Phantom of Riverside Park

by Peggy Webb

“Ask me what?”

  “Mommy, Mommy! Can I see the car?”

  Any other woman going off in a big fancy car like that on such an important occasion would have brushed the child aside, but not his granddaughter. She squatted beside Nicky and put her hands on his little face and said, “We’ll see, sweetheart.”

  She was an angel on earth, and Thomas didn’t know how such a miracle was possible, her with two such godawful parents. And that’s what they were. He’d say it to anybody who asked, even if one of them was his own son. He reckoned he and Lola Mae had been so wrapped up in their love for each other and had waited so long to have children, they’d passed on some dried-up genes.

  Elizabeth opened the door, and a man the size of a refrigerator ducked his head to come inside.

  “Miss Elizabeth Jennings?”

  “Yes, I’m Elizabeth.”

  “Milton Edwards, at your service.”

  He pulled off his cap, real respectful like. And a good thing, too, for Thomas wasn’t about to let his granddaughter get into the car with just any old body, even if he was driving a stretch limousine.

  Thomas was watching like a hawk. He knew respect when he saw it, and furthermore he knew what was genuine what was as fake as a three-dollar bill.

  The man standing in their living room looking a mite uncomfortable--probably due to being buttoned up in a coat and tie in ninety-degree weather--was the real thing.

  Personally, Thomas felt the world would be a better place if folks would shuck their fancy suits for a good comfortable pair of overalls. A man could have some freedom in overalls.

  “I’m ready to take you to Mr. Lassiter whenever you’re ready to go, Miss Jennings.”

  Thomas liked that. No rushing Elizabeth out the door. No checking his watch to see if he was going to be late. Tonight Elizabeth was a queen.

  “Before we go, I wonder if my little boy could see inside the car?”

  Thomas held his breath, waiting. If the man said no he guessed he’d have to teach him some manners.

  The driver turned out to be as kind a gentleman as he’d ever met. He not only let Nicky see the car, but patiently answered every question. When Elizabeth finally rode off in the limousine with him, Thomas got misty eyed.

  “There she goes, Lola Mae.”

  She looked so much like his wife, Thomas got confused for a minute and thought it was Lola Mae riding off in a limousine, riding off to their honeymoon.

  It hadn’t been a limo they’d driven off in, but a pickup truck. They’d married with a full-blown war on. Thomas was eighteen with a draft notice in his pocket, and Lola Mae was a fully blossomed rose of seventeen just right for the plucking. If he didn’t, somebody else would. He was dead level certain of that.

  And so he’d asked, and she’d said yes, and when he saw her walking down the aisle in her blue velvet gown he was so proud and grateful and so much in love he wept.

  She put her hands on his cheeks and kissed his tears and whispered, “Don’t cry for me, love,” and that’s when he knew she was not only a lady but smart, to boot.

  “I’m taking you to Paris,” he said after the ceremony.

  “France?”

  She got this look on her face, all big-eyed and round-mouthed with wonder that nearly tickled him to death. He knew that she knew he was teasing, but she was charmingly gullible.

  It was one of her most endearing qualities, and she never lost it till the day she died.

  “Tennessee,” he’d said. “I’m saving France for our fiftieth wedding anniversary.”

  She stood on tiptoe and kissed him right there in the middle of the wedding reception, and he knew he’d picked a winner.

  What he had with Lola Mae is the thing he wants most in the world for his granddaughter. A love like that puts a shine on everything you do. Makes it all worthwhile. Even if it’s snatched away before you’re ready to let it go, a love like that is enough to last a man a lifetime.

  Would it be too much, God, for Elizabeth to have that, too? As Thomas headed to the house with Nicky swinging along beside him, he could taste the shape of his prayers.

  o0o

  David regretted the foolish impulse that had compelled him to call Elizabeth Jennings. George could have handled the matter. Or Peter. Or even McKenzie.

  But no, he had to play God. He had to manipulate events so that when she walked through the door she would perceive him as powerful, generous.

