When Christy and Hayden reached his house, they found Oliver Vaughn in a rattan chair on the front deck, smoking a professorial pipe. He greeted them with a wry smile, and Christy was struck once more by his almost perfect good looks. She wondered why they put her off. Perhaps they gave him an arrogance that she reacted to and resented.
“I’ve been hoping you’d show up, Hay,” Oliver said, rising to greet them. “I hiked over here to have a talk with you about Victor Birdcall. I’ve recently learned some pretty interesting things about him. Perhaps information that may have some bearing on what’s been happening around here.”
Hayden had chosen his own direction, and for the moment wasn’t interested. “Later, Oliver, please. Have you seen Donny?”
“He’s upstairs. Eve was here, also waiting for you about some problem at the nursery. I’d hardly come up the steps when Donny dashed out of the woods and tore into the house. Eve thought she’d better find out what was going on, so she went inside after him. This must have been a half hour ago, and I haven’t heard a peep out of either of them since.”
“Will you wait for me, Oliver?” Hayden-asked. “We shouldn’t be too long.”
Oliver settled in his chair again rather sullenly. This was Saturday, so he had no classes, and would probably rather be doing something else with his day.
Hayden gestured Christy into the house. She could still sense his anger because of what she’d asked about Deirdre. Yet she couldn’t regret her question. Did he want to find her? She wasn’t sure what had prompted her to ask him that, except that she needed to smoke him out of hiding. His bristling was useful to him as a screen, but she needed to know what lay behind it. Whether Hayden resented her for probing wasn’t important.
The red-tiled central room was empty when they went into the house. Hayden called out for his son, but there was no answer, and he motioned toward the stairs. On the second floor Christy heard Eve’s voice from the direction of Deirdre’s open door.
Hurrying after Hayden as he entered Deirdre’s room, Christy felt at once a rush of negativity that she hadn’t felt before among Deirdre’s things. Perhaps its source was Eve Corey, who sat jauntily cross-legged on Deirdre’s bed, watching Donny. The boy had perched on a stool before the rainbow painting and he didn’t look around.
Eve glanced at them and shrugged helplessly. “I’m glad you’ve come. I’ve been trying to persuade Donny that he won’t find his mother in that picture.”
Donny kept his eyes on Nona’s painting. “My mother loved rainbows. She always wanted to go into this picture herself. So if I look hard enough, maybe I’ll find her there. I think there’s somebody hiding in those woods—you can see if you look!”
Christy crossed the room to study the painting. Had Nona painted more than mist beneath the rainbow?
“If you do find her there, Donny,” Eve said, “she won’t be real. She would only be a bit of paint that Nona used when she created that scene.”
“What do you know!” This time the boy swung about on the stool and faced them all, his eyes alive with a fury that was nearly out of control. An echo, perhaps, of what Christy had seen in Hayden. “I did see her!” he cried. “I saw her really in the woods—not in a picture. She’s not dead—like Rose!”
“I hope that’s true.” Hayden came to put an arm about his son. “But we can’t count on it, Donny. We mustn’t fool ourselves.”
Christy, still searching the painting, saw what Donny had seen—not merely mist but a tiny face—or something very like a face—peering out from thin shrubbery, the faintest indication of the body beneath, lost in shadow. There was no telling whether Nona had known what she was painting.
Eve got off the bed and stretched plump arms over her head. “If I’m off duty here, I’d better go downstairs and tell Oliver what’s happening. See you later.”
It was a relief to have her leave, Christy thought. Eve wasn’t insensitive, but she viewed the world in a totally opposite way from Deirdre’s mystical approach. Like Oliver, she was tied to what she believed was real, and she left others little room for choice, too quickly condemning.
With Hayden’s eyes upon her, Christy began to move about, allowing her senses to turn inward to where the knowing might begin. With Eve gone, the negative quality Christy had sensed might evaporate. She needed to be quiet, needed to resist the turbulent feeling that had charged the room. Behind her, both Hayden and Donny watched, and she could sense their tension. She paused before Deirdre’s dressing table, where everything personal had been put away. If she opened a drawer she would probably find Deirdre’s lipsticks, makeup, the perfume she’d used. Her perfume had a heathery scent, light and woodsy, and it still lingered in the room. She avoided touching the drawer.
