Domino

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  The brass bedstead was covered by red and green patchwork, and a large oval braided rag rug lay aslant across the floor. There was an oak bureau, rocker, armchair, and plain deal table. A closet had been hung with cretonne, and I could imagine a hidden gunman stepping out from behind the curtain.

  Hillary grinned. “Look out the window. You’ll probably find John Wayne or Gary Cooper down there right now.”

  I stepped to the glass and saw that a flat roof extended over the porch—that same roof where somebody always got shot and rolled over the edge. I smiled, and Hillary looked relieved.

  “That’s better. You’ve been forgetting how to smile lately. I was told that there are more luxurious suites, but I thought I might as well play out the fantasy. Try the Morris rocker, Laurie. You’ll find it more comfortable than it looks. Sit down and tell me everything.”

  This was what I wanted. While Hillary sat on the edge of the bed, I rocked gently, relating a slightly edited version of what there was to tell. I mentioned briefly the meeting at the barn with Jon Maddocks. But I didn’t want to repeat all that he had said, or bring up the fact that I’d remembered him from my childhood. Nor did I mention that ominous word, “murder,” which Gail had flung at me. For some reason I was holding back.

  “What about me?” Hillary asked when I stopped. “Am I to be accepted by your grandmother?”

  “Caleb has told her that I’ve brought a friend, and she thinks you should stay at the Timberline for now. I don’t know whether you’ll be summoned to the house. For all that she’s supposed to be so ill, everyone seems to snap to attention at her orders.”

  “I may not wait to be summoned. What else?”

  “There’s a nurse who appears to be taking charge—Gail Cullen. She and Caleb Hawes don’t like each other, and I think she’s trying to ingratiate herself with my grandmother.”

  “Is that so bad?”

  “I don’t know. The entire atmosphere is a bit creepy and peculiar. It’s as if they’re waiting for her to die. And neither of them wants me there.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Gail—the nurse—seems almost malicious at times. And Caleb says openly that I shouldn’t have come. Then there’s Mark Ingram. When we spoke just now, he was hinting that I might become my grandmother’s heir.”

  “That’s possible, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t want that!” The words came out with a vehemence that startled me. I hadn’t thought about inheriting, so why should I react with such repugnance to the idea?

  “All right. Don’t get excited. Is there anything special you’d like me to do?”

  “I think you should come to the house and meet my grandmother as soon as possible. Whether she asks for you or not. I’ll see if I can pave the way, And if I ride over to Domino with Gail Cullen tomorrow, will you come with us, please? She makes me uncomfortable.”

  “Why is that? What is really happening that has upset you so badly, Laurie?”

  I couldn’t hold back any longer. “Gail asked me if the word ‘murder’ meant anything to me in connection with the past. I don’t know whether it does or not, but it terrifies me.”

  Hillary drew me out of the chair and into his arms. “Darling, don’t let them throw you like this. If it all gets too much for you, whistle and I’ll come. If I have to break down the door.”

  It felt wonderful to cling to him and be comforted, to be held and kissed so that I could pretend that nightmares didn’t exist. Yet something in me wasn’t responding with the old fervor.

  “Of course I’ll come with you tomorrow if you ride up the valley,” Hillary went on. “Don’t worry about the nurse or Hawes. I’ll be there. Have you remembered anything, Laurie?”

  I felt a little steadier now, and I went back to my chair. Somehow the moment was wrong for being held too closely.

  “Not really,” I told him. “Except for a flash of recognition now and then, nothing has come back. But they all watch me as though something may happen at any moment, and they all know whatever it is I’ve blacked out. I think Gail would tell me at the slightest encouragement.”

  “So? Isn’t that what you’ve come for?”

  “I don’t want to hear it from her.” Hillary moved restlessly about the room, and I hurried on. “Whatever there is to tell must come from my grandmother. She’s the only one who knows the truth. Mostly, though, I just want to leave as soon as we can get away. That’s what I wanted to tell you.”

