A Scarlet Cord (5 page)

“I like those,” he said finally, pointing to an ad campaign the firm had done for a large credit union.

“Okay.” She slipped the ad slick out of its plastic sleeve and handed it to him. “What is it that you like about this one? The colors, or the graphics, or just the overall feel the design conveys?”

He stared at the piece for a long minute, then gave an awkward laugh. “You are asking questions I can’t answer, Melanie. Seriously, I guess I just don’t think this way. I … just like the way it looks. I’m not sure I could tell you why.”

“All right. The client on this project was a large financial institution. We were going for an image of security and conservatism … stability. Does that sound like what you’re wanting to convey?”

“Yes …” He nodded slowly and a twinkle came to his eye. “Throw in just a hint of adventure, and I think that’s very close to what we want to say.”

She smiled up at him. “
Now
we’re getting somewhere. A hint of adventure, huh? Okay … What about something like this?” She dashed off some quick sketches, using a rough variation on the design Joel had selected, but incorporating a stylized letter
C
for
Cornerstone
.

“Yes … yes. I like this one especially.” He pointed to the sketchpad. “It’s really remahkable how you can just draw that, without tracing or anything.”

Melanie smiled, charmed all over again by the East Coast in his voice.

She scanned the sketches into her computer and tweaked them a bit.

Joel watched over her shoulder in obvious fascination. Finally, he stretched and looked at his watch. “Do you realize it’s past 11:30 already? I really ought to let you get home.” He put out a hand. “Thank you for all your help, Melanie. I’m excited about your ideas.”

“I think we can come up with something really nice. I’ll do up
some thumbnail sketches from these preliminaries, and we can go from there. Give me a week or two. I’ll give you a call when they’re ready.”

“Well, hey, no rush. The capital campaign has been without a logo for this long; I doubt it’ll hurt to wait a few more weeks.”

He turned toward the elevator, but Melanie said, “Let’s take the stairs. You get a neat view from there, too. Let me just turn out some lights first.”

He waited while she shut down her computer and closed the office, then she descended the curved staircase behind him. They chatted idly as they walked through the main studio, Melanie turning off fans and lights and checking locks as she went.

She had enjoyed their time together immensely and almost hated to have the morning end. In the parking lot, they stood by their cars, still chatting.

“Have you found a permanent place to live yet?” she asked as he unlocked his car door.

“Well, right now I’m in the Manor Haven apartments over on Crestview, but I wouldn’t mind finding a small house eventually. You don’t know what’s available around here, do you?”

“Hmmm … I really don’t. But I have a friend who’s a Realtor. She might be able to show you around. I think I have one of her cards at home. I’ll bring it to church tomorrow.”

“That’d be great. Thanks.” He looked at his watch again. “Good grief, it’s almost lunchtime.”

There was an awkward moment when Melanie thought he was going to invite her to lunch. Instead, he climbed into his car and drove off with a friendly wave.

She got in her own car and turned toward Jerry and Erika’s, but as she thought about the morning, she had to admit that she wouldn’t have minded a lunch invitation from Joel Ellington. “Stop it, LaSalle,” she chided aloud. “You’ve been down this road before, remember?”

Four

Joel Ellington rolled onto his back and plumped the pillow beneath his neck. Beside him on the nightstand, the digital numbers of his alarm clock glowed red in the semidarkness. He turned his head and watched them change minute by minute, marching toward 5:00 A.M. His thoughts swirled like mist, carrying him back to a time that was painful to revisit. He floated on vapors of memory into a dreamlike trance, feeling powerless to change the course of his thoughts.

He was in his dorm room at Hartwick with its peeling paint and battered desks. He was studying, trying to concentrate on a particularly boring chapter in his world civilization textbook, when his roommate, Brent Payne, hung up the phone complaining loudly that his parents and younger sister were in town and making an impromptu visit to the campus. They planned to stay over the weekend, effectively putting his party plans on ice.

