The Turquoise Mask

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  “Quetzalcoatl,” he said, and held up the brass figure for me to see. “The Plumed Serpent—one of the Aztec gods. He’s made a good bludgeon.”

  How much of this was acting? I wondered. Eleanor moved her head and light caught the glitter of excitement in her eyes.

  “But who would hide in the store and strike you down? We heard you fall, but there was no one here when we reached you. What did you come here for, Amanda?”

  I found that my legs would hold me, and my head was clearing. The throbbing lessened as I righted myself. Gingerly I felt the back of my head and discovered a rising lump. But there seemed to be little blood, if any, and I knew I had spared myself the full force of the blow by moving at the moment it fell. All I wanted now was to get away from these two. I could trust neither one. Either might have struck me down. But my arms were weak and the box I clasped dropped to the floor with a clatter.

  At once Eleanor leaned to pick it up. “What’s this? What are you taking away from the store?”

  With an effort, I reached for the box, but she drew it away and set it on a counter. There was no way to stop her as she pressed the clasp and raised the lid. The interior of the box was lined with midnight blue velvet, its contents wrapped in a chamois skin which Eleanor unwound, revealing a slender dagger with an ornate handle.

  There was a roughness in Paul’s voice when he spoke. “What do you want with that, Amanda?”

  For just an instant I thought of saying that I needed it to protect myself against someone who’d strike me on the bead with Quetzalcoatl, but that would do no good. Secrecy was no longer possible.

  “Juan Cordova asked me to bring him the box,” I told them. “I didn’t know what was in it.”

  Eleanor whistled softly, looked at Paul. Then she replaced the weapon in its wrapping and closed the box, gave it back to me.

  “I suppose you’ll have to take it to him,” she said. “But I don’t like this at all.”

  Paul held my arm as we went out the door, and Eleanor ran ahead to open her car. I was helped into the back seat, where I slumped into a corner. We drove home without incident, and no more questions were asked. It was good to breathe deeply of the night air, and my headache faded to a dull throb. I didn’t try to think of anything.

  When we reached the house there was a hasty, whispered consultation between Paul and Eleanor in the front seat. Paul helped me out and waited long enough to see whether I was able to walk. Then he told us a quick good night and cut through the patio to his own side gate, while Eleanor took my arm and steadied me through the living-room door.

  “Shall I help you up to your room?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “Not now. I’m going to see Juan first. He asked me to come to him when I got back.”

  For a moment Eleanor looked as though she might say something more—perhaps ask for my silence, perhaps ask how much I’d heard of her conversation with Paul—but she must have known it would do no good, for she shrugged and made a slight grimace.

  “I’ll go get Clarita. She’ll want to have a look at that lump on your head.”

  I tried to tell her not to bother, but she went off, and I moved reluctantly toward my grandfather’s study. I had no wish for long explanations. All I wanted was to sit in my room and try to recover myself. But there was no help for it—I had to face Juan Cordova.

  He was lying on his couch, waiting for me.

  “I’ve brought the box,” I said, and put it into his hands.

  He sat up, almost fondling the case, his fingers moving in appreciation over the carved lid.

  “I know what’s in it,” I said. “Why did you want the dagger?”

  He made a sound of annoyance and opened the box. With careful fingers he unwrapped what lay within and held it up by the handle, forgetting me for the moment as light caught the blade in a bright flash.

  “There is no better steel than that of Toledo,” he murmured. “And this handle is of fine Toledo Damascene. I purchased it myself in a shop there many years ago.”

  “Why did you want me to bring it to you?” I persisted.

  With a suddenness that startled me, he thrust the dagger beneath his pillow on the couch. “I do not mean to lie here helpless, defenseless. But I told you not to open the box, Amanda.”

  “I didn’t open it,” I said. “Eleanor did.” And I told him that she and Paul had been in the store, apparently to return the Penitente things to their display case, and that I had been trying to escape without their discovering me when I was struck.

