Vermilion

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  “I saw the high-heeled sandals she was wearing. She’d never have gone hiking in shoes like that!”

  He shook his head wearily. “If they come to that conclusion—murder—I’m likely to be the first candidate for a suspect. It’s no secret that Sybil and I have been having rows. She’s been talking about it all over town. And I expect others have too.”

  I hated the possibility of such suspicion. He touched my hand and I turned my fingers to twine in his. We sat for a moment in silence, gaining what comfort we would from this slight touch.

  “Whatever happens, I want to keep you out of it,” he said, and I knew that circumstances were already changing everything between us.

  A fresh burst of operatic sound came suddenly from the kitchen, and Rick tensed. “Parker? What on earth is he doing here?”

  There was nothing to do but blurt out everything. “He’s getting ready for the dinner that was planned for tonight. Sybil’s dinner party. Rick, I—”

  “And you didn’t stop him?” Rick got up and started for the kitchen.

  I flew after him. “Wait, please! Let me explain. I told him to go ahead. Clara is coming, and I was going to call Orva and Brian to let them know the dinner is still on.”

  He didn’t tell me I was crazy, as Clara had, but his look was hardly approving. “I’ll stop this immediately. This is no time to give a party. What’s come over you, Lindsay?”

  He was reacting just as Clara and Parker had warned he would—as any sane person would react. On this particular matter I didn’t feel altogether sane. Make him do it! Vermilion was shrill.

  “It’s not a dinner party,” I told him. “It’s an—an inquisition. That’s what Sybil meant it to be. An opportunity for revelation. Orva thinks she was going to tell us what happened when she went to see Jed in his room that night in Las Vegas. She only invited those who were there, plus Parker and me, and of course Alice. We can’t know just what she planned, but we can ask questions.”

  I must have sounded convincing, for Rick was listening intently, and I hurried on in spite of his ominous expression. “If that was Jed’s key I found, and it was dropped by someone else, and not by Sybil—”

  Rick made the same connecting link in his mind and shook his head. “It’s too long a shot. It could be innocent enough, and even Sybil could have dropped it there.”

  He was quiet for a moment, considering, while Celeste Aida soared out of the kitchen.

  “Sybil thought something would come out of this dinner,” I repeated urgently.

  “All right, Lindsay. I don’t know what good it will do to go ahead. If Sybil knew something, she’s not here to carry through. But it’s possible that if we meet and talk over Las Vegas together, something may come out that hasn’t surfaced before. Something that might have a bearing on the present.”

  I remembered something. “Sybil told me she was inviting a relative of mine. Was it Alice Rainsong?”

  “Yes. I called Alice an hour or so ago to tell her what has happened. She said that Sybil had invited her tonight. Now she’s driving down anyway.”

  “Why does she still want to come?”

  “Because you’re her sister,” Rick said quietly.

  “I don’t think she even likes me.”

  “There’s trouble, and a family sticks together.”

  How strange to realize that, except for Marilla, this woman whom I hardly knew, this gifted, part Hopi woman, was now my only family.

  Rick glanced at his watch and stood up. “I have some things I need to do. Arrangements to make.”

  As he’d done so short a time ago with Sybil’s father, I thought. My father, my sister. Again there was that sense of unreality that comes when death is sudden and impossible to accept.

  Rick continued, impersonal and more formal with me than ever. That touch of his hand might never have been. “Can you take care of Alice when she comes?”

  He was leaving me to handle this meeting with my sister alone—the first since I’d learned the truth—and while I felt uncomfortable, I recognized that this might be the best way.

  When he’d gone I walked out to the kitchen, where Parker was working busily, humming to himself as he whipped up some sort of creamy concoction for a dessert. Sybil’s death was not bothering him very much.

  “Has Rick canceled everything?” he asked, beating eggs expertly with a wire whisk.

  “No. We’re to go ahead.”

  “Depressing,” Parker said. “It’s a terrible idea.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Aside from being inappropriate—which I’d have thought Rick would consider—it’s not going to work, is it? Sybil had something special in mind, and she’s not here to carry it out.”

