There was no air left in my lungs. They were bursting. At the last instant, my legs were released and I kicked myself desperately to the surface, to gulp air. Immediately my feet were grasped again, and I barely had time to hold my breath as I went under, pulled to the bottom, my ankles pinned in that steely grip.
I don’t know how many times it happened. I was allowed to reach the surface, teased with a chance to breathe air into my lungs, and then pulled under again, mercilessly. Each time I felt this would be final, and I’d be held under too long.
When my head broke the surface for the last time, I managed a single wild scream before I went under, swallowing water.
Consciousness can go quickly, and I have only a blurred memory of what happened next. Someone must have heard my scream, for sudden floodlights dazzled the water. Voices shouted and running feet clattered on the tiles. My head was above the surface—if only I could breathe, and the bands around my body were gone. Only succoring hands held me now, and I was being unceremoniously hauled out of the pool by Ralph Reese.
After that I lay face down on the tiles, while Ralph pumped water out of my lungs. I seemed to hurt all over, but I was breathing again and air was the most wonderful element in the world. When I opened my eyes, I found Ralph bending over me, and Linda beside him, both dripping wet. She had jumped in too, to help me out.
The water had been warm from the day’s sun, but now I was aware of sharp air chilling me to the bone. My teeth chattered and I shivered with cold and shock.
“Quick!” Linda cried, pulling me to my feet. “Let’s get you to your room where you can change to something dry. I’ll fix you a hot drink. I’m frozen myself. How on earth did you fall in, Carol?”
Ralph was made of sterner stuff. No shivering for him. “Do you always go swimming with your clothes on, Miss Hamilton?” he asked. “It was a good thing I was around to fish you out.”
I pulled away from his supporting arm, dazed, but not trusting him. “Someone—someone t-t-tried to d-d-drown me!” I gasped, and then made an effort to steady my voice. “Someone pushed me into the pool and tried to hold me under the water!”
“That’s impossible!” Linda cried.
“She’s off her nut.” Ralph was scornful. “There was no one else around when I got here. She was just yelling and flapping around in the water.”
I had no strength to argue, to deny. There had been someone in the pool with me. Ralph, of course. Or someone else who had eluded all the barriers—someone sent in by Owen?
Between them, Ralph and Linda half carried me toward the house, our shoes squelching water and clothes dripping. At the top of the steps, Linda paused with an arm around me, looking down toward the rear balcony at this end.
Monica Arlen stood at the rail, her face white above her long dark robe as she stared at us.
“What is it?” she cried. “Linda, what’s happened? I heard shouting.”
Linda answered her unhappily. “Carol says someone pushed her into the pool and tried to drown her.”
Monica clutched at the balcony rail with both hands, too shaken to speak. Then she made a low, moaning sound and fled into the bedroom behind her.
At once Linda abandoned me. “Ralph, see that Carol gets back to her room. Monica’s frightened and she needs me.”
“Hah!” Ralph said. “Maybe it’s Miss Arlen who pushed her in!”
For an instant I thought Linda might slap him, but she restrained herself with an effort. “There were some men climbing the mountain today. Maybe you were right, Carol. Maybe Owen Barclay has a longer arm than I thought.”
She hurried off and once more I moved from Ralph’s touch. “I’m safer walking alone.”
His look seemed to know all and tell nothing. When I stumbled into my room, I found Keith still asleep, and I shed my wet clothes in the bathroom and put on a warm robe. Then I got into bed, still shivering.
In a little while Linda appeared with a cup of steaming soup. She’d changed her own clothes, and had managed to quiet Monica.
“I’m sure it was Ralph. It must have been Ralph,” I said as she sat down near my bed. “But why would he try to drown me?”
She was already shaking her head. “I can’t believe anyone would try to do that. Not even Ralph.”
I supposed she was right. It was only Owen to whom I was a threat. If I were dead, Keith would go straight into Owen’s hands—as I already knew. This returning thought was even more chilling than water closing over my head. Now there had been a real threat to my life. If I hadn’t been able to scream …
Not until I was finishing the soup, did I become suddenly aware of my hand. I held it up for Linda to see. “Monica’s emerald! It’s gone!”
