Elusive Promise GO PL 2

by Barbara Freethy

  He walked across the room to throw open the windows. He was surprised to find the blinds open. The cleaning service must have forgotten to close them. He’d hired a service to come in once a month while he was gone to keep the dust under control. They’d obviously done a good job. The air didn’t smell nearly as musty as he’d anticipated, but he opened a window just the same, allowing the cool March breezes to blow through the room.

  He’d chosen this small house because it overlooked the Marina Green, the bay, the Marin Headlands, and most important, the Golden Gate Bridge. Bridges were his passion. He was an admitted junkie. His living room walls were covered with photographs of his favorite bridges, a few he’d had a hand in building. There was something about the massive structures that made his blood stir. He’d decided to become an engineer before he graduated from high school, and he’d gone after that career with single-minded determination. It hadn’t been easy. He’d had a lot of other distractions and responsibilities, which he’d acquired when his father had run out on the family, but that was water under the proverbial bridge, he thought with a small smile. He had the life he wanted now. That was all that mattered.

  Turning away from the view, he caught sight of his telephone answering machine. The red light was blinking. He pushed the button on the machine and listened as the first message played back. A woman’s voice came out of the speaker.

  "Nick, it’s Kayla. Where are you? Please call me as soon as you can."

  Kayla? Who the hell was Kayla? The machine beeped.

  "Nick, it’s Kayla again. I don’t know what to do. The security guard found your coat and wedding ring in a men's room at the hotel. I'm really worried. If you wanted out, you should have told me. Please call me."

  His coat and his wedding ring? He sure as hell didn’t have a wedding ring. She obviously had the wrong number and the wrong Nick.

  "Me again," she said, her voice filled with panic. "I don’t know why I keep calling, except I don’t know what else to do. The police say they can’t help me because there’s no evidence anything happened to you. They think you ran out on me. I guess that’s what you did. Don’t you think you owe me at least an explanation? I love you, Nick." Her voice caught on a sob. "I thought you loved me, too. It was your idea to get married so fast."

  Nick shut off the machine, reluctant to hear more of her desperate pleas. He felt as if he had stepped into the middle of someone else’s life, and his relief at being home was tempered by the sense that something was very wrong.

  As he looked around the room, his uneasiness grew. Small things began to stand out: the celebrity magazines on the coffee table, the wilted roses in a vase by the window, the empty coffee mug on a side table, the throw blanket that he usually kept on his bed now resting on the arm of his brown leather couch.

  Unsettled, Nick walked into the kitchen and found a box of Lucky Charms on the counter, the kind of sugared cereal he’d never eaten in his life. In the refrigerator there was a half-open bottle of chardonnay and a carton of milk that had expired a month ago. His stomach began to churn as he considered the possibilities. Obviously someone had been in his home. The only people who had keys were his mother and the cleaning service. His mother would never leave sour milk in the refrigerator.

  His nerves began to tingle. The air was filled with vague scents he couldn’t quite place—a man’s cologne or a woman’s perfume? The silence felt thick and tense. He turned around, feeling as if someone were standing behind him, but there was no one there.

  He picked up the phone and called the cleaning service. "This is Nick Granville," he told the woman who answered. "I’d like to speak to the person who has been cleaning my house for the last three months."

  He heard the flip of papers, and then she said, "That would be Joanne. She’s not in right now. Can I have her call you?"

  "Yes, I need to speak to her as soon as possible. It’s urgent." He ended the call and punched in his mother’s number. She didn’t answer. Not wanting to leave a long message on her machine, he simply told her he was home and asked her to call him back as soon as possible.

  He moved across the living room and up the stairs. The master bedroom was the first door on the right. He paused just inside the room. The cream-colored down comforter on his bed was pulled back, the sheets and blankets tangled, as if someone had recently gotten up. A couple of towels from his bathroom lay in a heap on the floor. An empty wineglass sat on the bedside table.

  Every detail made his blood pressure rise. What kind of thief slept in his bed, took a shower in his bathroom, and kept food in his kitchen?

  The phone rang and he grabbed the extension by the bed, hoping for some answers. It was Joanne from the cleaning service.

  "Is something wrong, Mr. Granville?" she asked. "Laurie told me I needed to call you right away."

  "Yes, there’s something wrong," he snapped. "This place is a mess. There’s crap everywhere, towels on the floor, and the bed is unmade. What the hell has been going on in my home?"

  "Excuse me? I don’t understand," she said, obvious confusion in her voice.

  "What don’t you understand? I’ve been out of the country. The only person to have access to my house is your cleaning service."

  "But you were home a few weeks ago," she said. "I ran into you right before Valentine’s Day. Don’t you remember? We spoke about how funny it was that we were finally meeting face-to-face."

  "What are you talking about? I haven’t been home in three months, so you couldn’t possibly have spoken to me." Nick’s mind raced. Joanne had spoken to someone—who? Obviously it had been a man, and that man had told her that he was Nick Granville. Who would do that? Nick didn’t have any brothers, no friends who would play that kind of a joke on him.

  The silence on the phone lengthened. Finally, Joanne said, "I don’t know what to say, Mr. Granville. Perhaps you’ve forgotten. You should ask the woman you were with."

