Pyrophobia Read online

  ‘You only just found it in your in-tray?’ he asked in a calmer tone.

  George nodded. ‘That’s right, Mr Evans.’

  ‘And you don’t know who put it there?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t,’ he said contritely. ‘I’m always extra careful when I’m sorting mail. Everyone will tell you that. But sometimes something goes wrong and that …’

  He paused and shook his head again.

  ‘I don’t understand it, Mr Evans. I could’ve sworn I had emptied out my in-tray. And then, when I glanced at it a half hour ago, just out of habit, I saw your envelope in it.’

  Jason gently gripped the man’s shoulder.

  ‘Think carefully, George. Letters don’t just appear out of thin air. Someone must have put it there.’

  In reply, George hung his head.

  ‘Were you here the whole time?’ Jason pressed.

  George looked up. ‘Not the whole time, Mr Evans. I went out for coffee with Lori. And Mr Albright from Accounting called. I went to his office, as well. He had some questions about our postage expenditures. As you know, he insists on everything tallying up to the last cent. And then—’

  ‘So you were away from your desk a few times,’ Jason concluded.

  ‘That’s right,’ George confirmed.

  ‘And then, suddenly, this letter appeared in your in-tray.’

  George nodded. ‘That’s God’s truth, Mr Evans.’

  ‘I believe you, George,’ Jason said, releasing his grip. ‘Thanks for your help. See you tomorrow.’

  Jason returned to his office to see a list of rejected concepts for Tommy Jones’s advertising campaign glowing on his computer screen. He ignored them. The king and his clunkers were now in full retreat from the front lines of his consciousness.

  He picked up the Polaroid photograph and scrutinized the gate, the headstones and the handwriting. He then slid the photo back into the envelope, tucked it into the inside pocket of his jacket, and grabbed his briefcase. After turning off the computer, he left his office.

  You are dead.

  Macabre mail. Was this some moron’s idea of a joke? Perhaps, but a voice deep within him warned that it wasn’t. He felt his face flush. A drop of sweat trickled down his brow. Angrily, he swiped it away.

  TWO

  Kayla

  He was awakened by the feel of her hand sliding across his bare chest. Blearily he opened his eyes and found himself looking up into Kayla’s sea blue eyes. Her long black hair was mussed and hung down appealingly. Her smile turned the moment soft and endearing.

  ‘Good morning,’ she said in that husky, sexy voice of hers. It was her voice that had first drawn him irresistibly toward her.

  He pushed himself up on his elbows. ‘I see your smile at the crack of dawn, and suddenly I forget to yawn,’ he quipped. ‘What more could a man want?’

  Indeed it was the crack of dawn. The alarm clock on his bedside table registered 6:02.

  ‘Or a woman,’ she quipped back.

  ‘You’re in a good mood.’

  ‘Of course.’ Her smile widened. ‘Your deep brown gaze puts me in a daze, and it’s your body I craze.’

  ‘The word is “crave”, not “craze”, and it doesn’t rhyme with “daze”.’

  ‘It does in my book,’ she said, and her hand slid lower.

  ‘Oh good Lord,’ he breathed. As his head slumped back against the pillows, she came to him, her long, lithe body hard against him, her mouth open and her tongue searching. Deftly she moved the tips of her fingers to his inner thigh, teasing him, playing with him.

  ‘Your fingers chase away the sleep that lingers,’ he whispered in her ear.

  ‘Hmm, not very inspired,’ she murmured as her hand found its mark. ‘Now this, my dear, is what I call rock-hard inspiration.’

  He moaned with pleasure as she squeezed gently.

  ‘Late breakfast today?’ Kayla whispered.

  ‘Screw breakfast,’ he breathed. ‘I’d rather screw you.’

  ‘Then do it, Romeo!’

  After showering together, they hurried through the evolutions of getting ready for work.

  Kayla served as a management secretary for Demas Electrical, a manufacturer of engine parts. Her boss, Patrick Voight, had told her many times that he would be lost without her – and upset with her when she was late for work.