Other items in the room had been left as they were—a lacy blue shawl that had been thrown over a chair and allowed to stay, as if awaiting Deirdre’s return; a square of needlepoint she’d been working on. Without touching this, Christy studied the pattern of stitches. Deirdre herself had been creating a rainbow, though it looked as though one end flamed into earthly fire, while the other grew out of a black thundercloud. A curious, rather violent conception—symbolic of what?
“Donny, did your mother ever talk to you about this needlepoint she was working on?”
The boy thought for a minute. “I don’t know if she was talking about this, but she told me once that you could never tell where a rainbow began. She said nothing was all beautiful, because there was always another side.” He left his stool and came over to Christy. “Her closet’s here. If you want, I’ll open the door for you.” It was as if he understood that Christy wasn’t ready yet to touch anything Deirdre had used when she was last in this room.
“Please, Donny,” she said.
Hayden watched them both, but Christy avoided looking at him—wanting only to be open to whatever impression of Deirdre might come to her in this room.
The closet offered an array of the long gowns Deirdre had liked. There were a few dresses, as well as skirts, blouses, and jeans. On a rack were high-heeled slippers, hardly worn, an array of sandals, and three pairs of walking shoes that bore the stains of red dust on the leather.
Nothing spoke to her. Nothing demanded to be examined, and she didn’t want to dispel whatever might come to her by needless handling.
Donny said, “There’s one thing my mother liked especially. A sort of—magic thing. Would you like to see it?”
“Very much,” Christy said.
He went to a teakwood chest that stood at the foot of Deirdre’s bed and raised the lid.
“Of course!” Hayden still watched intently. “Deirdre’s jewel case is in there and it might tell you something.”
But what Donny took out was a small, dark blue velvet pouch, tied with silver cord. He offered it to Christy, and this time she didn’t hesitate. At once she sensed a faint pulsing in her hand as though she held something with a life of its own. When she opened the drawstrings she found that the bag contained a crystal. Somehow she had known it would be a crystal—but what a crystal!
It lay heavily in her palm, more than two inches long from point to base, its planes filled with rainbow lights. It was a polished crystal, such as healers sometimes used in their work.
“My mother said there was a spirit in the crystal,” Donny said.
“Even rocks have their own life,” Christy agreed, “and I’m sure this is special.”
“Can it lead to Deirdre?” Hayden asked skeptically.
“I don’t know.” Christy returned the stone to its pouch. “May I borrow this—take it with me for a day or so?”
“I suppose.” He seemed indifferent. “Is there anything else in this room that might help her, Donny?”
The boy shook his head, but as they went downstairs he followed close on Christy’s heels—as though she carried a bit of his mother with her in the crystal.
Out on the front deck Oliver and Eve sat talking, and they broke off when the others appeared. Christy had a faint sense of conspiracy between them.
“Can you spare me a minute now, Hay?” Oliver asked.
“Of course.” Hayden sat down beside him. “I’m sorry you had to wait. I was concerned about Donny, but my son is fine.” When he ruffled Donny’s hair, the boy drew away and followed Christy as she moved toward the far steps.
“Can I go with you when you look for my mother?” he asked.
“I’m not going to look for her. At least, not now, Donny. I just want to see whether this”—she held up the pouch—“will tell me anything. I promise I’ll let you know when there is something I can talk about.”
“Okay.” He caught her hand suddenly, pulling her along the deck so the others couldn’t hear. “I—I guess I ought to tell you . . .” He broke off doubtfully.
“Whatever it is, I’ll listen,” Christy assured him.
He reached out to touch the blue velvet pouch as though it would help in what he meant to say. “It was my fault that my mother went away.”
“How do you mean, Donny?”
“Something happened.” He glanced toward his father and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Something awful. I know it was my fault, but I can’t tell you. I don’t want to talk about it. Just so you know.”
“I don’t believe,” Christy said, “no matter what it was, that you were really to blame. Perhaps if you talked with your father about this . . .”
