Rainbow in the Mist

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  As the Jeep passed below Nona’s house before turning up the drive, she looked up to see that Victor Birdcall was again perched on the ridgepole, working on his lightning rods.

  Donny saw him too. “There’s the Thunderbolt Man!” he cried. “Dad, I want to go talk to him.”

  Hayden stopped the car. “Go ahead. Though I don’t think Victor will like that choice of a name.”

  “He doesn’t care. He knows I call him that.” Donny hopped down again and went running along the drive toward the house.

  “Shall I drive you up?” Hayden asked Christy. “Or will you come over to my place and tell me whatever you can?”

  He spoke without emotion—as though he didn’t care one way or another. The flash of challenge she’d seen in his eyes was gone, yet the very suppression of emotion reached through her defenses. There was very little she liked about Donny’s father, but she knew he was suffering deeply, and this she couldn’t refuse.

  “I’ll try,” she said. “Though I’m not sure there’s anything I can do.”

  Silently, Hayden put the Jeep into gear and drove on.

  Will she go away, or will she stay?

  If she stays, sooner or later someone will give her the scarf. I wonder what she’ll make of it? Soap and water will surely defeat her. Besides, even if she senses something, it won’t lead anywhere. All the secrets are safely hidden.

  I don’t want to harm her. She’s only an incidental interference. But if she persists, it may be necessary to stop anything she tries to do—even to stop her. There is too much at stake.

  4

  Hayden Mitchell’s house had been built next along the ridge that ran high above the road, and it was hidden from Nona’s by a thick stand of pine and oak. The steep gravel driveway wound up to a cleared parking space in front of the garage. Christy, looking ahead, saw Eve Corey sitting on the low front steps studying a sketch pad propped against her knees. As usual she wore faded denim shorts, a bit tight on her plump legs, and a man’s shirt hanging outside. Thonged leather sandals left her bare toes free.

  Eve looked up as they approached from the car, thick eyebrows beneath windblown bangs, raised and faintly derisive.

  “Hi,” she greeted them, and then to Hayden, “So you’ve persuaded Christy to do her thing after all?”

  Hayden ignored her words coolly. “You have something to show me?”

  “Right,” Eve said, unchastened. “You aren’t exactly on top of things lately, and Mrs. Hampton is annoyed. She’s a good client, and we want to keep her happy, so you’d better look at what I’ve suggested for plantings in the front area.”

  As Hayden sat down beside Eve on the steps, Christy studied the house he and Deirdre had built a few years before. Like Nona’s, it was gray, with a red deck running its width, but this house was two stories at the front, and built foursquare, with big windows offering a sweep of mountain and valley from a slightly different angle than Nona’s.

  Eve looked up from her sketches at Christy. “I hope you got some sleep last night, after all the excitement.”

  “I did fine.” Christy resisted the probe.

  “Rhododendrons should look well in this corner where the deck jogs.” Eve held out her pad for Hayden to see. “Farther along we can plant gumpo—those Japanese dwarf azaleas. The deck’s low, and Mrs. Hampton doesn’t want anything growing too high in front. Around the oak tree over here on the right we might use spiraea. Gold flame, maybe? But she wants to see you about all this. You really haven’t been on the job as you should be.” Eve sounded both critical and impatient.

  “I’ll talk to her,” Hayden said and handed back the pad.

  Eve’s curiosity hadn’t lessened and she was still interested in Christy. “That was some get-together last night! Especially with Victor showing up like the spirit of doom after you left. Did Nona tell you? Oliver was pretty upset. When we went out to our cars afterward, I tried to talk to him and calm him down—but he hardly listened. I’m not sure why he was so upset, but the sooner he gets away from all these bad vibes and moves to Charlottesville, the better.”

  Hayden said nothing, and neither did Christy. Eve finally took the hint and stood up. “I’d better run along. Good luck, Christy, with that scarf of Deirdre’s.” Clearly she’d guessed why Christy was here and would have liked to stay. But with no encouragement from Hayden, she gave them both a mocking salute and walked toward her car.