  While she was applying make-up in the bathroom, Jason scrambled a few eggs, heated water for coffee, and popped two slices of wheat bread into the toaster. Their bedroom romps had made him hungry, and he was sure it was the same for her. As he was setting out jam and butter on the table, she came up behind him and hugged him. He turned around. Her hair was still damp, and her cheeks fresh and rosy.

  She brushed her lips against his. ‘God, how I love you,’ she said, from the heart. She gestured at the kitchen table. ‘Not only are you a woman’s dream in bed, you’re a gentleman in the kitchen.’

  ‘I wish I was more like that boss of yours,’ Jason allowed. ‘You know, I envy him sometimes. You do whatever he tells you to do.’

  ‘Not everything, Jason Evans,’ she said, stepping away from his embrace and wagging a finger at him. ‘Not by a long shot, and you know it. Some things are just for you. This, for example.’ She ran a hand from her ample breasts down to the curve of her thighs.

  He reached for her but she spun away.

  ‘No more of that,’ she admonished. ‘I’m in a hurry. So how’s that toast coming? And where’s the cutlery? Either give me what I require, or tonight you shall not have what you so desire.’

  ‘Nor shall you, my love, in that case.’

  ‘Oh, yes. That’s right. I forgot.’

  She smiled at him and sat down.

  Jason sat down beside her. ‘See what I mean?’ he sighed. ‘I try my damnedest to organize things around here, to make you happy, and still you give me grief. Isn’t it you women who are always complaining that men think you’re good for only one thing? That, and cooking and cleaning.’

  ‘Oh, but you’re doing such a great job,’ she laughed. ‘It must be your line of work. You advertising types sure know how to appeal to your target audience.’

  ‘Ah, my sexy target audience,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, but who’s complaining? Your product’s deft manipulations have once again ensured maximum customer satisfaction. I’m sold on whatever you have to offer.’

  ‘Glad to be of service,’ he said in a mock grumble. ‘Always good to have a happy customer.’ He poured out two cups of coffee. ‘Well, if you need cutlery, you know where to find it.’

  She arose and started rummaging through the kitchen drawer.

  ‘Another disappointing line,’ she teased. ‘Your marketing skills need some more work. You’re not perfect yet.’

  ‘A man always needs room for improvement.’

  Jason plucked two slices of slightly burned bread from the toaster and added, ‘By the way, I’m stopping by my father’s house after work.’

  ‘Want me to come?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘Dad probably has everything sorted out for his party, and that means I won’t have to do much of anything beyond sitting with him for a while. So unless you’re up for a social call, you might as well come straight home. We’ll be going there tomorrow anyway, and I won’t be long. Just an hour or so.’

  They finished their breakfast, cleared the dishes, and then drove in separate cars away from Fernhill, a town nestled in the lush Santa Monica Mountains between Malibu and Santa Monica. Jason had grown up in a town called Cornell, seventeen miles away. Kayla had been born and raised in Palm Springs.

  Five years had passed since Jason had bought the house at 160 Cherokee Drive. Truth be told, his father had bought it for him. He knew Jason wanted the house, and so he had purchased it. At the time, Jason had just started working for Tanner & Preston, and the local bank hadn’t judged him sufficiently creditworthy to buy the property on his own.

  It hadn’t cost all that much, per
haps because it needed quite a lot of work. Jason and his father had completed the basic home improvements in under a year, calling in professionals only when the complexity of a project exceeded their combined skills and experience. The result was a distinctive, whitewashed, wooden country house reminiscent of the neo-colonial style of the Go West era. The facade of the house stretched five feet across a lawn surrounded by flower beds containing Kayla’s cherished white and purple lupins and some sizeable hydrangeas.

  But their favorite place to be outside was on their back porch, where commanding views of the canyons around Fernhill took one’s breath away. Canyon View, they called their home. It wasn’t a big place: living room, kitchen, one and a half bathrooms and two bedrooms, one of which Jason had converted to a study. But that was all they needed.

  As Jason followed Kayla along Tuna Canyon Road toward the Pacific Coast Highway, he recalled the day when he had literally bumped into her. It had been about ten months after his break-up with Carla Rosenblatt, one of three women in his life with whom he had been seriously involved.

