Rainbow in the Mist

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  In the single moment when she came near Victor, Christy tried to sense any current that might emanate from him, but she knew instinctively that the evil that had woven itself into the scarf in some moment of fury couldn’t be discerned now in its human beginnings. The intensity would have long since been dissipated—perhaps even wiped out at its source by the act of murder?

  Nona was in the kitchen fixing lunch when they came in. She looked at Christy and Hayden with sharp understanding.

  “You’ve touched Deirdre’s scarf, haven’t you?” she said to Christy.

  “I wasn’t able to help,” Christy told her. “I need to talk to you—please. And I need to see that painting again—the one of Deirdre going off into the mist.”

  “I’ll come too,” Hayden said. “What painting is this?”

  “I haven’t shown it to anyone, Hayden,” Nona explained. “This morning Donny knocked it over and discovered it. I’d hidden it from view because I didn’t want to show it to anyone after Deirdre disappeared.”

  “Is Donny here?” Hayden asked as Nona started ahead down the long hallway to her studio.

  “Not now. He came back and stayed with the painting for a while. I had the feeling that he recognized something in it—something physical.” She paused in the doorway of her studio. “He even asked me about the pile of rocks I’d painted beside the road. I could only tell him it was out of my imagination and didn’t represent any real place. After a time he decided to go down to visit the llamas, so I made up a bag of sandwiches and fruit for him and let him go. He enjoys those animals and he and Floris Fox hit it off very well.”

  Nona moved to where the painting stood on its easel, uncovered now. This was a very different painting from that of the rainbow that hung in Deirdre’s room. Even the pigment in the earlier painting had seemed filled with light and hope and promise. This one of Deirdre was a darker scene—dark in its implications, somehow, even though the haze that wreathed her was light in tone. The great pile of granite that formed an outcropping at one side of the path rose somberly, and beyond it Deirdre’s figure flitted into misty air. Her very dress seemed like vapor, and only her face was clear—laughing as she looked back over one shoulder. Viewing the painting for the second time, Christy could fancy the eerie laughter that might be coming from her open lips. At least the throbbing torment of Christy’s headache had lessened.

  Hayden studied the painting for a moment. “You knew, didn’t you, Nona? I mean that she’d disappear into the mist. Something in you knew, so that you were seeing the future.”

  Nona flung out her hands in denial. “If that’s what I was doing, I certainly didn’t know it at the time.”

  “What if you painted her now?” Hayden persisted. “Would anything more come to you?”

  Nona shook her head impatiently. “I can’t work coldly and deliberately. I need to be prompted by some vision in my mind. Or by the insistence of something that wants to be painted. As that picture did. There’s nothing right now to make me try.”

  When Hayden turned away, Christy had the feeling that he avoided looking at her again—as though the very sight of her added to his unhappiness. “Anyway, thanks,” he told them both, and walked out of the room.

  “Hayden has lost a daughter as well as a wife,” Nona said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Here—let’s sit down,” Nona pulled a stool for Christy before the easel and drew up a chair for herself. “You need to understand what Deirdre was like, if you’re to help him.”

  “I can’t help him at all—I know that now.”

  Nona went right on. “Deirdre was woman enough for him, I suspect—passionate and high-spirited. Men were always drawn to her—perhaps because she eluded them, slipped out of reach. She was also a child who never quite grew up—and so was at the mercy of those who didn’t respect her innocence.”

  Once more Christy studied the gracefully turned head in the painting—the bright look of that face peering from the mist, the parted, laughing mouth. Somehow there seemed little of innocence in that face. Perhaps the portrait—though only a glimpse—was more true than Nona realized. More and more, Deirdre seemed to be composed of a confusion of qualities that made her enticingly mysterious. Christy thought of what Hayden had said about not being a good husband for Deirdre, and wondered if any man ever could have been.

