LEGEND

by Jude Deveraux

  Later, there was a tiny notice that Mrs. Jordan and her widowed daughter-in-law had moved to Denver, and eight and a half months after that was a notice that Mrs. Jordan had given birth to a nine-pound baby boy, who was named Cole Tarik Jordan.

  Kady went through three years of curled-up microfilmed newspapers until she found a mention of a kidnap attempt on Mrs. Ruth Jordan’s young son. The reporter, who was obviously on the side of the residents of Legend, almost brushed aside the nearly successful kidnaping as though it were justified after what Ruth had done to the people of Legend. Kady’s stomach turned as the reporter went on and on about how Ruth had had the mines blown up and how she’d thrown people out of their house into the storms (it had been summer, but that didn’t seem to matter to him). He went on to hint that Ruth had somehow brought on the attack of cholera that killed so many people who had once lived in Legend.

  Days went by while Kady searched the archives, but she could find nothing else about the Jordan family. Then in 1897, she found the article that Ruth had shown her, the one that said that a Mr. Smith had been found murdered in his home in Denver and he’d willed his entire estate to be used to build orphanages. This was the man Ruth thought Cole had killed while Kady had cooked.

  In the next year, 1898, Kady found Ruth Jordan’s obituary. It said that she was survived by one son, C. T. Jordan of New York City, but unfortunately, urgent business had prevented Mr. Jordan from attending the funeral.

  When she read that, Kady had to look away as tears came to her eyes. It didn’t look as though Ruth had had enough time to reconcile with her son before she died.

  Kady read on to find that the funeral had been “sparsely attended” and there had been some unpleasantness that had to do with something that had happened long ago.

  After Ruth’s obituary, Kady found only bits about the Jordan family. The Jordan mansion was sold through lawyers, then torn down in 1926.

  She searched the old New York directories but could find nothing on C. T. Jordan or Cole Jordan, leaving Kady to wonder what had happened to Ruth’s son who had been so full of anger.

  After the newspapers, Kady began to search the books, and there she found what she didn’t want to see. A book on ghost towns had a chapter titled, “A Town Destroyed by Hatred,” which was a highly dramatized account of Ruth’s closing of Legend. When Kady turned the page, she gasped aloud as she saw a line drawing of an emaciated, wirehaired old shrew laughing in glee as the children of Legend died of cholera. “You took away my family, now I’ll take yours” was the caption.

  Never in her life had Kady wanted to destroy a book, but she wanted to destroy that one with its lies and poison. She closed the book with such a sharp thud that the man across from her frowned.

  Now, sitting in her apartment, the sun about to rise, Kady felt at a loss as to what she should do next. As far as she could tell, her adventure in Legend was over. What she should do now is go to bed, sleep for a few hours; then tomorrow she would mail her nearly forgotten résumés and try to start a new life.

  But Kady couldn’t seem to work up the energy to walk into the bedroom, so instead, she pushed half a dozen pages of notes off the sofa and stretched out on it. She was asleep instantly.

  And the minute she closed her eyes, she began to have the dream. At first everything was the same. The veiled man was holding out his hand to her, and Kady was trying to reach it, but this time something was different. This time she seemed to be moving away from him, and she could tell by the expression in his eyes that he was angry with her.

  “Now,” he said, and for the first time Kady heard his voice. It was deep, with a strange quality to it, as though the bottom of it were filled with dried leaves.

  “You must come now,” he said. His voice seemed to be a command, but at the same time it was a plea. “If you do not come now, I cannot return.”

  With those words he disappeared in a flash, and Kady was left alone in a dry, sandy place that was eerily empty. “Where are you?” she called and began to turn around, looking for him, looking for some clue as to where to go. “How can I go to you if I don’t know where you are?” She was shouting and frantically turning about, looking for anything that would tell her where she was.

  She awoke with a start, and her face was lying in a wet place on the couch; she had been crying in her sleep. For a moment she didn’t remember the dream, but then it came back to her with all its frustration. Where was she to go? How was she to go when she had so little money? She needed to get a job, needed to get on with real life.

