Domino. Part 26

I moved toward her without trying to be quiet, and she heard me. Her head came up from her arms, and she stared at me, startled, her eyes swollen, her face wet with tears. I had never before seen her in a state of distress, with all the hospital 287.

starch gone out of her. It seemed a little unreal that she could v, eep like other women.

"Is there anything I can do?" I asked.

"Just go away!" she said. "I thought I could be alone here." And she sat staring at me with an anger that must be all the stronger because it was I who had caught her in this weak moment.

I crossed the bare, splintery floor, where the church congregation had once sat in their rows, pulled another chair toward the table, and sat down.

"Perhaps this is a good time to talk," I said, and remembered that I had said this to her once before.

She pulled a wad of tissue from a box on the table and dried her eyes, blew her nose, offering nothing.

I went on. "Perhaps this is as good a time as any to ask why j ou left that wreath on my door, with its cruel note about my father."

Her tears had ceased to flow. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Let's not play games," I said. "Who else at Morgan House v ould retrieve one of Belle's funeral wreaths and hang it on my doork.n.o.b? With a card which hinted that my father would ne^er sleep in peace."

She seemed to be considering this. "I should think it would be someone who wanted to frighten you away from Jasper and Morgan House."

"I believe that too. You left it there, didn't you? You disliked me from the moment that I arrived, though I don't understand why. Why did you so want me to leave?"

"I didn't want that!" She was emphatic. "Not in the beginning. I thought the old woman needed you."

Her words were hard to believe. "Then why the wreath? Who else-"

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"Perhaps that's what someone wanted you to think. So I would be the one you'd blame."

"You mean it wasn't you?"

"Of course it wasn't. Not that I might not think that sort of thing a good trick-if I wanted to start frightening you. But I never did. I never liked you, but I didn't do that"

She sounded as though she was telling the truth. > "But then who-" I began.

"Take your.pick. You've got this whole enormous metropolis to choose from. n.o.body around here ever locks a door at night, so whoever waiiie.d to could walk into that house. Perhaps someone acting on instruction. Perhaps someone you don't even know."

I was trying to digest this. Her manner, her earnestness almost convinced me. Besides, I rather suspected that she would admit it easily enough if she had been guilty. I began to feel a new uneasiness. Being sure it was Gail had enabled me to dismiss the trick as something of no consequence-the act of a malicious woman. If someone else was behind it, there could be a more ominous implication.

"Maybe you can cry a little now," she said. "I've got a whole box of tissues with me."

I wasn't ready to let her off altogether.

"Have you any plans?" I asked her. "What will you do now?"

"Plans? Oh sure, I'm full of plans!"

"Why did you drug my grandmother?"

She stood up, rocking the small table, looking scornful again, and no longer tearful. "I didn't! You don't need to believe me, but I didn't drug her. I do have some professional ethics."

It was difficult to believe in her ethics, professional or otherwise. "Then who could possibly have-"

"Why don't you try asking Caleb?"

I.

"That's absurd. It's not the sort of thing a man like that would do."

"Isn't it? When he was pretty sure you would blame me? It must have seemed a good way to scare you off. And the drugging would postpone her making a new will. After all, he's the one who would have most benefited in the old will. Then, eventually, when she was gone, he could make a further profit by selling out to Mark Ingram. Only you came along to spoil everything."

This was the first time she had ever been open with me, yet all her old antagonism was still there, and" I didn't know whether anything she said could be believed.

Her look changed suddenly as she stared past me, and I turned to see Caleb standing in the doorway, regarding us in chilly disapproval. Perhaps he would think this meeting between Gail and me conspiratorial. Perhaps that was what he would want to think.

"Well," he said, "this is surprising. I didn't know you two were such good friends."

I sat at the table waiting, trying to see Caleb Hawes in the further light Gail had shed on him. He came toward us doubtfully, as though finding us here together had disturbed him. As perhaps it would if any of the things she had told me were true.

"Your grandmother saw the light from her room, Laurie, and she sent me to find out who was here. Even though she doesn't own the church anymore, she feels a proprietary interest, since her parents built it."

"I saw the light too," I told him. "And when I came in Gail was sitting here crying. She tells me that she never left that wreath on my door, and that she didn't drug my grandmother."

He came across the room. "You can believe very little of what Miss Cullen says."

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"Any more than I can believe what you say!" Gail picked up her box of tissues and walked past him out of the church.

I looked up at the round window above the altar s.p.a.ce, its colors hardly visible in the dim light from the lantern. "Perhaps this is a place for the truth. Perhaps that's the game Gail and I were playing just now. Maybe not all the truth, but perhaps little trickles of it. It is true that you were to inherit most of Persis Morgan's wealth. That's no secret now."

"I was one of the few close friends she had left. Until you came here, she didn't expect to leave anything to you."

