Vermilion

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  He nodded soberly and stood up. “I suppose this all goes back to the time when Jed lived for a while in Jerome. Though I don’t think we’ll find out a thing. Anyway, I’ll see you in the morning. Ten o’clock?”

  Alice returned just as he left, and he greeted her casually and hurried away.

  “Well!” she said. “Did Brian have anything interesting to tell you?”

  I held up the rock. “He brought me the symbol of the Cloud Clan.”

  I didn’t tell her about where we planned to go in the morning. I would have to let her know, but not until it was too late for her to stop me.

  13

  Two more visitors came to see me before the evening was over. The two I most wanted to see—Rick and Marilla. I was alone when they arrived, as Alice had gone out for dinner. Strain showed in Rick’s face and there were new hollows in his cheeks. Marilla seemed more subdued than I’d ever seen her.

  At least her antagonism toward me had apparently faded, and perhaps I had Orva to thank for that. With a shyness that seemed foreign to her, Marilla held out a small package. When I’d unwrapped it I found the little unicorn smiling at me.

  “The other time I just said you could have it, because I didn’t want it,” Marilla said. “But now it really is for you. Orva showed me how to paint it and put on the pink glaze before we fired it. Unicorns are for love and luck—and to keep you safe.”

  “I’ll keep it always,” I told her.

  “You’ll come back to the house, won’t you?” she went on anxiously.

  I looked up at Rick, questioning, and he sat down beside my bed. “Alice is going to stay for a while, and we’d like you there too. Marilla will feel more comfortable. Are you all right, Lindsay?”

  “I’m fine. I’ll be out of here tomorrow, and I’d like to come back to your house. This time I’ll be more careful. How did it go in Flagstaff?”

  “Not badly. They’re inclined to believe me, I think, though anything might change that. I’ll have to go back tomorrow. The trouble is, they’ve nothing else to go on but my truck, which it appears really was out there.”

  “Will there be a grand jury hearing?”

  “Only if they’re ready to indict. The medical examiner’s report and that of the police have gone to the county attorney, and they want to talk to me again. Then perhaps there’ll be a preliminary hearing before a local magistrate. I don’t really know what will happen. I can account for some of my time, but there are blank spots.”

  “Couldn’t this have happened while you were driving me to Flagstaff?”

  “They think it happened later than that.” He glanced at Marilla and stood up. “We’d better go along now. Marilla will spend another night with Orva, and then I’ll bring her home. Shall I pick you up in the morning before I go to Flagstaff?”

  I shook my head. “Alice is here, and I have a lift.”

  I couldn’t risk being stopped by anyone who might think I shouldn’t go to Jerome. Not even Rick.

  When they’d gone, I lay back against my pillow, feeling limp again, and depressed. Getting to Jerome had begun to seem the one thing I might be able to take action about. If I could find the same answer that Sybil had found, and if I could handle it more wisely, perhaps I really could be of some use to Rick.

  When Alice returned, I told her first about my visitors and then brought up the subject of Jerome.

  “Brian is driving me there in the morning. I realize that you don’t want me to talk to Mrs. Jessup, but I must go, Alice. This is what my instinct says I must do.”

  “Vermilion again?”

  “No! This is only my decision. She’s been quiet for a while.”

  “Perhaps because you’re doing what she wants you to do?”

  I didn’t want to even think about that.

  The room had grown dusky, with only light from the hospital corridor shining in, and the echo of trays being collected sounding far away. My muscles tensed as if for resistance as I lay there, waiting for Alice’s opposition. This time it didn’t come.

  “Since you’re so determined about this,” she said, “I’ll go with you and Brian. Perhaps you’ll need me there.”

  “Thank you. I think I can sleep now.”

  All night long my dreams were quiet ones, and Vermilion was quiet too. Alice’s offer to come with me had finally enabled me to relax, and perhaps her intention might really have worked out, if it hadn’t been for Brian.

  He came for me promptly at ten. I was wheeled to the downstairs door, where his car waited. While Alice went to the desk to take care of checking me out, Brian started the motor and drove away.

