Domino. Part 12

"I'm all right," I told him quickly, before he could question me.

Gail came to meet us at the dining room door, looking trim and self-confident, having changed from her Levi's to green jumper and blouse instead of her uniform.

When she greeted me, I looked at her with no expression at all, and Hillary touched my arm. "Are you really all right, Laurie? You're ent.i.tled to fall apart a bit, you know. Don't try to be too controlled. Let go, Laurie."

"Is that what I am-controlled?"

"You do look a bit frazzled/' Gail said. "Perhaps hot food will help and something to drink. Lunch-dinner, reallyseems to be ready, so let's sit down." She slipped her hand easily through my arm and drew me into the dining room as though we were good friends.

Caleb was already there, looking as displeased as ever, though he pulled out my chair courteously. Hillary took the place next to me and gazed about the room in enjoyment.

"What a good stage setting this would make," he said. "I must remember that old fellow up there over the mantel. Laughing Boy. I'll bet he could tell a few stories if we got him to talk."

His light note didn't relieve my mood. For me the elk's head over the mantel seemed a thoroughly melancholy touch, and not anything I could laugh about.

While plates of thick roast beef, browned potatoes, and homegrown b.u.t.ter beans were pa.s.sed down the table, Gail spoke again.

"It's very odd about your memory, Laurie. It seems to be so selective. Don't you remember anything about this room?"

I made an effort to behave normally. "Very little. There's a lot I can't remember. But there is something I've wanted to ask you. When I went into the back parlor today and turned on the lights, I saw something strange. Mostly the cobwebs and dust hadn't been disturbed in years. But someone had been in that room recently. There were other footprints besides mine, and I could see where a few things had been moved, as though someone had been searching. Was it you, Gail?"

Her surprise seemed genuine. "I've been in that room only once, and hardly any farther than the door. I was curious, but it gives me the'creeps and I didn't stay."

"Someone searching for something, Laurie?" Caleb repeated. "How extraordinary! Mrs. Morgan closed that room off years ago, and I've looked into it rarely."

148.

"Someone has been in there," I said. "And not long ago."

Caleb and Gail exchanged a look that seemed to carry quick suspicion of each other, but no one said anything more about the back parlor.

As we started to eat, Gail went on. "Mrs. Morgan must have held up a lot better than she usually does for you to have stayed with her that long, Laurie."

I knew how curious she was to learn what had occurred in Persis' room, but I didn't mean to satisfy her.

"I think she can hold up when she wants to," I said. "I don't think she has any intention of dying."

"Sometimes she talks about a change in her will," Gail mused.

Caleb looked at her sharply. "What does she mean by that?"

"Probably she's thinking of her granddaughter."

Caleb said nothing more, but I found myself watching him again, wondering why he seemed so much of an enigma..He was a man who waited in the background, never seeking the spotlight, but watching rather ominously. And perhap^ manipulating more than I had guessed?

In any case I didn't care about my grandmother's will or Gail's casual gossip. My only regret was that when Persis Morgan was gone, whoever was left would probably sell out quickly to Mark Ingram. Perhaps that didn't really matter. Times changed, and she couldn't sit forever across the right of-way that a man as strong as Mark Ingram coveted. Jon Maddocks' words came back to me-the thing he had said about the house Malcolm and Sissy had built in Domino. That it ought to belong to me. A curious remark. I wanted neither that house nor this one. Especially not this one. I only wanted to know those things my grandmother had skimmed over, avoided, or distorted. I was ready to open the door wide and walk through it.

"Grandmother Persis has explained what happened in the back parlor," I told Gail.

149.

"Can't we stop talking about that?" Caleb said.

Hillary disagreed. "Perhaps now is the best of all possible times," he said quietly.

Gail gave in. "All right then. I'm sure this is a subject that is more upsetting to you, Laurie, than to the rest of us. Which of the stories did she tell you?"

So that was it-an a.s.sortment of fabrications? Was that why memory hadn't stirred in me?

"She said that my father was shot by an intruder who got away with some family jewels. I think I must have been there in that room when it happened."

"I understand that you were," Gail agreed, and threw a look at Caleb that seemed faintly challenging. "Of course that was the official story," she went on. "I grew up hearing it since my family lives not too'far from Jasper. My brothers are still there. That was the story that got into the papers and was accepted by the police."

