Shadowfires (4 page)

Present-focused people, according to Benny, are more likely to find obvious solutions to problems than are other people, for they are not preoccupied with either what was or what might come to pass but only with what
is
. They are also the people most sensuously connected with the physical realities of life—therefore the most perceptive in some ways—and they most likely have more sheer pleasure and fun than any dozen past- or future-oriented citizens.

“You’re the best kind of present-oriented woman,” Benny had once told her over a Chinese dinner at Peking Duck. “You prepare for the future but never at the expense of losing touch with
now.
And you’re so admirably able to put the past behind you.”

She had said, “Ah, shut up and eat your moo goo gai pan.”

Essentially, what Benny said was true. Since leaving Eric, Rachael had taken five courses in business management at a Pepperdine extension, for she intended to launch a small business. Perhaps a clothing store for upscale women. A place that would be dramatic and fun, the kind of shop that people talked about as not only a source of well-made clothes but an experience. After all, she’d attended UCLA, majoring in dramatic arts, and had earned her bachelor’s degree just before meeting Eric at a university function; and though she had no interest in acting, she had real talent for costume and set design, which might serve her well in creating an unusual decor for a clothing store and in acquiring merchandise for sale. However, she had not yet gone so far as to commit herself to the acquisition of an M.B.A. degree nor to choosing a particular enterprise. Rooted in the present, she proceeded to gather knowledge and ideas, waiting patiently for the moment when her plans would simply . . . crystallize. As for the past—well, to dwell on yesterday’s pleasures was to risk missing out on pleasures of the moment, and to dwell on past pains and tragedies was a pointless waste of energy and time.

Now, resting languorously in her steaming bath, Rachael drew a deep breath of the jasmine-scented air.

She hummed along softly with Johnny Mathis as he sang “I’ll Be Seeing You.”

She tasted the chocolate again. She sipped the champagne.

She tried to relax, to drift, to go with the flow and embrace the mellow mood in the best California tradition.

For a while she pretended to be completely at ease, and she did not entirely realize that her detachment was only pretense until the doorbell rang. The instant the bell sounded above the lulling music, she sat up in the water, heart hammering, and grabbed for the pistol with such panic that she knocked over her champagne glass.

When she had gotten out of the tub and put on her blue robe, she held the gun at her side, with the muzzle pointed at the floor, and walked slowly through the shadowy house to the front door. She was filled with dread at the prospect of answering the bell; at the same time, she was irresistibly drawn to the door as if in a trance, as if compelled by the mesmeric voice of a hypnotist.

She paused at the stereo to switch it off. The ensuing silence had an ominous quality.

In the foyer, with her hand upon the knob, she hesitated as the bell rang again. The front door had no window, no sidelights. She had been meaning to have a fish-eye security lens installed, through which she would be able to study the person on the doorstep, and now she ardently wished that she had not procrastinated. She stared at the dark oak before her, as if she might miraculously acquire the power to see through it and clearly identify the caller beyond. She was trembling.

She did not know why she faced the prospect of a visitor with such unmitigated dread.

Well, perhaps that was not exactly true. Deep down—or even not so deep—she knew why she was afraid. But she was reluctant to admit the source of her fear, as if admission would transform a horrible possibility into a deadly reality.

The bell rang again.

While listening to news on the radio during the drive home from his office in Tustin, Ben Shadway heard about Dr. Eric Leben’s sudden death. He wasn’t sure how he felt. Shocked, yes. But he wasn’t saddened, even though the world had lost a potentially great man. Leben had been brilliant, indisputably a genius, but he had also been arrogant, self-important, perhaps even dangerous.

Ben mostly felt relieved. He had been afraid that Eric, finally aware that he could never regain his wife, would harm her. The man hated to lose. There was a dark rage in him usually relieved by his obsessive commitment to his work, but it might have found expression in violence if he had felt deeply humiliated by Rachael’s rejection.

