The Glass Flame

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  “Go see Maggie,” she finished.

  I picked up my raincoat and went out to my car. This was no day for walking in the woods. The world ran with water, the mountains had vanished, the road shone with puddles and the trees were green satin, slashed through with the black emphasis of wet trunks.

  Maggie stood under the overhang, waiting for me as I drove into the carport. She took me upstairs at once to the kitchen, where I had first sat beside her at a counter, drinking her good coffee. Now she plied me with more and asked me questions.

  “Nona phoned,” she said. “What is this all about?”

  Once more I repeated everything, wondering how much she could be trusted, how much anyone could be trusted, including Nona. But Maggie, presented with a physical problem—something that required action—took hold with admirable confidence. Though even as I listened to her plans, I wondered if everything, including my own control over my life, was slipping away.

  “We’ll go in your car,” she decided. “And we’ll go well ahead of time. I’ll stay on the floor in the back until we’re sure there’s no one around to see me. Then I’ll find a place where I can be well out of sight and watch. It’s nine-thirty now, so we’ll leave in a few minutes.”

  I had a weird feeling of scenes repeating themselves. Once before, Trevor had said almost the same words to me—that he would follow us to the island and stay out of sight. But he hadn’t been there when I needed him. Now, at least, I would have a bodyguard with me—if that was what Maggie was supposed to be.

  She moved a dishtowel from the counter and I saw the deadly little gun it covered. “Don’t worry, Karen. Eric taught me how to use this and I’m a pretty good shot.”

  I felt like saying, What if it’s Eric you find yourself facing? But I didn’t dare. By this time she was a missile too, and well on her way. But whose hand had fired the machine? Nona’s? Or someone behind Nona?

  At least Maggie was in her element and I was beginning to understand she was a born plotter and eagerly involved. Perhaps recklessly involved?

  When we went out to my car she carried a blanket to spread on the floor in back, where she curled herself up comfortably.

  “Okay,” she said. “Let’s get going.”

  I turned on the windshield wipers and drove down the mountain. There were slippery places where gravel had slid into mud, but I went carefully around the turns in low gear until we reached the highway.

  My mind was anything but quiet on that drive to Belle Isle. I knew why I was doing this. It was because of Trevor. If he wouldn’t believe in Gwen’s involvement, wouldn’t lift a finger in that direction himself—then I had to follow up this one lone lead. I hadn’t wanted to go to the island with Chris that other time, yet what he’d had to show me had put us a great jump ahead in our realization of the facts. Now perhaps Gwen would give me another piece of the puzzle. And I had to admit that I felt a great deal safer with Maggie in the back seat than I’d have felt with Giff.

  The guard let me through, and I drove slowly around the lake toward the island. There was still no building going on, no clearing of the places that had been burned, no repair. We drove past the ruin where David had died and I saw that one of the blackened trees was sprouting a little green out there in the rain. If only human beings could put out new shoots.

  The lake waters were rough, lifting into small waves in the wind, the entire surface gray and roiled with rain.

  “How is the causeway?” Maggie asked from her place on the car floor.

  It was directly ahead now and running with shallow water. “We can get across,” I said. But the water was flowing and frothy, buffeting the car, so that I could feel its impact as I drove.

  “I’ve seen times when the island is cut off from the world,” she said.

  I didn’t want to think about that. I had to be able to escape when the time came. Escape? But I mustn’t try to think from what. Right now I could only move ahead toward what was already inevitable. The water was inches deep about the wheels, the force against the car increasing, but I could still see paving and avoid deep water on either side as I drove slowly across.

  “Where shall I leave the car?” I asked over my shoulder.

  Maggie sat up to peer out an edge of rain-swept glass on a rear door. “I can’t see much back here. Go slowly and watch for a turnoff space among the trees on the right. Stop there and we’ll decide what to do.”

  I found the spot where bushes had been cut back, and swung the car into a wet stand of weeds.