“You don’t know!” he cried darkly, and pulled away from her to run to the far end of the deck, where he jumped off to the ground. In a moment he had disappeared into the trees.
Troubled, Christy returned to Eve and the two men. When she could see Hayden alone, she must tell him about his son’s feeling of guilt.
“Can you tackle this alone—make a start, Eve?” Hayden was asking. “I’ll get over to the office as soon as I can and straighten it out.”
“It’s about time,” she said grumpily. “I’ll get back now. Thanks, Oliver, for telling me about Victor. Let me know what happens.”
Her manner was brusque with both men, but there seemed a special edge to her tone with Oliver, and Christy wondered if any of her old affection for him remained. The edge could be a defense she put up to hide what she might really feel. Certainly there was some sort of friction between those two.
Oliver nodded, not looking at her. “Sure. I’ll see you later.” Then, as Christy started to move away, he stopped her. “Christy, wait. I think you ought to hear what I have to tell Hayden.”
She sat down on the steps to listen, though Oliver’s antagonism toward Victor made her uneasy.
“I have a friend in Santa Fe,” Oliver went on, “and I sent him what little I knew about Victor Birdcall. The name didn’t mean anything, because of course he adopted it when he got out of prison and came here two years ago. It was my description of him, and the fact that his work is putting up lightning rods, that gave my friend a clue.”
Oliver paused to puff at his pipe, and once more Christy sensed the tension in him and wondered why he was so down on Victor.
“Prison for what?” Hayden asked.
“Murder.” Oliver seemed to relish the word. “Doesn’t that make you uneasy? It does me.”
“I’ve always liked Victor,” Hayden said. “I’d need to know more about the circumstances, and why he was freed.”
“How do we know he was freed? He killed his wife—shot her! And when it’s a crime of passion, what does a murderer look like, anyway? We could hardly tell.”
“Let’s have the rest,” Hayden said. “Do you know any more details about what happened?”
“I don’t know any more. Maybe he’s escaped—who knows? He’s been pretty secretive—changing his name and all. And he must have felt safe enough here. Though perhaps others haven’t been. Rose was much too kind to him.”
“Don’t stretch it, Oliver,” Hayden said. “I don’t think you ought to spread this around without talking to Nona first. I have a lot of confidence in her judgment, and I’m sure she knows all about Victor. Obviously, she trusts him.”
“The police might be interested.”
“They’ve talked to him, just as they have the rest of us,” Hayden pointed out.
“But this information about him never came out. He certainly didn’t tell them.”
“You’ll do as you like, of course,” Hayden said. “But why not get a few more facts first? You might even talk to Victor.”
“As though he’d tell us anything!”
“If that’s all,” Hayden said, standing up, “I’ll get along to the office. Can I give you a lift, Oliver? It’s begun to look like rain.”
“No, thanks. I’ll chance it,” Oliver said. “But you’d better think about Victor. Don’t dismiss this too easily.” He gave Christy a sudden smile that surprised her. “I know you will think about him,” he added, and went off with a wave of his hand.
She watched him go down the driveway with his long stride, surprised by both his smile and his words.
“What did he mean by that?” she asked Hayden.
“Maybe you’re supposed to come up with something psychic about Victor. Oliver gets under my skin sometimes, though I suppose we must make allowances because of Rose. He’s hurting a lot, and he can take it out on other people.”
Just as Hayden himself was hurting, she thought.
Now she took the opportunity to speak to him about Donny. “I’ve just learned something. Donny believes that he’s guilty of sending his mother away. Do you know about that?”
Hayden looked startled. “It’s nonsense, of course.”
“I’m sure it is, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be hard to shake. Sometimes children take on blame that isn’t theirs. Can you think of anything that might have happened to cause this?”
“Not offhand, but I’ll talk to him. Thanks for telling me. Did you get any sort of lead from Deirdre’s room, Christy?”
“I don’t know yet.” She held up the blue pouch. “I’m going to spend some time with Deirdre’s crystal now, so I’ll walk back to Nona’s.”
“Then you’d better get started. The sky doesn’t look good, and storms can blow up fast around here.”
