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The Man from Shadow Valley Page 2
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Without a word, she turned and headed for the kitchen to give the order to the cook. Normally, good manners would have dictated another pleasant smile flashed at the customer, but in the presence of this man, Ellen didn’t trust her own reflexes. It was like coming face-to-face with a phantom!
He wasn’t a trucker because his entry wasn’t preceded by the sound of a big truck engine roaring in. He must be someone just traveling through. He would eat his sandwich and disappear, just as he had done in the dream. No, just like someone who looked like him in the dream, she corrected.
Some moments later, another man—Shadow Valley’s youngest veterinarian—joined him. Dr. Jeff Calhoun occasionally came in during late hours when he had been out on emergency calls. That he would know the stranger baffled Ellen enough to wonder if she was still dreaming—dreaming all of this....
But the veterinarian was real enough. She set a steaming cup in front of the stranger while she greeted Dr. Calhoun. “Good evening. Will you have coffee, too?”
He nodded pleasantly. “Yeah, thanks, Ellen. No menu, just coffee and a large slice of lemon pie.” He turned to his companion. “I recommend the pies here.”
Minutes dragged by like tortured hours for Ellen. She studied the phantom of last night’s dream from a distance, a few casual seconds at a time, trying not to stare. There was that vaguely familiar something about him. From the dream, of course. But how could she dream of a man she didn’t know?
The mens’ heads bent in conversation while they ate. It wasn’t the body language of small talk. When she refilled their coffee cups, Ellen caught snippets about the music being played on the radio. Locals had been talking about the Shadow Valley station this past week because the programming had changed. Ellen hadn’t given it much thought.
Business picked up as two regulars settled into the adjoining booth, waving for Ellen’s attention. She approached with her usual forced smile. “Beef stew is the special tonight.”
One trucker removed his hat, the other didn’t. Ellen kept it to herself that she noticed such things. Her grandfather hadn’t worn a hat indoors in his life; he considered it outrageously ill-mannered.
“You’re looking pretty tonight,” the hatless man said, grinning.
The other, whose name was Spence, chimed in, “Well, hey, did you ever see our Pebble Princess when she wasn’t looking right spiffy?”
Anger shot into her like an arrow. Through years of practice, Ellen outwardly ignored the remark. Inwardly, she seethed. The dream look-alike, seated with the back of his head only inches from Spence, could not help but overhear. She detected a slight turn of his head and a pause in his conversation. Or at least it seemed so. Could his reaction be only her own paranoia kicking up? A stranger to Shadow Valley wasn’t likely to know Pebble Street.
Something changed, though. She felt it. Or thought she felt it. Once, from across the room, he glanced up and met her eyes with an uninterpretable expression—mysteriously placid, even friendly. Ellen couldn’t bring herself to look in his direction again.
By eleven o’clock the café was all but empty. Dr. Calhoun and the phantom had been gone over two hours, and Ellen was so dream-logged from the experience, every little sound and shadow made her jump. The stranger’s face haunted her and his eyes seemed to be still watching her from some invisible place. It was a welcome relief when her shift was over at eleven-thirty.
Walking home through the town of Shadow Valley, Ellen felt last night’s dreams creep up out of the shadows like serpents, evoking a strong sense of fear. Fear of a ghost. Fear of a coincidence that had no explanation.
The air smelled of flowers and pine trees, and the special magic of a Colorado mountain summer. But when she reached Pebble Street, the atmosphere of the July night changed. Brooding shadows skulked through the moonlight like dark mist clinging to the ground—shadows of poverty and despair and memories better forgotten. Even the night couldn’t hide the personality of the street where she lived.
The porch light was on. Her grandfather never forgot to leave it on for her. Ellen hurried across the small stretch of lawn that the old man tended with care. Hollyhocks and iris bloomed along the walk—the only flowers on the street except for those few that grew untended year after year along the alley.
