Unexpectedly, Keith smiled at me. “You look nice,” he said. “Your eyes are all sparkly.”
His words reminded me how much I had been showing my cruel anxieties. For Keith’s sake as well as my own, I must try to get control of myself and make sound and realistic plans. Our flight from Owen was nearing its end, and perhaps when we reached Smoke Tree House we’d be reasonably safe for a while. Or so I tried to convince myself. Certainly I must climb out of a gloom and anxiety that was affecting Keith as well.
Through the rest of the meal I made an effort to be cheerful, and it was good to see my son respond, and even laugh a little at my nonsense. I too was to blame for his grave withdrawal. My initial mistake in marrying Owen had been disastrous in every respect but one: it had given me this son to cherish and defend. I must help him to find his own strengths, but I mustn’t place on him unfair burdens that were really mine to carry.
Back in our room, sleep seemed far away, and now the photos in the restaurant haunted me. My restless dreams were filled with Monica Arlen—whom I would meet for the very first time tomorrow.
THREE
In the morning we breakfasted in our room and were ready when Ralph Reese came knocking on the door. He was a large young man, muscular and sandy-blond, with rather staring blue eyes that examined me warily. As though I might be a threat to him in some way. Perhaps as Monica’s only relative? Nevertheless, his smile had an air of self-satisfaction, indicating that he had total confidence in its effect on me. He was probably twenty-five—more than forty years younger than Monica Arlen.
“Our bags are ready,” I said when we’d exchanged good mornings.
He picked them up as though they weighed nothing. “Hi, kid,” he said to Keith. “How about you helping me with this one?”
I could almost like him for giving Keith a useful task by handing him a flight bag, and we all went down to the impressive old white Rolls-Royce he said belonged to Miss Arlen.
We drove through streets that seemed bright and clean to eyes accustomed to New York litter. Palm trees grew everywhere, their high green fronds rustling in the breeze, and dead stalks hanging down to make thick brown collars beneath. Ralph pointed out to Keith a man on a ladder, “shaving” a palm tree to get rid of dead branches. The shops we passed were smart and expensive, displaying famous names and obviously catering to a wealthy clientele. The town had a washed green look to it, thanks to the ever-present water supply, so that brown grass was not the pattern here, as it sometimes was in Southern California.
We turned past a golf course at the base of the mountain, and came to the high steel gates that guarded Monica’s private road. These were operated electrically by a guard in the small gatehouse. We drove through and started up inside the chain link fence. Below us, Palm Springs spread out in neatly ordered squares, a relief map in green and white and red and tan.
Keith was growing excited now, and even ready to chatter. It was to Ralph’s credit that he tried to keep up with my son’s questions. The road was narrow, so that passing another car would have been impossible, and I presumed there was some sort of signal used at the gatehouse when a car was going up or down.
At the top another gate, this one of ornamental wrought iron, stood open, and here there was no guard. We drove through to park at one end of the brick-paved terrace in front of a long garage. The latter had been built into the mountain near the far end, and held the car that Linda Trevor had driven last night, as well as a smaller sports car. Ralph’s, perhaps?
The red-tiled roofs of the house and white walls spilling over with purple-red bougainvillea blazed in the morning light. Straight up behind it rose the dark mountain peak, and the air was already warming in the sun. Air that smelled clean and fresh and slightly toasted.
Linda came to one of several arched doors that opened from house to terrace, and promptly whisked us inside. I hated the feeling that we must be taken quickly out of sight, but for now at least, I could do nothing about this.
The end room nearest the road was obviously a drawing room—not a large room, but grand in a threadbare way. The ceiling was high, with dark beams and white plastered walls. Rugs from old Persia covered the floor, and the furnishings were fine traditional pieces, the upholstery—exquisite in its day—now faded and worn. Rose silk brocade on chairs and sofa, a cabinet with tortoiseshell inlays, a Waterford chandelier—all were formal, and made no bow to California except for brownish-red tiles that showed beneath the rugs.
