by Sylvia Nobel
If I remembered correctly, one of the guys at the Muleskinner had said the old road on Devil’s Hill was a shortcut to the mine property. That could provide the answer as to how our ghost arrived and departed unseen. What if an off road or four-wheel drive vehicle was parked on the other side of the ridge just out of sight?
The blue Suburban jumped to mind. But how could it be D.J.? He and Marta left for Mexico hours ago. There was Willow of course, but I couldn’t picture her dilapidated VW bus making it up the steep slope. Duncan Claypool was off the list. So that left Archie or Bitsy. Or Jesse and Haston. And I certainly could not leave out the possibility of Fran or Dr. Orcutt.
I thumped the steering wheel with my hand. Damn! I was driving myself nuts again. With difficulty, I shoved the whole frustrating mess to the back of my mind and swung the car onto Red Lantern Lane. Apropos, I mused, considering the notorious profession chosen by Ida’s mother.
Like the rest of the town the majority of dwellings I passed on Vixen Hill appeared to be unoccupied. So when I reached the crest of the knoll and spotted a neat stone cottage appearing weathered enough to be an extension of the rocky hillside itself, I figured it must be Ida’s place.
The name on the mailbox confirmed my guess. I parked the car beneath the low hanging branches of an oak tree, scooped up the albums, and hurried along a shady walkway accompanied by the silvery clamor from what must have been a hundred wind chimes all clanging, dinging and tinkling a melodious, yet slightly off-key concert.
My knock was answered by a dour-faced, gray-haired woman of indeterminate age whose blunt features and reddish skin told me she was from one of the Indian tribes in the area. Probably Pima or Yaqui.
Smiling, I introduced myself and informed her of my appointment. Apparently unimpressed, she said nothing, just ushered me into a small living room and gestured for me to wait before shuffling away.
Slightly nonplussed by her uncommunicative manner, I turned to survey the small room filled with a hodgepodge of frayed silk furniture, antique tables and glass-fronted cabinets stuffed with a lifetime of bric-a-brac. I set the albums on a doily-topped table and wandered about breathing in the musty scent of mothballs that reminded me of my grandmother’s attic.
As an ancient cuckoo clock began its whistled proclamation of twelve noon, I stopped to admire Ida’s collection of pewter figurines and my eyes fell on a large glass Mason jar that looked like it was filled with...what? I leaned in closer. Cat litter and jelly beans?
“Well, Miss O’Dell, you’re certainly a tall one,” came a soft voice from behind me.
I swung around and stared down at an incredibly shrunken, unbelievably wrinkled woman bent over an aluminum walker.
“You’ve met Edgar, I see,” she intoned with a high-pitched chuckle, peering up at me through thick lenses.
I lifted an inquiring brow. “Edgar?”
Her smile revealed a row of gold-flecked ivory-colored teeth. “My fourth husband. I put the other three in the ground, but Edgar wanted to be cremated and stay right here in the living room by the window so he could keep an eye on his precious garden.”
I edged a look outside at the profusion of flowers filling a rock-walled enclosure. “I see. And the jelly beans?” “His last request,” she said with a grunt, easing into a frayed armchair. “He said as long as he had to spend eternity in that jar, he might as well enjoy his favorite snack. It dresses things up a bit, wouldn’t you say?”
“Very colorful and a definite conversation starter,” I replied, answering her mischievous grin with one of my own.
She appeared to be studying me closely and finally said, “I believe you favor my mother. That’s a picture of her on the wall behind you.”
I turned to examine the faded likeness of the famed Madame of Vixen Hill, feeling flattered at the comparison, but not really seeing much resemblance. Perhaps Dr. Orcutt’s assertion that the old lady was partially blind held some merit. “Thank you,” I murmured, shifting my gaze back to her, “she was beautiful.”
“Take a gander at the girl in that oval frame,” she said, pointing a bony finger. “Once upon a time, that was me.”
With a twinge of melancholy, I stared at a pretty young face that bore not the slightest similarity to this seasoned citizen. As if to echo my thoughts, she lamented, “Don’t ever get old, there’s no future in it. Plus that, you end up looking like a well-cooked prune.”