The front door squeaked when she closed it behind her. Softly, she made her way to her grandfather’s bedroom, as she always did, to check on him. The old man slept peacefully with his eyeglasses on the bed beside an open book. He was reading Look Homeward, Angel again. Ellen’s heart filled with love. Smiling, she picked up the book, placed the marker, and set it with his glasses on the bedside table next to his pipe.
Her grandfather was the only reason she stayed. Without her, he would be alone in his last years. She didn’t resent him for keeping her home, because as a girl Ellen had needed him and he had always been there. Now he needed her—needed her love and her care. Lately, he had not been well.
In the upstairs room that had been the master bedroom when her grandmother was alive, she hand-basted the silk blouse, trying hard to concentrate. Each minute that passed distanced the events of the evening further, making them seem less real, so it became easier to try to convince herself the resemblance between the man in her dream and tonight’s stranger was the work of her overactive imagination. Her head was eager to accept the theory; her heart was far more stubborn.
Sometime after two she went to bed and closed her eyes against the haunting residue of the puzzle, and the dream came drifting in....
The dust smelled like a fearful memory. No one had been in this splendorous room for a very long time. Crystal chandeliers overhead were laced with cobwebs; none were lighted. Through gray gloom came the echo of a deep, velvet soft masculine voice. “Ellen? Where are you?”
She knew the voice from somewhere—perhaps from long ago. Turning around and around in the moonlit room, she searched for him. No moving shadow announced him this time; he materialized beside her as if he had been there all the time and she simply had not seen....
She knew him now; knew the soft sheen of his dark brown hair, and the intensity of his powder gray eyes. She knew him—but who was he?
“I’ve been waiting for you,” he said. “I knew you’d come back.”
“Why am I here?” she asked, bewildered.
“To meet me.” He held out his hand again. “We don’t have much time. Will you come with me?”
They walked together from room to room as if searching for some unknown thing. A moan sounded high on the stairway where gauzy light from a window above began to swirl. Out of the swirl appeared the filmy shape of a woman. Through undulating vapors, the apparition gazed down at them.
Ellen became aware of the tug of her companion’s hand, urging her away, as if from danger. Then they were running through darkness, and she was pleading silently, Don’t let go. Don’t let go of my hand....
This time he didn’t. They reached a moonlit window, and he paused and looked at her with secrets in his eyes that caused her to shiver. Behind them the window began to glow and brighten with blinding rays of light. She found herself abruptly awake in the dull safety of her room. Her limbs were dead weights, as if tired from running, and her heart felt heavier still. He was gone again. Plunged into wistful sadness, Ellen became aware of a peculiar taste in her mouth.
Her first real taste of loneliness.
2
HE FELT THE SUN warm on his shoulders, but when he reached the big old shade trees that formed a canopy over Pebble Street, the summer air felt cooler, unwelcoming. His eyes scanned the two rows of run-down houses, some boarded shut. Three children playing barefoot in the street didn’t acknowledge his presence as he passed. A dog of unidentifiable heritage sauntered up, though, to sniff his leg. It responded to his touch with keen, accepting eyes and wagging tail, and fell into step at his side.
Cody Laird passed the hulls of dead cars, passed the low iron fence, rusted and leaning into a patch of flowering weeds. He stepped
over potholes and crossed in front of the shell of a tiny store, its faded sign unreadable, but he knew the painted letters had once read M. G. Market. Near the far end of the street, he stopped before a narrow, two-story frame house.
He stood under the shade of a giant oak, hands in the pockets of his jeans, legs apart, eyes misting, gazing at the house. The white paint had chipped and fallen. Most of the windows were broken. It had been years since the old house had known footsteps or the sound of laughter. Once, though, four mine workers had occupied the upper bedrooms. When they worked the day shift, the men ate evening meals in the dining room with the family—a widow and her young son.
With a stab of pain, he thought of the blue flowers on the dinner plates and the aroma of baking bread, of the leathery faces of the miners and the sorrow in his mother’s smile.