I hadn't been aware that she'd lived in these mountains as a child. Now I understood why she had so much gossipy information.

We managed to go on eating as though this were an ordinary conversation. But then this was all old history for Caleb and Gail, and no longer something that had just occurred to a living man.

"Where was Noah Armand when this happened?" I asked Caleb.

He put his fork down carefully, as though I had startled him. "Noah walked out of this house a week before your fatherdied. And he was never seen again. He had been quarreling with your grandmother for some time, and I think she probably told him to leave."

Gail made a small explosive sound of derision, and Caleb looked at her coldly.

"Take care," he said.

150.

I asked another question. "My father was Noah's stepson. How did my father get along with his mother's new husband?"

"What does any of this matter now?" Caleb stared at his plate.

"Perhaps it does matter." Hillary spoke so softly that I think we were all startled, having forgotten his presence. "Perhaps it matters if, as Mrs. Morgan says, Mark Ingram was Noah's friend. So why don't you tell us, Caleb?"

"All right-if you must know, it's true that Richard Morgan, Laurie's father, never liked his mother's second choice as husband. Sons hardly ever do. Armand was a great deal younger than your grandmother, Laurie, and your father was protective of his mother and suspicious of Armand's motives in marrying her."

"Then what happened to Noah?" Hillary asked in that same soft tone that seemed somehow persuasive, so that his questions were answered.

"We don't know," Caleb said shortly. "We believe he must be dead." *

Hillary pressed him further. "Why do you think that?"

"Because of the sort of man he was," Caleb answered. "Bad pennies always turn up. If he's alive, he's still Mrs. Morgan's husband. It's hard to believe he wouldn't make claims, put on some sort of pressure."

"What if he has?" Hillary asked, his tone gentle, almost amused.

We all stared at him, startled, and he laughed.

"Don't look so shocked. It's just a thought. Why don't you check with Mark Ingram?"

"Let it alone!" Caleb said sharply. "Don't go digging Noah Armand up-if it's really a grave he's in."

I wondered again what it was that had so alarmed Caleb Hawes.

"Perhaps that's a good idea, Hillary," I said. "Perhaps I will ask Mr. Ingram when we have dinner with him tonight."

Hillary's smile approved of me. Then he turned gracefully to other subjects, drawing Caleb and Gail into talk about Mrs. Morgan, Jasper, and Ingram's plans, drawing them away from more dangerous topics. Once more I was grateful for his social skills, manipulative though they sometimes seemed.

I was glad to be left to my own thoughts. An obvious suspicion was growing in my mind. Had it been Noah who returned to the house after he had left? Returned quietly, to break in, kill my father, pick up some of his wife's jewels, and disappear before he could be stopped? Had Persis, to avoid scandal, developed the lie about an intruder that everyone had believed ever since? But I could put none of this into words now.

When we'd finished our meal, Caleb said he had work to do in his office upstairs, and Hillary asked rne to come with him to the Opera House, which he wanted to visit again.

I said, "Not right now, please. There's something I must do. Caleb, Grandmother Persis told me that there are alb.u.ms of family pictures. I'd like to go through them before I leave. If you could help by identifying any of the faces . . . ?"

"I can show you the alb.u.ms, Laurie," Gail offered. "I've taken them up to Mrs. Morgan often enough. Most of the pictures are marked with names underneath, so you won't need help in identifying them." She turned to Hillary. "May I go to the Opera House with you? I love that old place, and I can show you some of its secrets that you'd never find out for yourself. Mark has been showing them to me."

Hillary grinned at me a bit c.o.c.kily. After all, I'd had first chance. "Don't you have some duties in the house?" he asked Gail.

"Not today. I've been banished for now."

"That won't do." Caleb spoke sharply. "You can't sidestep everything like this. I'll talk to Mrs. Morgan."

Library Jl 152.

"Yes, you do that," Gail said. "In the meantime I'll show Hillary the theater."

I found myself watching her, decidedly troubled. Gail was a nurse, and it seemed odd that she could take her position so lightly. It was possible that she knew Mark Ingram better than she pretended. In which case his influence in this house was much greater than I liked to think. Perhaps she held a secure if unacknowledged place here that not even my grandmother understood?

"Go ahead," I said to Hillary. "I'll look at alb.u.ms for now."

