We went through a glass door into a kitchen of stone and brick, with ample storage and counter space, far more neatly arranged than was Maggie Caton herself.
“My castle,” she said with a wave of her hand. “The only thing I’m any good at is cooking. I expect that’s why Eric married me. He was tired of beautiful faces.” Her grin was self-mocking.
I slung my camera equipment bag to the floor and sat on a high stool at one of the counters. “Last night at dinner I saw your fascinating fern mural,” I said. “So I gather you do have another talent.”
“Oh, that!” She shrugged off my words. “Cooking takes real talent. Painting is like breathing—just something I do. How did you like my ferns? Squirmy, aren’t they?”
I smiled uncertainly. “I’m not sure I’d want to live with them.”
“Nor does Trevor. They must be dreadful for the digestion, but they’ve only been there a short while and Trevor’s had his mind on other things. Otherwise he’d have had them off by now, I’m sure. Nona doesn’t like them either, but Lori adores the painting and she’ll scream when it’s removed.”
“What made you do it?”
She poured coffee from a pot already plugged in and set a cup before me. “That’s the way my imagination works. I don’t try to explain it—it just happens. And I do think the effect is beautiful.”
I couldn’t quarrel with that and I sipped scalding coffee in silence.
“I’m alone at the moment,” Maggie went on, “because Eric’s off with Giff and Lori and Chris in Asheville.”
“Trevor mentioned that Lori and Chris were away,” I began, and she nodded her red and gray head at me.
“Maybe you’re not up on all the complicated relationships. Gifford Caton is my stepson, Eric’s son. Old Vinnie’s great-grandson, as Lori is his great-granddaughter. Giff is staying with us for now and works for his father. He’s Lori’s cousin, of course, and Eric is her uncle. I’m only an outsider around here, without any kin except by marriage. After what happened, Lori was showing signs of falling apart, and Chris has been in a pretty unsettled state. They’ve taken him out of school for a while. Eric and Giff drove them off to visit more Caton kin in Asheville. I wish they’d all stay away for a while. I miss Eric, but it’s more peaceful when they’re gone.”
Her tone gentled as she mentioned her husband, and I found myself wondering about him even more.
She placed a jug of what looked like real cream on the counter and shoved a sugar bowl toward me. When I continued to drink my coffee black, she nodded her approval.
“Never touch sugar myself. Poison. And cream’s too fattening.”
I didn’t want to sit here and talk about sugar and cream. While I had Maggie Caton alone, I had to ask questions.
“What did you mean about David’s doing his job too well?”
Maggie seated herself beside me at the counter and picked up her cup. “Did I say that? I often talk out of turn. You’ll get used to it.”
“Will you tell me what happened?” I said. “How do you think David died?”
This time she gave me a quick glance from rain-cool gray eyes. “I shouldn’t think you’d want to talk about that. Hasn’t Trevor given you the whole story?”
“He gave me his view of it. I was wondering about yours.”
“Playing detective? But that’s what got your husband into trouble. And you’re an amateur. Were you on good terms with David?”
Her directness startled me. “Isn’t that an odd question?”
“So are yours. Except that you have a right to ask, and I haven’t. Sorry.”
“David and I understood each other,” I said.
“Good enough. But I can’t tell you anything more about his death. I only know what Trevor told us.”
I wondered about that, but her words carried a certain finality, and I didn’t dare probe too hard. When my cup was empty, I slipped off the stool.
“Thank you for the coffee. I’d better be getting back now.”
“If you’ll wait until I get my foot out of my mouth, I’ll walk you over to Trevor’s,” she offered.
I accepted readily, and when we were on the path leading through the woods she began to talk in her low, slightly husky voice.
“Don’t mix yourself up in what’s happening here,” she said. “Get the funeral over with, meet the formalities, and then go home as soon as you can. And don’t look back.”
“Why?” I asked bluntly.
Her answer was evasive. “I gather that arson is an especially nasty sort of crime to deal with. Only a week or two ago, David came to our house for dinner and I heard him talking to Eric about fires and the people who set them.”
“What did he say?”
“He only spoke in generalities. You know—women who start fires are usually angry or frustrated. They’re likely to set fire to their own belongings. The pyromaniac has a few screws loose. Sexual, that is. Mostly he acts on impulse and lacks motivation. The fire to raise insurance money is often done by a professional in the employ of the owner. But a fire isn’t always for monetary gain. Sometimes it’s an effort to hide some other crime.”
She had listened well, but she wasn’t telling me anything I hadn’t already heard David discuss a hundred times in the course of his work.
“How do you explain the explosives that were used at Belle Isle?” I asked.
“I’m not trying to explain anything. But maybe that was only intended for the house. Wasn’t it just David’s bad luck to walk in at the wrong time? That’s what the police decided. Maybe it was murder, all right, but not first-degree, not intentional. It might have been Trevor or Eric or anyone else who was killed. Could be it was only a different, more emphatic way of destroying a house.”
I thought of David’s letter back in my room. “I don’t believe that.”
She stopped beside me on the path and I saw the white, pressed-in look about her mouth, as though some barely restrained emotion pinched her lips.