Ben kept a cellular phone in his car—a meticulously restored 1956 Thunderbird, white with blue interior—and he immediately called Rachael. She had her answering machine on, and she did not pick up the receiver when he identified himself.

At the traffic light at the corner of Seventeenth Street and Newport Avenue, he hesitated, then turned left instead of continuing on to his own house in Orange Park Acres. Rachael might not be home right now, but she would get there eventually, and she might need support. He headed for her place in Placentia.

The June sun dappled the Thunderbird’s windshield and made bright rippling patterns when he passed through the inconstant shadows of overhanging trees. He switched off the news and put on a Glenn Miller tape. Speeding through the California sun, with “String of Pearls” filling the car, he found it hard to believe that anyone could die on such a golden day.

 

By his own system of personality classification, Benjamin Lee Shadway was primarily a past-focused man. He liked old movies better than new ones. De Niro, Streep, Gere, Field, Travolta, and Penn were of less interest to him than Bogart, Bacall, Gable, Lombard, Tracy, Hepburn, Cary Grant, William Powell, Myrna Loy. His favorite books were from the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s: hard-boiled stuff by Chandler and Hammett and James M. Cain, and the early Nero Wolfe novels. His music of choice was from the swing era: Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Harry James, Duke Ellington, Glenn Miller, the incomparable Benny Goodman.

For relaxation, he built working models of locomotives from kits, and he collected all kinds of railroad memorabilia. There are no hobbies so reeking with nostalgia or more suited to a past-focused person than those dealing with trains.

He was not focused
entirely
on the past. At twenty-four, he had obtained a real-estate license, and by the time he was thirty-one, he had established his own brokerage. Now, at thirty-seven, he had six offices with thirty agents working under him. Part of the reason for his success was that he treated his employees and customers with a concern and courtesy that were old-fashioned and enormously appealing in the fast-paced, brusque, and plastic world of the present.

Lately, in addition to his work, there was one other thing that could distract Ben from railroads, old movies, swing music, and his general preoccupation with the past: Rachael Leben. Titian-haired, green-eyed, long-limbed, full-bodied Rachael Leben.

She was somehow both the girl next door and one of those elegant beauties to be found in any 1930s movie about high society, a cross between Grace Kelly and Carole Lombard. She was sweet-tempered. She was amusing. She was smart. She was everything Ben Shadway had ever dreamed about, and what he wanted to do was get in a time machine with her, travel back to 1940, take a private compartment on the Superchief, and cross the country by rail, making love for three thousand miles in time with the gently rocking rhythm of the train.

She’d come to his real-estate agency for help in finding a house, but the house had not been the end of it. They had been seeing each other frequently for five months. At first he had been fascinated by her in the same way any man might be fascinated by any exceptionally attractive woman, intrigued by the thought of what her lips would taste like and of how her body would fit against his, thrilled by the texture of her skin, the sleekness of her legs, the curve of hip and breast. However, soon after he got to know her, he found her sharp mind and generous heart as appealing as her appearance. Her intensely sensuous appreciation for the world around her was wondrous to behold; she could find as much pleasure in a red sunset or in a graceful configuration of shadows as in a hundred-dollar, seven-course dinner at the county’s finest restaurant. Ben’s lust had quickly turned to infatuation. And sometime within the past two months—he could not pinpoint the date—infatuation had turned to love.

Ben was relatively confident that Rachael loved him, too. They had not yet quite reached the stage where they could forthrightly and comfortably declare the true depth of their feelings for each other. But he felt love in the tenderness of her touch and in the weight of her gaze when he caught her looking secretly at him.

In love, they had not yet
made
love. Although she was a present-focused woman with the enviable ability to wring every last drop of pleasure from the moment, that did not mean she was promiscuous. She didn’t speak bluntly of her feelings, but he sensed that she wanted to progress in small, easy steps. A leisurely romance provided plenty of time for her to explore and savor each new strand of affection in the steadily strengthening bond that bound them to each other, and when at last they succumbed to desire and surrendered to complete intimacy, sex would be all the sweeter for the delay.