Very little must have changed in this room since Monica Arlen had furnished it many years ago. Space in a house built into the very side of Mt. San Jacinto must be limited, but the room’s formal dignity gave it an air of importance.
At the rear, a narrow hallway led to a staircase of dark wood running straight up to the floor above. A far cry from Monica’s Beverly Hills home. I’d seen pictures of Cadenza’s famous winding black marble staircase, and I wondered if she still owned that house.
“I’ll show you to your room, so you can settle in,” Linda said. “Ralph, will you bring up the bags, please?”
Keith clung determinedly to his flight bag as we followed Linda upstairs. A narrow upper hail with tall windows along one side edged the mountain for the entire width of the house. At the far end a heavy carved door partitioned off what was undoubtedly Monica’s apartment.
The bedroom into which Linda showed us occupied prize corner space, and had its own upper balcony commanding the tremendous sweep of view. Keith ran at once to look out, and I followed him. As Ralph set down the bags and stood waiting in the room behind, Linda came out to stand beside us.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” she said. “Sometimes when people first come here, they hate to see brown sand and brown mountains all around. But you’ll find nothing is really bare and dead. There are even plants that cling to what looks like sheer rock. You should hear my brother Jason go on about the desert. It may look dead to you at first, but it’s really alive.”
From time to time in her letters, Linda had mentioned her younger brother, who was a naturalist, and she’d always written of him with admiration and affection.
Keith, quickly bored with the view, returned to the room to talk to Ralph, and I was glad of a chance with Linda alone.
Before I could put my question about Monica, however, she forestalled me as she gestured toward a cluster of rectangular buildings directly below us.
“That’s the Desert Museum down there—where Jason has worked as assistant science curator. Right now he’s acting as a free-lance consultant and doing various odd jobs, so he’s on his own time. There are reasons why he needs to be free.” She hesitated as though she might add something, and then went on. “I’ve invited him to lunch today, so you’ll meet him soon. I suppose I’m prejudiced, but I think he’s the wisest person I know. He may even be able to help with some useful ideas about your problem, Carol. That’s why I’ve asked him to come.”
I must have looked surprised, but she gave me the quick, warm smile that could so change her face.
“Don’t worry—he understands why you’re here. I had to tell him. He always sees through me when I lie. And besides, I thought he might help. Not that he approves of us up here. He hates my working for Monica Arlen, and I’m afraid he’ll never understand how you and I feel about her.”
I wished she hadn’t spoken so frankly to her brother about my personal problems. Didn’t she understand that I must keep my presence here quiet for as long as possible?
“Why doesn’t he want you to work for Monica?” I asked.
She heard the coolness in my voice and touched my arm lightly. “It will be all right, Carol. You’ll see, once you meet him. It’s just that he thinks movies and all that goes with them—stars and notoriety, all that fantasy and escape—don’t have much place in today’s world. None of that is real to him. Not nearly as real as his desert. Though sometimes”—she sounded unexpectedly wistful—“sometimes I like the make-believe world better than the real one. It’s
much more satisfying.”
As a narcotic could be satisfying? I wondered. It was a disturbing thing for her to say, though who could understand better than I?
She became suddenly brisk and down-to-earth, so that I had again the sense of a very capable woman. “I’ll leave you to unpack now. If there’s anything you want, I’ll be right downstairs in my office. Come down when you’re ready and I’ll show you the house. Carol—I hope you’ll be happy here.”
“I hope we’ll be safe,” I said. “Linda, you still haven’t told Monica that I’m here? Hasn’t anyone told her?”
She turned in the balcony doorway. “We have to move slowly. This morning she seemed less jangled and nervous than she did last night. So I’ll talk to her soon. Perhaps right away. I promise.”
“Yes—please do that,” I said.
For these moments I’d almost forgotten Ralph, who still stood in the room beside our bags, watching with that staring blue gaze, obviously listening to every word, even while he talked to Keith. It seemed surprising that Linda would speak so openly before him, and again it perturbed me that she seemed to have so little respect for either Monica’s privacy or my own. I wondered what it was she held over Ralph that made her so confident and careless.