  As they went through the front door into a long stretch of living room that ran the width of the house, a woman came through from the rear.

  “Hello, Leonie,” Hayden said. “This is Miss Loren. Christy, this is Mrs. James, who takes excellent care of us.”

  Leonie was a tall, handsome woman with warmly golden skin and black hair that she wore in a coil at the nape of her neck. Her skirt, bright with tropical flowers, was topped by a scoop-necked white blouse. Gold hoops in her ears danced as she moved, and she acknowledged Hayden’s introduction with dignity, though her concern was elsewhere.

  “Have you seen Donny, Mr. Mitchell? He went off right after breakfast and didn’t tell me where he was going.”

  “It’s okay,” Hayden said. “We have to let him run free for now. But I’ll speak to him about letting you know when he goes out.”

  Leonie nodded and returned to whatever task she’d dropped when they came in.

  Hayden explained as she went off. “It was Deirdre who found Leonie for us, and we need her more than ever now. Her father was local, but her mother came from Haiti. She’s older than she looks, and has retired as a schoolteacher. Deirdre liked her to dress in island colors and Leonie enjoys a bit of drama after all her staid years. She’s very good with Donny and he talks to her more than he does to me these days.”

  Hayden was marking time, Christy knew—perhaps postponing whatever might happen, now that the moment was upon them. He probably dreaded the outcome as much as she did.

  “This is a beautiful room.” She gestured, looking around. The floor was red-tiled in a herringbone pattern. Woven swivel chairs upholstered in royal blue could face the conversation area of sofa and bookcases or swing around to command the stunning sweep of mountains. Once more, Christy’s eyes were held by the view. Shreds of mist topped trees across the valley, while the rest of the green land, with its patches of red, dreamed in morning sunlight. Nothing appeared to move anywhere.

  On the opposite side of the room, more windows looked out upon the same stretch of woods that plunged down the hill behind Nona’s house.

  Hayden came to stand beside her. “There’s a stream running through at the bottom of the hill. That’s where the Llama Lady, as Donny calls her, lives. Nona has told you about Floris Fox?”

  “She’s mentioned her.”

  “Sometimes I think Floris likes animals better than she does people. Deirdre didn’t get along with her too well in the last months.” He turned from the window abruptly. “Let’s go upstairs and I’ll show you the scarf.”

  “Not yet,” Christy said quickly. “I mustn’t go too fast. I need to feel my way a little. Did Deirdre have a room of her own—a private space she enjoyed?”

  “Yes. Her room’s upstairs. Do you want to see it?”

  “Please. It might tell me something about her—something that might help before I touch her scarf.”

  As he led the way upstairs she could sense his uneasiness, his distrust. He was clearly doing this against his better judgment—perhaps at Nona’s urging.

  “Deirdre chose the room with the balcony at the front of the house for her own,” he said as they reached the upper hallway.

  When he opened a door Christy stepped across the threshold and stood very still, waiting for whatever might happen. A single narrow bed had been placed where Deirdre might lie against pillows and look out at the mountains by day, and the stars and moon at night. It was not a bed to share with a husband, and t
he room itself surprised Christy. Somehow, from what she’d heard about Deirdre, she’d expected frills and fancies. But this might have been the room of a nun. The wood furniture was plain oak, straight and severe. There was no upholstery—one sat on hard boards, and there was little in the way of decoration. A patchwork quilt on the bed offered the only splash of color, except for a single large painting over Deirdre’s small, plain desk.