  Wonderful.

  David rubbed his hand over the long jagged scar that bisected his left cheek, felt the puckered ridges, the skin that sometimes burned so hot he thought he was still in the midst of the explosion.

  Who did he think he was? No woman would ever perceive him as wonderful, no matter what he did.

  He was reaching for the intercom to summon Peter to take charge of the meeting when he remembered that Peter was in New Albany. Facing the wrath of McKenzie.

  She’d been furious when he’d told her Peter was coming.

  “You sent him down here deliberately, didn’t you, David?”

  “Of course. It’s business, McKenzie.”

  His innocent act didn’t wash with his sister. “I can smell a rat a hundred miles away, David, and this one stinks to high heaven. Ever since Paul’s been gone you’ve acted like I can’t find my butt with both hands.”

  After all these years she still couldn’t bring herself to speak of her husband as dead. And that’s why David had sent Peter. McKenzie needed somebody besides animals to talk to.

  “Don’t get on your high horse, McKenzie.”

  “I rarely ever get off of it.”

  “Just make him feel welcome, McKenzie.”

  “This is your place, too, and he’s welcome as rain. As long as he stays out of my hair.”

  David would bet his last dollar that Peter would be in McKenzie’s hair every chance he got. Life was simple when you were twenty-seven and handsome and successful.

  It was when you were pushing forty and looked like Frankenstein’s monster that things got complicated. It was when you had invited a shining girl nearly half your age to come up and see you late at night while the moon held magic and the stars spoke of promise that you got scared. It was when the sound of light footsteps in the hall made your heart swell twice its size and sweat break out on your hideous face that you wanted to run.

  But David didn’t run. Instead he sat in the dark with the left side of his face turned to the wall and waited for Elizabeth Jennings to enter the room.

  Chapter Eleven

  Elizabeth stood in the doorway blinking, trying to adjust to the darkness. She could only make out shadows. That must be David Lassiter, sitting behind his massive desk across the room. The furniture stood in ghostly groupings about the room, and on the walls she saw darker spaces that must have been works of art.

  “I’m sorry I’m late,” she said, not knowing what else to say, what to do.

  “Are you?”

  Was she what? Sorry or late? His voice was cool, detached, and he sat totally unmoving.

  “It wasn’t your driver’s fault. It was mine. Nicky wanted to see the car. He’s my son.”

  “I know your son’s name.” Did she detect a note of warmth creep in his voice, or was it merely wishful thinking on her part? “Sit down, Elizabeth. Please.”

  The room was full of chairs, some closer to the desk than others. She felt like an unprepared school girl taking a multiple choice test. She wanted to get everything right tonight, including sitting in the proper chair.

  “Where shall I sit?”

  “There.”

  A light flicked on, and a wing chair upholstered in tan leather was softly illuminated. She sat down in the circle of light, taking great care to cross her legs at the ankles the way Mae Mae had taught her.

  “A lady never crosses her legs, Elizabeth,” she’d said. “Only her ankles. Always remember that.”

  Though the light shining down on her was not bright, it further obscured the rest of the room. A
ll she could tell was that her chair was the farthest one from the desk where her benefactor sat. Elizabeth couldn’t help but feel cheated. There was no way she would be able to see his face, not a single feature.

  She’d especially wanted to see his eyes. You could tell a lot about a man by looking into his eyes. She’d known the first time she’d looked deeply into Taylor’s eyes that he was a little boy parading as a man, and a spoiled little boy, at that. Still, his charm had been irresistible.

  There was an eerie silence in the room, and suddenly she realized that David Lassiter must have said something. Alarmed, she twisted her hands together in her lap. He was probably going to think she didn’t have a brain in her head, or else that she’d lied to him about having something important to discuss and had merely wanted to see him again out of morbid curiosity.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t hear what you said. I guess I’m a little nervous.”

  “So am I.” He actually chuckled, a big deep sound, totally masculine and completely wonderful. Elizabeth couldn’t help but smile. “I asked you if Nicky enjoyed seeing the car.”