  The woman? He was reminded of the pleading, desperate voice from the answering machine.

  "You said you were getting married that weekend," Joanne continued. "You both looked incredibly happy. I thought it was so romantic that you were going to have a Valentine’s Day wedding."

  He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. "That wasn’t me. You didn’t talk to me."

  "The man I spoke to said he was Nick Granville," Joanne stated. "I didn’t imagine it."

  "I’m sure you spoke to someone, but it wasn’t me. I’ll need to talk to you further about what these people look like. First I’m going to call the police."

  "I’ll do whatever I can to help," Joanne replied, a nervous note in her voice. "But I swear I thought the man was you."

  "I’m sure you did." Nick hung up the phone, feeling completely rocked by the conversation. He’d always prided himself on being able to roll with the punches, adapt to any situation, no matter how dangerous or bizarre. But this invasion of his home, his privacy, his life, disturbed him more than he wanted to admit. As he gazed around the room, he saw his computer on the desk. The monitor was dark, but the light on the hard drive was on. Someone had been on his computer. He cursed himself for never setting a password, but he’d put it off. No one used the computer but him. Now he realized whoever had been in his home could have accessed his bank accounts, his credit cards, and God knew what else. It occurred to him that he hadn’t looked at a bank statement in a very long time. He hadn’t felt the need. His income far outstripped his living expenses, especially when he was working in the field. He could have been ripped off in a big way.

  He rushed across the room to check the computer. The machine whirred and whirred. It must have frozen. Damn. He turned it off, then back on. While he was waiting for it to boot up, he returned downstairs to the living room and replayed the messages on the answering machine.

  "Nick, it’s Kayla...."

  Kayla. She had to be involved. How the hell was he going to find her?

  * * *

  As Kayla stared down at the shattered pie
ces of colored glass on her studio worktable, she couldn’t help comparing the broken window to her life. In the case of the glass, a baseball had come out of nowhere, blowing the window apart without warning. In her life that baseball had been Nick Granville. She’d spent the past two weeks living in a whirlwind of emotions, one minute furious at Nick for running out on her, the next minute worrying that something had happened to him. She’d bitten her nails down to the quick. She couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, and couldn’t go ten minutes without thinking about him. Not that anyone else seemed to care.

  She’d filed missing-persons reports with the Nevada and the California police, but both, upon hearing that she’d known the man only a few weeks, seemed less than enthusiastic about pursuing the case. There was no evidence of foul play, and further questioning had produced few concrete details. It had become embarrassingly clear that she knew very little about her husband.

  When the police threw her missing-persons report into a stack of thousands, she’d turned to a private investigator. He’d listened to her story, barely keeping a straight face, and told her he would need a thousand-dollar retainer to get started. Although she’d been tempted to empty her bank account, some part of her brain had finally woken up and said no. If Nick had suckered her into marriage, for what reason she couldn’t fathom, was she really going to let herself get taken again? She’d walked out the door and prayed that Nick would come back to her, that there would be some crazy but logical explanation for his absence.

  She was still waiting for that to happen and feeling more stupid by the minute. Her friends and her family had reminded her that they’d told her so, that no good could come of such a hasty marriage. They had encouraged her to simply get on with her life. How on earth was she supposed to do that with so many unanswered questions?

  Stretching her arms over her head, Kayla gave a weary sigh. Work was the only thing that got her through the days and sometimes the nights. It was almost four o’clock in the afternoon, and she’d been working for six straight hours, trying to reconstruct the pattern of the window, so that she could see how best to attack the job. She would be able to use most of the old glass, but she would have to create several smaller pieces to fit where the shards of glass had splintered too finely to be replaced.

  It had once been a beautiful window in a small chapel in the Presidio, intact for almost a hundred years—until a group of neighborhood kids decided to play a pickup game of baseball in the field next to the church. Kayla wanted to restore the window to perfection for many reasons, but most of all to prove that nothing was irretrievably broken. Everything could be fixed. That was what her grandfather had always told her. And with her life in tatters, she wanted to believe that now more than ever.

  She wished her grandfather were here today. Edward Hirsch, who had taught Kayla the art of stained glass, would know just what to do with this window. The Hirsch family had been creating and restoring stained glass in Germany for almost a century. Edward had passed the family talent down to her. He’d also passed down his house and the converted garage studio. Well, actually, her grandmother had passed it on. Charlotte Hirsch had decided to move out and start over somewhere new after her husband of forty-something years had died.

  While Potrero Hill wasn’t as fashionable or sophisticated as downtown San Francisco, the abundance of sunny days on the hill bathed Kayla’s studio in beautiful light more often than not, and the studio was perfect for her needs. Her grandfather had worked with glass only as a hobby, a way to let off creative energy after his day job as a banker. Kayla, however, was turning her passion into a lucrative business.

