A Scarlet Cord (29 page)

Melanie hung up and called information for Langston, New York. There were five pages of listings for Anderson. The operator gave her the most likely possibilities and she jotted them down and started dialing. She reached two answering machines and hung up without leaving a message. Two other calls proved to be dead ends, but when she dialed the next number a rather gruff female voice answered on the first ring.

“Is this Barbara Anderson?”

“Who’s calling please?”

“Mrs. Anderson … Is this the Barbara Anderson who teaches at Foxmoor College?”

“Yes … Who’s calling, please?”

Suddenly Melanie had no idea what she should say. If Joel truly was in trouble, it could make things worse for him if someone connected him to her. But Joel had spoken of Barbara Anderson as a friend and mentor. Maybe she could help. She decided to take the risk. She hadn’t given her name yet. She could always hang up. “I’m … I’m very sorry to bother you at home. I’m calling about someone who taught at Foxmoor several years ago in your English department. I wonder if you might know where I could find him.”

“Well, I may. Who is it you’re looking for?”

“His name is Joel Ellington. He taught English there four or five years ago …”

“Joel Ellington, you say? No, I’m sorry. I’ve been at Foxmoor for twenty-eight years, and we’ve never had anyone by that name in the English department. Or in any department for that matter. Who did you say was calling?”

“I’m sorry. Joel is … a friend of mine. This is … Mary Jones.” Her heart thumped at the artless lie.

“Well, Ms. Jones, this is a very small college, and I can’t recall anyone by that name ever teaching here.”

“Are you certain? Joel would have been in his early thirties, tall, light brown hair, a scar on his cheek …”

There was a pause and then a voice full of curiosity. “In his thirties? Oh my, no. Most of our teachers are much older. I can only think of one man in the department in the last five years who was that young. But he was killed in an accident … such a tragedy.”

“You can’t think of anyone else that age who worked at the school? Maybe an assistant or a fellow?”

“I’m sorry, no. I really can’t.”

“Is … is there by any chance a fountain on Foxmoor’s campus? A dragon?”

A hint of suspicion crept into the woman’s voice. “Yes … there’s a fountain in front of the administration building … a dragon. I’m sorry, how did you say you knew this man?”

“Well, uh, thank you for your help. I’m sorry to have bothered you.” Melanie hung up quickly, her heart pounding.

How strange. She knew that Joel must have been connected to the school somehow in order to know Barbara Anderson and to be familiar with the unusual fountain. He couldn’t have made those things up. But why didn’t she remember him?

Pondering, she looked at the atlas. Langston was less than a hundred miles from Hartford. The library on campus would have Foxmoor’s yearbooks on file. If she hurried, she could be there before everything closed for the day.

Twenty-Four

Melanie stood by the fountain, mesmerized, feeling strangely elated to be standing in a place from Joel’s past. A stream of water gurgled from the bronze dragon’s mouth, producing a steamy mist in the air. As Joel had said, the fountain on Foxmoor’s campus did indeed look remarkably like the ice sculpture that had been the centerpiece on the banquet table at the Addy awards a year ago.

But when she walked across the empty campus to the library, Melanie was disappointed to find that it, like most of the buildings on campus, was closed until the students returned after the winter break. A receptionist in the administration office told her that Langston’s public library might have the college yearbooks in their collection.

She returned to her car and drove to the business district of the small town. Housed in a two-hundred-year-old stone building that was as dim and cold today as it likely had been two centuries before, the library held the charmingly musty smell of old books, pencil shavings, and oiled wood. An impressive collection of books lined the sturdy shelves around the main room’s perimeter.

“Yes, I think we have a few,” the librarian said when Melanie inquired about the yearbooks. “What years were you looking for?”

Melanie told her.

“Wait here. I’ll see what I can find.”

The woman returned with a stack of the slim Foxmoor annuals, and Melanie took the books to a quiet corner of the high-ceilinged room. She opened the issue of the last year she thought Joel would have been at the college and flipped to the faculty pages. She could tell at a glance that his face was not among the predominantly female, predominantly senior-citizen staff of the college.

