A Walk Through the Fire

by Marcia Muller

  An unearthly screech came from behind us.

  Hy said, “What the hell?”

  “Well, it would be silent, if it wasn’t for him.” Glenna pointed at the lawn, where a rooster was strutting purposefully toward the hens, crowing his lungs out.

  “I thought they only did that at dawn,” I said.

  They both stared incredulously at me.

  “City girl,” Hy said.

  “They don’t?”

  “God, no.”

  “Roosters,” Glenna told me, “chickens in general, are very stupid birds. They don’t know dawn from dinnertime. This one is especially stupid; I’ve even heard him crowing in the middle of the night.”

  “Is he a pet?” I asked.

  “What? No, of course not. They run wild all over the island. Why would you think that?”

  “Well, if he’s not a pet, how d’you know it’s the same one that’s crowing?”

  She frowned. “Now that you mention it, I don’t know as it’s the same one.”

  “Then you can’t claim that this guy’s exceptionally stupid.”

  “Well, no, but look at him.”

  The bird did appear intellectually challenged.

  Hy said, “I can’t believe we’re standing here in this heat having this conversation. Open the trunk, Glenna, and show me where to stow our bags.”

  6:55 P.M.

  I was shaking the wrinkles out of a long black-and-gold cotton dress that Glenna had assured me would be perfect for the Wellbright party when Hy appeared in the doorway of our bedroom, his index finger pressed to his lips. I frowned and watched him cross to the bathroom. A few seconds later he called, “McCone, I can’t find where you packed my razor.”

  Packed his razor? He was a master packer, never needed any help from me.

  “Will you come in here and see if you can find it?”

  Very puzzled now, I went over there and peered around the doorjamb. Hy was at the far end of the narrow space, flattened against the wall between the twin sinks and the linen closet. He held his finger to his lips again and motioned for me to join him. When I did, he put his arms around me and whispered in my ear. “Did you hear that clicking sound when you crossed the bedroom?”

  “Just the motion sensors Glenna warned us about. She’s right—they’re really annoying.”

  “I think they’re more than motion sensors.”

  “They look pretty standard to me.”

  “Look, yes. Function, no. I checked the security command center by the front door. The indicator lights aren’t registering that the sensors’re on—meaning they’re hooked into some other system. Somebody’s monitoring us, could even be making audio- or videotapes. We’re out of range here—one of the few places in the house—but if you back up and stand by the door, you’ll hear that click again.”

  I backed up and heard the telltale noise from the sensor mounted in the corner of the bedroom. Quickly I moved back to Hy.

  “This is awful! What’re we going to do about it?” I heard the anxiety in my voice, told myself this was an unreasonable response to the situation. But two months ago my life had been invaded, my privacy violated, my very identity threatened. Now even the slightest incursion into my space held a nightmarish, nearly life-threatening quality.

  Hy sensed what I was feeling, drew me close. “Tonight we can’t do anything. We’ll just have to watch what we do and say in the areas those things cover.”

  “God. Can’t we disable them?” In spite of his reassuring touch, I felt my fingers begin to tingle—only one of a variety of physiological responses to stress I’d experienced in the past month, which an SFPD psychologist had assured me would go away in time.

  “I don’t know enough about this particular type of system to try, but tomorrow first thing I’ll call our Honolulu office, see if they can help. If necessary, I’ll have one of our people come over here.”

  “Who would want to keep tabs on what goes on here? And why?”

  “The situation won’t be clear till we meet everybody involved. Particularly this Peter Wellbright. You noticed how Glenna acted when you first mentioned him.”

  “Yes, as if she wanted to say more about him, yet wasn’t sure she should. Well, we’ll meet him soon. He lives next door, she tells me, down the path through those papaya trees, and he’s coming over before we go to the party.”

  “Which reminds me—we’d better get ready.”

  The reason for Glenna’s strange reaction to my mention of Peter Wellbright became apparent when Hy and I joined them on the lanai. She was barely able to keep her eyes or hands off him.