  “She told you that?”

  “Hardly. Clara and I were talking about it. It seemed too pat a performance—this dinner.”

  “Perhaps it’s a good idea for us to get together and talk about everything openly, before the police move in on us,” I said.

  The whisk paused in the air, foamy yellow, and he gave me a questioning look. “The police are moving in?”

  “They’ll be making an inquiry, of course.”

  “I suppose they have to,” he said gloomily.

  “There’ll be one more guest. Alice Spencer is coming from Flagstaff.”

  “The Indian woman?”

  “My half sister,” I said. “It turns out that I’m as much Hopi as she is.”

  Parker didn’t seem surprised. “Clara’s said she always thought there was something between Jed and Alice’s mother. I only met Alice once, but I know her a little through Clara. She’s a fine person.”

  For once he sounded warm and approving, which surprised me. He was even regarding me in a kindly fashion.

  “I’ll go call Orva now, since it’s already after four,” I said. “What time shall I say for dinner?”

  “Early. Let’s get it over with. It’s hardly a festive occasion.”

  “How about six-thirty?”

  He nodded and returned to his humming concentration, switching to “La donna è mobile.” He really had a good voice, and he knew his opera.

  “When you were young, Parker,” I asked, “did you ever think of a singing career?”

  “Sure, I thought about it.”

  “Then why—?”

  His grin twisted down at the corners. “No character, I suppose. Too much alcohol. I could manage better with my other talent—cooking.”

  I returned to the living room and dialed Orva’s number. She answered after a couple of rings, and I explained about the dinner.

  While she didn’t approve, she took a different tack. “Why stir up things, Lindsay? Sybil’s motives were always pretty twisted, but maybe she had someone running scared. There’s no point to following through on that now, and, as I say, you can’t tell what you might stir up.”

  “Perhaps it’s necessary to stir up a few things. You used to think that yourself. Will you and Brian come?”

  “I guess nobody would dare not come. As though there might be something to hide. And I’ll tell you one thing—Sybil Adams would never have gone out to that place unless somebody forced her to go.”

  “Who would do that?”

  “Jed, of course. Jed still owed her one, you know.”

  Her words shocked me because they were spoken so earnestly. I thought of the key in Rick’s keeping. However, I didn’t mean to be led down this particular road.

  “If you’re trying to scare me, it’s not working,” I said. “I’m not superstitious.”

  “Too bad. You could do with a little scaring.”

  I hardly waited for her good-bye. I might have my own peculiar voice that I listened to on occasion, but I didn’t want to open the door to anything else.

  As I stood by the phone table, undecided as to what I should do next, I heard a car coming up the hill. When I went to look out a front window, I saw that it was another four-wheel-drive pickup truck, with Alice.

&nbs
p; Once more, the door chimes sounded, and Consuela, always hovering watchfully, ran to answer. A moment later, Alice Rainsong came into the room, carrying a small suitcase.

  Today she was dressed casually in Levi’s and a tan shirt, her lovely face showing little expression as she stood looking at me down the long el of the room. The planes of her face were broad, and her dark eyes looked at me impassively from between heavy lashes. Indian, I thought.

  “Hello, Alice,” I said. “I’m glad you’ve come.”

  She continued to stand just inside the door, and I sensed that she searched for something in my face, just as I had in hers.

  “There are a great many things unspoken between us,” she said gravely, formally. “In time, perhaps, we’ll say them, but we need to be strangers first. In spite of the blood tie. It’s a tie that may be troubling until we become accustomed.”

  I liked her frankness, and I wanted to tell her that it was a tie I was proud of. It was true, however, that we were strangers, and intimacy must come slowly, if it ever came. I couldn’t say this to her yet—not until it could be spoken from the heart without self-consciousness.

  “I’m sorry about Rick’s wife,” she said, coming into the room. “What has happened is very terrible.”

