Dawn in Eclipse Bay

chapter 3

Lillian watched Octavia Brightwell’s expressive face while she examined the painting. Rapt attention radiated from the gallery owner.

Octavia stood in the center of the studio, her red hair aglow in the strong light cast by the ceiling fixtures. Her slender frame was taut with concentration; she seemed lost somewhere inside the picture propped in front of her.

Or maybe she hated the painting and didn’t know how to deliver the bad news, Lillian thought.

She berated herself for the negative thinking. She considered herself to be a positive, glass-half-full kind of person under most circumstances, but when it came to her art she knew she was vulnerable.

Octavia was the first and, thus far, the only person from the art world who had seen her work. Until recently, she had allowed only the members of her family and a very few close friends to view the paintings.

She had always drawn and painted. She could not remember a time when she had not kept a sketchbook close at hand. She had been fascinated with watercolors and acrylics and pastels since childhood. She picked up her brushes as easily as other people picked up a knife and fork. Her family considered her painting as nothing more than a hobby but she knew the truth. It was as necessary to her as food and water and fresh air.

She had been born into a family of financial wizards and entrepreneurs. It was not that art was not respected in the Harte clan. Some of the members of her family actively collected it. But they treated it as they would any other investment. Hartes did not establish careers as artists. She’d dreamed her dreams of becoming an artist but she’d kept them to herself.

Until now.

The time had come to turn her dreams into reality. She could feel it. She was ready. Something inside her had changed. She sensed new dimensions in her work, new layers that had not been there in the past.

She was sure of her decision to try her hand at painting full time, but she did not know if her work had a market. She had enough Harte business instincts to understand that in the real world, art was a commodity like any other. If there was no consumer demand for her work, there was no possibility of making her living as an artist.

The route to financial success as an artist required the support and savvy marketing of a respected dealer. The decision to show her paintings to Octavia Brightwell first had been based entirely on intuition.

Octavia owned and operated an influential gallery, Bright Visions, here in Portland. She had also opened a branch in Eclipse Bay.

“Well?” Lillian prompted when she could no longer stand the suspense. “What do you think?”

“What do I think?” Octavia appeared to have trouble dragging her gaze away from the painting. “I think it’s absolutely extraordinary, just like the others in yourBetween Midnight and Dawn series.”

Something inside Lillian relaxed a little. “Good. Great. Thanks.”

Octavia turned back to the painting. “I’m pulling out all the stops for your upcoming show. I want maximum impact.”

“I don’t know how to thank you, Octavia.”

“Don’t bother. We’re both in this thing together. I have a feeling that it isn’t just your career that will take off when I hang your work in my gallery. Mine is going to get a real shot in the arm as well.”

Lillian laughed. “Sounds good to me. I’ll leave you to do your job. I’m off to Eclipse Bay on Wednesday.”

“You’re really going to do it? You’re going to close down Private Arrangements?”

“Yes, but keep it to yourself for a while.” Lillian folded her arms and studied the paintings that lined the studio wall. “I’m still working on figuring out how to break it to the family gently.”

“I suppose it will come as a shock.”

“Well, it won’t be quite as much of a blow as it was when Nick announced that he was leaving Harte Investments to write mysteries full time. After all, my grandfather had counted on him taking over the company when my father retires. But no one is going to be real thrilled when I announce that I intend to paint full time. Hartes don’t become artists. They’re businesspeople.”

Half an hour later, the laptop under her arm, the hood of her rain cloak pulled low over her face, Lillian walked quickly through the misty rain toward the building that housed the offices of Private Arrangements. Her thoughts were on the conversation with Octavia. She did not see the big man until he stepped right into her path.

“You’re Lillian Harte, aren’t you?” he said fiercely.

The anger in his voice made her mouth go dry. She came to a halt in the middle of the busy sidewalk, fervently grateful for the fact that she was surrounded by a large number of people.

The man looming in front of her appeared to be in his mid-forties, big, heavily built with blunt features and thinning, short-cropped hair. She could not see his eyes. They were concealed behind a pair of dark sunglasses. Not real useful on a cloudy, rainy day, she reflected, but they certainly added a note of menacing drama.