Before they left, Gail set the big books out for me in the parlor, and I curled up on a plush sofa with one of them on my knees. My wish was to stay away from Ingram's Opera House because it was enemy territory. Besides, I was beginning to feel a new and enormous need to learn about my father's family. My family. This must be done in the few days left to me in this house.

Gail's small overtures to Hillary didn't really matter. In fact, perhaps that was part of what troubled me. That so much that I had believed important was ceasing to matter.

Soon I must talk again with Jon Maddocks. He knew Persis Morgan, knew what she was really like. Besides-I wanted to see him again. Perhaps of them all he was the one person I could trust. He might tell me off bluntly at times when he disapproved of me, but there was also a chance that he was my friend. In this house I was badly in need of a friend.

X.

The first alb.u.m I opened contained not snapshots but early photographs, a little faded and stiffly posed. I found Sissy at once-the same face I'd seen in the framed picture upstairs. The face that resembled mine. Some were theatrical pictures from her Silver Circuit days, when she had entertained in the larger mining camps under her mother's chaperonage. That lady had a strong chin and a domineering loolc in her eyes, while the young Sissy was all curves and smiles, melting and loving, the frothy skirts of her costumes swirling flirtatiously about her. My resemblance to her was only superficial, I decided. But Persis must have inherited an autocratic strain from Sissy's mother.

The first picture I discovered of Malcolm Tremayne fascinated me, and I followed him eagerly through the pages. There seemed something romantic and rather devil-may-care and das.h.i.+ng about him. In the early photos he appeared as a well-dressed young man, obviously just over from England. In later pictures he grew more American in appearance, more informal in his clothes, but no less arresting. There was one of him standing before the opening to what was probably the Old '54.

Desolate mine. That same entrance that I had seen boarded over and well padlocked.

There was also one of Sissy and Malcolm outside their spanking-new house in Domino. In every picture he seemed a striking, exciting sort of man, and probably a reckless one in his younger days.

There were some marvelous pictures of Domino too, as it had once b'een, with the houses intact and people in oldfas.h.i.+oned dress in the street. What a pull that lost little town had for me-as though it had claimed me long ago and was not yet ready to let me go free. Perhaps I would ride there again before I went away.

In later pictures the posing was done before the house in Jasper-when it was the Silver Castle. It was easy to see how their fortunes had changed. Sissy was plumper, more matronly, but still smiling, while Malcolm looked handsome and successful, and perhaps a bit piratical with his flowing mustache. Apparently Sissy hadn't borne children with the prodigality of her day, for only Persis came up repeatedly, first as a little girl and then as a young woman. Not a beautiful woman, but with an arresting look about her and a poise that gave her a great deal more than beauty. She must have had great authority of manner, even as a young woman, and the resemblance tO her father was evident.

She had grown up with Johnny Morgan, the son of Tyler Morgan, Malcolm's partner, and clearly he'd been a strong personality in his own right. Together they looked like a powerful pair-Persis and Johnny-well matched and content with each other's company. Their marriage must have been a good one, lasting until the time of his far too early death. There was one picture taken at his grave, with expensive floral pieces heaped about it, but my grandmother was absent from the scene. There was no mention of where he was buried.

As the years went by, fewer pictures were taken, though sud- denly I came upon one of Richard Morgan when he was a young man. This I pored over, trying to recapture something lost so long ago. His seemed a good face, both strong and gentle, with dark, intelligent eyes, and it was faintly familiar to me. Following were several vacant places in the alb.u.m where pictures had been removed. Pictures of my father when he was older? Of my mother? Of me? I found only one or two more marked ones of my father.

The snapshot age had long begun, and the pages grew more crowded with smaller, more informal pictures, often unlabeled. I fancied that I could find Richard here and there-and certainly that was my mother, Marybeth, standing beside Persis in a group picture-very lovely and young. Not at all the worn, sad woman I remembered. There I was, too, as a small child, holding onto the hand of my tall father, whom I looked up at adoringly. I studied this picture with a lump in my throat, but I couldn't bring him strongly back to mind. No attempt had been made to remove all traces of us in these smaller shots. Perhaps my grandmother had given up her system of identification before she got this far.