  He paused in his restless prowl. I knew he wasn’t pleased with me, and I hoped that one of his moody spells wouldn’t take over. I supposed that all high-keyed, creative people must have these highs and lows, but sometimes I didn’t know how to deal with them.

  It was a relief when he thrust back his annoyance and spoke persuasively—though I didn’t want to be persuaded.

  “Laurie, honey, you’ve come here to get over being frightened. Isn’t that the whole idea? I think you should stay awhile.”

  “No. Nothing is the way I thought it might be. I’m going home.”

  He came to a stop before my chair. “Shall I walk you back to the house? You’re tired and upset. Things will look better in the morning. They really will, you know.”

  For the first time I felt that Hillary had failed me. As perhaps I had failed him. We didn’t truly understand each other in this matter. But at least he made no further effort to keep me there, and as we went downstairs I could sense a coolness between us. Even though I resisted the idea, he reminded me a little of Peter. Perhaps the man didn’t live who liked to be opposed on anything.

  When we reached the lobby we found Mark Ingram at the desk talking to Belle Durant, who had returned to her place. There had been a transformation in her.

  Tonight she wore a wig as red as her unnatural hair, but puffed into a nineties hairdo, with a coiled pat on top held in place with jeweled combs. Her yellow gown flowed to her toes, showing a good deal of décolletage and a revealing slit from the knee down. The costume looked better on her than jeans and a shabby sweater, and for the first time I realized that she was a handsome and rather arresting woman. Her interest in me seemed not to have abated, and I was aware of her frank, not unfriendly, stare as we crossed the lobby.

  Mark Ingram turned to smile expansively. He must have cut a dashing figure in his youth, I thought. In fact, he still did, in spite of his years and the slight limp he revealed as he came toward us leaning on his silver-headed cane.

  “There you are! Hoped I’d catch you before Miss Morgan left. I wonder if you’ll both have dinner with me here tomorrow night. I’d like to talk with you about my theater project, Lange. And it would be a pleasure to see Miss Morgan again. We don’t have many visitors coming to Jasper yet. But we will, we will.”

  At Ingram’s words excitement seemed to come alive in Hillary again, and he pressed my arm in warning, lest I offer an objection.

  “Thank you. We’d enjoy that. I’d like to hear more about your plans.”

  I said nothing until we were outside. Caleb had left his flashlight for us, and Hillary flicked it on to guide our steps. For a few moments I tried to restrain myself, but when we were a short distance from the hotel I burst into words.

  “I don’t want to go to dinner with that man tomorrow night! You shouldn’t have committed me to that. You can go if you like, but I don’t think I should. My grandmother—”

  He squeezed my arm a little too tightly against his body, silencing me. “Since I’m neither a Hatfield nor a McCoy, I’m not on any side. So I’ll be there myself.”

  “Of course. You do as you please, Hillary. But don’t ask me to come and be nice to that man.”

  We had reached the incongruous iron gate in the even more out-of-character link fence around the Morgan house, and he flicked off the flash.

  “Don’t upset yourself, darling. Nobody’s forcing you into anything. But it might be a good idea for you to have a toe in the enemy camp, as it were. It might even be useful to that old woman up there.
So I think you might reconsider.”

  I couldn’t promise, and I still resented his lack of support. We walked in silence through the gate, and at the porch steps he said a quick good night and turned back toward the hotel.

  He had left the flashlight with me, and its beam led up the steps. Just as the light reached the door, someone moved to one side, out of its direct path. The man was Jon Maddocks.

  “Hello,” I said, trying to sound casual, though he had startled me. I remembered Gail’s remark about a house where things walked at night. “Isn’t it a beautiful evening?”

  “The mountains are always beautiful.” He spoke softly, and I could catch a hint of that cadence in his voice that might have come from his Spanish mother.

  He opened the door for me, gave me a softly mocking “Adios,” then went quickly down the steps and around the side of the house. I stood for a moment looking into the darkness after him, wishing that he would stop being so prickly toward me. I could remember him as a friend, and I needed a friend.

