Judgement By Fire (14 page)

            “I really do have to
go, although I’d like nothing better at this moment than to go on sitting here
with you, holding you…” His eyes were dark with a depth of feelings that took
Lauren’s breath away and she knew from his look that her own eyes mirrored
similar emotions.

            Leaning forward to
place a gentle kiss on his cheek, Lauren stood and looked down at him.

“You’re an
interesting man, Jon Rush,” was all she said as she walked from the room

*
* *

Warren was
waiting in the all-night coffee shop when Jon arrived, a large white mug of
coffee and a half-eaten jam donut on the table before him, the latest edition
of the Toronto Star clasped in his big hands. He put the paper down immediately
as Jon sat down, clutching his own mug of coffee.

            “How are things at
your end?” he asked easily.

            “Well, I think Lauren
feels safe enough at the house. She seems to believe that all this is nothing
to do with us, but I’m worried. Whatever bastard did this to her studio, I’d
say there was a lot of anger there.”

            “Yep, I’d say that it
was probably a good thing that Lauren wasn’t there when our friend came to call.
Did you see the upstairs? The bed was ripped to ribbons. There was a real…
feeling
behind it all. A real bad feeling,” Warren looked at Jon, knowing his friend
trusted his intuitions and would understand what the security chief was trying
to say.

            Jon nodded. “But did
you get any ideas as to why—or who?”

            “No. My first
reaction was this was someone with a lot of anger to work out, that it was a
spontaneous attack, maybe he thought she should be there, she wasn’t, and he
lost it…”

            “He? Are we sure
about that?” Jon interjected.

            Warren rubbed his
chin thoughtfully, fingers rasping in the day-old growth of stubble. “Judging
by the sheer amount of damage, and the way some of it was done, it would have
required a lot of strength, a lot of stamina. Sure, a woman
could
have
done this, but I really doubt it.”

            “You said your first
reaction was that it was a sort of spontaneous combustion. Did something change
your mind?”

            “Actually, it was old
Chief Ohmer who put me on to it. He’s a wily old wolf, let me tell you,” Warren
said, and Jon smiled. It wasn’t too often he heard his security chief express
admiration for another’s skill, and particularly for an older cop out in
‘Hicksville’. “Remember the day of the protest meeting?”

            “Ouch, as if I could
forget,” Jon said ruefully, his fingers sliding delicately over the stitches
which still ruffled the smooth skin of his forehead.

            Warren grinned.
“Yeah, well. And how did Lauren take your comments and the photos that appeared
in the paper?”

            “Don’t remind me.
Damned well marched into a meeting at the company offices, thought she was
going to drag me out by force if necessary, and inflict worse damage.”

            “It’s the red hair.
My granny always warned me about them red-haired girls,” Warren chuckled.
“Anyhow, Ohmer invited me to join him for a beer, and I did. Two or three,
actually, it’s on my expense acount.” Warren grinned as Jon rolled his eyes.

 “So the old
guy told me the life history and crime history of every living soul in the
area—much abridged and quite hilarious. It sounds as though the place was a
cross between the Klondike and Tombstone, once upon a time.

“Anyway, worst
thing about Lauren is she has, or had, a nasty piece of work for a husband.
Quite a scandal—he turned up one day while she was having dinner with friends
down in West River, and it sounds as though he’d had too much to drink. He
caused an awful scene in the bar, so bad that the manager called in the police.
But Lauren told them this jerk was just leaving, wouldn’t cause any more
trouble. Ohmer decided to let the evening end peaceably.

“However, he
got another call later, from a friend and neighbor of Lauren’s. Seems this
creep had followed them back to Lauren’s studio and was hurling rocks and abuse
through the windows. Ohmer arrested him, after something of a fight in which
the creep fared badly.” Warren grinned again. “But the next morning Lauren came
down to the police station, told the chief she didn’t want to press charges,
told the creep she never wanted to see him again, and the whole thing was over.”