  “Enormously. Mr. Edwards let him wear his cap and sit behind the steering wheel. He pretended he was driving.”

  “Where did he go?”

  The question startled her. She would never have imagined him as a man who understood children.

  “The zoo.”

  He laughed again. “That’s exactly where I’d have gone myself, if I were four years old and driving a limousine.”

  Elizabeth was amazed. Not just at him, but at herself. She’d arrived at his office so scared, so nervous she’d barely been capable of walking across the floor without tripping on her feet. David Lassiter had appeared to be an enigma, a power figure as remote as Mars, and no more approachable.

  In a matter of minutes all that had changed. It had happened exactly the same way the first time she’d come here: a perfect stranger had transformed himself into a warm and caring friend.

  “Do you have children, Mr. Lassiter?”

  He was silent so long she thought she’d offended him. Nothing had been written about a wife and children, but then David Lassiter was the kind of man capable of keeping secrets, even from the press.

  “No, I have no one... except my sister.”

  It wasn’t what he said but the way he said it that saddened Elizabeth to the point of tears.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “I don’t want your pity.”

  His voice cut through her like a whip. In an instant the man had changed from open and friendly to cold and remote.

  “I didn’t mean what I said as pity, Mr. Lassiter.”

  A long silence overtook them once again. Elizabeth bit the insides of her lip and tried not to squirm. She was acutely aware of the light that shone on her to the exclusion of everything else.

  As if I’m a criminal under interrogation.

  “Call me David.”

  The chill had left his voice. It was amazing to her how important the voice becomes when you can’t see a person’s face. She wasn’t merely listening: she was reading the map of a man’s soul.

  “I’m sorry to be taking up so much of your time, Mr... David.”

  “Time is all I have.”

  Loss. That’s what she read. Loss so bone deep it had become a central part of him.

  “I would like very much to see you,” she said. “May I?”

  “No.”

  “Forgive me for asking.”

  “Your curiosity is understandable.”

  “I didn’t ask out of curiosity. I asked because, strange as it seems, I feel as if you’re my friend, and I like to know the face of a friend.”

  Silence screamed in the room once more, and she strained to read it. All she could find was a wall. The man behind the desk had erected a barrier between them, and she had a feeling that no matter what she did or said for the rest of the evening, she wouldn’t be able to see beyond it.

  “Why did you come, Elizabeth?”

  So, she had been right. The man speaking to her now was a complete stranger. If he hoped to put her at a disadvantage, he was going to be sadly disappointed. Nothing got her fighting spirit up more than adversity.

  “I came to ask you for a loan.”

  “Why? You have a million dollars.”

  “No, I don’t. As I told you before, I have no intention of taking charity. I’ve been taking care of my family for years, and I’m going to continue to take care of them...with a little help from you, I hope.”

  He didn’t say a word. He simply waited. There was no impatience in him, merely the enduring stillness of a mountain.

  Everything was left up to her now. The brilliant but heart-felt presentation she’d planned standing in her house on Vine Street went right out of her head, and she was left with nothing but simple honesty and a heart on fire.

  “I’ll do anything to help my son,” she said, and it seemed to her that at that very moment the whole atmosphere of the room changed. Maybe the moon grew brighter, or perhaps it simply chose that moment to send a beam that stretched across the room from David’s desk to her chair--a shining path of hope.

  “I’ve applied to every agency I can think of for assistance with what the doctors call cosmetic surgery, but I either don’t qualify or I’m buried at the bottom of the list under a pile of red tape.”

  There was a sound across the room--a sigh, a whisper, a curse, a prayer. She couldn’t tell what it was, only that it came from David.

  “I can’t borrow money from the bank. I have no credit history and no collateral. I suppose I could go to one of those fly-by-night lenders, but I’m broke, not foolish. They’d require my soul.”

  “How do you know I won’t?”