  Now why did I think of that when I had Hillary? So instinctive a disloyalty troubled me.

  No one seemed to be about when I went inside the house, though it wasn’t very late. Lights still burned in the front parlor, and I stood in the doorway for a moment, looking about the beautiful, empty room. The front parlor. Why did that phrase spring to mind? If there was a front parlor, as used to be the custom, there must also be a back parlor. Those sliding doors at the rear of the room would open upon it. I walked toward them slowly, following an urge that seemed to well up inside me and have nothing to do with reason. But when I tried to slide the doors apart they resisted my effort, and I knew they were locked. That was odd in a house like this, where no one seemed to lock anything. Not even the front door.

  The need to enter that room was strong in me, and almost mindless. I went into the narrow hallway with its long Turkey-red runner and walked purposefully back to the hall door of the rear parlor. That door, too, was locked. For a moment I stood with my hand on the knob, and I could feel the old tension beginning to rise in me—that faint spinning sensation. If it weren’t stopped I would soon be trembling uncontrollably, and after that might come …

  All desire to enter the room evaporated and I fled toward the stairs and ran up them, pulling myself along by the banister. Craven, craven, I told myself. But I couldn’t wait now to reach the safety of my room. With all my senses alerted, I knew that back parlor was a dangerous place for me—a place of threat to my well-being, perhaps to my sanity. How could I have imagined that I could carry through my purpose in coming here when I was so easily thrown into the fears of childhood that still threatened me?

  When I reached my door I stopped because something large and dark had been hung over the doorknob—something round and dry and prickly. It was a wreath—a very old funeral wreath!

  But why? Why here at my door? I lifted it from the crystal knob with both hands and saw that a lettered white card had been slipped between its dry leaves. With hands that shook I carried the wreath into my room and sat down in a chair, turning on the reading lamp.

  Black-lettered words seemed to leap out at me from the card in my hand.

  RICHARD MORGAN

  REST IN PEACE

  (IF YOU CAN)

  VII

  I don’t know how long I sat with that dry and dusty wreath on my knees and the small white card in my hand. Strangely enough, this wasn’t one of those times when I blanked out. Movement was perfectly possible, but my heart was racing, my palms wet.

  The card in my hand had brought my father close with a strange clarity. My fantasies about him were always so real that I often forgot that it was I who made them up. From snapshots I had seen, I knew he had been tall and very handsome. He had worn glasses for reading. I knew that because I had come across a pair among the few things of his my mother had kept. But I never pictured him wearing them. In my imagination he was altogether too dashing for that. A hero figure whom my mother had never stopped loving. About whom she seldom talked because the pain was so great. All her life she had been true to his memory, turning away from any man who wanted to be her friend. Even when her beauty began to fade, she still had been lovely and appealing, yet she had lived out a sterile life.

  With an effort I shook myself from this dreaming, knowing very well that my vision of them both was based on no real understanding of what they had been like as human beings. Even my mother, who had been with me so much longer, I had seen only through a daughter’s eyes. She had never existed for me in her own right until I started to grow up, and then it was quickly too late for me to know her.

  Now, though the reason wasn’t clear, this wreath and card seemed to threaten the very dreams I had clung to over the years. And if these fantasies of my parents were destroyed, what would I have left?

  The dusty wreath on my knees seemed suddenly repugnant to my touch, speaking only of death. I jumped up and carried it to an unscreened window. When I raised the sash, cold night air and a wind from the mountains blew in, funneling through the valley. I held back the card and flung the wreath out into darkness, heard it clatter dryly somewhere below.

  But there was no reassurance to be found in flinging it away from me. A message had been delivered. Not merely one of malice, but of warning as well. For the first time I sensed danger around me. It wasn’t just that there were those who did not welcome my coming. Looking out into darkness and the mountain stillness, I could feel the almost palpable threat that had been made, the attempt to frighten me into mindless terror.

  That I wouldn’t allow.

