Dreaming In Color

by Charlotte Vale-Allen

  "Never," he said, making a show of rubbing his injured arm. "I mean it. I usually get to the end of your books and heave a contented sigh, very pleased with the way you've tied everything up. I take it you were thinking of going with something downbeat?"

  "Well, it seemed to me I'd have to. Deborah did die."

  "True. But you're not writing a biography, are you?"

  "No. Which is why I'm no longer offended." That much was true. She was no longer bothered by Bobby's suggestion. Now she was simply bothered by Bobby. "To be honest, I think the idea made me mad because I was opting for the easy way out. It's infinitely easier to write a book with three characters than it is one with, say, eight. The thing of it is, Charlie, I'm basically lazy." I'm also a fraud, she thought, feeling another twinge of guilt. Why hadn't she left things alone? She'd manipulated Bobby, encouraged her to reveal her past, and then felt something akin to loathing for having been made to view scenarios that sickened her. Again she saw that image of Bobby on her hands and knees.

  "You, cupcake?" He feigned surprise with lifted eyebrows and widened eyes.

  "Don't mock me," she warned, on emotional thin ice. One small push and she might blurt out the sorry details of what she'd done. And she despaired of reducing herself in Charlie's estimation.

  "I'm not," he said, letting his face relax. "I think we're all basically lazy, if the truth be known. The temptation is always to take the easiest route. But those of us with conscience usually choose to go plodding down the more convoluted trail because we know we won't be able to live with ourselves if we don't. It's like prescribing medication for the superficial symptoms instead of digging deeper to find the actual source of the problem. Digging deeper takes more time, more thought, more care. It's the responsible way to go, but that doesn't mean the instinct isn't there to throw it all off by writing out a scrip. A hell of a lot of doctors do. Personally, I can't. And neither can you. It's why you're a good writer."

  "You amaze me," she said, sitting up to look directly at him. "You actually understand what I'm talking about." Was she expecting too much of herself? she wondered. How was someone supposed to react to horror stories? Why did she have the idea that she should, somehow, have been able to absorb the things Bobby told her without feeling any measure of revulsion?

  "Sure," he said with a shrug. "It's part and parcel of the old work ethic. You and I have that in common. It's one of the reasons why I like you, cupcake. You're a plodder, like me."

  "That's one way to put it, I suppose," she said, still looking at him closely. Alma was daily becoming more attached to Bobby and Penny. There was no likelihood of their leaving in the near future. How was she going to resolve this? What kind of person was she, anyway? Forty-three years old and she'd gone along thinking she knew herself well. Now she wasn't sure she knew herself at all.

  "All right," he amended. "How about diligent?"

  "Better," she said. "It sounds nicer than the other. The mental image of a plodder is someone acutely overweight waddling across the road on a yellow light." God! She was actually playing out the role of Eva Rule here, hoping to do a good-enough job so that Charlie wouldn't notice the understudy was on tonight. This was terrible.

  He laughed and tightened his arm around her shoulders. "Definitely not you, Eva. Aside from everything else, you don't have an ounce of excess fat."

  "What say we finish our drinks in the bedroom?" she said, leaning in to kiss the corner of his mouth. She'd take her clothes off and allow Charlie's body to close down her brain. Her flesh at least was still honest.

  "That's one of the other things I like about you," he said, taking her by the hand.

  "What did you do," she asked as they got up from the sofa, "make a list or something?"

  "Or something," he said with a grin. "It's what we diligent types tend to do."

  "You really do love me, don't you, Charlie?" she asked, wondering for the first time how he saw her. She was actually losing her confidence. Was this going to be the penalty for what she'd done to Bobby? But what had she done to the woman? Nothing, in fact. It was all in her head. In her head and crowding out rational thought.

  "Uh-hunh."

  She was very lucky, she decided, breathing in the enticing scent of his Obsession. He wasn't about to judge her the way she'd so harshly judged Bobby. If her luck held, perhaps he never would. And perhaps in another day or two she'd get past those appalling mental images. "I love you too," she said, and wrapped her arms around him, telling herself she wasn't a bad person. But she wasn't a nice person, either. Not nice at all.

