The strip of stores that edged the shopping center in Nellysford was divided at one point by an alley that had been made into a small park. Low wooden benches invited, and new plantings made it an attractive spot. The entire shopping area was well lighted, and tonight a big moon sailed overhead, silvering the dark hills beyond the highway.
Liliana Dukas sat on a bench, waiting for them. For once she hadn’t dressed for the occasion, but had come in slacks and an embroidered Filipino blouse under an open cardigan. The evening was cool and clear and this space seemed set apart from shops and shoppers. No one else was using it at the moment, and Nona led the way to where Lili waited.
She looked up and smiled at her sister. “Good! You found them, Nona. Josef knew you would. Do sit down, all of you, and I’ll try to reach him.”
Christy sat opposite her mother, and Hayden slid along the bench beside Christy. Nona seemed uncomfortable and unable to sit still. She walked up and down beside the benches, her tension evident.
Once more Lili went through her ritual of prayer and request for help. Then she sat very still with her hands folded in front of her. The silence grew endlessly long. Christy watched cars turning in and out of the parking spaces nearby, yet they seemed to occupy a different, faraway world. Only this small circle waiting for Josef seemed real. Though when his voice came through Lili, Christy jumped in spite of herself. Hayden put a quieting hand on her arm and they listened intently.
“You have embarked on an earthly search,” Josef proclaimed. “It is necessary to find that for which you search as quickly as possible. Much harm has already been done, and one of you is in grave danger.”
Josef’s voice faded out, and Nona spoke for all of them, since Lili, in a sense, was elsewhere.
“Can you tell us which one is in danger?” she asked.
“You will know when it is time. Your paths lead toward the same goal in different ways. Once they converge, there is danger and possible death. But there are always free choices within the pattern.”
Once more Christy felt impatient with Josef, and she wished Lili were not so devoted to this particular entity.
“You’re talking in riddles, Josef,” she told him. “I think you enjoy riddles. Tell us what to do—where to look. Help us to find the way!”
He didn’t seem annoyed by her words, but then that was one of the virtues of existing on another energy plane. One was never upset by foolish mortals.
“Part of the answer lies with the llamas,” he said. “There is a woman who will try to prevent you from finding what you seek.”
“Do you mean Floris Fox?” Nona asked.
“You will find the answer with the llamas.”
“But we don’t even know what we should look for!” Christy cried. “Help us, Josef!”
Josef was silent and they couldn’t be sure if he was still listening.
Hayden asked a question, sounding matter-of-fact. “You said part of the answer lies in the llamas, Josef. Where will we find the other part?”
“There is a man. He is bound by his own fears and his own beliefs. He is of American Indian heritage. This man knows more than he understands, and he keeps his secrets well.”
“You’re talking about Victor Birdcall now?” Nona said. “Do you mean that he’s not to be trusted—that he is part of the evil things that have happened?”
“This you must find out. He has yet to speak out about what he has seen.”
Josef went away with his usual aggravating suddenness, and Lili stirred and stretched, looking a little dazed, as she always did after such a session.
“I heard it all,” she told them. “But I don’t understand any more than you do. Please take me back to your house, Nona. I think it is nearly time for me to return to my own life. Josef will have nothing more to say. He has given you something to work on, and he knows you must finish this on your own.”
Christy and Hayden walked with her as Nona led the way to the station wagon, bright with its brave rainbow decals. When they’d watched Nona and Lili drive away, Christy spoke helplessly.
“What do you make of all that?”
Hayden’s smile was wry. “As Josef says, there is always a choice. Victor or Floris—which one do we talk to first, and when?”
“He didn’t really say we should talk to Floris,” Christy pointed out. “He only spoke of the llamas.”
“Who aren’t going to tell us very much. So we’d better try Victor. Shall we see him tonight? It’s not awfully late.”
“Yes, let’s. He may really have seen something he isn’t talking about, since his cabin’s pretty close to Oliver’s house.”
They drove back through the mountains, the lights of little houses along the road shining in the darkness, and the Jeep’s headlights carving the way ahead. Dark hills and valleys rose and fell mysteriously around them in the moonlight, sometimes without any habitation at all.
When they reached Redlands and followed the way across the valley up toward Victor’s, they could see the lights from his cabin through the trees. He must have heard them pull up in the clearing in front, but he didn’t come to look out. They went up the steps together, and Hayden knocked.