  I protested quickly, indignantly. “You can’t do this! I told Alice that she could come with us. Brian, you’ve got to go back!”

  “If you really want to go, we’ll be better off without Alice,” he said.

  “No—I won’t treat her that way!”

  “Oh, stop it,” he said impatiently. “You don’t really need a built-in nurse! Just keep still and enjoy the drive.”

  He had changed again—not at all the sympathetic man he’d seemed last night. I was furious with him, but at least I felt better physically this morning than I had yesterday. Though there were still soreness and a lump on the side of my head, the dizziness and over-excitement seemed to have passed, and my energy had returned. In fact, I felt as though I were bursting for action. To do something was to allay last night’s depression. So I would go with Brian without further protest, and I would explain to Alice later.

  Luckily, Jerome was no great distance from Cottonwood, where the hospital was, and after Clarkdale in the Verde Valley, we began the steep rise of two thousand feet—“over the mountain,” as I’d heard the phrase used. Cleopatra Hill, a great spreading mound on the side of Mingus Mountain, rose behind the town, and it seemd amazing that tiers of houses could cling to the steep sides. A great barren scar that was the old mine pit was visible, long since abandoned.

  “Fifteen thousand people used to live up there,” Brian said. “Now it’s mostly a ghost town. Oddly enough, it was named for a New Yorker—Eugene Jerome. He more or less started it all, and you may remember that he had a famous cousin named Jenny. Underneath the town there’s a hundred miles of shafts and tunnels, mostly filled with water. There used to be cave-ins and buildings could slide down the mountain. Houses were pretty solidly packed up there at one time, but now you can see the gaps where buildings are gone, or empty and wrecked.”

  The road began its steep turns and traffic that tunneled into the narrow way moved slowly. We were nearing the end of our trip.

  “Do you know anything about Mrs. Jessup?” I asked Brian.

  “Only that she’s an old-time resident who has always refused to be moved out of her rickety house. I gather she has no relatives left. A few neighbors look out for her, and she’s kept her independence until this illness. Of course we can’t be sure she’s still alive by this time. Or that she hasn’t been moved to a hospital.”

  “Didn’t Sybil say anything that would give you a clue when you brought her here?”

  “I think she was looking for clues herself. She wouldn’t let me come in with her, and she didn’t tell me anything. Though she seemed pretty pleased when she came out.”

  We made a last steep turn, and I saw that people who lived here must get around mostly on foot, by trails and steps. Cars were kept in garages dug into the mountainside, since there was no parking space. Brian knew his way, however, and found a spot where he could leave his car temporarily.

  “Now we walk,” he said.

  He led the way up wooden steps to a higher level, and once when I stopped to catch my breath I looked back over the great panorama of the valley. Far out there were the red rocks of Oak Creek Canyon. I felt a slight lift of my spirits, thinking of Sedona—and Rick.

  Up we went again, climbing to a small brown house that perched on the edge of nothing. More steps brought us to the front door. When Brian knocked, a woman came to look out at us doub
tfully.

  Brian turned on his easy charm and smiled at her disarmingly. “We were going through,” he said, “and we wondered how Mrs. Jessup is. The last time we called she was pretty sick.”

  The woman accepted his words without question. “She’s some better. She’s a good fighter, so she’s still hanging on.”

  “That’s fine,” Brian said. “Her friend, Alice Spencer, asked us to stop and see her.”

  How glibly he managed, I thought, glimpsing an aspect of Brian Montgomery that I hadn’t seen before. He wasn’t all mystical naturalist by any means, and apparently he could be pragmatic enough when he chose.

  The woman recognized Alice’s name. “You want to come in? Just so you don’t stay too long. Though prob’ly she won’t talk to you anyway.”

  The main room of the house had been turned into a downstairs bedroom for Mrs. Jessup. All the windows were carefully closed, though they looked out upon magnificent views. The room had the musty, mediciny smell of a sickroom and the bed was set against the far wall in the dimmest part of the room. It took a moment for my sun-filled eyes to make out the figure of the old woman who sat propped against pillows, her gaze fixed on emptiness.