  “I wonder if she was all that innocent?” Christy spoke aloud. “You didn’t catch innocence in what you painted here. I’d say you revealed a woman with secrets.”

  “Sometimes my brush makes judgments I’m not aware of,” Nona admitted.

  “Did you like Deirdre Mitchell?”

  “I try to give everyone the benefit of the doubt.” Nona sounded wry. “I don’t think I succeed as well as Lili does. Perhaps some deeper feeling that I don’t even recognize got into that painting. Perhaps what I felt about her wasn’t altogether fair. I don’t think she was always good for Donny, because he wanted so much more from her than she could ever give as a mother. That wasn’t her fault, any more than it was his. It’s a wonder she could ever bear a child, when she was so much like one herself.”

  “Do you know of anyone who hated her enough to kill her?”

  “Of course not! This is a peaceful place.”

  “The place is peaceful, yes, but I wonder if the people who live here really are!”

  Nona let that pass. “You held her scarf, Christy—what did you feel? Tell me.”

  Christy swung about on the stool, her back to the painting. “I felt something more terrible than I’ve ever experienced before. Even when I was working with the police, I never felt anything exactly like this. But I don’t believe it was Deirdre I felt. There was no quick vision of where she might be found. Only a sensation, as though whoever had held the scarf was driven by some vicious intent. Something almost inhumanly evil that made the silk feel as though it scorched my hands. I don’t think Donny found it where Deirdre dropped it originally. But I have no clue as to who might have put it there.”

  “What about the velvet slipper that Victor picked up near the same place? Is there a connection?”

  “I can’t tell. I received the strong impression that whoever had worn the slipper was dead. There was a superimposed male impression that could have meant Victor Birdcall, since he found it. What do you really know about Victor, Nona? Your friend Eve seems to disapprove of him.”

  “She’s that way toward a lot of people, and he’s never made any effort to make friends with her. I’m afraid he has a way, sometimes, of dismissing with indifference those who don’t interest him. I know where he comes from and what he’s running from. All that’s in the past and doesn’t matter any more. It has nothing to do with what’s happening now, so you needn’t look in Victor’s direction. He claims that he found the slipper by chance, and I believe him. Will you try again with it, Christy, and see if it might tell you anything more?”

  There was no point in refusing. The escape she’d intended when she got up this morning seemed further away than ever. It was as though the dreadful experience with Deirdre’s scarf tied her here with its silken strands.

  Turning the slipper about, touching the frayed embroidery, slipping her fingers into the toe, Christy tried to let the male impression go. She wanted something else to come through. She sat very still, letting everything but the slipper fade away. And suddenly the sense of evil was there again. With it came the conviction that the same person who had left Deirdre’s scarf in the woods had put this slipper there as well. To confuse? To set down false trails? This time the feeling was far less intense than when she’d picked up the scarf, and no burning sensation came with it. As she continued to hold the slipper, the second layer of personality faded and left a sad truth behind.

  “I’m sure this slipper belonged to Rose Vaughn,” she told Nona. “I knew Rose through her writing—and there’s some essence of hers
that I can recognize. But last night no one claimed the slipper. What do you know about Rose’s husband?”

  “Oliver’s a bit too opinionated for my taste, and he’s totally scornful of anything that touches on the mystical or psychic.”

  “Yes, I got that impression.”

  “But I can’t think he’s the one you’re looking for. I can’t imagine Oliver committing a violent crime. Physically, he might, but not emotionally.”

  “How could anyone else get the slipper?”

  “It wouldn’t be hard. Around here we don’t lock our doors. I suppose anyone could have slipped into Oliver’s house and taken it. Since he teaches at the university in Charlottesville, he’s away a good part of the day. Sometimes he seemed to dislike Deirdre—they were really at opposite poles—and I think sometimes she liked to tease him, just to see him squirm. She could be almost cruel—in the way a child is cruel, with no real recognition of what she was doing.”

  “Nona, do you believe that evil actually exists? Lili doesn’t.”