There was so much cold venom in the words that I began to feel uncomfortable with him here in this place. Perhaps the things Gail had told me explained a great deal.

Uncharacteristically, he moved quickly, suddenly, and came to sit at the table in the chair Gail had left.

"There's no need for us to be antagonistic," he said. "There are worse enemies than we need to make of each other."

"I've never wanted to be anyone's enemy."

"I know. I'll admit that I've disapproved of you and resented your coming. But now we have a common foe to face."

"Mark Ingram?"

"Partly. But I've always had a feeling that someone else was pulling hidden strings. Someone whose very name makes your grandmother cringe."

There was one name that made me cringe too.

"Noah?" I said. "Noah Armand? Do you think he's alive?"

"I don't know. For some years I kept track of him. But eventually my sources lost the trail and were never able to find him again. I know very well, however, the machinations that man was capable of. Laurie, I was the one who brought him here originally. I was the one who was to blame from the first for Noah coming to Jasper."

He turned his face from the direct light of the lantern and shaded it with one hand.

"You'd better tell me," I said.

After a moment he went on. "I knew him when I was away in college. Maybe we were opposite poles attracting. He had wild, crazy qualities that I didn't have-didn't want to have. But he made life exciting, wherever he was. He was full of schemes-miraculous schemes-most of them for getting rich without working very hard.

"After college we kept in touch with occasional letters. I knew he'd married and wasn't happy. I knew when he got his divorce. He wrote that he'd like to see Denver and the Jasper that I'd written him about. So he came. And like a fool, I brought him up to the house to meet Mrs. Morgan. You know the rest. It was all my fault. I made it possible for him to marry Persis Morgan. All those years older than he, she was intrigued at first. But Persis got onto him soon enough, and would have cut him off without a dime. Your pretty little mother never stood a chance. She was like a rabbit charmed by a cobra. He thought it was amusing to have both Persis and her young daughter-in-law. He should have died instead of your father. You don't know how many times I've wished your aim had been better."

Everything swept back as I listened to Caleb. The thought of the man who had caused all our loss and sorrow swept over me, weighing me down. I had no spare pity for Caleb, no longer any blame for him, no matter what he had done. But I just couldn't stay here with him a moment longer.

I jumped up and ran out of the church and back along the road toward Morgan House, sometimes stumbling in the dark, until the light from the door and from my grandmother's high window fell across my path and brought me in.

I ran up the stairs and straight to my room. I couldn't beat to see Persis now, or face Belle's good cheer.

As I undressed, the face of the man I could remember only from a snapshot was clear in my mind. And the thought of my 292.

mother, my tragic, doomed father. How I'd hated and feared Noah Armand, even as a child. If he were alive now-as Caleb had seemed to think was possible-what further horrors lay in store for us? If he allied himself with Ingram, whom he already knew- Oh, the possibilities were endless and frightening. As Persis' husband he might still be able to make claims upon her.

When I got into bed, I couldn't sleep. Night thoughts are always the worst. Threats are magnified, problems become insoluble, and depression deepens. Worst of all, when I closed my eyes, all the terrible pictures returned. The memory of that scene in the parlor was gone over and over vividly in all its terror. Perhaps the very fact that I had blocked it out for so long made it return all the more insistently and horribly now.

Finally I gave up and got out of bed, to see that it was well past midnight. In slippers and robe I went softly upstairs to Grandmother Persis' open door and looked in. Moonlight shone at the windows. Belle snored lightly on her couch on the far side of the room, and I could hear my grandmother's deep, steady breathing. All was well.

Back on my own floor, I listened again to the uncanny groanings of an old house. Caleb's door was closed on silence. I'd heard him when he came home. The stairs were dark, but I didn't want to turn on lights. I could probably feel my way down to where a patch of moonlight fell through the front door. Perhaps I would try the hot milk treatment myself.

Then, as I hesitated at the top of the stairs, I heard a faint creaking of hinges as the front door opened. It was never locked, as Gail had pointed out. Anyone could enter or leave, and I wondered if Caleb was still up. The patch of moonlight changed its shape and spread to the foot of the stairs, but for a moment no one came in. I held my breath, waiting, not daring to call out.

After a moment a shadow moved into the lower hall, cast by moonlight. Whoever it was moved softly along the hall toward 293.

the rear, and I heard the door of the back parlor open. Quickly I went down a few steps and leaned over the banister. No light shone down the hall, and the door to the parlor had closed. Because of high, old-fashioned door sills there was no line of light to reveal whether whoever had entered the room had turned on a lamp.

I had to know who it was, but I mustn't take risks alone. Walking lightly, so that as few boards as possible would creak, I hurried to Caleb's door. A knock would sound through the house, so I turned the k.n.o.b softly and opened it a crack.

"Caleb?" I whispered. "Caleb, are you there?"