  Twenty-Eight

  It was completely dark by the time Helen Chandler went out to her car, which was parked at the side of the Ford dealership. It was bitingly cold but the sky was very clear, although snow was forecast. She was thinking about Bobby and Pen as she pulled out into the traffic, on her way to the supermarket, trying to decide what to get them for Christmas. The previous two years she'd bought Pen books, but she was no longer up-to-date on what Pen was reading and hated the idea of duplicating something she might already have. If Bobby had given her a phone number, she could have called to ask. But all she had was the address. Before Bobby's last call, she'd tried to get the number from information and had been told it was unpublished. And she'd forgotten to ask for it, so pleased had she been to hear Pen's darling voice. Next time Bobby called, Helen intended to get the number. She wanted to be able to check in from time to time and not have to wait for Bobby to get in touch with her.

  She decided she'd get Pen a cute little outfit to wear and maybe some coloring books and crayons. And there was a sweater she'd seen at the mall, pale pink with a lace Peter Pan collar, that'd look good on Bobby; pink had always been a good color for her. As a teenager, Helen had been responsible for buying Bobby's clothes, and she'd enjoyed it, sometimes pretending Bobby was her child and not Susan's. Getting pregnant and leaving the baby on their hands was so typical of Susan. Helen was only surprised she hadn't turned up again with another child for them to raise. But aside from a postcard from Arizona that arrived when Bobby was about six months old, they'd never heard from Susan again. For all anyone knew, she was long dead. Which, so far as Bobby's well-being as a child was concerned, was probably for the best. Susan had been far too self-centered ever to have made an even halfway decent parent. Still, now and then Helen couldn't help wondering what had become of her older sister.

  She made the trip to the market a quick one, picking up a package of center-cut loin pork chops, potatoes, some frozen broccoli, and a Sara Lee cherry cheesecake. She'd do a real shop on the weekend, but right now she was anxious to get home after a long day's work, have something to eat, and curl up on the sofa in front of the TV.

  The potatoes were on the boil, the broccoli was in the steamer, and the chops were baking in a pan with about a quarter inch of orange juice. The aroma of the spitting chops and the warmth of the oven gave her the same cozy sense of well-being she felt every evening as she prepared herself for a few hours of relaxation. She'd never cared much for cooking but had promised herself she wouldn't be one of those people who ate out of cans or took all their meals at restaurants. So she fixed herself a decent supper each night of the week. She thought of this time as her reward for the eight hours she put in Monday to Friday, and the four hours on Saturday, at the dealership. It wasn't the best job she'd ever had but it was far from the worst. And she did get a new car, free, every year and free servicing, to boot.

  She was just setting the table in the kitchen when the cellar door burst open and there was Joe, inside the house, with a gun in his hand and a chilling smile on his face.

  It happened so quickly she had no time to react. She was so shocked— her heart pounding frantically from the noise, the surprise—that for a few precious seconds she was frozen in place, trying to comprehend how he'd managed to get into the house. Had he been hiding in the cellar for hours waiting for her to get home? The front door had been properly locked. But she hadn't checked the bac
k door, and was stupidly tempted now to turn and see if she'd left it off the latch. How did he get in? she kept asking herself, frightened but determined not to show it.

  She turned automatically and put a hand out to the telephone, but he shot across the room, grabbed hold of the back of her sweater, and jammed the gun into her neck, saying, "Tell me where she is."

  "Get your hands off me!" she demanded, trying to set free herself. "I don't know where she is, and even if I did, you'd be the last person I'd tell." Even as she spoke she was still trying to figure out how he'd gained entry to the house. Had she left the back door open? She didn't think she had. In fact, she now recalled taking out the garbage that morning and making sure the door was locked when she came back in. Which meant he'd found some other way to get in, maybe through one of the cellar windows. "How did you get in here?" she asked, knowing even as the words came out of her mouth that she was being stupid. It no longer mattered how he'd got in. He was in, and he had a gun to her neck.