Linda’s expression told me that losing the ring was worse than nearly losing my life. “That’s awful! You should never have worn it up there, Carol. It probably came off in the water. Now it’s too dark to search for it. In the morning I’ll send Ralph to look for it in the pool. I won’t dare tell Monica.”
“No,” I said dryly, “don’t tell her anything more to upset her. I’ll be all right now, Linda. Thank you for the soup.”
She looked at me doubtfully, perhaps rehearing the wrong emphasis of her own words. Then she took my cup and went off, leaving me to my own shattering thoughts.
An hour or two went by while I tossed, growing more and more wide awake, living over those terrible moments in the water. At least I was warm again, and eventually I got up and stood for a few moments beside my sleeping son. Then I wrapped my robe more tightly around me and went to the open door of the balcony at the front of the house.
Outside it was cold and bright and very clear, with all those stars looking down on oasis and desert. The lights of Palm Canyon Drive followed the mountains. I’d noticed that all this area had the appealing custom of using palm trees for streetlights, so that illumination glowed up through the branches. What had once been a dirt track called Plank Road now stretched for a long way through the little “cities” strung together at the base of the San Jacintos.
Beyond the house, beyond the town, loneliness seemed part of the vast landscape. Nighttimes were always lonely for me now. How foolish I’d been, how starry-eyed, only a few years ago, when I’d believed that something wonderful and treasuring had come into my life, bringing me a man to value and love, and who valued and loved me. I couldn’t have been more blindly stupid. Yet I couldn’t regret what had happened, because I had Keith. No, for Keith, as well as for me, I must stay alive.
I wondered if Jason Trevor ever stood out there beneath the desert stars and thought about loneliness. Probably not. He would think only with anger of the loss of his daughter. I had already sensed in him that deep, hot rage, and I’d known, though I hadn’t understood, that at moments some of this had been for me. A judging anger.
My hand looked bare on the balcony rail, and I thought again of the missing ring. It had to be found in the pool. The emerald was precious beyond its value—in a sense symbolizing much that had happened in Monica Arlen’s life, and it could never be replaced for her. Or even for me. We must find it quickly.
At last, in spite of too many fearful thoughts, the peace of the night and of the sleeping city began to quiet me so that I was ready to return to bed. Ready until I caught movement on the lighted terrace. Ralph Reese stood at the far end of the stone wall, smoking. The hour was late—two o’clock, my watch told me. Was he there because he couldn’t sleep either, or because he waited for something? Or had met someone?
Perhaps I made a slight sound, or perhaps he had an animal’s sense of being watched, because he turned and looked up at my balcony. Terrace lights fell on his face and the insolence was there again—even bolder and more open than before. He gave me a slight salute of finger to temple, ground out his cigarette on the bricks, and went through a door near Monica’s end of the house. No alarm sounded.
Which only meant that of course he could turn the system on and off at will, if he wanted to come outsid
e at night. That too was far from reassuring.
Once more feeling chilled, I went back to my own bed, but not to sleep for a long time.
NINE
The two boys didn’t understand why they were being smuggled out concealed under a blanket in the back of Jason’s station wagon, but they regarded it as a game, and stifled their giggles. I was more apprehensive as I sat beside Jason in the front seat. No blue Chevy was in sight at that early hour, however, and after what had happened last night it was a relief to get away from the house. I was no longer safe in Monica’s fortress.
In a little while the boys were able to sit up and look out. We drove along a main road called Tahquitz-McCallum, and when I asked about the name, Jonah was full of information. The boy’s bright, dark eyes and slightly cocky manner were appealing, but I suspected that he could easily get out of hand.
“Tahquitz is a real bad Indian spirit who lives in a canyon on the mountain,” he told us. “That’s what they call the canyon too. All the little Indian kids are scared of him. But I’m not.”
“I’m not either,” Keith said.
