Star Flight

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  “I liked Ty, even though he shied away from me.”

  “I suppose he’s happy as he is, and we let him alone. He doesn’t miss what we call civilization. Gordon Heath is one of the few he’s made friends with. And, of course, Finella. She’s a free soul in her own way. You know, I suspect he believes that Victoria’s spirit still haunts the lake out there, but I don’t talk with him about it. Although I do know that he thinks she wants him to do something now—something that will make up for all that happened.”

  “What did happen?”

  “She died,” Gretchen said simply. I had the feeling that she knew more than she was willing to tell me, but I didn’t press her.

  “It was all such a long time ago, Lauren. When she died, it was a terrible thing for Tyronne and me. We’ve both learned to live our own lives, but it was hard for us to welcome Jim’s efforts to dredge everything up again. He’s still doing that, in a sense. But you can stop it if you just let everything alone.”

  I wasn’t sure I could do that. If Jim hadn’t died by accident, I owed him. Because of Gordon and San Francisco and too many years of a less-than-ideal marriage. And because Jim had been my friend, even though our marriage hadn’t worked out. I owed him a great deal.

  Gretchen went on, rambling a little. Mental and emotional exhaustion seized me as I listened, and she saw this.

  “You’re about out on your feet, Lauren.” She reached out to take both my hands in hers. Her touch was light. It sent warmth flowing up my arms to envelop me, and for the first time I experienced the energizing force of Gretchen’s power.

  “You needed this,” she said with satisfaction. She released my hands. “Go and rest now. You’ll wake up refreshed and ready for the evening.”

  I hadn’t told her that I was meeting Gordon and Natalie, and I wondered whether her talents ran to clairvoyance. In any case, I felt better, and I seemed to float toward the door without effort, completely relaxed. As I went up the walk toward the lodge, she stood outside, watching me go. A curious thought came to comfort me. Gretchen was my family. She was my grandmother’s sister, and I had a feeling that she wanted me to know that she was on my side, even though she might only think of me as Jim’s wife. I realized that she hadn’t told me why she wanted to see me, but perhaps she’d accomplished what she wanted indirectly.

  I didn’t want to think ahead to the coming meeting with Gordon, since that might upset me all over again. In fact, I didn’t want anything to interfere with the sense of serenity that Gretchen’s hands had induced.

  In my room, I slipped on a robe, drew draperies across glass doors, and lay down on the bed. Gretchen’s spell held me and I fell asleep instantly.

  When I began to dream, the experience seemed very real. Someone had come into my room from the lakeside—a woman in a white dress. Fair hair stirred on her shoulders as she moved to the foot of my bed. My eyes were closed, but I could see every detail of the room clearly, including the shimmering, ethereal vision who raised her hands toward me as though entreating.

  Let me go, she whispered. The sound was in my mind, but the words were clear. Please let me go.

  In the dream, I spoke to her, though I made no sound. “I’m not holding you—so how can I let you go?”

  The whispering voice pleaded. Find me and let me go.

  Even as I answered her, part of me rejected what seemed to be happening. “You’re at the bottom of the lake. How can anyone find you?”

  Outside, a dog bayed mournfully. Immediately, I was awake and sitting up in bed. No shimmering vision hovered in the room and no voice whispered through my mind. But the dream had been disturbingly real, brought on, no doubt, by all that had just happened, but with no connection to reality. I didn’t need to worry about fulfilling the request of a figure in a dream. So why did this strong connection with Victoria Frazer persist now that I was awake?

  I tried to make peace with the dream. If in some fantastic way I should be given the opportunity to free Victoria Frazer from whatever bonds still held her to an earth where she no longer belonged, I would do everything in my power to succeed. My wide-awake self promised her that.

  I had a bond with Victoria that my mother had never known about. In my early teens, I’d gone into a secondhand bookstore that specialized in old movie magazines. There I had found an issue printed a month after her death and devoted to her. It contained several photographs. She had been impossibly beautiful. I studied her delicate face with its huge, expressive eyes.