  As he approached the exit for Pacific Coast Highway, he waved goodbye to Kayla, who kept driving straight toward Interstate 405.

  Not until he joined the traffic jams on Interstate 10 near the LaBrea exit did his thoughts drift back to the Tommy Jones campaign. With those thoughts came a headache and the death of his good spirits. Come what may, he had to get a draft on paper by the end of the day. He then thought about his father who would turn sixty-six tomorrow and mentally checked off the list of things he had promised to do for him.

  The strange mail he had received the day before never entered his mind.

  THREE

  Fuss

  Jason’s resolve to get serious about the advertising campaign came to naught. He had just started reading through his new emails when Barbara Baker stepped into his office. Barbara was an essential girl Friday: she answered the phones, performed clerical jobs, and was a junior designer. She worked closely with senior designer Donald Nelson and art director Carol Martinez. But Barbara and Carol did not get along, and Barbara had recently been hinting that Carol was cutting corners.

  ‘I’m a junior associate, but I do most of the work around here,’ she griped to Jason. ‘My work is not appreciated. The least management could do is strip the junior off my title, right?’

  Jason was in no mood to explain, once more, that Carol had been working for the company six years longer than Barbara, and that she had brought a lot of dollars into the firm during those years. He certainly didn’t want to explain that she was having problems at home. Carol’s marriage was steering toward the rocks. Jason knew it, Donald Nelson knew it, but few others among the office staff were aware of how tenuous the situation had become. Carol Martinez was, in a word, preoccupied – in one of the worst ways possible. Although Jason felt sympathy for her, there was little that he or others in senior management could do for her despite their admiration of her as an employee. They had to wait it out, and try to keep the lid on a boiling pot.

  ‘You’re doing a great job for us, Babs,’ he said, calling her by her popular nickname. ‘I can see you making progress every week. Your ideas and solutions are solid. Be patient. Your time will come, I promise you.’

  He cast a meaningful glance at her tight jeans and tight top that exposed her navel. Earlier, Jason had mentioned Barbara’s provocative way of dressing to Kayla, who had warned him not to take undue notice. It was a warning that Jason had found unjustified. In his mind he was unavailable, no matter how young and attractive Barbara or any other woman might be.

  Today, Barbara had more to complain about. If he thought she was doing such a great job, she asked him sternly, why wasn’t she being assigned to more design work?

  ‘I’m tired of answering phones and playing secretary,’ she groused. ‘And I’m sick to death of bookkeeping. What I want is DTP work.’ She was referring to artistic work as a desktop publisher.

  Jason again appealed to her patience, in vain. Finally she slouched off to her work desk without a glance back at him. He gazed after her with concern. Barbara had talent and ambition, no one could deny that. The agency should cherish and protect such an employee. If nothing happened soon, she would find a job at another advertising agency, and that he didn’t want to happen. He made a mental note to discuss the matter with Brian, but it would have to wait. Tommy Jones came first.

  But it soon became apparent that today was not the day for the Automobile King either. Brian entered his office under the guise of a work meeting, although it wasn’t long before his real purpose became clear. Brian started complaining about his wife Louise, who had suddenly lost interest in their long-planned trip to Las Vegas. This sorry state of affairs, Jason immediately suspected, was related to Brian’s love of gambling that bordered on addiction. Louise had told Jason more than once that whenever Brian traveled to Vegas, he gambled away whatever cash he happened to have on hand, often several thousand dollars. He imagined she was getting tired and resentful of his passion. But how could he make Brian see the folly of his ways? He couldn’t ever seem to find the right words. Luckily, on this morning, Brian received an important phone call and had to excuse himself.

  Next up at his desk was Carol. Last night, she told him, things had come to a head with her husband. After what had apparently been a ferocious fight, Carol had packed a bag and driven to her mother’s house. She hadn’t had much sleep, despite several stiff nightcaps. And now she couldn’t control her tears.

  ‘It’s over,’ she sobbed. ‘Twelve years of marriage down the drain.’

