Domino. Part 13

"I don't think anyone thought that," he told me. "Mrs. Morgan wouldn't have allowed anyone to think it. The last thing she wanted was a scandal that would involve more of her family. It was bad enough that Richard was shot. No mother could have loved her son more than your grandmother loved your father, Laurie. His death almost destroyed her."

"What did she think about Noah's running off?"

This time Caleb let himself go. "Good riddance! She knew by then that she'd made a bad bargain. I think she'd been telling him to get out for some time. So if he chose to go-fine!"

That this usually controlled man should permit himself such an outburst was disturbing in itself. A smoldering beneath the surface hinted at explosive depths.

"What is it?" I asked. "What is it you're not telling me?"

For the first time since I'd stepped into his office, he met my eyes directly. "If you are wise, Laurie, you won't press to know any more than you do. Let it go. Leave while you can, before irreparable harm is done. To you as well as your grandmother."

'59.

"What do you mean-leave while I can? What irreparable harm?"

"That's all I have to say. If you want to know more, you'll have to go to your grandmother."

I wondered out loud. "Perhaps she gave him the jewels. Perhaps they were never stolen at all, but were a bribe to get him to leave. What did they consist of-the things that were taken?"

Caleb was staring at me, appalled, and again alarmed, as though I threatened him in some way. It took him a moment or two to get himself in hand.

"Really, Laurie, you ask too much. How could I possibly remember what was taken after all these years?"

I suspected that his was the sort of mind which would remember such details exactly, and that if he wanted to he could probably list every item that had disappeared.

"I suppose there's a listing somewhere? I wonder if the Denver Library would have microfilm from the newspapers of that time. Perhaps I could read about what happened here?"

He seemed relieved. "If that's what you want, Laurie, I can furnish you with those old papers myself. They have been kept on file right here in this house. But first I must ask your grandmother if she wishes you to see them."

"I'll ask her myself," I said, with the strong suspicion that he might prejudice any chance of my seeing such papers.

I left him to his calculator, and just as I reached the stairs, Jon Maddocks came out of Persis' room. I felt a small rush of joy at the sight of him.

For once he seemed warmly approving as he came toward me. "You're good for her, Laurie. She's coming to life. She wanted to know all about your visit to Domino and how I thought you felt about the old place."

"What did you tell her?"

"I told her you'd fallen too much in love with the past, but 160 *

that I thought there was still time for you to catch up with the present."

The tiny rush of feeling in me died. "Why must you always mock me?"

"Is that what you think I'm doing?" He stood close to me at the head of the stairs, and suddenly he reached out a finger to touch a tendril of hair that had come loose against my cheek, lifting it back. "I don't mean to mock you, Laurie. I just hope you'll wake up in time to be useful to her. You were ready to be for a while this morning."

I drew back from his touch, a little afraid of my reaction.

He came down with me, his hand on my arm. "Witt you stay, Laurie?"

"I want to," I said. "I think I really do. But there's so much that I don't understand. Sometimes-"

"Trust yourself. Just trust yourself a little more. There's a lot of her in you."

"You said that before. But why should you think it?"

"I think it because of what you did in facing up to Ingram this morning. That took courage. And because I can remember a s.p.u.n.ky small girl who loved her grandmother very much. A small girl who was so much like Persis Morgan that everyone around could spot it. Even a kid like me."

"It's gone now!" I cried. "I've lost a whole part of me somewhere and I don't know how to find it again."

I leaned against the stair rail, sagging a little as we reached my floor, and he put an arm about me, walked me toward my door Behind us Gail came running up the stairs and stopped.

"h.e.l.lo!" Her look questioned, faintly derisive. "I've left Hillary to explore that old theater. I needed to get back here for Mrs. Morgan's afternoon medication."

"What is that medication?" I asked.

"Only a simple sedative."

"Why does she have to be sedated? She seems fine to me."

"Perhaps you'd better ask Dr. Burton when he comes. If you'll excuse me-" She ran lightly up to the floor above and disappeared from view.

Jon hadn't dropped his arm at her appearance. For an instant it tightened around me, and then he let me go.

"There's too much of this sedation going on," he said. "It's begun since that nurse came in. When Belle Durant was here things were better. I have a feeling she talks old Doc Burton into doing what she wants. Maybe you can put a stop to it."

The moment of emotion was safely past for me.