She turned to the index, scanning the columns for his name, with no luck. A quick glance through the student photo pages confirmed that his picture was not in that section either. On a hunch, she returned to the faculty pages and found the “not pictured” section at the end. There were only four names on that list, but one of them grabbed her attention: Joseph Bradford.

There was that name again. Was it possible that Bradford—not Ellington—was the family name? Tim had said that Ellington was Joel’s legal name. But she’d thought that a rather odd way to put it. His legal name? Had
Joel
changed his name for some reason, then?

The librarian helped her set up the outdated microfiche reader where the town’s old newspapers were on file. Melanie scanned the issues of the weekly
Langston Advisor
, going back five years. The images whizzed before her as though she were seeing them from a fast-moving automobile. But nothing on this highway of film looked familiar. Until she came to a large headline on a front page dated January twenty-sixth, three years earlier:
Local teacher killed in motorcycle crash
.

Barbara Anderson had mentioned a teacher at Foxmoor who had been killed in an accident. Melanie focused on the story, which continued on an inside page. Finding the section, she stifled a gasp as Joel’s face appeared through the viewer. The photograph, a poor quality snapshot reprinted in black and white, was still sufficiently clear for there to be no doubt in Melanie’s mind that it was Joel. His hair was longer and he sported a mustache. Though his right side was facing the camera, there was no sign of the distinctive scar on his
cheek, but of course, the picture had probably been taken before he acquired the scar.

Most disconcerting of all, the photo caption read
Joe Bradford
.

Melanie sat in stunned silence.

So it
was
Joel who was using an assumed name. Not Tim. Joel Ellington had lied to her about everything—even his very name. No wonder all the Internet searches she and Matt had done when Joel first disappeared led to dead ends.

Her senses numbed by the shock of what she had discovered, she turned back to the microfiche and read the newspaper account:

LANGSTON, NY—Foxmoor College suffered a tragic loss Friday with the death of English professor, Joseph (Joe) Bradford. Bradford was killed in a motorcycle crash in Connecticut. Bradford came to the English department of the four-year private school two years ago, and according to Barbara Anderson, head of the department, the thirty-four-year-old teacher was a favorite with students.

“It’s a terrible tragedy. I am deeply saddened to hear of Joe’s death. He will be greatly missed,” Anderson said when contacted at the school yesterday morning.

According to Anderson, Bradford’s life was marked by tragedy. His parents died in a plane crash when he was a teenager, and his long-time girlfriend had died in a house fire just weeks before his death. Bradford had reportedly received minor injuries while attempting to save Victoria Payne from the burning building.

Private graveside services were held Monday in Kingston. A memorial service in Wilkes Chapel on the Foxmoor campus will be Sunday afternoon at 2:00 P.M. Memorials are suggested to Foxmoor College Scholarship Fund.

Bradford is survived by one brother, Timothy Bradford of Manchester, CT.

It was eerie to read this obituary beside Joel’s picture. It was no wonder Tim didn’t want her showing Joel’s photograph around the area. People in Langston thought he was dead! Suddenly, she remembered Joel’s encounter with Larry Cohen at the Addy awards. Hadn’t Cohen mistaken Joel for someone he thought was dead?

She scanned the obituary again, her heart hammering. Why on earth would someone have falsely reported Joel’s death? She was sure this somehow explained why he had used an assumed name when he came to Silver Creek. But she couldn’t begin to fathom why he would have needed to conceal his identity.

The story said burial was to be in Kingston. Why there? She had never heard Joel mention the town before. She was tempted to go back and confront Tim Bradford with what she’d found, but she was beginning to suspect that Tim played a major part in this whole twisted plot. He definitely knew something he wasn’t telling her.

She made a copy of the news article, gathered her belongings, and went out to the rental car to consult the atlas once again. Kingston wasn’t far. Maybe the newspaper files of that library would yield more clues to a mystery that was becoming stranger by the hour.

