“I’ll show this to the police,” he said. “Did you report the egg throwing?”
Sybil’s eyes were on me, and I realized that I’d been staring at Rick, hanging on his words. I must be more careful. Sybil was no fool, and the last thing I wanted was to have her armed with new ammunition.
After a moment she answered Rick almost carelessly. “There was no point in reporting it. Whoever it was got away while all the attention was on me. I suppose this sort of thing can be expected when people are being stirred up.”
I suspected that Rick didn’t believe in this dismissal of the incident. Nor did I. Sybil undoubtedly had something to conceal—as the second note to me had hinted.
“I’ll turn this in tomorrow at the sheriff’s office,” Rick said. “I’m just glad you weren’t hurt.”
Sybil shrugged and finished her fresh drink. I still sensed an anger that she held under steely control.
“What is this controversial topic?” I asked her.
At least she could warm to the subject, and she came out of her preoccupation. “Until recently, we’ve had no pollution in Sedona. There are septic systems for houses already built, and our water comes from mountain wells and reservoirs. It’s as pure as our air has always been. There’s been no problem until recently.”
“Oak Creek flows into the Verde River near Cottonwood and its purity is important down there too,” Rick added.
Sybil went on. “New subdivisions are springing up. Some promoters want to build condominiums and restaurants up the canyon and we’re becoming alarmed as the contamination level rises. That’s the battle I’m helping to fight.”
“You can do it, too,” Rick said warmly. “You know I’ll help, if I can.”
Her look flicked briefly to his face, and then away, and I sensed that his warmth was for what she would regard as the wrong reason.
“I hope you were into all this when Dad was here,” I told her. “He’d have been pleased.”
She stared off at the black peaks, and when she turned her head and looked at me I knew she would no more accept me now as a sister than she had done in the past. Inexplicably, her hostility toward me had deepened.
“I understand some of the reasons why you’ve come, Lindsay,” she said, “but it’s a mistake for you to be here.”
With Rick present, she was being more careful than she had been with me alone, though she was still challenging me. However, when she went on, her words took an unexpected turn.
“Obviously, Jed had enemies—and he’s dead. Has it ever occurred to you, Lindsay, that the same people who hated him may not be fond of his daughters?”
“What are you talking about?” Rick demanded.
“Perhaps that thrown egg and the windshield note had nothing to do with our conservationist project. Perhaps there will be worse before this ends.”
“You’d better explain.” Rick was curt.
She only shrugged again. “Perhaps I will—and very soon. But not right now.” Again she turned a quick glance in my direction, as though hinting of something unpleasant to come. I had no realization then of how quickly prophetic her earlier words were to be.
It was as though some unseen hand suddenly pushed me. Instantly I scraped my chair backward on the terrace. I had no time to think—I simply reacted—and as I did so I caught a glimpse of movement off the terrace to my right. I was the only one facing that way, and I had an instant’s impression of a face, a raised hand, as a rock came hurtling across the terrace. It flashed through the air where my head had been, and smashed upon the tiles.
Rick was on his feet at once, snatching up a flashlight from a nearby rack as he ran. He vaulted over the railing, to crash down through brush, while I sat shaking in reaction.
A few times before in my life I’d experienced warnings just like the push I’d felt, and I was always disturbed afterward, not only because of danger that had barely missed me, but because I had known ahead of time.
Again, Sybil was watching me. “You look terrified, Lindsay, I wonder which one of us that was intended for?” Though she spoke calmly enough, I sensed underlying tension as malice toward me surfaced. “A rock is rather more serious than an egg. Do you have any enemies, Lindsay?”
It was possible that I did have, and meeting her look I knew her for my enemy. She had always been that, and now her antagonism toward me had deepened to a frightening degree.
I didn’t answer her.
“He won’t find anyone,” Sybil went on, setting down her empty glass as though nothing had happened, and now her hand didn’t shake. “Not at night. Whoever threw that rock was sure of not being caught.”
She was right. After five minutes of fruitless searching, Rick returned angrily and came directly to me.