  No man could have resisted falling in love with a face like that—not only because of her enchanting appearance but also because of a vulnerability that showed in her softly rounded chin and full, voluptuous mouth. It was a face that waited to be kissed and that invited protection. But Roger Brandt had not protected her.

  The magazine writers romanticized that Victoria and Roger had fallen in love during the making of Blue Ridge Cowboy. There was even a photo of them together—a publicity still for that picture. It showed a tall, handsome man with an amused, slightly wicked look in his eyes—something that had appealed to a nation of newly born moviegoers and to my grandmother.

  In the photograph, the beautiful young woman looked up at her hero with love and adoration. And the entire country swallowed the fantasy. In reality, it must have been very different. There had been a wild, uncontrollable passion, suffering, scandal, and death. And I was the child of the baby that had been born of that less-than-ideal union. Was I, perhaps, more like my grandmother than I’d ever been like my mother?

  I wondered what Camilla Brandt had thought of that photograph. She must have seen it when it appeared. But perhaps she had known even then that Roger would never leave her for some movie actress.

  My dream still haunted me and I tried to shrug it off. I didn’t subscribe to the legend of a great romance, and I found there was an indignant part of me that wanted to meet Roger Brandt in order to tell him just what I thought of him.

  Suddenly aware of the lateness of the hour, I took a shower that was cool and bracing and put on a white cotton peasant blouse with a round neck. A smoky blue chambray skirt flared out from a wide blue leather belt, and I liked the effect. I was dressing in self-defense, needing to give myself confidence and courage. I didn’t have to look like Victoria Frazer—only like a woman far removed from that foolish young girl in San Francisco. The full-length mirror on the bathroom wall seemed to approve of me and I gave it my best smile.

  When I went down to the lobby, I found Gordon waiting for me. I managed to be friendly but casual, discounting the way his eyes lighted when he saw me.

  “I thought perhaps we could go together. Natalie will meet us at the inn,” he told me as we went out to his car. Not a Jeep this time, but a small, sleek sports car, midnight blue. On the way, he told me that he’d given Natalie a call before he left home. “She said she’d had you up to the Brandt house and that you’d met her mother. What do you think of Camilla?”

  My reaction to Roger’s wife had been mixed. “She’s beautiful and she carries her years well. But she chilled me a little.”

  “She can do that. Jim never got very far with her, though he felt she should be part of his project.”

  “Natalie wants me to pick up Jim’s work and continue with the writing. Perhaps even do the interviewing on-camera. She would handle the photography part.”

  My news surprised him. “That’s a switch! When Jim died, she said she’d never want anyone to finish his work. I wonder why she’s changed her mind. Will you take her up on it?”

  “I don’t know. Roger Brandt would have to be convinced, and I doubt if he’d accept me for the job.”

  “You’re still not telling anyone about your relationship to Victoria and Roger, are you?”

  “No, I’d rather keep that quiet for now. A sort of ace up my sleeve, though I don’t know how I’ll use it.”

  He seemed intrigued by the possibilities, though he didn’t comment.

  The Lake Lure Inn was so close that
the drive took only a few minutes. There was not time to tell him about other matters that disturbed me.

  We drew up before the long white stucco building that I had seen earlier from the boat. Its Spanish-flavored architecture had been popular in the early years of the century, though its style was more likely to appear in California than North Carolina. The inn’s great resort days had ended in the forties, but now all of Hickory Nut Gorge, with Lake Lure at this end and Chimney Rock at the other, had become popular with tourists once more and the inn was coming to life.

  We climbed wide cement steps under a green canopy. Once, carriages and early motorcars must have drawn up to this entrance. Just inside the door, a round walnut table held a massive fresh flower arrangement in charming pastels, the polished wood gleaming beneath. Beyond rose an impressive staircase that climbed to a landing and branched on either side to the floor above. To my right and left, the lobby was furnished with dignified sofas and a variety of comfortable-looking chairs.