"I'll try," I said. "I wonder if there's something you can tell me." I gestured toward my door. "Do you know why anyone would hang an old funeral wreath on my doork.n.o.b? There was one there when I came upstairs last night."

"So that's where it came from. You must have dropped it out your window. I found it when I walked around the house early this morning."

"Why would it be left there?"

"I can't even guess."

"There was a card." I'd kept it in my pocket, and I took it out to show him.

He read the words gravely and handed it back. "I don't like this. It seems a cruel and stupid thing to do."

"Where could a wreath like that come from?"

"There's an old cemetery out behind the ranch, where a few Morgans and those who worked with them are buried. It could have come from there."

"Whoever wrote that card knew that my father had been murdered. Grandmother Persis told me this morning about what happened."

Jon looked away uncomfortably.

"You knew too, didn't you?"

"I knew about his death, of course. I was living here at the i6a ranch with my mother at the time. There was a lot of excite^ ment, and it was in all the papers."

"What do you know?"

He seemed to hesitate. "Why-that somebody broke into the house, stole some valuable jewelry, shot Richard Morgan, and got away."

"The official story."

He was silent, and I went on.

"That's what Gail Cullen calls it. Did you know she used to live around here?"

"I've heard that."

"She sounded as though something else might have happened that was never in the papers. I thought you might know what it was. And about Noah Armand's disappearance."

"Sorry," he said curtly. "I've got to get back to work now. See you later." He went quickly down the stairs to escape my questioning. Like the others, he knew more than he was telling, but since he was the one I was beginning to trust, I hated to see him turn away from me, holding onto those secrets.

I went into my room to stand before a window, where I could watch him heading toward the barn, moving with that easy lope which was characteristic, never looking back. It was good just to watch him.

I sighed and turned from the window. Everything that had happened so long ago was somehow connected to what was happening now. More and more I was convinced of this. It was connected with my presence here. Perhaps I was the catalyst who was causing old horrors, old fears, to boil toward the surface. What would happen when the truth exploded into my mind, into my life? What would happen to Persis Morgan?

What would happen to me?

XI.

The afternoon hours stretched idly ahead, and I was restless. To be idle meant letting in my fears, letting in the conviction that something stronger than malice was operating against me. I had begun to jump nervously at unexpected sounds, and I dreaded nightfall and my room, where a door could creak open after dark.

This wouldn't do. What I needed was a plan of action, something I could take to my grandmother. Something I could announce to the world, to Mark Ingram, to whoever else threatened her. Hillary would back me, I knew, and so would Jon Maddocks if he approved. About Caleb I was not so sure. At the moment, however, there seemed to be no way in which I could take charge. Persis hadn't put that right into my hands as yet, and there was no reason why she should in the face of the unwillingness I'd shown her.

In any case was I ready to take on any sort of authority? My thoughts, my feelings seemed to be in a state of flux. Even my feeling for Hillary was undergoing a change. Not a sea change -a mountain change. Ever since that moment when I'd looked out my window toward Old Desolate, I had been chang- ing. I didn't seem able to help it-or want to stop what was happening inside me.

Now, as I looked out that same window, my attention was caught by the old cemetery Jon had mentioned. I could see where it spread up the hillside above a stand of pine trees. The fenced-in Morgan property ended well before the burying ground, but there was a gate out there, and I knew that much of the land along the mountain and up the valley also belonged to Persis Morgan. Perhaps something could be learned from old graves. Perhaps a walk would help me to sort out my own thoughts and emotions, lead me into the plan I must make.

I picked up Red's leash and went outside. When I neared the barn, the setter came running and I clipped it on his collar, not wanting him to go free once we were outside the fence. I wasn't sure that Red would know what to do with such freedom.

We skirted the barn, the old bunkhouse, and the cabin Jon occupied. I saw that a weed-grown road started beyond the gate, and we went through to follow it. Here the rocky land began to climb in an easy slope, and when we reached the pine grove we paused in its shade.

The sky wasn't as blue as it had been this morning, and already puffs of white drifted across the tops of the mountains. We climbed again, out in the sun. The cemetery was farther than it had looked from my window in the clear air, but the road was marked in the earth, and wide enough to take a burial party, though obviously long unused. The cemetery itself had been left unfenced, its boundaries obvious where the stones ended, though a sustaining wall above the graves kept the mountain from sliding down upon them.

