She broke off, closing her eyes as though she were seeing again the scene she described. When she went on, Kelsey could hear the tinge of horror in her voice.
“The front door was open, so Jody and I walked in—right in on that ghastly scene. Kelsey, she was already dead when we got there. It was awful for Jody to see—all that blood! He was terribly upset, and the only thing I could think of was to get out of there quickly and take him home.”
“You didn’t report what you found?”
Ruth shook her head miserably. “I know—I’m a coward. But I didn’t want Tyler to know that I ever tried to see her. If I’d said anything, the blackmail scheme might have come out—and why Francesca was doing this. It would have been dreadful for all of us.”
“Why should it be, if you were innocent? Since Jody was with you, you could prove your innocence.”
‘I didn’t want him questioned. Besides, who would take the word of a small boy? On the way home I pulled off the road and we talked awhile. I tried to be very calm and reasonable. I made him understand that it was better to say nothing. She was dead and there wasn’t a thing we could do for her. I explained that it might mean serious trouble for Tyler and me if he talked about this. So he promised me he’d keep still. But it must have been boiling up inside him, and he kept edging toward blurting it out. Tyler knew something was troubling him, and we almost had a fight because he was asking Jody too many questions that day before we went out to Point Lobos. Jody was so upset that I took him away for a picnic and a chance to talk to him alone. And then—” Her voice broke. “Please believe me, Kelsey. I didn’t have anything to do with what happened to Francesca. I wouldn’t have had the strength to hit her that hard.”
Kelsey sat up on the side of the bed. “So the lies have kept on piling up to smother the truth about what happened. And Francesca’s murderer goes uncaught. You might have had something useful to tell the police. And you’d have spared Jody.” She knew she was condemning Ruth because of Jody, who was still harboring this terrible secret.
“Oh God, Kelsey—I’m not a monster. I know I haven’t behaved well. In my life I’ve done a lot of crazy, spoiled things. But I didn’t kill Francesca, and I didn’t go out to Point Lobos and throw myself and Jody off the rocks. I’ve never been the suicidal type, and I’d never harm my son. You must believe me, Kelsey.”
“I think I do believe you. Only I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do with what you’ve told me. This must be horrible for Jody, if he can remember.”
“You have a choice. You can go to Tyler and open it all up. Maybe that’s the best way, late as it is. I’m tired of all the subterfuge—and it’s all going to come out through Jody anyway.”
“Why should you be afraid to have Tyler know? Won’t he believe you?”
“I can’t be sure. Sometimes I think he hates me.”
Kelsey knew what the other choice was. “If I keep still, what will happen then? Anyway, I’m not sure I can promise that. Jody needs to be comforted, reassured.”
“I won’t ask for your promise. The most I can hope for is that you’ll be there when Jody begins to talk. Help him, Kelsey. Maybe that way you can help all of us. He may be confused about what happened, and you can keep things straight.”
“Does your mother know?”
“I didn’t dare tell her until a few days ago. Now she’s crazy with worry too.”
Before Kelsey could ask about Dora’s reaction, the telephone rang in the hall.
“I’ll get it,” she said, no longer nervous about the phone—not with all that had come into the open. She went to answer it, and the voice was Tyler’s.
“Come down to my study,” he said. “Right away, Kelsey. We’re going out again. Not with Jody. I’ll explain when I see you. We’ll have lunch while we’re away.”
Watching the door of her room, Kelsey saw Ruth slip out and go quietly off down the hall. “All right,” she told Tyler. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
When she’d hung up, she returned to her room and stood for a moment on the balcony, looking out at a white cruiser going by on the bay. Confusion was difficult to deal with, and sound decision impossible. When she thought of the horror Jody had experienced, she could hardly bear it. It wasn’t Point Lobos he was trying so hard to talk about. Yet if she told Tyler, what would he do to Ruth?
Sooner or later, Tyler would recognize how she felt about him, and if that happened there would be no way to retreat, no pretense she could manage, and she would hate her resulting loss of pride.
