She shook her head and tears came to her eyes. “I don’t know. I wish I did.”
I slit the flap with my finger and took out a folded sheet of paper. Inside was a rough circle of green material about three inches across that looked as though it had probably been cut from some larger piece. Its edges seemed to indicate the clean cut of a knife. It was apparently made of some synthetic that I’d never seen before—too tough to tear and strangely luminous—almost unearthly! Or perhaps radioactive?
Jim’s handwriting scrawled across the page. He had always written as though he was short of time and in a breathless hurry, but this was ragged, even for him.
Dear Lauren:
It will probably be better if this never comes into your hands. I don’t expect that it will, because the puzzle is almost clear, and I’ll handle it myself. That is, as soon as the last piece clicks into place.
Gordon Heath is away, or I would leave this with him, but I know Natalie will follow my instructions. Talk to Ty Frazer, since he knows where this fabric came from. If he takes you to the source, as he did me, everything will become clear.
Be careful. Victoria Frazer didn’t drown herself—she was murdered.
I hope there’ll never be a reason for you to receive this letter.
Love,
Jim
I sat for a moment with Jim’s letter and the scrap of green material in my hands, feeling shocked and deeply shaken by this confirmation of my fears—both about Victoria’s death and Jim’s. The letter hinted too much without saying enough.
Silently, I handed it to Gordon and watched as he read it.
“What is it?” Natalie cried. “What has he said?”
As he read Jim’s words, Gordon looked as disturbed as I felt. This was support for what Ty believed. Gordon gave the letter to Natalie and when he covered my hand with his own, I tried to take some comfort from his touch.
“So Jim’s death wasn’t an accident and neither was Victoria’s,” he said quietly, picking up the piece of fabric.
Tears filled Natalie’s eyes again as she watched.
The green iridescence shone in the lamplight as Gordon turned the scrap about in his hands. It looked as though it would glow in the dark.
“It’s almost as thin as paper,” he said, “but very tough. And it doesn’t crumple. I have no idea what it is. Maybe some new sort of synthetic?” He handed it to Natalie, who examined it silently and gave it back without comment, along with the letter.
“Maybe I should send this piece away to have it tested, Lauren,” Gordon said.
I didn’t want to wait for tests. “I’d rather show it to your friend Ty and ask him about it, as Jim suggested in his letter. Could you set up a meeting with him, Gordon? He has a tendency to duck when he sees me.”
“I’ll see what I can manage,” Gordon promised.
Natalie appeared to be studying the dessert offerings on the menu from which we had ordered earlier, as though it absorbed her full attention. I noticed that her hands were trembling. Gordon stared suddenly in the direction of the door, and I saw his look of surprise. He pushed back his chair and stood up as the hostess led Finella to our table. She still wore her blue denim jacket with the patches of color at the shoulders, but she had lost the poise I’d sensed in her at the shop. She was agitated now.
“I’m sorry to interrupt, Gordon,” she told him the moment she reached our table. “Something has just happened that you’d better know about.” She glanced at Natalie and me. “All of you.”
Gordon pulled out a chair and she sat down, waving away a menu and asking only for coffee.
“I’ve just had a surprising visitor in my shop,” she said. “It was your grandfather, Natalie. I hadn’t seen him in years, and he still looks as handsome and distinguished as ever.”
“Why on earth—” Natalie began, but Gordon motioned for her to wait, and she was quiet.
“He came into the shop like a storm cloud,” Finella continued. “I remember how dramatic he used to be, and he hasn’t lost his touch. He wanted to know if I’d seen Jim Castle’s wife, and I said you’d gone to dinner with my son and his granddaughter. That seemed to upset him still more. He strode around vigorously—you’d never guess his age!—and stopped before your Star Flight watercolor, Natalie. Apparently, he hadn’t seen it before, and he appeared even more disturbed.”
“I don’t see why,” Natalie said. “He and my father were on the mountain when that—whatever it was—came down. I painted from his own description.”