            Anger surged through
Jon’s chest at the fear and humiliation Lauren must have experienced as she was
harassed by her drunken husband, ex-husband, whatever. He could  picture her,
pale but dignified, telling Ohmer she wanted the chapter closed, telling him to
send the foolish bastard on his way.

And he must
have been a fool to let Lauren go,
Jon thought suddenly, and then turned
back to the matters at hand.

            “Do you think this
ex-husband is to blame for what happened at the studio?” Jon asked Warren. The
other man shook his head.

            “This all happened
several years ago. Lauren’s friends say she hasn’t heard anything since. That’s
the weird part—if it was him, I could maybe understand the ferocity of the
attack. In addition, Mike Ohmer pointed out that there is something, well,
something
deliberate
about the destruction. It’s as though whoever did
this was thorough and methodical and frighteningly deliberate in trashing
everything of beauty within that cottage.”

            The two men sat
grimly silent over their cooling coffee. A shiver ran along Jon’s spine at the
thought that someone would turn such calculating violence and cruelty on
Lauren.

“One thing I
did pick up, and you might ask her about it. Lauren’s answering machine
contains an unusual number of hang-ups.  Someone has been calling and calling,
but slamming the receiver down when the answering machine picked up. No
messages left, and it suggests to me that someone was getting frustrated with
trying to contact Lauren and maybe she was even leaving the machine on to avoid
contact with them.”

“Also, you
could ask her who Steve W. is—it was a name scribbled on the pad that was by
the phone—or would have
been by the phone if the phone hadn’t
been yanked out of the wall and thrown across the room.

“So I guess the only good news, if you could call it that, is that
there is nothing to connect this with Rush Co. or the West River Project.
Unless maybe someone objects to Lauren’s taking a political stance, but it does
seem as though whoever did this was aiming right at Lauren, not at us,” Warren
concluded, stretching his muscular arms and shoulders as he stifled a yawn.
“Anyways, it’s been a very long day, and I need to see someone in the office
tomorrow, even if it is a Saturday. Just wait until you see the overtime bill
on this one, Boss!”

With a grin and
a wave of the hand, Warren was gone. A few minutes later Jon, too, left the
steamy, coffee-scented warmth of the all night café, his head buzzing with
possibilities and things that must be done.

*
* *

He’d known she
wouldn’t stay at the studio, and he couldn’t phone her there. He’d tried
calling a couple of those artist people, but no one seemed to know where she
was. Now a dark, deep thought was curling around in his mind. He’d heard about
the debacle at the meeting when she’d embarrassed Jon Rush in front of all the
important people at the company—here the man’s lips curled in a bitter smile. He
also knew that Jon Rush had headed out towards West River late that afternoon.

             What if - and
this was what was nagging at his mind like porcupine spines in a dog’s snout -
what if she’d gone back to the big white farmhouse with Jon Rush? Could she
really be that stupid? Finally, even though it was very late, or very early in
the morning, he gave in and called the number he knew so well.

            The phone rang and
rang, but not in an empty house. At least the housekeeper should be there. When
the phone was finally picked up and a sleepy voice answered, the man’s stomach
clenched as though in the throes of poisoning.

            Lauren Stephens
had just answered the telephone in the middle of the night in Jon Rush’s house.

Visions of
the two of them locked together in the act of passion, their bodies writhing in
Rush’s massive sleigh bed, caused sour vomit to rise in the man’s throat as he
slammed the telephone down.

This must
stop—he must end it now!

            Lauren hadn’t
intended to fall asleep; she’d just sat down on the soft, firm bed for a moment
while she finished her tea, intending to go right in to take a shower. But the next
thing she knew she was being dragged from a deep sleep by the harsh buzzing
call of the bedside telephone. Without stopping to think about her visitor
status in the house, Lauren reached out and answered the phone, and the silence
which greeted her brought her wide awake. How many times in the past weeks had
she listened to the same overflowing silence on her own answering machine? The
silence filled with someone’s angry presence.