  On impulse she went to the wall that had once opened and made an entrance into Legend. Now it was just a wall. “Damn all of you!” she said, turning and leaning against it. “You want me to do something, but you give me no help.”

  It was at that moment that she heard Ruth Jordan’s voice inside her head. “I will give you six weeks. If you haven’t contacted my son’s descendants by then, it will be clear that you’re not going to.”

  Six weeks? Kady thought, then leaped toward the couch to find her date book and tore through the pages. Her heart was pounding so hard she could hardly think. How much time did she have left? Even if she had all the time in the world, how was she going to find Ruth’s descendants? What were their names? Where did they live?

  “Three days,” she said aloud, looking at the calendar. “I have three days left.” But where? she thought, her eyes roaming the room as though she might see something written on the wall.

  Kady looked up at the ceiling. “Damn you, Ruth Jordan! Help me! Where do I look?”

  The words were hardly out of her mouth when she again seemed to hear Ruth’s voice and what she’d said that night on the porch. “He’s in New York trying to make a life for himself. He wants no help from me, actually, he wants no contact from me.”

  “New York,” Kady said, then ran to the bedroom to pack a bag. A train could have her in the city in three hours.

  Twenty minutes later she opened the door to her apartment, overnight case in hand, and ran smack into Gregory.

  “Oh, Kady, my darling,” he said, trying his best to pull her into his arms. “You don’t know how much I’ve missed you. I forgive you for everything, and I ask that you forgive me, and I hope we can—”

  “Would you please move? I have a train to New York to catch.”

  “Train? You can’t think of leaving me. If you do, I’ll—”

  She could tell she wasn’t going to get away from him easily. “If I leave you, you’ll have even fewer customers than you’ve had this last week,” she said with satisfaction. Kady was disgusted by her own vanity, but each night she’d made sure she walked near enough to Onions to see that the street was no longer filled with customers. Hardly minutes after she walked out, some dear food critic had published the word that Kady’s Place was now just a steak house. He’d even speculated on where Kady was going to be cooking next, which could only help her find a job.

  “All right,” Gregory said with disgust, pulling away from her but completely blocking her way to the stairs. “You win. What do you want? Ten percent of the action?”

  “If you’re asking me if I want ten percent of Norman House Restaurants, the answer is no. Now, would you please get out of my way so I can leave?”

  “Fifteen percent, and that’s my final offer.”

  “Good! I refuse, so now you can move.” She tried pushing him aside, but he wouldn’t budge.

  “What is it that you want of me?” he asked, making it sound as though she were a demanding shrew.

  Kady set her suitcase down and looked him in the eye. “I don’t want anything from you. Nothing whatever. To tell you the truth, I never want to see you again.”

  “Just because we had a lovers’ quarrel is no reason to—”

  “Aaaargh,” Kady growled, then gave him a good kick in the shins that made him move to one side of the stairs, and grabbing her case, she ran down them. She was on the Metro and heading toward Union Station before he could cat
ch her.

  Chapter 20

  WHEN KADY GOT TO NEW YORK, SHE KNEW HER MEASLY SIX grand wasn’t going to last very long. Between lack of time and lack of money, she would have to hurry to find Ruth Jordan’s descendants. She took a room in a less-than-desirable hotel by Madison Square Garden and wasted a day at the library and on the telephone, calling people named Jordan. She soon found that people in New York City did not know who their great-grandmothers were and, for the most part, didn’t want to be bothered.

  By late afternoon Kady was ready to give up. She was sitting in a New York deli eating sliced turkey on a bagel, her notebook open before her, and wondering where she could look next, when she noticed the knife in the hand of the man at the table across from her. Looking down at her plate, she remembered how Cole had had knives concealed inside his clothes and how he was one of the few people she’d ever met who knew how to properly sharpen a knife.

