I obeyed Marilla and locked my door with its key—there was no bolt—and came inside. I couldn’t quickly forget that moment when a rock had come crashing out of the darkness to whiz past me and smash on the tiles. If there was any connection between past and present, I didn’t know what it was and it was useless to speculate.
When I went to bed, I left a light burning.
I awakened early and lay quietly, trying to orient myself. Last night I had been very tired and there had been too much that was strange and perplexing. The answers would come gradually, I told myself, and perhaps today I could begin to help them along. I needed to move about Sedona, meet Rick’s and Sybil’s friends—learn which of them was a watcher. Though of course there was no guarantee that whoever it was need be a “friend.” In any case, I must certainly consult with Rick now and tell him why I had come.
Decision helped a little, and when I’d dressed I fixed myself breakfast in the small kitchen. Afterward, I stepped outside to breathe the marvelous mountain air. Under a deep blue and cloudless sky, the rocks were a flat carmine, with shadows erased by brilliant sunlight, so that they seemed less mysterious than in the evening. I leaned against the railing on the narrow deck.
In the gully of the wash below me, bushes trembled, and something moved down there. Even as alarm started up in me, a man stepped into view, in waist-high juniper growth. It was Brian Montgomery. This morning he wore khaki pants and shirt with a gold and blue insignia of crossed hammer and pick on his sleeve. His beard looked even more golden by morning sun, and his thick hair more sun-bleached. He smiled up at me, his eyes dark in contrast to his hair, and very solemn. An earnest young man, and perhaps not quite as young as he looked. Last night I’d thought him to be in his early twenties but now I was less sure. Nevertheless, I didn’t think he was my letter writer. Though I wasn’t sure why I should believe those notes to be the work of a woman, that was what I thought.
“Good morning,” Brian called, climbing up the cliff to join me on the deck. “Sybil phoned last night about what happened. She wanted me to come over early and see if I could pick up any traces down there. Maybe she sees me as an Indian tracker.”
“Did you find anything?”
“Not really. Anybody could have climbed up and down here last night. Rocks have slipped, where someone might have stood. But I expect Rick left some of the traces himself. Sybil says you saw something.”
“Not clearly enough. Just a quick flash—like a face and a hand. Then the rock came flying and I didn’t see anything else.”
“That’s all you remember?”
“I’m afraid it is,” I admitted. “When I think of it now, it doesn’t seem very real.”
Yet the thrown rock had been real. But since there was nothing more I could offer, Brian returned to the subject of the meeting.
“Your sister really wowed that crowd in the auditorium. They loved the way she went on after that egg hit her.” There was admiration in his voice, and I knew that Sybil had acquired a loyal follower in Brian Montgomery.
“She always had courage,” I said, trying not to sound grudging.
He nodded agreement. “I’ll go along now, and phone her later. Have fun.” His smile was attractive, lifting briefly his slightly frowning earnestness. When he chose to exert himself, Brian had a certain charm. For a moment longer he stood staring at me and then loped off toward the street.
When he’d gone, I looked toward the house, where nothing moved. Rick had set no time for taking me to the shop this morning, though since I knew that was his plan, I’d put on a pair of gray slacks and a blue blouse with a black string tie at the throat, so I was ready to leave whenever he wanted me. By the way the heat of the sun was intensifying, I wouldn’t need a jacket, but I’d better get my sunglasses.
After I’d taken them from my suitcase I went into the living room for a moment and stood looking at Jed’s ivory-mounted cane with the same feeling of revulsion I’d experienced the night before. The dragon’s shining eyes seemed to watch me with a knowing air, and I was sure the creature had always been aware of how much I disliked it. It would be easy to believe that the thing had used its own malevolent will in that attack on my father.
Reluctantly, I picked up the cane and thrust it into the back of a closet. For Marilla’s sake, I would tell neither her father nor her mother what she had done. Let it remain our secret.