“Do I know you?” she asked cautiously.

“No.” His heavy jaw jerked. “But I know you, lady. You’re the matchmaker, aren’t you?”

She clutched the laptop very tightly. “How do you know that?”

His mouth twisted. “I’ve been watching you for the past couple of days.”

A blast of stark fear left her palms damp. “Youfollowed me? You had no right to do that. I’ll report you to the police.”

“I didn’t do anything illegal.” He looked disgusted. “I just wanted to be sure.”

“Sure of what?”

“Sure you were the woman who runs that matchmaking outfit, Private Arrangements.”

“Why do you care who I am?”

He moved in closer. “You’re the one who took Heather away from me. You hooked her up with someone else, didn’t you? I called her a couple of days ago. Thought I’d give her another chance, y’know? That’s when she told me that she planned to marry this guy you set her up with. She thinks she’s in love. I think you messed with her mind.”

Ice touched Lillian’s spine. “Are you talking about Heather Summers?”

“Heather was with me before you tricked her into thinking I was no good for her. She left me because of you.”

It took everything Lillian had to stand her ground. “Who are you?”

“My name’s Witley.” He took another step toward her, his face clenching with anger. “Campbell Witley. Heather and I were together before you came along. You ruined everything.”

She glanced quickly around again, reassuring herself that she was not alone here on the sidewalk. Then she looked very steadily at Campbell Witley.

“Please, calm down, Mr. Witley. I did match a woman named Heather but when she filled out the forms I gave her she stated that she was not currently seeing anyone. I always insist that my clients be single and unattached when they sign up with my firm.”

“I don’t care what Heather said on your damned forms.” He tapped his wide chest with a stubby thumb. “She was withme.”

Lillian remembered Heather very well. She was a shy, nonconfrontational type who would have found it extremely difficult to deal with an aggressive man like Witley.

She also recalled that Heather had been a different woman after her first date with Ted Baker. Baker was the quiet, studious sort, very much a gentleman. He and Heather had attended the opera together. It had been love at first sight.

“Out of curiosity,” Lillian said, “do you enjoy the opera, Mr. Witley?”

“What business is it of yours?”

“Heather loves the opera. I just wondered if you shared her interests.”

Witley’s mouth creased into a thin line. “Are you saying I didn’t have anything in common with her just because I wouldn’t go to the damned opera? That’s bullshit. Heather and I had a lot in common. We went to ball games. I took her camping. We went white-water rafting. We did lots of stuff together.”

“Those were all things that you enjoyed. But it doesn’t sound as if you did many things that she liked to do.”

“How do you know what she liked?”

“She was very specific on the questionnaire I had her fill out. She is really quite passionate about the opera, you know. And she likes to attend film festivals.”

“I took Heather to the movies. We sawBattle Zone twice.”

This was hopeless, Lillian thought. Campbell Witley would probably never understand, much less care, that he and Heather had had no common interests.

“I’m sorry about your personal problems, Mr. Witley, but I assure you, I had nothing to do with the breakup of your relationship,” she said.

“The hell you didn’t. If it hadn’t been for you, Heather would be with me now.”

“When did she end your relationship?”

Witley scowled furiously. “The night we went to seeBattle Zone the second time. When I took her home that evening, she said she didn’t want to date me again. Why?”

“You say that she broke up with you after you took her to back-to-back screenings ofBattle Zone. As I recall, that film came out early last fall. I remember the ads were everywhere.”

“So what?”

“Heather didn’t register with Private Arrangements until December. I matched her in January.”

“Who cares when she registered with your damned agency?”

“I’m trying to explain that my firm had nothing to do with the end of your relationship with Heather,” Lillian said patiently. “She didn’t come to me until after the two of you had stopped seeing each other.”

“Don’t try to weasel out of this. She’d have come back to me by now if you hadn’t fixed her up with someone else.”

