Vermilion

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  “There were six of us. Clara, Brian, and me. And Rick, Sybil, and Marilla. We had rooms on the same floor, and Jed proceeded to give us a very good time. He was in one of his highs that night. Keyed up and abnormally excited. Oh, I don’t think he used drugs of any sort. He didn’t even drink more than moderately. He didn’t need to. His particular highs came out of those crazy ideas of his. To be fair, I don’t think he ever meant to cheat anybody. He believed in all of it himself. Every time it happened, he believed. That’s how he always sold his victims—out of his own strong convictions. And afterwards, when everything collapsed, he was desperately sorry.”

  I remembered that—the way he’d always taken the blame, poured out regrets that came too late to help anything.

  “Then it was someone who didn’t appreciate the purity of his motives who struck him down,” I said wryly. “Anyway, it’s over now. It’s finished. So why did you want me to come? Why did you write those notes?” She evaded the direct question. “How can it be finished when whoever killed Jed is still walking around unpunished?”

  That was what I’d felt too, but I had to play devil’s advocate. “And will probably never harm anyone else. My father attracted lightning once too often. If you brought me here to tell me about that Las Vegas party, it seems pretty extreme.”

  “All right—I wrote those notes. And I mentioned Sybil, didn’t I? Brian told you about the quarrel she and Jed had after dinner that night. Jed tried to put her down once too often. He was usually a kind man, but he knew what she was doing to Rick, and he tried to have it out with her. They got to baiting each other, and he told her off. After all, she was his daughter. She lost her temper and slapped him, and he shook her so hard she had bruises on her arms the next day. Brian stopped it. He got pretty mad at Jed himself. Rick wasn’t there when it happened because he’d gone to take a phone call. The rest of us were there, except for Marilla, who had fortunately gone to bed. So we saw what happened.”

  Orva paused, the veins standing out on the backs of her hands as she pressed them down, smudging one of the pencil drawings under her fingers. There was more to come, and I sat tensely, waiting.

  “By the time Rick came back, Jed had left. Rick got Sybil quieted down, and we went to our rooms. Sometime after midnight Sybil walked down the hall to Jed’s room. No one knows this but me. Not even Sybil knows that I opened my door and looked out just as she was leaving Jed’s room and hurrying back to her own. I couldn’t sleep after all the excitement, so when I heard doors open and close, and someone moving about, I was curious.

  “I got out of bed and opened my own door. Sybil came out of Jed’s room fast and ran back to her own. She was fully dressed, as she’d been for that rather grand dinner. I didn’t see her face because she was moving away from me. Believe me, I shut myself into my room in a hurry and went back to bed. Whatever was going on, I didn’t want to know any more about it. It wasn’t my quarrel. Not then. I didn’t learn until morning that Jed was dead.”

  “Why didn’t you tell what you’d seen right away?”

  “Because of Rick. Because I’m fond of Rick, no matter how much I dislike Sybil. I thought Jed probably invited what happened to him, and if I talked about what I’d seen it would only stir things up in a horrible way.”

  “Are you accusing Sybil of our father’s murder?”

  Her hands relaxed their tension and dropped into her lap. “That’s for you to do,” she said. “That’s why you’re here. Because you’re the only one close enough to Sybil to find out the truth.”

  “And you’re doing all this to save your son from my sister?” I was incredulous.

  “I would do more than that, Lindsay, but my hands seem to be tied.”

  “You could still tell Rick.”

  “After keeping still for more than a year? I’m not sure he would even believe me.”

  “Why should I?”

  “No reason. Except that you grew up with Sybil.”

  I closed my eyes, not wanting to remember. But the pictures were all there. Sybil holding those sharp-pointed scissors of hers, threatening me, when I’d been no more than three. Sybil pushing me off a high swing when we were riding tandem. Sybil lying to our mother, blaming me, to get herself off. She had always been able to convince Mother, when she never could with Jed. But none of this would help me now.