“May I come in?” That was Rick at the door I’d left open, and I went to greet him.
“How is Sybil?” I asked. “She seemed remarkably calm about everything last night, yet at the same time wound up inside.”
He followed me into the living room and sat down. “She seems all right. She was up early for a trip to Jerome with Brian. For some reason she seems to have developed an obsession with Jerome lately, though I don’t know why. Anyway, she won’t be home until after lunch. The shop at Tlaquepaque doesn’t open until nine, but Clara’s coming in early, so we needn’t wait to get started. Have you had breakfast?”
I nodded, focusing upon the strange name he had spoken, repeating it phonetically. “Tlockapockey?”
He spelled it for me. “It’s a fantastic place. I wish I’d had the imagination to dream it up myself. A South-westerner named Abe Miller created it, and he has based the architecture on a real town in Mexico—Tlaquepaque, a suburb of Guadalajara.”
I had a feeling that Rick was marking time, and that he wanted to talk about something else. Yet it was an enticing picture he drew for me as he went on.
“It’s a bit of old Mexico right here on the banks of Oak Creek. Five acres, complete with sycamores and pines and glorious flowers. The buildings are the best of Spanish Mexico, and stunningly beautiful. There are shops selling silver and leather, stained glass, sculpture, paintings, all the Indian crafts at their best—anything creative and beautiful. You could roam through it for days, and you may want to. It’s still growing, and visitors come from everywhere to explore what it offers.”
I watched Rick’s face as I listened and he warmed to what he was saying. Not since I’d come here had I seen this glow in him, this enthusiasm.
I hated to quench it, but this was the moment to talk to him.
“I want to show you something,” I said and took the two notes from my handbag, giving him the first one. “This is what brought me here.”
He read the lettered words aloud slowly, and when he came to Sybil’s name he gave the paper an angry flick. “I’ve no use for anonymous threats, Lindsay.”
“I know. But I could hardly ignore it, could I? Not even for Sybil’s sake. How do I know what’s behind it? Have you any idea what it could mean as far as she’s concerned?”
“None at all. That is—” He broke off as though he might not be as positive as he sounded, and I knew with a stab of concern how torn he was.
I wouldn’t challenge him, but I held out the other note. “This is a second one, and it was brought here for me yesterday. Consuela took it from a boy at the door?”
This time Rick read in silence, his expression grim.
“I can’t let this go,” I said miserably. “My father was murdered. Has anything ever turned up to tell you why?”
“There are plenty of whys, robbery aside. What we don’t know is who. I loved him too, you know. And perhaps I knew him better than you did.”
A great many people had known him better than I had. The thought was bitter, and I thrust it away. “Do you think we should show these notes to Sybil?”
He gave them back to me with a curt gesture. “Not yet. You saw her yesterday when she knocked over her glass. She’s not as calm as she pretends. Something’s stretching her out. I can guess a few reasons for this but not all of them, and it worries me. She’s capable of—” Again he broke off, as though he’d said too much, and went to stand before a window.
“Do you think what’s troubling her could possibly tie in with Jed’s death?”
“No, of course not. She was no more to blame than the rest of
us who were there with him in Las Vegas. He was her father too, even though neither of you was close to him.”
He turned to look at me as he spoke. I knew I’d been reproved, and I didn’t like it. He wasn’t being completely open with me, and he had no right to judge me when he knew so little about the past.
I stood up abruptly. “Shall we leave now?”
He led the way to the garage, a large one built at one side of the house and holding a Mercedes sedan, a red Triumph Spitfire, and a Ford pickup truck.
“I’ve some things to drop off at the shop,” Rick said and went to open the door of the pickup for me.
I climbed in and felt immediately comfortable. As a small girl, when I’d gone camping in Connecticut with Jed, he’d driven this sort of vehicle, and one summer when I was older, he’d even taught me to drive it.