“I don’t think so,” Lillian said as gently as possible. “It doesn’t sound like the two of you were a good match. You need an outdoorsy type. Someone who likes to camp and hike. Someone who isn’t afraid to argue with you.”

“That just shows how much you know. One of the things I really liked about Heather was that she never argued with me.”

“Guess there wouldn’t have been much point.”

His face worked. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I get the feeling you didn’t listen to her very well, Mr. Witley.”

“That’s a damned lie. I listened to her.”

“Can you honestly say that Heather never once indicated that she preferred attending the opera to camping?”

Witley grimaced. “She may have mentioned the opera crap a couple of times but I told her to forget it. That highbrow stuff is boring. No beat to it, y’know?”

“In other words Heather did everything you wanted to do but you didn’t do any of the things she liked. You don’t see that as a problem in a relationship?”

“I told you, Heather and I had a great relationship.” Witley’s voice got louder. “And you wrecked it. What gives you the right to play games with other people’s lives, Lillian Harte? You can’t get away with treating folks like lab rats.”

She held the laptop in front of her as if it were a shield. “I don’t treat them that way.”

“Using a damned computer to figure out who people should date and marry? You don’t think that isn’t treating them like rats in a maze? Hell, you’re like some mad scientist in a movie or something. Like you know what’s best for everyone else.”

“Mr. Witley, I can’t discuss this with you. Not while you’re in this mood.”

She made to step around him but he blocked her path.

“You can’t mess up my life like this and then just blow me off,” he said. “You took Heather away from me. You had no right to do that. You got that? No right, damn it.”

“Excuse me, I’ve got to go now,” Lillian said.

She whirled abruptly to the left and plunged through the glass doors of the large department store that occupied most of the block. There would be security staff inside if she needed help, she thought.

But Campbell Witley did not follow her into the store. She paused in front of a cosmetics counter and glanced over her shoulder to see if he was still on the sidewalk outside.

There was no sign of him.

She stared down through the polished glass at a display of elegantly packaged face creams. Her pulse was beating too rapidly. Her stomach was doing weird things.

What gives you the right to play games with other people’s lives, Lillian Harte? You can’t get away with treating folks like lab rats.

She could not blame this queasy, slightly panicky feeling entirely on the scene with Campbell Witley, as unpleasant as it had been. She had been getting little foretastes of this nasty sensation for several weeks. It was one of the reasons why she knew she had to shut down Private Arrangements.

“Can I help you?” a solicitous voice asked from the other side of the counter.

Lillian looked up and saw immediately that the sales-woman was not offering to summon medical assistance. She was looking to make a sale.

“Uh, no.” Lillian pulled herself together with an effort. “No thanks. Just browsing.”

The clerk’s smile slipped a little the way clerks’ smiles always did when you used the magic words.

“Let me know if I can be of service,” she said and moved off toward another potential customer.

“Yes. Thanks. I’ll do that.”

Lillian turned away. She wove a path through the remaining cosmetic counters, angled across accessories and shoes and exited the store through the doors on the cross street.

Outside on the sidewalk she glanced uneasily in both directions. Campbell Witley was gone.

But he had followed her home the other night. He knew where she lived.

This was scary stuff.

She took a steadying breath and walked purposefully toward her office building. She had definitely made the right decision when she had made up her mind to close down Private Arrangements.

A short while later she stepped off the elevator. Halfway down the hall she saw a familiar figure waiting for her in front of the door marked Private Arrangements. J. Anderson Flint.

She was immediately hit with a full-color flashback to the scene in Anderson’s office on Friday afternoon. Every lurid detail was there, including the red bikini briefs. One of the drawbacks to having an artist’s eye, she thought. You sometimes remembered things that you would just as soon forget.

It was all she could do to resist the urge to leap back into the elevator before the doors closed.

She made herself continue moving forward. There were things that had to be done before she left town. She could not avoid Anderson. Running away was not going to solve anything. Sooner or later she had to deal with the man.

Anderson did not notice her immediately. He was too busy checking the time on his very elegant black and gold wristwatch.

“Good morning, Anderson.”

