Judgement by Fire

by Lydia Grace

  Lauren was silent for a few moments, remembering Jon’s angry accusation that she had been looking for publicity, but had gotten the wrong kind. Maybe Jane was right.

  “I still think he’s a scum-sucking, bottom-feeding-pond-dweller,” she declared, causing Jane to raise an eyebrow.

  “Like him that much, do you?” The other woman teased. “Can’t say I blame you much, lots of women seem to fall at his feet. Though after Terry, I’d think you would be a bit gun shy.”

  “Too true,” Lauren declared, asking if Jane ever saw Terry, or his new wife, Susie, socially.

  “We’ve met occasionally at the same parties, but mostly formal stuff. They move in more exalted circles, now. Mind you, I hear Susie’s a very good hostess…”

  “So at least Terry has found what he wants…” Lauren said.

  “Well, maybe. I suppose I shouldn’t gossip, but there’s a delicious rumor that he still has a wandering eye. You ought to see his newest secretary.”

  “You’re kidding me!” Lauren laughed. Conversation went to more general topics and people they knew in common, and soon Lauren felt calm and refreshed enough to head off back to her studio. She wasn’t looking forward to the long drive, but felt she’d at least cleared her mind and would be able to go on with some work in the evening hours.

  On her way back to the car park, she passed the window of the gallery where some of her work hung with that of other artists. She was surprised and gratified to see that one of her nature studies was featured among the spotlighted works hung in the large plate glass window. She remembered how it was here, at the opening of the ‘Ontario Wildlife’ exhibition, that she had first met Stephen Wallace. He’d been so superficially attractive, and she’d been disappointed when that had given way to demands on her time and jealous tantrums when she wasn’t available whenever he felt like a date. There were several apparent similarities between Stephen and Jon Rush, she thought with a start. They were both tall, blond men, powerfully built, but where Jon exhibited quiet authority and confidence, Stephen exuded a kind of manic charm which was exciting but…again, the word superficial sprang to mind.

  Not wanting to spend any more time thinking about either man, Lauren pulled her blazer more snugly around her against the increasing chill and joined the throng of home-going workers trudging through Toronto’s city streets as she walked to the car park where she’d left her small car. Ruefully looking at the billboard where parking fees were displayed, Lauren thought that if she’d stayed much longer, the parking would have cost more than the elderly car was worth.

  *

  Jon finished the meeting he’d been in when Lauren interrupted, studiously ignoring the subtle and not-so-subtle attempts by his staff to find out the identity of the beautiful young woman who’d laid siege to their routine department-heads only planning meeting. One of the least subtle was Ray Wilkie, the gray-haired older man whose amusement Lauren had noted.

  “So, I do hope that urgent matter you had to attend to was nothing too distressing?” he asked in the kindly, old-friend-of-the-family voice that instantly alerted Jon that he was less than sincere.

  “Just a minor problem and it’s all cleared up now,” he replied shortly in a voice that brooked no further comment, even from old friends of the family. That didn’t stop Wilkie giving a knowing wink and smirk as he clapped Jon on the back and left the room.

  Jon returned to his own office and tried to get on with some of the more urgent work that had piled up on his desk while he’d been at the meeting. Nonetheless, he found himself, time and time again, staring morosely out of the window into leaden, snow-laden clouds over which his mind’s eye insisted on superimposing a pretty face, full of character, framed by unruly auburn hair. And deep green eyes filled with hurt that he had placed there.

  When Cathy, his secretary, came in late that afternoon with a welcome cup of coffee, Jon told her to pass any important messages that came in for him onto his service and promised he’d pick them up later. He signed the most urgent of the letters she’d prepared from earlier dictation, and decided everything else could wait.

  Ten minutes later, he was fighting late afternoon traffic along University Avenue and Queen Street West, heading out towards the eastbound Gardiner Expressway, Highway 401, and West River.