“Not at all,” I fibbed, taking a seat opposite her.
“Oh, honey, if the Lord loved a liar he’d squeeze you to death,” she chided me good-naturedly. “Now, why don’t you tell me why you’re here and Miss Morgan isn’t.”
After I explained the reasons for Audrey’s absence, she made a long face. “Fiddlesticks. I was looking forward to meeting Rita’s little girl all grown up.”
“She’s anxious to meet you too and,” I said, patting the photo albums on the table next to me, “she’s hoping you might be able to identify some of these people so she can start reconstructing her past.”
“I heard the poor girl favors her late father, that black-hearted son-of-a-bitch.”
I grinned. “Not one of your favorite people either.”
“There’s an ass for every chair.”
I laughed aloud at her salty language, then started with surprise when she grabbed a pearl handled letter opener from the adjacent table and rapped loudly on the aluminum walker. “Minnie!” she called out, “Minnie, come here.”
The elderly Indian woman appeared in the doorway with hands on ample hips and glared at Ida. “What?”
“There’ll only be two for lunch today instead of three.”
She gave a brusque nod and strode away mumbling under her breath.
“A woman of few words,” I remarked dryly. “Listen, if this isn’t a good time...”
“Pay her no attention,” Ida said, waving one withered, age-spotted hand. “Her nose is out of joint because I made her drive me to the doctor over in Sierra Vista.” She settled back in the chair. “Now then, young lady, let’s get down to brass tacks.”
I scanned my notes. “I’ve got so many names on this list, I’m not sure where to start.”
“The beginning is always best,” she advised, absently fingering loose folds of skin hanging like a shriveled hammock beneath her chin.
Within minutes, I highlighted most of the pertinent events that had transpired since our arrival in Morgan’s Folly, including last night’s goblin gig, and was about half way through our frustrating confrontation with Dr. Orcutt when she interrupted with a vociferous, “That drunken old quack. I don’t know how he sleeps nights. His stupidity was responsible for my god daughter’s death and all the other pain he’s caused the Morgan family.”
Drunken? Well, well. That helped explain the doctor’s dissipated appearance. “So, he and Grady both had problems with booze?”
“Humph. Quite a pair those two. Great drinking buddies. They should have revoked that man’s license to practice medicine years ago.”
“Whitey told me about your crusade.”
Frowning, she said, “And to think he’s trying to frighten that poor child. You tell Miss Morgan not to worry. Her father was a ruthless, selfish bastard, but only crazy like a fox.”
I edged forward in my chair. “I’m sure she’ll be relieved to hear that but frankly, it’s the rumors concerning her sister that really have her worried.”
“What’s that?” she asked, adjusting the hearing aid protruding from one ear beneath a thin halo of hair so white it looked like a dandelion gone to seed.
In a louder voice I repeated what few facts we’d been able to drag out of Dr. Orcutt. “At first he didn’t even acknowledge Dayln Morgan existed and now he flatly refuses to discuss her case. My question is, why?”
Her eyes grew distant and she retreated into silence while I sat listening to the clamor of wind chimes wafting through the open window for what seemed like an eternity, before gently prodding her with, “Ida? Are you all right?�
�
Her foggy-hazel eyes slowly refocused as she came back from wherever her memories had led her. “Oh, yes. I was just remembering that whole unfortunate situation.”
There was no point in sugar-coating my question so I asked straight out, “Was Audrey’s sister insane?”
The ensuing hesitation accelerated my pulse. “Well,” she said at length, “let’s just say she was always...different.” “Different? In what way?”
“She was a real moody kid. Kind of withdrawn. Unapproachable a lot of the time and pretty much lived alone in her own little fantasy world.”
I chewed on that information a few seconds. “Rita told Dr. Orcutt that Grady’s drinking and physical abuse were the reasons she took Audrey and fled. Did he mistreat Dayln too? Could that be what caused her to turn on him with a knife?”