  “Do you see anyone around?” Maggie asked.

  We were close to the house now. It stood up ahead of us, dark and formidable, its octagonal sides streaming water. On this lee side of the storm the veranda looked reasonably dry, however, with the door to the house closed and no one in sight. Nor did any face look down at us from visible windows.

  “I think we’re here ahead of her,” I said.

  “Then I’ll go with you to the house,” Maggie decided, and swore at the rain as she got out of the car.

  We ran for it together. Maggie kept her hand in the pocket of her coat where it sagged a little with the gun. A sense of unreality possessed me, and I fought against it. That way lay helpless drifting. Everything was real enough—including arson and death and Maggie’s gun. I had better stay alert.

  “If the door isn’t open,” I said as we ducked through the rain, “Chris showed me a way to get in at the back.”

  The door was unlocked, however, and I didn’t know whether that made me feel relieved or frightened. We stepped into the foyer and Maggie looked around quickly.

  “I haven’t been here in years. Thank God for the prehistoric furniture.”

  She placed herself behind a huge carved chair with a worn leather back, well hidden from view, but still beside a window, where she could look out.

  “I’ll stay here, where I can see anyone going or coming, inside or out.”

  “And I’ll wait on the porch,” I told her. My memories of this house were anything but pleasant and its great mass overhead oppressed me.

  Outside, the steps were wet, so I seated myself cross-legged on a dry patch of veranda against the wall to the right of the door. The lion’s-head knocker watched me, as though old Vinnie’s eye were upon me derisively. He wouldn’t have approved of women taking action. Rain was coming down harder than ever, and the wind made a roaring sound through the trees as the storm grew in strength. I looked at my watch and found that we were only twenty minutes early, due to our slow trip down the mountain.

  From the corner of my eye I caught movement, but it was only Commodore stepping around a corner of the veranda with a careful dignity that avoided puddles.

  “Come here,” I said, and held out my hand. Perhaps he was glad of company for once, and he approached me with deliberation and allowed me to scratch the white ruff of fur around his neck. As he looked up at me with his one blue and one yellow eye, I examined his shoulder where the wound and fur had been cut away. It appeared to have healed nicely. Once more I remembered David’s liking for cats and wondered if he had ever met Commodore. It was remarkable how clean he kept himself, no matter what his living conditions.

  I too was glad of company for this little while. Maggie, kneeling inside by her window, seemed very far away.

  Gwen was no more than five minutes late. I heard her small car bumping along the road, coming up the wet drive. She sat alone in the front seat, and for a moment after she had stopped the car she peered through the windshield, looking around. When she decided that I was alone, she got out and came scooting up the steps to the veranda out of the wet.

  “Where did that cat come from?” she demanded.

  “He lives here. He was Vinnie Fromberg’s cat and he belongs here.”

  “Joe always hated cats,” she said. “That must be the one he threw a stone at.”

  So that was how Commodore had come to be struck with a rock, I thought, despising Joe Bruen even more. Commodore, however, was not my main c
oncern now, and I scarcely noticed when he removed himself from me and went haughtily off around the veranda, still avoiding the patches of wet.

  “We’d better hurry this along,” I said, standing up. “Rain may make the causeway impassable. Do we go inside, or stay out here?”

  “We can stay here for now. I like the air better outside.”

  “What is it you want to show me?”

  “First we talk a little,” she said, and dropped down on the veranda floor as I had done. Luckily, she was under Maggie’s window where she could be clearly heard.

  I didn’t join her at once. “What if your husband shows up? Wouldn’t it be better to be inside out of sight?”

  “He won’t. I know where he is.” She smiled at me reassuringly and I saw her small pointed teeth. “Do sit down, Mrs. Hallam”—as though she offered a comfortable chair. “As I said, first we talk.”

