A Scarlet Cord (27 page)

She resisted the desire to feed the fantasy, praying silently.
Lord, take away this awful pining I have to live in the past. Fill my mind and my heart with your thoughts
.

In spite of her prayer, Joel’s face appeared in that hazy state between awareness and sleep. Her memory was stirred as if by an unseen hand, and an image floated to the surface. It was the day they’d gone to the carnival when Tim was in Silver Creek. The scene played like a movie behind her closed eyes. The four of them were having a wonderful time, laughing, soaking up the sun, walking
down the midway. Jerica was starving, so they headed for the food pavilion. Joel bought hot dogs and Cokes for all of them. But when they sat down, he realized the vendor had given him back too much change. He dug two dollars from his pocket, and Melanie and Tim sat watching him weave his way through the crowd toward the hot dog stand.

Melanie sat up abruptly, the memory strikingly vivid in her mind. She rubbed her eyes, struggling to recall every detail. She could see Joel’s back as he stood in line for the second time that day, to make things right with the cashier. Tim’s voice echoed in her mind: “That’s Joel for you. Honest as the day is long.” It wasn’t just a dream. It was a memory. The incident had actually happened that day at the carnival. She had completely forgotten it until now.

She lay beneath the quilts, contemplating what this could mean. Troubled, she reached up and flipped the switch on her bedside lamp. Sliding the drawer of her nightstand open, she reached into the back and withdrew the envelope—the one that held Joel’s last words to her.

She slowly lifted the flap and let the braided satin cord spill onto her lap. A red satin cord. Why had this been so important to Joel? What had it meant to him? She could only guess that he had left it with her as a token of comfort. After all, the only hint he had revealed to her was that the cord reminded him of a scripture that comforted him. But what was the scripture? If it was just a generic verse offering reassurance, why would he have been reluctant to share it with her?

She picked up her Bible from the nightstand. A red ribbon marked the place she’d been reading. She was struck by the similarity between the ribbon attached to her Bible and the one Joel had given her. Was it possible Joel’s cord had once served to mark a certain passage in his own Bible? Was that what he meant about it reminding him of a scripture that comforted him? She leafed through the New Testament, not having the slightest idea what she was looking for,
merely seeking consolation herself. When nothing stood out at her she flipped to the concordance in the back. On a whim, she turned to the word
ribbon
. Nothing. She paged back to see if there was an entry for
cord
. She ran her finger down the column.

Two words stood out as though they were printed in iridescent ink:
scarlet cord
. She looked at the cord in her hand.
A scarlet cord
. Her heart pounding, she turned to Joshua 2:18, the reference given. She leafed back a page to the beginning of the chapter and began to read. The passage told the story of a prostitute named Rahab. The account was vaguely familiar to Melanie, though her excitement waned as she realized that it was unlikely Joel’s scarlet cord had any relationship to a story about a prostitute. At least she certainly hoped it hadn’t.

The verses told of Joshua, who sent spies to scout out the occupied land near Jericho, which God had promised to give to the Israelites. Rahab gave shelter to the spies, acknowledging that she recognized Joshua’s God as “God in heaven above and on the earth below.” She begged the spies to show kindness to her and her family, and to spare their lives when Jericho was inevitably conquered. The men swore they would do so, but only if she tied a scarlet cord in her window as a sign.

Intrigued, Melanie scanned the annotation at the bottom of the page. One commentator compared the scarlet cord in the window to the lambs’ blood the Israelites were instructed to put on their doorposts during the plagues of Egypt. According to the footnote, the blood-colored cord could be seen as a representation of Christ’s atonement.

Melanie ran the thin rope through her fingers again and again. Had that been its meaning for Joel? Simply a symbol that reminded him of his own salvation? That would certainly have been a comfort to him. But what possible reason could he have had for being unwilling to share that with her? He had spoken freely of his conversion as a young boy, won to Christ by his missionary parents, then recommitted
after a time of doubt when those parents were killed. No, there had to be something more.

Returning to the commentary, she noticed a cross reference that pointed to the book of Hebrews in the New Testament. She paged forward until she found chapter 11. Rahab’s name appeared again in verse 31. Again Melanie had to go to the beginning of the chapter to understand the context of the passage. The writer was citing Old Testament heroes who had exhibited remarkable faith. It seemed odd. Here was a prostitute who had lied to her country’s leaders to protect a couple of spies whom she knew planned to ravage her homeland. And yet she was deemed worthy to go down in history as a woman of great faith. Why was that?

Melanie almost forgot her reason for seeking out the story in the first place as she studied verse after verse. From what she could discern, it appeared that Rahab was honored for her actions because they stemmed from her faith in the one true, living God and from her desire to protect spies she knew would soon occupy the land in the name of that God.

A strange thought occurred to Melanie.
Was Joel a spy?
She dismissed the idea immediately. How absurd. What could a spy possibly hope to accomplish working as a Christian education director in a small church in an obscure Missouri town?

Still, the thought niggled at her. Something did not fit with the entire scenario. No matter how objective she was, no matter how logical the facts seemed, she could not make the Joel she knew into the kind of man who embezzled money from his church while he went out of his way to return two dollars to a hot dog vendor. It certainly wasn’t enough to exonerate Joel. She could almost hear her brother’s derisive laughter if she were to relay that idea to him in an effort to clear Joel’s name. Matt would probably tell her that Joel’s action was just another way he had deceived her into believing that he was someone he was not. And perhaps that was so. Why then, did a measure of peace fill her heart now? Somehow, she knew—knew
in a place deeper and more trustworthy than her human mind—that Joel could never have done the things they accused him of.