  He punched her between the shoulder blades, saying, "Don't give me any shit. I'm not in the mood. Tell me where she is!"

  "I don't know, and I want you out of my house this instant!" she said, but her voice shook so the words emerged sounding feeble. Whatever authority she possessed had vanished. Strings of commands shunted around inside her head, but everything she tried to say to him came across as scarcely more than a whisper.

  "Just what I figured you'd say," he barked, and shoved her in the chest with his free hand. "You're gonna tell me where she is," he insisted, eyes glittering with intent. “You are gonna tell me."

  She looked at the pot of potatoes on the burner and thought if she could get close enough to reach it she'd throw it at him, but he backed her into the refrigerator, put his face close to hers, and smiled. "You're gonna tell me," he said again, so close she could see the tobacco stains on his teeth, could smell oil and some kind of solvent on his soiled work clothes. He put a hand over her throat, keeping her pinned to the refrigerator, and said, "I had this dream about you, Auntie Helen." He made the words Auntie Helen sound snide. "I dreamed I tied your hands good and tight behind your back. Then I took a big darning needle and some thread and I sewed your fucking lips shut." He made a pinching motion with his thumb and forefinger and she flinched, desperate to get away from him but there was nowhere to go. He had her right up against the refrigerator and was standing no more than six inches away. "Then," he went on, obviously enjoying himself, "I sewed your eyelids together." Again, he made the pinching gesture, this time directly in front of her eyes. "After that"—he grinned—"I put the needle right through here"—he held the gun to her nose—"and sewed your fucking nostrils shut." His smile widened. "And you know what I did then?" He waited, as if expecting her to answer. When she didn't, he tapped her under the chin with the gun and said, "Then, Auntie Helen, I sat down and had a smoke while I watched you suffocate. You put up a damned good fight," he said, as if describing something that had actually happened. "I'll give you that," he said. "You fought like a bastard. I got off on it. I sat there and jacked off while I watched you croak, came so hard it felt like my spine cracked." He laughed at the look of disgust on her face. "I might even do it, just for the hell of it, if you don't tell me where she is." He pulled back the hammer, dropped his hand, and pressed the barrel into her thigh. "Give me the address," he said, "or the first bullet goes right in here."

  She believed him. He was crazy. She'd always known it. But she'd never been able to get Bobby to see it. Time and again during the months Bobby was dating him after poor Dad died, she'd sat her down and tried to get her to see she was making a terrible mistake. But Bobby had been dazzled, and dazed, too, still grieving for her grandfather. She'd needed to be taking care of someone, and she believed Joe was that person. Nothing Helen could say would persuade Bobby that she was too young and too inexperienced to be getting married at all, let alone to a man as clearly disturbed as Joe Salton. There'd been no satisfaction for Helen in learning she'd been right. And Bobby, having given her word and committed herself to the marriage, couldn't or wouldn't admit she'd been wrong. "He needs me," she'd said dozens of times, but with an expression that indicated she was attempting to convince herself and not Helen. She'd come to the house with all manner of injuries—blackened eyes, puffy split lips, a broken nose, broken ribs, broken fingers, cuts and bruises, even a concussion—and Helen had begged her to leave him, but Bobby had wound up going back to Joe every time. The bastard had managed to convince poor Bobby that she was too inept, too defective in every way to cope on her own.

  It had taken her far too long, but Bobby had finally escaped, and now this demented thug was going to go after her. Helen couldn't think of any way to get rid of him, or to gain a few seconds to call the police. All she could think to do was stall him. "The address is in my purse," she said. "In the bedroom." She thought she might somehow distract him, then she'd get to the extension upstairs and call 911.

  "Okay," he said. "Let's go get it." He fastened his hand to her upper arm and marched her down the hall and up the stairs to her room. "So where is it?" he asked, looking around. "You jerking me around, Auntie Helen?"

  "I forgot," she said, eyeing the extension on the bedside table, knowing there was no way she could get to it. She felt foolish, incompetent, unable to outwit him despite her superior intelligence. It was because, she told herself, she lacked criminal instincts; because, with the exception of this despicable hoodlum, all the people she knew were decent, law-abiding citizens. No one was equipped to deal with a creature like Joe. He was an aberration, an abomination, the epitome of everything she abhorred.