  Wellbright was a tall, slender man with horn-rimmed glasses and fine brown hair, whose dress and mannerisms suggested Ivy League colleges and exclusive men’s clubs. In spite of being around forty, he moved with an adolescent awkwardness; I could imagine him on a tennis court, playing badly. Although he clearly didn’t mind Glenna’s attentions, his body language was far more reserved.

  When she’d first spoken of Peter before leaving for Kauai, Glenna had referred to him only as her partner and backer. They’d met through a mutual friend, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who dabbled in the arts. Glenna had been looking for someone to finance a documentary on the Islands; the friend knew of Elson Wellbright’s unpublished manuscript and suggested Peter let her look at it. But when she expressed interest in using it as the basis for her script, Peter told her he would have to consult with his family after he made his move back to Kauai. Surprisingly, in light of the fact she had little money and supplemented her income with teaching jobs at two university extensions, Glenna had gone ahead and paid a scriptwriter to begin work without any assurance of permission to use the manuscript and with no certainty of financial backing.

  When Peter returned to Kauai and broached the subject to his family, they were adamantly against the project. Their resistance surprised and angered him, and he became determined to make the film, so he called Glenna, asking her to fly over and firm up an agreement. That was a month ago, and it was clear to me that in the intervening weeks their relationship had altered markedly. Something—the seductiveness of this climate, the intimacy of working together, or mere proximity—had brought them together romantically. As she made the introductions, Glenna glowed.

  Wellbright fixed us gin and tonics from makings on a patio table, saying, “We’ll be fashionably late to Mother’s, hopefully with a buzz on.”

  I asked, “Is that a good idea, seeing as it’s the first time Hy and I will meet her?”

  He smiled as he handed around the glasses. “It’s the only way to arrive at one of her parties. And don’t worry, she’ll be so smashed that she won’t remember she hasn’t known you all your lives.”

  There was an awkward silence. What do you say when someone you’ve just met comes out and tells you his mother’s a drunk?

  “Look,” Peter said easily, sitting down next to Glenna, “it’s no secret about my mother. I’m trying to prepare you. Parties at Pali House have a way of becoming… colorful, to say the least.”

  We followed his lead and sat opposite them. Hy asked, “Who else will be there?”

  “Depends on who’s got the fortitude to show. My brother Matthew and his wife, Jillian, will attend. They live with Mother. He’s a real-estate developer and more or less watches over the family’s financial affairs. My sister, Stephanie, and her husband, Ben Mori, will come if they’ve got nothing better going. She’s a painter, sells through a gallery down at Poipu Beach. He operates the Hawaii branch of a software firm owned by his relatives in Japan. He also dabbles in development and has done a few projects with Matthew, although they’re currently at a professional impasse. And of course there’ll be the other members of the film crew, the neighbors, and some of Mother’s fellow clubwomen with their long-suffering husbands in tow.”

  “Sounds like an interesting group.”

  Peter waggled one hand from side to side. “I only hope it doesn’t degenerate into a drunken family squab
ble, as so many of our gatherings do.” He smiled at Glenna. “I’ve asked Glen why she doesn’t hate me for dragging her over here and involving her with my crazy people.”

  She said, “When a family isn’t yours, their antics are amusing. When they are yours, however…”

  Not for the first time in the nine months I’d known her I was reminded that she’d given me few clues to her family background. I knew she’d grown up outside of Melbourne and come to the States to attend UCLA. She married while in college, but divorced shortly afterward, taking nothing away from the brief union except her former husband’s surname, which she claimed sounded better for a filmmaker than her own.

  I met her the day she moved into her office at the pier: a tiny woman struggling valiantly with a heavy desk that threatened to fall from the back of her Bronco and crush her. After rushing to her aid, I summoned my staff and some of the other tenants for an impromptu moving-in party that ended with us drinking beer and eating take-out Chinese food amid the clutter.

