by Lisa Jackson
She swung the heavy wooden door inward, and stepped into the dimly lit and secluded restaurant. The tangy odor of honey and tomato sauce assailed her nostrils, and she felt herself relax a little with the familiar aroma. It was forced, but she even managed a smile for the blond hostess who led Erin to a table where Mitch was already seated. She hadn’t seen her ex-boss for over three weeks, and it was difficult to hide her surprise and embarrassment for the shell of a man that Mitch had become. Although more sober than the last time she had faced him, he carried with him a haunted look that destroyed the pleasantness of his face. His features, once bold, appeared gaunt, and his once-bright eyes had faded to a watery blue. A small, thin cigar was burning unattended in the ashtray.
At the sight of Erin, Mitch visibly brightened. His smile, though slightly strained at the corners, appeared genuine as he rose from the table while she was being seated. After she was comfortably settled in her chair, Mitch reached across the small table for her hand and clasped it warmly. “Erin,” he shook his graying head in wonderment. “If possible, you’re looking lovelier than ever!”
“Thank you,” she murmured, and nervously pulled the napkin from the table in an effort to steady her hands. It wasn’t like Mitch to gush, at least not the Mitch she remembered, and his bubbling enthusiasm seemed somehow phony and out of character. The uneasy feeling grew in the pit of her stomach. Perhaps it was the way he didn’t quite meet her gaze, or the way he played with his cigar, but something about him made Erin definitely uncomfortable.
“So,” he said with forced joviality, “how’s it going at the old salt mine? Still as busy as ever?”
He had asked the question, but Erin had the distinct impression that he was totally uninterested in the topic that he had introduced.
“We’re busy—all the time,” she admitted, and when he didn’t immediately respond, she continued chattering to break the uncomfortable silence that was building. “Kane—that is, Mr. Webster, has been out of town for a few days, and well, that just tends to make things all the more hectic for everyone else….” Why did she feel compelled to rattle on about the bank, and why did she feel so nervous around a friend whom she had once respected? She wiped her damp palms on the napkin in her lap.
The waiter deposited two platters of ribs on the table, and Erin turned her attention to the saucy food, hoping to dream up a polite way of excusing herself at the earliest possible moment. She knew now that it was a mistake to have met with Mitch; she wasn’t ready to deal with him or any of the problems in his life. Loathing herself for her turn of feelings, she managed to continue to feign interest in her ribs, wondering why Mitchell Cameron had changed so much, and how she could manage an escape from the uncomfortable and intimate lunch.
It was then that Mitch brought up the subject of his courtroom hearing. “I suppose you know that the arraignment hearing is this afternoon?” he began slowly, and lit another cigar. His faded eyes waited to study her response.
“Oh, Mitch…I wish that all of this—problem—could be avoided,” Erin claimed, and he could read the honesty in her eyes.
“Yes, well, it’s a little too late for that now, isn’t it?”
“I suppose so,” she sighed, touching her napkin to her lips and pushing the uneaten ribs aside. Her appetite had diminished. “If there’s anything I can do to help you, just let me know.”
Blue eyes lighted. “There is something.” His voice was bitter cold.
“Oh? What?”
Mitch shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Nothing much.” He shrugged his shoulders and reached inside of his jacket for a neatly folded piece of paper. “I was hoping that you could borrow a little information from the bank….”
“What?” she asked, perplexed, and ran a shaky hand through her sleekly restrained hair. “Information? What information?”
Mitch waved off her questions dismissively with the clean white envelope. “Well, it’s really not all that important, except that I can’t get my hands on the records, as I’m no longer employed with the bank.” He puffed furiously on his cigar, cloaking his head in a thin veil of blue smoke as he offered her the envelope.
Reluctantly she reached for the paper, as her uneasy stomach began to churn. “This information—what do you need it for?”
“I know it’s rather sudden,” Mitch rattled on, “but I need documents that would help clear my name. Bank records, trust documents, computer printouts on the dividend accounts, stock certificate registrations…nothing all that important….”
