Winter Affair Page 2
Leda rinsed her empty cup and set it on the drainboard. Her thoughts drifted away from her career and back to Kyle Reardon, like the needle of a compass returning to its pole. Reardon hadn’t spoken a word to her, but the communication between them had been instant and complete. Leda resembled her father very much; Reardon had recognized her from that resemblance, and from her presence at the grave. What might he have said to her if Monica hadn’t interrupted? Forgive me, I’m sorry, I never meant to do any harm? Leda knew from the accounts she’d read that Reardon had maintained his innocence throughout the trial, claiming that he had received permission to conduct the test, and that his fuel had been sabotaged. Apparently, no one had believed him.
All of those involved—the jurors who had convicted him, the judges who had denied his appeals, the police and the press and the public—had thought him guilty. Maybe her emotional response to Reardon’s undeniable attractiveness was influencing her opinion. Compelling men could be criminals too.
She didn’t know what to think. The man had brought flowers to her father’s grave, in the dead of winter, a few days after his release from prison. Why? The act itself was touching, almost pathetic. It was the awkward gesture of someone uncomfortable with the niceties of custom but determined to do something positive, something right. But when he reached his destination, he had thrown the flowers away. Did he feel himself unworthy of the offering, as Monica believed? He certainly hadn’t looked happy; his gray eyes had been haunted, the eyes of a man who lived with pain and had come to accept it.
Leda shook her head briskly, chasing the topic of Kyle Reardon from her mind. She had to concentrate on the audition in the morning and her performances for the rest of the week.
She left the kitchen and headed for her bedroom, intent on studying her lines for the first act. The director had a problem with Leda’s interpretation of the second scene, and she was going to prove to him that she was right.
* * * *
Leda didn’t get the commercial. She was told her hair didn’t bounce properly and was sent home. On the way back to Yardley, she stopped off in the rest room at the train station. She stared glumly at her reflection in the fly spotted mirror. Her bounce free hair lay in still profusion on her shoulders, the reason for her most recent failure. Leda shook it back in disgust and studied the rest of her features. They were even, well proportioned, giving her the sort of looks most other women envied, but which were almost a disadvantage in obtaining the serious roles Leda craved. She wanted to play Rosalind and Lady Macbeth and Stella DuBois, and she was usually stuck with the flashy, fluffy parts for which the shapely blonde was typecast. She’d even lost out on Juliet in her high school play because the English teacher casting it envisioned the youngest Capulet as a striking Italian brunette. Leda shrugged. There was always tomorrow, and she had learned to be philosophical about the vagaries of potential employers. Maybe she would be lucky next time.
She had a quick lunch back at her apartment and changed her clothes, then headed north to New Hope. Her little green sports car followed the familiar river road almost by rote, and she observed with real pleasure the snow whitened scenery as she drove along. Leda disliked warm climates where winter never came; despite the ice and traffic hazards, it was her favorite season.
The parking lot at the playhouse was empty except for Elaine’s gray Volkswagen. Elaine was a local seamstress, a friend of Monica’s who was coming in early to refit Leda’s costumes. She worked part time as a fill-in wardrobe mistress for the playhouse, which couldn’t afford a real one. As a consequence, the actors had to accommodate her schedule. The two fifties style dresses that Leda wore on stage were too big, cut for the actress originally slated for the part. She had backed out when she got that sought after holy of holies in the acting profession, a steady job. It was a contract role on a New York based television soap opera, and she had left New Hope the same day, leaving Leda with outfits made for a shorter, slightly heavier girl. Leda pulled in next to Elaine’s car and got out, hurrying toward the back entrance of the theater.
The building had a picturesque location on a small waterfall of the Delaware River, and the sound of the gushing torrent filled Leda’s ears as she climbed the wooden steps to the rear porch and let herself in the door. She made her way down the narrow corridor to the wardrobe room. Elaine was waiting for her inside, tapping her foot, her measuring tape in hand.
“Come on in and let’s get going,” she greeted Leda. She was never one for elaborate preliminaries. “Get out of those jeans.”