  He was silent for a long time after my account, his gaze fixed on the wall beyond my head. When he spoke his face seemed to collapse into the fallen lines of despair.

  “What am I to do? Where can I place my trust? Which one of them did this to you, Amanda?”

  “I don’t know whether either of them did,” I said.

  “But who else would go to the store? Amanda, this is no longer a choice you can make. You are not safe in this house.”

  “Because the one who killed my mother is afraid of me?”

  He made a choked sound. “No one killed Doro. She died by her own will. It was Kirk Landers who was shot.”

  “You believe what you want to believe!” I cried. “You won’t be shaken from your own stubbornness.”

  He looked at me with pain in his eyes, but as I started to say more Clarita burst into the room in an agitated state. She was dressed in black again, with only one of the gold hoops she’d worn at dinner still gracing an ear.

  “What is this, Amanda? My father has told me of this foolishness in sending you on an errand to the store at this hour. Now you have been hurt. And I suppose you have come crying back to him?”

  “That’s enough!” Juan said sharply. “I wish to know all that happens. There are to be no secrets held from me.”

  “Isn’t it time you went to the police?” I asked.

  Both Clarita and Juan made sounds of repudiation.

  “I will not advertise our troubles in the newspapers,” Juan insisted. “We have been through all this before.”

  Clarita bowed her head in agreement. “Come with me, Amanda, and I will look at your bruise in a good light. It must be bathed and perhaps bandaged.”

  “Go with her,” Juan said. “We will talk more tomorrow, before you start for home.”

  “Right now this is my home,” I said, “inhospitable as it seems to be,” and I followed Clarita out of the room.

  She led me to a bathroom where she opened a medicine cabinet, so thoroughly annoyed that she spat angry little cries as she took out what she needed and examined the back of my head.

  “Why must you be where you should not be? Why must you provoke trouble? You will be killed if you continue like this. You must heed my father and leave Santa Fe tomorrow.”

  “Who is it that wants to kill me, Aunt Clarita?” I asked softly.

  She dabbed roughly at the lump on my head with cotton dipped in disinfectant, and the skin must have been broken because it stung.

  “Ask no more questions. Close your eyes. Close your ears. Be quiet until you can get away.”

  “What did you do with the diary pages, Aunt Clarita?”

  Again her hand on my head was rough. “I don’t know what you are talking about. Stand still. I must fix a patch over this spot.”

  I stepped away from her, declining to have my hair stuck up with a taped patch. “The lump isn’t important.”

  She gave up in further annoyance, but she was not through with her questions. “He told me he’d sent you to the store, but what did he want you to bring him?”

  “You’ll have to ask him yourself,” I said. “Or ask Eleanor. She knows.”

  Clarita flicked her hands at me in dismissal. “Eleanor is being wronged. But go to bed now. Here—I will give you something to help you sleep.”

  “Perhaps I’d better stay awake,” I said, though I accepted the pills from her.

  “As you please,” she said.

  I started towa
rd the door, leaving her to put away her bottles and bandages—but then I turned back.

  “Where did you lose your gold earring, Aunt Clarita?”

  Her hands flew to her ears and I knew that she was unaware that one was missing. “I’d started to undress,” she said. “I haven’t been away from the house, so it’s undoubtedly on my dressing table.”

  “Undoubtedly,” I said, and went out of the room, leaving her with a look on her face that I didn’t like.

  I took the capsules she’d given me to my room, but I didn’t swallow them, nor did I go immediately to bed. Instinct told me that my senses must not be dulled artificially. I needed to be alert, lest there be some further move against me. Though probably I was safe enough now. No one was likely to attack me in my room.

  I went to turn down the covers of my bed and stopped with my hand on the spread. The Zuni fetish lay against the pillow. It was the same one I had found before, and which Eleanor had taken away to return to the exhibit in the store. The small, heavy stone with its rudimentary carvings of the legs and head of a mole, its bloodstains and its thong binding of arrowhead and turquoise beads, all were the same. Now I knew I would not sleep.