Victor opened the door, and Hayden and Christy stepped into the main room of the cabin. He had lighted a fire as the night air cooled, and its flames cast shimmering shadows over the papers he had spread out upon the floor. Christy recognized Rose Vaughn’s rough sketches for her book.
“Perhaps that’s what Josef meant,” she said to Hayden. “Not the real llamas, but these.”
Victor stood beside them. “Another interview with Josef?”
Hayden nodded. “Yes, and he told us to come to you. What is all this?” He gestured toward the drawings.
As Christy explained, Hayden knelt to look at them, picking each up in turn. He smiled sadly at the first Deirdre sketch.
“Rose caught her very well. Deirdre would love this. She could laugh at herself. Sometimes.”
“I wonder how well you knew Deirdre?” Victor asked softly.
Addressed to Deirdre’s husband, that seemed a startling question, but Hayden didn’t look surprised. “Sometimes I didn’t know her at all. And often, just when I believed I could reach her, she slipped away and eluded me.”
Christy dropped down beside Hayden so that she could study Rose’s sketches again. There was the Deirdre llama, coquettish in lace and ribbons. Then the later one with her crystal diadem askew, her fragile garments trampled, and Donny nearby crying, Sinh on his shoulder, looking wild as she watched her mistress. This drawing troubled Hayden, though he didn’t comment.
“What did Josef come up with this time?” Victor asked.
“He only mentioned your Indian background,” Hayden said. “He told us that you know more than you understand—whatever that means.”
“Or perhaps I understand more than I really know.” Victor went to lean against the mantel, his arm resting between a Zuni doll and the Indian pottery. He seemed to have gone off into one of his own deep silences.
Christy’s impatience crept into her voice. “Don’t go inscrutable on us! If you know anything about Oliver that would help, please tell us.”
For a moment longer he stood looking into the fire. Then he went to his desk across the room and picked up another drawing. “I didn’t show you this one, Christy. But now you’d better see it. Though I’d rather not have shown it to Hayden.”
Christy took the sketch and studied it in dismay. Rose had drawn the Deirdre llama again, this time with long, fluttering lashes and a look that was somehow adoring as she followed a male llama along the fence of Floris’s pen. The male llama, however, was not Hayden but Oliver, Rose’s husband. And he didn’t seem indifferent.
She showed it to Hayden, who responded angrily. “That’s crazy! Deirdre never looked at Oliver twice. She detested everything he stood for.”
“Read what’s written on the back,” Victor said.
Christy turned the drawing over. Across the reverse side of the rough sketch, Rose had written a few words: Oh, Oliver, how could you?
“This is idiotic!” Hayden took the drawing and tossed it aside. For a moment, Christy thought he might stalk out of the room.
Victor said wearily, “Come and sit down. I never wanted to talk about any of this. I didn’t want to know what was going on. But since it’s possible that Oliver killed her, you’d better know.”
“Killed who?” Christy demanded. “Deirdre?”
“Rose, of course,” Victor said. “Because he was obsessed with Deirdre, as she was with him. She told me as much one time when she came up here to her Sun Wheel. I tried to stop her from telling me, but I can understand what happened. Oliver looked like a hero out of some legend. Rose knew what he was like and she loved him anyway. But when she found out about Deirdre it must have been too much, and he had to be rid of his wife. I don’t know this—I only understand that it would have been possible. That’s what obsession can do.”
Hayden listened grimly. “I don’t believe this, Victor. I knew Deirdre well enough to be sure she was incapable of obsession, except with her own spirit world. You’ve gone down the wrong road.”
“I wanted to stay out of this,” Victor said. “It wasn’t up to me to tell you after she disappeared, but I glimpsed Deirdre up there at Oliver’s a few times. I was out chopping firewood, and I saw her through the trees.”
“But you told me that the figure Donny saw that time wasn’t Deirdre,” Christy reminded him.
“That’s the strange part!” Victor shook his head as though he wanted to clear it of cobwebs. “When I saw her move, I didn’t think it was Deirdre, though the woman dressed like her. I did know that Oliver had someone up there with him after Rose died. And as long as he was alive, I couldn’t interfere. The problem wasn’t mine to work out, Hayden.”
“Thanks a lot,” Hayden said.
“I’m not trying to defend my position,” Victor told him. “But maybe I know more about circumstantial evidence than you do. I know about the wrong conclusions people can leap to. Rose suspected—as you can tell by those sketches. Sure, it looked obvious—but it wasn’t up to me to expose whatever was going on.”
