Scarlet Woman

“Not bad for one day. At this rate, you can’t miss. If we can finish this list, you’ll be free to get on with that other business.”

Now what had he done? She’d wilted like a crushed rose. He looked downward and kicked the carpet with the toe of his left shoe, ashamed that his words—spoken to hide his own feelings—had bruised hers. The urge to take her in his arms and soothe her almost overwhelmed him, but he knew the consequences if he gave in to it. He’d tempered his opinion of her, but too much remained unexplained, and not all of it was pretty. The wisest thing he could do would be to keep a good solid distance between them. With her standing there open and vulnerable, a defenseless beauty, he laughed to himself. If he was serious about staying away from her, he’d better pray for sainthood.

She straightened her shoulders and sat down, and his admiration for her soared.

“Good afternoon, Mayor Washington,” Melinda said, and continued with her reason for calling. “I hope I can count on you to serve.”

She held the phone away from her as if to protect her eardrums, and he took it. He’d rather not get on the wrong side of His Honor, the mayor, but he said, “Frank, this is Blake Hunter. I’d be careful about that kind of talk if I were you.” He winced as he thought of Melinda’s ordeal with the people of Ellicott City. “Mrs. Rodgers is setting up a foundation as prescribed in her late husband’s will. If you slander her as you were doing, she’ll sue you, and as the representative of her husband’s estate, I’d have to take you on.”

“You?” The mayor sounded as if he was stunned.

“You got it. I’d rather not do that, buddy, but you know me. I’ll bite the bullet every time.”

“Sorry, brother,” the mayor went on, “but…you know she’s not fit for something so important as that foundation is to this community.”

Blake tightened his fist, then he ground his teeth. Count to ten, man, he told himself, loosening his tie. “Have you forgotten that there won’t be a foundation unless she sets it up?”

“In that case the money goes to the city. Right?”

“A million will go to the city for the benefit of the homeless alone and the rest to a charity event or organization of my choice. It will pay for you to cooperate.”

“That’s not the way I read it. If necessary, we’ll go to court.”

“Forget that, buddy. You’ll only be wasting time and money.”

Melinda grabbed the phone. “Excuse me, Blake, but I just want to tell the mayor that he will not serve on this board, not now or ever. That’s right, sir.” She hung up.

“You just made an enemy, but he deserved it. Let’s get on with this.”

Well after seven that evening, they could count twelve people who were willing to serve on the board. Melinda leaned back in the chair, locked her hands behind her head, and blew out a long breath.

“I’m pooped.”

He didn’t doubt it. “Me, too. How about something to eat? Let’s go around the corner to Tersiguel’s. I feel like some decent food.”

“Fine. Where’s the ladies’ room? I need to freshen up. I’ll eat what Ruby cooked for me some other time.”

“There’s one just off Irene’s office. I thought you were too pooped to bother with hair and lipstick and things like that.”

“Mr. Hunter, I never get that tired.”

They’d barely seated themselves when Martha Greene paused at their table. “Oh, how nice to see you, Mr. Hunter! Good evening, Melinda.” From hot to freezing in less than a second.

Melinda searched Blake’s face for the question she knew she’d find there. “What is it?” he asked her.

“As far as I know, I’ve never done anything to offend her, but she seems to enjoy being rude to me.”

His eyes softened with what she recognized as sympathy, but she didn’t want that, not from him or anyone else. He reached across the table, evidently to take her hand, but withdrew before she could enjoy the warmth of his touch.

“I believe I reminded you once that most people envy the rich, but when a woman is both rich and beautiful, women will dislike her and men will turn cartwheels for her. Even so, Martha Greene isn’t known as a charitable person.”

Flushed with the pleasure of knowing that he thought her beautiful, she lowered her gaze. “You don’t know how happy I’ll be when the will is settled and this business is history.”

The expression in his eyes sliced through her, and she knew that somewhere in those words, she’d made a blunder. A serious one, at that.

“I imagine you want to get on with your life,” he said, “especially after having spent almost five of your best years in semiretirement. But don’t forget that when you finish this round, you’ve got to show me a marriage certificate.”

She knew that she gaped at him; she couldn’t help it. Her fingers clutched the table, knocking over the long-stem glass of white wine that soaked the tablecloth and wet her dress.

“You kissed me and held me as if I were the most precious person in the world, and now you can say that to me. You’re just like all the others.” As though oblivious to the wet tablecloth and the dampness in her lap, she gripped the table and leaned toward him.

“You at least know that Prescott was happy with me, that I made his life pleasant, and that I was loyal to him. You know I never looked at another man, because I didn’t look at you.”

