The stirring under the surface was alive now in Christy, as though something dark waited to spring out at her.
Nona knew what was happening. “Don’t, Christy. Don’t let it take over. You can stop it, you know. Give yourself a little breathing space.”
“What does that mean?” Eve asked bluntly.
Christy raised her hands in a helpless gesture. “Tell Eve, if you like. It doesn’t matter.”
Reluctantly, as they ate, Nona related the story of what had happened in Christy’s life during the last two years, and Eve listened intently. When Nona was through, Eve regarded Christy with growing excitement.
“Perhaps you were sent!” she cried. “Perhaps it was meant that you should come here and help Hayden and Donny.”
Nona said nothing and her silence made Christy all the more uncomfortable.
“I haven’t any talent for finding people who disappear because of accidents,” she told Eve.
“But what if something worse has happened to Deirdre?” Eve persisted.
“That’s enough for now.” Nona pushed back from the table. “If you’re through, let’s clear the dishes and I’ll fix the dessert.”
Eve gave up for the moment. “Okay. How does it work, Christy? You can talk about that, can’t you? How do clues come to you?”
Christy carried dishes to the sink, wishing she could sidestep all of this.
“It’s not idle curiosity,” Eve added. “I feel terribly sorry for Hayden and Donny—so if there was any chance of your helping—”
“I can’t tell you how it happens,” Christy broke in. “I don’t know where the pictures come from or why they come. They’re suddenly there, whether I want them or not, and I begin to sense something. I don’t feel anything now about Deirdre, and I don’t want to. When it happens it can be shattering. Worst of all, I never have any feeling that I’ve helped.”
“You don’t need to think about any of this until you’re rested,” Nona assured her. “Eve, why does Victor feel that the search should stop?”
Eve scowled. “Who knows? He gets hunches, but he makes me mad the way he acts—as though he has some deep, inner knowledge that nobody else can have. I don’t know if he really knows something or if he’s putting me on. I just wish he’d go back to New Mexico, or wherever he came from.”
“I’ll talk to him,” Nona said. “For dessert we’re having yogurt with honey and nuts and a sprinkle of carob. Agreeable?”
Nobody objected, and when she’d spooned the mixture into sherbet glasses, Eve carried them to the table.
“I’d better fix an extra dish,” Nona said. “Someone’s coming.”
A moment later they heard a car on the gravel driveway, and Eve rolled her eyes at Christy as Nona switched on the outside lights.
“I don’t know how you do that.” Eve went to look out toward the driveway. “It’s Oliver Vaughn.”
“Oliver was Rose’s husband,” Nona reminded Christy as she went out on the deck.
A moment later she returned, followed by a tall, slender man, perhaps in his early forties. He carried a tote bag filled with books that he set down on the tiles as Nona introduced him to Christy.
His interest as he took her hand seemed especially intent. “You’re Liliana Dukas’s daughter, aren’t you? Nona has told us about you, though I gather you haven’t followed in your mother’s footsteps.”
“Sit down, Oliver,” Nona directed. “I know you hate yogurt, but have some anyway. At least you drink coffee.”
Oliver Vaughn was good-looking enough to have been a movie actor out of the past. Today’s actors were stamped in no such beautiful pattern. His pale, silky hair contrasted with dark eyes as heavily lashed as a woman’s. His straight, classic nose looked as though he might be disdainful of much that came under it.
“I brought over the extra copies of Rose’s book you wanted,” he told Nona. “I’m clearing out her things, and I know you can use more copies of Little Red Road.” He sounded matter-of-fact, but Christy sensed that Oliver Vaughn might be suppressing a great deal of emotion under his cool demeanor.
Seated, he didn’t seem as tall—it was his legs that were long. Under a blue pullover his shoulders rounded a little, as though from bending above a desk.
“Thanks,” Nona said. “I’m very glad to have these.”
“Can you use any help, Oliver, sorting through Rose’s things?” Eve offered. “I can manage the time.”
