The Woman (4 page)

The two women had been meeting at O’Malley’s for lunch once a week for more than six years and never had either of them just failed to come. Linda’s concern grew, but she clung to the thought that Cynthia would soon contact her with a rational explanation.

At one-thirty Linda paid the bill and left without having seen or heard from Cynthia. She walked her normal route home through the sweet smells from the donut shop. When she neared the alley into which she had been dragged, the alley in which the two dead bodies had been found, she stepped out into the street giving the mouth of the alley a wide berth. She also went cold remembering the squatty man’s hard touch on her breast. She still had no idea why she had been attacked. She had assumed a rape at the time, but that seemed likely only due to the absence of any other plausible reason. Now she knew there had to be another reason, she just had no idea what it could be.

Chapter 4

Linda went out to sit on the deck of her condo, hoping to calm herself by watching the ocean.

Sea Crest had always provided Linda a safe place to watch sunrises and sunsets, and read novels next to the fireplace or on her patio overlooking the Pacific. She had exiled herself to Sea Crest following the death of her marriage. In part, she had selected Sea Crest because when she first visited, the town projected the feel of a Thomas Kinkade painting, a slice of Americana she believed existed only in the hearts of romantics. But here she had felt it, and here she had moved. In the beginning she had called the move a peaceful getaway, a place to calm herself and reset her ambitions. But with time came honesty. She had selected Sea Crest as a hideaway, not a getaway. Last week had completed seven years and still she remained, in hiding. That was the truth, in hiding.

The only times she left Sea Crest were the nights she dressed the way she had once dressed regularly. On those nights, her celibacy growing intolerable, she went bar-hopping in one or another of the not-too-distant cities. She avoided the dives populated by lost souls, choosing instead the upscale watering holes frequented by the successful men of commerce and finance. These one-night stands usually occurred near the end of each month, perhaps the result of the fecundity of her id. These forays were daring, yet safe, both for the same reasons. She did not know the men. She did not use her real name. She never agreed to see any of these men a second time. These couplings were not in search of a relationship, only in search of a servicing. That said it crudely, but, when talking to oneself, plain talk was just fine.

Her life had become much less than she had once wanted, once hoped, but she desperately clung to the belief that marooning herself in Sea Crest would be enough. More recently, with the help of Dr. Shaw, she had begun to acknowledge a few truths. Avoiding all chances for a new loving relationship could protect her from the agony of being hurt, but such a choice also assured the lingering anguish of loneliness. Only through finding a successful lifelong relationship could enduring sadness be avoided. Still, Dr. Shaw had, at least tacitly, admitted the odds of finding such a relationship were not all that good in today’s world.

While she had been on the deck the hummingbird returned, a distant friend, comfortable, yet suspicious. She had hung a feeder filled with red sugar water to which the bird seemed a constant visitor. She doubted any hummingbird had a weight problem given their highly aerobic pace. A sudden dart, the envy of any helicopter made, took the hummer away as suddenly as it had appeared. She wished she could as abruptly stop wondering about Cynthia, her only real friend, and the stranger who had, to say the least, acted curiously while passing SMITH & CO.

The man remained clear in her mind. He stood about six feet, and had medium brown hair with a slight natural frosting just above his ears. Actually, he might have had more gray, even been bald. She hadn’t been able to tell because of his cap. She estimated his age to be mid forties. He strode gracefully, but without gentleness, confidently, without swagger or military march. She recalled the cleft she had seen momentarily when he turned toward her. He had not looked right at her, but in her direction. Still, his gaze had made her momentarily look away. She enjoyed watching men more than watching women, but did not enjoy them being aware.

Then a thought swirled in her mind the way a floating leaf circles in an eddy.
Clark could have been the man in the alley. He has a similar build, but the voice hadn’t sounded like Clark. But then, in my state of mind, I can’t be sure I’d have recognized his voice.

Linda shook off these thoughts and again called Cynthia. Again she got no answer. She was no longer concerned. She was worried. Enough so that she decided to return to town and go to SMITH & CO.
,
a company without a listed business phone. That had always seemed strange for a consulting firm, regardless of their brand of consulting.

Linda walked to town quickly. When she arrived at SMITH & CO., she found the door locked. She knocked. No answer. According to her watch the time was four-fifty-four, but she had been there at least a minute, probably two. She walked a little further to check the time in the window of the antique shop in the next block. There, the grandfather clock in the window displayed one minute after five, her watch now saying four-fifty-nine. Apparently, Cynthia and her coworkers had left a little early, but, in truth, she didn’t know their hours of business and they were not posted on the door.

Linda spent that evening doing the same things, worrying and wondering. Leaving messages on Cynthia’s cell phone and praying her friend would return her calls. She even checked with the nearest hospital and urgent care center, both twenty-five miles up the coast. Cynthia had not gone into or been taken into either. Thank God for that, but it didn’t change the facts. She had been attacked. Her friend had disappeared. What were the odds of those two things happening in Sea Crest on consecutive days?

Linda fell asleep with that discomforting thought and the resolve that in the morning, if Cynthia had not reappeared, she would return to SMITH & CO., and demand to see her friend.

Chapter 5

The sun had been up for about ten minutes when Linda rolled out of bed. The sun came up later in Oregon than it did farther south. But the process was the same. The black diluted into ever lightening grays, at first dull and matte. Then the colors started as the new day quickly blossomed into the vibrancy of youth, without any of youth’s silliness or petulance.

With the morning light, Linda backed out of her decision to go to Cynthia’s place of employment, admonishing herself for having spent the previous night being overly dramatic. She even convinced herself she would laugh upon hearing Cynthia’s explanation. Besides, she wouldn’t want to embarrass her friend who had often made it clear that she should not come to SMITH & CO.