  “Of course I believe. There are evil men and women—evil nations, since they can be led by evil human beings. You don’t question that, do you?”

  “I don’t know how we can ever judge. Maybe there are only those who are weak and mistaken and programmed in the wrong direction in childhood. So that evil is only a result.”

  “Perhaps. But then do we go on forgiving terrible acts? I suspect that the most dangerous aspect of evil is that it never recognizes itself. The blame must always be put on someone else, or on outside circumstances, so the guilty can believe themselves innocent.”

  “That’s pretty frightening.”

  “We all have a dark side, Christy. Only rainbows are made of light. Wait until you see a rainbow out there against the mountains—it will lift you and wash away all that’s wrong in the space around you.”

  “But only for as long as it lasts—seconds? Minutes?”

  “That can be enough if we carry the effect with us afterward.”

  “I saw your rainbow painting that Deirdre hung in her room. Hayden seemed to think it had special significance for you.”

  “He’s right. The rainbow is becoming a symbol all over the world. Something that brings together people of good will from different religions and races—perhaps a vast coming together in time to save the planet. Though I’m not sure Deirdre was ready for such harmony. Perhaps I should never have given her the painting. She set too much importance upon it—as though it were real and she could find the rainbow right there within its frame.”

  Christy turned to the painting to study Deirdre’s laughing face, its expression somehow all-knowing—the very opposite of innocence. Who had Deirdre so tormented that some punishment had been dealt her?

  Nona left her chair abruptly. “We’ll talk about all this again. Right now we’d better get lunch. Victor’s joining us—remember?”

  Christy hadn’t remembered. For one thing, she hadn’t expected to be here, and she still wanted to get away. She had done what she could for Hayden Mitchell—which was very little—and she had glimpsed something threatening and terrible.

  Nona was watching her. “Honey, stay a few days longer. We need you more than you know.”

  But she didn’t need any of this, Christy thought as she followed her aunt to the kitchen that was Nona’s family room. When salads were set out, cold chicken forked onto a platter, and rolls put in the oven, Nona went outside to call Victor. He washed in the laundry room and joined them in a few moments.

  “Seeing how you have company, I could have brought my lunch and eaten outside the way I always do,” he said.

  “Don’t be grumpy, Victor,” Nona told him. “Sit down and turn on your charm.”

  This was apparently a joke between them and Victor smiled grudgingly. Because she felt uncomfortable with this man, Christy made an extra effort to be pleasant.

  “Birdcall’s an interesting name. What tribe were your ancestors?”

  “One of them danced the Highland fling under the name of MacLeod,” Victor told her, and then relented. “It’s not a real Indian name. The family name was Man-Who-Calls-Birds, but my grandfather thought that was a mouthful in the translation. So he shortened it to Birdcall.”

  “It’s good that you can carry the name on.” Christy was still trying.

  “I haven’t. It’s my grandmother’s name. I just took it for myself.”

  Because his own birth name had become known in some unpleasant way? Christy thought with that intuition that could come in a flash, and was often to be trusted.

  “Some of Victor’s ancestors were Plains Indians—Sioux,” Nona said.

  Victor corrected her. “Sioux is the language. They called themselves Dakota, or Lakota.” After that bit of information he addressed himself to eating his lunch, the subject obviously closed.

  Nona passed him the basket of rolls. “We think that the slipper you found in the woods, Victor, might belong to Rose Vaughn. Christy had the feeling that whoever had worn it was dead.”

  Victor gave Christy the same blank stare with which he’d regarded her when she arrived yesterday. Perhaps it was a look more searching than antagonistic. As though he tested people in some way.

  “If that’s true,” he said, “why didn’t Oliver claim it when I brought it over here last night?”

  Nona shook her head doubtfully. “It seems strange, but perhaps it was too painful for him to talk about. I know he’s trying to put all reminders of Rose away from him. I feel that it’s a good idea—his moving to Charlottesville.”