He shook his head. “I want to do this myself. I’m going to put my house up for sale and move into Charlottesville as soon as I can.”
“Must you move?” Nona asked. “I should think Redlands would be ideal for a writer.”
“You mean because it’s so quiet that nothing ever happens here?” He raised an eyebrow derisively and turned to Christy. “You may have heard that this hasn’t been a happy place lately. I lived here because of Rose—because she loved the isolation. Now I’d rather get away. I don’t want to be here when they find Deirdre.”
“What makes you think she’ll be found?” Nona asked.
“It’s inevitable, isn’t it? Where could she go in sandals and a nightgown?” There was something about the way he spoke that made Christy look at him quickly, but his bland expression told her nothing.
He ate a mouthful of yogurt, made a face, and went on. “I saw your mother in an interview on television last week. What do you think of her work?”
“Before you commit yourself, Christy,” Nona put in, “you’d better be aware that Oliver’s second vocation is the exposing of fake psychics. Lili would really baffle him.”
Christy smiled, sidestepping his question. “My mother lives her life as she pleases, and that’s fine with me.”
“I’d like to meet her,” Oliver said. “I’ve just finished writing an article about this so-called channeling—where spirits who come from God knows where and have special identities are supposed to speak through human channels.”
“Perhaps God does know,” Nona said mildly. “Even though you don’t think it’s for real.”
“Oh, I’m sure some of these people get carried away by their own fantasies,” Oliver said. “I’ve checked some of the prophecies psychics make at the beginning of every year, and mostly they’re wrong.”
“Of course there are phonies in every field,” Eve put in. “But you see what you want to see, Oliver. Rose heard her own voices—”
“Rose was different.” Oliver dismissed her words. “Every artist, every writer, experiences inspiration—something that comes from the unconscious. How, we don’t know. But these aren’t voices from outer space, or put into us mysteriously.”
“How do you know that?” Christy asked. “Who really knows where inspiration comes from?”
He regarded her with his cool, rather distant air, and again she sensed some tension in him, barely suppressed. Oliver Vaughn was far from being an open, easily read person.
“People like Dukas speak with changed voices and claim that entities are speaking through them—coming from elsewhere. The scientific mind knows that this is nonsense.” He was emphatic.
“Then you think my mother is a fake?” Christy asked.
“I don’t know enough about her. That’s why I’d like to meet her, perhaps put her through a few tests, if she were willing.”
“She wouldn’t be,” Nona said. “I know my sister and she wouldn’t waste her time. She uses whatever she has for purposes that count. It doesn’t matter to her if there are those who don’t believe.”
Oliver smiled without warmth. “All of which brings her a great deal of publicity and wealth. That’s one of the things that makes me skeptical. Forgive me, Christy, but this sort of enterprise can become pretty big business these days, taking money from the gullible.”
“You only see one side!” Eve protested. Her attitude toward Oliver seemed an odd
mixture of affection and impatience. “We all have to earn a living, and sometimes money comes more easily in one profession than another.”
“Except,” Oliver pointed out, “that this pretends to be an altruistic gift—all for the benefit of mankind.”
Even though this man put her off a little with his skepticism, Christy had always shrunk from these very aspects of her mother’s work. Lili, of course, dismissed the money earning airily. All that was incidental, she said, and she couldn’t help or control those who handled her scheduling and programs. There was a large staff who had to be paid, and she trusted all of them. Yet it had seemed to Christy that the entourage that surrounded her mother might be all too willing to sop up whatever came their way. Perhaps they even used Lili, but this was not something Christy could do anything about. She was sure that her mother was not the greedy one in the picture.
Nona glanced at her watch. “I didn’t know whether to mention this or not, but since we’re talking about her, Lili’s to be on a program that’s coming on TV in about five minutes. Shall I turn on the set? Would you like to watch, Christy?”
Watching Liliana Dukas “perform” was not Christy’s favorite way of spending time, but Oliver Vaughn’s attitude and remarks had rankled. It might be interesting to see her mother answer him herself.