“Uninvolvement isn’t a virtue,” Hayden said harshly. “Not when all of us were out searching for Deirdre, including Oliver!”
Christy still knelt on the floor before Rose’s sketches, but now the voices of the men seemed to fade away. The room had begun to fill with mist, closing in around her, hiding Hayden and Victor from view, forming a frame, as if she looked through a window. The scene itself was misty, as though it might be raining. Someone was there in the center of the picture, covered by a long raincoat with a hood that shrouded the face. Who this figure was she couldn’t tell, but he or she was digging with a spade. Christy had the strong sense of something being either buried or dug up, and she watched for some revelation. Then a second figure came out of the mists, moving lightly on delicate legs—a graceful young llama that gave her a clue to the setting.
Fog erased the pictures as though someone had closed the window, and Christy returned to the present. Both men were watching her.
Victor said, “You went away, Christy. What did you see?”
“Someone was in the llama pen,” she told him. “Someone who was digging—either to bury something or to dig something up. I don’t know what it means.”
“Well, we can’t go digging up the whole llama pen to find out,” Hayden said impatiently. “Though if the figure was Floris, I suppose we could ask and see if she’d tell us something.”
“I don’t know that it was Floris. It could have been a man. I don’t even know if it’s something that has already happened, or an event that’s still ahead.”
“That’s a big help!” Hayden was still upset by Victor’s revelations.
“I’m sorry,” Christy told him. “Lili says this happens often with psychic messages. Unless there’s some evidence in what’s communicated to give a time, there’s no telling if it’s past or future. Or even something that’s happening right now.”
Victor looked out the window. “It’s started raining since you came in. So if you saw someone in a raincoat, perhaps whoever it is is burying something now.”
“I don’t think so,” Christy said doubtfully. “I remember now that there was a sense of daylight—perhaps around dawn.”
Hayden dismissed this speculation. “I don’t think you’re right, Victor, but I think we should go up to Oliver’s and see if we can find any evidence of Deirdre being there—of having been there. If there’s nothing, then you’re wrong and we can forget it. Can we get into his house?”
“I have a key,” Victor said. “Since it’s been standing empty, it’s been locked up. There’s a distant cousin who now owns the place, and I’ve agreed to look after it for now.”
“Then let’s go,” Hayden said.
When Victor had picked up the drawings and put them away, they went out into the drizzle to the Jeep and drove the long way around to the upper road. Oliver’s house was dark, with a deserted look about it. Victor unlocked the door and turned on lights. Remembering the last time she’d come into this house, Christy glanced around uneasily.
“Suppose we take separate routes to save time,” Hayden suggested. “We’ll each look for traces of someone who might have stayed here besides Oliver. We can watch for anything that might be unusual or out of order.”
Christy had no wish to go upstairs, so she chose the kitchen area. With one exception everything there appeared to have been put away since the last time Oliver had used it. However, a paring knife lay on a counter, with a potato beside it. The potato had been cut in two, and if it had been there for long it would have blackened, but the cut part was only a little brown. Someone had used this kitchen recently.
Hayden called from another part of the lower floor. “Christy? Come here a minute, will you?”
She walked through the living room, which seemed in order, except for an old newspaper or two, and the table surfaces that had gathered dust. When she stepped to the door of what must have been Oliver’s study, she could see a good deal of disorder—probably natural for a man who was busy with his work. She remembered that someone had said he was writing a book.
“Look at this, Christy!” Hayden gestured toward a row of volumes along one wall. “Oliver had a whole collection of stuff on occult and psychical phenomena—parapsychology. Pretty strange for someone so set against the whole subject?”
“Perhaps they gave him ammunition for his arguments. Hayden, did you know what sort of book he was working on?”
“He never talked about it to me.”
In the brief silence that followed, Christy experienced an instant of suspended time. This sort of thing was coming more often now—probably because she was so entirely involved. A sense of foreknowledge filled her. No mists, no visions, but only an intense fear—an anticipation of some horror she couldn’t place. Then it was gone as though it had never happened. She knew only that it had to do with what Hayden had been telling her—something about Oliver’s research for a book.
Hayden noticed nothing as she went on. “Nobody has mentioned a manuscript being found, so I don’t know what happened to it, if there really was one.”
“That’s because he burned it,” a voice said from the doorway.