The silence had an empty ring to it, and there was no sound of a sleeper. I touched the switch beside the door so that light flashed on and then off immediately. Caleb's bed was empty. Unslept in. I knew he had come upstairs earlier, so he must have gone out again.

I thought of rousing Belle, getting her to go downstairs with me, but that would take too long. I needn't actually confront the person in that room. There was a better way.

This time I left my slippers at the top of the stairs and went down softly in my bare feet. Hardly a step creaked. Moonlight from the open front door lighted the hall, and a chill breeze blew in. I hurried across to the front parlor and tiptoed to the double doors at the rear. These were locked, as they had always been, and I didn't want to go through anyway. I pressed my ear to the wood, listening.

Beyond the double doors I could hear movement. The sound of furniture being shifted, of someone moving stealthily. I had to know who it was, but how could I find out safely? After what had happened to Jon, and after my being shut into the mine, I knew very well that whoever played this game was dangerous, and that I might well be a target. Whether I liked it or not, I had better go back upstairs and summon Belle.

A cloud engulfed the moon, and the dim light that had come through the windows faded, leaving me in blackness. I felt my way cautiously, but it was not an easy room to cross because of Victorian taborets and all the bric-a-brac. I struck the corner of something my reaching hand had missed, and a vase teetered and fell on the carpet. It didn't break, but there was sound-and beyond the double doors a sudden silence.

Then movement, swift and heedless now. I heard the opening of a door to the porch and the sound of running feet. I rushed to a side window, trying to see out. Only mountain shapes stood against a lighter sky, and the grounds near the house were lost in inky shadow. Though I stepped onto the porch, I could see nothing, hear nothing but the normal rustlings of a mountain night. The intruder could have gone in any direction, and he was already out of my sight and hearing.

Now there was nothing to keep me from going into the back parlor. The door opened at my touch, but no lights were burning. A flashlight must have been used. When I touched the switch by the door, the wall bulbs came on and showed me an empty room. A table in one comer appeared to have been moved and a chair set in its place. Otherwise the room seemed untouched. Except for one thing.

The mahogany box lay open on its table. Startled, I went to look more closely. Everything was in place and every molded compartment filled. Instead of only one deringer, the twin s.p.a.ce was now taken. Two identical pistols lay in the box, their silver mountings shining in the light.

XVIII.

I hardly slept. Nothing made sense, and the very lack of reason set fearful questions rising to keep rne awake. Questions to which I could find "no answers.

In the morning, because of the coming meeting with Mark Ingram, I had no time to do anything about my discover}- of the missing deringer. Caleb seemed to have disappeared during the night, Belle had breakfasted earlier, so I ate alone. By the time I reached Persis' room, she was up and dressed, thanks to Belle.

"Come in, Laurie," Belle invited. "We're getting ready to go downstairs."

I kissed Persis' cheek and caught again that brave whiff of verbena.

"You look wonderful," I said. "I like that gown. It reminds me of the wallpaper in your room in Domino."

"That's why I bought it. Years ago. My closet is full of things I haven't been wearing. Time I changed all that. I'm going downstairs before Ingram gets here. I want to be ready for him."

"Aren't the stairs difficult for you?"

,96.

"I have to manage. Once I've settled with Ingram, I plan to move downstairs to the back parlor. It's a perfectly good room, and I ought to be down there, where it will be easier for everyone."

Her look met mine defiantly, as though she expected opposition.

"Good for you," I said. But I didn't feel as brave as Persis Morgan looked.

Jon arrived while we were still upstairs. The bruise on his cheekbone was changing color, and he had removed the patch of bandage from his head.

"I see you're ready for battle, Mrs. Morgan," he said.

"I am, as far as I'm able. I'm glad you're here to help me downstairs. Though I'm not feeble, you know. I've made myself get up nearly every day and walk about my room-even while Gail and Caleb were trying to turn me into a cabbage. Where is Caleb?"

Belle knew. "He took the jeep and drove down to Denver late last night. He stopped in to say he'd get back as quickly as possible. You were asleep, so we didn't wake you, Mrs. Morgan. He wanted to deliver your will to the office himself and have it put into proper form."

"That's fine. I'll report that much to Mark Ingram."

I still felt uneasy about Caleb Hawes.

When Jon had helped Persis down the two flights of stairs, she seated herself in a high-backed wing chair, with windows behind her, so that morning light wouldn't fall directly upon her face. Sitting there, she looked more like royalty than ever. The daughter of a silver king!

Jon posted himself behind her, and he, too, seemed braced for battle, his black hair crisp and curly from a wet comb, his chinos and blue shirt fresh from the laundry, and his best boots polished and unscuffed.

How very much I had loved him as a little girl. Perhaps I 297.

had never stopped loving him. Perhaps I had been searching for him ever since leaving Jasper.