When she hurried off, as though to avoid further questions, Ralph followed her, with a quick backward glance for me that was clearly sly.
When they’d gone, I stood at the door to the rear hall, looking out through the opposite glass at the sheer brown rock of the mountain rising scarcely an arm’s length away. At any other time, I might have felt shut in by that formidable barrier, but now it offered safety. Surely no one could get in from that side. I could see the stretch of garden on the higher level, visible through a chain link fence, and I would explore it later for reassurance.
Linda’s words had darkened both my hope and the morning. Even this first step of reaching Smoke Tree House in my flight from Owen hadn’t lessened my real anxiety. Until Monica knew we were here, and said we could stay, this was not even a temporary refuge. Keith and I were utterly vulnerable unless Monica offered her protection. To the very end, Owen would be merciless.
Linda’s prevarication seemed especially discouraging. She was putting this off because she was afraid of the result of telling Monica we were here.
I turned back to the pleasant room, finding a momentary relief in its soothing blue and sand colors. In contrast to the formality downstairs, this room seemed plain, easy, comfortable. Probably it had been refurnished by someone other than Monica Arlen, since her tastes, as reflected in the drawing room, had been formed in a more opulent age, when stars were expected to live like stars.
“Do you want to help unpack?” I asked Keith.
He paid no attention, his eyes fixed on the open door to the hall. “Look, Mom,” he said.
A regal Siamese cat had stepped haughtily into the room. She was purely bred, with velvety sable boots and black markings against smoky brown fur. Her eyes were a deeper blue than Ralph’s, the sound of her mewing imperious and demanding, though I couldn’t tell what it was she demanded. We were to learn that her name was Annabella and that she knew very well that she could talk.
“Be careful,” I warned Keith. “Sometimes Siamese cats aren’t friendly with strangers.”
I wasted my breath. Keith and the cat were already friends. Watching them, a sick remembrance returned to me of a scene with Owen in New York two years ago. I’d brought home a kitten for Keith, without knowing that Owen abhorred cats. We had been sitting outdoors on our high terrace above Sutton Place, and when Owen joined us, Keith had run innocently to him with the tiny kitten, and placed it on his father’s knees. In one swoop of revulsion, Owen had thrown the little thing violently over the parapet to die on the pavement far below. There had been no more pets for Keith. My son’s suffering over the incident had been almost more than I could bear, and I still felt nauseated when I thought of that time.
So now I could be especially happy watching Keith with the cat. Then, as a still greater bonus, two fluffy white Persian cats followed the Siamese to the doorway. Their triangular faces were wide-eyed and angelic—far more innocent than that of their leader. Clearly they knew their places as court maidens to the queen, and they had nothing to say. They merely sat in the doorway, listening and watching. Keith was in heaven at this largesse of cats, but when he moved to pet a white one, the Siamese made a slight, menacing gesture with one paw. The royal prerogative was clear.
As soon as I’d hung up the hurried collection of clothes I’d brought along, we went downstairs, forming an entourage as the cats escorted us, her majesty in the lead.
No one was in sight in the beautiful little drawing room at the foot of the stairs, but other doors opened into a series of connecting rooms that ran along the terrace and opened on to it. First came Linda’s office, where she sat at her desk; then a dining room with a long oval table, and beyond that the open door to a kitchen, where a blond woman busied herself at a stove. Unless doors were closed, one end of the house was visible from the other.
Linda turned in her chair and smiled when she saw Keith and the cats. “I see you’ve made friends with Annabella. Which means that Seraphim and Cherubim—Monica’s names, of course—will welcome you too. Monica dotes on cats. We used to have six of them, heaven help us! I’m glad they’re down to three. They have a tendency to take us all over. At least Annabella does.”
The Siamese sat down and regarded us intently, muttering to herself.