“I don’t think we’ll ever know.” In a halting voice, she explained that she and her third husband had been abroad when the attack had taken place. By the time they’d returned, Dayln had already been committed. “I went to visit her twice at that wretched place.”
“Only twice?”
“They didn’t make it easy if you weren’t a blood relative. But anyway, the first time I went she was all doped up and couldn’t seem to remember much of anything. When I finally did get her to talk, I couldn’t make head nor tail of what she was saying. The second time she seemed really agitated, all wild-eyed, pacing like a caged tiger and still talking in riddles.” Her expression grew distant and I could almost see the parade of memories marching before her eyes. “She kept repeating something about not being who she was supposed to be. Claimed someone else was living inside her head and begging me to help her...” The old woman’s bony shoulders sank in defeat. “She did kind of sound...well...”
“Unbalanced?” I said, hating to admit to myself that Dr. Orcutt may have been telling the truth after all.
“Perhaps so,” she said in a hushed voice, “but if you ask me I think the poor child was doomed from the start.”
“In what way?”
Ida went on to explain that because of the strict provision in Hannah Morgan’s will stipulating the mine’s ownership be passed onto the sons, Grady was constantly harangued by his father to abandon his lustful wanderings and settle down to produce the much-desired male heir.
“Grady needed a brood mare, not a wife,” Ida said. “Lydia got sick not long after giving birth and when she was told it would be dangerous for her to bear more children, Grady didn’t try to hide his displeasure. Not only was he unspeakably cruel to her after that, he pretty much ignored his daughter.”
“And that’s why Dayln hated him,” I murmured, scribbling madly on my notepad.
Ida shook her head sadly. “Far from it. She worshipped the ground the foolish man walked on. Craved his attention so much she’d force herself to go down in the mine with him to prove her worth, even though it scared the bejesus out of her.”
I stared in confusion. This version was diametrically opposed to everything I’d surmised and demolished the obvious motive. There had to be some other reason. “How old was she when her father remarried?”
“Eight or nine.”
“Was she jealous of Rita?”
“I don’t know, but she changed a lot after Lydia died. Got real belligerent, and by the time she was oh, maybe twelve, she’d started hanging around town with that bunch of no good hoodlums.”
“That I don’t get. Rita was her stepmother. Why didn’t she exercise some control over her.”
“I think she tried for a while, but if the truth be known, she didn’t really pay much more attention to her than Grady did.”
“Why?”
“I think it was mostly because she was so obsessed with trying to have a baby.”
“Really? You mean she couldn’t conceive?”
“Oh, she managed that just fine. Just couldn’t carry the babies to term. She miscarried one right after the other until Audrey finally came along and I guess it was a real miracle that she even managed that.”
Catching my puzzled glance, she revealed that after almost losing Audrey twice, Dr. Orcutt had ordered Rita to lie flat on her back the last five months of her pregnancy. “It was quite an ordeal. The poor woman spent the remaining two months at some clinic in Tucson. They kept her pumped full of that stuff that keeps women from going into premature labor and even then, the baby was born way too early. She was hospitalized for a long time before Rita was allowed to bring her home.” She paused for a breath, then smiled wistfully. “You tell Audrey she was the apple of her mother’s eye. Land sakes, I never saw a woman so thrilled to have a child.”
“But Grady wasn’t thrilled, was he? He still didn’t have his son.”
“Very true. I guess it wasn’t meant to be.”
I could see the whole picture pretty clearly now. Rita found herself trapped in the identical position as the first Mrs. Morgan and decided to opt out. But something was still bothering me. Why not just divorce the creep? Why the elaborate identity switch?
“Ida, do you think the long-standing relationship between Audrey’s mother and Dr. Orcutt could have been based on more than just friendship?”
A calculating gleam sparked her eyes. “There were rumors to that effect, but nothing was ever verified.”
“Lunch,” Minnie announced from the doorway and my stomach rumbled in anticipation. Breakfast seemed like a long time ago.
“Oh, good,” Ida said brightly, pulling herself to a standing position. “Bring those albums along, Miss O’Dell, and Minnie, fetch my magnifying glass.”