  When I opened my eyes and looked at Orva, she was still watching me intently.

  “There’s nothing I can possibly do,” I said. “It’s too late.”

  “Just think about it, Lindsay—and then run away if you dare.”

  If I ran, it would be from more than Orva Montgomery.

  From another part of the house a sound reached us, and I raised my head, listening. It was soft and whispery at first, like the stroking of a drumstick over taut rawhide as the player sought his rhythm. Then the sound grew stronger, more resonant, until it filled the house. The beat was clear now: Boom, pause—beat-beat-beat. The last three beats were quick, and then the simple rhythm was repeated. Over and over—Jed’s Indian drum.

  I looked at Orva and saw that she leaned back in her chair, smiling as though some battle plan had been successfully launched.

  “A tom-tom?” I asked.

  “The Hopi don’t use that white man’s word. Brian really has learned to play it, hasn’t he? Sometimes I’ve heard the drums talk like that in the pueblos. Though I never knew what they were saying.”

  What this drum was saying made the skin prickle at the back of my neck. The message was somehow anticipatory, as though the steady, monotonous beat was building toward some climax—some explosive climax.

  “How can you stand it?” I said.

  She continued to smile. “Just listen.”

  The sound had risen in volume, the rhythm quickening until it seemed to burst the confines of the house, vibrating outward to echo against red peaks, calling to the old, old land.

  Now the rhythm changed to something still more insistent, more primitive: BOOM, beat-beat; BOOM, beat-beat, over and over again, a sound of warning, an arousal of dark emotions, of mounting passions that must find release.

  It was more than I could bear to listen to. I had to make it stop before it got into my blood and caused me to do—whatever it was that was forbidden. If I listened too long, it would make me feel more deeply than I dared. It was a sound that might cut me free of all the past and send me down some new and reckless road.

  I stood up quickly. “I’d like to go back to Rick’s now,” I said.

  Orva nodded, understanding more than I liked. “Yes, I know. I can feel it too. Makes you want to kick over the traces, doesn’t it? Maybe run away from everything that’s sensible and safe. I’m glad I’m too old for it to reach me anymore. But sometimes that sound makes me wonder if I really know my son.”

  As though my insistent thoughts had reached out to touch the man who played the drum, he changed the rhythm to something less-insistent, beating it out more softly and without accent, then building to a sudden climax that ended on a last loud BOOM.

  Whatever it was that gripped me, let go, and I looked around as Brian came to stand in the doorway. An ordinary young man with a fair, curly beard and a pleasant smile. Not at all a prophet of danger and doom. A peacemaker. Or at least that was what he claimed.

  “What was the drum saying?” Orva asked her son.

  His eyes looked a little sleepy, as though he had gone somewhere far away and hadn’t fully returned as yet.

  “I can’t always tell,” he said. “My hands know more than I do. The drum is like Jed—always depths beyond depths. I wonder if anything really lies at the promised end?”

  “Will you please take me back to Rick’s?” I said. “I’m very tired. I expect I’m still on New York time. Forgive me for running, Orva”—falsely polite.

  “Of course,” she said. She knew one reason why I was running, but not all. Mainly, perhaps, I ran from a burden of responsibility that I wasn’t ready to accept.

  Bri
an went to back out the car, while Orva came with me to the door.

  “Catch up on your sleep,” she said. “I believe I’ll make a phone call now.”

  Something in her voice alerted me. “You’re going to call Sybil?”

  “Why not? It’s time to carry the attack of nerves a little further. In the end, I think she’ll betray herself.”

  “What else have you done?” I demanded.

  When she grinned at me impudently, the sun lines in her face deepening, she could look disarmingly innocent. I knew she wasn’t innocent at all.

  “Oh, nothing much,” she said. “Just a little note to Sybil to let her know that you were coming out to investigate your father’s murder. That was all—I left it at that. Hasn’t she said anything?”