She went inside and joined him in his study. He told her very little. In fact, when they were on their way he began to speak as lightly as though this were a sight-seeing trip.
“You’ll be interested in Nepenthe,” he told her. Yet the way he spoke belied his tone, and she felt chilled. His purpose wouldn’t be peaceful, and she felt increasingly anxious about what lay ahead.
“I know we’re going because of Marisa’s tape,” she said, “but I wish you’d explain a little. Why must I come along?”
He shrugged off her question. “Relax. Whatever will happen, will happen.” Someone was always saying that.
“Because you’ll make it happen. What sort of serpents are you stirring up?”
“Anything else is postponement. And that has already gone on for too long. I’m glad Marisa sent me the tape. I’d forgotten some of what Francesca said that day.”
He was beginning to sound almost cheerful, as though taking any sort of action was a relief to him.
“I’ve phoned ahead,” he added. “Olga still lives in Big Sur, though she’s retired now—as a fortune-teller. Nepenthe is three miles south of the Big Sur post office, and Olga’s agreed to meet us there for lunch. Try to enjoy the trip, Kelsey. Look out the window. This is one of the most famous roads in America, and one of the most beautiful. Highway One—the Big Sur coastline.”
She couldn’t relax, or think of much else but the awful scene at Flaming Tree that Ruth had painted in her mind. The horror that Jody had been allowed to see, but never talk about, must still burn terribly in his brain, when and if he remembered. And she suspected that Ruth was right—that he did. He must long to talk to his mother, to receive her assurance that everything was all right—and to understand. But no one had ever taught Ruth to face reality and deal with it. Her father had been grimly realistic about everyone but his own daughter. Now, unprotected by the General, she could only run.
“It’s a thirty-mile trip from Carmel,” Tyler went on, “though the road goes clear down to San Simeon and on.”
It was hard to understand his lighter mood. It seemed almost frivolous, but then he didn’t know what Jody had seen.
The day was a rare one, free of fog from the ocean or mists on the mountains. The strip of highway—the coast road—seldom ran straight. All along the rocky edge of the continent the ocean had cut into granite in sharp indentations, where water foamed white and the seas tossed restlessly. Their road followed the ragged edges of the land, the curves winding high above rocks that crouched with their feet in the water. On the left, mountain ridges crowded in, sometimes bare, sometimes green, the slopes often covered with plumy pampas grass waving gracefully in the wind.
Since there was little traffic, Tyler slowed as they crossed the Bixby Bridge that spanned a deep gorge between two mountains.
“Until the coast road and this bridge were built, people had to follow the old road inland,” Tyler said. “A long way around.”
As she listened, Kelsey tried to suppress her troubling thoughts about what would happen when Tyler learned where Ruth had taken Jody, and even worse, about the merciless silence she had thrust upon him.
Tyler’s voice ran on. “When all this was a wilderness—as some of it still is back in the mountains—the Spaniards called it El Pais Grande del Sur. The big country to the south. So Big Sur has stuck.”
Sometimes, looking far ahead, Kelsey could see where the highway wound above indentations made by the ocean, cur
ving between mountains and water. The road, like the bridge, must have been a spectacular job of engineering—work that must continue, since there’d been times recently when parts of the highway had dropped into the water, buried by landslides from cliffs that had been weakened by too much rain. Now and then they passed ominous warning signs about falling rock. The Santa Lucia Mountains flowed along above the road, their ridges sometimes double, sometimes triple, as they followed the coast.
Once Tyler stopped at a turnoff, and they left the car on the pretext of looking at the view. But now he had made up his mind, and he began to talk.
“We’re going to Nepenthe because Olga knows what happened on the date Francesca mentioned in the interview. I’ve tried to put what she said out of my mind, but I can’t anymore. I have to know the whole thing.”
“You needn’t explain,” Kelsey said, though she’d wanted him to only moments before.
“Yes, I do. You have a right to understand, Kelsey. You’re the one who fought me for Jody’s life. You believed when I couldn’t, and I owe you a great deal.”
She didn’t want him to feel that sort of obligation, but there was no stopping him now that he’d begun to talk. His words took a suddenly personal turn that had nothing to do with Jody.