  Idly, she picked up her pen and began to doodle, and when she had finished, she saw that she’d drawn a sword, a long-bladed, round-hilted sword that looked like something out of a pirate movie.

  As she chewed and looked at the drawing, she wondered if a love of something could be passed down through generations. Cole had loved knives. Could a relative of his also love knives and swords?

  Grabbing her sandwich, Kady ate as she went back to her hotel room and checked the Yellow Pages for antique dealers, and when she had a few addresses, she hit the streets again.

  It wasn’t until midmorning on the third day—the last day—that she had any success. She’d been given the address of a tiny shop downtown, one that reeked of money because only a serious collector could find such a place, and when she saw it, she knew that only a connoisseur would have wanted to go inside. The windows hadn’t been cleaned since the store was built many years before, and there was nothing inside the filthy display window except dead flies and layers of dirt. The glass door had been painted black, and the only indication that she was in the right place was the name Anderson in faded gold paint. Beside the door was a buzzer and a speaker.

  Without much hope that she’d meet with any success, Kady pushed the buzzer, and after several minutes the haughty voice of a man came out. “Yes?”

  Kady took a deep breath. “Mr. Jordan sent me,” she said into the speaker. When there were no questions asked and no hesitation before she was buzzed inside, Kady could only stand there and stare in astonishment at the door for precious seconds before pushing it open.

  Inside the tiny shop the dirty walls were covered with swords, the kind found only in museums: curved blades, thin blades, rusty and pitted blades, some looking pristine new, some as though they’d been buried for centuries. Glass cases were filled with knives of every size, with handles of every conceivable substance. Looking about in wonder, Kady could only gape.

  “And what is Mr. Jordan looking for today?” said a man from behind her. Turning, Kady saw an older man, tall and thin, gray at the temples; he had a look on his face that let a person know that he was the best in his field. He was as perfectly groomed as the store was ungroomed.

  “Actually, I was thinking of a gift.”

  At that the tiniest smile crossed the man’s face as he looked down at Kady’s very ordinary and very inexpensive clothes. She was aware that there were no price tags dangling from the swords. “I think you should look in Bloomingdale’s, a nice tie perhaps.” Pointedly, he glanced at the door.

  Wildly, Kady searched her mind for something to prevent his throwing her out. “I was trying to get an idea of what Cole liked, and I—” Kady had no idea what she said, but something had certainly piqued the man’s interest, because, for a flash of a second, his eyebrows nearly hit his hairline.

  “I see,” he said as he tried to get his face back under control, but before he could say anything, there was a commotion in the back of the store, and she heard a door opening and closing. “If you’ll excuse me,” the man said, then disappeared into the back, leaving Kady alone to wander about. But she was more interested in what was happening in the back of the store than in the swords, for there was a great deal of furious whispering going on.

  Minutes later a handsome, young blond man came into the store from the back, his arms full of packages, looked at Kady for a moment, then whispered, “He’ll do anything to find out what the T stands for,” then disappeared again into the back.

  For several stunned minutes, Kady didn’t understand what the young man was talking about, but then she almost swooned with happiness. She had just found Ruth’s descendant, Mr. C. T. Jordan. Now all she had to do was trade her information for the proprietor’s, for she full well knew what the T stood for.

  Fifteen minutes later she left the store with an address clutched in her hand and a smile on her face.

  Chapter 21

  “I HAVE TOLD YOU SEVERAL TIMES,” THE RECEPTIONIST SAID sternly, “Mr. Jordan sees no one without an appointment.”

  “But you don’t understand, I must see him today. This is the last day!” Twice now Kady had tried to explain why she had to see Mr. Jordan this day, but what could she say? That his great-great-grandmother who had been dead for ninety-eight years had told her she had only six weeks in which to contact a man who had yet to be born? Even when she said that this was the last day, it carried no weight because she couldn’t answer the question, Last day of what?

  When the woman only glared at Kady, she went back to her seat in the elegant waiting room, where she had been sitting for the last hour and a half.