Leda obeyed, stripping quickly and standing in front of Elaine in her underwear.
“Look at that waistline,” Elaine sighed. “I haven’t seen my ribcage in twenty years.”
Leda smiled to herself. Elaine’s fondness for ice cream would keep her ribcage invisible for the rest of her life.
“I saw your aunt Monica in the bank this morning,” Elaine announced, picking up the party dress from a nearby chair and dropping the pink confection over Leda’s head.
Temporarily imprisoned in chiffon, Leda closed her eyes. Elaine was her aunt’s age, a grandmother, and a bigger gossip than Monica, if that were possible. Their conversation must have been interesting.
It was. “She told me that Reardon fella was out of jail,” Elaine mumbled through a mouthful of pins. “They didn’t keep him locked up long enough, if you ask me.” She tugged expertly on the net bodice of the dress.
I didn’t ask you, Leda thought as the folds of material settled around her legs. Elaine pulled and tucked and adjusted, taking in the seams of the gown. As she did so she kept up a running monologue on the disgraceful return to Yardley of the unwanted convict, Kyle Reardon. Leda listened in silence, fascinated by this outpouring of venom against a man Elaine didn’t even know.
“No one will give him a job, of course,” Elaine concluded with satisfaction. “He’ll be panhandling in the streets pretty soon, unless he moves.”
“I guess that’s the general idea,” Leda observed dryly, wincing a little as Elaine stuck her with a pin. “To get him to move.”
Elaine glanced at her sharply. “I wouldn’t think you would want to see him back here,” she said tartly.
Leda made a dismissive gesture. “Elaine, I was away when it all happened, and it was a long time ago. I suppose I should hate Reardon, but I really find it difficult to hate anybody.”
“Well, you wouldn’t say that if you’d been in town at the time. Your poor father. He was a very popular man hereabouts, and Yardley is a small community with a long memory. You can’t expect people to forget that all they did was lock that hothead up for a few years and take away his pilot’s license. Small price to pay for your father’s life, and the lives of the others who died in that accident.”
“He can’t earn his living without his permit,” Leda pointed out. “Don’t you think that’s going to hurt him?”
“He’s trying to get it back,” Elaine said huffily, gesturing for Leda to turn around. “He filed in Harrisburg already, I heard.”
“How do you know?” Leda asked suspiciously, craning her neck to look over her shoulder.
“Stand still,” Elaine barked, lifting the hem of the dress and examining it. “Where are the shoes you wear with this?”
Leda pointed, and Elaine scooped the high heeled pumps off the floor. Leda stepped into them, and Elaine crouched down, muttering to herself.
“I asked you how you knew so much about Kyle Reardon,” Leda repeated, holding herself rigid.
“He rented that apartment above Sara Master’s garage,” Elaine replied. “He gets his mail in the same box she does.”
“Sara’s been reading his mail!” Leda exclaimed, shocked into motion. The fabric tore out of Elaine’s hand.
“Stop jumping around!” Elaine said, exasperated. “You’re going to look like a harlequin in this dress if you don’t settle down.”
“Has Sara Master been reading that man’s mail?” Leda demanded in a strong voice, ignoring
the reprimand.
“Of course not,” Elaine answered mildly. “But she sees the return addresses on the envelopes he receives. He’s been writing to the FAA division in the state capitol.”
Leda felt a flash of sympathy for Reardon. He was the new grist in the Yardley rumor mill. To the gossip mongers in town he was a fascinating blackguard with a dark past, and the closest they’d ever get to the villains they saw in the movies.
“Maybe I should tell him to find a new apartment,” Leda suggested.
Elaine stared up at her. “Surely you wouldn’t speak to him,” she said. The sarcasm of Leda’s comment was lost on her.
“Somebody should inform him that his landlady’s a spy,” Leda said in clarification.