Always, on this ridge she had a sense of woods on one side and open space and sky on the other. But now, across the valley, everything had changed. One of the near meadows still shone green in sunlight that slanted through darkening clouds, but the wooded slopes above stood like black cutouts against an ominous lemon sky.
“Thunder weather,” Hayden said. “I’d better drive you.”
But she wanted to be alone. Wanted to escape from the troubling emotions that filled both Donny and his father and clouded her inner vision. He walked with her somewhat absently as far as the path to her aunt’s house, then returned to his car.
As she hurried toward Nona’s, she tried to empty herself of everything except the sense of Deirdre that must come to her through the crystal.
A sudden gust of wind blew through woods that covered the ridge on her left, and she walked faster against its thrust. The yellow sky had grayed by the time she reached Nona’s house, and she saw that lights had been turned on inside. But she didn’t want to talk with her aunt now about anything that had happened. She must give the spirit of Deirdre’s crystal time to speak to her. It no longer seemed to pulse with its own inner life through the pouch in her hand, and she would need to be quiet and alone to awaken it again. It wouldn’t matter if rain caught her—she was close enough to shelter so she could turn back quickly to Nona’s and run if she had to.
Past Nona’s house the hill that flowed downward on the right was bare of trees and offered a clear view of mountains and sky across the deep cut of the valley. Now all that open space made her feel exposed—vulnerable. Somewhere a calf bawled for its mother, and the sound traveled and echoed in air that was suddenly still. High above a far mountaintop, lightning slanted, followed after a long count by rumbling thunder. The storm wasn’t close as yet, but hilltops and sky that had seemed serene were suddenly darkened with roiling, moving clouds.
The path led toward a wooded area that shielded another house beyond. Nona had told her that the people who lived there were away. So she wouldn’t bother anyone if she followed the path. She wanted to find a place where she could take shelter if the storm broke—a place where she could be alone with her own inner senses. A porch would do.
An awareness that someone was coming behind her cut through her preoccupation, and she turned quickly. But if anyone followed, he had stepped into near woods out of sight. She felt no particular fear. This wasn’t the place of her dream, and nothing would happen to her out here in the open.
The next flash of lightning was bright, and thunder followed immediately with a tremendous clap and a great rolling of kettledrums. Before she knew what was happening, someone rushed out of the woods and hurled himself upon her. She was thrown bruisingly to the ground and lay with her cheek in a patch of red earth where grass was sparse. Struggling to free herself, she looked up at her captor and found that it was Victor Birdcall who had hurled her to the ground. He lay beside her, whispering angrily—as though the storm could hear!
“Don’t you have any sense? Out in the open in a thunderstorm! Lie still—don’t move.”
Once Donny had called him the Thunderbolt Man, she remembered. Thunder and lightning were his business, and she lay obediently still, oddly reassured by his presence.
Rain—big crystal drops—slanted out of thunderclouds above, sounding through the woods like a rushing train. The sky had turned blue-black, with lightning flashes crackling through.
After a moment Christy protested. “I’m getting soaked, and the earth is turning to mud! Do we have to lie here?”
Victor raised his head cautiously, almost as though he sniffed the sulphurous air. “There’s a house a few yards away. When I tell you, we’ll make a dash for it.”
The next thunderclap indicated that the storm had moved farther away. Victor waited for the next lightning flash and said, “Now we go!” He dragged her up roughly and they ran toward the log cabin in its clump of woods. Once on the porch, Victor took out a key.
“I look after the place when the owners are away,” he said, and unlocked the front door. “They won’t mind.”
Christy moved inside gratefully, too cold and miserably wet to worry about Victor and the things Oliver had said about him. She viewed the big fireplace with joy.
“Oh, good! We can build a fire. There’s plenty of wood.”
“You crazy?” Victor shouted through a roll of thunder as the storm moved back upon them. “You better stay away from chimneys in a thunderstorm. Come over here to the middle of the room—it’s safest here.”
Reluctantly she let him pull her away from the fireplace, to stand dripping on a rag rug. “Why? Why here?”
“There’s a cellar under us, and an attic overhead. Soot in a chimney can be a conductor, and so are all those iron shovels and pokers by the hearth. This is the best place unless a lightning ball comes down the chimney—then we take our chances.”