“Look! There’s no need to—”

“Yes, there is. You listen to me. It happened the minute you opened your office door for Prescott and me when we went there to be married. And the first time you came to our home I knew that what I felt for you twenty minutes before I took my marriage vows was definitely not superficial. From then on—at least once a week for almost five years—I had to deal with you. But you didn’t know it, and don’t tell me you did. You don’t know what it cost me, and you’ll never know. So don’t sit there like a judge-penitent and pass sentence.”

She tossed a twenty-dollar bill on the table, grabbed her purse and briefcase. “I’ll eat whatever Ruby cooked. I’ll…I’m sorry, Blake.”

Walking with head high, away from the source of her pain, her eyes beheld only a blur of human flesh and artifacts. She didn’t see the gilded candles on the hanging chandelier, the huge bowl of red and yellow roses on a marble stand beneath it, or her reflection in the antique gold-framed mirrors that lined the walls. Only the gray bleakness of her life. But none of those who accused her would ever see one of her tears. The gossiping citizens of Ellicott City irritated her. But Blake’s words bored a hole in her. She got into her car and sat there, too drained to drive. Should she fault herself for having let him hold her and show her what she’d missed? Maybe she shouldn’t have allowed it. But I’m human, and I’ve got feelings. After a while, she started the car and moved away from the curb. “You’re dealing with your own guilt, Blake,” she said aloud, and immediately felt better. “You wanted your friend’s wife. Well, take it out on yourself.”

Blake washed his Maryland crab cakes down with half a bottle of chardonnay wine and considered drinking the whole bottle but thought better of it. He shouldn’t have plowed into her, knowing he’d hurt her, but she had infuriated him with her tale about the men who wanted to marry her. He knew she’d attract every trifling money hunter and womanizer in Howard County and maybe farther away than that.

As much as he wanted her, he didn’t intend to get in that line. Her apparent eagerness to gain control of Prescott’s millions didn’t sit well with him, especially since she hadn’t once shown the grief you’d expect of a woman recently widowed. His left hand swept over his face. It wasn’t a fair accusation, and he knew it. Not everybody grieved for public consumption. He didn’t covet another person’s wealth; he made a good living and had every comfort that he could want, but he’d earned it. He’d worked for every dime he had, and he couldn’t sympathize with, much less respect, anybody who didn’t work for what they got. He let out a long, heavy breath. How had it come to this? She was in him, down deep, clinging to the marrow of his being, wrapped around his nerve ends. Way down. Right where he lived.

“Oh, what the hell. If it hasn’t killed me so far, it won’t!” He paid the check and left her twenty-dollar bill on the table for the waiter.

He walked into his house, threw his briefcase on the carved walnut dining-room table, and looked at the elegance all around him. Thick oriental carpets covered his parquet floors; Italian leather sofa and chairs; silk draperies, fine walnut tables and wall units and fixtures, and fine paintings adorned his living room. All of it aeons away from the days when water soaked his bed every time it rained, and wind whistled through the cracks of the house in winter. The memory depressed him, and he wondered if the hardships of his youth had made him a tough, cynical man. He hoped not. Shaking it off, he telephoned his mother in Alabama, his thoughts filled with the one problem he’d never solved. His relationship with his father.

“How’s Papa?” he asked her after they greeted each other.

“Just fair. I think he’s tired, and I don’t mean ordinary tired. I sense that he doesn’t feel like going on.”

“You serious?”

“I wish I wasn’t, son.”

“I don’t like the sound of it,” he told her. He’d gotten the same feeling when he spoke with his father the previous morning. “I’ll be down there tomorrow.”

After hanging up, he remembered his promise to visit Phil and Johnny. The warden had separated them from Lobo, who’d set up business as usual there in the jail. Blake called the warden and asked him to explain to the boys that he’d see them on Sunday.

“I’d hoped to hold my grandchildren,” his father told him, “but none of the three of you bothered to get married yet.” His thoughts appeared to ramble. “You had a tough life, but you made something of yourself, and I’m proud of you. I know I seemed hard, maybe too hard, but we had to live. Make sure you find a girl who’ll stick with you through thick and thin. One like your mother.”

The old man’s feeble fingers patted Blake’s hand. He’d never thought he’d shed tears for his father, but when he walked out of the room, they came. And they flowed.

He didn’t want to use Melinda, but when he boarded the plane in Birmingham, his only thought was to have her near him. It might be unfair to her, but life wasn’t fair. Right then, he knew he could handle most anything, if she was there for him. As soon as he walked into the terminal in Baltimore, he dialed her on his cell phone, and when she didn’t answer, he felt as if the bottom had dropped out of him. Surely she didn’t mean that much to him.

“It’s because I know I’m losing my father,” he rationalized. As a child, he’d almost hated the man who’d driven him so relentlessly. How often he’d wondered if he worked so hard to save young boys from a life of crime because he’d had neither a childhood nor the freedom that adolescence gives the young. What the heck! He put the car in Drive and headed for the Metropolitan Transition Center.