Domino

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  I kept my eyes fixed upon his face, lest I miss some nuance of expression. “Perhaps you’re the one who can best answer that.”

  Ingram sipped champagne and waited for me to go on. No one else said anything.

  “This afternoon,” I said, “I told my grandmother that I would like to stay and help her in any way I can. There are some of us who don’t want to see Jasper and Domino and the whole valley turned into just another cheap resort. Perhaps that will come someday, but not now.”

  “Well, good for you!” Belle applauded.

  Ingram glanced at her and then back at me. He was still controlled; outwardly unperturbed. He would have long since faced the likelihood of my alliance with Persis Morgan.

  Unexpectedly, Hillary came to my support. “Of course you can’t let your grandmother down.” He was watching Ingram with a certain bright anger that I wouldn’t have thought he could feel.

  Caleb put in his own dry words. “This is hardly a wise move on your part, Laurie. You will do nothing for your grandmother’s state of health if you talk like this. She needs to get away.”

  “I’m beginning to think that there’s nothing much wrong with her health,” I answered heatedly. “Nothing but loneliness and discouragement and frustration.”

  “Hear, hear!” Belle remained undisturbed by another look from Mark Ingram. There was a light in her eyes as though she for one might enjoy the sound of guns in the street at high noon.

  “You’re in no position to know anything about her health,” Gail said sharply.

  Before I could answer, Ingram went on, his tone still gravely courteous. “I’m sorry you feel this way, Miss Morgan. It seems a rather narrow approach. When a lot of people should be able to enjoy this place, it’s a shame to hold it back for the use of a few.”

  “Perhaps it’s for the use of the land and everything that belongs to the land,” I reminded him.

  “I can’t allow this argument to continue.” Caleb seemed to come in on cue. But whose cue? I wondered. “I have wanted Mrs. Morgan to move down to Denver for some time. There she could be properly cared for, made comfortable, and we could look after her interests more conveniently. My firm has a certain guardianship, an obligation—”

  “The move would kill her,” I said flatly.

  Our waiter came in to clear away dishes, and for a little while Belle took it upon herself to chat cheerfully in her hoarse, slightly amused tones. I watched only Mark Ingram, and at last my concentrated attention began to get through to him. He must have been well accustomed to the looks of admiring women, but I was doing something that perhaps he hadn’t experienced before. When he looked straight at me, I managed to stare back, and mine was no look of admiration. His eyes shifted, then came back, to find me still staring, and to my surprise a faint flush crept over his face.

  Nevertheless, when the waiter was gone, he moved to a direct attack. It was as though Hillary, Caleb, Belle, and Gail no longer mattered at the table and we two were alone.

  “I want to talk with your grandmother, Miss Morgan. I want to see her soon.”

  “I don’t believe she wants to see you,” I told him.

  “I think she will change her mind. Perhaps you will give her a message for me. Can you do that?”

  “It depends on what it is.”

  “You can tell her that I’m interested in learning what became of a man named Noah Armand when he left her house twenty years ago. You will tell her this, Miss Morgan?”

  I was startled. This was the question I had meant to ask him. “What do you mean—what happened to him? I understand that he went away and wasn’t heard from again. So how could my grandmother know what happened to him? I thought perhaps you might know—since you were once his friend.”

  “Just give her my message,” he said.

  He had shaken and bested me, and I could no longer stare him down. Always the name of Noah Armand seemed to bring with it some vague and sinister threat. Something that I remembered—and didn’t remember. Didn’t want to remember?

  When I glanced around the table, I saw that the others had each reacted in a different way. Caleb wore his usual mask of restraint, though now I knew there could be seething depths underneath. Gail seemed curiously expectant, as though she waited for something more from me. Hillary was watching Ingram with a fixed look, and he wasn’t acting now. Only Belle still seemed at ease, still somewhat cynically amused, and quite sure of herself when it came to Ingram.

  “You do love to drop bombshells, don’t you?” she said to him.

  His smile was affectionate, and he seemed not to mind her occasional barbs. As he looked at her across the table, there was an instant when their eyes caught and something leaped between them. Something strangely deep and true. Ingram might be every bit the villain we believed, yet I had a feeling that he loved Belle Durant with whatever good and sound emotion was left in him. It was there for all to see, and I couldn’t help but marvel a little at how infinitely complex any human being could be.

  I turned to Belle. “Did you ever know Noah Armand?”

  “Not as well as you did,” she told me.

  That was unpleasantly revealing. “What do you mean?”

  She glanced at Ingram before she answered, and then shrugged. “After all, he was your grandmother’s second husband. There were times when you lived in the same house with him.”

  I didn’t want to touch that at all, or think about it.

  “After all, Mr. Ingram,” I said, “if you were Noah Armand’s friend, aren’t you the one most likely to know whether he is dead or alive?”

  He looked at me distantly, as though his thoughts were elsewhere. “That’s something I would very much like to know. His disappearance has always seemed thoroughly mysterious to me.”

  A new thought intruded in my mind. A thought so disturbing that I thrust it back. When the waiter returned with fruit and cheese, I was glad for the temporary distraction. This was something I would have to think about later, when I was alone.