He was willing to give her as much time as she required. For one thing, day by day he felt their need growing, and he derived a special thrill from contemplating the tremendous power and intensity of the lovemaking when they finally unleashed their desire. And through her, he had come to realize that they would be cheating themselves out of the more innocent pleasures of the moment if they rushed headlong through the early stages of courtship to satisfy a libidinal urge.

Also, as a man with an affinity for better and more genteel ages, Ben was old-fashioned about these matters and preferred not to jump straight into bed for quick and easy gratification. Neither he nor Rachael was a virgin, but he found it emotionally and spiritually satisfying—and erotic as hell—to wait until the many threads linking them had been woven tightly together, leaving sex for the last strand in the bond.

 

He parked the Thunderbird in Rachael’s driveway, beside her red 560 SL, which she had not bothered to put in the garage.

Thick bougainvillea, ablaze with thousands of red blossoms, grew up one wall of the bungalow and over part of the roof. With the help of a latticework frame, it formed a living green-and-scarlet canopy above the front stoop.

Ben stood in cool bougainvillea shadows, with the warm sun at his back, and rang the bell half a dozen times, growing concerned when Rachael took so long to respond.

Inside, music was playing. Suddenly, it was cut off.

When at last Rachael opened the door, she had the security chain in place, and she looked warily through the narrow gap. She smiled when she saw him, though it seemed as much a smile of nervous relief as of pleasure. “Oh, Benny, I’m so glad it’s you.”

She slipped the brass chain and let him in. She was barefoot, wearing a tightly belted silky blue robe—and carrying a gun.

Disconcerted, he said, “What’re you doing with that?”

“I didn’t know who it might be,” she said, switching on the two safeties and putting the pistol on the small foyer table. Then, seeing his frown and realizing that her explanation was inadequate, she said, “Oh, I don’t know. I guess I’m just . . . shaky.”

“I heard about Eric on the radio. Just minutes ago.”

She came into his arms. Her hair was partially damp. Her skin was sweet with the fragrance of jasmine, and her breath smelled of chocolate. He knew she must have been taking one of her long lazy soaks in the tub.

Holding her close, he felt her trembling. He said, “According to the radio, you were there.”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It was horrible, Benny.” She clung to him. “I’ll never forget the sound of the truck hitting him. Or the way he bounced and rolled along the pavement.” She shuddered.

“Easy,” he said, pressing his cheek against her damp hair. “You don’t have to talk about it.”

“Yes, I do,” she said. “I’ve got to talk it out if I’m ever going to get it off my mind.”

He put a hand under her chin and tilted her lovely face up to him. He kissed her once, gently. Her mouth tasted of chocolate.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s go sit down, and you can tell me what happened.”

“Lock the door,” she said.

“It’s okay,” he said, leading her out of the foyer.

She stopped and refused to move. “Lock the door,” she insisted.

Puzzled, he went back and locked it.

She took the pistol from the foyer and carried it with her.

Something was wrong, something more than Eric’s death, but Ben did not understand what it was.

The living room was shrouded in deep shadows, for she had drawn all the drapes. That was distinctly odd. Ordinarily she loved the sun and reveled in its warm caress with the languid pleasure of a cat sunning on a windowsill. He had never seen the drapes drawn in this house until now.

“Leave them closed,” Rachael said when Ben started to unveil the windows.

She switched on a single lamp and sat in its amber glow, in the corner of a peach-colored sofa. The room was very modern, all in shades of peach and white with dark blue accents, polished bronze lamps, and a bronze-and-glass coffee table. In her blue robe she was in harmony with the decor.

She put the pistol on the table beside the lamp. Near to hand.

Ben retrieved her champagne and chocolate from the bathroom and brought them to her. In the kitchen, he got another cold split of champagne and a glass for himself.

When he joined her on the living-room sofa, she said, “It doesn’t seem right. The champagne and chocolate, I mean. It looks as if I’m celebrating his death.”