As they reached the bottom of the steps, Mark spied Maria’s shoes, half hidden under the shrub.
“Looks like someone forgot her shoes.”
Karen shook her head. “They belong to Peter Watson’s fiancée.” She told Mark what had happened.
“What a pig. Of course, if anyone was going to act like that, it would be Peter.”
He held Karen’s hand as they walked through the garden.
“I had a good time, Mark. I’m sorry I was late and that I came dressed as…as I did. I should have run out to buy a dress like Maria did. I never thought of it.”
It would have been the first thing that her mother would have thought of doing.
“Nonsense. You look terrific.” His eyes focused on her, a strange, faraway look on his face. “I would be happy to see you if you were not wearing anything.”
“I’ll bet you would.”
Mark’s face turned deep red, and Karen laughed.
“I mean…”
Karen laughed again and squeezed his hand. “I know what you meant. Thank you. I’ll see you later?”
“You’ll see me now. I said I would walk you back to the museum.”
“That was just an excuse,” Karen protested. “You need not come all that way.”
“You think I lied to Dean Williams?” He raised one eyebrow.
“No…well…”
“I want to walk you back,” Mark said firmly. “Shall we go?” He took her hand and they walked through the garden.
“Did you know that the President’s Residence is a national historical landmark?” Mark asked.
“I did see a plaque on the gate.” Karen nodded. “How old is the house.”
“It was built in the eighteenth century, seventeen seventy, I think. It was the parsonage for Saint Phillip’s Church.”
“When did it become part of the college?”
“That, I don’t know…It’s beautiful, though, isn’t it?”
“It really is…Some of the departments have offices in houses near here. How does the math department rate space in a classroom building?” Karen teased.
“We’re special.”
They walked for almost twenty minutes.
“Here we are.” Karen stopped outside the museum. Thank you for walking me back. I did enjoy the reception, but we have so much work to do…”
“Do you need help?” Mark asked. “I’ll be happy to pitch in. I’ve admitted to knowing nothing about art, but I can lift and carry.”
“We could use the help. But it would be…grunt work I think they call it.” Karen smiled. “You don’t mind?”
An hour later, as Karen moved through the Great Hall, distributing bottles of water to the staff, the metallic creak of a heavy door straining to open caught her attention. Turning to look, she spied Mark as he held the door open while Tom Calvert, one of the other curators, pushed a cart loaded with a six-by-four-foot canvas from one of the storage rooms. The canvas was covered with sets of red and blue lines converging on clusters of bright gold circles. The cart was built to move smaller loads and the wheels would periodically lock or flip to the side, causing the cart to tip, nearly sending the painting crashing to the floor.
Mark had removed his coat and tie. His shirt sleeves were rolled up to his elbows and perspiration ran down his face.
Karen watched as Mark swept debris out of the way as Tom maneuvered the cart across the hall, finally reaching their destination on the far side and positioning the cart near an empty space on the wall.
“Let me make sure we’re in the right place.” Tom reached for a clipboard. “I have a diagram right here…Leading Lines,” he read aloud, glancing at the painting, shaking his head. “I suppose…I’m more a fan of the impressionists,” he said.
“Me, too,” Mark said.
Karen chuckled quietly. Not wanting to disturb them, she stood back as Tom hoisted the painting up, securing it to the wall. Mark looked awkward standing by. Not because he didn’t want to be there she supposed, but more because he likely wanted to do more. Thankfully he understood it was simply a matter of liability, not that she didn’t appreciate his offer to help.
“Very good.” Karen clapped. Mark and Tom looked up, obviously surprised they had an audience. They both bowed.
“Have some water.” Karen said, plucking two bottles from the box she had rested on a small table.
“How’s it going,” she asked Mark as Tom pushed the cart back to storage.
“Fine. No problem.” He took a deep breath and stretched. “Tom tells me he has a master’s degree in art history. Is body building part of the curriculum?”
Karen laughed. “They neglect to tell you that moving furniture will be part of your job description…You sure you’re all right?”
Mark nodded. “I’m fine…It’s getting late, though. I need to make a call.”
“If you need to be somewhere…”
Mark shook his head. “No, I just need to call someone.” He stepped away as he pulled his cell phone from his pocket.
An hour later, Vicky’s voice carried through the building, calling everyone to the lobby, announcing that supper had arrived.
The staff clustered around a long work table covered with a cloth. Containers of food were set out, and Karen recognized the food from the reception.
Vicky rapped on the table. “The president of the college hosted a reception at his home this afternoon.” She pointed to the plates and bowls that covered the table. “They had a lot left over and when the president heard we were working late, he graciously passed some of it our way. Now, the crab soup has my name on it but, otherwise, let’s eat,” she exclaimed.
It was late when Mark walked Karen home. She clung to his arm as they strolled, as if she feared she would lose him if he strayed.
“It was so nice of you to arrange for dinner. People were so appreciative. And impressed,” Karen hugged him
“I’m happy I could do it.”
They walked the final block in silence, not stopping until they had climbed the stairs and stood outside of Karen’s apartment.