He actually sounded frightened and his fear was contagious because it grew out of knowledge of this particular danger. Christy did exactly as she was told and stood shivering and dripping in the middle of the room.
“They haven’t bothered with lightning rods here, though I’ve warned them they’ll be sorry one of these days. I just hope it’s not today.”
Rain clattered on the roof, making an uproar of its own, and Christy held the wet blue pouch that contained Deirdre’s crystal against her body, as if for protection.
“What’s that?” Victor asked suspiciously.
“It’s a crystal that belonged to Deirdre Mitchell. I’ve borrowed it for a little while.”
“My grandmother knew about crystals,” Victor said.
He too was dripping as he stood beside her, and he raised his head when thunder crashed at the same time that a lightning bolt struck nearby. This was a new view of Victor Birdcall. Storms were his element, even though he feared them, and she could feel his excitement and glimpse a blue fire in his eyes—his own sort of lightning. He was a strange, rather terrifying man, and yet she didn’t feel in the least afraid of him. He had followed her and saved her from those wild elements out there. If he had really murdered his wife . . . but she wouldn’t think about such things.
“That last one struck real close,” he said, sounding almost pleased. “An oak tree, probably. Oak attracts all that anger from the sky.”
Somewhere in the house a telephone tingled—a brief burst of sound.
“It’s not ringing,” Victor told her. “That happens to our phones in these mountains. It’s the storm. Never touch a telephone in a thunderstorm.”
She was beginning to realize that thunderstorms in the Blue Ridge were very different from milder Long Island storms, and certainly to be respected.
Victor went on admonishing. “Always stand away from walls. They’re good conductors. Even better than a man. When you’re outside stay away from tall men and cattle and trees. A man is even better as a conductor than a tree. So just put your face in the mud and stay safe.”
Christy chattered her teeth in response. He crossed the room to pick up a patchwork quilt that lay on the sofa and threw it around her.
“Not much help till you get out of those wet clothes. But it will do for now. I think this will be over soon.”
“How long have you been putting up lightning rods, Victor?” she asked, pulling the quilt up to her ears.
“Most of my life. When it’s done properly, it’s an art. I’ve made the connections on Nona’s house practically invisible. When I do a good job it doesn’t show, so of course nobody looks up and tells me how beautiful it is. But when the house stays safe in storms, I know I’ve done what I do best.”
The storm appeared to have brought him to life, so that he seemed a different man—expansive on the subject he knew so well, and less suspicious and guarded. From what Oliver had said, he had reason to be guarded. However, she had stood enough of shivering wetness.
“It’s stopping now, isn’t it?”
“Hard to tell. The wind can change in a minute and then everything comes crashing back.” He listened intently. “Maybe we can chance a fire now. It’s still raining too hard to go out.”
To Christy’s relief, he busied himself at the hearth, lighting wood already stacked, now and then pausing to listen to make sure the storm hadn’t returned. In a few moments the kindling caught and flames speared upward, crackling yellow and red. Christy pulled over a stool and sat as close as she could to the warmth and cheery brightness of the fire.
“In a little while I’ll make a dash for Nona’s,” she said, shedding the quilt. She’d given up any thought of communing with the crystal for a while. That would have to wait until she was dry and comfortable.
“First we talk,” he told her abruptly, and dragged a bench over, to join her at the fire.
“This isn’t the time for talking,” she said, suddenly uneasy.
“It’s the time. Maybe it’s the only time we’ll have alone. You need to listen because you’re the one with the gift.”
“What do you know about that?”
His smile was slyly amused, more like a grimace. “I listened out on Nona’s deck last night.”
“All right.” Christy gave in. “What do you want to talk about?”
“It’s about seeing Deirdre in the woods in her white dress. I said what I did because I wanted to reassure Donny. Somebody needed to support him. And he believed he saw her.”
“You mean you didn’t see anything after all?”
“Oh, I saw someone in a white dress like Deirdre’s all right. But it wasn’t Deirdre.”
She stared at him, reaching cold hands toward the fire. “Go on.”