Surrounded by ornate glass cabinets brimming with blue flowered china patterns, we settled into a small formal dining room. In between the cold asparagus soup and chicken salad sandwiches, Ida’s gaze misted with nostalgia as she roamed the pages of the albums, identifying faded faces from the past while regaling me with colorful tales of bygone days. She digressed long enough to disclose that her own mother had been a schoolteacher from Virginia.
“Believe it or not, she came into her profession when she began coming west each summer to earn extra money,” she said, responding to my look of surprise with an expectant smile. “After a few years, she realized she could make a better living entertaining lonesome miners than if she taught school for the next two hundred years.”
I wished I had time to hear more about what it must have been like growing up as the daughter of the town madam in this once lusty mining town, but I steered the subject back to the Morgan clan. “Tell me more about Audrey’s great-grandmother, Hannah. Did you know her?”
Her eyes narrowed to pinpoints. “Not well. She wasn’t the type to consort with someone who grew up in the red light district and she died in the late forties, long before I became involved with the family.”
“Why do you think she was so intractable in her decision about bequeathing the mine to only a male heir? I mean, you would have thought, considering that she didn’t exactly bow to the normal conventions of the day that she’d be more open to having any Morgan child inherit the Defiance regardless of sex.”
“Hannah was somewhat of a stickler when it came to blood line. Did you know she was already a Morgan before she married Seth?”
My pen stopped in mid-stroke and I looked up “I’m not following you.”
“She was his second cousin twice or three times removed. Kissing cousins, they used to call them, but nevertheless she considered herself a Morgan through and through. Anyway,” she continued, patting her wispy white hair, “after poor Seth died and she’d dealt with Jasper Claypool’s shenanigans, she got downright obsessed with the idea of never losing control again. And remember, things weren’t like they are now as far as women being liberated and all that, so she wasn’t about to take a chance on having the Defiance pass out of the family through the marriage of a female heir.”
Making notations as fast as I could, my head swam with all the new material. It would create great underpinning and really spruce up my article.
By the time we turned the last page on the second album, she confirmed what I already knew. There wasn’t a single picture of Rita or Audrey. I was repeating Marta’s story of how Grady had destroyed them in a rage when another thought intruded. “Maybe I missed something, but I don’t remember you mentioning any pictures of Audrey’s sister either.”
Ida looked momentarily befuddled and then leafed back several pages before pointing a yellowed fingernail at the photo I’d examined a few days ago in the tower room. “That’s Grady, that’s Lydia, and this is Dayln when she was about a year old.”
I strained my eyes and even borrowed the magnifying glass, but the little girl’s shadowed face was unidentifiable. Could it be that Grady had tried to destroy all evidence of both children but missed this one? And if so, why? I consulted my list of questions while Minnie cleared away the empty plates and served a fruit tart smothered in lemon yogurt for dessert. “Ida, do you remember a girl named Bitsy Bigelow?”
She blinked a few times and then nodded. “Dayln’s friend.”
“Right. Best friends, supposedly. You knew she was back in town?”
“Oh, yes. I’ve seen her around. She looks like a different person since her surgery.”
“So I’ve heard. Listen, I tried to talk to her about Dayln yesterday but she positively came unglued. Any idea why?”
The old lady spooned a strawberry into her mouth and munched pensively before admitting she could only repeat gossip. “The story I heard was that Bitsy was mad as hell and refused to have anything more to do with her after Dayln stole her boyfriend away. And when Grady got wind that his daughter was sneaking around with one of those white-trash Lawton boys...”
I sat up straight. “Lawton? Which one?”
“I don’t remember, honey. But anyway, Grady flew into a terrible rage and threatened Dayln within an inch of her life if she so much as looked cross-eyed at the boy again.”
My mind skipped back to Orville Kemp’s disclosure that Archie’s father had spent much of his time in prison. So, the mixture of Dayln’s scandalous behavior and Grady’s ultimatum could very well have provoked their confrontation. But did Dayln’s twenty-year old indiscretion justify Bitsy’s extreme reaction to my inquiries? No. There had to be more.