  There had been terror for me here once before. Far away at the end of the valley I could make out the dark cone shape of Old Desolate standing against a starry sky. The wind chilled me, but I stayed for a moment longer, lost in a memory of galloping up that valley on my pony, with terror at my heels, and a desperate goal to be reached. Then I slammed down the window and turned back to the room, where ugly questions still remained to be answered.

  Why should my father’s name be written on that card when he had died so long ago that I couldn’t really remember him?

  I knew I would not sleep easily tonight. I wrote a quick note to Aunt Ruth, to be mailed tomorrow, and then I looked at the books on the marble-topped table. One title caught my eye: The Morgan Mines of Colorado, and I picked up the old, rather fragile volume. The print was small and the yellowing pages had a tendency to stick together. The author’s name meant nothing to me, but there was an engraving as a frontispiece to the book—a representation of the mountain I had just seen out my window. Old Desolate. Had the book been placed here for me to see?

  I sat down, determined to read myself sleepy and learn something about the Tremaynes, and the Morgans as well. The mother lode that Malcolm Tremayne and his partner, Tyler Morgan, had discovered on the mountain had made them both wealthy, but there had been other strikes besides in more important mines, with ore that hadn’t played out so quickly. The pages dealt particularly with the men and women involved, and I found the book fascinating in spite of its flowery and slightly stilted style.

  An old fellow whose nickname was “Dominoes” had first cut into the mountain and found silver ore. Tremayne and Morgan, working with slightly more sophisticated methods, had tunneled in from another direction, and had bought the old man out for the little he wanted.

  Sissy Farrar, my great-grandmother, had been the beautiful toast of the Silver Circuit in her late teens, singing and dancing her way into the miners’ hearts, under the strict chaperonage of her mother. Her father had been a “hard rocker,” coming out in the first spate of the Gold Rush, but never succeeding. When the handsome young Englishman, Malcolm Tremayne, appeared on the scene, Sissy had eyes for no one else. It had been a dashing courtship, and she had given up without a qualm her life as an entertainer. With never a whimper she had settled down to the early privations of Domino, and in the end, apparently, she had become as fine a lady as anyone could wish.


  A certain aura of danger seemed to have hung about Malcolm Tremayne. In a day when they had almost gone out of use, he sported two silver-mounted deringers that he learned to use well, and legend had it that he’d once killed a man who was annoying Sissy. It was agreed by all that Tremayne was not a man to trifle with.

  I could smile a little as I read. This was a tale out of the old West, and I loved every word of it. Perhaps before I left I could ask Grandmother Persis what she remembered of her father and mother.

  I read on. The mine on Old Desolate had “pinched out,” and Domino was abandoned. There was still silver in Jasper—if ever silver became valuable enough again to justify the expense of getting it out. The Tremayne and Morgan fortunes were secure and not dependent on mining, so when the silver boom ended they were not destroyed. However, when Malcolm died, there were no Tremaynes left in Jasper, whereas the Morgans were still around. So it was mainly the Morgan name that was remembered.

  The narrative closed with Persis a powerful figure in her own right. She had married Tyler Morgan’s son, Johnny, who had died when Richard Morgan, my father, was still a small boy.

  There was nothing to give me a clue to more recent history concerning my grandmother’s second marriage to the man named Noah Armand. Or anything about what my father’s life had been like as he grew up. I knew that we had lived in Denver for a time, and that my father had taught English literature in college. But I wanted to know much more.

  I felt a deep and growing need to substitute reality for the fantasies I had clung to for so long. Make-believe had been necessary because all the girls I’d known as a child could produce real fathers, whom they took for granted. To protect that empty space inside me I often talked about my father as though I had known him well, as though I had seen him only yesterday. Now I wanted to do more than that, and only Persis Morgan could help me.

  At least reading had relaxed me, and I went to bed hoping for sleep to come quickly. But an old house talks to itself at night. This one creaked and whispered, and I found myself listening. Once I thought I heard footsteps, and once the creaking seemed so close that I sat up and turned on the light.