Cody was grateful for the dog, the only sign of friendliness. He knelt and stroked its head and neck. The shepherd’s eyes and black fur edged with tan were so remarkably like old Buster’s that for some moments he became lost in the deep past with his childhood companion. Warmth in his bed on winter nights, waking to a wet tongue on his face, sad canine eyes outside the school door on cold mornings, and wriggling leaps at the same door every afternoon.
“You’re probably an ancestor of his,” Cody said to the dog who sat at his feet. “Old Buster had his share of girlfriends in the neighborhood.”
The house cast a cold shadow over them. Shivering deep within, he forced himself to look at it again. He had to see it one last time, for closure.
Why didn’t the town put these dying houses out of their misery? Maybe because people still lived in some. That waitress with the pretty smile was one of them. After the remark they’d overheard at the Blue Spruce, Bill Calhoun had confirmed the girl was, indeed, a resident of Pebble Street. One wouldn’t have guessed that, the way she dressed and the way she carried herself with so much pride. She had looked at him so curiously; did she recognize him? He hadn’t asked her name. Maybe if he had, he would remember.
Turning his back one final time on the past, he started down the gloomy street wondering which of these pathetic old houses was hers. Through flashback habit, he had noted the identity of the truck driver who had called the woman “Pebble Princess,” and had scrutinized him. He would not forget his face. Cody never forgot their faces, and, more than likely, she didn’t, either. The man unknowingly had made a grave mistake, one he would likely have to answer for sometime, like so many others had; he had shot off his mouth within earshot of Cody Laird.
When the dog, who wore no collar, followed him back up the slope into the main part of town, his presence was so indelibly familiar, Cody gave it no conscious thought. His thoughts were still out recapturing the beauty of the young woman whose eyes had stolen shy and repeated glances at him last night. The stares were more than mere curiosity on her part; he detected shades of something like fear.
At the radio station on the lower end of Main Street, he was met by workmen making repairs to the interior of the building.
“The insulation is finished in the studio, Mr. Laird,” one of them said.
“Good.” He looked at his watch. “And just in time. I have a show to record.”
“We had to order the oak lumber for the office cabinets. The company promised to deliver it from Denver day after tomorrow.”
Cody nodded, making his way through the small brick building where he had ordered some minor remodeling, including removal of two interior walls, and fresh paint.
“Your dog?” a workman asked.
The animal was still at his heels. Cody looked down, smiled and shrugged. “Not that I know of.”
He crossed through the refurbishing project and entered a three-room apartment at the back of the building. Renovation of these private rooms would have to wait. Meantime, he had made them reasonably comfortable with furniture he’d brought with him. There hadn’t been time to concern himself with any but the basic necessities since he arrived last week, because the business itself needed more work than his living quarters. “Resurrection” was a more accurate description of what station KUBS required to get back the status of a moneymaking concern.
At the chipped kitchen sink, he rinsed the dust of Pebble Street from his hands and face, while he felt the stare of curious yellow eyes. “Well?” he asked through a towel. The dog sat down.
Cody filled a bowl with water and set it on the floor. “This is where I park myself, in case you’re interested, which obviously you are. So if you have no place—you know—no place you’d rather be...” He reached out to pet the dark head. The dog licked his hand politely.
Everything was set up in the studio. He could get tonight’s two-hour music program recorded before the noon news broadcast, if he didn’t waste any more time. The dog had settled down on the floor after helping himself to a drink, and didn’t move toward the door. Either he knew better than to follow his new pal into the studio, or he decided he had found a pleasant place to nap. Whichever it was, Cody was astonished at how the dog accepted him. It was as if he knew him. As if he had been waiting around on Pebble Street just as old Buster would have done—if he could have—to welcome his buddy home.
3
ELLEN FELT A JOLT like an electric shock when the man walked into the Blue Spruce café shortly after seven o’clock. Much of the day had been spent convincing herself he had come through town and departed, just as he had sprung unexpectedly into her dreams and gone, with an impact that penetrated her subconscious—waking or asleep—and left a mystery never to be solved.