“Well, he didn’t like it, and he turned away as though he couldn’t bear to look at it. He wants to talk with you, Lauren, as soon as possible.”
This didn’t bode well for my first meeting with Roger Brandt, and I began to feel alarmed. “Did he say why he wants to see me?”
“Not a hint. He just went off in the same dark cloud. So I thought I’d better come over here and warn you right away. He really scared me.”
“Before I met you for dinner tonight, Camilla told him you might continue with the documentary, Lauren,” Natalie said. “He was against it. He said you couldn’t possibly pick up Jim’s work—no one could. But I didn’t think he’d go running around trying to find you. At least he hasn’t come here.”
Looking a little guilty, Finella said, “I’m afraid I told him where you’re staying, Lauren.”
Natalie pushed back her chair. “I’d better get back to the house and talk to him—get him calmed down. Sometimes he listens to me.”
I tried to reassure her. “Just tell him that I could never fill Jim’s shoes, so he needn’t worry. Though I would like to meet him before I leave, if it’s possible. Perhaps he could tell me more about what Jim was doing.”
“I still think you should finish the film, whether he approves or not,” Natalie said. “I wonder if I could win him around, in spite of my grandmother.”
She left us rather abruptly and rushed off with her shells and beads clashing.
I didn’t want any dessert, but I drank my coffee, feeling tired and scared, and I told Finella that I might be leaving Lake Lure soon. I would stop in to see her before I went home. All the while, I was aware of Gordon listening quietly, though he’d made no comment about all this drama. When we left the dining room, we walked Finella to her car and then Gordon drove me back to the lodge, with hardly a word between us. What was there to say? When we reached the driveway and he stopped the car, he kept me for a moment longer, and his words surprised me.
“I wonder if you should leave so soon, Lauren? Are you being frightened away?”
“Perhaps I am,” I told him, though one of the things I was most afraid of was my confused feeling about Gordon himself.
“If you leave,” he said, “I suspect that everything will stop. All the questions will fade away and no answers will ever be found. That’s the safe and easy course.” His tone hardened. “You’re pretty good at taking the easy course, as I remember.”
Perhaps the sudden anger that shook me came from the fact that he was speaking the truth. But that young girl who had loved him and been afraid to act didn’t exist anymore. I might be afraid of a lot of things, but I wouldn’t run away from Gordon now if there was a real reason to stay.
“You don’t know anything about me,” I said sharply. I opened the door on my side and got out to run up the steps and get away from him as quickly as I could.
By the time I reached the lobby, I felt tired all over again. I wanted only to go up to my room and do nothing for the rest of the evening. The last thing I wanted was to think about Gordon, either in the past or the present, and I wasn’t sure that was something I could turn off.
When Mrs. Adrian spoke to me from the desk, I paused unwillingly.
“Mrs. Castle—there’s someone here to see you.” She nodded toward the far end of the lobby, where a sitting area had been arranged. She looked so excited that I knew at once who must be here.
“It’s Mr. Brandt, Mrs. Castle. Mr. Roger Brandt! He’s wait
ing for you.”
There was nothing else to do but face him. I took a long, deep breath and went to meet my grandfather.
6
He rose as I approached, and I would have recognized him anywhere. His hair was white but still thick, and lines had deepened in his face. Yet the look of the young man was there. His bearing, as erect as ever, indicated a man who kept his body in shape.
Until now, I’d seen him only in black and white. He seemed far more impressive in color and he still had a presence that was part of Roger Brandt’s film mystique. His skin was well tanned and a patterned red silk scarf—his signature in the old days—was tied jauntily at his throat. His corduroy jacket appeared to have been tailored to fit him and corduroy pants ended in expensive, well-worn leather boots that had undoubtedly been made to order. Added to the charisma that had belonged to the young man was an intimidating assurance. He looked both angry and for some reason surprised at the sight of me. I had to stiffen my inner resolve and stand up to him. I raised my chin—a chin cleft as deeply as his own—and gave him look for look.