  *

  It had been a tiring day, but somehow satisfying, although as he drove along Highway 401, the powerfully built blond man had to admit that he’d felt a pang or two at the pain he knew his actions would cause. But she deserved it, lying to him, cheating, and treating him like a nobody while pursuing her own selfish ends. She was just like the other one, the one he had to deal with later this evening.

  Chapter 6

  It was fully dark and beginning to snow again when Lauren pulled into the parking space behind her own cottage, tired and stiff from the long day and the hours of driving. However, it was a relief to be back, and she sat in the car for a few moments with the window open, breathing in the fresh, chill air redolent of the pine forests, and letting the country silence seep into her mind.

  Lauren had called in at a country store on her way home, and hefted the paper sack of groceries on one hip as she did a juggling act with purse, briefcase, newspapers, and key ring. She picked her way carefully over the icy patches and the newly fallen snow, already looking forward to lighting a log fire, drinking hot coffee, and returning to her easel. It was evidence of how tired she was that she didn’t realize the cottage door was slightly ajar until it began to swing inwards as she pressed the key into the lock.

  Suddenly shivers ran down her spine. She’d heard people talk about being so nervous that the hair stood up on the back of their necks, but never understood the meaning until this moment. While it wasn’t unusual for friends and neighbors to drop by, the ones who were welcome to come in would invariably use the back door, getting the key from under the big plant pot on the step. They would never, ever leave the front door open like this.

  Her heart pounding, Lauren slowly pushed the heavy door further open, reaching in to flick on the light switch as she did so and time seemed to stand still as she surveyed the ruin of her home. Everywhere she looked, there was destruction. Her beautiful Afghans and the hand-quilted cushions lay shredded on the floor. Paints squirted from their tubes in long worms around the floor, the walls, even the ceiling, and in some places mixed with cereals, sugar, and coffee, apparently the entire contents of her kitchen cupboards. The bed settee and her favorite armchair leaned towards each other at crazy angles; their legs smashed, stuffing hanging like internal organs from their mutilated bodies.

  Lauren suddenly realized she was holding her breath, hoping that between this heartbeat and the next the world would right itself. That her cottage would return to its usual, slightly unkempt, but comfortable state, and the terrible vision she was having would recede to being just an illusion brought on by tiredness, by too many headlights flashing in her eyes as she drove home from Toronto.

  She let out a deep breath, breathed in again. Nothing changed. With unnatural calm, she carefully placed the sack of groceries and her briefcase and purse down near the door, and walked slowly into the large studio-cum-living room. Everything was broken, smashed, defiled. Pictures torn from the walls, smashed or slashed, even, and she sobbed a little as she picked this up from the debris, the tiny picture of her parents’ wedding that she’d had framed.

  In the kitchen, the destruction was absolute. A monstrous hand had torn open cupboard doors, smashed glass inserts, and swept dishes, cups, bowls, tins, pans, jars, everything out of cupboards and onto the countertops and floor. The coffee maker hung drunkenly from its electrical cord; the broad pine planks beneath it sprinkled with a mishmash of coffee grounds and shards of glass from the smashed glass decanter.

  Lauren raised her eyes towards the stairs, but wasn’t sure she was ready to go up and view whatever horrors waited for her up there. The blood was roaring in her ears as she walked numbly over to her easel and tears beg
an to fall as she saw the great slash marks across the face and body of the bobcat she’d worked so hard to portray. Then it felt as though the beating in her chest came to a walloping stop.

  Pinned to the ear of the painted bobcat was one of Jon Rush’s business cards. Lauren felt the room spin around her. Surely even he wasn’t so angry after that last interview that he would do this? What kind of cold-blooded, vengeful monster would that make him?

  A rustling sound, and the swish of the cottage door being pushed open, made Lauren’s already overstretched nerves jump. She’d never even thought to check: what if the animal that’d created all this destruction was still here, still in the cottage, waiting for his opportunity to wreak the same havoc on her defenseless body? Lauren’s eyes scanned the floor by the easel, where her heavy worktable had been tipped over, scattering all her paints, brushes, cleaning solvents, and the set of sharp craft knives she used for scraping paint. In a swift movement, she snatched up the biggest of the knives and turned to face whoever was intruding into the cottage.