He turned slightly at the sound of her voice and smiled. It struck her, not for the first time, that he could have played the part of the wise, understanding, all-knowing therapist in a soap opera. He certainly had the cheekbones and the jaw for television. He also had the eyes. They were very, very blue and filled with what looked like insight. He was in his late thirties but he projected an image of wisdom and maturity far beyond his years. His thick, precision-cut, prematurely silver hair and the precision-trimmed goatee added to the impression.

Anderson was dressed more conventionally this morning than he had been the last time she had seen him. He wore a gray chunky-weave turtleneck sweater, dark tailored trousers, and loafers. He had explained to her once over coffee that a formal business suit and tie made patients tense and uncomfortable. She tried not to think about whether he had on the red bikini briefs.

“Lillian.” He looked relieved to see her. “I was getting a little worried. It’s nearly eleven o’clock. I called your office several times this morning. When there was no response I thought I’d come up here and see what was going on.”

“Good morning, Anderson.” She jammed the keys in the lock and opened the door with a single twist of her hand. “I didn’t have any appointments today so I used the time to take care of some personal business.”

“Of course.”

She flipped on the lights and went toward her desk. “Was there something you wanted?”

Anderson followed her into the office. “I thought we might have dinner tonight.”

“Thanks, but I’m afraid that won’t be possible.” She gave him an apologetic smile and put the laptop down on her desk. “I’m going to be busy all day and I have a lot to do tonight.”

“You just said you didn’t have any appointments.”

“I’m getting ready to leave town for a while.”

“You never said anything about planning a trip.”

“I’m not going on vacation. I’m changing careers.”

“Changing-?” he asked with concern. “What’s going on here? You’re not making any sense, Lillian. You seem tense. Is something wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong, Anderson. I’m going to stay at my family’s place in Eclipse Bay for a while, that’s all.”

“How long will you be gone?”

“A month.”

He stared at her. She doubted that he could have looked any more dumbfounded if she had just told him that she intended to join a cloistered order of nuns.

“I see.” He pulled himself together with a visible effort. “I hadn’t realized. Can you take that much time off from Private Arrangements?”

“I can take all the time I want, Anderson. Private Arrangements went out of business Friday afternoon.”

His jaw dropped a second time.

“I don’t understand,” he said, looking genuinely baffled. “What do you mean?”

“You heard me. I’ve closed my doors.”

“But that’s impossible,” he sputtered. “You can’t just walk away from Private Arrangements.”

“Why not?”

“For one thing, you’ve got too much invested in it.” He swept out his hand to indicate their surroundings. “Your office. Your program. Your client list.”

“My lease is up next month. I made back my investment in the program several times over a long time ago. And I’ve whittled my client list down to one.” She waved one hand. “I admit I’m having a small problem getting rid of him, but I’m sure that situation will soon be resolved.”

“What about our book project?”

“That’s another thing, Anderson. I’m sorry, but I’ve decided not to get involved in helping you with your book.”

He went very still. “Something is wrong here. This isn’t like you. Your behavior is very abnormal. It’s obvious that you’ve got some issues.”

She propped herself on the edge of the desk and looked at him. “Anderson, a very unpleasant thing happened to me this morning. A man named Campbell Witley stopped me on the street. He used to date one of my clients. You know what? Mr. Witley was really, really mad at me because I’d helped his girlfriend find someone else to date.”

“What does this Witley have to do with your decision to shut down your business?”

“He pointed out in no uncertain terms that I had no right to use my computer program to meddle in other people’s lives.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“As it happens, I tend to agree with him.”

Anderson stared at her, clearly appalled.

“What do you mean?” he asked sharply. “Why do you say that?”

She eyed the closed laptop and wondered how to explain things to him. He probably wouldn’t believe her if she told him that the program only worked in conjunction with her intuition and a dose of common sense. She hadn’t wanted to believe it, herself.

She needed a more technical-sounding excuse with which to fob him off.

“The program is flawed,” she said finally. In a way, that wasn’t really far from the truth, she thought.

“Flawed. Are you certain?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t understand. You’ve been so successful. You’ve attracted so many high-end clients.”