  This was too much. Somehow it seemed the last, shattering straw, as frightening as the whip and the blow on my head. It meant that whoever threatened me would not let up for an instant. The hunter was close on my trail, and he wanted me terrified.

  I paced about my room with the ugly little stone in my hand, and found there was no order to my thoughts. There were only desperate questions in every direction in which I might turn. And now there was constant terror as well.

  When the knock came on my door, I dissolved into trembling despair. My room was remote from the others. There was no escape from it except down the narrow stairs where this visitor, whoever it was, must stand. The knock came again, and a voice. Gavin’s.

  “Amanda, are you there?”

  Relief swept through me and I ran to open the door. It didn’t matter that he was displeased with me, that he distrusted me, I simply clung to him, shaking so that my teeth chattered.

  He held me quietly, impersonally, and it was enough that his arms were about me and that I loved him, however hopelessly. He, at least, would let nothing harm me. He was not involved in any of this plot.

  His warmth and closeness soothed me, and my shivering stopped, my chattering teeth stilled. I became all too aware that his arms merely supported me, and that it was I who continued this embrace. I stepped back from him, still feeling shattered but in better control of myself.

  “I—I’m sorry,” I faltered. “I just—let go for a moment.”

  “I know.” His voice was kind. “Clarita has told me what happened to you in the store. I came to see if you were all right.”

  “She—she gave me some sleeping pills, but I don’t want to take them. I’m afraid to go to sleep. Look!”

  I held out the fetish to him and his eyes seemed to cloud as he looked at it.

  “It was there on my bed,” I ran on. “Where someone also put the death-cart figure.”

  His composure seemed to crack a little as he took the fetish from my hand.

  “Eleanor,” he said. “She likes to play such games. I’m afraid there’s a cruel streak in her—as there is in Juan. But she’s unlikely to take any serious action.”

  I wasn’t sure about that, and I walked away from him to a window and looked down into the patio. Nothing moved in bright moonlight. A single light burned at the Stewarts’ house. Someone was taking serious action. I just didn’t know who it was.

  “I don’t know what to do,” I said.

  He didn’t answer me directly. “It’s not terribly late. Put on your coat and come with me. I’ll take you for a drive and make you sleepy without pills.”

  I turned from the window with a feeling of unreasonable joy. All my emotions were exaggerated tonight—out of bounds. Of course I would go with him—anywhere, and gladly.

  While I wound a scarf around my neck and took out my coat, Gavin stepped to the window embrasure where I’d propped my small painting to dry.

  “May I?” he said, and drew it out.

  I froze with my coat still on its hanger. Here was more emotion. I couldn’t bear it if he thought poorly of what I’d done.

  He held up the canvas in both hands and studied my brilliant scene of village road and stark hot sky.

  “It’s good,” he said, and I breathed again. “It’s very good. You’ve painted your own feeling into your pigments, as a true painter should. You must show this to Juan.”

  He put it aside and came to help me with my coat, and I was awkward about finding the sleeves because I was too happy to concentrate on mundane matters like putting on a coat. Gavin liked what I had done, and my feelings were off on a new and joyful path. I had to make an effort to contain myself and not bubble with foolish happiness like a child. For me, just then, only the moment existed, and I would not look ahead or use my wits. I would not look behind. It was enough to be with him, and I asked for nothing more.

  No one saw us as we went downstairs and out to the garage. I got into the front seat beside Gavin, and he eased the car onto the narrow road, where I’d done my painting in a time that seemed utterly remote from now.

  “There’s a full moon tonight,” he said. “I know where I can take you.”

  We followed the quiet streets of Santa Fe and then turned onto a side road that led off toward the mountains. Before long the highway began to rise, winding and climbing into the Sangre de Cristos. Our headlights cut the darkness and the moon shone down on forests of ponderosa pine, with stands of aspen still above us.

  Gavin knew the road well and he drove with confident skill. I let myself relax beside him, breathing the night scent of pine trees which had warmed all day in the sun. The world was all the more intensely beautiful because of my unreasoning happiness. If only this drive could go on forever, I would be content and ask for nothing more.