“No matter what happens, I want you to know the truth. I’ve tried for a long time to fool myself about my marriage. Because I loved Ruth a great deal in the beginning—because loving her became a habit, even after I knew the woman I thought I loved didn’t really exist—I kept trying to close my eyes so I needn’t believe what should have been evident. I absorbed myself in my work and my son, and pretended that the marriage was still working. I want no more of that. So we’re going to Nepenthe to learn the truth—and I want you to be there and hear for yourself.”
“I’ll be there if you want me,” she said.
“I’ve counted on that.” He spoke gently. “We’ll go on now, though there’s a lot more to tell. You’ll know it all soon.”
On their way again, he let the personal go and told her about Nepenthe itself. “In a way, it’s Marisa’s sort of place. Lolly and Bill Fassett bought the property in 1947, and lived there for a time in a log cabin they built. Then they decided that they wanted to share that beautiful spot with whoever cared to visit it. So a building was constructed where the view is splendid, and a restaurant opened. It’s not as elegant as the Ventana Inn that comes just before, lower on the mountain, but it’s a place for families to enjoy, and it has a special fantasy quality of its own.”
“Marisa says there’s something mystical about Nepenthe.”
“She’s right. Lolly has always understood the magic. They hold what they call zodiac dances once a month on the great terrace, and people come in costume to celebrate one astrological sign. I’ve heard that these affairs can be exciting and colorful. Maybe it really is a place to rid oneself of sorrow!” His tone had turned mocking.
Kelsey was all too aware of his nearness and of the sound of his voice—a presence that stirred everything she wanted to forget, and could not. She picked up his last words.
“Is that what you mean to do today? Rid yourself of sorrow?”
“That will depend on Olga and what she has to tell me. If I can get her to talk.”
“Tell me about her.”
“There are often fortune-tellers-in-residence at Nepenthe. Olga worked with tarot cards. She made no charge, but received what anyone wanted to donate. In her way, she became well known for what she could read and foretell. She’s getting old now, and she lives quietly in a cabin in the valley behind Big Sur. There are probably less than two thousand people living around there, and they all had a taste of the even more primitive a few years ago when the coast road went out on both sides of the town. They were isolated for quite a while.”
The end of the trip was near, and they drove past the few stores and post office of Big Sur. In a few miles, a narrower road turned up the mountain. They drove to a parking space and left the car to climb to the restaurant on foot.
The Phoenix Gift Shop occupied a lower level, its low roof crowned by an arresting statue carved of wood. Kelsey stopped to look up at the tall figure that might be part angel, part devil. Its wings hung folded at its sides, and a metal halo with strands of fine wire raying out from it crowned the strange head. The eyes dominated a crudely carved face, seeming to stare down at Kelsey. She wasn’t sure whether the eyes were kind or malevolent. As she and Tyler started up the mountainside, following a railed path, Kelsey looked back, and saw that the statue’s eyes still searched her own eerily. She had a feeling that the creature—whatever it was—promised no good for them here at Nepenthe.
At the top they came out upon a broad terrace of terra cotta stone, and the view took Kelsey’s breath away. The ocean seemed just off the edge of the terrace wall, though the water was more than eight hundred feet down. The California coastline went on into the distance, and mountains crowded in, so that this gem of a spot sat like a jewel mounted in a green setting.
Plantings of sturdy aloe vera were surrounded by a wooden bench that made a great circle on the terrace. From the midst of greenery rose a huge bird carved in redwood.
“That’s the Nepenthe Phoenix,” Tyler said. “Do you see that stump it stands on? That’s all that’s left of a big oak tree that grew there once. Lolly couldn’t bear to accept the death of the oak tree, so in the Chinese Year of the Dragon the redwood Phoenix came to perch there, rising out of death to promise new life. That’s what Nepenthe stands for—renewal.”
The bird’s legs were of bronze, anchored into the oak stump, and the carving itself gave an effect of flashing, jeweled color as light poured over it.