Jason smiled. “The canyon sometimes trembles and rumbles so Indian mothers used to blame that on Tahquitz and used him as a warning to naughty children.”
“Was McCallum somebody bad too?” Keith asked.
“Hardly,” Jason said. “The McCallum family practically started Palm Springs. The place had other names in the old days—Palmdale and Palm Valley. Though out here the old days aren’t that long ago. Agua Caliente is what they called the hot springs. John McCallum—he received the courtesy title of judge when he was old—planted fruit orchards. He’s the one who brought water down from the mountains in a canal. His daughter Pearl did a great deal for the city to keep it beautiful. It’s a name that’s respected in this town.”
I sensed that Jason was talking to cover my own disturbed state of mind. When we’d started out, he’d asked if I was all right, and I’d managed to assure him that I was. I don’t think he believed me, but I couldn’t speak out in front of the boys. Anyway, I wasn’t sure I wanted to tell him what had happened last night. Linda would take care of that. I just needed to escape from the house and put everything behind me for a while. It felt good to be driving into the desert.
Today Jason looked comfortable in jeans that were faded and a bit worn at the knees, his blue shirt open at the throat, and short, scuffed boots of tooled leather on his feet. He still seemed a stern, remote man, and I was intensely aware of the circumstances that stood between us.
A recently risen sun flooded the desert, so that palm trunks and the mountain itself glowed with a pink light. As we left Palm Springs behind, the warming scents of mesquite and creosote drifted in the car windows. On every hand the desert rolled away—not flat, empty land, but with high rock formations, shifting dunes, gullies where water must sometimes flow. I began to have a feeling of familiarity. All those stories I’d heard from Mrs. Johnson when I was ten were part of my own fantasies, always connecting with Monica, who also lived in the desert. This morning the country around me no longer looked strange and frightening as it had seemed when I’d driven here.
Jason pointed out feathery gray smoke trees growing in a wash, and a few rounded paloverdes with their green bark. I had a sense of recognition in everything I saw.
“Desert Hot Springs is off that way.” Jason motioned toward the north. “You should drive Keith out there sometime to see Cabot’s. It’s a pueblo-type building full of local history. You can learn from it yourself.”
“I know,” I said. “Monica was born in the area, so I’d especially like to go there. For some reason she doesn’t want to talk about her childhood, though I need to know a lot more about the years before she went to Hollywood, if I’m to write this book. Right now, she’s banished me, though Linda doesn’t think it will last.”
Jason looked straight ahead through the windshield and offered no comment, his very silence suggesting disapproval. Yesterday’s resentment of being judged began to stir in me again. This was a disapproval to which he had no right!
“Why don’t you like the idea of my writing about Monica?” I asked bluntly.
“It doesn’t matter to me, one way or another. It’s none of my business.”
Now that the subject had been opened, I wanted to smoke him out, force him to talk about what was bothering him. My earlier notion of ignoring what he felt toward me wasn’t going to work. I couldn’t, after all, stifle my own resentment against his prejudice. Monica wasn’t the true subject I wanted to open, but perhaps she was a way past his prickly guard.
“You do disapprove, and I’d like to know why,” I challenged him.
“Maybe it’s because Hollywood biographies usually turn out to be glorified gossip. Rather cheap gossip, at that.”
“Gossip isn’t what I want to write. I’m not looking for tidbits of scandal. It’s the human experience that fascinates me. Monica had a spectacular success—I’ve seen all those old films of hers. Yet she threw it away overnight to live as a recluse. Other people survive broken love affairs and go on. Why didn’t she? Perhaps it will even help her if I can get her to open up honestly with me. I’d like to write about her with understanding and sympathy.”
“Then it’ll be pretty bland, won’t it? Isn’t gossip what your readers are likely to want?”
His argument wasn’t really about Monica. It concerned all the other things he held against me. “Why not wait and see what I’m able to write?” I asked. “It isn’t fair to leap into judgment.” I wasn’t talking about Monica either. “I think you’re baiting me,” I added.