  Recognizing Harmony’s work, Christy went to stand before it. The painting had been done in recent years, since it featured a red road. Trees grew on each side in the foreground, and the road climbed between them, curving out of sight at the top of the picture. Nona had caught the particular blue of a Virginia sky when the haze lifted, with only a trail of mist smoking between the mountain folds. The central theme of the picture was not the road, however, but the tremendous rainbow that arched above it, one end lost in mist, while the other seemed to touch the road itself where it curved to one side of the picture. All the rainbow colors were there in the wide band that held them, yet they blended one into another in the nebulous way of a real rainbow—soft-focused, yet distinct at the same time.

  “It’s—magical,” Christy said softly. “One of Nona’s best.”

  Hayden glanced at her. “That’s the word Deirdre used. Though for some reason Nona didn’t want me to buy it for her. She said at first that it wasn’t for sale, because the rainbow meant something special and she wanted to keep it herself. But Deirdre coaxed and coaxed, and Nona wound up making it a gift. Deirdre would sit for hours staring at the painting—so that her behavior made me uncomfortable. She said voices spoke to her out of the rainbow. Deirdre had a strong mystical cast to her nature. I knew that was part of her, and I tried to understand her whimsical side. In the end, I failed.”

  His voice had dulled, and Christy shrank a little, knowing what she must do. She moved close to the painting, shutting Hayden out of her mind, willing herself into the scene Nona’s brush had caught—as if she might step beneath the arch of the rainbow. Nona had said that she didn’t always understand what she herself had painted.

  “Yes,” she said softly. “I think this is where Deirdre wanted to go—out to the rainbow’s end. I wonder why she wanted to—to escape?”

  “She always wanted something that was beyond reality. She could never accept the fact that rainbows have no end.”

  “I’m not sure that’s true,” Christy tried to speak lightly. “I think Nona has seen the end of a rainbow in her imagination—so she could paint it.”

  “Imagination is one thing. Believing is another.” Hayden turned his back on the painting. “I don’t like it. Sometimes Donny comes here and sits on that stool staring the way his mother used to do. As if he wants to go to the end of the rainbow—the way he thinks she has done. Sometimes I wonder if I’d better take it down.”

  Again Christy could sense darkness in him—something even more troubling than sorrow.

  “Show me the scarf,” she said. “I’m ready now.”

  He crossed the room. “It’s right here in Deirdre’s desk.”

  “Then let me go outside first. Take it to a neutral place and leave it. I don’t want anyone nearby when I touch it.”

  Every clairvoyant had his or her own way of working, and this was Christy’s. But now she sensed increasing resistance in Hayden. It would take very little to turn him away from what she must do, and perhaps that might be safer for all of them. But it was already too late. She could feel the inner stirrings begin—following a course that could never be stopped.

  Hayden gave in. “All right. Go and wait on the deck downstairs, and I’ll come and tell you where I’ve put it.”

  She ran down the stairs with an odd sense of flight. Leonie James stood near the bottom step, watching her. Her dark eyes were wide with awareness, and Christy knew she sensed something.

  “Be careful, Miss Loren,” she whispered.

  Christy nodded understanding and went out onto the red deck. The morning had warmed and a small breeze shivered in the oak tree, sending a crisp brown leaf from last winter skittering across the boards. She breathed deeply of the high, clear air, bracing herself against what might come; feeling, as always, unprepared and defenseless. Down on the road a car, traveling too fast, raised a cloud of dust that drifted upward.

  A moment later Hayden joined her. “I’ve put the scarf on the bookcase in the living room. I’ll stay here until you want me.”

  She had to offer him—and herself—one last chance. “You’re sure you want me to go ahead?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Oliver Vaughn doesn’t believe in any of this,” she added, still delaying. “Even though he was married to Rose, who must have been sensitive to mystical vibes—as she revealed in her writing.”

  “I’m not Oliver.” He sounded sharp and disapproving. “And I always thought Eve would have made him a better wife than Rose was able to.”

  From Hayden, who had seemed reticent and not given to revealing what he thought, this was unexpected. Christy couldn’t help retorting.

  “That’s a man’s viewpoint—which woman would make the best wife.”