  Jon Rush stood on the doorstep, his face pale and shocked as he surveyed the devastation. In a few strides he was across the room, his arms rose to comfort her, and then he saw the knife in her raised fist.

  “Lauren?” he asked the question quiet in the heavy silence of the cottage.

  That was when Lauren realized her antique grandfather clock, probably her most prized possession, no longer filled the room with its comforting measurement of passing time. Looking beyond Jon’s tall figure to the spot beside the door where the clock normally stood, Lauren let out a small gasp of sorrow as she saw its beauty smashed, the mahogany case and etched glass door little more than shards, the brass pendulum and chain hanging out in a knot.

  Suddenly, it was all just too much. Lauren simply didn’t want to know any more about this, her mind refused to accept it and screamed for release. The world began to fade and she felt her knees buckle; strong arms caught her, swung her up and carried her towards the door. She laid her head on his solid chest, breathing in reassurance from his strength and no longer caring that she might be surrendering her life to a madman who had just destroyed her home.

  However, someone else did care.

  “What the hell is going on here? What have you done?” Paul stood in the doorway, his face blanched with shock at the sight of the devastation before him.

  Nevertheless, his wits were still about him and he concluded that he’d just caught company CEO Jon Rush in the process of ransacking his friend’s cottage and kidnapping her. Without a thought to his own safety, he blocked the doorway with his body, his fingers already pressing the 911 on the mobile cell phone in his hand.

  Lauren was vaguely aware that Paul, though tall and wiry, was nearly seventy and no match at all for Jon’s youthful vitality and strength. She was surprised, then, that she didn’t feel anxiety for her friend’s safety as Jon plowed with her in his arms, through the doorway, swiping Paul out of his way as if he had little substance at all.

  “I’m warning you; put her down!” Paul’s stentorian voice commanded and Lauren decided he was right. Struggling in the iron clasp of Jon’s arms, she, too, demanded to be put down.

  “Right away,” he conceded, swinging open the passenger door and depositing her on gently on the leather seat in the warm cab of his Jeep.

  “I’ve already alerted the police. There’s no way you can get away with this,” Paul stated, holding Jon’s eyes with his own. “Just let Lauren go and we’ll talk, maybe sort out something.”

  “There’s nothing to sort. She can’t stay here.”

  “She can’t go with you.”

  “She’s in no condition to deal with this…”

  “And she’s the cat’s mother,” Lauren interjected, knowing she probably sounded ridiculous, but tired of hearing the two men fighting about her as if she was a bone.

  “Lauren, I’ve called the police. We’ll see how he can explain this to Chief Ohmer,” Paul told her, his eyes never leaving Jon’s face. At that moment, as though they had conjured him up, they heard a blast of the police siren as Ohmer himself turned into the Haverford Castle driveway.

  Moments later, he’d surveyed the wreckage of Lauren’s home, checked that she herself was uninjured, called for scene-of-crime backup, and fixed a cold eye on Jon Rush.

  “So, Mr. Rush, how do you explain yourself?”

  “I don’t have anything to explain.” Rush’s voice was flat, authoritative.

  “Then who trashed Lauren’s place?” Ohmer asked.

  “Who else would want to, except some corporate scum?” Paul interjected, drawing a daggers-glance from the police chief.

  “Easy now…” Ohmer warned, but Lauren interjected.

  “No, Paul, finish what you were going to say. I liked the sound of it.” Lauren knew shock was making her giddy, but an attack of the giggles seemed preferable to howling at the moon and tearing her hair, which was her only other apparent option. All three men swiveled to look at her.

  “Hysterical,” Paul judged.

  “Overwrought,” Jon agreed.

  “Getting madder by the minute,” Lauren chimed in.

  “So who could hate her enough to do this?” Jon asked Paul.

  “I wouldn’t think she’s got that many enemies,” Paul replied.

  “No, but she does have an attitude,” Jon commented sagely.