He slanted that sudden smile at me—reminding me of his sister—a flash that lighted his desert tan. He was baiting me, yet the truth behind his hostility wasn’t a subject I could open up with him directly. Not yet.
“What about your article on the museum?” he asked. “Have you already dropped that?”
“Of course not. I’ve been making notes, setting down impressions. I need to know more before I write.”
As we neared the ranch, he pointed out to the boys a few low buildings occupying an empty space of desert, with no houses nearby. Buildings that included a house, a barn, and a fenced corral with three or four horses inside. Along the western boundary tall eucalyptus trees made a handsome windbreak.
Keith sat up and exclaimed. His interest in animals was always lively, and his very excitement made me glad we’d come. Never mind about Jason Trevor and his prejudices! I must thrust away the thought of water closing over my head, arms pulling me down. For this little while I must escape from all tension—for my own sanity.
“It’s not a real ranch anymore,” Jason explained. “In my parents’ day it was a working ranch. They’ve moved to a coast town now. But Linda and I grew up out here, and since I’ve always liked to come back, I’ve kept a bit of it up. I stay here whenever I can, though I have a small place in town.”
The house was a weathered brown, low and wide, with a front porch that boasted several old-fashioned rockers. Jason led us into the long living room, where an early morning fire burned in a rock fireplace. At the far end, open double doors led into a dining room, and another warm hearth. Mrs. Sanchez came to greet us, smiling and plump, her English flavored with the Mexican “tune” that was to grow familiar to me. The lilt of the words was different from the Puerto Rican cadence I was more accustomed to.
Breakfast was ready, and we sat at one end of an enormous oak table that must have served ranch hands in the past. When sizzling ham with hash brown potatoes on the side was brought in, and a plate of thick toast slices from home-baked bread, both boys went eagerly to work. Watching Keith, I could forgive Jason anything. What he thought about me didn’t matter. Somehow, I must hold to that and swallow my resentment.
After we’d eaten, he took us out to the corral with its rail fence, and introduced us to the horses. Keith and Jonah were lifted to the back of an elderly mare, and led cheerfully around the corral by Mr. S
anchez, who appeared to like small boys.
Jason and I sat on the top rail of the fence and watched in comfortable silence. Gradually, a sense of peace I hadn’t felt for a long while began to envelop me. The sky was pale blue and cloudless. Already the sun warmed the morning, but at this time of year the warmth was kind, and I raised my face gratefully to the light, and to the westerly breeze. Fall in New York could be the best time of the year—invigorating. This was different, more languorous, and very pleasant. The horror of last night seemed far away.
Jason watched the two boys, one so fair, the other dark; he watched Keith particularly. “His father must miss him a great deal,” he said quietly.
My sense of languor vanished. Now it would begin. The remark, for all his quiet tone, was deliberately provocative, and I plunged into an answer.
“As you miss your daughter? No, I don’t think so. If I believed that, I wouldn’t have run from New York.”
Jason said nothing, and even his silence was hostile, skeptical. I slid down from the rail, feeling better braced with my feet on the ground.
“Linda’s told me about your wife and daughter. I’m terrible sorry, Jason. I felt sick when I heard what had happened. I know what it’s like. Owen stole Keith from me a few months ago, though I got him back that time—by law. Next time I might not.”
“Yet you can’t see what it might be like for Keith’s father?”
I looked at him on the fence above me, seeing the grim lines about his mouth, the coldness of his eyes, and I almost faltered. I might never be able to convince this man, but I had to try.
“It isn’t the same. It isn’t like that for Owen! If Keith were truly happy with his father, I would let him go on visits whenever Owen wished. In fact, I was willing to do that from the first—until I began to see what was happening.”
Jason’s laugh dismissed my words. I heard deep bitterness in the sound. We were a long way from any mutual understanding, and I tried to suppress my own rising anger. He had reason. The hurt he’d suffered over the loss of his daughter was something I felt and understood. Yet only I could know how different it was from anything Owen was capable of feeling.
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