“Dumb luck, I’m afraid.” She shrugged. “Keep in mind that I don’t have any long-term statistics yet because I haven’t been in business long enough to obtain them. It’s possible that over time my matches won’t prove any more successful than the ones people make on their own in the usual ways.”

Anderson gave her a long, considering look. “I think I see the problem here.”

“The problem,” she said very deliberately, “is that Campbell Witley has a point. I don’t have the right to fiddle with other people’s lives. Besides, it’s too stressful.”

“Stressful?”

“Lately I’ve begun to wonder-what would happen if I screw up badly someday and put the wrong people together? Oh, sure, I do a comprehensive background check on all of my clients to make certain they don’t have a criminal record or any history of serious mental disorders. But what if I miss something? Don’t you see? There’s a very real potential for disaster.”

Anderson nodded soberly. “I agree.”

“You do?”

“Yes.” He shoved his hands into his pockets and rocked a little in his tasseled loafers. “To be perfectly frank, I had been meaning to broach the subject, myself.”

“You were?”

“Yes. But I wanted to get to know you a little better before I raised such a delicate question. After all, Private Arrangements is your business.”

There was something distinctly patronizing about his smile, she decided.

“What delicate question?” she asked carefully.

He looked at the laptop. “As you know, I have been deeply intrigued by your program for some time now, but I must admit that the fact that you have been using it without professional guidance has worried me more than somewhat.”

She waited a beat. “Professional guidance?”

“Let’s be honest here, Lillian. You don’t have a background in psychology. You have no training or experience in clinical therapy or counseling techniques. It says a great deal for your program that you’ve been as successful as you have thus far. But I agree that in using it for real-life matchmaking, you assumed an enormous responsibility and a degree of risk. Obviously such a sophisticated program should be used only by a professional.”

“I see. A professional. Like you.”

“Actually, yes. If you’re serious about getting out of the business, I would like to make you an offer for the program and the related files that you’ve developed in the course of your work.”

That stopped her momentarily. She hadn’t bargained on this. The last thing she wanted to do was sell the program to Anderson. If he used it, he would soon discover that it didn’t work very well on its own. No telling how many mistakes he might make before he realized that it was not magic.

“No,” she said. “I told you, it’s flawed.”

“You mean there are bugs in the program?”

“Not technical bugs,” she said, trying to keep things vague. “It just doesn’t work very well.”

He chuckled. “I’m sure that I have the professional background necessary to fix any small problems that might come up. I’ll make you a fair offer. We can work out mutually satisfactory terms. Perhaps a licensing agreement?”

“The Private Arrangements program is not for sale.”

“Lillian, be reasonable.”

“I’m sorry, but I’ve made my decision.”

He frowned. “Obviously that confrontation with Witley was traumatic. Your state of generalized anxiety is extremely high. But I think that when you have a chance to calm down you’ll see that you’re overreacting.”

She straightened away from the desk, walked to the door and yanked it open. “If you don’t mind, I have a lot of things to do here today, Anderson. I want to leave town the day after tomorrow. That means I don’t have time for this conversation.”

He hesitated and then apparently decided that further argument would get him nowhere. “Very well. We’ll discuss this later.”

Don’t hold your breath,she thought. But she managed what she hoped was a civil smile.

He hesitated and then took the hint and walked out into the hall. He paused.

“Lillian, perhaps-”

“Goodbye, Anderson.” She shut the door very firmly in his face.

It felt good.

Probably overreacting, but what the heck. She had a right to overreact. Between Gabe, Witley, and Anderson, she’d had a very difficult week.

She went back to the desk, picked up the phone and called a familiar number.

Nella Townsend answered on the second ring.

“Townsend Investigations.”

“Nella, its me.”

“Hi, Lil. What can I do for you? Got a new client you want me to check out?”

“Not exactly. I want you to get some background on a man named Campbell Witley.”

“Not a client?”

“No. Ex-boyfriend of one.”

There was a short, distinct pause on the other end of the line.

“A problem?” Nella asked.

“I don’t know. That’s what I want you to find out for me.”