They looked around, startled, to see Eve Corey watching them.
“What are you up to?” she asked. “And who’s walking around upstairs? I went over to your house to talk with you, Hayden, and Leonie said you’d gone out for dinner. I could see lights in this place from across the valley, so I drove over. Would the sheriff be interested in what you’re doing here?” A clear challenge sounded in her voice.
“What does it matter?” Hayden said. “Go ahead and call him, if you want to. But first, maybe you can help us. What do you mean about Oliver burning his manuscript?”
Eve looked more than ever like the llama sketch Rose had done of her, Christy thought—with eyes that bulged a little, and a skittish air, as though she might take off at a trot at any moment.
Instead, as if to quiet herself, she sat down at Oliver’s desk and clasped her hands together. “I don’t know why he burned it. I was a good friend—for longer than he knew Rose—and sometimes he talked to me more than to anyone else. I was here the day he took up the pages he’d written—he hadn’t done all that much, really—and stuffed them in the fireplace. I had the feeling that it hurt him to burn them, but I think he was afraid in some way of what he was writing.”
Victor had come quietly into the room behind Eve, and he stood with a finger to his lips, not wanting her to know he was there.
“Did you ever think,” Hayden asked Eve, “that Deirdre might be hiding here in Oliver’s house after she was supposed to have disappeared?”
Eve hesitated a moment. “Why on earth would you think that?”
“Victor believes that he saw her up here,” Christy said quietly.
“That Indian!” Eve said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he put that copperhead in the bath with Oliver! He’s the one we should all be afraid of!”
Her vehemence was too great, Christy thought, and wondered how she might get Eve to open up.
Though Victor still didn’t move, Christy saw his eyes darken, and she thought of Donny’s Thunderbolt Man. Then he went away as quietly as he had appeared, with Eve still unaware that he’d been there.
Eve began to think out loud. “There was a book that Oliver used a lot as reference. That’s the space on the shelf where it always stood. It was a big tome on abnormal psychology, and I remember a chapter on siblings that seemed to interest him especially. Once he went down to talk to Floris Fox about some of the examples in that chapter.”
“Why Floris?” Hayden asked.
“Because she comes of a whole family of siblings—she had seven sisters and brothers. So she knew all about the quarreling and the jealousy—and sometimes affection. She even had a couple of sisters who fell in love with the same man, and they haven’t spoken to each other in years—though neither one married him. I went along with Oliver that time when he talked to Floris about her family.”
“I don’t know if that has any bearing now, Eve,” Hayden said. “We came into the house to see if we could find any trace of Deirdre staying here since Oliver died. Victor thinks he’s seen her, but I don’t believe this. Whatever happened—if she was alive—she wouldn’t come here.”
“There’s a cut potato in the kitchen,” Christy said, “and it hasn’t blackened. So someone has been here.”
“Then let’s go on looking,” Hayden decided. “You might as well help us, Eve. Since you knew Oliver pretty well, perhaps you’re better acquainted with the house than we are.”
“I knew Rose when she lived here.” Eve sounded defensive. “I know where she hid a few things from Oliver. He was pretty scornful of her children’s books. They were beneath his notice, so she’d work when he was off at his teaching. Then she’d get everything out of sight before he came home. It’s funny her llama book never turned up. Even though she never showed it to me I know she was working on it, and after she died I really looked for it.”
Neither Christy nor Hayden said anything. Eve went into the living room and stopped in surprise. Victor Birdcall sat on the sofa, looking through a newspaper that was weeks old.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded.
“Victor has the key,” Hayden said curtly. “He let us in.”
Abruptly, Eve changed her mind about whatever help she might have offered. “I’ll go along home now. I only came over because I saw the lights up here and thought I’d take a look.”
“Don’t go yet,” Christy said quickly. “You spoke about a place where Rose used to put her work, so Oliver wouldn’t find it. Can you tell us where that was?”
Eve hesitated. “I suppose it doesn’t matter if you know now. There’s an attic, with old trunks and boxes and stuff. Oliver had a dust allergy, so he never went up there. But that’s where Rose kept her work when she knew he’d be around. Then there wouldn’t be any put-downs.”
“Show us, Eve,” Hayden said. “Come up there with us.”
“No, thanks. I’ve had enough of this. I’m going home.”
She walked out of the room abruptly, and they heard her slam the front door.