Mark put his arms around her.
“I couldn’t believe you made it to the reception this afternoon. Vicky told me you came in to work two hours early. You must be exhausted.” He smiled. “I’ll find a way to make it up to you.”
“It wasn’t a problem.” Karen waved her hand dismissively. “I wanted to come. I wanted to see you.”
“Thank you.” He kissed her. “I’ll be there tomorrow afternoon when you preview the exhibit for your board members.”
“It will all be ready by then. You can see what all of your hard work accomplished,” Karen said. “You can meet the board.”
Mark kissed her again. “I’ll be there because I want to see you.”
Finding Lucia
Mark was whistling as he passed his car and headed toward the front door.
“Mark? Is that you?” His parents had placed rocking chairs on the porch running the length of the side of their house, a common feature of old Charleston double houses, and his mother enjoyed sitting outside in the summer when the evenings often were cool, no matter how hot it had been during the day.
“Mom, what are you doing up this late?”
“I couldn’t sleep and I decided a dish of ice cream might help me doze off. You are whistling. I haven’t heard you whistle in ages.”
Mark smiled. “Just happy, I guess.” He looked out toward the street. “The president hosted a reception at his house this afternoon. Karen managed to get away from the museum for a while, showing up unexpectedly…I was pleased.”
“She makes you happy.”
Mark nodded. “She does, Mom. She makes me happy.”
“I felt certain you would like her. From the beginning. I interviewed her before you dated, if you recall.”
“How would I forget that, Mom?”
“And you thought I was a crazy, meddling, old woman.”
“I never thought you were old.�
�
They both laughed.
His mother placed her dish on the table and peered at him.
“You’re in love.”
Mark slowly shook his head. “I’m not in love. I renounced love a long time ago. Karen and I have agreed we are very good friends.”
His mother sat back, visibly tense, taking her “debate stance,” as Mark called it, apparently ready to argue the point. Then she relaxed.
“You can do much worse than marrying a really good friend.”
“Very true.” Mark nodded. “I need to go. Enjoy your ice cream.”
He walked across the yard to his house. He and his friend, Brad Thomas, planned a photography outing the next evening, going out to the beach just before sunset, taking photographs of the setting sun over the marsh to the west, and the stars as they began to twinkle over the ocean, in the east. He went to his office to make sure he was packed, ready to go.
The last time he had uploaded photographs, he had corrupted the memory card from his camera, and he needed to replace it. Reaching for his backpack, he found the plastic bag containing extra cards, choosing one with a large memory, snapping it into the camera, and flipping the ON switch.
Strange, he thought, looking at the display on the back. He made it a habit to erase his pictures after uploading them, but the card was not empty.
He heard the grandfather clock strike midnight. He would just glance through the images to see what was on the card. He plugged his camera into the computer and clicked UPLOAD. Images he had taken during the basketball game the previous January began to flash across the screen.
He remembered. He had taken the card to the newspaper’s office and they had copied it. Arriving home late, he had put the camera aside, planning to view his images later, but he’d never found the time, so he had inserted a new card the next time he used the camera.
He found he had taken one hundred twenty-five pictures during the game, and he chuckled. That many in one hour of play. He often lost count once he began to shoot.
“I’ll just look through them quickly,” he said to himself.
He flipped through all hundred twenty-five pictures, identifying twelve he thought might be good enough to print, tagging them to look at in more detail.
Not bad. A photography teacher had once told him that in the old days of film cameras, one usable image from a roll of thirty-six frames was considered typical by photographers at National Geographic Magazine. He had many more than that.
Of course, his definition of “good” and National Geographic’s definition of “good” might be a bit different. He chuckled as he glanced at his watch. Just another fifteen minutes, then off to bed.
He opened one of the twelve images and enlarged it to check for sharpness. One of players for the military college had stolen the ball, raced down the court, stopped several feet from the basket, and pumped the ball up and in for two points. The image captured the player as his feet left the floor and the ball left his hand. The arc toward the basket was obvious.
“Nailed it,” he whispered as he found the basket to be tack sharp, with just enough blur on the ball and the player to indicate they were in motion.
He glanced at the background. He had been under the basket, so he could see spectators in the background, on their feet, screaming. The background was blurred and did not distract attention from the action, but he did recognize a few of the people. One of the professors in his department was sitting—standing during the photograph—on the back row. Spotting Richard and Karen, his eyes cut away, not lingering on the image of her with someone else, but they were drawn back to a blurry figure on Karen’s right, a few rows behind.
Who is that?
Lucia?
He shook his head to clear his mind. Too often he had thought he had seen Lucia walking along King Street, or mingling with the crowd at the old market, or, once, walking down the side aisle at church. On one occasion, he had approached a woman lying on the beach, getting within ten feet of her before realizing she was not Lucia.
Perhaps his mother’s comment about his whistling had jogged his memory. He often whistled when he was happy. He had frequently whistled when he was with Lucia.
Surely that was the case now. It was merely a subliminal suggestion…and now he was seeing her face in a photograph. Purely a trick of the mind.