“Sara is not a spy. She can’t help but notice what goes on right under her nose. She wouldn’t have rented to him at all, you know, but she needs the money. Rafe’s arthritis has been acting up something terrible. He’s got this pain in his lower back and they had to take him to a specialist…”
“I think Sara would be better off minding her own business,” Leda interrupted, to forestall a lengthy catalog of Rafe’s symptoms. “And so would you.”
Elaine rose and glared at her. “You sound like you feel sorry for him,” she said accusingly. “The man practically killed your father.”
“Nobody killed my father,” Leda said, pulling the dress back over her head. “He died of a heart attack.”
“After Reardon caused the accident that brought it on,” Elaine said, shaking out the dress and replacing it on its hanger. “I trust you haven’t forgotten that.”
“I haven’t forgotten anything,” Leda said wearily, tiring of the subject. “Where is that sundress for the picnic scenes?”
Elaine went to get it, throwing Leda a dirty look over her shoulder.
Leda shook her head. If this was a sample of the kind of reception Reardon was getting, he had to be having a jolly time.
* * * *
During the following week many of Leda’s neighbors stopped her to express their outrage at the return of the local pariah, Kyle Reardon. Since Leda had only recently moved back to town herself, they greeted her warmly, expressing delight that she was among them again. Then they took the opportunity to shake their heads and wonder aloud what Reardon was thinking of, to come back to a place where he wasn’t welcome. Leda often diverted the subject to her relocation, explaining that since she had taken the job at the playhouse, she’d subletted the apartment she shared with another actress in New York. It made economic sense to live in the duplex and commute to the city when she had to, rather than run back and forth for her performances in New Hope. Her father’s friends nodded politely and quickly skipped back to the more interesting topic, the felon in their midst. The endless inquiries exhausted Leda, and she soon learned to cut the conversations short.
In all the talk she never heard one word in Reardon’s defense.
And on a couple of occasions she had firsthand experience of the treatment Reardon was receiving from the good citizens of Yardley. One afternoon she was in the pharmacy on South Main Street, standing unobserved behind a high counter, when Reardon walked in and asked for a bottle of iodine and a packet of gauze. He was wearing the same jacket he had worn in the graveyard, and there was a large, angry looking cut next to his left eye. The result of an altercation? Leda wondered. She watched as the druggist, an old golfing buddy of her father’s, treated Reardon with such glacial politeness that the effect was more offensive than the grossest insult would have been. Another time she saw him walking, erect and alone, through a chattering crowd gathering on the walk outside the movie theater. The show had just ended, and she paused on her way to her car from the convenience store across the street to observe the scene. The throng parted as if by magic to let him pass through. The people stared at him in rigid silence until he was almost out of earshot, and then someone made a comment Leda couldn’t hear. Reardon heard it, though; she saw him break stride and then recover, his broad shoulders squaring as if in anticipation of a blow. None came, however, and he walked on, never glancing back. The onlookers snickered nastily behind him, reacting to what had been said.
Leda’s expression was thoughtful as she stowed her package in the back seat of her car and started for home. She couldn’t help feeling a grudging admiration for Reardon’s stoic endurance. He took all the abuse directed at him, subtle or overt, with quiet dignity, as if he expected it and had made up his mind to tolerate it.
The image of him striding purposefully through that hostile assembly, eyes straight ahead, the lights of the theater marquee glinting on his dark hair, haunted her until she wished she could forget it.
* * * *
About ten days after her accidental meeting with Reardon in the cemetery, Leda received a call from the businessman who had purchased the hangar and airstrip formerly used by her father’s company. Matthew Phelps was a newcomer to the area, and when he had inquired about buying the property through Leda’s lawyer, she was surprised. It had been listed for years with no show of interest. Airstrips were not exactly in big demand. But he’d offered a fair price, just enough for Leda to satisfy the mortgage against it. The new owner ran a charter company, making supply runs and transporting groups of vacationers to sunny islands. Phelps asked if she would come out to the hangar office and pick up some personal items of her father’s that had been overlooked and were still there, ledgers and notebooks and even some clothes. Leda was tempted to tell him to pack the stuff up and give it to charity. She had no wish to relive painful experiences by sorting through belongings she hadn’t even known existed. But her innate good manners won out and she told Phelps she would be out that evening , steeling herself for a visit to her father’s former milieu, where she would surely hear the echo of happier times. When his wife died, Carter Bradshaw had focused all his energies on his only child, and Leda had spent a lot of time with him at his office. She’d done her homework on his desk and watched television on a small portable set in his anteroom while he took care of business. Once she went away to school she missed the smell of exhaust and engine grease, the heat and bustle of the lab where the technicians tested parts and fuels and lubricants. It would be difficult to go back there now and see it all in the hands of someone else.