Armed with a new name for Joel, Melanie entered the small but modern Kingston Public Library and searched the computer files for newspaper stories about the Bradford family. She started by looking for the obituaries of Joel’s parents. She could figure out the approximate dates the death notices would have appeared from information Joel had given her about the age he was when his parents had been killed—if she could trust anything Joel had ever told her.

Half an hour staring at a computer screen finally yielded what she was looking for. The story of Randall and Patricia Bradford’s death in a small plane crash had been front-page news two decades ago. And apparently Kingston was the Bradfords’ hometown. She was certain Joel had never mentioned that fact. She glanced up at the elderly librarian who was perched on a high stool behind the circulation desk, working at the computer. The woman would probably recognize the Bradford name if Melanie inquired.

With Tim’s warning ringing in her ears, Melanie got up from the computer and went to the desk. “Excuse me,” she said, clearing her throat.

The librarian slipped her reading glasses from her nose and let them hang from the gold chain around her neck. “Yes? May I help you?”

“Um, yes … well, I hope so. I’m looking for information about a family who used to live in Kingston—the Bradfords? Randall and Patricia were the parents’ names.”

The woman put a hand to her throat. “Oh, my, yes … the Bradfords. Such a tragedy. That whole family …” She clicked her tongue, then studied Melanie’s face for a moment. “Did you know them, dear?”

“Oh no … I just heard about them from … from a friend of mine.”

“Oh? Who would that be? Perhaps I know them?”

She decided to hazard the truth. If what she’d discovered so far were true, there would be no harm in using Joel’s alias. “His name is Joel Ellington, but I doubt you’d know him. He’s … not from around here.”

The librarian wrinkled her forehead. “No … no, I don’t believe that name is familiar.”

“No. He’s … a friend of the Bradfords’ son—Tim,” Melanie risked.

“Oh. Well, I certainly knew little Timmy. And Joe—his brother. That was a sad story too. I assume you know about that?”

Melanie shook her head, feigning ignorance. The woman gave
her a gentle smile, which only made Melanie’s deceit more difficult. She had told more lies in the past two days than she had in the rest of her life put together.

“Joseph was killed in a cycling accident just a few years ago—a motorcycle,” she harrumphed. “Dangerous machines, if you ask me. Such a waste! He was a fine young man, Joseph was. Taught English up in Langston. Foxmoor College.”

Melanie nodded and inclined her head toward the woman. “Well, it was a loss. A huge loss …” The woman seemed absorbed in the past for a moment, then shook her head as if to erase the tragic memories. She eyed Melanie curiously. “Now, just what was it you were looking for?”

“Oh, well … my … my friend is … helping Tim do a family history. When he found out I was going to be in town, he suggested I see what I could find.” Melanie’s heart pounded erratically. The lie had come so easily, but had it given her away? It was very possible that this woman knew Tim lived in Manchester. Perhaps Tim still visited Kingston on occasion.

But the woman seemed oblivious. “How thoughtful of you,” she said. “Well, I’ll see what I can do. We have quite an extensive archive of the local newspapers.”

“Yes … yes, I’ve already found the obituaries.”

“Oh … well …” The librarian seemed taken aback, and Melanie worried that she was growing suspicious.

“I’ll keep looking through the papers,” she said. “I just thought you might know somewhere else I could look. Thank you so much.”

Melanie went back to the computer and found a shorter version of Joseph Bradford’s obituary. There was one more item in the local news section in an issue of the newspaper dated four years after the plane crash—a small notice of Timothy Bradford’s graduation from a Christian college in California. But there didn’t seem to be anything else about Joseph Bradford. Feeling nervous and guilty about
her lies, she quickly searched a few more issues without success. She printed out the stories she’d found, then gathered her things, thanked the librarian once more, and went out to the car.

She wasn’t any closer to locating Joel. Nevertheless, Melanie found a tiny seed of hope in reading these news accounts. They matched the stories of Joel’s life and family that he had told her.

Some part of their relationship, at least, had been based on the truth. And they proved that what Joel had told her about his fiancée was true. If he was going to lie about anything, wouldn’t that have been the one thing he would have kept from her? She had a full name for Joel’s Tori now—Victoria Payne. Maybe she could find out something through the woman’s family.