Fire in the Wind (31 page)

"Hello, darling," said the voice over the phone at nine o'clock the next morning. "How is life in the backwoods treating you?"

"Colin!" Vanessa exclaimed. "How are you?"

"I'm fine, of course," he said blithely. "I'm here in New York, where the action is. You're the one who's consigned herself to the frozen wastes of Canada. How
is
the weather, by the way?"

"A bit rainy, right at the moment. As it happens, however, Vancouver has a milder climate than New Yo—"

"Oh, please, no gushing travelogue, darling," he interrupted. "As long as you aren't stuck in a snow-bank, I'm happy."

"You can be happy, Colin: no snowbank," she said with an irritated laugh. "How is business?"

"Isn't it funny you should mention," Colin said. "That's what this call is about: business. I want to drum some up."

"From me?"

"No one else. Now listen: I've designed you a signature fabric and some Number 24 motifs in my spare time. It's a summer design, very cool and light, Vanessa, and I've sent off the sketch by courier. If you like it and order immediately I can deliver by Christmas."

If I'm still here by Christmas,
Vanessa thought involuntarily, feeling a sharp pang at the thought that her future might not include Number 24.

But as long as her present did, she was going to run it the best way she knew how. As far as she knew, no ready-to-wear manufacturer in Canada had anything like a signature fabric, and although a few might have monograms, they were mostly done in imitation of the designer ready-to-wear fashions like Pierre Cardin's.

A thing like this could succeed wildly or fail wildly, and what did she have to lose? Nothing that she wouldn't be losing in the end, anyway.

"Colin," she laughed, "that's the best idea I've heard all month!"

When she had put the phone down on Colin she went next door to Robert's office. "T-shirt manufacturers, Robert," she announced. "Anybody around who'd supply T-shirts to our design and with our label?"

"I can have a look," said Robert. "What's in the works?"

She kept her explanation brief, not mentioning Colin at all, not letting him see the scope of what she was considering. Robert looked as though he were both dubious and willing to be convinced but trying hard to look more willing than dubious.

"It's pretty ambitious for your second season," he said. "But I'll look into the cost and possibilities if you want."

Vanessa thanked him and turned to go."Oh, by the way," she said as an afterthought. "Do we have a copy of our lease around anywhere? I'd like to have a look at it."

"Sure," he said. "I'll ask Roberta to run off a copy for you today."

She had thought it just possible that Jake had been lying in order to frighten her, but when she examined the copy that Roberta dropped on her desk later that day, there it was, in clause thirteen. "If, in the best estimate of the lessor, the said premises are being used by the lessee in a manner or for a purpose other than that defined in the lease, and if, in the best estimate of the lessor, the said uses are deemed to be detrimental to the property or to the best interests of the lessor or of the other tenants of the building, together or severally... or if the lessee is convicted in a court of law of violating any federal, provincial or municipal statute on the said premises, whether in the course of the business being carried on on the said premises as defined in the lease or otherwise... then the lessee may be given thirty days' notice to quit the premises...."

Vanessa leaned back and rubbed her eyes, wondering how many of the myriad laws of the land Jake could be certain of their breaking one way or another in the course of a business day, and which function of the business had inadvertently not been defined in the lease.

Her eyes dropped back to the document.

"Fourteen. If the business of the lessee should suffer a labour dispute...." Vanessa wrinkled her forehead. What was this? Then she sat forward with a snap. "That the said premises should be picketed... to the detriment of the reasonable function of the business of the lessor or of the other tenants together or severally... for more than thirty days, then the lessee may be given notice of the termination of the lease...."

Vanessa felt an insane desire to laugh. Jake Conrad was right: he had her coming and going. A strike! She couldn't believe it: all he had to do was engineer a strike and he could put her out of business!

Suddenly she thought about Ted Loomis and how quickly he had found the labour force she needed. To whom would all those people feel they owed their loyalty? To the man who'd hired them, who controlled their working conditions, or to herself and the company that paid their wages? And to whom did Ted owe his loyalty—to her or to Jake Conrad?

Vanessa breathed slowly as a new thought assailed her: how had Robert ever let a clause like this slip by him? Or did Robert, too, feel more of a loyalty for Jake than he did for Number 24? Was Robert, in fact, here only to serve Jake's purpose, to set up the methods for him to destroy her?

Vanessa shook her head. She was getting paranoid, which was just what Jake wanted. If she kept this up, soon she would be examining Ilona's friendship and wondering if Roberta sent Jake a photocopy of all the mail every day....

Vanessa opened a drawer and blindly threw in the lease. She would look at it later. Jake wasn't likely to call a strike today, and right now she had work to do.

She also had a dinner date this evening, with a man she had met at the tennis club she had joined. With any luck he would take her mind off her troubles and Jake Conrad.

But it wasn't to be. "This is the best place to eat on English Bay, if not in the whole of Vancouver," David said as he parked the car, and with a sense of impending doom she looked through the windshield and saw Skookum Chuck's.

She could hardly cry, "Not here, anywhere but here!" without having him think her a lunatic, and she could think of no reasonable excuse for asking him to take her elsewhere. But she was absolutely convinced that Jake was going to walk in with Marigold on his arm and spoil her evening, and she couldn't keep her eyes off the door all evening.

Her obvious jitters and preoccupation made conversation strained, though David did his best. Eventually he began to talk about his ex-wife, who had divorced him unexpectedly a year ago, and Vanessa encouraged him because it meant she could listen with half an ear.

But Jake did not come to Skookum Chuck's that night, and by the time David pulled up in front of her house again she felt she owed him some explanation for her distracted behaviour.

"David, I'm awfully sorry I've been such lousy company. I've got too much on my mind at the moment."