  The aging Victorian house also felt like home to her, and one day it would be perfect for raising a family, with its three bedrooms and basement playroom. Nick had loved it the minute he’d seen it. He’d wanted to explore every nook and cranny of the two-story house. They’d picked out the bedroom they would turn into a nursery. They’d talked about remodeling the old kitchen and tearing up the carpets and restoring the hardwood floors. She’d believed in him, trusted him, confident that his actions would follow his words. When he’d told her on their wedding night that he was going to get ice and that he’d be right back, she’d never thought for a second that would be the last conversation they would have.

  Getting to her feet, she walked over to the counter and poured herself a cup of coffee. Taking a sip, she realized it was barely lukewarm. She made a face and tossed it down the sink. As she rinsed her mug, she glanced out the window at the wild cottage garden that was still very much one of her many works in progress. She’d planted a ring of wildflowers around the sprawling old apple tree and added a wooden bench and a birdfeeder to attract the hummingbirds. An arbor entwined with climbing roses stood in one corner of the yard; a thick row of shrubs ran along the perimeter, hiding the neighboring houses from view. She’d mixed rosemary and sage with currant and blueberry bushes. She’d added foxglove and sunflowers to attract the butterflies, and filled in the rest of the garden with whatever color she could find, cosmos, zinnia, and marigold. She especially loved the splash of lavender that spilled over the path leading back to the house.

  She’d thought about trying to capture the essence of her garden in glass, but she was afraid that she wouldn’t be able to do justice to the wild beauty, that she wouldn’t be able to fully capture the nuances of the changing colors of each new season. She smiled to herself as she remembered Nick’s face when he’d first seen her garden. She’d tried to explain the method behind the madness, but he’d simply shaken his head and looked at her as if he thought she was completely crazy. He’d said the only thing he’d ever wanted in a backyard was a pool or a hot tub. Funny how the bits and pieces she remembered about him now made her wonder just how compatible they’d really been. Had it all been a mistake? Had Nick changed his mind? Or had something terrible happened to him?

  Turning away from the window, she forced her mind away from the frustrating questions that had no answers and started to clean up her work area. A few minutes later, the door to her studio opened unexpectedly. She couldn’t prevent the involuntary skip of her heart. Two and a half weeks had passed, and she still couldn’t stop jumping at every ring of the phone, every knock at the door. But it wasn’t her husband entering the studio; it was her longtime friend and business associate, Samantha Jennings. A tall, thin ash blonde with an energetic personality and a sarcastic wit, Samantha was a marketing whiz who had built a thriving business representing various artists, including Kayla. However, their relationship went far beyond business, their friendship dating back to childhood.

  Unfortunately, their bond had been strained since Kayla’s wedding. Samantha had been in London for most of the month that Kayla and Nick were together. She’d begged Kayla not to get married until she returned, but at the time Kayla just hadn’t wanted to wait one more second to have everything she’d ever dreamed about. Now she was left not only to repair her broken heart but also to mend her friendship with Sam.

  Samantha perched on the edge of the worktable and glanced down at the glass. "How’s the window coming along?"

  "Slowly," Kayla replied, sitting down in her chair. There was a sparkle in Samantha’s eyes. It was obvious that she was practically bursting at the seams to tell her something. "What’s up?" Kayla asked.

  "I just took a call from the Carleton Court Hotel in Sausalito. They’re doing massive renovations, and listen to this—they want you to bid on doing two stained-glass windows in the lobby. Isn’t that cool? Not only will it be great money, but it will also be tremendous exposure for you as an artist."

  "That sounds like a big job." Kayla felt both excited and terrified at the prospect. Living in limbo the past month had cut into her confidence, her trust in herself and other people.

  "It is big, but you can do it," Samantha said. "You’re so talented."

  "Still..."

  "Look, I know you’ve been going through a rough time, but this will be good for you—for both of us." />
  Her no-nonsense words reminded Kayla that she wasn’t in this business alone and that she owed it to Samantha to keep putting one foot in front of the next, something she hadn’t been doing particularly well since her aborted wedding night. "When do I meet with them?"

  "Not for three weeks. You have plenty of time to get ready. They gave me some ideas of what they want." She handed Kayla a folder. "It’s all there."

  "I’ll take a look later tonight," she said.

  "Good. I have to run," Samantha said, sliding to her feet. "Tonight is my second date with Jeff."

  "You brought him back for a repeat performance—I’m impressed," Kayla said with a smile. Samantha was notoriously picky when it came to men, and unlike Kayla, she wasn’t in any hurry to get to the marriage, kids, white-picket-fence kind of life.

  "He made a good first impression," Samantha said. She paused, an uncomfortable note entering her voice as she asked, "Did you talk to your stepsister about filing for divorce?"

  "No," Kayla said with annoyance. "It’s only been two weeks. The police are still investigating."

  Samantha shot her a skeptical look. "Sure they are. I’m sorry if I’m pressuring you, but you should be filing for divorce. Get the ball rolling, so you can put this whole disaster behind you."

  "He could still come back."

  "What if he does?" Samantha asked in amazement. "What could he possibly say, aside from that he’d been kidnapped or was suffering from extended amnesia, that would explain why he ran out on you without a word?"

  "It’s possible he was kidnapped. And amnesia is a real clinical diagnosis."

  Samantha let out a long, disgusted sigh. "That’s your imagination talking, Kay. You know it is."