The Glass Flame

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  I grieved for both of them, but I suspected that Chris had never told his father about the suspicion that tormented him, and I had a feeling that it had not died out entirely. If they could have continued to talk openly it might have helped.

  In his loneliness and desperation, Chris began to follow me about, and I accepted his company gratefully. He couldn’t understand, of course, but he was giving me more than I had ever known in a life that had been empty of children. We had shared experiences that drew us comfortingly together, and perhaps I was the only one just then who could offer him activity, a certain quiet assurance and a loving, undemonstrative presence. It was an assurance that concealed my own inner torment. Chris was interested in my camera and in picture-taking, and a tenuous new relationship began to evolve between us though we said nothing of those terrible moments we had shared on the island.

  Inevitably we began to accept, to accustom ourselves, as one does after loss. I hadn’t liked Lori, but I’d never wished her ill, and there were still stabs of horror that met us on every hand in the reminder that she was gone—so dreadfully.

  There could be no immediate flying home to New York, even if I’d been able to. Nona asked me to stay on for a little while, even before the police mentioned that I would be needed for a few days for further questioning.

  “Chris seems to have accepted you,” Nona said. “And you’re more mobile than I am. So be with him when you can. We must get him back to school soon. Trevor can’t manage everything. Too much has happened.” She broke off, moving her hands in a gesture more helpless than she usually displayed, and I understood her deep concern for Trevor and Chris. A concern I shared, aching helplessly with love for both of them.

  Trevor was, I suspected, blaming himself for Lori’s death, wondering what he could have done differently that might have prevented it. Once or twice I tried to talk with him, to at least offer a listening presence, but he couldn’t let go of his demons and in his own way he was as tormented as his son.

  The police decided this time that no crime had been committed. Lori, as we knew, had been fixing up Cecily’s dressing room to amuse herself. He had tacked a large piece of plasterboard to one wall and had been fastening various pictures to it. Chris had seen this, and could describe it in detail. The photos were old ones that Lori had collected over the years. Family pictures, with several of Vinnie, and one or two of Cecily that she had found in old albums. To accomplish the mounting she had apparently brought down a quart container of liquid glue from Trevor’s office. True, that was a much larger quantity than she needed, but such glue was commonly used by architects and was plentiful in Trevor’s supplies. It was extremely flammable stuff. With the glue in use, Lori must have lighted one of those incense candles that Nona enjoyed, and obviously the whole place had gone up in a blaze. Foolish and needless and tragic—but not criminal. An accident. So the police seemed to think. And at first I was baffled, disturbed by their lack of suspicion, not realizing how little they had been told.

  There were a number of questions they seemed content to leave hanging, and no one pushed hard enough for answers that were not easily forthcoming. Who was the man Chris and I had seen in the theater with Lori? The police were interested enough in his identity, but since he was no more to be found now than in the past, nothing could be done about him. The men from the sheriff’s office were local, and they could hardly be blamed for making their own judgment of Lori, though they offered no expression of this to Trevor. It was evident behind their questions, but they didn’t probe too deeply, knowing Trevor’s temper.

  His insistence that the door to the dressing room had been somehow jammed, which would have prevented Lori’s escape, was discounted. Old wood often swelled, and Lori could easily have jammed it herself. If some small wedge had been forced into it from outside, Trevor had been in too desperate a hurry to get into the room to have been aware of that. So he could offer no proof. The single small, high window in the room had offered no easy way to escape in her weakened state.

  The police knew by now about the cabin under the kudzu, and that someone had been hiding there. But neither Chris nor Trevor had mentioned the finding of David’s body, and when I asked why this hadn’t been told to the police, Trevor turned distant and told me it was better not to mention it. Not now. In deference to his wishes, we said nothing. What he was thinking, what he might be planning, I didn’t know, and his silence frightened me.

  There was also the curious matter of the container that had held the liquid glue—easily identified as coming from Trevor’s office. It had been found empty, not in the dressing room where the glue had ignited, but a little way off in the woods. The explanation that was finally agreed upon was that Lori must have brought down only a small quantity in the can, and then discarded it, empty, perhaps using it from some smaller, more convenient container. When Chris said he thought that the can had been full, the comment was disregarded. There was no immediate dealing with all these small, puzzling matters.

  In the end it was decided that this fire was not like the others, in that no connection with arson had been found.

  “They don’t want to believe it was murder!” Nona said indignantly to Trevor.

  “Do you?” he challenged, and she turned silent.

  But I think we all believed in what was left unspoken and kept our feelings to ourselves. I could only hope that Trevor had his own plans, and, as he pointed out, the investigation wasn’t over by any means.

  Twelve

  The week that followed Lori’s death was painful for all of us. The funeral was far more impressive than David’s had been, since Lori’s family wanted it that way, and it was well attended.

  There was, however, one encounter for me during the week that remained clear in my mind for a long time afterward.

  I had been wondering how to catch Maggie alone and ask her the questions that were troubling me. Then two days after the funeral she played into my hands. One morning early she turned up at the house with a picnic hamper on her arm, looking as disheveled as usual, her shirt half in, half out of patched jeans, and her pepper-and-salt red hair caught hastily back with a frayed green ribbon. Her gray eyes still looked haunted, but her manner was determinedly cheerful.

  “I’ve packed a lunch,” she announced, “and you and Chris are coming with me. I can’t sit around the house a minute longer wondering if I am going to be next. And I’m sure you and Chris can use a change. If you’ve got any extra fruit around, you can dump it in my basket.”

  When I stared at her in surprise, she grimaced. “Oh, I know what happened to Lori was an accident. They say. But after a while one gets superstitious.”