  Ingram remained the proper host, but I sensed anger in him now, though I was not at all sure of the direction in which it was turned. Toward me? Toward Belle for being outspoken? Or only toward my absent grandmother? My newborn courage began to seep away. How could Persis and I possibly stand up to a man who might turn vindictive and dangerous in the space of a moment, even to the point of ordering a vicious attack such as had been made upon Jon?

  Yet we sat at the table and toyed with grapes, drank chartreuse from fine crystal liqueur glasses, and then at last found excuses to escape a dinner party grown oppressive.

  Mark Ingram stood on the hotel steps while we got into the jeep, bidding us a formal and courtly “Good night.” Belle stood beside him, unperturbed. Behind the wheel, Caleb seemed lost in deep silence, and even Hillary and Gail had little to say.

  When we reached the house, Gail left us quickly and ran inside, to go to my grandmother.

  Caleb said he would take the jeep around and come in the back way, and he, too, took himself off hastily. I was eager now to run upstairs to report to Persis, as I had promised to do, but Hillary lingered on the steps.

  “You showed a lot of courage tonight, Laurie,” he said, the sober mood still upon him. “The fight’s been opened now. So don’t back down. You’ll need to get your grandmother to change her will in your favor. As soon as that’s been done, you can take charge and Ingram will be helpless to move any further.”

  I knew all these things were true, yet I didn’t like his choice of words, and he quickly sensed my hesitation.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounds.”

  “I didn’t think you wanted to take sides.”

  “I didn’t. And I do want a chance at that theater. I could really do the job of fixing it up. Just the same, I don’t like what Ingram is doing. If he comes to see your grandmother, I’d like to be there.”

  “Of course,” I said, and let it go at that.

  “What will you d
o tomorrow?”

  I didn’t mention the back parlor. That was something I must face alone.

  “I’ll have to look for Red if he hasn’t turned up. He’s been gone now since this afternoon.”

  “I’ll come over when I can and we’ll search for him together.”

  For a moment longer we faced each other, and there was a new uncertainty between us. Then Hillary kissed me lightly and went away. I watched him go, feeling both regretful and relieved.

  Inside the house I climbed the stairs slowly. I had a promise to keep to my grandmother. But now the question that I’d been holding off ever since that moment in the dining room when it had come to me returned full force to torment me.

  If Persis Morgan had shot her son, this surely would have been an accident. But if she had then killed Noah Armand—that was murder. Had his body been spirited away in order to hide a crime that my grandmother had committed?

  I mounted the last steps reluctantly, not knowing how I could face her with this question in my mind.

  XIII

  When I reached the door, Edna was coming out of Persis Morgan’s room with a tray and empty milk glass. I was glad to see that Gail wasn’t there.

  “She’s waiting for you, miss,” Edna said, and I went in.

  Once more Persis sat propped against her pillows, a crocheted bed jacket about her shoulders and a lively look of anticipation in her eyes.

  “Good!” she said. “I’m glad that dinner didn’t last forever. I’ve been waiting. Tell me everything. Tell me right away!”

  With an effort I thrust back the dark thoughts for which I had no real foundation. Drawing a chair beside the bed, I reached for one cold hand and held it between my warm ones. I had to get the worst over with at once—Ingram’s words.

  “Mr. Ingram sent you a message, Grandmother.”

  “All right. Deliver it.”

  “He said to tell you that he would like to know what became of Noah Armand when he left this house twenty years ago.”

  Whatever she might have expected, it wasn’t this. She stared at me in a mingling of surprise and alarm.

  “He wants to know what?”

  I repeated the words, and she turned her head from side to side despairingly. “How can he ask a question like that? What can I possibly know?”

  “He seems to think you may know something.”

  “But I haven’t heard from that man since he left this house, and I hope I never hear from him again.”

  She didn’t sound as though she were lying, but I didn’t always trust her.

  “Mr. Ingram wants to see you,” I said.

  “No! I’ve seen him once, and that was enough. I let him come here when he first arrived in Jasper. I know what he intends, and I don’t ever want to see him again.”

  “I’ve told him you won’t see him, but I don’t think he takes ‘no’ very easily.”

  “Never mind. Let it go for now. I’ll have to think. I’ll have to think quietly when I’m alone. I’ll have to discuss this with Caleb. How did Caleb answer him when Ingram brought this up?”

  “I don’t think he did. I don’t think Caleb said anything.”

  She seemed to sink a little lower against her pillows, and withered lids came over great dark eyes, where all the life that was in her still lived.

  “Grandmother,” I said, “is there anything more I should know about Noah Armand? How can I help you when I understand so little?”

  “I’ve told you all I can. Laurie, did that man ever show up again in your mother’s life?”

  The way she put the question relieved my mind, and I let ugly suspicion go.

  “Not that I know of. But then—how could I know if she chose to keep it from me? All I can tell you is that if he did, he didn’t stay.”

  “What else came up tonight at dinner?”

  “I talked about the attack on Jon,” I told her, “but Ingram seemed to shrug it off. Just the same, I think more than ever that he was involved.”

  “Of course he was involved.”

  “But why—why?”