  Six months later the clutter was still there—would be as long as she was—and she and I had become friends of sorts. I helped her find a tiny furnished studio in the Outer Mission district, the best she could afford on her earnings from her films and part-time teaching jobs. She introduced me to a friend who cheaply repaired my aging Nikkormat camera when it sprang a light leak. She displayed a lively interest in my business, to the extent of borrowing manuals on skip tracing and other investigative techniques. From her I learned a lot about the way those in the visual arts looked at the world, a way that was not mine but that could be adapted to investigation in order to see details more clearly. We shared herbal tea and brandy, engaged in spirited debates about everything from sports to politics, but still I never felt I really knew the woman behind the smiles and bright chatter. Her history and inner concerns were tacitly off limits, and now I wondered why.

  Hy was saying to Peter, “I understand the film’s based on writings of your father’s. Is he still living?”

  An odd expression passed over Glenna’s face. Peter got up to freshen drinks. “No one knows. He disappeared the year Hurricane Iniki blew through here, 1992. But he’d been estranged from the family for several years before that. The film’s to be a memorial to him.”

  I asked, “The unpublished manuscript of his that the script’s based on—how come it was never published?”

  “I don’t know. He had a literary agent who was going to market it, and he mentioned her name in the letter that accompanied the copy of the manuscript he sent to me on the mainland. A couple of years ago I tried to contact her, but she’d either died or gone out of business. I’m hoping this film will generate interest from another agent or publisher.”

  “Maybe it will. Glenna tells me it’s terrific material.”

  “It is, because of my father’s understanding and enthusiasm for the native culture. Our family comes from missionary stock, and while it’s true that many of the missionaries and their descendants took more from the Islands than they gave, others, like my father, had a deep interest in preserving the legends and culture. He had an advanced degree in anthropology and wrote on the Pacific for publications like the National Geographic. The book on the Hawaiian legends was a lifelong labor of love, since he started meeting with a group of native storytellers in his thirties.”

  I said, “And he disappeared?”

  “Ran off, and I can’t say as I blame him. The family situation had become intolerable, he was drinking heavily, and I suppose he just plain burned out and decided the hell with it. My older brother hired private detectives to look for him, since there was a good deal of cash missing from the joint accounts, but they never found him. I like to think he’s on some distant island, listening to yet another group of storytellers and living out his days in peace.”

  Glenna bit her lip. It was clear she didn’t buy into such a happy scenario. Then she stood, smoothing her bright orange dress. “Peter, we’d better go up to Pali House before the party gets too colorful.”

  10:55 P.M.

  I was standing alone at the rail of a terrace that over-looked a distant sliver of palm-fringed beach; beyond it moonlit breakers crested on a dark sea. Pali House lay behind me: a low tan structure with an aquamarine tiled roof and many wings, set among well-tended gardens. A babble of talk and laughter came from within. I tuned it out, concentrated on the rush of a stream that meandered through the property and cascaded down the slope in a waterfall.

  The night was sweetly fragrant, the breeze warm on my bare arms. It took me back to my teenage years in San Diego, when velvety spring evenings had been new and full of promise. To my high school prom, the heady smell of a gardenia corsage, the touch of a special boy’s hand on mine. The memory was far more pleasurable than the immediate present.

  When we arrived, Celia Wellbright was playing the regal lady—a lady with a snootful of rum. Had she been even half sober she might’ve carried the part off: she was tall, thin, erect of carriage, her silver-gray hair pulled into a chignon, her handsome face nearly unlined, her almond-shaped eyes hinting at Polynesian ancestry. But liquor made her exaggerate her gestures and speech till she seemed a caricature of herself.