Again, no
words were spoken and the telephone receiver at the other end was slammed down.
This time however before the line was closed, Lauren thought she heard a
ragged, angrily indrawn breath. Then a sharp click, silence and the dial tone
buzzed again. Could this possibly be the same caller who’d haunted her days and
nights, who’d woken her from sleep sometimes several times a night, and left
only silence as his message? Lauren shivered, her heart thumping in her ears as
she struggled for breath past the lump of fear in her throat. Who could
possibly have this number, and know she was here? Paul Howard, Chief Mike
Ohmer, Jon Rush.

            And if Jon was the
one making the mischief calls, why would he bother calling her here, when she
was already under his roof, a trusting lamb to the slaughter?
Okay, enough
already with the gruesome metaphors,
protested the voice in her head, and
even Lauren managed a tense smile at the melodrama inherent in such phrasing.
And, she reminded herself, she had not even met Jon Rush when the calls first
started, immediately after she returned from the Ontario Wildlife Exhibition
grand opening.

            As far as the company
president was concerned at the time she first began receiving these
frighteningly uncommunicative calls, Lauren Stephens didn’t even exist and West
River was just a place on a map that maybe meant more dollars in the kitty.
Aside from a number of acquaintances, met and forgotten, among the clients and
spectators at the exhibition, the only other new person in Lauren’s orbit at
that time was Steve Wallace. She’d met him at the exhibition, where he’d
admired her work and, she suspected, had bought at least one of the canvases.
He’d made his interest in the artist plain. She’d spent quite a lot of time
with him those few days, at lunches and dinners, and walks on the boardwalk in
the Beaches area, before his possessive nature showed itself and his charm grew
thin. She’d been glad to escape back to her quiet life in West River.

            The last time she’d
talked to Steve on the telephone he’d been overbearing, domineering, and
finally, angry when she said she couldn’t see him. Nevertheless, those were
straightforward, if unpleasant, reactions, directly to her on the telephone.
He’d had no reason to continue calling in this obsessive way after she’d made
it clear that she might see him again, but only when her hectic schedule
allowed. He’d even voiced his irritation at getting her answering machine and
insisted he wouldn’t leave messages.

But if Steve
was the mystery caller, how could he know he’d find her at this number?
Suddenly, Lauren became aware that she was still holding the telephone
receiver, clasped tightly to her breast, and the loud buzzing it was emitting
was chewing at the edges of an incipient headache. Dropping it back into the green
plastic cradle, Lauren reached for her purse and pulled out her address book.

“Damn,” she
muttered to herself as she realized that Steve Wallace’s number wasn’t in the
book. Visualizing, she remembered she’d scribbled his name onto the notepad by
the telephone, intending to get the number from the caller ID list on the
telephone and transfer it into her personal directory. Then Alex Waters had
called, or was it Paul? Whichever, she’d forgotten and now had no way of
tracing him until she returned home tomorrow. When she’d tried to trace the
origin of the hang-up calls that way, she’d discovered that the caller was
using an unlisted number, which would not appear on her caller ID list.
However, she would wait for Steve to call, ask for his number and satisfy
herself that he wasn’t the source of the mysterious hang-ups. Still, how he
could have found out where she was tonight, she had no idea.

She shuddered
as another thought hit her. Whoever was calling, if it was the same person,
must also know the reason why she wasn’t in her own home tonight. Visions of
the awful damage inflicted on her studio and on her possessions flooded into
Lauren’s mind, and she thought that for a moment she was going to be sick. Then
the nausea passed, along with the thought that it was likely, horribly likely,
that the person who was making these telephone calls was also the person who
had trashed her studio. And that same person must have been watching her every
move. How else would he have known where to find her this evening?

Yet for the
life of her, Lauren could not imagine anyone in her life to whom, deliberately
or inadvertently, she’d caused the kind of hurt that would lead to such
terrible anger and retribution. At least one good thing came from the late
night call; that whatever or whomever was threatening her, was unlikely to have
any connections with the West River Project. Somehow, that seemed cold comfort.