“Let’s have a look at the attic,” Hayden said. “There’s nowhere else to search. How do we get up there, Victor?”
Victor showed them where stairs led up from the second-floor hallway. He had brought a flashlight, and he went up first, while Hayden and Christy climbed the steep flight behind him. The door at the top was locked and there was no key. Experimentally, Victor reached along the ledge overhead and found it. The key turned silently in the lock, and Victor went ahead to switch on an overhead bulb that dangled from the raftered ceiling.
Shadows came to life in the big, unfurnished space, and a wave of stale air greeted them. Up here, rain sounded noisily on the roof.
Trunks, boxes, pieces of old furniture, and discarded household items, were piled everywhere. A clearing had been made for a table that held a covered typewriter, some notebooks and pads, and a jar of pencils. No work in progress was in sight. Christy felt a new disliking for Oliver because of the way he’d treated his wife’s very real gift.
“She used to carry her portable typewriter downstairs so she could work in the kitchen when Oliver was out of the house,” Victor said. “It wasn’t that he minded what she was doing, though maybe he was a little jealous of her success—he just poked fun at whatever she wrote, and that could damage her confidence, in spite of her talent.”
At the far end of the attic several trunks had been piled up, forming a wall that hid from view what lay behind it. On top of one trunk stood a table lamp, an electric heater, and a fan. Christy went quickly around the trunks and stood looking at what lay beyond. A futon had been placed on the floor, with a pillow and blankets, offering a sleeping place. Against the wall stood a cracked mirror, and a wire had been strung to hold hangers with a few articles of clothing.
“These aren’t Deirdre’s things,” Hayden said.
“They wouldn’t be, Hay,” Victor reminded him. “When Deirdre left, she didn’t take much with her, did she? Except maybe this?”
He had found a rolled-up bundle on a dusty table and he shook out a long white caftan. Whoever had masqueraded in the woods must have worn this gown. It was the same garment that had lured Christy down from the rear deck at Nona’s house. She couldn’t remember now where she’d left it after they went to the place where Rose had died. She hadn’t wanted to ever touch it again, and she didn’t touch it now.
Their light-fingered, malicious spirit had clearly brought the gown here, and now the question rose once more as to whether it had been Deirdre in the woods, or Deirdre hiding in this house. Someone had certainly been camping out here, and if not Deirdre, then who? But of course it must have been Deirdre!
They were inside Oliver’s house tonight. I could see them through the kitchen windows, though I didn’t dare watch for long. There was no way to keep them from going to the attic, where I’ve hidden since Oliver died. After Rose was gone, of course, I lived downstairs with him for a time.
It was a good thing I persuaded Oliver to burn those pages of the book he’d started. He told me what he was writing about—obsession. He thought he knew enough to write about it. I know a great deal more. I was obsessed by him for much too long a time. Deirdre never liked him. In her way, I suppose, she really cared about Hayden—who would have been my enemy if he’d known about me. I’ve always pretended in order to keep what the spy stories call my “cover.” Deirdre will never dare to betray me. She knows what I can do, and how much stronger I am than she is.
Oliver was such a gorgeous man. I could never stand men who were ugly. He was sensual, strongly sexual, and I wanted him as I’d never wanted any other man. That was obsession. But in the end he proved to be weak and ineffectual. Would he have done to Rose what I did? No—he’d never have had that sort of passion. In his mind, where he thought he was so securely intellectual—he was nothing—an empty shell. He would have betrayed me in the end, out of basic weakness. Just the same, I only meant to frighten him.
He had his uses for a time and was some protection for me, but that came to an end as I began to know him. I suppose he was obsessed with me in his way, since he couldn’t get me out of his life. And since he couldn’t escape, it would have been much better for all of us if he’d killed himself.
It seemed such fun at first—playing Deirdre’s spirit self in the woods; leaving Rose’s slippers around for Victor to find, and planting the needlepoint in the llama pen. But I’m bored with those childish tricks, and I must get away—find a place where I can live safely. I can’t take Deirdre with me. My little sister has become too great a burden. I’ve kept our secret well over the years—since she never wanted to acknowledge me. But now time has run out, and it must be done, once and for all, though I’m still not sure exactly how.
Perhaps Deirdre and Christy at the same time? If I can coax them out together. Christy won’t be suspicious, but Deirdre will know what I intend. I wonder if Donny can be used to help me? From a distance he still thinks I’m Deirdre. That beastly cat knows better!