  “I’m so tired. I don’t want to talk anymore tonight, Laurie. Is there anything else you have to tell me?”

  “Nothing, Grandmother.” Questions were of no use now when she was using her familiar method of escaping from them.

  When I pulled the comforter up and checked to make sure her bell was within reach on the table, I bent to kiss her lightly on the cheek. It was the first time I had touched her that way, and I was startled by my own emotion.

  She opened her eyes. “Thank you for that, Laurie. It’s more than I deserve. You’ve already suffered enough at my hands, but now you’ll manage. You have to manage.”

  I left the lamp burning beside her bed and went downstairs.

  Ever since the wreath had been left on the door, I’d found myself approaching my room with a certain uneasiness—as though anything that was meanly vindictive might await me here. But the doorknob was bare, and when I went in the room stood empty. I wished again for Red’s comforting presence and dared not think that anything serious might have happened to him. Tomorrow I would find him, I was sure.

  My thoughts were turning unhappily as I undressed and got between cold sheets. Something in this house was terribly wrong, and I could only believe that it stemmed back to the happening I had so long rejected in my memory. My father and mother had been a part of it, and so had Noah Armand. I had been there too, and tomorrow I must find the answers to all that troubled me. Only when I knew everything could I find the proper means of fighting Mark Ingram. If I were to take a stand against him at Persis Morgan’s side, I would need all the strength I could muster.

  But I must not think about any of this now or I’d never go to sleep. I let myself drift into thoughts of Jon instead, let him come warmly into my mind. Was I falling in love with him? It was not an altogether happy thought.

  What about Hillary if this happened? What about me and my ability to love?

  When I finally slept, I dreamed again of riding up a mountain meadow, knowing I must reach the mine. Knowing that if my father was to live I must reach it. Once more the sound of hooves followed behind, only they didn’t frighten me because now I knew it was Jon coming after me. I woke up when the pony shied and I went sailing into the air, never to reach the ground. But this time, awake, I was aware of something new the dream had given me. I had been riding to save my father—at the mine. And of this I could make nothing at all.

  My watch told me it was past two o’clock. I got out of bed and went to the window, where I could see the cone of Old Desolate rising black against a lighter backdrop of sky and stars. Close in, among the ranch buildings, a light burned in a window of Jon’s cabin. Did that mean pain and sleeplessness? I was glad that Sam had arranged to stay with him. What had happened still seemed too terrible to be believed. Not in this peaceful setting. Yet it was a setting that had known times of fear and violence in the past, and there might be more to come. More to threaten my grandmother and Jon and me—all stemming from Mark Ingram.

  Nevertheless, I must stay. I knew that now without any doubt I must try to see Persis Morgan through whatever was to come. Looking out toward that lighted window, I knew how much I needed to talk with Jon. But I must wait until he felt a good deal better. In the meantime I would face that room downstairs tomorrow morning, without fail.

  As I turned back to my bed, I heard light footsteps in the hall and wondered who could be up at this hour. Curious to know, I opened my door a crack and was in time to see Gail slipping into her room down the hall. She was fully clothed—not in her shimmery dress, but in jeans and jacket.

  I remembered what Belle had said, and guessed that she must be coming home from a rendezvous with Mark Ingram. What had been only a suspicion that he had deliberately planted an enemy within the house grew into conviction. I wondered how much Belle knew, and what she thought about this. In any case something must be done about Gail.

  So why not now? I put on my robe a
nd slippers and went down the hall to tap on her door. There was a moment’s silence, and then she came to open it a crack.

  “We’re both awake,” I said, “so perhaps this is as good a time as any to talk.”

  If she could have closed the door in my face, I think she would have, but she didn’t quite dare. Instead she opened it and let me into her room. She had started to undress, unbuttoning her blouse. Her dair hair was loose, falling tousled about her face, and what makeup she had worn was smudged, so that her mouth had a well-kissed look. She stared at me with eyes that were still languorous with love.

  “What do you want?” she said.

  I glanced about a room that was not much different from my own, except that it had been lived in longer and there were more personal possessions lying about. Gail might be antiseptic enough as a nurse, but she wasn’t a particularly tidy person.

  “Do you mind if I sit down?” I asked.

  “I don’t think this is the time—” she began.

  “It’s the perfect time. You’ve just come from the hotel, haven’t you?”

  The languorous look was vanishing, and she seemed faintly alarmed. “So what if I have?”

  “Your personal life is your own affair,” I said. “But when it involves Mark Ingram, then that becomes my affair. And my grandmother’s.”

  She stared at me, admitting nothing.

  “How long have you known Mark Ingram,” I asked bluntly.

  “I don’t know him at all …” she began, and then shrugged. “Have it your way, if you must. But I’m not going to tell you anything.”

  “It’s pretty clear that you’re in his hire,” I said. “He planted you in this house, didn’t he?”

  Coolly, insolently, she finished undoing her blouse and took it off. She wore no bra, and she reached without hurry for a pajama top, slipped into the sleeves, and began to button up the front. All the while she watched me with that sly, faintly triumphant look that I’d seen her wear before.

  “Mr. Hawes employed me,” she said. “Through Dr. Burton. You know that.”