  Natalie Brandt rose to meet us—a colorful, rather surprising figure. She had changed from her artist’s work clothes to indigo blue trousers banded in silver at the ankles. The plain silver top was hung with long strands of shells and bright beads. Even her dangling earrings dripped with tiny shells. Altogether, she looked stunning and exotic, and I could imagine that her appeal for Jim Castle would have been immediate. Jim had liked and enjoyed women, and I was just as glad that I hadn’t been desperately in love with him. We’d done better as friends.

  Natalie seemed a bit more wary toward me than she had been earlier, and I wondered whether her grandmother’s seeming disapproval of me had succeeded in turning her against me.

  We went out to a long, enclosed porch, where well-spaced tables and a wall of windows created an attractive dining area. Heavy white tablecloths were overlaid with squares of pale peach and chairs were upholstered in the same color.

  A waitress seated us beside a window and provided us with menus. Feeling uncomfortable about Natalie’s manner, I absorbed myself in listening to a recitation of the specialties of the evening. We ordered rather quickly, and as soon as the waitress had gone, Natalie spoke to me, putting my suspicion into words.

  “I must tell you right away, Lauren, that my grandmother is absolutely opposed to your continuing Jim’s work. I should never have suggested this without consulting her first.”

  “Perhaps your grandfather is the one to consult,” I said. “However, I’m more relieved than anything else. I never really thought I’d be right for this.” I kept out of my voice any regret I might feel for the loss of this access I could have had to our mutual grandfather.

  Gordon had little to say, watching Natalie and me but leaving the exchange mostly to us.

  I asked a direct question. “Have you seen the film that your grandfather made with Victoria Frazer?”

  “No one is supposed to see it. Grandfather owns what I believe to be the only print in existence and he keeps it locked in a safe. He’s never ran it for me, though he’s shown me his earlier pictures.”

  “Why won’t he show it to you?” I asked bluntly.

  A spark flared in Natalie’s dark eyes. “Maybe he’s afraid that if he takes it out, my grandmother will get her hands on it and destroy it. She still has enough temper to do that.”

  “Does she feel that strongly about Victoria Frazer after all these years?” I asked.

  “I expect that she was forced to put up with a great deal. She has a right to feel any way she wants. I admire her tremendously.”

  I noted the use of the word admire rather than love.

  Gordon said, “I’ve heard some of the story—that Camilla was the one who held everything together when the going got rough.”

  Natalie spoke more quietly, her annoyance with me subsiding. “That’s the way it must have been. My father was born the following year, but he’s told me stories he heard from Great-grandmother Brandt. She told him that when the scandal broke, the house was in a state of siege from reporters and the curious public. Audiences can be unforgiving toward an idol with clay feet. That was when my grandmother engineered a trip to Switzerland and took the family out of the country. They didn’t come home until everything quieted down. Then they returned secretly and Gran made the house a fortress.”

  “Home was really California, wasn’t it?” Gordon asked.

  Even as I listened intently to Natalie, I was still all too aware of Gordon across the table. Everything about him had changed—and nothing had. I seemed to be two women—the one putting on a front and pretending she didn’t care, the other much more involved than I wanted to be.

  Natalie answered him. “My grandfather couldn’t bear to stay in Hollywood after all that happened. It can’t be easy to suddenly become a fallen star after so many years of fame. His supposed friends were cutting him off, and suddenly no work was available. I expect there was enough money to live wherever he wanted—between what he’d been earning and my grandmother’s private wealth. But he’d become attached to the house they occupied here and the beautiful Lake Lure area. He’s told me that much.”

  Perhaps not even Natalie Brandt knew the real reason why Roger Brandt had stayed here and I wondered whether it might be something more sinister than she suspected.