  She immediately took Peter to task for being late, then swept us into a courtyard where a buffet was set up and began introducing Hy and me to an assortment of people whose identities quickly blurred, as if someone had fast-forwarded the scene before my eyes. A banker and his wife. A politician. A member of the horticultural society. A retired couple from Oregon. Glenna’s scriptwriter, Jan Lyndon, whom I’d met in San Francisco and whose assurances that we knew each other fell on deaf ears. Celia’s older son, Matthew, a big pinched-faced man whose eyes peered disapprovingly through thick glasses, and his fragile-looking wife, Jillian, who seemed nearly frightened by the crowd. Stephanie and Benjamin Mori: she sun-browned and -blonded, he dark and athletic-looking, both dressed in shorts in spite of the other guests’ more formal attire. Glenna’s sound man, bearded Bryan O’Callaghan, leaning on a cane, his ankle in a cast. Her film editor, Emily Quentin, a heavy woman with a hearty and likable laugh. And many others…

  Hy and I were ravenous after not eating since the meal on the plane, and we managed to down a respectable amount of sushi and hot canapés before Celia again attempted to appropriate us. Peter and Glenna had disappeared; the crew members had escaped, making their excuses. We were the only exotics Celia had not yet shown off to her guests, and show us off she would. There was a simply lovely man we must meet: Alex the mad Russian. He was also a pilot.

  I pleaded a need for the rest room and, as Celia led away a martyred-looking Hy, fled to the deserted terrace.

  Now, in spite of the night’s warmth, I shivered. Something felt wrong here. Something elemental. Something I couldn’t put a name to. It emanated from the towering scarps behind the house, from the ancient volcanic boulders that spilled down the slope. It whistled in a stand of bamboo, echoed when a breaker smacked onto the reef. Spoke to me in a voice I’d never before heard, urged me to come closer, make its acquaintance—

  Shadow and motion behind me. I whirled.

  “Ripinsky!”

  “There you are.”

  “Sorry to’ve run off like that, but…”

  “I know.”

  “How are things in there?”

  “Barely tolerable. Most of the guests’ve left, and Celia’s into what Peter calls her severe and domineering mode. I think we should all leave too.”

  “Then let’s liberate Peter and Glenna and go.”

  The scene inside had turned ugly.

  The family stood in a phalanx, allied against Peter and Glenna. Celia was at center: head held haughtily, hair disheveled, one strap of her long black gown hanging off her shoulder. To her right, Stephanie and Benjamin Mori assumed aggressive stances. Matthew was on her other side, features pinched unpleasantly. His delicate-looking wife peered around him with frightened eyes.

  The closing of the familial rank
s didn’t seem to intimidate Peter; he perched casually on the back of a sofa, one foot dangling. Glenna seemed similarly unaffected; she surveyed the family with a narrow-eyed expression that I recalled from a shoot I’d attended in San Francisco, as if she were evaluating the scene’s potential for filming. No one noticed Hy and me enter.

  Celia was speaking. Although her words were slurred, they had considerable bite. “Of course that’s what you’d say, Peter. You’re exactly like your father. You’ve done nothing but run off on this family.”

  “I take the comparison to Father as a compliment,” he replied calmly. “And I did not run off.”

  “What do you call it, then?”

  “I call it attending school on the mainland and then establishing myself in my profession.”

  Matthew snorted. “I call it going to school as far away from us as you could. MIT’s halfway around the world. And then, instead of bringing your expertise—which this family paid for—home where you could do some good, you chose to squander it in California.”

  “I thought the word ‘squander’ went out with the missionaries. Anyway, I don’t believe it applied to founding a software firm that was bought out for a hundred million last year.”

  Stephanie said, “And how much of that hundred mill will these islands see? How much of it are you determined to waste on this movie?”

  Glenna transferred her narrowed gaze to Peter’s sister. Stephanie returned the look with one of her own. “Well, Peter?”

  “Backing a documentary isn’t like bankrolling a Hollywood blockbuster. I should think you’d be glad to see a memorial created to Father’s work.”

  “That’s not the point, and you know it.”

  “What is the point?”

  Benjamin said, “What Stephanie’s trying to get at is your reason for coming home after… what? Twenty years? It can’t just be to make this film.”

  “No, that’s only one among many.”

  “And the others?”

  “You’ll hear about them when I’m ready to tell you.”

  “This discussion is getting us nowhere,” Matthew said.