  So this was what lay behind some of the hostility I’d sensed in my sister? Orva’s scheming outraged me, but I couldn’t express what I felt. Not yet.

  As I waited for Brian, she came close to me and patted my arm. “Don’t look like that. In the end, you’ll thank me, you know. I’ll see you the day after tomorrow at your sister’s dinner. Has it struck you that it’s rather curious—that dinner? Except for you and Parker, and of course the absence of Jed, the guests will be the very same ones who were gathered in Las Vegas when your father died.”

  I ran down the steps toward the car and got in without looking back. I didn’t know whether or not she watched as we drove away.

  A full moon sailed high over the great rock formations, silvering their edges, making deep shadows of the crevices. The landscape seemed wilder by night—as though darkness brought turmoil to those red peaks. A turmoil that matched my thoughts.

  I was grateful for ordinary lamplight shining in the windows of Sedona as we drove along. There was still a normal world around us.

  “You’re shaking,” Brian said. “My mother has upset you, hasn’t she? They were really a pair, you know—she and Jed—when it came to imagination and weird schemes. Not that Ma could ever match your father. Sometimes she gets carried away by some notion that doesn’t have much connection with reality. So don’t take her too seriously.”

  Sometimes I wondered how much he was in touch with reality. This notion of Orva’s might have more connection with what was real than her son understood, no matter what fantasy she might indulge to bring about a confrontation with Sybil. For an instant I thought of telling him what his mother had done, but quickly backed away. I didn’t know him well enough, and I mustn’t forget that he was one of Sybil’s followers.

  When I said nothing, he let the matter go and didn’t speak again until we were in Rick’s driveway. Then, like his mother, he put a light hand on my arm.

  “Thanks for coming, Lindsay. I’m looking forward to taking you and Marilla on that jeep trip Saturday. The kid’s counting on it, you know.”

  “I’ll try to come,” I said. “I can’t leave until I’ve found out who killed my father.” I heard my own words with a certain relief. It didn’t matter to whom I’d spoken them. They reinforced what I’d said to Rick, and I was glad of the commitment. It didn’t matter that this was no longer my entire reason for staying.

  Brian’s hand tightened on my arm. “Hey, wait a minute! That’s a pretty cold trail. I don’t know what my mother opened up with you, but you’d better not follow any of her wild clues—if she gave you any. I’m keeping more of an eye on things than she thinks. I know how she feels about Sybil. Though Ma doesn’t always see things in the round.”

  “And you do?”

  “Nobody does,” he said shortly, and came to open the door on my side of the car.

  The front entrance of the house was only a step up from the drive, since no basement had been dug into this deep rock. I stood on the terra-cotta tiles of the entryway and watched Brian’s car disappear. Lights were on inside, but the house seemed very quiet and I felt a strange uneasiness about going through its empty spaces. Had the telephone been ringing? Had Orva’s call been answered?

  Even more, I disliked crossing that lonely bridge to the island of the guesthouse. Tonight I didn’t want to feel isolated. So much that might be more terrible than I could face had been planted in my mind.

  Another car stood on the apron before the garage, and as I raised my hand to ring the doorbell, someone got out and came toward me.

  “Wait, Lindsay. Don’t go inside yet.”

  It was Rick. His voice came out of the darkness with that same deep timbre that I remembered. I paused uncertainly.

  “Come and get in the car,” he said, and I heard the anger in his voice. Yet in the same instant I knew that it was not directed at me.

  The drum wasn’t silent after all. It was still beating in my blood.

  I walked over to the Mercedes and got into the passenger seat.

  7

  My sense of direction wasn’t clear, and at first I didn’t know where we were going. The rocks looked different with their heads in the moonlight. It was an alien landscape and more disturbing than ever.

  Not until I saw ahead the lighted bell tower of Tlaquepaque did I realize where we were. Beside me, Rick was quiet, though tension showed in his hands on the wheel, in the set of his head—a tension that seemed to draw me into it, making me a part of his deep anger.