Here, too, I found young Caleb, stiff and correct in one picture, perhaps fearful of my grandmothei, who stood beside him. The snapshot of a curly-headed boy on a horse caught my attention, and I looked closely for a resemblance to Jon Maddocks. I could find it readily in the jaunty, slightly arrogant way in which he sat his saddle, filled with confidence, knowing his place to be one worth occupying. But I didn't find him again. I wondered if Persis would mind if I took this picture away with me. Just to help me recapture a memory.

And finally I came upon Noah Armand's picture-a fulllength snapshot, beneath which someone had lettered his name. He had been a tall, thin man, rather handsome, perhaps with a certain appeal if he hadn't looked so lugubrious in this shot. He squinted into the sun, so that his eyes were narrowed, and heavy black brows added to the scowling look. Even in so small a picture he appeared to be an enormously dissatisfied man. He looked familiar as well, as though I had known him and feared him too.

What had he wanted in his alliance with Persis Morgan? Money, of course, perhaps position. But what had there been about him to charm her into such a marriage?

In the picture his clothes seemed well cut, and he wore them with a certain a.s.surance. Obviously he had been an adventurer, wandering from place to place until he'd come here and Persis had recklessly taken him for a husband. Of course a single small picture couldn't give me the measure of a man, and I was reading into this some of the bits of information about him that I had picked up. I knew one thing for certain. I hadn't liked him.

Persistently now, I searched for more shots of Noah, but the last of the alb.u.ms came to an end with only empty pages. More than ever I wanted to know the story of his leaving a week before my father's death. That seemed altogether too fortuitous, and I wondered that the police had accepted it and made no connection with his possible return.

When I'd put the alb.u.ms aside, I sat for a little while pondering my next move. If something was to be done to aid my grandmother, I had to know more than she was willing to tell me. All questions seemed to return to Noah Armand-where they stopped. Tonight I would follow up my promise to ask Mark Ingram about him, but perhaps there was someone else I could question right now.

Caleb Hawes. If I could find him alone.

I went back to the kitchen, where Bitsy, the cook-a large, rather cranky elderly woman-was was.h.i.+ng up while Edna dried dishes. Apparently it wasn't necessary for someone to be with my grandmother at all times. After all, she had her bell.

I asked Edna where Mr. Hawes' office was, and she told me it was on the third floor, a couple of doors down from my grandmother's room.

When I'd climbed the stairs to the open door, I found Caleb sitting before an old-fas.h.i.+oned rolltop desk, with the anachronism of a modern calculator, battery-operated, beside him. He looked up at my step, and I sensed a wariness in his greeting.

"Will I interrupt if I come in for a little while?" I asked. "I can return later if you're busy."

He rose at once to remove a pile of books from a chair, and set it for me where sun came through an open window. There was little furniture in the room, and no effort had been made to dress it up. All was strictly utilitarian, makes.h.i.+ft, and temporary. As though the man who worked here expected to be elsewhere very soon.

"What happens to your law office in Denver while you're tied up here?" I asked.

"I have two senior partners." There seemed a hint of resentment in the words, but he went on quickly, "I suggested that it was wiser for me to be near your grandmother right now. Is there something I can help you with?"

"I'd like to know more about Noah Armand," I said.

For an instant Caleb appeared startled, then his normal guard came up and he busied himself rearranging papers on his desk, not meeting my eyes. I had again the feeling that Caleb Hawes might be a secretive man, and perhaps capable of behind-the-scenes scheming.

"What do you want to know about him?" he asked.

"What was Noah really like? I found a picture of him in one of those alb.u.ms just now, and he didn't seem to be an especially appealing man. Why was my grandmother attracted to him?"

"I can't answer that. I wasn't here very often in those days. My father took care of Mrs. Morgan's business himself and sent me up here only occasionally. I believe he was as surprised as anyone by her marriage. Older women can be foolish sometimes, and she may have been lonely. Or perhaps it was simply the attraction of the rogue that she felt in him. Other women felt it too." He hesitated. "Does it matter now?"

It mattered to Caleb-much more than he wanted me to believe. I was sure of that. Always when Noah Armand was mentioned, an uncertainty seemed to surface-in myself as well as in Caleb.

"He must have been fairly important in Jasper, married to my grandmother. Did anyone think that Noah might have returned to the house that day my father died? That he could have shot my father?"

Caleb's expression did not change, but his fingers were suddenly still on the papers before him, betraying the fact that I had shaken him in some manner I didn't understand.