  Our escort spoke to her cheerfully. “You got company, Emma. Some folks are here who know Alice Spencer. You remember Alice?”

  Dim eyes seemed to return from a distance and with an effort focused upon us as we advanced into the room. Wrinkled lips almost smiled. She made no attempt to speak.

  I glanced helplessly at Brian. It seemed unkind to intrude upon the frailty of the woman in the bed.

  “Look,” Brian said under his breath, “you wanted to come. Now let’s see you do your thing.”

  I went close to the bed and spoke clearly to its occupant. “Alice Spencer is my sister,” I said.

  Some sort of spark came to life in the old eyes, and this time she made an effort. “Alice’s a good woman. Always tried to help.”

  At least she could talk, and I sought for another means of getting her to open up. “Mrs. Jessup, I have another sister—another half sister who came to see you not long ago—Sybil Adams. Do you remember her?”

  She closed her eyes, pressed her lips together and said nothing. I couldn’t tell whether she had even heard what I’d asked.

  Brian moved closer to the bed. “I brought Mrs. Adams here that day, though I didn’t come in with her. We’d like very much to know what she said to you, and what you told her. It will help us in something we need to do. Please try to remember.”

  The old woman moaned faintly and turned her head from side to side. “It’s so hard to remember. I can remember when I was a little girl, but sometimes I can’t remember yesterday. What was her name again—the lady who came to see me?”

  “Sybil Adams,” I repeated. I could see that the name meant nothing to her.

  Perhaps there was another approach, I thought, remembering that Jed had lived in Jerome at one time. I bent toward her again.

  “I believe my father lived here years ago. Perhaps you knew him? His name was Jed Phillips.”

  This time there was a reaction, sudden and startling. Mrs. Jessup pushed herself up in bed and glared at me with a fury that seemed to shake her thin body.

  “That awful man! Wicked, wicked, wicked! I won’t talk to anyone connected with that man. Go away!”

  “Well, that settles it,” Brian said. “We’d better go.”

  I had to make one last try. “Sybil Adams was his daughter too. Didn’t she tell you that? Why did you talk to her?”

  But her outburst of anger had shaken her badly, and she lay back upon her pillows with her eyes closed, rejecting us, refusing to accept our presence in her room.

  The woman who had let us in beckoned from the doorway. “I guess you’d better go. She won’t talk to you now. You shouldn’t have mentioned that name to her.”

  We followed her from the room, and I made one last try. “Can you tell us why she reacted that way?”

  She answered evasively, uncomfortably. “I only came to Jerome last year to stay with my daughter. She works at the museum here, and her husband has a job in Cottonwood.”

  I had a feeling that she could tell me if she wished but would say nothing more. Her manner had cooled and she too wanted us to leave.

  We went out on the porch, thanked her, and started down the steep flight of steps that appeared ready to slide down the hill. At their foot, Alice Spencer waited for us. She looked calm and unruffled, except for a light of anger in her usually serene dark eyes. Again I recognized depths of emotion she seldom revealed.

  “You didn’t need to kidnap Lindsay,” she told Brian.

  He smiled at her as we went down the steps. “Oh, yes, I did. I don’t think you’d have let her see Mrs. Jessup. You knew why she’d react the way she did. Certainly you’d have kept me out. But I wanted to see for myself.”

  “You’re right,” Alice said. Her look seemed to soften a little. “You, especially, I’d have tried to keep away from her.”

  “Maybe you’d better tell us why,” I said.

  “There’s no need to be secretive any longer,” Alice admitted. “I’ll tell you what I can, though it won’t do you much good. Let’s stop for coffee and we’ll talk.”

  The steep descent led us quickly to the main street, and in a few moments we were seated at a table in a small café. I couldn’t wait to ask the question that had been haunting me ever since I’d seen what Jerome was like.

  “Why did my father come here to stay?”