  “Instinct. Although I can’t see your face, I can see your heart. You’re a kind man.”

  He made another of those inscrutable sounds, like a massive lion awakening to find his pride threatened.

  “I would pay you back. Every penny. Plus interest. I’m not looking for charity, merely a loan.”

  He was totally silent. Had she overdone it?

  “I’ll sign any kind of loan agreement you want to make... as long as it’s fair.”

  “Good for you, Elizabeth. Never sign an agreement that is disadvantageous to you.”

  “Then I have the loan?”

  “Yes.”

  She wanted to shout, to scream, to run across the room and hug him. Instead she felt the hot press of tears. She sniffled in a vain effort to stop them.

  He made another of those puzzled lion sounds.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I sometimes cry when I’m happy.” To her dismay she realized she didn’t have a handkerchief with her, nor even a tissue. She’d just have to sit there tear-streaked. “I suppose you’ll draw up the papers and I’ll sign...or something.”

  “I’ll make all the arrangements, Elizabeth. The doctor, the hospital. I’ll take care of everything, including the bills.”

  “I thought this was a loan. I don’t want ...

  “Charity. I know. This is not charity, Elizabeth. After the surgery is over, you and I will come to terms about repayment. Fair enough?”

  He was more than fair. He was magnanimous bordering on saintly. Put Elizabeth in front a firing squad and she would fight like a tigress, but confront her with kindness and she wilted like a camellia left too long in the sun.

  The dam inside her burst, the dam she’d been shoring up with resolve and holding back with bravado and patching with prayer. She knew she was sitting in a leather chair late at night on the top floor of the Lassiter building, but she felt as if she’d been climbing for years carrying a backpack weighted down with stone, and finally she’d scaled the top of the mountain. Now she would rest. At last she could breathe.

  She couldn’t stop her tears. She couldn’t find her voice to say I’m sorry. She couldn’t even find a voice to say thank you.

  “There’s a box of tissue on the corner of my desk.” The
shock of what he’d said stopped the tears. Was he going to bring her a tissue? Was he coming into the light? She sat very still, waiting.

  “You can come over and get it.”

  Her heart in her throat, she stepped out of the circle of light and walked into the darkness toward David Lassiter. As she got closer, his profile emerged--squared-off jaw, classic nose, chiseled cheekbone. Even in the shadows she could see that the right side of his face was that of a very handsome man.

  One long arm snaked out and pushed the box to the edge of the desk, and for a moment she thought she saw the glimmer of his right eye, dark as obsidian.

  A trick of the moonlight? Improved night vision? Wishful thinking?

  Pierced to the heart, she lingered near the desk under the spell of David’s intense sideways glance.

  Once when she’d been ten, a deer with a massive rack that labeled him the grand old man of his herd had stepped out of the trees into the clearing beneath the tree house where she sat dreaming. Sensing her presence the buck had tilted his head, his antlers so heavy they almost touched the ground. And then in one of those shining moments forever emblazoned on her heart, he’d studied her with ancient eyes that knew the secrets of the deep woods, and she’d felt touched by magic.

  That’s how she felt, now: touched by a mysterious force that made her believe David knew the secrets of the deep woods and beyond--the secrets of oceans and mountains, of creation itself, and the heavens that encompassed it all.

  That look, that single sideways look, touched her soul and made her feel that she was no longer alone, one small woman standing fierce against the fates.

  David broke the spell. “Take the tissue and leave,” he said.

  “Leave?”

  How could she go? There were things she didn’t know, details to be worked out.

  “Edwards is waiting to take you home. I’ll contact you as soon as the arrangements are made.”

  Fifteen minutes earlier she would have called his dismissal arrogant and curt. But that was before she’d gazed into his deep black eye. There was no coldness in David Lassiter, only a heart frozen over and a soul imprisoned.

  Strange as it seemed, Elizabeth didn’t want to leave him. She might have called her reason compassion if she hadn’t been Papa’s granddaughter. He’d taught her that survival depended on truth.