Oh, bull feathers, Linda said out loud a few moments later. A dress on a pig can’t change what you have. Something was very wrong. She had to stop vacillating and take action. Cynthia was one of the most polite people in the world. For her not to call to explain and apologize was completely outside her personality.

Halfway through her first cup of coffee, Linda settled on a new explanation. Cynthia did not have a land-based home phone, only a cell phone. She could have accidentally left the cell at work and became too sick to go in. That would also explain why all the workers had left yesterday before five o’clock.

By the time Linda stepped out the shower, she had a new reasoned calm plan. She would take the bus and go to Cynthia’s home. After all if Cynthia was that sick she might need help, just as Linda needed Cynthia’s help. She had decided to tell the wise older woman about her being attacked in the alley, and about the mysterious man who saved her and then warned her not to go to the police. Linda was certain Cynthia would agree that the two men found dead in the alley had been the men who had accosted her. Together they would decide whether or not Linda should confess it all to Police Chief Ben McIlhenny.

The number three bus stopped in front of Cynthia’s condo building. And Linda could catch the number three at the park two blocks from her own home. There was a light rain, but no real wind. She would walk the two blocks.

Her decisiveness excited her. She felt alive. She began to dress, and then realized she had inadvertently gone to the closet in the spare bedroom in which she kept the clothes she wore when going bar hopping.

She had stopped dressing to attract the attention of men seven years ago, following her crushing divorce which had been final on her thirty-second birthday. A divorce she had gradually come to think of as her finest birthday present ever. She still wore a size eight, but she had purposefully begun wearing plain pants or dresses and skirts below the knee, and discontinued low-cut tops and enhancing undergarments. Since the change she got no more whistles. No grunts. No lusty comments. She missed the bawdy attention, but continued to resist her urges to bait the boys.

As Linda approached the bus stop, she saw the man from yesterday. His chin cleft appeared darker than when she had seen him across from O’Malley’s. Perhaps he had not shaven this morning. He stood in the light rain far enough away that the other person waiting for the bus paid him no mind, but she knew he was the same man.

Today, he wore a dark turtleneck sweater, black she thought, inside a dark peacoat. The collar turned up. His hands jammed into the pockets. The image made Linda think of Captain Ahab, stoic and vigilant on the foredeck, impervious to the crashing waves and salt spray. His eyes fixed on the horizon, searching for any sign which might point the direction in his relentless pursuit of the great white whale. She had read
Moby Dick
, and many other seafaring adventure stories, old classics such as
Mutiny on the Bounty
and newer classics including
The Hunt for Red October
. Read them sitting on her deck looking out toward the ocean, imagining the stories playing out before her.

Captain Ahab’s presence near her bus stop was completely illogical. Yet there he stood without provocation or intimidation. He was watching Linda. She had no doubt she was his reason for being there. Why? Why would she attract the interest of such a man?

Linda knew almost nothing about Cynthia’s place of employment. With some prodding, Cynthia had once shared that she was the manager and had a staff of three, and that they analyzed things, stuff too boring to discuss. Her tone had said, “Let’s not talk about my work.” After that they never did.

This did nothing to lessen Linda’s wild suspicions about SMITH & CO., suspicions she had repeatedly dismissed as the over active imagination of an avid reader. But the last twenty-four hours or so had not been the product of her imagination. She really had been attacked. A mysterious man had really saved her. The two men in the alley were really dead. Cynthia had really disappeared. A mysterious stranger had really watched Cynthia’s place of employment, possibly the same man who had saved her. That mysterious stranger had really reappeared at her bus stop. Common sense told Linda these events could not be related, but her built-in warning system screamed the hell with common sense.
All of this is somehow connected to me.

The two women met every Friday evening, usually at Cynthia’s home to play cribbage. Linda knew that Cynthia had begun to think of her as a daughter, and she liked that feeling. The regular Friday routine included taking an overnight bag, staying the night at Cynthia’s, and going home on the Saturday bus, then taking a long run on the beach. Before her divorce Linda had run suburban streets with her husband, their dream being to one day live where they could run on the beach. Now she ran on the beach alone and had come to enjoy it that way. She did no day trading on Saturdays so these runs, after getting home from Cynthia’s, were always her longest.

The earlier rain had stopped and the sun, struggling through the clouds was bringing new warmth, while a light breeze helped the trees shed their held water. The number three bus pulled through a wispy coil of steam rising from the wet pavement, an airy whoosh signaling the opening of its door.

Linda chose a seat from which she could watch Ahab by shifting her eyes without turning her head. A clunky sound announced the closing of the bus door. Then the big box pulled from the curb. As the bus turned at the corner, she looked back to see Ahab still standing where he had been next to a tree about fifty yards into the park.

Perhaps it’s a coincidence, his being here and all. Or, perhaps Ahab doesn’t need to follow the bus. Perhaps he knows my destination.

She twisted around and squinted while looking out the window at the back of the bus, but saw nothing that indicated Ahab had followed.

Or, perhaps, I’m just daffy. Ahab may just like parks in the rain.

Linda, sitting with her hands on her lap, instinctively leaned to her right as the bus turned at the next corner. Back on the straightaway, she opened her purse and looked at the small picture of Cynthia she carried in her wallet. The woman had the rounded cheeks, close-set brown eyes, and thick mouth reminiscent of the early pioneer women who immigrated to America from any number of feeder countries. Women with neck moles and calloused hands eagerly awaiting the challenges ahead, prepared to do what became necessary in their adopted America. That was Cynthia. Tough. Dogged. Thick. Plain. Lovely.

As for Captain Ahab, well, the man could have been in the ocean side park on a wet morning dressed to film a commercial for Old Spice aftershave. She smiled at the thought, admitting that explanation was likely as plausible, or more so, as some of the spellbinding explanations she had conjured.