“Okay, what have you got?”

“Not much. All I know is that until sometime last fall he was seeing Heather Summers, a client, on a regular basis. You did a check on her when she signed up with Private Arrangements.”

“Got it. This shouldn’t take long. He’ll probably pop up in her file. I should have a preliminary report ready for you by the end of the day.”

“Great. I’ll pick it up on my way home. Thanks, Nella. I really appreciate this.”

“No problem. Got any plans for tonight?”

“I’ll be packing.”

“Packing takes energy. You need to eat. Why don’t you have dinner with Charles and me?”

“I’ll bring the wine.”

At five-thirty that afternoon, Lillian sank into a deeply cushioned chair in the living room of Nella’s apartment and kicked off her shoes.

“I’m exhausted. It took an entire day to pack up that office. I thought I’d be finished by two o’clock. How can a person accumulate so much stuff in an office?”

“One of the great mysteries of life.”

Nella picked up the blue folder lying on the table and carried it across the room. She wore jeans and a deep yellow blouse with a spread collar. The gold necklace at her throat gleamed against her dark brown skin. She wore her black hair cut close to her head in a style that showed off her excellent bone structure.

She took the chair that faced Lillian’s, curled one leg under her and opened the folder.

“I thought you told me all of your files were stored on the hard drive of your computer,” she said.

“The client files are on the computer along with the program, but that still leaves a lot of paper. Receipts, correspondence, notes to the janitorial staff, messages from the company that leased me the space, you name it. I had to go through every single item and make a decision about whether to keep it or toss it.” Lillian exhaled deeply. “But it’s done and Private Arrangements is no longer in business.”

“Congratulations,” Nella said. “Feel good?”

“Yes, but I’ll feel even better after you assure me that Campbell Witley is not a serial killer.”

“He looks squeaky clean to me.” Nella glanced at some of her notes. “Witley was in the military at one time, as you guessed. He received an honorable discharge. After leaving the service he took over his father’s construction business and has been very successful. He was married for six years. Divorced. No children. No record of arrests, no outstanding warrants, no history of violence or abuse.”

“Just what I wanted to hear,” Lillian said.

“I also managed to get hold of his ex-wife. She said Witley was the domineering type and inclined to get a little loud at times, but she sounded shocked at the suggestion that he might turn violent. She said he was, and I quote, ‘harmless.’ ”

“Excellent.”

Nella closed the file and looked seriously at Lillian. “None of this means that he might not be dangerous under certain circumstances, you understand.”

“I know. But I suppose you could say that about any man.”

“True.” Nella pursed her lips. “This was a fairly superficial check. I didn’t have time to go deep. Want me to continue looking in the morning?”

“No, I don’t think it’s necessary. If his ex-wife vouched for him, I’m satisfied. Thanks, Nella. I really appreciate it. I’ll sleep better tonight.”

The sound of a key in the lock interrupted her.

Nella uncoiled from the chair. “That’ll be Charles. Time to pour the wine.”

Lillian twisted in the chair to give Nella’s husband a welcoming wave. Charles came through the door, a long paper sack with a loaf of bread peeking out of the top in one arm, a briefcase in his hand.

He was a slender black man with serious dark eyes framed by gold-rimmed glasses and the air of an academic. He kissed his wife and released the bread to her custody. She disappeared into the kitchen.

Charles turned his slow smile on Lillian while he removed his jacket. “I hear we’re celebrating the closure of Private Arrangements tonight.”

“Yep. I finally took the big step. I am now officially a full-time painter. Or officially unemployed, depending on your point of view.”

He nodded gravely. “This is going to put a dent in Nella’s business, but I’ve told you all along, that matchmaking business of yours was nothing but a lawsuit waiting to happen.”

Nella walked out of the kitchen with a tray of wine and cheese. She wrinkled her nose. “You’re a lawyer, Charles. To you, just walking down the street is a lawsuit waiting to happen.”

“Dangerous places, streets.” Charles took one of the wineglasses off the tray and lifted it in a toast. “Here’s to art.”