  We left the car in an almost empty parking area and walked once more into a world of perfect beauty and harmony. The central plaza was empty except for couples strolling through now and then. Farther on, in one of the upper galleries, a restaurant was open and we could hear voices, but most of Tlaquepaque drowsed in the moonlight, a quiet and enchanted place. Over all rose the slim pencil of light that was the bell tower shining through the trees.

  In the courtyards Spanish lanterns shed a soft glow. We found a green iron bench and sat down in the shadow of a sycamore, its branches flung above us scattering spangles of moonlight. Nearby, a fountain splashed softly, and on one of the galleries a guitar strummed an old romantic ballad about Mexico. The words were sung softly, as if for the singer’s pleasure, or that of his lady. Somewhere, I could hear the rushing sound of the creek far below.

  We sat so close that I could sense his warmth through my thin dress, and yet we were not touching. It was a moment of such heightened sentience for me that I knew when the rage began to flow out of him, when he began to let all his torment float away. If he moved now, if he touched me, I would be in his arms and no voice of reason would stop me. Yet his words startled me.

  “I think I’m in love with you, Lindsay. I wanted to tell you this—away from the house.”

  I sat very still and waited, lest I break the spell of the moment.

  He went on softly. “Perhaps I’ve always been a little in love with you, even when you were only seventeen and we were friends. I didn’t have the good sense to listen then, to wait. What I felt for Sybil was too demanding and strong. It got in the way. Then when I met you later in New York and saw the woman you’d become, I wanted to know you better. I also knew that it wasn’t any use, that it was too late, and I went back to Sedona. When your letter came, I was eager to see you again, and I began to make plans to try to keep you here a little while.”

  I started to speak and he put a hand on my arm, silencing me.

  “The plans I worked out are good ones, and they’re genuine. There’s a valuable role for you to play out here. It was because you were coming that I began to develop them seriously. And I tried to make the break with Sybil that should have been made long ago. I even began to fool myself with hope.”

  I put my hand over his where it lay on my arm. “You don’t need to tell me this. I know how hard it is for you!”

  “I don’t think you do, exactly. That doesn’t matter. I want you to understand how I feel, though I won’t ask about your feelings.”

  “You don’t need to. You already know.”

  He moved away from me on the bench, so he could look into my face. I could see the shine of moonlight in his eyes, the gold of it touching his dark hair.

 
“Yes, I do know,” he said gently. “I don’t want you to commit yourself until you’re very sure. That’s why we must talk. I don’t want to hurt you—yet if we go on, there’s nothing but hurt ahead. There’s no sure commitment I can make, with things as they are. I can’t promise anything, Lindsay. You have to understand that.”

  “I do understand,” I told him warmly. Just the same, he was right—I didn’t really. And perhaps he didn’t either. There were all kinds of commitments—large and small, and I was ready to make the largest, and accept the smallest, if that was the way it had to be. I had never thought I could feel like this.

  “I want you to stay,” he went on. “But you’ll have to do it with your eyes open. Sybil will cause trouble. I had something of a showdown with her a little while ago, though all that came out of it was her promise to injure me in any way she could. Of course I didn’t bring you into it, but she’s already guessed how I feel. That’s why I came to offer you a lift to Phoenix tomorrow if you want to go. You’d be better out of it.”

  “I’m not going,” I said.

  He cupped my cheek gently with one hand. “I don’t know the answer. Not yet. I’ll try to find one. I promise you that.”

  Again I sensed his rising anger, frightening in its strength, carrying a current of purpose that I began to dread. I didn’t know what he might do against Sybil.

  He stood up abruptly. “Let’s go back,” he said.

  Reluctantly, feeling a little dazed, I let him pull me to my feet. It was difficult to return to the reality of this dusky plaza, with only the moon and a few lamps to light it. I looked around, trying to quiet the thudding in my blood. No matter what he’d said, a commitment had been made by both of us, and it was only a matter of—days? Hours?