Listening to Brent’s grumbling, he kept silent, but that afternoon he watched with envy as Brent’s parents embraced their son and bombarded him with questions about campus life. He was angry at Brent’s irritation with his family. His own parents had been dead for several years now, and his brother was three thousand miles away, attending college on the West Coast. He would have given anything to have a family to intrude on his life once in a while.

But the weekend had turned out to have one great redeeming
quality. That was when Victoria Payne had walked into his life. Brent had always painted his kid sister as a brat, but Brent was wrong. She was incredible. At eighteen and a high school senior, Tori, as she liked to be called, was mature beyond her years. And beautiful. They’d hit it off immediately.

“It’s like we’ve known each other forever,” Tori told him that Sunday night before she climbed into the car to go home with her parents. As he watched their car disappear through the campus gates, he realized he felt the same way. There were many more weekend visits that spring. Victoria entered Hartwick the following year, and after that there’d never been anyone else for him.

The memories floated disconcertingly through his mind. Joel rolled onto his side and stared at the bare wall of his bedroom. His eyelids grew heavy, and he felt sleep trying to overtake him. He struggled against it, knowing that the dreams would follow. The minute he closed his eyes, the familiar scene flashed before him. He fought it, but the pull was too strong. Like a drowning man, he finally ceased struggling and gave in to the nightmare. It dragged him under, suffocating him as surely as any murky depths of water. The dream played like a film on a continuous loop. Victoria was there … so beautiful … so beautiful. It all seemed real … as though it were happening all over again …

The main dining room of Ciao! was bathed in warm candlelight. Strains of Mozart offered a soft accompaniment to the hushed voices of a few late evening diners, punctuated by the faint clatter of dishes that drifted from the kitchen each time the wide double doors parted to let a tray-bearing waiter pass through
.

He thrust his hand deep into the pocket of his suit jacket and nervously fingered the small square box hidden there. Across from him at the linen-clad table, Victoria Payne was intent on the steaming plate of pasta in front of her. He studied her delicate features in their frame of golden curls
.

She took a sip from her water goblet, but when she caught him staring at her, she set the glass back down and flashed him a quick smile. “What?”

“Nothing …” He stifled a grin and turned his attention to his own entrée. But he had trouble keeping his eyes off of her. She had never looked so beautiful. In the flickering light of the single taper on their table, her porcelain skin was flawless. The cream-colored dress with its high ruffled collar and long lacy sleeves made her look almost like an angel. Or a bride
.

Suddenly nervous, he wrapped his hand tightly around the box in his pocket and willed his heart to slow down. He was certain she would say yes
. Almost
certain
.

A crash from the kitchen made them both jump. Victoria laughed at their skittishness and put another bit of pasta on her fork. He’d wanted everything to be perfect tonight. He had tried to secure a table away from the noise of the kitchen, but it was late, and the other sections of the restaurant were closed for the day
.

Now the dining room was nearly empty, the only other diners two businessmen at a nearby table. A lilting Mozart air faded away, and the room filled again with the sweet strains of a Handel sonata
.

Victoria looked up, fond remembrance in her gaze. “Oh, listen. I used to play the flute part for this piece—with my high school symphony. It’s so beautiful.” She closed her eyes, listening, obviously enraptured
.

He took a deep breath. It was now or never. He took the velvet box from his pocket and set it casually on the linen tablecloth
.

A sudden commotion at the lobby entrance was followed by a loud shout and a stream of curse words from the older man at the table near them. Then, as though it all happened in slow motion, he and Victoria stared in horror as a fashionably dressed man stood calmly at the nearby table, pulled a gun from beneath his suit jacket, and methodically fired six shots into the angry diner’s chest
.

The ring box was forgotten. They froze in their chairs, unable even to breathe, unable to believe that what they had just witnessed was reality
.
Then, seeing the horror in Victoria’s eyes, he forced himself to act. He lunged across the table and covered her body with his, then pushed her down to the banquette beneath it. He scrambled toward the kitchen on all fours, pulling Tori along with him, until they sat trembling against a wall
.