  Once or twice Gavin glanced at me as though my mood puzzled him and he might be wondering what had become of all my fears. It was colder now, but the air was bracing and nothing could chill me. When we came to a lookout place, Gavin pulled off the road and let me gaze over the lights of Santa Fe, sparkling at our feet, and off to the faraway lights of The Hill—Los Alamos. I let beauty hold me. I would have liked to paint a night picture of this—something I’d never attempted. Again Gavin was watching me, rather than the scene he knew so well.

  But he said nothing, and in a few moments we started up the mountain again. There were patches of snow in the crevices now—white and shining, with shadows of indigo. We were climbing in low gear, and suddenly the tall trees gave way to scrubby growth, and we were in the open below the snow peaks. Santa Fe was no longer in view. A dark building rose on our right and we could see the framework of the ski lifts climbing to the fields above us. Nothing moved. Deep silence lay over the peaks. Again Gavin stopped the car and we got out into invigorating cold. Our breath frosted on the air and I wrapped my scarf about my head to keep my ears warm.

  Gavin held out his hand to me and I took it easily as we walked about the open area where cars would park for the winter skiing. His hand was as warm as mine was cold, and once he stopped to chafe my fingers. The moon had an icy radiance and this was a world far removed from threats of violence, from the darkness of murder. There was no evil in this clear air. Happiness was a mountaintop at night and the companionship of Gavin Brand.

  As we turned back to the car we ran, our hands still clasped together, though when he reached the car he did not open my door at once, but just stood looking at me for a moment. Then he drew me into his arms in hungry despair.

  “I knew from the first that you spelled trouble,” he said ruefully. “I meant to make you dislike me, distrust me.”

  “I don’t do either,” I said with my cheek against the rough cloth of his jacket.

  He turned my face up to him and kissed me with a tenderness I’d
never known before. “What am I to do about you?”

  It had happened to me—just as it had once happened to my father and his Doroteo—and I had no wish to struggle against it. This was a natural force which would go its own way, and there was no stopping it. My quiet joy had heightened.

  “Let’s never go back,” I said with my cheek against his jacket. “Let’s just go away and make a life of our own.”

  His arms tightened about me, though he didn’t answer my foolish words. Down in Santa Fe the Cordovas waited for us, and there nothing had been settled.

  “You must go away,” he said at last. “Your safety means everything now. Juan is going to be angry, and so is Eleanor.”

  I could think of nothing but my new love. “You aren’t going to do what Juan wishes, anyway,” I pointed out. “Can’t we stay together?”

  He released me and opened the car door, waited until I was in my seat, and then walked around to the driver’s side. When he was behind the wheel he turned the engine key, switched on the heater, and we sat for a little while in silence, not touching each other. I knew there was nothing more I could say or do. I had declared myself without reservation, and whatever happened now would be up to Gavin.

  “I don’t know whether I can make you understand,” he said. “It’s true that I’ve told Juan I want to get out of this marriage, just as Eleanor does. But it isn’t a simple matter and I can’t cut off the past with a sharp knife.”

  “Do you still love her a little?”

  He slipped an arm behind me on the back of the seat. “I love you, even though I wish it hadn’t happened. But once I loved her a great deal, and I haven’t entirely got over my feeling of responsibility for her. She can be heedless. Juan knows that. He knows that I’ve kept her on a steadier path than she might otherwise have followed.”

  “If you leave her now, will he put you out of the store?”

  “It’s likely. But that isn’t what matters most. I want to see her land on her feet and not destroy herself.”

  “With Paul Stewart?”

  “Paul will never leave Sylvia. He’s roamed a bit before this. Eleanor is too sure of herself, too sure that the world revolves around her. She can’t help that. It’s what Juan has taught her. But she may be in for a shock with Paul. There are matters which must be settled before I can be free. You came here in the middle of turmoil. Will you go away and wait for me?”