  I noticed that she didn’t refer to Sybil as my “sister.”

  “Please come in.” I knew I sounded stiff and I couldn’t relax with her yet. “Rick hasn’t told me where your room should be, but I know he wants you to stay here.”

  “He said I might share Marilla’s room for now. We’re good friends, and a cot in her room will be fine.”

  “I have a whole guesthouse to myself. You can certainly share that.”

  She shook her head gently. “The time isn’t right. Later, perhaps.”

  At least I was relieved that she wouldn’t be in Sybil’s room. All Sybil had left behind was still there.

  I hurried into words. “Marilla is staying with Orva tonight, so I’m not sure which room … You know the house better than I do.”

  “I’ve been here with Jed,” she admitted. “I’ll show you.”

  She picked up her case and led the way into the bedroom wing. All the doors were open, and I glanced into the rooms as we went past. First Rick’s bedroom, done in desert shades, with an Indian rug visible. Sybil’s next, all pastels, tailored and very neat. She’d never gone in for frills. Marilla’s room looked as though chaos had struck, and I suspected this might be its usual condition, except when her mother was watching.

  “I’ll hang the few things I’ve brought in Marilla’s closet,” Alice said.

  I thought of Parker in the kitchen, preparing dinner, and knew that she must be warned.

  “I should tell you,” I began, “we’re going ahead with the dinner Sybil planned. Just Clara and Parker Hale. And of course Orva and Brian Montgomery. You know them all, I expect.”

  Alice nodded. “They were all guests of Jed’s in Las Vegas, weren’t they? As well as Rick and Sybil.”

  She was sensing intuitively the point Orva had made.

  “I asked Rick to go ahead with this,” I told her. “There are questions about Sybil’s death, and perhaps about Jed’s that we need to consider.”

  “A sad, driven woman, Sybil.”

  Her words surprised me. “Driven, perhaps, but what do you mean by sad?”

  “That’s only an impression I had. I never knew her well.”

  Alice had carried a few things to Marilla’s closet, and I watched her hang them up. I didn’t want to talk any more about terrible, sad things. I asked a question, somewhat timidly.

  “Will you tell me about our mother?”

  “What would you like to know?” She slid hangers along the rod without turning, and I sensed a deep quietness in her.

  “Anything, I suppose—everything! It’s strange to be so ignorant, but this was always kept from me. Rick says Jed wanted me to know and would have told me eventually. My stepmother didn’t wish it. All I was ever told was that my father had brought me to New York from Arizona.”

  “It’s hard to know where to begin,” Alice said, and I sensed a reluctance in her to share something that might still be painful. Yet I had to go on—for both our sakes. In the open, pain could be dealt with.

  I sat down in a small armchair and settled myself into waiting. It was easier to talk in the midst of Marilla’s lively clutter than in that vast and somehow impersonal living room.

  “Did she ever live in a pueblo?” I asked.

  “As a child she did. But you need to understand something here. These two women—our mother and grandmother—weren’t typical. Hopi women are honored and they get a lot better treatment from their men than they’d be likely to find with chauvinistic white men. There isn’t much intermarrying, and I don’t know why they turned away from their own people.

  “Anyway, our grandmother’s Anglo husband died and she returned to Oraibi when Mary Silvercloud was very small. Mother was only half Hopi, and she was a rebel as a young girl. She had lived outside and she didn’t want to settle for the old ways. Though they are good ways and still work for those who believe in them. Trust, honor, integrity, working for the good of all—these are Hopi beliefs. Christians might find some resemblance. Though you won’t see the struggle for success that’s usual in the Anglo world. They don’t compete with each other and they counsel living in peace. Difficult concepts for a competitive world to understand!”

  Concepts. That was where the great difference lay, I thought. Customs could easily be learned and accepted, but basic concepts could make a great, instinctual difference. Alice, and perhaps Jed too, had been able to cross the line back and forth and live in two worlds. I could never step across as easily, though Alice might be able to help me stop being an “outsider.”