“You’re not serious!”
“Of course I’m serious. Everything I need is listed in there.” He pointed dramatically to the envelope that Erin was holding. She dropped it onto the table.
“Mitch!” Erin’s cool voice was tightly formal. “Are you suggesting that I confiscate private bank records and give them to you?”
“Not give…I just want to borrow the stuff, until I can get this embezzlement fiasco straightened out.”
“But you know that I can’t do that,” Erin exclaimed. “For one thing it’s against the law. All that information is confidential!”
“Erin!” Mitch interrupted her. “This is my life that we’re talking about. I face more years in prison than you’d want to count!” His eyes beseeched her, but she didn’t waver. She spread her hands against the linen-clad table, and looked him directly in the eyes.
“Mitch, you know I’d love to help you out, but you can’t expect me to do anything illegal, for God’s sake!”
He chewed on his cigar and rolled it from one side of his mouth to the other. All the while, his watery blue eyes impaled her.
“Can’t your attorney subpoena the information that you need? Why come to me?”
“It would be better for me this way, Erin. Otherwise I’d never put you on the spot. You know that. But any information that my attorney subpoenas will be sifted through by the prosecution. If they don’t know about the information until the time of the hearing, I could get the jump on them. You know, surprise the court, confuse the D.A., perhaps avoid the indictment!”
Erin began to shake her head in a negative sweep. “You’re just putting off the inevitable. You can’t expect me to take such a chance. I…can’t…”
“And I counted on you as a friend,” Mitch spat out with a bitterness that chilled the air.
“I—we are friends.”
“No, you’ve got that one wrong, Erin, dead wrong!” he snapped, waving an angry accusatory finger and his cigar within inches of her face. “We were friends when it was convenient for you—when I was your boss, and I could help you. Especially when that jerk of a husband dumped on you and you needed a shoulder to cry on. But now, when the tables have turned, our friendship seems to be wearing a little thin, doesn’t it?”
Erin drew in an unsteady and disbelieving breath. “You can’t possibly mean what you’re implying. You know that I care for you—I always have—but you’re asking the impossible!”
“Ha!”
“Mitch…don’t…”
“Don’t what, Erin?” he taunted, all of his hatred coming to the surface. “Don’t overextend your friendship? Don’t ask you to help me, after I helped pull you back together during your divorce? Don’t ask you to do anything that might endanger your fragile relationship with your new boss?”
“What?” she gasped, but the meaning of his words was clear.
“Don’t give me that wide-eyed shocked virgin routine, Erin. It won’t work. Besides, it’s demeaning. I know that you’re Kane Webster’s mistress, and that you’ve been hopping in and out of bed with him since he first set foot in this town!”
All of the color in Erin’s face washed away with Mitch’s cruel words, and little protesting, choking noises came from somewhere in her throat. But Mitch’s vicious tirade wasn’t finished.
“You’re surprised, aren’t you. Well let me tell you this—it’s all over town!”
“No!”
His eyes narrowed evilly. “I never tho
ught you would stoop so low as to sleep with such despicable scum as Webster. But then you’ve never had very good taste when it came to men, have you?”
“That’s enough,” she gasped, finding her voice and her purse at the same moment. “I’m leaving!”
“What’s the trouble, Erin? Am I getting too close to the truth? I should never have promoted you over Olivia Parsons eight years ago. That’s where I made my mistake.”
Erin’s lilac eyes flashed fire. “I’m sure she would agree with you.” She stood and hurriedly pulled on her coat. “I don’t know what it is that’s making you so bitter….”
“The prospect of prison, Erin. It can be very frightening!”
“I’m sorry, Mitch, but there’s absolutely nothing I can do.” Her poise was beginning to come back to her. She sighed heavily. “But no matter what, if it’s any consolation, I do wish you luck today.”
“Sure you do,” he echoed sarcastically. “Thanks but no thanks. I don’t need your good wishes, Erin. Not now, not ever!”
