The tiger who stalked and destroyed had been brought down by three pussycats.
For an instant the two stared up at us. Then both went gingerly down past Owen’s body, as though he might call them back, and rushed for the door. We heard brakes screech as they took off down the hillside.
I felt only a sense of blessed relief for my son, and I didn’t know anyone who would grieve for Owen. When I looked around for Peggy, I saw that she was laughing hysterically. Leaning against the wall, she slid down until she sat on the floor, still laughing—or weeping—I couldn’t tell which. I went quickly to kneel beside her and she put a hand on my arm.
“Give me credit, Carol. I’ve done one good thing. One thing that wasn’t an accident. And I did it myself.”
“You’ve saved us all,” I told her. “If you hadn’t brought the cats—”
“But of course I brought the cats. Annie told me Owen would come. And I remembered his face that time at Smoke Tree House, when he first saw my darlings. They were my only weapon this time.”
She had left a trail of death behind her—deaths that had caused suffering to many. But about what she had just done she was triumphant and unrepentant.
“He deserved what happened to him. He earned it! Carol, you’ll still write your book about Monica Arlen? I owe her that.”
“Of course I’ll write it. And I’ll write about Peggy Smith too.”
The famous eyes closed and her breath caught in sudden pain. At a sound from the hall below, I looked down through marble balusters to see Linda come through the open door.
“We’re up here,” Jason called to her.
Linda ran up the stairs, skirting Owen’s body, all her attention focused on Monica-Peggy as she came to kneel beside her, pushing me out of the way.
“Oh, God! She’s having another attack! Jason—”
Jason had already gone to phone for an ambulance and the police. For the second time that day. Then he went outside to help the officer who had been struck down.
Again we waited for screaming sirens to come up the drive. Peggy was taken in the ambulance and Linda went with her—to the same hospital where Ralph had gone earlier. And from which Ralph would leave to face a kidnapping charge when he recovered, but Peggy would never leave at all. She died quietly two days later.
The police aftermath of violent death went on again for hours that night, and I could only feel grateful for Keith’s exhaustion, which let him sleep through it all. I answered questions wearily, numbly—and mostly about Owen.
When they’d finally gone, Jason and I stood on one of Cadenza’s upper balconies and looked east toward a pink and gold dawn above the mountains. The three cats came with us, lost and bewildered, seeking human company.
“Shall we go home to the desert?” Jason said. “You can rest when you get to the ranch.”
I understood what he was asking. All barriers were down, and by this time we knew how much we belonged together. I held on to him, nodding mutely.
When we went inside, I bent to speak to Annabella, who would be able to explain to her two friends—from the tone of my voice, at least. “You’re going to live on a ranch now, Annie. I think you’ll like it there with Keith.”
“Monica’s” death caused a tremendous stir in papers and magazines. Old photos were reprinted, old stories about her retold, and of course there was a great revival of Arlen-Scott pictures. Through all the uproar, I said nothing public about the truth.
Of course I told Jason. And after Peggy died, I told Linda. That was the hardest thing to do, because now she had to realize that years of her life had been given to a mirage—in more ways than one. It was as though Linda were awakening from a dream and hardly knew what was real and what wasn’t. Wally’s lively pragmatism was a good tonic. For once surprisingly sensitive, he pointed out that these years had, after all, been spent helping someone who was very much alone, and had needed desperately what Linda had to give.
Rumor—as I read it in the papers—had it that Monica Arlen’s great-niece, who had married again after the tragic death of her ex-husband in a fall, was writing a book about her famous aunt. That is true enough. The book is done and will soon be published. But it is not about the masquerade. There is another, more secret journal that I’ve been keeping.
My desk looks out upon the desert I’ve come to love, and the portrait I brought from Cadenza hangs on the wall of my study. Sometimes when I search the face of the woman in the picture, I’m filled with a strange, sad feeling of loss—for exactly what or whom, I’m not always sure.
I’m glad that the painting is really of Peggy. Monica Arlen died before I was born, and I’ve never known her at all except through make-believe on a screen. It was Peggy who sent me to college; Peggy to whom I’d related. Between us, a precarious affection had developed that was more real than any of my fantasies.
Even the ring I wear so often had been more Peggy’s than Monica’s, and in a way, the emerald was the symbol that tied everything else together. Created for Saxon by Peggy, worn by the real Monica for a little while, and finally given by Peggy to me—it brought me close to all of them and made me a part of their story.
Jason’s search for his daughter goes on, and now we look together, still hoping that we’ll find a happy ending eventually. All the old distrusts and prejudices are gone, and the fights we have now are just those of two people who love each other deeply.
My journal will be finished soon. I’ve been setting it down on paper just as it happened. To Monica, and Saxon, and Peggy. And to me. It will be ready when the right time comes to publish it.
A Biography of Phyllis A. Whitney
Phyllis Ayame Whitney (1903–2008) was a prolific author of seventy-six adult and children’s novels. Over fifty million copies of her books were sold worldwide during the course of her sixty-year writing career, establishing her as one of the most successful mystery and romantic suspense writers of the twentieth century. Whitney’s dedication to the craft and quality of writing earned her three lifetime achievement awards and the title “The Queen of the American Gothics.”
Whitney was born in Yokohama, Japan, on September 9, 1903, to American parents, Mary Lillian (Lilly) Mandeville and Charles (Charlie) Whitney. Charles worked for an American shipping line. When Whitney was a child, her family moved to Manila in the Philippines, and eventually settled in Hankow, China.