How very peaceful, how utterly lonely it seemed. Even Red stopped prancing about at the end of his leash, affected by the quiet. Small blue wild flowers grew among the stones, though weeds had been kept down to some extent, so that nature I.

i65 hadn't taken over entirely. Most of the graves were undecorated, but on several mounds lay incongruous, crumbling wreaths.

As I looked about, I caught movement as chipmunks scampered among the headstones, and Red came to life.

"Be quiet," said a voice nearby, slightly hoa.r.s.e, familiar. "Don't frighten the little critters away."

I had felt so alone a moment before that I jumped and looked around. Perched on a rock in a shadow of the wall where I hadn't noticed her sat the woman from the hotel, Belle Durant. Somehow I couldn't have been more astonished than to find her here watching the chipmunks. She had shed her fancy dress of last evening, and once again wore tight jeans and a green pullover. As I stared, she raised one hand, holding up a bunch of pinkish wild flowers, nested in greens that had the look of ferns.

"Tansy asters," she informed me. "They can smell strong, but they're pretty outdoors."

In the open, away from the Timberline atmosphere, Belle looked and sounded more real, but she worked for Mark Ingram and I didn't trust her. I sat on a sun-warmed rock nearby and undipped Red's leash. He wouldn't go very far with me right here.

"Have you always lived in these mountains?" I asked.

She shrugged, and her red hair caught highlights from the sun. "Now and again. torn Durant, my husband-he died ten years ago-was part Morgan. Of course old Mrs. Morgan knew that, and she let me bury him here. I used to work for her, you know."

"Yes, someone told me. You seem to be missed. Why did you leave?"

For a moment she seemed uncomfortable. Then she met my question with a look that dared me to criticize.

"Mark Ingram turned up. I went to work with him." Her ex- 166.

pression changed, as though she remembered something that was still bittersweet. "I don't mind telling you. Everybody knows. I knew him a long time ago, when I was young. Before torn. You don't forget things like that-things that happen when you're young. So when he needed me at the hotel, I went back to him."

"No more loyalty to Persis Morgan?"

She bristled. "I have to take care of myself. Mark will be here when your grandmother is long gone."

"Maybe," I said, and she was silent.

I stirred myself to look about me. "Jon Maddocks says there are Morgans buried in this place, so I thought I'd come up to have a look."

"Sure. Do you want me to introduce you?"

She got lightly to her feet, and Red made a dash for the chipmunks. The little creatures vanished among the stones far more quickly than he could move. Belle picked her way among the grave markers to a low one of mountain granite, where she placed her small bouquet. The stone flaunted a wreath that had seen better days, and I read upon it the name of Thomas Durant.

"Is that a custom?" I asked. "I mean to leave old funeral wreaths on the stones?"

She flashed me a smile that was wide and a little mocking. "That's my idea. When I see there's been a funeral in some place I can get to and wreaths are being thrown out, I collect a few and bring them here. Sort of dresses up the place, don't you think?"

"I don't know," I said. "Wild flowers and gra.s.s do pretty well."

"But they grow here. When I bring something special in from outside, it shows them"-she waved a hand-"that they're not forgotten, that I made a special effort."

What a strangely unexpected person she was.

i67 "Hardly anyone gets buried here anymore," she went on. "Tom's grave is pretty new, compared with most. There are a lot of these old burying grounds around in the mountains, where they sprang up near the mining camps. Sometimes they outlive the towns."

I walked among the stones, finding many of the markings nearly erased by time and mountain winters.

"Diphtheria took a lot of them in the old days, I guess," Belle said. "Though in the beginning it was mostly accidents in the mines that killed the men. Women were scarce, though a few are buried here, and of course there were the babies that never grew up. Look here at this one."

It was a small grave, a small stone, simply inscribed. The words read, Our Darling, and no name was given. So much pain, so long forgotten.

"I don't suppose Sissy and Malcolm Tremayne were brought here?" I asked.

"Lord, no! They'd have to be taken someplace grand. Persis Morgan wouldn't have left them here. But while they were alive they didn't feel that way. Tyler Morgan's grave is right here where they buried him. I guess you know he was Malcolm's partner in the Old Desolate, and it was his son who married Persis. Of course she wouldn't let her Johnny be buried here either. He was taken down to Denver. It always seemed kind of strange that she buried their son, Richard, here. Your father."