  She had changed subtly since last night, I thought, returning to my cross-legged position with my back against the house wall. I could make out her features better by daylight—her rather sleazy prettiness, the shoulder-length hair that no longer seemed as dark as it had last night, the huge hazel eyes, again carefully made up. But it was her manner that had changed. She still seemed nervous and a little edgy, but no longer frightened. This morning she was far more matter-of-fact.

  “I didn’t want to talk in front of Giff Caton last night,” she said. “I had to see you alone. Because I want to tell you a whole lot more about your husband than you seem to know. You can be pretty glad that you’re out of that deal altogether. He was badly in debt, you know.”

  I nodded, startled. “I found that out. But I don’t know how it happened, or how you know about it.”

  “It was blackmail, of course. He was paying out plenty for his own safety.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You are an innocent, aren’t you? Remember that big fire in New York a while before he came down here? The Oriental import shop that burned? He made a pile out of that. All he had to do was report that he found no traces of arson and the fire was legitimate. The insurance company had to pay up. There was a split of that payment between your husband and the owner. Not the first time, as maybe you ought to know.”

  Her words made me feel ill. The one thing I had admired in David was his pride in his work. He knew all about fires, and he had hated the men who started them. Or so I’d believed. Yet if Gwen Bruen’s words were true—and somehow they carried the sound of truth—then he had been corrupted for I didn’t know how long. But I couldn’t accept them without question.

  “I don’t see how David could have gotten away with anything like that,” I told her. “A fire marshal’s squad would look into those fires too.”

  “Joe was an expert. He wouldn’t leave traces if he didn’t want to.”

  “You mean that Joe Bruen set that import-store fire?”

  She grinned at me impishly. “Sure. It was all worked out ahead of time. The owner took a whole night to get his most valuable merchandise out of the store and substituted cheap goods. When it was over no one could tell whether all that burned-out stuff was valuable or just cheap junk.”

  That small Buddha, I thought. Somehow it had escaped full damage, and someone had found it after the fire and mailed it to David with the note about money. A threat. The whole thing was too awful, but I was beginning to believe in spite of myself.

  I already knew the answer to my next question, but I had to ask it. “Did David know Joe Bruen in New York?”

  “Of course. David recommended him for some of those jobs. Of course he knew him. Who do you think hired Joe to come down here to work on Belle Isle? It was David Hallam, naturally.”

  Fourteen

  For a moment or two, sitting there on the cold veranda floor with the bare siding of the house pressing against my back, I felt as though I couldn’t breathe. I felt as though the storm that pounded the island beyond the veranda’s edge was pounding inside my head.

  “You all right?” Gwen asked. “You look a bit woozy.”

  I made myself breathe long, deep breaths that would revive me. “Why are you telling me all this now?” I asked.

  “I should think you’d see why. To get even with Joe. Because Joe was beginning to threaten David. And in the end Joe killed him.”

  “I—I don’t understand any of this,” I faltered. “Why would David send Joe down here?”

  “You don’t know anything, do you? Mr. Andrews, David’s brother, came to see him in New York and told him about a fire some kid had set at Belle Isle. So then David got the idea of paying his brother off in a really big way. Maybe he was a little crazy when it came to hating his brother. And some of that was because of you.”

  “How do you know so much about David?”

  She jumped to her feet and stretched widely. It was almost a gesture of triumph. “You know he played around, didn’t you? Only he stuck with me pretty well for a long time. Until Lori Andrews came along!” Gwen paused, lost in her own petulant thoughts. “I don’t know if I’m so sorry that she’s dead. That they’re both dead.”

  “Go on,” I said. I had to hear it all.

  “It was pretty funny when David’s brother asked him to come down here to investigate. He had a real good time pretending to look into the Belle Isle fires, when all along he knew who was setting them and was paying to have them set. Or anyway he was supposed to pay, only it was falling off.”

  Her smile was a grimace as she went on.

  “Joe had a showdown with him over here on the island. Right near that old cabin under the kudzu, where nobody ever came. Joe told me about it afterwards. David got nasty and Joe hit him with a big rock. He only meant to knock him out. But when he found he’d killed him he had to get rid of the body. I told you about all that. Only I fixed it up a little last night.”

