Poison Flowers (11 page)

Marya was perplexed. She didn’t know Denton that well, but she recognized his attention to detail and sense of duty, common to most journalists. Being irresponsibly absent just didn’t seem part of his nature.

“He’ll be back soon,” she said with conviction. “I’m sure of it.”

“Who are you trying to convince?” Ed said, eyeing her with a sideways glance. “You or me?”

She sighed and shrugged. “Both of us, I’m thinking.”

“I’m not convinced,” he answered with his own heavy sigh as he straightened his back. “If I don’t hear from him by the end of today, I am calling the police in the morning. I don’t care how much trouble it causes him.”

She nodded in accord. “I agree. Listen, I finished his proofreading on the A-front and I’ll jet it over to you as soon as I boot up.”

“Thanks, Marya. I don’t think we’d make a single deadline if not for your help.”

“No problem, Ed. Like you, I just want him back here.”

She left Ed and moseyed to Denton’s desk as she sipped her coffee and tried to dull her offended taste buds. If not for the caffeine content, she wouldn’t touch the stuff. She had dropped her backpack by the desk earlier. Now she switched on Denton’s work station. The computer desktop waited, blinking at her as if impatient. She was reminded of the robot, Number Five, in the film
Short Circuit
. The comical one who was always saying, “Need input!” Smiling to herself, she sat down and gave this machine input, typing in the generic
Schuyler Times
login.

She dug down into her bag and pulled out the bright blue thumb drive on which she had stored Denton’s proofreading files. Deluged at work, she had taken the A-front home last night to make sure she made deadline today. She plugged it in and waited for the machine to recognize it, then dragged the A-front file folder to the desktop. When no replacement window popped up, she leaned forward and examined the desktop. The original file was gone.
What the hell?

Everything else seemed to be there, even the silly folder of plant catalog orders she had brought over the day before. She used the search function to find the A-front, thinking she had erroneously placed it into another folder. Nope. The folder was gone.

A sudden chill rushed through her. She knew she had had the folder on the desktop when she left work yesterday. She distinctly remembered checking for it after copying it to the thumb drive. Very weird. Had someone been in Denton’s computer?

She glanced around to see if anyone was watching. She keenly remembered the Dorry interview episode and knew her co-workers weren’t beyond a good practical joke. Was she being punked again? No one seemed to be giving her undue attention.

Had there been some sort of server failure? She checked other files and folders again, making sure all the regular desktop shortcuts were still directing properly.

Everything seemed to be okay, but worried, she tapped the waste bin icon and scrolled through the items there by date. A folder called “Private” was the next to last one deleted, just before the A-front folder. Following a hunch, she dragged the “Private”folder back to the desktop and then onto the thumb drive. She also copied it to her personal file that was kept on the
Schuyler Times’s
server before deleting it again. There was no real reason she could cite for feeling like it was important to do this, rather she was following her gut—something that had helped her before in her journalism career.

Putting the folder from her mind, she put the final touches on the A-front files and then sent them over to Ed via interoffice e-mail. She stretched, leaned back in her chair and glanced around the office. Marvin had come in and was talking on his phone, one hand idly twirling a pencil as he studied the loafer-clad feet he had propped up on his desk. Dallas was at her desk as well, scribbling on a yellow legal pad, reading glasses perched on the end of her nose. Connie stood at the layout table at the back of the pasteup room, visible through the wide doorway. She was laying out ads, a ruler and X-Acto knife protruding through the fingers of her left hand as her right sought the perfect placement. Marya could hear the faint soul music that Wallace and Craig often played.

Looking to the front, she saw Carol dutifully working on some filing at the reception desk. Over to her left Ed was studying his computer screen, peering like an owl through his glasses, and Emily was filing her nails with keen attention as she talked on her phone. Everything seemed so normal. Yet someone—one of these people, the ones with access to Denton’s computer—had taken a folder and then tried to sabotage the paper by deleting the A-front files. A bad feeling began to churn in the back of Marya’s mind.