As we started down the hill, I could see the houses and subdivisions of Sedona spread along the thread of the highway, with a wilderness of rocks and undeveloped forest crowding all around. It seemed a very long town, though not especially dense. Some of the rock shapes that hemmed it in were becoming familiar to me, though it seemed startling to see them rising so close at one end of the business section of town. Most had names, Rick said—Coffee Pot, Bell Rock, the Giant’s Thumb, and many more—and I thought their beauty far more impressive than such prosaic names. It was a good thing they didn’t know what they were called!
We drove through the village along the wide main street that was also the highway. Shops and restaurants and motels stretched along either side, typically Southwestern architecture—adobe or trading post—and usually no more than a single story high. Red rocks backed the town and closed it in, rising from spotty green juniper that encroached wherever it could gain roothold.
We turned at the “Y” and drove the short distance to the bottom of the canyon, where Tlaquepaque had been built near the creek. We entered the compound through an arched gateway to a parking area. Rick’s spirits seemed to lift, as though he put all that concerned him deliberately from his mind for the present. Together, we lifted the few cartons from the truck and he led the way in.
Tall trees and the canyon walls had hidden all this until we were almost there, so the first impact of Tlaquepaque was stunning. The buildings were larger and more dense than I’d expected—a small Spanish town set down on its own acres. The paving stones of a wide plaza shone pale in the sunlight, while arches and balconies offered the flavor of old Mexico. Tiled walkways rimmed the rectangle we had entered, and led into other courtyards. On every hand masonry gleamed with a creamy whiteness, tinged by deep rose in the shadows. In several of the courts fountains played, and twisted gray sycamores raised leafy branches to soften the starkness of stone. Everywhere there were plants and flowers and vines. Bougainvillea and chrysanthemums, geraniums and begonias brushed lavish color wherever I looked. Loving hands had planted and cared for all this, contributing a living beauty to the manmade angles of stone.
Commanding all else rose the square bell tower. It could be seen all over the compound—with an intensity of turquoise sky burning above.
Rick was watching me, waiting, and I wanted to tell him how much it meant to me that he had brought me here. But none of this feeling could be spoken.
“I haven’t any words,” I said. “I can’t take it in all in one breath.”
“We’ll get rid of these cartons first,” he said, and went through a stone arch, following another red-tiled passageway. The maze of courts and fountains and walks in a place that was still growing led one continually into new and marvelous vistas, warm with the colors of Mexico and the Southwest—and of the very sun itself.
Surrounding each plaza were shops that were out of the ordinary. In one window stood a bronze armadillo with a red head, and I set down my boxes to look closer, discovering beyond him a multitude of imaginative creatures that inhabited the shop.
“You can come back and see everything another time,” Rick said. “I’d like you to meet Clara before the shop opens. Have I told you its name? We call it Silver-cloud.” There seemed something almost questioning in the way he spoke the word—as though he expected some response from me.
“It’s a beautiful name,” I said.
“You’ve never heard it before—from Jed?”
“No. Should I have?”
“He suggested it for the shop and Clara and I liked it. We’ll go and meet her now.”
I’d rather have roamed these courtyards and explored enticing arcades instead of meeting a woman who, for some reason, was already prejudiced against me. I wasn’t sure why Rick seemed so insistent about this meeting, and I found myself wondering if Clara Hale could be the writer of my notes.
We crossed another paved courtyard, rounded a pool that gleamed in greenish shadow, and stopped before a window that displayed the arts of the West. A grinning Indian mask looked out at me through the glass, and just inside the door was a stand that held an intricately tooled saddle—one of Rick’s specialties, I’d learned. Over the window curved the name: SILVERCLOUD.
“Here we are,” Rick said.
The door was locked and when he opened it with a key I went ahead into a warmly lighted area of redwood paneling. Rick piled our cartons at one side of the shop, while I stood looking around.