“I always watch the way people move—and that wasn’t Deirdre.”
“But Donny said she just drifted away in the mist.”
“When I saw her she was walking toward me and she didn’t move the way Deirdre did. Deirdre was like a dancer. On tiptoe! This person was more awkward. When whoever it was turned and ran, I knew it wasn’t any spirit. She—he—it—didn’t want me to come too close.”
“Who do you think it could have been?”
Victor reached forward with the poker and prodded a chunk of wood, so that sparks flew upward. “I couldn’t begin to guess. That dress is a loose, cover-up sort of thing. Like a tent.”
“A caftan?” Christy asked.
“I suppose. Anybody could have been under it—man or woman. Donny saw what he wanted to see—what he made up inside his own imagination, because he wants his mother to be alive.”
“You didn’t see a face?”
“No. There was a hood pulled over the head—white like all the rest.”
“Why have you told me all this?” she asked.
“Because you’re the one who will find out what happened—what is happening. You’re already on the road and you won’t stop now.” He stood up with his back to the fire, looking down at her. You won’t stop because it’s your way—your road—to help Hayden and Donny.”
His eyes seemed darker with the fire-shine behind him—a deep, dark blue, and very wide and open, as though they searched her mind, her spirit.
“I’m not sure what I can do,” she told him, letting the dark fire of his eyes hold her own gaze. She felt a little spacy, as though he might be hypnotizing her—perhaps influencing her mind for some purpose of his own.
She pulled herself out of the spell she’d begun to feel and stared into the fire, where a log fell, sending more sparks up the chimney. Away from the fire, the rest of the cabin seemed dark and chill, with shadows that flickered unsteadily up the walls.
“Did you like Deirdre?” Her sudden question came as a surprise to Christy herself—prompted by some inner voice?
“I don’t know,” he said. “She couldn’t be counted on. She was like smoke, and you could never be sure from one minute to the next where she’d be or what she’d do.”
“Do you think she’s dead?”
“I only know that someone was masquerading in her dress.”
“Will you tell Hayden?”
“Somebody will,” he said cryptically, and glanced out a window. “You can leave now,” he told her abruptly. “It’s stopped raining.”
Victor Birdcall ceased talking as suddenly as he’d begun. It was as though he’d closed a door and shut himself away from her. Reluctantly, she left the fire. In spite of Victor’s strangeness, heat and light made the hearth seem a safer place than the cold, shadowy room.
She could see through the windows, however, that the sky had lightened, with clouds shredding away and nearby mountains turning green again. Mist rolled into the folds, soft and fluffy as cotton, making the crests float like the etched hilltops in a Japanese print. When she reached the door, Christy turned back.
“You ought to know,” she said, “that Oliver Vaughn has been investigating you. He has learned where you’ve been for the last few years and why you were there. He’s telling everyone.”
When he faced the light, Victor’s eyes were no longer dark but that intense blue again, and the lids came down to narrow them. He said nothing at all.
“I think you ought to know that Oliver wants to take some action against you,” she went on, a little fearful because he’d turned silent and distant. “I don’t know whether Hayden believed him or not, but he told him to stop talking.”
Christy had taken her hand from the doorknob, and Victor reached past and pulled open the door. He made no response to anything she’d told him, but merely waited for her to leave. She went quickly out onto the wet path with its patches of red mud. Now she ran without looking back, and once she slipped, smearing herself with red.
Nona was waiting for her on the front deck, and she shook her head in reproach. “You shouldn’t be out in a storm like that!”
“I know.” Christy was out of breath. “Victor rescued me.”
“Good for him! Take off your shoes, Christy—don’t tramp that stuff into the house. Then go and take a hot bath and change into something dry. I’ll bring you tea and honey, and we’ll talk about a few things.”
More talk! She wanted only to be alone where she could let whatever was clamoring to be released by the crystal come through. It was ready to speak to her now and she wanted to listen.
Deirdre was right to be afraid of me. Now she’s gone—in the mist and rocks and rainbow, where she always belonged.
The dress must be got rid of, and I think I know how. There is a game I can play—perhaps a deadly game. But that’s the kind that always fascinates me.