"That's okay," he said. "Problems?"

She nodded.

"Legal or emotional?"

And he really was a kindly person, and she laughed and said, "Are those the only choices I get?"

He laughed with her. "I find that most people's most worrisome problems usually fall into one or the other, or both."

He seemed to be speaking from a professional point of view, and she suddenly remembered. "Of course. You're a lawyer."

"Yes, ma'am," he said. "You need a lawyer?"

"I might, David," she said thoughtfully. It couldn't hurt to have a Canadian lawyer go over the contract and the debenture agreement and even the lease. "I just might."

David pulled open a wallet. "Here's my business card. I'll write my home phone on it for you," he said as he did so. "Give me a call, Vanessa."

She let herself into the house feeling more secure than she had all day. She wasn't just going to sit around waiting for the axe to fall, as though it were inevitable. Jake Conrad wasn't infallible, he wasn't God. He must have made a mistake, left a loophole. If he had she would find it and use it. If he hadn't—well, she would have to try something else. But she was going to fight Jake Conrad—every way she knew how.

* * *

On Saturday she did something she had been promising herself she would do for a long time: she walked the sea-wall promenade the whole distance around Stanley Park. It was a walk of several miles, and the sky and the sea were grey with the light continuous drizzle that was Vancouver's trademark.

But Vanessa wore her new bright yellow sailor's mac and hat over a thick sweater, breathed in the fresh damp air and let the soft wind carry off her worries, and the sight of mountains and the threatening sea soothe her.

That night she slept soundly, and she dreamed of Jake Conrad and knew in the dream that she had dreamed of him often without remembering. He was holding a letter, and he opened it and a snake curled up out of the letter, a beautiful snake that fascinated her. When she put her hand out to it, it sank its fangs into her arm, and its body writhed suddenly and grew large and immensely powerful; she could feel its terrifying power all around her. It was wrapping its body around her waist, and Vanessa knew there were words she could say to stop the snake from hurting her, but she couldn't remember them. They were in the letter, and she looked at Jake and saw a look of helpless surprise in his face. He set the letter down on a desk and it was a file folder, thick with documents, the words "PACKAGE DEAL" written across it. "It's in there," she said urgently to Jake.

She awoke with the words on her lips and terror in her heart and sat up in the grey light of another wet day.

The file folder. There was something in the file Jake hadn't told her about. "The best one of all," he had called it, and Vanessa knew that Jake would not have told her about all those vulnerable areas if he had intended to attack her there. If she plugged those leaks it wouldn't matter. The real danger lay somewhere else.

Jake wouldn't tell her about that one. There would be only one way to find out what it was: get her hands on that file in his desk, and do it soon.

* * *

The envelope from Colin arrived by courier and was waiting on her desk Monday afternoon when she returned from lunch. Resolutely pushing aside all thought of Jake and the file in his desk, which, up to now, had been consuming her, Vanessa turned to the envelope gratefully, hoping the contents would absorb her.

The fabric sketch was in watercolour: a pale soft green with a textured-weave pattern of swirls. After a moment she realized that the swirls read "number twenty-four" over and over. "It will look a bit like watered silk," read the note in Colin's handwriting that was attached to the sketch. "The pattern comes out when it catches the light—otherwise it looks absolutely plain. Other colours, of course, but green should be your trademark."

That was an interesting idea. Vanessa laid down the board and picked up the one beneath, flicking back the protective onionskin to examine Colin's design for a logo.

He offered several. A green cat lying on its back, playing with a ball that was inscribed with the number 24; a house with a lighted window and 24 on the door; "number twenty-four" written in words, both in a straight line and in a horseshoe; and several others; always in green, picked out with white and red.

She liked them all, for different reasons. The horseshoe shape would go on the back pocket of casual pants, and for skirts and blouses... not in the traditional breast-pocket position, perhaps, but... on the cuff? Yes, maybe, on the left sleeve cuff—the cat, the house? She had liked the house best at first, but somehow the horseshoe began to look better and better....

Did she want a green horseshoe for a trademark? Did she want a trademark emblem at all? A horseshoe was a western, a country symbol, and most of her clients would be city-bred women....Suddenly she had a vision of a black silky cocktail dress with long full sleeves and delicate cuffs, and on the left cuff, a small, diamanté horseshoe. Her heart beat a little more quickly, and she knew she was onto something. The horseshoe would not always have to say "number twenty-four," of course. Sometimes it could be stitch-work, sometimes an appliqué... sometimes you'd have to look hard to see it, sometimes there'd be a row of them down the sleeves—down the left sleeve....

And in the fabric. Colin should redesign the fabric pattern with horseshoes.

Abruptly Vanessa picked up the intercom and buzzed Robert's office.

"Are you busy?" she asked. "There's something I'd like you to see."

"Be right there," said Robert's voice, and within thirty seconds he was walking through her door.

"Is this going to cost me?" he asked cheerfully, and she smiled. She and Robert had a lot of arguments over the running of the business, but they never descended to the level of the arguments she had had with Tom Marx, and neither she nor Robert carried a grudge, regardless of who won.

"Yes," Vanessa said now, "but it's worth it."

"It always is," Robert sighed resignedly.

She showed him the sketches and began to outline what she had in mind. As she talked she became more and more enthused, and picking up one of the sketchbooks that was always handy she quickly sketched out a few of her ideas for him.

"Once we have the fabric design I want, we can do it in a hundred different ways—in contrasting colours for sportswear, in gold thread for dressy blouses, canvas tote bags later on, some just stylized horseshoes, some reading 'number twenty-four'—"

Robert interrupted. "Vanessa, this is a pretty expensive idea."