On Thursday, Marya was able to take a day off from the
Schuyler Times
, a rare opportunity given that Denton was still missing. Ed had reported his disappearance to the sheriff’s office the previous morning and the day had been a tedious waiting one, full of meetings and questions as the police investigated.

Wanting to use this special day well and seriously needing a nature break, Marya made plans to explore the land adjacent to her small cottage. Household chores, laundry, weeding the flower gardens and mowing the small patch of grass took longer than expected so she got a late start. After tucking a water bottle and snacks into a small pack, she donned hiking boots and set off.

The weather was delightful. At eighty-five degrees, it was just hot enough without being too hot. The low sun rested heavy on her face as she blazed a trail through young pine trees. She headed into the wooded area, avoiding the beach where she might encounter Dorry. Dorry’s house was east of the wooded area, and she had no desire to let an impromptu sparring match with her dampen the peace and contentment of the day.

The woods were surprisingly cool due to the shading of the interlaced tree branches overhead, and she found herself shivering in her thin T-shirt and shorts. Mosquitoes buzzed around her head and a few biting flies nipped at her knees. Nevertheless she was happy, her legs falling easily into the pumping rhythm of the hike, her breath rate increasing. Squirrels scampered at her approach, and small tribes of nut-brown quail made frantic escapes as she passed. She found her footsteps following the natural curve of the land as it sloped upward.

At one point she had a wonderful view of the rental cottage with the mighty surging sea as a backdrop. She admired the neat square of lawn over which she had labored just an hour before, proud of the result. The many small, bordered flower gardens formed fascinating geometric patterns from this vantage, and she was sure that they were much more attractive without the choking green of the weeds she had removed earlier that day.

Marya plowed deeper into the forested acreage, eventually emerging into a natural clearing. The warm sun kissed her in greeting and she strode the perimeter of the small sandy lot. White cotton clouds passed overhead and she stood, head thrown back, feeling vertigo as earth and sky rubbed against one another. Dropping her gaze, she spied a patch of blue through the trees on her right and moved forward. The blue was the ocean and she could see a house. Master Wood’s house.

Larger than she remembered, it was a lovely home when framed against the ocean, with shutters and trim of deep blue. The siding was a weathered white and the sloping driveway, made of creamy crushed stone, blended in well as it framed the property. The house settled onto a thick, half-moon shaped peninsula of rock which jutted out into the water so its foundation was regularly caressed by frothy waves. The backyard sloped down to a dock and a landing where a small boat stirred restlessly at its mooring.

Feeling a sense of guilt, even though she wasn’t intentionally spying, she turned away and returned to the clearing. Settling herself on a patch of soft sand, she sipped water and thought about Dorry. She forced herself to think of Dorry’s positive attributes, her strength, her bold attractiveness, her determination to make her mark in a traditionally male-dominated discipline. Still, the image of her blue eyes flashing in fury kept intruding.

Marya forced all thought from her mind then, falling with practiced ease into that state of no thought, of the nothing that is the everything sought so often by Buddhist monks and practitioners of the martial art.

Sometime later she allowed full consciousness to re-enter and came back to herself feeling refreshed and years younger. It always amazed her how energizing meditation could be. Though her legs were stiff from being folded for what seemed like hours, she could feel each mentally revived muscle fiber better than before. Her mind was quiet, oxygenated, her thoughts slow and crystal clear.

Stirring reluctantly, as dusk was fast overtaking the land, she took a hearty drink of water, then began a casual stroll toward home. Realizing that she was lost in the trees, she began slanting her feet toward the ocean. The number of trees decreased and the last fading rays of slanting sunlight helped guide her steps. Soon she spotted the beach. Although it was unfamiliar, not the beach below her home, it was a welcome sight.

She had emerged into the tree line just behind Dorry’s house, she saw. She prayed Dorry wouldn’t see her. She was feeling too good for another battle with the woman; it would ruin her pleasant mood. Then she saw Dorry. Her next indrawn breath nearly choked her.