Well-spaced shelves and tables and glass counters displayed, pottery, sculpture, weaving, turquoise mosaics, sand paintings, jewelry—everything imaginable that had been created by fine craftsmen and artists. Even at first glance, it all seemed fresh and original in concept. I identified the smell of leather, a smoky hint of oriental sandalwood—oddly out of place—and another odor suspiciously like garlic. No one seemed to be about.
Rick caught the garlic odor and wrinkled his nose. “Clara won’t like this. Probably it’s why the incense is burning.”
He nodded toward an earthen bowl of lighted punk sticks, from which aromatic smoke curled in wisps that were losing the battle with the stronger smells that drifted out from a burner somewhere in the rear. Rick smiled wryly, and I tried to relax and not think about Clara as I looked around the shop.
My eye was caught at once by a dramatic wall hanging—a coiled straw plaque, bordered by a geometric design in terracotta red. In the center, done in the same red-earth tones, a formalized eagle spread its great wings. Fanned tail feathers were formed in the natural straw color of the background, and etched in red. For all my working life, travel had meant to me an infusion of fresh ideas to feed my imagination. I had trained myself to be open to impressions, to receive and store and imagine creatively. Now I felt the familiar tingling of excitement that meant this faculty was stirring again.
I forgot Rick and the rest of the shop and went to stand before the straw circle on the wall. “Blue,” I said. “Denim, perhaps. A dress, not jeans, and it should be the blue of the sky over Tlaquepaque. Tiny birds of terra-cotta red, woven in a narrow strip that could be appliquéd.”
I closed my eyes, visualizing as I went on aloud.
“The strip could start at the round neck and follow the shoulders and the outside of the arms down each side all the way to the narrow cuff. A continuous strip of color, with the bird pattern very small. Perhaps a narrow leather belt with an enameled buckle that would carry out the terra-cotta motif.” I turned to find Rick watching me, and an enthusiasm I hadn’t felt in a long while spilled over in me. “I can see the dress in every detail! I could even cut a pattern and—” I broke off, hearing my own words as I came to my senses. “That was foolish, wasn’t it? To look at something beautiful and think of clothes.”
Rick was smiling at me. “That’s your job. And clothes can be an art form, can’t they? Go on.”
“It’s not a practical idea. I’d drive the textile manufacturers crazy asking for little red birds in an Indian design. They don’t warm to individual orders. That’s the trouble. I have to compromise with what’s available, what I can find—so I’m always at war with myself. My best ideas are apt to be expensive�
��and impossible.”
“Not necessarily impossible,” Rick said. “Look at yourself! Until this minute, all I’ve seen has been the slick polish of New York. Then you looked at that thunderbird done in straw, and you came to life. You’re excited, you’re real. And you know something? You look just the way your father used to when an imaginative idea seized him. Excitement’s good for you.”
Even as he spoke, the elation I’d felt faded, and I sighed. In any case, I didn’t want to look like my father—or be like him. Jed’s dreams usually came to nothing. That was one reason why I always tried to be practical—however dull practicality had grown.
I shook my head at Rick. “It’s no use. Oh, I’m sure when I get home I’ll find myself using ideas I’ve picked up in Arizona. I’ll look for new color combinations, textures. But I can’t really do what I’d like to do. In the old days Chanel and other designers could go straight to the weavers in France and other countries in Europe and tell them what they wanted. But that’s impossible now. At least for me.”
“Don’t give up so easily. Why not go on with this idea that’s just hit you and see what happens?”
Before I could repeat that it was useless, a burst of singing filled the room, emerging from the rear, along with the aroma of garlic. In a rich tenor voice someone was singing “Vesti la giubba,” and as we both turned to stare, the singer appeared at the rear door. He was a big man, long, lanky, partly bald, with a fringe of faded, gray hair around his head, and a lean body, mostly hidden by the spotless bib apron he wore over his jeans. One hand held a wooden spoon, stained at the bowl with tomato sauce, and with this he conducted himself through a last phrase of the aria, then bowed to us grandly.
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