“Mr. Brandt?” I said before he could attack. “I’m Lauren Castle, Jim’s wife.”
He didn’t trouble to acknowledge this. “Sit down,” he said curtly, gesturing toward the far end of the sofa where he’d been sitting.
I stayed where I was. “I prefer to stand, since this will take only a few moments. Your granddaughter has suggested that I pick up my husband’s work on the documentary about you. But of course that’s out of the question. I haven’t the skills or the interest to carry on Jim’s work. So if you’ve come here to tell me not to, you needn’t have troubled.”
He blinked, and I suspected that his vanity would reject an excuse that indicated a lack of interest—in him. But before he could dismiss me and stride out of the lobby, I continued.
“Perhaps you’d like to know why I don’t want to touch this project. I have a strong feeling that the real story concerns Victoria Frazer. But to learn about her life would be much more difficult than to learn about yours. So I won’t even try.”
I expected his anger to explode around me. Bristling white eyebrows, more unruly than when he was young, seemed to climb his forehead above eyes that had widened as he stared at me. Then a faint quirk appeared at one side of his mouth, creasing up one cheek—not a smile, but possible amusement because someone so insignificant would dare to mention Victoria’s name in his presence.
“Please sit down,” he said. “We can talk more comfortably if you’ll stop looking like a firecracker about to go off.”
So much for what I’d considered defiant dignity. I sat down in the farthest corner of the sofa from him, my feet close together and my hands clasped like a schoolgirl’s on the knees of my blue skirt. At once, I unclasped them and folded my arms—the body language of defiance. I would not allow him either to intimidate or ridicule me.
His own relaxing into the opposite end of the sofa seemed casual enough—but then, he was an actor. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Castle. I seem to have misunderstood what my wife told me. I liked your husband, and his death was a shock and a great loss. But now you’ve made me curious. I want to know why you think Victoria Frazer’s story is so important. Her career was hardly more than a flash in the pan.”
“Through no fault of her own,” I told him. “There was a revival in Los Angeles of all your films that have survived. I’ve seen most of them. But never the one picture you made with her. Years ago, I found in a secondhand bookstore an old movie magazine that carried Victoria’s picture on the cover. When I bought it and read the article, I could see why men must have fallen in love with her.”
He didn’t seem to care for that conclusion. “You’re young and romantic. Almost any female face can be given extraordinary beauty with makeup and lighting and the right camera angle. On the street, you might not have noticed her.”
I tried not to rise to the bait. “I don’t believe that. I don’t think you believe that.”
He looked away as though I’d touched him in some way. “This is a very strange experience, Mrs. Castle. I haven’t talked with anyone about Victoria Frazer in a good many years. What is it that appeals to you about an actress who is mostly forgotten, except here at Lake Lure, where she has become part of a sentimental legend?”
I tried not to sound indignant at such a dismissal coming from him. “I suppose the mystery of her death is part of the appeal for me. Why was her body never found? What really happened?”
He showed his impatience clearly. “Do you think every effort wasn’t made at the time to find her?”
“Not every effort. Haven’t you wanted to know what happened to her?”
This time, I’d really gotten through to him, and he looked uncomfortable. “I think you’d better go back to California, young lady. Your decision not to try what Natalie has suggested is the correct one.”
He was an arrogant man, and I disliked arrogance. “You shouldn’t allow yourself to become antique, Mr. Brandt. Young lady is a patronizing term, and as old-fashioned as all those cowboy movies you used to make.” If he was arrogant, I was rude, but I didn’t care.
Once more, I thought he would rise and stalk out of the lobby. Instead, he surprised me by laughing. “Touché! You remind me of my granddaughter. She never lets me get away with anything. Just the same, there would be no point in opening up that old tragedy again. The only reason I was seeing your husband was because he stayed away from all reference to Victoria Frazer, except when it came to the one movie I made with her.”