“It’s fine,” she told her aunt.
Eve jumped up eagerly. “Do let’s! Dukas always fascinates me. So here’s another chance to check her out, Oliver.”
He didn’t seem particularly eager as he trailed after them to the living room. His aloof manner gave him an air of being removed from whatever was happening around him. Yet Christy, walking beside him, could sense the vibration of some inner turmoil. She felt a curious urge to put a quieting hand on his arm to reassure him. A disturbed and unhappy man was masquerading under the guard he wore.
Nona’s living room was large, with cream walls and a high ceiling. An electric fan hung beneath the central light fixture, its blades quiet on this cool evening. Soft green wall-to-wall carpeting gave the room a sense of quiet and peace, even though small tables and bookcases were busy with dozens of ornamental objects that Nona had collected in her travels around the world. Christy remembered the African pictures brought from the French Congo before it became an African nation, the lacquer boxes from Japan, and the great carved fish of gray Vietnam marble.
“This is my museum room,” Nona told Christy. “Its the first time I’ve had a place to set out all my treasures. Do sit down, everyone.”
Christy moved away from Oliver, whose tension continued to make her uncomfortable. She chose a hassock near Nona’s armchair, while Eve and Oliver sat on the couch. Nona touched a button that raised a screen over the television set in one wall. A satellite dish outside brought in the world, and Nona began to change galaxies. Perhaps Lili’s “channels” were just as real as these, Christy thought, if one possessed the ability to understand such mysteries.
Nona found the proper channel, and Bill Mathison’s middle-aged, affable face came on the screen. His show had the special quality of being live in these days when most programs were recorded. So one never knew what might happen next, and he often invited controversial guests who dealt in the esoteric.
Once the commercials were out of the way, Mathison introduced his panel. The only man was Thomas Ardle, “debunker” of psychic matters, and a man Christy detested for his prejudice and ability to twist everything to his own views. She wondered if Oliver Vaughn was like that, and found herself watching him across the room. There seemed a deep suffering in this man who had so recently lost his wife, and she wondered if his mind could be opened to the help and comfort he might receive from someone like Lili. Probably not, since Rose, with all the sensitivity and awareness that showed in her writing for children, hadn’t been able to convince him.
“Get on with it!” Eve told the screen, squirming with her usual impatience. “Let’s have Dukas!”
Christy had never heard of the woman who was next introduced—rather wispy and other-worldly—perhaps given force by the entities who spoke through her. Liliana Dukas, secure in her fame, came last on the screen in the introductions, confident, smiling warmly, exuding a quality that Christy thought of whimsically as “electric serenity.”
How strange, she thought, that the old childish longing could arise whenever she saw her mother after a lapse of time. Memories swept back—memories of a vibrant, beautiful whirlwind of a woman who swept lovingly into her daughter’s life—and then flew off on her own affairs, leaving Christy lonely and empty. Now the unwelcome longing was almost as sharp as when she had been a little girl.
From her chair, Nona watched her knowingly, and Christy smiled at her aunt. If it hadn’t been for Nona, she’d have felt even more bereft through all her childhood.
Once the introductions were over, Dukas was to be interviewed first, and she smiled kindly at the critic, who scowled back, determined to remain unimpressed. There was a radiance about Lili, an outgoing generosity that always brought a sense of helpless admiration to Christy, no matter how much she might want to resist and resent all that charm.
Dukas was still beautiful in an old-fashioned way, not minding a few extra curves to her full figure. She could wear timeless clothes that enhanced her voluptuous appeal, and tonight her long dress was of a royal blue that the camera loved. A shimmering blue that contrasted with heavy coils of dark hair that she had never allowed to turn gray. Lili’s face seemed as smooth as that of a young woman, and even her hands appeared flawless, devoid of wrinkles or conspicuous veins.
“Dukas sure takes care of herself,” Eve murmured, hiding her own bitten nails under the hem of the man’s shirt she wore over her shorts.