Dorry was swimming toward her across a small, enclosed pool of ocean water. Her muscular arms moved with smooth, powerful strokes, her short, white hair turned silver by the water. Marya stepped back so she was hidden by trees and watched her, hypnotized.

Dorry climbed into the shallows below her deck and rose up, strong hands sluicing sheets of water from her suit-clad form. Marya was amazed by the richness of Dorry’s body—her breasts were melon globes of rounded flesh. They swelled from a hard muscular chest and were topped by visible nipples centered in the bodice of the crimson suit she wore. Her shoulders were broad and curved with muscle and her wide belly lay flat and smooth. Her legs rose like columns of sculpted granite, meeting with curious grace to cup the dark shadows at the mount of Venus.

After scratching idly at her right thigh, she turned and dove into the deeper water, hands cupping and pulling her through the salt-water pool with dynamic speed.

Marya was too shaken by the sight of her to complete her passage along the beach. She had to turn away and melt into the trees. Traveling just inside the line of trees along the beach, she made her way home.

Once inside the cottage, she mechanically fixed hot tea. Only when the cup was in front of her on the kitchen table did she allow her mind to focus on what she had seen and, more importantly, on what she had felt.

Marya desired Dorcas Wood in a big way. Watching her unconscious casualness had affected her in a strange fashion. She’d seen her share of half-dressed females in her life—males too, for that matter. So why should the sight of Dorry affect her so? She reviewed her feelings.

How much of this was due to what she had learned the other evening? Was she enamored of Dorry just because she now knew she might be a lesbian?

What was most amazing to her was the way her body had reacted. She reached one hand down and pressed it over the mound of her sex, able to gauge wetness even through the fabric of shorts and panties. A gentle throbbing still disturbed her there. She brought her hands up, swept them across her breasts. Her nipples, awake and alert, leapt to new life beneath her palms.

She drew her hands away and shuddered. She wanted Dorry. The feeling rushed across and through her. She imagined Dorry’s wet sleekness pressed against her, Dorry’s taut, wet skin sliding over her own. She ached to heft the heady fullness of Dorry’s breasts in her hands, wanted to pluck the ripe red raspberry nipples from them with her lips. She wanted to plunder the crevice of Dorry’s sex with her fingers and tongue. She wanted these things with an ache that was consuming her entire body.

With a growl of frustration Marya left the table, her tea untouched. She crept to her bed as if suffering a dire illness and crawled beneath the blankets, assuming a fetal curl, both hands pressed to her groin. There she stayed, eventually falling asleep, her mind trying to understand that awful, puzzling ache that was consuming her.

Several hours later she awoke, her eyes wet with tears, the roar of the ocean surrounding her. The cottage was hot, so she kicked the coverlet aside. Her thoughts flew to Dorry as she came fully awake. How could she be so enamored of a woman who hated her? She knew then that her subconscious tears were for the futility of her situation. She told herself that Dorry would be no different than the rest of the women she’d temporarily shared her life with and been disappointed by. Surely she was doomed for even more disappointment as the barriers to touching Dorry’s soul and spirit loomed even larger.

Yet, there was something there, some unspoken something between them that had begun nagging at Marya a little more every day. She recognized it as attraction and it scared her. She didn’t feel equipped to deal with the growing feelings she was developing for Dorry. She didn’t feel she could handle the resultant regret of forcing them to go away.

She rose and strode into the night through the front door.

She watched the ocean for a time, then walked around back to lean one hip against the railing and watch the full moon as it lolled above the trees. The moon glow made the night transform into the murky crispness of a developing print; certain surfaces were raised in bas-relief while others retreated into light and shadow. She wrapped her arms about herself in a comforting hug. She so wanted to have someone in her life, but she would rather be alone than with a prickly pear of a woman who was incapable of tenderness.

It was at times like this—after seeing Dorry’s intriguing beauty—that she realized how lonely she had allowed herself to become. She had told her mother she wanted closeness, touching, tenderness. Was it out there and she just wasn’t capable of seeing it? Or had she been blind to it on purpose, afraid of finding what she thought she wanted and discovering it still wasn’t enough? That
she
still wasn’t enough?