“Are you all right, Lindsay? That was very close.” His concern reached out to me, and I was all too aware of Sybil watching.
“I’m fine,” I said, and kept myself sternly in hand.
He went on, his anger mounting. “I’m not going to wait until tomorrow. I’ll call the sheriff’s office now.”
As he spoke, Marilla ran out upon the terrace, eager to join us. In contrast to what had just happened, she seemed a vision of bright innocence in neat blue chambray, with a jonquil embroidered on the pocket. Her fair hair had been brushed into a semblance of order before it sprang into unruly curls again, and there was an elfin appeal about her. Nevertheless, her eyes held an awareness that belied her nine years.
Before anyone could speak, she challenged us. “Something’s happened, hasn’t it?”
Rick started to reassure her, but Sybil broke in sharply. “Yes! And for the second time today I seem to have been in the line of fire. The aim just wasn’t as good this time. That rock came closer to Lindsay. Unless, of course, Lindsay was really the target.”
“Stop that!” Rick said, and put an arm about his daughter’s shoulders. “Someone threw a stone,” he told her quietly. “Some kid, probably. I’m going to phone the sheriff, but it’s nothing to be scared of. Go inside now with your mother and Lindsay, and sit down to dinner. I’ll be with you soon.”
The heat of anger was in him as he strode off, and I knew how he felt. It was one thing to fight a known enemy, to stand up and defend oneself, but something else when that enemy was faceless and offered nothing tangible to fight against.
As we moved toward the dining room, my foot crunched on rock. I could still feel the violence of disturbed air close to my face. The stone would have injured one of us, though it was unlikely that it could have been fatal. A warning had been given. To whom? Was there any question, in spite of Sybil’s words? I had a feeling that the aim had been very good indeed, and that the chunk of sandstone had landed exactly toward the target intended—me. Had the intent been to miss? This time.
3
It was nearly ten o’clock and I was ready for bed. The remainder of the evening had been upsetting. A deputy had come from the sheriff’s office, and we’d told him what little we could. I had seen a face, a hand, but only for an instant. I had no remembered impression of either.
It was all an exercise in futility, but at least the sheriff had been alerted, both about what had happened in Flagstaff, and on the terrace of Rick’s house. When he left, the deputy took with him the note left on Sybil’s windshield, as well as the rock. I had still said nothing about the two notes I’d received. They were quite different and I was convinced that they had come from another source. I wanted to put them into Rick’s hands first. He had a right to be prepared before they were shown to anyone else.
Marilla had stayed with us, in spite of a half-hearted attempt by Rick to send her away, and the child almost seethed with excitement as she listened to everything.
We had finished dinner late, and it had been an uncomfortable meal.
“Nothing so dramatic as this usually happens around here,” Sybil assured me as we finished our dessert. “Sedona is a remarkably peaceful community.”
Marilla said, “Just the
same, Mom, things do happen here. People get lost up in the rocks, or they have accidents there and fall. That can be exciting. Then Brian has to go searching for them, and sometimes he brings them down safely. If they don’t get killed first.”
“Why Brian?” I asked.
“Because he belongs to Search and Rescue,” Marilla said. “I’ll bet he’s about the best they’ve got on the whole crew.”
Sybil explained. “Tourists who don’t know any better sometimes go rock climbing, and that’s not always safe on crumbling sandstone. Even experienced rock climbers can have accidents. And it’s easier to get lost in the back country than outsiders think. So Search and Rescue, which is made up of volunteers, performs a real service. Brian is an expert.”
Rick had been silent and preoccupied through most of the meal. What had occurred on the terrace seemed to trouble him deeply, and I wondered again if there was any connection between my father’s death and what was happening now. Did someone besides the letter writer know why I was here?
Later that night, as I sat up in bed trying to read The Book of the Hopi, my thoughts were melancholy and not on the pages. Two men were insistent in my mind, with a hurtful longing that connected them both.