  Jason was starting to feel more like a social worker and marriage counselor than an advertising executive. Nevertheless, he put his arm around her shoulder. ‘Take the rest of the day off,’ he urged.

  She gave him a grateful look. ‘I was hoping you’d say that,’ she sniffled. ‘I thought I might go shopping with my mother, to take my mind off things. Thanks. I’ll be in tomorrow.’

  She swiped at tears that had reduced her mascara to a blur of gray and left his office. Jason was watching her walk down the hallway when Donald suddenly materialized from a side office and wrapped his arm around her waist. Jesus, Jason mused, here was another office problem that had nothing to do with business. The truth was, Donald was in love with Carol. Jason had often wondered how much Donald was to blame for Carol’s marital crisis. Their affair had by now become an open secret. Even Barbara knew about it, and it was probably another reason for her to hate Carol. If the relationship between Carol and Donald grew any closer, there would never be room for Barbara to improve her position in the company, she probably figured.

  Jason sighed with frustration as the last member of the Tommy Jones team, Anthony Wilson, appeared in the open doorway glancing back over his shoulder at Donald and Carol. When his eyes met Jason’s, he arched his thick, dark eyebrows and his mouth broke into a broad grin.

  ‘Not good?’ Tony asked, pointing down the hallway. His voice was as non-committal as his expression was unflappable. In the often troubling waters of office politics and office affairs, Tony Wilson, unmarried and uncomplicated, was the one safe harbor Jason could always depend on. He also happened to be one of the most gifted copywriters of his acquaintance.

  Jason shook his head. ‘No. Not good.’

  ‘Well then,’ Tony commented, ‘I guess you and I will have to man the fort today.’

  ‘We’ll man the fort, Tony,’ Jason conceded, unavoidably smiling at Tony’s choice of words.

  He glanced at the clock. Almost eleven thirty.

  ‘Time for the Automobile King,’ he said.

  FOUR

  Edward

  At first blush Edward Evans appeared to be a healthy fifty-year-old man. His hair was military gray and well-trimmed, he had hardly an ounce of fat on him, and his arms were lean and muscular. Plus, he sported the rich brown tan of an outdoorsman. But in fact he was almost sixty-six and a good four inches shorter than his son. As Jason walked inside the
house, his father gave him a pensive once-over.

  ‘You look tired, son. Are you OK?’

  ‘I am tired, Dad,’ Jason allowed. ‘It’s been one of those days when nothing turns out right.’

  ‘Busy at the office,’ his father assumed.

  ‘If only that were all.’ Jason sighed.

  Edward’s eyebrows arched up in question. Jason considered spilling the beans – about Carol, Barbara, Donald, his boss, all of it – but he kept his emotions in check. Priding himself on not being a worrywart, he had long ago resolved never to bring work home with him.

  ‘Let’s talk about your birthday, Dad,’ he said, changing the subject. ‘Is everything set for the big party tomorrow?’

  Edward Evans frowned. ‘You act as if I can’t handle this,’ he said. ‘But you know better than that, I hope.’

  ‘Of course I do. I just mean that if anything needs to be done, Kayla and I could run some errands for you. Or whatever.’

  ‘You just said you were busy.’

  ‘I’m never too busy to help out my family.’

  Their conversation had settled into its usual pendulum-like, back-and-forth pattern. Jason would offer help, and his father would decline that help, kindly but resolutely.

  ‘You don’t have to worry about your old man,’ Edward avowed. ‘I’ve already done all the shopping. Tomorrow I’ll move the furniture around a bit, and after that, I’ll just be sitting around waiting for the guests to arrive. All you have to do is show up with that lovely bride of yours and leave the rest to me.’

  His father was right, of course. He didn’t need Jason’s help. Jason understood his father’s strength because he felt that same strength inside of himself. ‘Never show weakness’ was the unspoken mantra of them both. Anything you can do yourself, you do yourself.

  The only time Edward had reached out for his son’s support was when his forty-seven-year-old wife had been diagnosed with incurable lung cancer. And then again in the months after she died.