  Paul burst out laughing.

  “Now, just you wait a minute. One moment you’re calling him out for ravaging my home and kidnapping me, the next you’re making jokes at my expense? What is this, the Men’s Club routine?” Lauren demanded, and both men shamefacedly lost their amusement. Chief Ohmer turned away to greet another police car with the backup personnel he’d requested.

  “Lauren, I don’t know what you believe, but I certainly did not, would not, do something like this.” Jon’s eyes held hers, but Lauren looked away.

  “Go and look at the painting on my easel—what there is left of it,” she told the two men.

  As they left, she leaned her head forwards against the chilled glass of the windscreen, fighting back the tears that threatened to overwhelm her. It had been okay to keep up the slapstick while Jon and Paul were there, somehow it had diffused the situation, and besides, she couldn’t really take seriously the concept of Jon Rush trashing her home.

  But if not him, who?

  “My business card. Pinned to the painting,” Jon said dully when he and Paul returned.

  “So you can see how I might have thought?”

  “And what do you think now?” his eyes raked at hers, searching for some kind of sign, something to suggest that she believed in him.

  A sign she found hard to give, she was simply too shaken by all the events, and she couldn’t hold his gaze.

  “I stopped off in Toronto, visited a friend to…to get some legal advice on that business with the photographs. You could easily have come straight out here and done all this, then pretended to arrive after me.” She steeled herself to look at him, then. His face was white, only the deeper whiteness around his mouth and the taut parallel lines between his eyes gave away his feelings.

  “I was in a meeting—the one you interrupted—until mid-afternoon. Then I had some work to do in the office. I have witnesses who can tell you I didn’t leave the city until less than four hours ago.”

  “I’ll want the names of those witnesses, Mr. Rush,” Ohmer had returned to join the three as they stood beside Jon’s vehicle.

  “Am I under suspicion of something?” Jon asked.

  “Right now, everyone and his brother is under suspicion as far as I’m concerned. Seems there’s been some nasty things going on around here since your company started to get involved.”

  Lauren saw Jon’s face flush with anger, but he said nothing.

  “One thing that does bother me, and that is that a company like yours must have lots of employees who’d be happy to do a favor for the boss. You wouldn’t actually have to dirty your han
ds yourself.” Ohmer said, ruminatively.

  “I won’t even grace that with a response, Chief Ohmer.” Jon replied, his eyes hard. The police chief glared at him assessingly, and then abruptly returned to business at hand.

  “There’s not much we can do here now, Lauren,” Paul said, gently touching her arm.

  “No, I want to stay, start tidying up. I’ve got to finish that picture for the exhibition.”

  A sob caught in Lauren’s throat. Even the best repair artist in the world, and she knew at least one of them, would have a hard time doing anything with the bobcat portrait, at least in time for next week’s exhibition. And even if she had the heart to start again, there simply wasn’t the time to finish a whole new work.

  “Come to our place, you can use the spare room, and get back to everything again tomorrow,” Paul urged, his eyes sad for the pain he knew she was experiencing.

  “I’ve a better idea. Come back to Toronto with me,” Jon put in quickly. “Mary would love taking care of you, and the twins would be ecstatic to have a visitor. In the morning, you can make whatever changes you need to the exhibition arrangements, and I’ll bring you back here. In the meantime, we’ll get a cleaning team in here during tomorrow morning to get started on putting everything back together.”

  “Why would I want to come to Toronto with you, Jon Rush?”

  “Yeah, that could be something like walking into the lion’s den,” Paul interceded.

  “Do you really believe that?” Jon asked. The two men stared at each other for a moment, silent messages passed between them, and then Paul rubbed his hands over his face.

  “No, I guess not. Not really. And it would be a good idea for Lauren to be away from here, at least over night. The cleaning crew’s a great idea, but I think all her friends here will pitch in, too.”

  “I wish you’d stop talking about me as if I wasn’t here,” Lauren interjected peevishly. “And why would it be better if I wasn’t here tonight?”