  “So now you’re trying to punish Joe for what he did? By talking?”

  Her look hardened. “Why not? I got pretty sick of him in the years since we got married. David stuck with me for a while, but Joe never did.”

  “And Lori? What about Lori?”

  Gwen Bruen’s eyes brightened with vindictiveness. “She was always coming over to the island. She used to meet David here. It never mattered to her whose husband she played around with. When she ran into Joe after David died, she began to catch onto what was happening. At first it was all right and we didn’t think she’d talk. But she liked to stir things up—that one. So Joe figured out how to get rid of her and make it look like an accident. That liquid glue she was using in the dressing room was just right for him. Only I hated that!” Genuine feeling seemed to mark her words. Then she spoiled it. “It could have been done some other way. Not fire. Not always fire!”

  “But you wanted her dead too?”

  Gwen was silent, staring off into the rain, seeming to listen to the noises of the storm. I wanted to keep her talking—for Maggie’s benefit, as well as mine. In her desire to betray her husband, she was willing to tell everything and I sought for a question that would renew the flow of words.

  “Do you know anything about who broke that skylight over my bed at Trevor’s house?”

  “Sure. That was Lori. Joe told her to do something that would scare you away. Because you were so bound on finding out about David’s death. You were getting to be dangerous. It isn’t good to be dangerous. Lori found that out.”

  Yes, I thought, it was the sort of thing Lori would do. She could easily have worn gloves to keep the char off her hands.

  “There’s something I still don’t understand,” I went on. “Why would Joe stay around after David was dead? Why wouldn’t he leave as fast as he could when he knew there’d be no more pay coming in?”

  Gwen moved to the edge of the veranda and held her hand out to rain that slashed across her palm. When she turned back to me she was smiling, her slightly uneven teeth giving her a look of piquancy.

  “You don’t get it, do you? Now the st
akes are bigger than ever! Now the pay is a whole lot better. Now he’s getting out of it what he really wanted.”

  I thought of Maggie crouched behind her window just at my back. What was she thinking?

  “You mean someone else is paying Joe now?”

  “We don’t need to go into all that.”

  “You’d better tell me,” I said. “Why have you brought me here? What is this all about?”

  “It was so easy.” She seemed to be musing almost to herself. “He could hide in that cabin, where nobody ever looked. And when he wanted to he could get off the island to where he’d left his car in the woods. He could go to a town where nobody knew him and stay at a motel, if he wanted to, and move out the next day. He could bring back supplies to the cabin. Or I could bring them in, after I came down.”

  “But why am I here?” I pressed her.

  “Because I know where Joe is,” she said softly. “Maybe I’ll even tell you. And there’s still something I want to show you in this house. If you’re going back to that man you’re in love with—that Trevor Andrews—and you’re going to tell him everything, you have to see this one thing more.”

  She moved toward the door, her hand on the knob, waiting for me to get up from the floor and come with her.

  I didn’t want to move. “Did Joe and David use this house too?”

  “Sometimes. But Giff Caton was around, so they didn’t come often. For a while Joe used to leave notes for David in one of the rooms.”

  “Yes. I found one of them.” I didn’t add that Trevor had sent it to New York and that Joe’s fingerprints and identity were known through that note.

  She was growing impatient. “Do come along. Don’t forget about the causeway.”

  I felt an enormous reluctance to step inside the house again. I sensed spite and vindictiveness in Gwen Bruen toward her husband, but what her true goal was I still didn’t know.

  “Come on,” she snapped. “We don’t want to stay here all morning. I don’t think we’d make good company for a house party, do you?”

  I got up and followed her through the doorway and across the wedge-shaped foyer, thankful for Maggie, hiding behind her high-backed chair. Gwen went ahead of me into the huge room that circled the stairs, and I didn’t dare glance behind to see what Maggie was doing.