  She went on. “While the Hopi weren’t warriors like the Plains Indians, they’d defend themselves when necessary. The early pueblo was like a fortress built on top of a mesa, with only one trail hacked out of rock leading to the top. It was pretty impregnable.”

  “I suppose the Spaniards were the enemy they had to fight?”

  “Their worst enemy was the Navajo. They still call Hopis by the name “Moquis”—the dead ones. Which meant in the past that they would like to kill them on sight. Nobody really got through, however, until the Spanish priests came along and the Hopi began to accept some of their ideas. But they never gave up the old altogether, and wise priests know this even now.”

  “How did your mother happen to leave?”

  “Somehow, she met my father and ran away with him. Her family would never have approved. They didn’t like him, and they were right. I was still a baby when he left her. After that I only remember—Jed. It was Jed who bought the house where I still live in Flagstaff.”

  Alice’s dark eyes looked far away, and I saw the shine of tears. She was not as impassive as I’d imagined.

  “I know. I’ve been through all that. I suppose it’s always hard to accept flaws in those we care about.”

  Flaws? That was too kind a word to use about Jed. I changed course.

  “Alice, were you ever in the place of the Fire People?”

  “Jed took me there once. I was only twelve and I felt afraid. I knew about the Old Ones—the Ancient Ones who came before. He told me he’d found some evidences of them there, but he didn’t want archeologists coming in to tear things up, so he only showed the place to a few of us. He said it belonged to the Fire People—and to the Shining One, the One who looked at the sky.”

  “It still does. I saw that face in the rock this morning. Before I knew that Sybil was—there.”

  “It’s not a place where an enemy should go.” Alice’s voice was low and there was an oddly rapt look on her face, as though she saw again something she’d glimpsed as a child.

  “We don’t know how Sybil came to be there,” I told her.

  She was silent, offering nothing.

  “I don’t know what will happen at dinner tonight,” I went
on. “Alice, do you ever feel an inner prompting that makes you do something that your mind tells you isn’t sensible?”

  Her face lost the rapt look and she smiled at me. “So! You have it too? The gift from our mother. It’s not very strong in me, but there are times when I think it stirs. It brought me here today.”

  “How strange. I’d have thought it came to me from Jed. He was always the one in my life who could touch the stars. And the clay as well.”

  “Then you have it doubly strong. You must listen to it and never deny, because it may lead you to wisdom. Perhaps with you it speaks through your friend—Vermilion?”

  I felt shocked again—almost violated. Vermilion was my secret, perhaps even a rather shameful secret, and I’d never shared her with anyone but Jed, who had, after all, helped me to create her. To others who didn’t understand her power, she might seem a childish invention, and even now I didn’t want her to be laughed at. Or perhaps I didn’t want me to be laughed at.

  Alice saw my face. “Of course Jed and I talked about you many times. I always wanted to know about—my sister. For me, it made you seem more real—that you had this friend. Though if I were a true Hopi, I think it would frighten me badly. Voices and vision are something to be superstitious about.”

  “They’re only in my head,” I told her.

  “I know. We’ve both been lonely, sister.”

  The simple way in which she spoke the word caused my sense of violation to dissolve. Suddenly I found that I could talk more naturally, to this woman whose blood I shared.

  “I’m afraid of what may happen now,” I confessed. “Of what may happen to Rick. Something evil has moved into our lives.”

  “Into my life too,” she agreed. “Sometimes trouble seems lighter when there’s more than one to carry the burden.”

  In her words I sensed her strength. I had seen anger in her paintings. Now I knew that she could be calm and filled with fortitude as well. I felt a stirring of new affection for Alice Rainsong.

  11

  Once more I dressed carefully in a gown of my own design. A pale taupe print with tiny stylized blossoms in lilac and white. I needed all the courage I could find tonight. As I fastened carved ivory teardrops in my ears, an idea came to me. If I was going to startle anyone at the table into a betrayal, I would have to do something really shocking. Now, quite suddenly, I knew what it could be.