The gunman turned then and strode quickly toward a rear exit. As he passed, hard, deep-set eyes glared at Victoria
.

Less than six feet away from the man, he frantically memorized the dark eyes, the wavy brown hair, and the jagged-edged port-wine birthmark on the left side of the gunman’s face. Though only three or four people had actually witnessed the shooting, the few workers remaining in the restaurant quickly learned that the gunshots had left a corpse at table 4B
.

Panic took over. In the kitchen, a woman sobbed hysterically. The headwaiter shouted, trying in vain to calm the small group now being herded toward the exits. Several cooks and a trembling waitress peered cautiously through the steamed-over window. As he and Victoria sat on the floor just outside the kitchen, he watched them, fear clenching his stomach
.

“He’s gone, man … he’s gone now,” a waiter whispered, shaking his head in apparent disbelief. “But that guy ain’t goin’ nowhere.” He motioned toward the table where the dead man sat, still slumped in his chair, his eyes staring unseeing at the blood-splattered white linen in front of him
.

The man’s dining partner had disappeared
.

Now the distant wail of sirens pierced the eerie silence that enshrouded the restaurant. Almost without exception, those who had not already fled stood like statues, covering their faces with trembling hands, their eyes horror-stricken as they stared at the victim
.

He had the odd sensation that they were playing roles in a movie. Surely at any moment a director would yell “Cut!” and the man would get up and begin to wipe the greasepaint and fake blood from his face and clothing
.

But as police officers stormed the building from front and rear entrances, they realized that what they had just witnessed was very real
.

Putting his arms around Victoria, he gripped her hands tightly, and she turned to look up into his eyes
.

Her face was ashen, her lips bled of color, and her eyes held a dazed, glassy expression. “What … what happened? Joe? Oh, Joe …”

The haunting sound of Tori’s voice caused him to thrash in the bed. The sheets were soaked with his perspiration. Barely conscious, he struggled to open his eyes before the next scene of the nightmare could overtake him. But there it was—a ball of fire, exploding, blinding him. The silence that followed was equally deafening.

He sat up in bed, battling to untangle himself from the sheets. “Tori!” he yelled, his own voice bringing him instantly awake … and instantly aware that it was futile to call for her.

“Tori …” Her name came out on a whispered sob, torn from his throat against his will.

Shaking, he swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat, head in hands, trying to orient himself. He hadn’t thought of himself as
Joe
in months. He crawled from the bed and went to the window. The sun was just coming up; the scene outside his window reassured him. The traffic in front of the apartment on Crestview was light on a Sunday morning, but the parking lot of the donut shop across the street was a hive of activity. He was in Silver Creek. Everything was all right. He was safe now. This was the town where no one locked their doors.

He took a deep breath and stumbled into the bathroom. Peering into the mirror, he scratched at the dark stubble on his jaw and instinctively traced the thin scar that ran along his cheek.

Why did this have to happen now? Why this vivid dream—this
memory
of Victoria? Why now, just when he was finding happiness here in Silver Creek?

He remembered his meeting with Melanie LaSalle yesterday, and thought then that he had his answer. Melanie reminded him of Victoria somehow. Physically, they were as different as they could be—Tori’s fair hair and complexion, and her statuesque elegance, contrasted with Melanie’s dark-haired beauty and petite stature. But something about the effect Melanie LaSalle had on him reminded him of Victoria. Melanie had the same easy grace, the same intelligence and no-nonsense attitude.

But the dream was a stark reminder that he could never again have what he’d had with Victoria. That part of his life was over, and he couldn’t pretend otherwise. He must be grateful that he had this new chance at life at all.

“Thank you, Lord. Thank you for a new day.” It was not a heartfelt prayer, but one uttered out of sheer obedience and willful self-discipline. He stepped into the shower and let needles of hot water pelt his body, trying in vain to wash away the sweat, the tears, and the terror of the dream.