Plank tables stood about the terrace, some in the shade of bright umbrellas, with colorful canvas-backed chairs pulled up to them. Though the sun stood at high noon, a cool breeze blew over the mountain, so that few people were eating outdoors.
The main building looked like a rustic lodge built of redwood, its slanting roof seeming to follow the downward pitch of the mountain. As Tyler and Kelsey moved toward the doors, a woman who had been sitting on the bench near the Phoenix rose and approached them.
“Mr. Hammond?” She held out a thin brown hand.
The woman who called herself “Olga” was very tall, all of six feet, and thin to the point of being gaunt. She wore beige slacks and a pullover sweater with zodiac figures woven into the wool. Her hair, cut in a surprisingly oriental style, hung short and straight to the line of her jaw, with bangs across the forehead. Its color was a somewhat unlikely black that shone like satin in the sun—probably a wig. The woman’s features seemed sharply carved in her bony face, the eyes large and dominating, like the eyes of the angel-devil on the lower level of Nepenthe. There seemed nothing malevolent about her gaze, however, as her eyes rested on Kelsey with sudden interest. She looked at Tyler briefly, and then fixed her attention disconcertingly on Kelsey.
“Olga, this is Mrs. Stewart,” Tyler said. “She’s taking care of my son at present.”
“I was sorry to hear about your wife and son,” Olga said, still staring at Kelsey as though she saw something that fascinated her. “My friend, Marisa Marsh, told me about you, Mrs. Stewart,” she added.
Kelsey wondered what Marisa could have said to cause this intense scrutiny. Kelsey was relieved when Tyler gestured them toward the dining room.
“Let’s go inside where we can talk,” he suggested.
They found a table on the far side of the room, near a great, metal-hooded fireplace that stood out in the center, its flames radiating a welcome warmth. Kelsey and Olga sat on a bench along the wall, with bright cushions piled behind them, while Tyler took the chair opposite. The beamed ceiling of the room slanted toward the outer edge to meet huge panes of glass that made the room an observatory.
Kelsey ordered an omelet, and Olga, a vegetarian, asked for a large salad. Tyler settled for hot soup and a sandwich. The moment she sat down, Kelsey could sense tension
in the air, though she wasn’t sure where the source of it lay. In Tyler, probably, since his lighter mood had vanished. Or perhaps merely in herself. Olga seemed serene enough outwardly, and whatever she’d read in Kelsey no longer held her fixed attention.
“Do you still read tarot cards?” Tyler asked.
Olga’s smile revealed slightly crooked teeth that gave her face a piquant character. Her age was uncertain—seventy? Eighty? She shook her head at Tyler in gentle reproach.
“I’m really not a fortune-teller, Mr. Hammond. Though I know I have that reputation. I am interested in parapsychology, and I use the cards to help me concentrate my energies. However, I don’t think you’re here for a reading.”
Her speech held a slight accent—perhaps from long-ago Russia—and the words had a formal ring as though she spoke each one with care.
“You’re right,” Tyler said. “I want to ask you to remember something.”
The black points of hair moved against thin cheeks as she nodded. “Yes, I know.”
“Marisa warned you?”
“She asked me to tell you whatever I knew. But I don’t understand why you should want to learn about something that happened here nearly eleven years ago. What does it matter now?”
“It matters.” He sounded grim. “Did you know Francesca Fallon?”
“She came to me a number of times—until I sent her away. I didn’t want to face what kept showing up in her future.” Olga stared at Kelsey again. “Stay away from high, rocky places, Mrs. Stewart. I don’t believe in the inevitable. We can always make choices. Mrs. Fallon made the wrong choice.”
“Francesca came here on the day Marisa mentioned?” Tyler asked.
“Yes. I’m not likely to forget. She phoned and asked me to have lunch with her, and I knew right away something was up. I can be almost as curious as she was, though I never used what I learned in the ways she did. We were sitting out there on the terrace bench when a man and woman arrived. Mrs. Fallon kept out of sight, but they wouldn’t have noticed her anyway, because they were so absorbed in each other.”
Flaming Tree Page 24