The night was cold, threatening more snow, as Leda drove past the long, low industrial buildings that flanked the airfield. The slate gray structure of the hangar loomed before her as she parked her car and walked through the huge doors toward the office just inside.
The noise of engines was constant, and deafening. Phelps kept a crew working all night, as her father had done, and the men in overalls scurried about, fueling a helicopter and a Piper Cub from a truck nearby. Frigid air rushed in through the open wall, and Leda hurried across the cement floor, intent on reaching the warmth of the business enclosure. She glanced around for Phelps, and stopped dead in her tracks.
Bending over the fuselage of the Piper Cub, absorbed in overhauling the engine, was a very filthy Kyle Reardon.
Chapter 2
“Miss Bradshaw?”
Leda started out of her reverie, turning to face the man who addressed her. “Yes?”
He was a middle-aged, freckled redhead with an open, engaging manner. He stuck out his hand. “I’m Jim Kendall, the plant manager here. Matt Phelps asked me to meet you. He’s tied up at the moment, but he should be with you shortly. Would you like to sit in the office and wait?”
Leda nodded, glancing once more at Reardon. He worked on, oblivious of her presence. She shook Kendall’s hand and followed him past the opaque glass partition that separated the administration area from the hangar.
“I understand your father used to own this place,” Kendall said conversationally as she sat down next to a green metal filing cabinet.
“Yes, Mr. Phelps purchased it from the estate.”
Kendall helped himself to coffee from a pot on a warmer near the door. Leda shook her head when he asked her i
f she wanted any, and he added powdered creamer to his drink as he talked.
“Your father was a real popular guy around here,” Kendall said. “I ran into some trouble with a few of the workers when I hired that Reardon fella, the one who got into the scrape with that test. He had a rough couple of days when he started, but he’s settling in now. I believe in giving a guy a second chance, and he’s a crack mechanic. It’s quite a comedown for him too, working as a grease monkey, but he’s taking it like a soldier.”
Leda eyed Kendall nervously, wondering why he was telling her all this.
“I saw you watching him when I came up to you,” Kendall explained, reading her expression. “I thought I’d better clear it up in case there were any hard feelings.”
“Mr. Reardon has paid his debt to society. Isn’t that the phrase?” Leda replied stiffly. “You have the right to employ anybody you please.”
Kendall’s brow furrowed. He obviously wasn’t sure what to make of her comment. He looked up at the clock on the wall and tossed his empty cup into the trash.
“Miss Bradshaw, I have to go. Would you mind if I left you alone for a little while? I’m sure Matt will be out directly.”
“Go ahead,” Leda said, relieved that the man was leaving. She was afraid she was in for further discussion of Reardon if he stayed. After Kendall was gone, she sat waiting for about ten minutes, and then, bored with the inactivity, got up to have a look around. Phelps was obviously delayed, and she might as well amuse herself until he showed up.
She couldn’t quite admit that she wanted another look at Reardon.
Once back out on the floor, Leda searched for him, trying to be as unobtrusive as possible. He wasn’t difficult to find. Though attired like the others in nondescript overalls, he stood a head taller than most of the men, and his vivid coloring drew her eye. The Piper Cub was gone, and he was now working on a much larger Beechcraft. The prospective passengers stood nearby, apparently a charter group en route to a Caribbean vacation. They had started the holiday early with some liquid cheer. Several of the men were already loudly, thoroughly drunk.