  “Because Arizona fascinated him,” Alice said. “He loved the Southwest, and since he never put down real roots anywhere, he could stay where he liked. He enjoyed places where he could get back into history and feel as though he were part of it. Jerome is where all the copper ore came from in the old days. He used to talk about writing a book about Arizona someday, but only when he got too old to get around and explore it. He’d have felt at home in the last century.”

  “Wasn’t there some sort of scheme he was trying to cook up for Jerome?” Brian asked. “Something that was supposed to revive it and make everybody rich?”

  “There were always schemes,” Alice agreed dryly.

  “Then he must have known Mrs. Jessup when he lived here,” I said.

  “She was his landlady for a while. She isn’t really as old as she seems. It’s just that she’s given up wanting to live, and that can age anyone fast.”

  “What did Jed do to make her so angry with him?”

  Alice sipped black coffee, watching Brian. “So she told you how she feels?”

  “She called him an ‘awful man,’” I said, “but she didn’t say why.”

  “She was never able to make allowances or forgive him. She blamed Jed for the accident to her granddaughter, and that was that.”

  “Her granddaughter?” I cried. “Celia was Mrs. Jessup’s granddaughter?”

  Alice was looking at Brian. He’d made a small sound of pain, and I saw the tightening of his mouth as he stared at her.

  She nodded. “Yes—that’s it, Brian. I didn’t want you to go there. It would only have hurt you all the more if you knew.”

  “I didn’t know. If I had, I’d never have taken Lindsay to that house. Though I’d have gone alone, perhaps. Celia never told me she came from Jerome. I thought she had no family left at all. You were the one who took care of everything when she died.”

  “I knew her grandmother was ill, and that she had no one else. Afterward, I went to tell Mrs. Jessup what had happened. There were family connections Celia didn’t want anyone to know about, and though she was fond of her grandmother, she’d have kept you away from her. I told her often that she wasn’t responsible for the past, but she could never get away from it.”

  “Just explain!” I pleaded.

  Again she looked at Brian and he nodded. “Go ahead—tell her.”

  “Celia and Brian met at the university in Flagstaff. That’s right, isn’t it?”

  He nodded. “I wante
d to marry her, but she wasn’t ready then. Maybe I was too patient. I waited too long.”

  Alice went on. “I don’t think there was anything more you could have done. She wanted to live in San Francisco, and I knew Jed had friends there who could help her. After all, he’d known her when she was a child, and he’d roomed at her grandmother’s. He was almost like family—the way he was for me—though he hadn’t seen her for some time.”

  “Some family!” Brian said bitterly. “He didn’t have any intention of remaining a benevolent uncle.”

  There was a submerged rage in his voice that I’d never heard before, and I could understand why all too well. Jed’s age had never mattered to women. His good looks and his charm could be overwhelming, as even I knew. Perhaps Brian’s “nonviolence” that Marilla had mentioned was only an abstract concept. I was beginning to feel very uneasy indeed.

  Alice spoke to him gently. “You can’t go on letting what’s happened destroy you. You have to live with what’s real. You matter now.”

  I felt saddened and sorry, both because of the old woman and because of Brian’s pain and loss. I also felt a little haunted, since Vermilion’s words about his “lost love” were sharp in my mind. Not that I might not have made some unrecognized connection and come up with this consciously in time.

  Alice glanced toward the door and her face brightened. “Good! I knew he’d find us if he could.”

  I looked around to see Rick coming through the door and my spirits lifted as they always did at the sight of him. He came to our table at once.

  “I got your message at the hospital,” he told Alice. “When I found I was free this morning, I went directly there. Thanks for letting me know. I tried the Jessup house first, then thought you might have stopped here. Lindsay, you shouldn’t be running around like this.”

  He sat down next to me and Brian looked at him without welcome. “You’ve just missed the confession time,” Brian told him. “We’re baring our souls. But of course you knew about Celia and me.”

  “I knew.” Rick spoke quietly. “And I saw Jed when he came back to Sedona after what happened. He never stopped blaming himself. I think he’d have given his own life, if he could have saved Celia’s.”