  During the past hours she had not only been unable to break through the receptionist’s reserve, but she’d been unable to pry any information from her. The office of C. T. Jordan was the entire top floor of an expensive marble-clad building, and when she’d entered the ground floor and told the guard whom she wanted to see, he had laughed at her. Thinking as quickly as she could, she showed him the sword dealer’s card. Thankfully, the guard made a call, and Kady had been allowed into the private elevator that took her to the top floor.

  But here she’d met opposition in the form of a large, humorless woman who at first wanted to have Kady physically thrown out. But a telephone had rung, she’d picked it up, listened, put it down, then told Kady she could not see Mr. Jordan. It had taken Kady a moment to realize what was different in her tone: the woman was no longer saying Kady was going to be dragged from the room by guards. She could remain on the premises, but could not see C. T. Jordan.

  “I’ll stay here and wait,” Kady said tentatively, but the woman had merely shrugged her shoulders in dismissal, then turned away.

  As Kady sat there for the next ninety minutes, she was more confused than ever. Why was she being allowed to stay? Was someone checking with the sword dealer before having her pulled screaming from the room? And why wouldn’t the receptionist answer any of Kady’s questions, such as what Mr. Jordan was like, what his company did, did the man have a family? But the woman had told Kady that she had no intention of gossiping about her employer. Her attitude said she could not understand why such a poorly dressed young woman was being allowed to stay in this place.

  On impulse, Kady took a piece of notepaper from an antique desk in a corner of the room and wrote a note.

  Dear Mr. Jordan,

  You do not know me, but I would like to talk to you about your grandmother Ruth and what happened in Legend.

  Below this she wrote her New York hotel address, then folded the note and, with pleading eyes, asked the receptionist to please see that Mr. Jordan received it. “He will be very angry if you don’t,” she said as ominously as she could manage. This seemed to do the trick, for the woman took the note and left the room.

  When Kady turned back, she saw there was a man now sitting in the waiting room, a briefcase open on his lap, and when he looked up and saw Kady, she could tell he was interested in her. A few weeks ago Jane had said that Kady had become a shameless flirt, so maybe she could use a little bit of what she’d learned in Legend to her advantage.


  Kady took a seat across from the man. “Applying for a job?” she asked in wide-eyed innocence.

  He gave Kady one of those up and down looks, and what he saw seemed to please him, because he smiled a bit and nodded his head.

  Kady gave a sigh that was meant to say she was glad to have a friend. “I’m applying for a job, too. Maybe if you get your job, I’ll be your secretary,” she said as she fluttered her lashes and leaned a bit toward him. “You must know what he’s like. C. T. Jordan, I mean.”

  The man took the bait. He gave a very macho stretch, then put on his wise look. “Private. Jordan is a very private man. Rarely seen in public.”

  “The agency sent me over here, and I don’t even know what this company does.”

  “Buys and sells. Owns things, you know, like states of the union, that sort of thing.”

  Kady’s mouth made a round little . “My goodness, is he rich?”

  “You don’t read Forbes magazine, do you?” the man said, chuckling.

  “I’m more of a Cook’s Illustrated type.”

  “Let’s just say that the elusive Mr. Jordan is a very wealthy man.”

  “My goodness! You don’t say! And how does one get in to meet him?”

  “By invitation only. No one knows when he’s here or when he’s not. He deals with only a few men who have worked for him for years—and his private secretary of course.”

  At that moment the receptionist returned, gave Kady yet another hostile glance, then told the man Mr. Caulden was ready to see him. After the man left the waiting room, the receptionist turned to Kady with a smug little smile. “Mr. Jordan has gone home for the day, so he won’t be able to see you.”

  Kady’s heart seemed to drop to her feet. “You gave him my message?”

  “Yes, he says he knows no Ruth Jordan and has never heard of Legend, Colorado.”

  Well, that’s that, Kady thought, then asked if she could use the rest room, and even at that the receptionist was reluctant. “Would you give me a break?” Kady snapped, making the woman look the tiniest bit guilty as she pointed the way down the hall.