  His mouth twisted in what seemed to pass for a smile. “I expect Oliver made no more of a husband for Rose than I have for Deirdre.”

  This was a new and distracting thought, but she thrust it aside to be dealt with later. The moment had come. She went again into the long red-tiled room and walked directly to the bookcase, where for a moment she stood with her eyes closed. When she had time, it was best to go down inside herself and achieve a mild trance before she touched anything from a missing person. The quivering had stopped, as it always did when she emptied herself and allowed whatever pressed in to come through.

  Now a deep inner stillness possessed her. Behind her eyelids colors flashed yellow and green—against deep black. She reached out with both hands and picked up the scarf. The silk seemed to twine about her fingers as though it were alive. Shockingly alive, so that the very touch of it seemed to burn her skin. She wanted to drop it and run from the room, but she made herself stand where she was and let the scarf flow through her hands in a stream of white fire.

  The impressions in her mind came thick and fast. A sense of horror that she had never before felt to this degree seemed to surge through her very veins. The intensity was far stronger—and it was different. She received no picture of Deirdre in her consciousness, or of where she had gone, where she might be found. Something else was there—an appalling sense of evil, of wickedness. Anyone who continued this search would be faced with an ultimate terror. Never before had this shattering awareness of a murderer swept her as it did now. In the past she’d seen only the sad, mutilated girl, and there was no wickedness, or evil residue left—but only the vision of a place where men could go to find the body. Never before had her vision reached out to the person behind the crime.

  This was different and far more terrifying.

  Perhaps she had made some sound without knowing it—perhaps she’d even cried out—for Hayden was suddenly in the doorway, watching her.

  “Are you all right?”

  The silk was no longer fire and ice, and it slipped from her fingers, floating lightly to the floor.

  “I need to go outside,” she told Hayden. She heard the trembling in her own voice, felt the throbbing begin at her temples.

  Alarmed, he put an arm about her and she leaned into his strength, seeking support and human reassurance—anything that would wipe away that awful knowledge of human viciousness that existed at the other end of the scale from goodness and love.

  Outside, Hayden led her to a porch chair and she dropped into it. “I’m sorry—I need to rest for a moment.” The throbbing would stop—it always did, but right now she felt ill.

  He drew over another chair and sat beside her, waiting. She knew he held back the questions that must be brimming in him, and
she tried to speak, though her words came haltingly.

  “I—can’t help you, Hayden. I’m sorry—but I can’t tell you what you want to know.”

  “But you felt something—you’re frightened. At least you can tell me why.”

  “I don’t know how to tell you, because this has never happened to me before. I only know that someone truly evil has held Deirdre’s scarf. Perhaps so evil that all that remains of Deirdre in the silk has been burned away.”

  “I don’t believe in an abstraction called evil.”

  She could sense his disapproval, his withdrawal, and there was nothing she could offer. “Lili—my mother—doesn’t believe in it either, but I’m afraid I do.”

  “You mean angels and devils and hell?” He sounded scornful, and the antagonism she felt in him from the first, had grown stronger.

  “No, I don’t mean evil in the old biblical sense,” she told him. “I can’t explain. But I’d like to talk to Nona about this—talk to her right away. I’m really sorry I can’t help you, Hayden.”

  “I never really thought you could,” he said. “I’ll drive you back to your aunt’s now, if you like.”

  Christy shook her head. Her need to be alone was too urgent, the danger she’d felt too great.

  Hayden paid no attention, but came with her when she left her chair. He kept a wary eye on her progress as they followed the path to Nona’s, though he didn’t touch her, even when she stumbled.

  An empty field of red earth and rough grass separated the two houses, and it took only moments to reach Nona’s. Victor Birdcall had come down from the roof to work at the near corner of the house, running a cable from one lightning rod into the ground. He looked at neither Christy nor Hayden as they went by, returning Hayden’s greeting with only a nod.