Linda waved a shooing hand. “Look, your highness, how about going someplace else for now? When you talk all the time, the rest of us can’t get in a word.”
The cat rose disdainfully and strolled to the terrace door, the two Persians following her.
Linda let them out on the terrace. “Sometimes Annabella gives me the creeps. I don’t know whether she thinks she’s a person, or Monica thinks she is a cat.” Her words seemed only half joking.
Keith followed them outside, and Linda waved me into a chair. “Sit down, Carol. We need to talk.” She still looked grave, but not especially downcast. I was relieved to find her much less excitable than she’d seemed yesterday, and glad that she’d stopped evading me.
Her office was furnished in rattan, with green chintz cushions. Bookcases stood along one wall, and a glance at titles showed that many were about the movies and the golden age of Hollywood.
“If you’ve already told her, you must have done it pretty quickly,” I said.
“It didn’t take long. I told her, and she threw a hairbrush at me. I only had time to state that you’d come with your little boy to visit your adored aunt, and that we had to keep you for a little while. She said, ‘I don’t want to see her. Send her away at once.’ So I told her that wasn’t possible right now, and she threw the hairbrush. I left her alone to think it over.”
I closed my eyes for a moment against bright sunlight that flooded in from the terrace. “What are we to do now?”
Linda produced her flash of a smile. “Nothing. She can only give orders. She really depends on me. So you’ll stay. Eventually I’ll get her to listen to why you’re here, and she’ll come around. If there’s one thing that still gets through to her, it’s the plight of a woman who’s been mistreated by a man. It’s too bad that awful bruise isn’t on your face instead of Keith’s.”
I didn’t tell her I had bruises of my own, even if they didn’t show. Bruises I could never forget, or tell anyone about. Though Linda’s bluntness might be uncomfortable, at least I liked the fact that she didn’t pussyfoot. She wasn’t what I’d expected from her letters, but then, I probably wasn’t what she’d expected either.
“What do you think your ex-husband will do?” she asked.
It was difficult to explain Owen, to reveal my very private life, and impossible to speak of my own blindness and lack of judgment that had led to tragedy. Whatever wisdom I’d gained, I’d earned the hard way through humiliation so deep I could never talk abou
t it. So how was I to speak frankly now to this woman who was more of a stranger to me than she’d seemed in her letters? I made an effort.
“He’ll use his own people, and I suppose he’ll hire detectives. We won’t be hard to find.”
“Then relax,” Linda said. “No one can get through our gates. I’ve given special orders to the guards. And it would be pointless to try to come down the mountain on this side. You’d need ropes and crampons. At night we lock the upper gate to the road as well, and you know the house itself is fully protected by the most sophisticated alarm system we could put in. I told you it was a fortress, Carol, and it really is.”
I felt somewhat relieved, yet at the same time increasingly concerned. “What is it she is afraid of?”
Linda shrugged. “Who knows? Security is the word out here. It’s not only crime our celebrities are disturbed about. They don’t want to be bothered by all the people who come to gape. To intrude. You’d be surprised at the lengths to which a few foolish ones will go. Of course there’ve always been tours wherever movie people live, so their houses can be stared at. Goodness knows why. Bob Hope was smart. He’s built that huge spaceship of his on top of a hill, where it can only be seen from a distance. You can view Smoke Tree House from all over Palm Springs too, but nobody can get up here. Monica arranged for total security right from the beginning, and the new electronics have helped. She’s always been more frightened than most.”
I remembered that fleeting look on Monica’s face in those retake scenes in Mirage, remembered feeling that something had frightened her, even then.
“Saxon Scott expressed himself very well in an interview a long time ago,” Linda added. “He said that all an actor ever owes his public is the best performance he can give. I agree! Even though I’m one of the few lucky fans who came to know them both personally.” She stood up. “Let’s call Keith in now, and I’ll show you the rest of the house. He may feel confused at first, but there are lots of places he can explore safely. We’ll try to make it interesting for him.”
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