  Natalie puzzled out loud. “For me, Gran has always seemed a much bigger mystery than my grandfather. She must have loved him a great deal to forgive him for Victoria and stay with him in this place where one of the biggest scandals of their day happened. She certainly wasn’t sympathetic when Grandfather first agreed to let Jim Castle do a documentary. Though I must admit that when Grandfather puts his foot down, she gives in, and I think it’s Grandfather who would oppose any plan to finish Jim’s film.”

  “Why was he willing to talk to Jim in the first place?” Gordon asked.

  “Perhaps because then he could have told his own side of what happened for the first time. No one with Jim’s obvious integrity had ever wanted to listen. The press and his studio simply leapt to conclusions. But when Jim died, I think he must have soured on the project.”

  “Would he have addressed the mystery of Victoria Frazer’s death if Jim had been able to continue working with him?” I asked.

  For just an instant, Natalie seemed uneasy. Then she took up the challenge. “How could he? How could anyone? Who knows what state she may have been in? It didn’t help that her body was never found, but part of the lake is a hundred feet deep. Divers searched for days without any success. There was only her scarf, caught on a dock piling, to show what might have happened. And she left an unfinished letter to her baby daughter that was taken to be a suicide note.”

  I knew about that. “Roger Brandt could hardly do a documentary about his career and leave Victoria out.”

  “Of course not. He’d have had to face up to that. Jim meant to interview Victoria’s side of the family—those who are left—Gretchen and Ty. Grandfather didn’t want that, but Jim was beginning to win his trust, and perhaps a few secrets might have surfaced. If there’d been enough time. If Jim hadn’t died.”

  Natalie stared at me challenging and then continued with a bite of scorn in her words—perhaps to hide the pain she might feel.

  “The great romance between Roger and Victoria that the papers went overboard about lasted for a little over a year. Their affair began in California, months before they were both cast in Blue Ridge Cowboy. After the movie was finished, the infatuation must have been over for Grandfather. Now I suspect that Gran wants to pretend that it never happened.”

  “But it wasn’t over for Victoria Frazer, who had a baby,” I said dryly.

  Natalie bristled. “Victoria must have been a silly fool, and she probably got what was coming to her. I think that woman was a born seductress! The parts she’d played in her own movies weren’t all that innocent. That’s what made her acting in a film with a folk hero like Roger Brandt all the more dramatic. She was a woman who had no scruples about taking another woman’s husband. If
she could. In this case, she hadn’t a chance against my grandmother.”

  I simply looked at her, and was glad to see her flush. I suppose she regarded herself in quite a different category from Victoria Frazer, and her affair with my husband didn’t seem to trouble her. Now, more than ever, I wanted to search out Victoria’s side of the story and find out who had really done the seducing.

  Our meal had been served and the food was good, but I was hardly paying attention to what I put in my mouth.

  “I have something to give you—something from Jim,” Natalie said abruptly.

  While I waited in surprise, she reached into her purse and handed me a sealed white envelope. My name was written on it in Jim’s familiar scrawl.

  “I don’t understand. If there was a letter from my husband, why wasn’t it mailed to me?” I asked.

  “When I saw him that last evening, he was pretty keyed up. He hinted that he’d learned something that would blow everything sky-high. Whatever that meant. He didn’t show me what he’d written or what he’d put into that envelope before he sealed it. Your husband and I had become close friends, Lauren, and he said I was the only person he could trust to give this to you—other than Gordon, of course. But Gordon was away that week, so Jim said that I should give you the letter only if you came to Lake Lure. He seemed to imply that he might not be here to give it to you himself.”

  She stopped and stared out the window for a few moments. “After he died and it was considered an accident, I didn’t know what to think or do. You didn’t come to Lake Lure, so I waited.”

  She thrust the envelope into my hands as though she wanted to be rid of it. I felt something slightly thicker than a sheet of paper at its center, and I knew that once I opened this envelope, I would never be able to turn back from whatever course lay ahead.

  “Do you think Jim had a premonition that something would happen to him?” I asked.