If only I could have seen my father again. While the loss of my mother was a constant sadness, it was a quiet grief, without anguish. She had wanted the release of death and I could wish nothing else for her. But Jed had never desired anything more than the life he’d lived so richly, and which had been cut off with cruel suddenness. Perhaps I had really lost him long ago. Perhaps my own anger had shut me away from him. Yet I’d always known he was there, had I wanted to reach out for reconciliation. Now he was truly gone, and I was left with an emptiness I’d never expected, and a growing need to know what had really happened.
But Rick was in my thoughts as well, as I had known he would be. The coolness between him and Sybil was evident, as was his love and concern for Marilla. I must be careful, very careful to upset no delicate balances with my presence. Nothing was going to be easy.
The voice I knew so well spoke softly in my mind. Things won’t be easy if you’re not more careful. If I hadn’t pushed you tonight, you’d have taken that rock right in the face.
My moving was pure instinct, I told her. I don’t want you here.
Surprisingly, she faded away, and I felt a small sense of triumph. Aberrations I could do without!
Mountain silence pressed all around this small guesthouse, and now the silence seemed to threaten me. I couldn’t concentrate on the beliefs of the Hopi, and I was about to put my book aside and attempt to fall asleep when a light tapping sounded on the outside door. In my present state of mind the sound was unnerving. Nevertheless, I drew on my robe and went into the little hallway that led to the louvered front door.
“Who’s there?” I called.
“It’s me—Marilla. Open the door, Lindsay.”
I sighed and turned the latch, not at all sure that I could cope with Marilla just then. She stood on the flagstones outside, dressed in pajamas and one of her father’s sweaters, which hung below her knees. She held both hands behind her back and smiled at me angelically.
“Invite me in, Lindsay. It’s cold out here.”
“Of course,” I said. “Please come in.”
“You go first,” she directed, clearly unwilling to show me what she held behind her back.
I led the way into the living room and switched on a lamp. “It’s pretty late—shouldn’t you be in bed?”
“Yes, I should. But I like to get up at night when nobody else is around. That’s when the Fire People dance in the moonlight, and everything gets spooky and thrilling.”
No wonder she had been fond of her grandfather. This sounded like the sort of speech he might have made. I could remember his leprechaun stories when I was little.
“All right,” I said. “Why are you here?”
“I have something for you. I told you I’d bring it. It’s something I knew you’d want.”
She drew her right hand from behind her back and thrust it toward me with a suddenness that made me jump. Her fingers were clasped tightly around the black stick of my father’s cane, and the ivory dragon’s head glared at me, teeth bared. Stumbling backward so that it wouldn’t touch me, I felt the couch behind my knees and dropped weakly onto its cushions.
Marilla said, “They’d hidden it away in a closet, but I knew it was there. Sometimes I take it out and walk around with it at night—the way Grandpa Jed used to do after he started to limp. He never could sleep much at night. He said that mornings were for sleeping. I thought you’d like to have it because it belonged to him.”
Her eyes were dancing, and the fair cap of curls shone in lamplight, but I couldn’t be sure whether she had wanted to please or to torment me.
“Do you know how your grandfather died?” I asked.
“Of course! I was there. I wasn’t even eight years old then, so they wouldn’t let me talk to the police or anything.”
“You were at the hotel in Las Vegas?”
“Yes! I just told you.” She perched herself, knees pulled up, on the wide arm of the sofa, regarding me intently. “Grandpa Jed invited all of us for a couple of days. Me especially. He thought I’d like to see Las Vegas once anyway, since I never had, and have dinner at one of those big hotels. Clara was there too, but not Parker, because she didn’t know him then. So were Brian and Orva. Orva Montgomery—Brian’s mother. And of course my father and mother. It was a Sedona party.”
I ran my fingers through hair brushed behind my ears, tugging a little to pull myself back to reality. When I spoke, it was more to myself than to this strange and bewildering child.
“Why would he give an expensive party when he had no money at all?” Though I knew that was a foolish question, since this was exactly what Jed would have done. He’d have had some plan afoot to raise funds for a new scheme, and he’d always said that you had to spend money to get more. Probably his guests had been targets as possible investors.