Whitney began writing stories as a teenager but focused most of her artistic attention on her other passion: dance. When her father passed away in China in 1918, Whitney and her mother took a ten-day journey across the Pacific Ocean to America, and they settled in Berkley, California. Later they moved to San Antonio, Texas. Lilly continued to be an avid supporter of Whitney’s dancing, creating beautiful costumes for her performances. While in high school, her mother passed away, and Whitney moved in with her aunt in Chicago, Illinois. After graduating from high school in 1924, Whitney turned her attention to writing, nabbing her first major publication in the Chicago Daily News. She made a small income from writing stories at the start of her career, and would eventually go on to publish around one hundred short stories in pulp magazines by the 1930s.
In 1925, Whitney married George A. Garner, and nine years later gave birth to their daughter, Georgia. During this time, she also worked in the children’s room in the Chicago Public Library (1942–1946) and at the Philadelphia Inquirer (1947–1948).
After the release of her first novel, A Place for Ann (1941), a career story for girls, Whitney turned her eye toward publishing full-time, taking a job as the children’s book editor at the Chicago Sun-Times and releasing three more novels in the next three years, including A Star for Ginny. She also began teaching juvenile fiction writing courses at Northwestern University. Whitney began her career writing young adult novels and first found success in the adult market with the 1943 publication of Red Is for Murder, also known by the alternative title The Red Carnelian.
In 1946, Whitney moved to Staten Island, New York, and taught juven
ile fiction writing at New York University. She divorced in 1948 and married her second husband, Lovell F. Jahnke, in 1950. They lived on Staten Island for twenty years before relocating to Northern New Jersey. Whitney traveled around the world, visiting every single setting of her novels, with the exception of Newport, Rhode Island, due to a health emergency. She would exhaustively research the land, culture, and history, making it a custom to write from the viewpoint of an American visiting these exotic locations for the first time. She imbued the cultural, physical, and emotional facets of each country to transport her readers to places they’ve never been.
Whitney wrote one to two books a year with grand commercial success, and by the mid-1960s, she had published thirty-seven novels. She had reached international acclaim, leading Time magazine to hail her as “one of the best genre writers.” Her work was especially popular in Britain and throughout Europe.
Whitney won the Edgar Award for Mystery of the Haunted Pool (1961) and Mystery of the Hidden Hand (1964), and was shortlisted three more times for Secret of the Tiger’s Eye (1962), Secret of the Missing Footprint (1971), and Mystery of the Scowling Boy (1974). She received three lifetime achievement awards: the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award in 1985, the Agatha in 1989, and the lifetime achievement award from the Society of Midland Authors in 1995.
Whitney continued writing throughout the rest of her life, still traveling to the locations for each of her novels until she was ninety-four years old. She released her final novel, the touching and thrilling Amethyst Dreams, in 1997. Whitney was working on her autobiography at the time of her passing at the age of 104. She left behind a vibrant catalog of seventy-six titles that continue to inspire, setting an unparalleled precedent for mystery writing.
Pictures:
A young Whitney playing with her doll in Japan.
Whitney with her family in Japan, where they lived for approximately six years. From left: Lillian (Lilly) Whitney, Charles (Charlie) Whitney, Phyllis Whitney, and Philip (Whitney’s half-brother).
Thirteen-year-old Whitney dancing in the Philippines.
Twenty-one-year-old Whitney at her graduation from McKinley High School in 1924.
Whitney worked at the World’s Fair in Chicago, Illinois, in 1933. She was pregnant with her daughter, Georgia, at the time.
Frederick Nelson Litten, Whitney’s mentor in writing and teaching, in Chicago, 1935.
Whitney’s first publicity photo for A Place for Ann, 1941.
Whitney, forty-eight, in her first study in Fort Hill Circle at her Staten Island house, where she lived with second husband Lovell Jahnke, 1951.
Whitney at sixty-nine years old with Jahnke in their home in Hope, New Jersey, 1972. Behind them hangs a Japanese embroidery made by Whitney’s mother.
Whitney at seventy-one years of age with Pat Myer, her long time editor, and Mable Houvenagle, her sister-in-law, at her house on Chapel Ave in Brookhaven, Long Island, New York, 1974. After her husband died in 1973, she lived close to her daughter, Georgia, on Long Island.
Whitney at eighty-one years old on a helicopter ride over Maui, Hawaii, to research the backdrop for her novel Silversword, 1984.
Whitney giving her acceptance speech for her Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award in 1985.
Whitney rode in a hot-air balloon in 1988 to use the experience for her novel Rainbow in the Mist.
Whitney ascending in the hot-air balloon, 1988.
Whitney in her study in Virginia in 1996 at ninety-three years old, looking over her “Awards Corner,” which included three Edgars, the Agatha, and the Society of Midland Authors Award.
Whitney at ninety-six years old with her family in her house in Virgina, 1999. From left: Michael Jahnke (grandson), Georgia Pearson (daughter), Matthew Celentano (great-grandson), Whitney, and Danny Celentano (great-grandson).
PHYLLIS A. WHITNEY
FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1983 by Phyllis A. Whitney
Cover design by Mimi Bark
ISBN: 978-1-5040-4592-6
This edition published in 2017 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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