Erin turned on her heels and didn’t bother to say goodbye. Her back was rigidly straight as she marched to the door and never looked over her shoulder. She felt tears begin to pool in her eyes, but she determinedly pushed them backward. She refused to cry over Mitch, not after the way that he had treated her today. She knew that she was trembling and weak-kneed by the time she reached the rain-dampened streets, but she ignored her weakness and the drizzle that collected on her hair and ran down the back of her neck. A queasy, nervous feeling of desperation was churning in her stomach.
How had Mitch changed so much? she wondered. What had happened to the kind and caring man she had once known and respected? And how—how had he guessed about her affair with Kane? Erin’s mind was spinning in circles, and her face, now covered with drops of rain, had lost all of its color. Her sleek ebony hair had begun to curl in the rain, and tiny tendrils began to spring out of the tidy black knot at the base of her head. She walked along the rain-puddled streets, absorbed in her own distant thoughts for over an hour. With her head bent against the wind, her small fists thrust into the pockets of her raincoat and her jaw clenched at an angle, she hardly looked her pert businesslike self. She felt a burning sense of betrayal that Mitch would stoop so low as to ask her to confiscate bank records secretly for his personal use. How far did friendship reach? How much would he ask of her? Again, she was reminded of Mitch’s initials on the chart showing that Erin had possession of a key that she had never seen. Had Mitch, somehow, tried to implicate her in his crime? Was it possible that she had been wrong about Mitch all this time? She stamped her booted foot impatiently on the sidewalk.
Suddenly aware of the passing time, she hurried back to the bank. She was oblivious to the fact that her usually neat appearance was disheveled from the wind and the rain and that her normally clear eyes were clouded and preoccupied. As she rushed into her office, she paused only to pick up her messages and remind her secretary more curtly than she had intended that under no circumstances, other than a telephone call from Kane, was she to be disturbed.
For the remainder of the afternoon Erin holed up behind her desk, and tried to immerse herself in paperwork. But all her concentration seemed to shift to Mitch, and she found it impossible to forget the hollow look of despair on his face or the nervousness of his hands or his eyes, once clear and blue, now gray and pasty. Erin’s stomach twisted violently as she remembered him and realized just how suspicious she had become of a man she had once trusted completely. Was she being paranoid, or had she been a fool to trust him in the past? She let her forehead drop to her hand, and hoped to God that the afternoon would slide by without any further complications.
The little yellow car couldn’t hurry home fast enough for Erin, and the snail’s pace of the late afternoon traffic as it snarled in the rain only added to her frustration. Maneuvering the Rabbit through the hilly streets of the downtown area of Seattle, she made it to the freeway, but to no avail. Tonight, even the freeways were choked with commuters anxious to get home, semis on their assigned routes and recreational vehicles hoping to get a head start on the wet weekend. As the windshield wipers danced rhythmically before her eyes, Erin sighed, realizing that because she usually worked much later than six o’clock, she had forgotten how difficult and frustrating rush hour could be.
It took her nearly an hour to get home. As she guided her car to a halt she jerked on the emergency brake before racing up the sidewalk and taking the steps to her third-floor apartment two at a time. With unsteady fingers she unlocked the door, hurried into the apartment and switched on the local news. She was too preoccupied to bother shaking the rain from her coat or umbrella.
The sullen-faced newscaster was already making predictions about the upcoming statewide elections as the television snapped on. From habit Erin began to unbutton her coat, but she never let her eyes waver from the small black and white screen that held her attention. At the next commercial break, she managed to slip out of her coat and toss it next to her on the couch just as the dark-haired newsman began to recount the story that was uppermost on her mind: an alleged case of embezzlement at a downtown Seattle bank.