Still…Since the spectators were blurred, and the woman’s head was turned, he could not be certain. Lucia had been stick-thin, and this woman’s body seemed larger than he remembered, so maybe she was simply a look-alike.
He studied the image. He couldn’t shake the thought. How could he be sure?
He recalled he had taken several shots of the spectators. In one of those, he had been attempting to isolate a little girl who was calmly licking her ice cream cone while all of those around her had been on their feet, waving their arms, and screaming madly. It would have been a cute image, but on his first attempt, he had misjudged the focus so the little girl was fuzzy while the spectators around her were perfectly sharp.
If he could find that picture, he might have a clear image of the woman.
He moved a slider at the bottom of the screen to display five images at once and he returned to the first photographs, scrolling quickly through the entire set, searching for the picture but not finding it. He repeated the process a second time, scrolling slowly, banging his hand against his desk in frustration as he came up empty again.
He had to find the picture. It suddenly seemed vital that he find out, that he know if the woman was Lucia.
Mark closed his eyes, and took several deep breaths, feeling a vein throbbing in his neck. It’s here, he told himself. He felt positive the picture was on his computer. He’d seen it as he had looked through the file the first time, almost deleting it because the little girl had been blurred, but leaving it—he felt certain he had left it—anxious to move on, to see the other images, and not wanting the distraction of deleting it.
Calmer, he moved the slider again, displaying a single picture at a time, and he forced himself to page through the photographs slowly, inspecting each one, rather than scrolling through them quickly. He looked through half of the pictures before locating the one he wanted. He enlarged the photograph, examining it carefully. He easily located the woman, she was standing beside the little girl, and he enlarged the image even more.
It looked like Lucia, but he had a three-quarter view of her face and it was too full, chubby, almost. Lucia had never been chubby.
Why would Lucia be back in Charleston? Mark felt his stomach churning. He stood and paced across the room, looking through the window as if he might see Lucia standing in the yard beside his parents’ house. He walked back to his desk, massaging his neck. His eye fell on a photograph of Karen, but he looked quickly away.
He had been Lucia’s sole tie to the city, so she had no reason to have returned, but if the woman was her, then surely she was living nearby. If she were visiting or passing through, then a ball game at the military college would hardly have made her list of things to do on a Saturday night. And who was the little girl?
As he studied the picture, yet again, he growled as he noticed, for the first time, Doug Mason, once his best friend, standing on the other side of the girl. He had been so intent on identifying the woman he had not noticed Doug
“Piece of scum,” he growled as he stared at his picture. Both of Doug’s fists were raised above his head in a gesture of triumph. Mark could almost hear the scream emanating from his mouth, and for a moment, he took Doug’s celebration personally, as if he had been shouting at Mark, rather than cheering for his team. Mark shut down the program.
He googled Lucia’s name, finding old photographs, but nothing in the last four years. He searched Facebook and Instagram. He entered her Twitter handle.
Lucia’s most recent Facebook posts included photographs of their anniversary dinner a week before they’d broken up. He found a photograph of them sharing a kiss, taken by a willing waite
r, and he snarled at her deception. Lucia’s old email address resulted in a response from the postmaster, telling him the address could not be found. Her other accounts were gone, deleted. It was as if Lucia McClelland had ceased to exist.
***
Common knowledge taught it was not possible to disappear. No matter where you went, no matter what you did, you could be located. Credit cards, email, downloads, all left a trail. Even should you assume a new name, someone who knew your habits, your interests, your favorite magazines, your hobbies, could ultimately run you to ground. Should you die, even then there would be a record.
Mark’s problem was that he had no idea how to find Lucia’s trail, much less follow it.
The department’s secretary, Jennifer Hunt, had once worked for an investigator at the McIntosh Law Firm, so Mark stopped at her office after his early class the next morning. Even if she had only assisted the investigator, surely she had developed some of the skills required to locate a missing person.
Even with a second cup of coffee beside his lectern, Mark had sleepwalked though his early class. Not waiting for questions, he’d gone directly to Jennifer’s office, and as he waited for her to arrive, he stood at a window, idly watching a group of joggers trying to navigate the crowded sidewalk.
He had not even approached bed the night before, sitting in his chair beside the window, unable to erase the image of the woman from his mind. Of course, she was Lucia. Doug Mason’s presence, and he had no doubt Doug Mason was the man in the photograph, confirmed it.
Time after time, he had replayed in his mind the last time he’d seen Lucia, the night he’d thrown her out of his apartment.
Mark whistled as he hurried home. He’d spent the entire day at the library, completing the literature review for his doctoral dissertation. He had finished early, and he smiled as he took the steps to his apartment two at a time, expecting to surprise Lucia in the kitchen when he reached home.
Lucia always cooked dinner for the two of them on Wednesdays and she had been bragging about the fish chowder she was planning to prepare tonight. It was made, she had told him, using an old family recipe, and she had finally persuaded her mother to write the instructions and to send her a copy. Lucia was Scottish, and the recipe, sent by snail mail, had finally arrived a week ago.
Just Three Dates Page 23