  "You forgot?" he repeated, eyes narrowing. "Don't play fucking games with me, bitch!" He backhanded her across the face, hard.

  She wanted to kill him. It frightened her to feel such hatred. It was like bile rising into her throat. And it was compounded by outrage at her helplessness. She had no means of defending herself. She'd never conceived of a situation remotely like this, had never understood until this moment what it felt like to be utterly defenseless. And suddenly she knew how Bobby had felt being married to this man. It was an appalling sensation of being completely inconsequential, of no value or significance whatsoever, of being less than nothing.

  "You think I'm playing some fucking game here?" he ranted, grabbing her by the hair and giving her head a fierce yank so that tears sprang to her eyes. "This is no fucking GAME!" He kicked her with his work-booted foot in the shin.

  Pain shot up her leg and her stomach contracted. Instinctively, she reached down to rub her injured shin, but he shrieked, "Don't you move! You so much as twitch, and I'll get me a fucking needle and some thread and start sewing your goddamned face up. Now where's the purse?" he demanded, giving her hair another yank.

  "In the kitchen," she whispered, trying not to be sick. This was what he'd done to Bobby. How had she survived eight years of this? Poor, foolish, nineteen-year-old Bobby, thinking this animal needed anyone.

  "If it's not," he warned, "I'm gonna start shooting you. First one goes here"—again he rammed the gun into her thigh—"and the next one's going here." He stabbed the gun barrel into her upper arm. Another pain radiated upward into her shoulder, down to her fingers.

  "It's there," she whispered, hating herself for being so afraid, for being so at his mercy. It was degrading, shameful. He made her feel defective for being smaller and weaker than he was. But he was crazy. How did you protect yourself from someone who was crazy?

  He prodded her with the gun to get her moving back down the stairs. "It better be there," he warned, jabbing her again and again with the gun— minor jolts of additional fear, localized pain.

  "It's there." She'd call the police the moment he left, get them to warn Bobby in Connecticut, get them to protect her and Pen. He'd be locked up; they'd never let him out. She wanted him put away somewhere for good.

  In the kitchen he said, "Get me that fucking address now!" and punched her between the shoulder blad
es. "NOW!"

  Defeated and terrified and angry, she got her purse from the back of the door, opened her wallet, and took out the folded piece of paper on which she'd written Bobby's address. "There!" she said, overcome by the sick sense that she was betraying the niece she'd so often pretended was her own child. "Take it and get the hell out of here." She'd never hated anyone, she realized. The animosity she'd felt upon occasion toward some salesgirl who'd been rude or one of the employees at the dealership who'd come into her office insisting she'd screwed up the deductions had been nothing compared to the twisting inner spasm of loathing she felt for this monster who'd somehow managed to get inside her home. She looked at the gun, wishing she could get hold of it. She'd kill him without hesitation. She wanted him dead.

  He snatched up the paper, and, while he was looking at it, she took advantage of those few seconds when his attention was elsewhere to spring across the room and reach for the receiver on the wall phone. There was an ear-shattering roar of sound that bounced off the walls and ceiling of the small kitchen, and a searing bolt of pain as a bullet penetrated the back of her leg, spun her around, and threw her against the counter. The leg wouldn't support her and she slithered to the floor in disbelief, her upper body coming to rest against the cabinet under the sink.

  This was what it felt like to be shot, she thought, watching him, knowing there was nothing she could do to stop him. He was going to kill her and she couldn't do a thing to prevent it. All she could do was pray one of the neighbors had heard the shot and was at that moment picking up the phone to call the police. Dear God, she was going to die and it wasn't supposed to be this way. She was supposed to have another thirty or even forty years before she died. She was only forty-four. She'd never suffered anything worse than the flu in her entire life, and now she was going to die. This couldn't be the way her life was going to end. It couldn't. She didn't want to believe it. But it was happening. This madman was going to take her life away.