’t tell his service that the message was urgent. She doubted he would call her soon whether she said the need was urgent or not. Stephen behaved toward her much as Elliott did. Aloof, unforgiving in his ways even if nothing special to forgive was in the offing. He would believe she had no special reason to bother him. No matter what the problem was.

In the beginning, years earlier, she had a notion she was the perfect wife and mother. She began to doubt this more and more over the years and lately believed she had done almost everything wrong. Stephen said she had made mistakes. How did it happen? How did she suddenly find herself going the wrong direction? Going the wrong way? Trying to be loving. Facing out to sea when she could have been home looking out at her garden, safe, planning her business?

She left half the cup of coffee on the terrace table and made her way downstairs through the plant-filled lobby of the Cosmos Hotel. She stopped in the middle of the lobby to look at the old fashioned clocks and the worn red carpet. Somerset Maugham. Elliott said it reminded him of Somerset Maugham but when she asked him to elaborate, he didn’t respond. Have you read Maugham? she asked, forgetting he didn’t like her to question him in any way. She asked anyway. She had always thought Maugham was bolder, less constrained than the lobby seemed to be. Maugham was trickier than most readers thought. She thought he was a complex yet subtle man.

I don’t like the word tricky, Elliott said to her. Please don’t use it. Tell me what you mean.

The patio garden was empty. Full up with silence again. The clock in the lobby indicated it was five o’clock. She had four more hours. She pulled her shoes off her feet and walked out the side door to the wide, smooth white beach. Elliott might be upset with her if he saw her out there in her best creme colored crepe de chine silk blouse, a Nordstrom gift, and her white silk suit. It was all inappropriate.

She had learned to be sophisticated when he wanted her to be, in the way he wanted her to be. But she loved wearing blue jeans and still looked good in them, even though many of her friends had given up on the tight fit.

Handle it, Samantha. Handle it Samantha, she could still hear his voice in her head. Dear this. Dear that. His father’s voice. Had he really been saying that to her for the last twenty-five years?

Elliott’s packet of cigarettes was now in a side pocket of her pocket book, and she took one out to light as she walked down the beach toward the center of Phillipsburg. She had given up smoking years earlier. She saw the men in the fishing boats watching her from a distance as she struggled with the sand in her stockings. She was not a run-of-the mill tourist strolling on the beach in a pair of shorts wearing a St. Marten T-shirt. She was not a woman who could be sold a one day trip to St. Barths with a box lunch. Not at that moment, she wasn’t.

But she had been a vacationer. She had been to the Baie de Marigot on the previous day. She had eaten the exotic fruits with abandon and loved looking at the vegetables in the stalls at the market. She