Besides, as she’d told Matthew more than once, if it really was about money, the truth was that Joel had stood to gain far more than fifteen thousand dollars by marrying her. With her comfortable salary and her share in By Design, they would never have wanted for anything.

But if it wasn’t the money, it had to be something else.
Something
had compelled him to leave Silver Creek. Something she couldn’t begin to imagine. And in that moment, she knew that whatever it took, she must find him and learn the truth.

Twenty-Three

Joel Ellington lay in the too-soft bed of his furnished apartment staring at the ceiling. Outside, a January wind howled and the furnace kicked on with a
clank
. How much longer could he live this way? He’d spent months in a hellish limbo, going through the motions, waiting. Waiting to testify at a trial that might as well have been his own.

Exhausted, he closed his eyes and tried to sleep. But slumber came with difficulty. Vivid pictures from the past swirled before him. And as she had in so many nightmares, Victoria appeared again.

In a half-conscious stupor, his mind followed a snarled thread of disjointed memories from a long ago night. Finally he slept, and the memories melted into the dream.

He was back in the restaurant trying to comfort Tori in the aftermath of the brutal murder. Everything around them was chaos
.

“It’s all right, Tori. They’ll get him. He couldn’t have gone too far. But … they’ll probably want to question us.” He swung his head in the direction of the police officers who were directing emergency crews to the table where the dead man sat, still eerily upright in his chair
.

A policewoman began steering people to the front of the restaurant. They were like sheep being herded into a pen, some bleating loudly, others mute, obviously still in shock
.

He led Tori along, guiding her with one hand at the small of her back. Her dress was damp with perspiration, and he could feel her shudder with each breath she took
.

The interrogation took place in the restaurant’s small office, and it lasted for almost two hours. Only four people had actually seen the gunman. The dead man’s dining partner had still not appeared, but each of the other witnesses had been asked to recount their story separately, away from the hearing and influence of the others. No one was allowed to leave until each had privately given his or her version of the events of the gruesome evening
.

By the time he and Tori got back to his car in the nearly empty parking lot it was after midnight. A long black limousine was parked near the curb in front of the restaurant. The dead man’s car? Or his fellow diner’s?
Even the rich aren’t immune to tragedy,
he thought as he turned his little Mazda onto the city street. The thought of the restaurant’s wealthy clientele reminded him that his wallet still held the wad of cash he had been saving for weeks to pay for this dinner. He held the steering wheel with one hand and retrieved his wallet from his back pocket. With a morbid attempt at humor, he riffled through the bills. “Do you think I should go back and pay our tab? Maybe leave a nice tip?”

Victoria burst into tears
.

“Oh, Tori! I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be joking about it.” He glanced at her and saw that she was trembling and pale. Easing the car to the side of the road, he shifted into park, and took her in his arms
.

“Hey, hey …” he crooned, holding her close. “It’s all right. Everything is fine now. God was watching over us. We’re safe. Everything’s okay.”

When she finally calmed down, he drove her back to her apartment. He put the kettle on for tea while Tori showered. Dressed in flannel pajamas and a thick terrycloth robe far too warm for the balmy June evening, she emerged from the steamy bathroom. She was shivering in spite of her attire
.

They sat together on the sofa in her living room and talked for hours, going over and over the nightmare they had lived, remembering buried
fragments of the evening’s tragedy, offering prayers of gratitude that they had been kept safe
.

Finally Tori convinced him that she would be fine. “You’ve got to get some sleep.” She looked at the clock on the end table. “You have to teach a class in just a few hours,” she laughed nervously
.

He took her hands and pulled her up from the sofa. Leading her back to the small, femininely decorated bedroom, he turned down the blankets for her and waited while she climbed in. He tucked the quilts tightly around her shoulders and kissed her cheek
.

“You’re sure you’ll be okay?”

She yawned and waved him away. “I can hardly keep my eyes open.”

“I’m going to go out through the back. I’ll lock the door when I leave,” he told her. “You sleep as late as you want. I’ll come and get you for lunch. Okay?”

“Okay,” she breathed sleepily. “This bed feels pretty good right now. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

Eyes still closed, she smiled up at him. He reached for the lamp on the night table and switched it off
.

“Good night, sweetheart,” she whispered, as he kissed her again
.

Suddenly it was a horror movie playing on the screen of Joel’s mind. Tori’s face shifted and changed until it was Melanie lying in the bed. “Good night, sweetheart,” she said in her sweet Midwestern accent. The face shifted again, and the bed became Tori’s coffin
.

Joel jerked to consciousness, clawing the air in an effort to shake off the horror of the nightmare that was still to come. Struggling in his mind to sort the reality from the dream, he lay paralyzed in his bed, remembering how he’d heard Tori’s steady, sleepful breathing even before he left the room that night.

It wasn’t until he was driving home from Tori’s apartment that he remembered her diamond. He had just taken it from his coat pocket
when the chaos had broken out in the restaurant. He decided to go back to the restaurant the next day to get it back. But by then Tori was dead, and the diamond no longer mattered to him.

And then it had happened all over again with Melanie. He had found love once more, had the promise of a wonderful life with a warm, loving woman and a little girl he loved like a daughter. He had truly felt that he’d been offered a new chance at life and at love. But then Toliver had shown up on his doorstep, and the nightmare had started all over again.

Hot tears seeped from under his eyelids. “Why, God?” He said the words aloud, then again louder, shouting at the ceiling above him and feeling that the words never went beyond the mildewed tiles over his head.

“Why, God? Why?”