LITMIR.BIZ

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A BLUE SHADOW

       1

      Saturday, November 2

      Dawn, Holmes County, Ohio

      CURLED up in her black down parka, Martha Lehman lay on her side, back pressed firmly against the polished wood door, knees drawn tightly to her chest. The white block lettering on the door read Dr. Evelyn White Carson, Psychiatrist. Martha was aware only of the rough, cold carpet pressing into her cheek and of long, ragged breaths that repeatedly dragged her out of a trance. Thus, for an hour, before sunrise bled pink hues through the window at the end of the second-floor hall, she lay in a stupor, hounded again by a dreadful loneliness.

      In wakeful moments, with a fervor born of an all-too-familiar pain, she renewed a childhood vow. Silence, she thought, had never betrayed her, and it was Silence she’d cling to now. Silence had brought her to Dr. Carson as a child, and Silence she would trust again. Then, it had been Carson who had understood the wordlessness. The sorrow and isolation of a mute child. It will be Carson, now, she prayed, who will remember.

      Thoughts formed only intermittently, in a cold, tortured nightmare of helplessness.

      Silence again, she vowed—now, more than ever before. The snap and pop of blue cotton shirts and black denim vests in a stiff winter breeze, clutching at her from a clothesline.

      Alone again, and safe that way. Menacing, cracked lips that sternly mouthed, “Save your little sisters.” A childhood nightmare, empowered, somehow, to hurt her again.

      How had She known? A man’s blue shirt tore loose from the clothesline, enveloped her face, and smothered her, its weight unbearable, its odor a familiar horror. On weak child’s legs, she struggled to carry the burden of an adult, and managed to breathe only in gasps.

      Too soon for Her to have known it. And yet She had. The wind began to whisper judgment from the clothesline. Shirt sleeves snapping near her eyes. Wagging fingers, all of them.

      Fallen like Babylon, Martha Lehman. “So, choose, young Martha,” an urgent voice pleaded. “Choose the better way.”

      Sonny, what have you done? The frowning congregation walked out of the barn, all their faces down, all their backs turned. No one dared to believe it possible. To accept the hell it signified.

      What plans now? He’s lost to you. No place for plain girls in his murderous world. Nor any place in the old. No haven for outcast girls.

      The cold tracks of tears on her cheeks slowly awakened her. She unclasped her knees and felt a binding stickiness between her fingers. Unzipping her parka, she instinctively pressed her palms to her belly and felt the stickiness there, too. Sitting up, she brushed hair from her eyes, smearing her forehead. She looked down in confusion and saw her white lace apron stained dark red. Gasping, she fell back on her side, knotting her fingers into the bloody fabric.

      Vaguely, now, she recalled brief snatches of last night’s disastrous conversation with Sonny’s mother. She dimly remembered driving away in the snow. A sleepless night of confusion and frustration. Her decision to go back. The blood. Running. Fleeing in the storm.

      But these were indistinct memories. Perhaps more dreams, she thought, as she lay motionless. Mere impressions. As if her mind had conjured events that her heart could not allow.

       2

      Friday, November 1

      6:00 P.M.

      THE ALBERTA clipper cut into Holmes County right when the weather crew on FOX 8 News in Cleveland had predicted it would. A hint of morning sun had earlier given way to gray skies, and the temperature had dropped twenty degrees by 9:00 A.M. By noon, most of the Amish settlements had six to eight inches of new snow on the ground, and buggies were traded for sleighs throughout the region. By evening, the clipper had pushed east, and moist air from the south blended sleet with the blowing snow, adding another four inches or so to the mix. Snowplows, active all day, still had not cleared the secondary roads by dusk, and the sheriff’s office issued a travel advisory. As night fell, Amish farmers bedded down livestock, latched barns tight, stoked fires in wood stoves, and gathered their families inside.

      Sheltered from the storm, Juliet Favor pushed open the lid of her tanning bed, swung her slender legs out to the floor, and stood up on the heated redwood planks of her third-floor gym-sauna. She took a royal blue towel from a gold hook on the wall and crossed to the mirrors on the other side of the warm attic room. Nude, as she dried her arms and shoulders, she studied her tan in the floor-to-ceiling glass. She had every right to be pleased with what she saw, but a too critical eye for matters physical failed to recognize the true beauty in her form. For Juliet Favor, the tan had only momentarily been adequate.

      July and August in the Mediterranean had laid down a deep copper hue. In the salons of Paris, between this year’s strategic nips and tucks, she had managed to hold most of her color. October in Rio had deepened her copper to a bronze that she had thought would last for months.

      But tonight, assessing her reflection, she shook her head and muttered a curse. Stay in the States for another two weeks, she thought, and you’ll have no color left for Jamaica.

      So, be done with Ohio. Wrap it all up. Tomorrow, if possible. Let them squirm, the whole lot of them. Dominate as Harry always had. They hadn’t deserved Favor money for years.

      Closer to the mirrors, Juliet lifted artfully colored blond hair behind her left ear and ran a finger lightly along the skin where an incision had been made. She felt nothing unusual, and smiled. She pulled the other ear forward and peered sideways into the mirror. Nothing there either, she saw with approval. Dr. Verheit of Paris—you do such nice work. On this point, she could afford to be congratulatory. Where else but Paris for those little fixes that kept a woman of fifty-three looking not a day over forty?

      She was diminutive and proportioned well. Her narrow face was pleasant enough when a rare smile found a home there. To new acquaintances, aging seemed to have ignored Juliet Favor. The truth, as old friends knew, was that she had anticipated its advances skillfully.

      She turned left and right in front of the mirrors and smiled briefly. Then she stepped into the recessed space where one of six large dormer windows faced west.

      The season’s first bitter storm blew snow and sleet against the glass, and the roofline carried a mournful tune as the wind played its music on the gutters outside. Winter air penetrated the seams of the window, and she felt the blizzard’s chill near the floor, on the tops of her bare feet. Eyes closed, she dropped the towel over her toes and stiffened, pulling pins from her hair to let it down over her shoulders. She fluffed her hair with thin fingers and shook it out fuller. Eyes open, she shuffled closer to the windowpane, stood on tiptoes, and looked out warily at the storm. With her forehead pressed against the cold glass, she studied the service drive far below. White flurries danced brightly in the floodlights, and she saw snow drifting in high mounds along a line of bushes on the west side of the mansion. After a quick assessment, she retreated from the window and wrapped the towel tightly around her chest.

      From a stainless steel rack in the center of the large exercise room, Favor selected two five-pound free weights. On the other side of the room, near the stairs that led down to her second-floor master bath, she leaned a shoulder against an intercom button as she flexed one arm and then the other, waiting for her butler’s reply. In short order, “Yes, Ms. Favor” came from a deep, calm voice through the speaker on the wall.

      “Daniel,” she scolded, “you know I hate snow. Turn off the floodlights.”

      “Right away, Ms. Favor.”

      “Were you trying to annoy me?”

      “No, ma’am.”

      “Then turn out those lights!”

      “At once.”

      “Wait. What have you laid out for me?”

      “Oh, just a few frumpy old things, ma’am.”

      “Knock

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