I studied Marilla’s bright face. “Then you know about the cane?”
She nodded vigorously. “Sure—it was the weapon the murderer used. You don’t need to worry. It was cleaned up ages ago, when the police let my father have it. You can see how beautiful it looks.”
Children were realists, so perhaps she wasn’t being malicious. The young can accept death with open grief and without mystic ramifications. I would not touch the cane for anything, and I could only regard it with repugnance.
“You’re upset,” Marilla said. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I just thought—” Her voice trailed away. She looked downcast and disappointed, but I still couldn’t be sure this wasn’t an act she was putting on.
“Perhaps there’s something we all need to understand when we make a gift,” I said, speaking as gently as I could. “It’s a good idea to be sure ahead of time that what we’re giving is something the person would really like to have. Do you know what I’m talking about?”
She looked again at the dragon’s head with its horrid teeth and the eyes that always seemed to watch me. “You mean you don’t want this cane because of—of what was done with it?”
“That’s right. Is that so hard to understand?”
“No, I guess not.” She sounded doubtful. “I really did love Grandpa Jed a lot. Sometimes I still make believe he isn’t gone. I pretend that he’ll walk through the door any time and talk to me the way he used to.”
“I know what you mean,” I said, understanding very well.
“This cane was just something he liked. Dad explained to me about it. He said the cane wasn’t to blame for what happened. It was only the—the instrument that somebody used. It was a person who killed him. Grandpa Jed liked his cane, and he was proud to carry it while he was alive. It was sort of a part of him after that accident, when he started to limp.”
“That’s a good way to think of it,” I said. “But just the same, your father didn’t include the
cane when he sent the rest of Jed’s things to me. He knew I would never want to see it again.”
She stared at me for a moment, while tears welled up in her eyes and rolled unheeded down her cheeks. “My mother says I never figure anything out right.”
I felt immediately guilty. “Don’t feel that way. I’m to blame too. I should have tried to understand why you brought it to me. There was nothing wrong about that, really. You thought I’d like to have it.”
“I’ll take it away.” She jumped off the arm of the sofa and picked up the cane, not touching the dragon’s head. “I didn’t mean to scare you or make you feel sad, Lindsay. I guess I had a different picture in my head that I was looking at.”
Most of us looked at different pictures in our heads, I thought. And we seldom understood the other fellow’s picture. But this was a late hour for philosophy.
I got up, steeling myself to take the cane from her hand. “Leave it here, Marilla. It’s time I got over my feeling about it. Thank you for bringing it to me.”
She brightened at once, her face still wet and shiny. “Then you aren’t mad at me?”
“No. Not now that we understand each other a little better.”
We went to the door together and she stepped outside upon red rock flagstones.
“I wish I could see her,” she said. “I mean your Vermilion. Does she come so close you can really see and hear her?”
“Only in my head,” I told her firmly. “And that was long ago. We all have to grow up, you know.” But I was trying to reassure myself.
She looked disappointed. “I’ll go now. Be sure to lock up, Lindsay. Don’t let the night things get in!” Then she was off, running across the redwood bridge to the main house, looking back only to wave her hand.
I didn’t close my door at once. I stood for a moment staring up at the great rocks riding like ships in black silhouette against the sky, their edges silvered by moonlight. Every time I looked at them they seemed to take on different characteristics, resembling something I hadn’t seen in them before. Up there was where Marilla’s “Fire People” belonged, and I wanted nothing to do with them. Yet this harsh red landscape with its dramatic beauty was something Rick loved, and I wished I could see it with his eyes. Or the eyes of those unknown ones of my own ancestry who had come before me, and who, perhaps, had looked at these very rocks with a lifting of the spirit. For the first time, a wondering arose in me—a marveling that I’d always suppressed before. Who had they been? Perhaps, after all, it wouldn’t be too terrible to know. Yet at the very moment of weakening, I stepped back, still afraid of the truth—lest it damage me in some way I couldn’t yet understand.
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