  “What about Donny?” Victor shifted his searching look to Nona.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “I saw him running through the woods a little while ago, and he didn’t answer when I called him.”

  “He was off to see the llamas,” Nona said. “They’re Donny’s road to Oz. Victor, have you any idea what’s going on in Donny’s head? Sometimes he talks to you.”

  Victor went on eating silently for a moment. Then he seemed to make up his mind. “The kid thinks he’s seen his mother. He thinks she’s come back to tell him something.”

  Nona put down her fork, dismayed. “That will be hard for Hayden to handle: Of course Donny’s head is full of what he imagines. He wants so much to believe that Deirdre’s alive that he’s brought her out of my painting.”

  “Except,” Victor said quietly, “that I’ve seen her too. I’ve seen her drifting in the woods in her white dress—just like Donny says. I had to tell him so, just to let him know he wasn’t making it all up.”

  “Go on, Victor,” Nona urged, but now he wouldn’t meet her eyes.

  “That’s all about that,” he said flatly. And then, to Nona, “Did you know Sinh has come back?”

  “Deirdre’s cat? It’s been gone ever since she disappeared.”

  “Right. But she turned up at Floris’s early this morning—half starved and scrawny. Sometimes I go down there to help with the llamas. I was there when the cat crawled to the bottom of those steps up to Floris’s house and began to yowl. I went down and brought her up to the kitchen. Usually she won’t let anyone but Deirdre and Donny touch her, but she was too weak to claw me. Of course Floris talked to her in the way she talks to her llamas, so maybe Sinh will tell her something.”

  He looked a bit sly and mocking, but Nona paid no attention. “That’s Sinh with an h,” she told Christy. “Do you know the story, Victor?”

  “Something about a sacred cat?”

  “Yes. Deirdre loved all sorts of exotic lore. The Burmese and Siamese kept temple cats—they still do to this day. They believed that when some holy human being—usually a priest—died his soul was temporarily housed in the body of his favorite cat. It might live there for years, until the cat itself died. I remember Deirdre’s excitement when she talked about this. She said such cats were often
put in gilded cages and given special offerings of food. In the beginning, legend has it, they had golden eyes. But then one was portrayed in a statue with eyes of sapphire, and all the eyes of the temple cats were miraculously turned to blue. Sinh was the name of one of the first cats of legend, and Deirdre thought it perfect when Hayden brought her a Siamese kitten.”

  It was a strange and entrancing story, and added a bit more to the growing “legend” of Deirdre herself.

  Nona wondered aloud. “Where can Sinh have been all this time? Christy, I think we’d better go down and see Floris and the cat. Then we can talk to Donny too. I’ll get my jacket.”

  Victor, at home in Nona’s kitchen, rose to clear the table, and Christy helped.

  “Did you really see Deirdre?” she asked.

  He piled dishes onto one long arm expertly and gave her his strangely searching look. She was aware of the contrast of blue eyes (like Sinh’s?) in his dark face.

  “Maybe I only thought it was Deirdre,” he said. “Sometimes the mists out there can fool you.”

  Rose is gone and Deirdre’s gone, so I should be safe enough. I can have what I want, and there is no one to oppose me. Except Dukas’s daughter. She hasn’t gone away yet, and she’s held the scarf. But I can’t be everywhere and hear everything, so I still don’t know exactly what happened.

  At least there’s a way to find out. An open channel. Not the kind of channel Dukas talks about! I must push a little harder now—make a real move.

  It was fun meeting Donny in the woods. I’m not sure if Victor saw me, but at least the white dress gave the right illusion. And misdirection. I’ve been laughing ever since.

  5

  The path winding through the trees at the back of the house was steep, but Nona was surefooted in jogging shoes. Christy stayed close behind as they went down. Nona had brought along a walking stick she used for balance, to help herself down rocky places and fend off springy vines.