Of course Jim would have touched on all that later, as he won Roger Brandt’s confidence, but I let that go.
“Did you ever really care about her?” I asked bluntly, holding my breath.
He looked at me and then away—a look more sad than angry.
Now it was I who baited him. “Jim wrote me that all this was a closed book—so far.”
“And it would have stayed closed. Now, if you’ll excuse me …” He rose, ending our discussion.
I stood up beside him, aware of how tall he was—over six feet. There’d been no shrinking of his spine with age.
I made one last attempt to pierce the armor he wore. “Natalie told me you may have the only existing print of Blue Ridge Cowboy. I’m going away soon and I won’t try to do anything about your story—or Victoria Frazer’s. But I would give anything to see that film. I would love to know how she looked and moved and spoke.”
He asked me the same question he’d asked before, phrasing it in a different way. “Why are you so drawn to an actress who lived before you were born?”
For just a moment, I was tempted. I wanted to say, Because she is my grandmother. But I held back the words. Once he knew, he might shut me out altogether. As Jim Castle’s wife, I would seem more harmless. For a moment, I looked at him as my grandfather—not as an intimidating and famous actor but as someone I might get to know, someone from whom I had inherited part of myself.
I smiled for the first time since we’d met, and he looked startled, peering at me a bit myopically.
“You remind me of someone. What did you say your first name is? Lauren? A beautiful name.” He paused and then seemed to make up his mind suddenly. “If you will call Natalie tomorrow, she will bring you across the lake to my house. Set a time with her and I will show you the film.”
Taken by surprise, I found myself stammering as I thanked him, and he looked pleased to have reduced me to shaky gratitude. He probably still fancied himself as having a way with women.
“Good-bye, Lauren,” he said, holding out his hand. When I put my own into his, he clasped it warmly for an instant. “I’ll see you soon,” he added, and started across the lobby. As he neared the door, he turned and looked at me over his shoulder. The gesture was deliberate and exactly the way he had done it so often in his films, his look amusing, captivating, engagingly mischievous.
I was not captivated, and I knew the dueling between us had not ended, even though I was now, so surpri
singly, to see the movie he’d made with Victoria Frazer. It was as though a ghost out of the past had winked at me. Then he was gone, and I shook myself back to reality and started upstairs. A flirtatious grandfather was not part of my plan.
At least I no longer felt tired, but surprisingly elated and alive. I saw Mrs. Adrian watching me curiously from the desk. The town would probably buzz tomorrow with the story of the reclusive Roger Brandt actually turning up at Rumbling Mountain Lodge to see Jim Castle’s wife. I wondered what Gretchen Frazer would think about this.
As I went upstairs, my exuberance lessened. The meeting with Roger Brandt had been too sudden, too unexpected. I began to think of all I had said to him and what I hadn’t said. At least I was to see him again, and I was to learn what my grandmother Victoria had been like on the screen. I would actually see her as she had been when the world loved her—forever young.
The moment I unlocked the door of my room, I knew someone had been there. The sliding glass door to the balcony stood open and a breeze from the lake swept through my room. Perhaps one of the maids had come in and forgotten to close the door.
I crossed to take care of this, then became aware that someone stood outside, looking toward the water, his back to me. After an instant’s shock, I relaxed. My visitor was only a small boy.
“Hello,” I said. “How did you get up here?”
He turned to face me without alarm—a child of about ten in jeans and a plaid shirt. “Over there,” he said, pointing.
Below the railing, the hill dropped away steeply. However, at the far end a thick branch of an oak tree reached toward the balcony that ran past all the rooms on this side. Obviously, it had been no trick for my visitor to climb out along the limb and drop onto the deck. Since I hadn’t locked the glass door, he had been in and out easily.
“Do you mind telling me who you are and why you’re here?” I spoke quietly, not wanting to frighten him off before I had a few answers.
“I’m Zach,” he said. “Grandpa Ty sent me.”
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