“It was an accident, Karen. Only an accident! Goodbye now. I’ll see you again.” She turned from me and walked back in the direction of her house, a sturdy, determined figure.
I stood looking after her for a moment in dismay, and then went onto Trevor’s. What had I said to so upset her? Only that I didn’t agree with her.
As I reached the house Nona came out upon the curving arm of a ramp that ran down to ground level, moving easily in her chair. This morning she wore a gown that was the orange-red color of bittersweet berries, and once more a half-dozen strands of beads looped her neck. She stopped her chair close to me and raised a hand in greeting.
“Been for a walk? Good. I’m glad you’re not the brooding type. Let the hills heal you. Have you been taking pictures?”
I patted my camera bag. “Yes. I found a rock on the mountainside where I was able to get several pictures of this house.”
“Fine. You’ll be hungry now. Everyone gets his own breakfast around here, since Lu-Ellen doesn’t show up until nine. You’ll find what you need in the kitchen, I expect. Trevor’s there now.”
She waved her hand again and rolled herself expertly toward the garage. As I reached the front door I heard her car start.
Last night I hadn’t had a good chance in the dusk and rain to admire the entryway Trevor had designed for this house. Now I could stand still and enjoy it. The doorway was of a generous and inviting width, set well beneath the deep overhang of the roof. Three steps leading up to it were of natural stone, and beside them a crude stone dog with a sly grin on its mouth rested on its hindquarters, one paw outstretched as though in greeting.
I bent to pat the stone head. “Good fellow,” I said, and went up the steps, to find Trevor just inside, watching me. The shock of seeing him suddenly was not as great as it had been last night, but the memory of old emotion stirred in me—emotion that I wanted only to forget, that I had to fight at every turn.
“I like your stone dog,” I told him lightly.
“He’s
local. Maggie Caton chopped him out of a chunk of stone in a whimsical moment. She’s more gifted than she knows.”
“I’ve just me her,” I said, and let it go at that.
“The dog’s name is Simon,” Trevor told me. “Nona says that’s the name he claims. How are you this morning?”
“I’ve been bracing myself for what’s ahead.”
He nodded. “Come in and I’ll give you breakfast.”
I paused in the doorway because now I could look down the full sweep of the hallway, clear to the glass of living-room windows at the far end, with the marvelous vista of mountains and sky forming a backdrop tapestry.
“I’ve never seen a more beautiful spot than you’ve found here,” I said. “Your house fits the mountain as though it had grown from it.”
He led the way into the kitchen without comment. There was no fire needed on the hearth this morning, and now I could savor the spaciousness and light that were always a part of Trevor’s rooms. He worked with space as if it were an entity in itself.
While he dropped bread into a toaster and brought me a glass of orange juice from the refrigerator, I sliced a banana over bran flakes. When the toast popped I buttered it and added country marmalade. It felt wonderful to be hungry. I hadn’t wanted to eat since David’s death. Perhaps by lunchtime my appetite would have fled again, so I’d better take advantage of it now.
“Maggie Caton explained all the relationships to me,” I said. “Lori, Eric, Giff and so on. Perhaps I’ll meet them before I leave. Though Maggie seems to think I shouldn’t stay around here for long.”
“She’s right, you shouldn’t,” Trevor said, once more curt and abrupt.
“Why do you feel that way?”
“It must be painful for you here. I shouldn’t think you’d want to stay.”
I set down my second cup of coffee and looked at him. “There’s more than the distress to me that everyone seems to be thinking of. Tell me why you want me gone, Trevor.”
For just a moment he regarded me sadly, almost pityingly. Then he shrugged, and the chill I had felt yesterday was there again. “Stay as long as you like, Karen,” he said, and I knew he had moved to some remote psychic place where I couldn’t go.
We left for Sevierville, the county seat, as soon as I’d finished breakfast, and the trip was made mostly in silence. It was a barrier I had no desire to cross. Trevor had brought down some sort of bar against the possibility of friendship between us, and that was fine with me—and safer than friendship. Much safer, I told myself firmly.
At the funeral parlor I had only to make arrangements for the burial. There was a little cemetery not far from Gatlinburg, where some of David’s family had been buried and I chose that for his resting place. In two days’ time, I agreed, and we went back to Trevor’s car. I knew that I was behaving stiffly, all too matter-of-factly, as though none of this had anything to do with me.
“Are you all right?” Trevor asked as I got into the car.
“I’m all right,” I told him numbly. That was the trouble—that I had felt so little in that muted, impersonal place, with its soft lighting and phony background music. Only the place itself made me angry, but there was nothing of David there, and anger for an established custom was a waste of emotion right now. When I had stood before the ruin of the house at Belle Isle where David had died, emotion had shaken me, but now I could find no tears, no pain or regret. The numbness was frightening. More frightening than if I had been grief-stricken. To be cool when it came to Trevor was one thing, but to feel nothing at all now about David was alarming.
We drove out of the city and when we were on the highway again I grew aware of Trevor’s uneasiness with me. I wasn’t behaving as a proper widow should, and I supposed that he was waiting for me to collapse in grief. I made an effort to reassure him.