Erin’s eyes were riveted to the set, and nervously she began to bite at her lower lip. As the scene on the television changed to the district courthouse, the eye of the camera sought Mitch and caught him hurrying out of the double doors of the marble courthouse. He was accompanied by a rather short and balding attorney who attempted to protect his client by fending off persistent questions from the group of anxious reporters clustered at the courthouse doors. Mitch, shielding his face with his hands, rushed to a waiting car. Erin only caught a glimpse of her former boss, and she felt a rush of pity for the man as his watery blue eyes darted anxiously back to the attorney before he climbed into the waiting automobile and sped away from the newsmen.
“Yes,” the mustached anchorman was stating, “Mitchell Cameron, once considered one of Seattle’s most prestigious and trusted bankers, was indicted today on seven counts of embezzlement. If Cameron is found guilty, the maximum sentence…” Erin couldn’t listen to the rest of the broadcast. She was too numbed by the chilling realization that Mitch actually had been indicted! Rubbing her temples with her slender fingers, she tried to think rationally—indicted, what exactly did that mean? It took her a few minutes to understand that Mitch hadn’t been found guilty of a crime, at least not yet. But apparently there was enough evidence against him to warrant a serious investigation and a trial. Erin sunk onto the sofa, mindless of the water that had started to collect around her boots on the Persian rug.
The TV continued to talk to her. A picture of the bank building, looking somehow more foreboding in the variegated gray tones of the set, flashed onto the screen. Consolidated First Bank stood out in bold letters, while a reporter recounted the bank’s recent history along with the fact that, within the last month, the ownership of the prestigious building had changed hands. The smug newsman noted that when the president of Consolidated, Mr. Kane Webster, was summoned by the television station to remark on the alleged embezzlement, Mr. Webster declined. He was, of course, unavailable for comment—supposedly out of the state.
Erin had heard enough, and she clicked off the television with cold, numb fingers. Drawing her knees beneath her chin, she wrapped her arms about her legs and sat on the couch, staring at the black Seattle evening through the window. A loneliness settled upon her and she thought about Kane, thousands of miles away in Southern California. The smoky gray drizzle and the heavy purple cloud cover that cloaked the city only added to her gloom. Unconsciously she began to take the pins from her hair, and shake loose the tight, confining chignon. She ran her fingers through her black tresses and rubbed her scalp, hoping to deter the headache that was starting to throb against her temples. If only Kane were here now—perhaps the lonely desperation that was closing in on her would fade….
She must have been staring into the oncoming darkness for quite a while, but she w
as too lost in her own black thoughts to realize that time had escaped her. The urgent ringing of the telephone startled Erin back to the present, and she rushed into the kitchen to answer its incessant call. As she spoke, she tried to conceal the note of depression that had crept into her voice.
“Hello?”
“Erin?” a concerned voice inquired.
“Oh, Kane!” She sighed, and let her knees give way in relief. Resting against the counter, she found herself overwhelmingly grateful for the thin wire that stretched the length of the West Coast and tied her to Kane.
“Are you okay?” he asked, and she recognized a tremor of concern in his voice.
“I’m fine,” she assured him. “It’s been a long, hectic week without you. I’m just a little tired, that’s all.”
There was a weighty pause in the conversation before Kane spoke again. “Have you heard about the indictment?” he asked, and his voice seemed to have become suddenly reserved.
“Yes…I saw the evening news….” She hesitated a moment. Should she tell him about her meeting with Mitch this afternoon and his proposition? Erin knew that Kane would be angry and upset when he found out about it, and she reasoned it would be better to tell him face-to-face. A long-distance call was too short and too impersonal. Too many misunderstandings could occur.
“I know that you care a lot about Cameron,” Kane began, wondering to himself why he continued to pursue a subject that only incensed him.
“I did, and I suppose I still do…but, really, it’s okay. This is the way it had to be, didn’t it?”
Why did he feel that there was a trace of hesitation in her voice? His fist involuntarily balled at his side, and his grip on the telephone receiver tightened until his knuckles showed white. It had been a difficult week for him also. Dealing with his strong-willed daughter had proven to be nearly impossible. And the fact that Erin was alone and over fifteen hundred miles away only added to his irritation and short temper.