With her usual grace, Lili answered the host’s questions and then settled herself in her chair and closed her eyes. She could do this very quickly, as Christy knew. In only a moment or two she began to sway a little—an almost infinitesimal movement that stopped as she began to speak.
The voice was of a different caliber from Lili’s, and the entity who came to Lili was called Josef. He could be outspoken and was not one to suffer nonsense gladly. Lili herself had none of his acerbity. The host’s questions were of no great depth, meant to entertain, and Josef disposed of them almost carelessly. Nothing of particular importance was said, until Thomas Ardle was invited to ask a question.
“What does Dukas do with all the money she takes in because of you, Josef?” he asked.
“That is not our concern,” Josef said loftily, removing himself from the plane of such earthly matters. His interest, he went on curtly, lay in how he could help, through Dukas, those who needed him.
Christy smiled, almost sorry for Thomas Ardle, who would be no match for either Lili or Josef. Ardle’s debunking talents might work on haunted houses, or the bending of spoons, or other feats that might or might not be trickery. But how did you “expose” someone who was channeling? Lili didn’t often make prophecies that could later be proved or disproved. Her gift lay in healing, in offering advice and comfort to those who had suffered a loss or needed guidance.
Josef went on in his slightly stilted way, ignoring the next question Ardle asked him. “There is someone listening now who is suffering greatly. A man who has lost his wife in recent months. He needs to take care and be warned. We wish to warn him that her death may not have been an accident.”
Josef stopped speaking and Lili opened her eyes, immediately with them again. She would know what had been said—never an unconscious channeler.
Ardle burst into angry words. “What kind of thing is that? Means nothing! There must be hundreds of men—thousands!—listening out there who have lost their wives. It’s harmful to warn of something that may not be true at all. How do you know who will take this to heart?”
Christy looked intently at Oliver Vaughn and saw that his hands were tightly clasped and white at the knuckles. He l
ooked as angry as Ardle did. The other woman had come on the screen, but in Nona’s living room no one watched her.
A note of malice crept into Eve’s voice when she spoke. “Maybe Dukas meant you, Oliver. I’ve always felt that Rose would never have fallen when she was out hiking. She was never the careless type.”
Oliver looked positively ill, and Christy knew that Eve’s words and her mother’s had struck home.
The doorbell chimed suddenly, startling them all.
“I’ll see who it is,” Nona said. For once, she hadn’t been aware of someone coming.
Oliver was staring at Eve as though still listening to her words, but now he chose to deny them. “That’s crazy,” he told her roughly. “Everyone loved Rose. There isn’t anyone who wanted to harm her.”
“I suppose not.” Eve sounded unexpectedly contrite. “Forget I said it.”
But none of them could forget what Liliana Dukas had said, and little attention was paid to the second woman being interviewed. Nona rejoined them, bringing with her a man whom Christy hadn’t met, though the others knew and greeted him.
“This is Donny’s father, Hayden Mitchell,” Nona told Christy.
Hayden was not as tall as Oliver, and he was more sturdily built, with wide shoulders and strong cheekbones in his tanned face. His eyes were dark brown, intent in their regard, and his brown hair showed a bit of unruly curl. At least, he smiled more readily than his son, though the relaxing of his wide mouth was fleeting.
“I’m sorry,” he told Nona. “I didn’t realize you had company until I saw the cars on the driveway. Then I thought I might as well come in anyway and show you what has turned up.”
Ardle had appeared on the television screen again, his voice cutting through the room, compelling attention, so they all turned to watch.
“I’ll switch it off,” Nona said. “Then we can listen to Hayden.”
Prompted by some inner urging, Christy spoke abruptly. “No—please. Lili will be on again and I’d like to hear her, if Mr. Mitchell doesn’t mind.”
At Nona’s bidding, Hayden sat down reluctantly, and the television stayed on. Christy, however, found herself watching the man instead of the set, and when no one explained what was happening, Hayden took something white and soft and filmy from his pocket.
Rainbow in the Mist Page 4