“I really am all right,” I said. “Don’t worry about me.”
“It’s better to let it out. If you hold everything back it will hit you harder in the long run. It’s better to cry, you know.”
“Crying is the last thing I feel like doing. But if that time comes, I’ll cry.”
“All right.” He withdrew his momentary sympathy. “In that case, this is as, good a time as any to make another stop.”
“Stop where?”
“County sheriff’s office. They’re holding some things of David’s. Articles that were retrieved—after the fire. Identification has been made, of course, but they’d like you to confirm these items.”
“Naturally,” I said, but this time a shiver went along my spine.
Only a deputy sheriff named keegan was on duty when we arrived. A tall man with sandy hair and a searching look, he gestured me into a chair a bit watchfully, and I suspected that he had dealt with distraught widows before. When he brought a small box and placed it on the desk before me, Trevor stood beside my chair, and I knew that he too was watchful, though still remote.
“You understand, Mrs. Hallam,” Keegan said, “that almost everything was either destroyed by the explosion or burned in the fire?”
I nodded, finding that I was tensing now, as I had not done at the funeral parlor.
He took the lid off the box and I avoided looking inside as he reached in a tanned hand and brought out an object that he held toward me in his palm.
“Do you recognize this?”
I knew it very well. What he held was the ruin of a handsome belt buckle of Mexican silver that I had given David one Christmas a few years ago. I didn’t touch the bit of twisted metal.
“Yes,” I said, and knew that strain sounded in my voice. “That belonged to my husband.”
Again searching fingers dipped into the box and again a lump of blackened metal was brought out. This time I took it into my hand, the better to examine what was left of David’s expensive and treasured wristwatch. When I turned it over I could just make out the initial “D” on the back. The rest was obliterated.
“This was David’s too,” I said.
“And this?” He was holding out a ring in his fingers—a carved gold band that had been partly melted, the stone in the setting gone.
I shook my head. “I’ve never seen that before.”
I was aware of a sudden exchange of looks between the two men. Deputy Keegan spoke brusquely.
“It was his, all right. Several people down here identified it because they’d seen him wearing it. Perhaps it was something given to him since he came here, or something he may have purchased.”
David had never cared particularly for rings and wouldn’t have bought it for himself. So who would have made him such a gift?
The next article was a scorched and battered flashlight and I shook my head. “He always carried a flashlight or two in his car, but I wouldn’t know one from another.”
“That’s okay,” Keegan said. “We had a real break there. The batteries came through pretty well inside the case. We were able to get his fingerprints from them. It was his all right.”
“It’s probably the one he had stuck in his belt when he went down to the house,” Trevor said.
I hardly listened because I was still thinking about the ring. Had it been a gift from a woman? I’d had no illusions about David’s fidelity for a long while. It didn’t matter. I would never even know who she was. Yet perhaps someone here grieved for him more than I was able to.
“Just one more thing,” Keegan said. “The explosion tore everything apart, of course, but this scrap of cloth came through. Do you recognize it?”
I could only nod. Staring at it, I felt a little ill, and Keegan went quickly for a cup of water from the cooler.
“She’s had enough,” Trevor said.
I reached out and touched the remnant of brown suede, torn and blackened, but recognizable as coming from David’s favorite jacket. He had always liked expensive clothes, and he had worn them well. I had seen him in that jacket a hundred times and had been wryly amused when he had created his own fire emblem of a conventionalized flame that ha
d been sewed onto a pocket. Traces of the red emblem were still there. The sight brought David before me with sickening clarity, and I could see him as vividly as though he’d been in the room with us, wearing that suede jacket, with his favorite Stetson cocked at a jaunty angle on his head.
“He—he used to wear a hat,” I faltered, and heard my voice crack.
Keegan held up some charred scraps. “A Stetson, yes. These, probably.”
I sipped cold water and tried to breathe deeply. But Keegan wasn’t quite through with me. “Of course the final identification was the teeth. We found enough to—”
“That’s it!” Trevor said. “Don’t show her anymore. I’ll take you home now, Karen.”
He put a hand on my arm and I rose obediently. I didn’t try to explain that it was not the idea of David’s teeth but his jacket and the remnants of his Stetson that had made him real for me again. I already knew about the teeth, of course. I had given the police the name of David’s dentist, and I’d talked to him afterward on the phone.
Keegan was putting the blackened objects back into the box. The bit of suede—all that remained of David Hallam—last. I could cry now, helplessly, silently. In a way, I think Trevor was relieved. He hadn’t understood my blank passivity.
He put an impersonal arm about me as we walked to the door, while the deputy stood helplessly by with the box of David’s things in his hands.
“I’ll take that,” Trevor said, and put the box under his arm.
We walked to his car together and I slumped into the front seat weeping. He sat beside me silently, letting me cry.
“I’ll be all right in a minute,” I said.
If only I could have clung to him and been comforted, but he did not touch me again, and I permitted myself no such weakening gesture.
“It’s going to be rough for a few days,” he told me when I sat up and wiped my eyes. “But this will be over soon and you can get back to your work, Karen. If you can keep busy things will get better a lot faster.”
The Glass Flame Page 5