He smiled over the heads of seated customers, smiled directly at her, as if he knew her! Well, of course, he did, if pouring coffee and setting a sandwich in front of him counted.
He slid into the same booth as before. Ellen drew a deep, shaky breath. She was both ecstatic and frightened to see him again, and self-consciously unsure of herself.
Scarcely breathing, she made herself smile and handed him a menu.
“What do you recommend?” he asked.
The voice—the same deep, resonant voice—echoed back from her dream...the most unforgettable voice she had ever heard. When he spoke, cruel warmth crept into her cheeks; she knew he could see her embarrassment and she wanted to turn and run.
“The...cook’s special is chicken pie.”
“Have you tried it?”
“Yes. It’s homemade, even the crust. Really quite nice.”
“Good enough.” He rubbed his chin. “And plenty of bread. And black coffee.”
Ellen noted the order in her head; she never used a pad and pencil. Before she responded, the deejay’s voice on the radio floated out over a lull in the blended conversations of customers. She reacted with stunned disbelief and an awkward stare.
“What?” he asked.
She swallowed. This was getting too ridiculous! Her imagination had soared far out of control, so far that she actually heard herself saying, “That voice...on the radio...”
The man laughed. “You’re not hearing echoes. It’s my voice, recorded earlier today.”
The relief brought nervous laughter. “So that’s where I had heard...you before.”
He leaned forward, and the light caught the gray of his eyes and turned them blue again. “Let me introduce myself. I’m Cody Laird.”
“And you work at the radio station.”
“Actually, I just bought the radio station.”
“Ah. People are talking about the station having a new owner, from...” Her sentence ended with the unasked question.
“I moved here from Denver a week ago.”
Then he lives here, he isn’t just passing through. “Well, then, welcome to Shadow Valley.”
Cody studied her. She didn’t remember him. Did that mean she had moved to Pebble Street in the past ten years? Hell, nobody moved to Pebble Street; people only moved away. He couldn’t expect her to remember him when he’d had a different name.
He asked, “And you are?”
/> Ellen nervously smoothed her white organdy apron. “Ellen Montrose.”
Montrose. One of the old names on Pebble Street. He didn’t remember any Ellen, but then she was several years younger and would have been just a kid when he left at the age of seventeen. Nobody remembered him—none of the respectable citizens of the town. He wanted it that way.
When she brought the coffee, he said, “Ellen Montrose, you’re one of my first acquaintances in Shadow Valley. At the risk of sounding too brazen, would you consent to having dinner with me on your night off? I mean...you don’t know me but you know who I am. Am I taking too big a risk, assuming you’re not committed to some lucky guy?”
At last she was on familiar ground. Refusing dates was second nature to Ellen. “I’m afraid I have no night off,” she said softly.
“What? You work every night?”
“I choose to. My school tuition is expensive.” Already she had given him more information than she gave other men, but she had met him in such an unusual way...in such an unusual place. It wasn’t easy to look into the face of someone with whom she had run breathlessly through a haunted mansion the night before—to look at him and say no.
“School?” he asked.
“Correspondence school. Fashion design. It takes...takes up all my spare time.”
“So you can’t have dinner with me.”
She shook her head uneasily. “No. Sorry.”
Something in her manner alerted him to the fact that more was going on here than he realized. The way she looked at him with a curiosity Cody had never seen before in a woman’s eyes. The thing like fear was there, too; which made no sense because longing was also in her eyes, and she knew it and had a hard time looking directly at him. His voice lowered to a private range not much above a whisper. “Do you ever have dinner with anyone?”
“No,” Ellen answered.
“For a reason?” He asked this gently, knowing her private life was none of his business and if he wasn’t careful, she would tell him so. Cody had the feeling he wouldn’t be the first guy she had put in his place. Yet she showed no signs of resenting him.