  I invited her in, wondering if that was all it was—mere superstition. I had little heart for what she proposed, but I’d wanted an opportunity to talk with her, so I thanked her and went to find Chris. He was always nervously ready for action these days, and willing enough to come. Inaction gave us all too much time to think and grieve. We picked up our cameras and some fruit, and went outside to my car, since Maggie’s was in for a tune-up.

  After recent rain, this was another beautiful morning, and mists were wreathing the mountains and the little “coves.” The latter was the term that always sounded odd to me (born near the sea) for small enclosed pockets of land. Maggie gave directions as I drove, and we turned off the highway into the park. The side road followed a rushing stream, and Chris stirred between us, approving our destination.

  “You haven’t been here, have you, Karen?” he asked. “It’s real pretty and quiet, and there won’t be many visitors now.”

  There were none. Trees arched greenly overhead, hiding the mountains from view as we entered the woods. Only here and there could be seen a hint of coming autumn, with a few maples beginning to turn, and always the pinky-red surprise of the sourwood trees showing. It would be a beautiful autumn. An autumn that neither David nor Lori would ever see.

  As the woods thickened and the narrow road ran closer to the strea
m, a bridge came into view ahead.

  “We might as well stop here,” Maggie said. “A little way back there are picnic tables when we want them.”

  The moment I stopped the car, Chris was out and off on his own explorations, his camera ready around his neck. I left mine in the car and walked beside Maggie toward the bridge. Picture-taking had no interest for me at the moment.

  “This is one of my favorite spots,” Maggie said. “We used to be able to drive over the bridge and up the mountain a little way, but they don’t allow vehicles across anymore.”

  I saw the sign forbidding passage and went with her on foot to midway across the rustic bridge. The water fascinated me in its rush and tumble, and I leaned on the rail, watching the furious stream below me plunging along, varicolored on its downward course. In the shallows where trees overhung the banks, the water shone like green glass, only to turn frothy-white farther on in rapids that tumbled over the rocks. In sheltered pools it swirled like watered silk, turning golden when the sun broke through overhanging branches, spilling like black ink where the shadows grew deep. Always in movement, while all along its course huge tumbled boulders stood up wet and shiny-gray above the heedless path of the stream. Almost like a pattern of our lives, I thought, with rocky obstacles tossed in our paths and the promise of calm only an illusion.

  Beside me, Maggie had closed her eyes and raised her face to the sun, breathing deeply as she let tension flow out of her body. I was sorry to spoil her hard-won peace, but I had to begin. Because of Lori, because of David, I had to begin, but most of all because of the living who were still threatened and unsafe.

  “Chris showed me the cabin under the kudzu, Maggie. How did you know it was there?”

  Her eyes flew open and she looked at me, startled. “What are you talking about?”

  “I know,” I said. “I know why you painted a man being swallowed by those vines.”

  She moved away, from me at the rail. “I don’t know what you mean. Would you like to walk a little way up the mountain, Karen?”

  “I’m fine here. You may as well tell me. Chris showed me the cabin. He told me he found David’s body there, where he was killed—or where he was brought to die. He’s told me everything. Did he tell you, too, or did you see it for yourself?”

  “Oh, God,” Maggie whispered. “I knew it would come out sometime. I’ve been terrified thinking about it. That’s why I painted that picture—to try to get it out of my mind. But the painting is as bad as the reality, and now I’m doubly haunted.”

  “That’s why you said the eyes of the man in the picture were David’s, didn’t you? Because you saw his body there too?”

  She nodded mutely, her hands clenched on the railing before her.

  “There’s a big rock over there in the woods,” I said. “Let’s go and sit in the shade. Then you can tell me.”

  Telling me was the last thing she wanted to do, but she knew by now that I would never let her off. “All right,” she agreed, and followed me to the big stone. I took off my jacket and spread it out to sit on, but Maggie didn’t seem to notice the hard surface. She perched beside me, her hands clasped about her knees.

  “I don’t know where to start,” she said, postponing.

  “Then start at the beginning.” My words sounded harsh and abrupt in my own ears, but there was no way to soften what had to be said. “How did you know about the cabin? How did you happen to go into it at that particular time?”

  She thought about that for a few moments with every evidence of distress, as though I had startled her—or frightened her?—so badly that she couldn’t collect her wits. When she finally started to speak, her voice was without expression, as though she held back feelings she dared not release. Once more I recognized strong mettle in Maggie Caton.

  “I’d been curious for months about what was going on at Belle Isle,” she began. “I knew Giff was following events there, under Eric’s orders, since the family owns the island, so I decided to have a look for myself. I really wasn’t scared then. Kudzu has always fascinated me and I thought I’d go over there to make sketches, do a little painting of that big patch of it on the island. So that’s what I was doing that day. I wasn’t planning a particular painting at that point. I was just making color sketches and getting down the shape of the leaves, the veining and all that. Or at least that’s what I told myself. But all the while I think I was waiting for something to happen. Waiting for someone to pop out of the shrubbery and surprise me.”

  “Weren’t you at all afraid to be over there alone?”

  A jay mocked us from a branch overhead and Maggie looked up. “I was afraid not to be there. I wanted to know—and no one was going to tell me. I’d realized that. So I painted, and while my brush was working I remembered that Chris had told me once that there used to be an old cabin on the island, and that the kudzu had buried it completely. I began to wonder if it was hidden under the mound I was painting, and after a while I began to investigate.”

  The jays taunted her again, and she said, “Oh, hush up.” And suddenly hid her face against her drawn-up knees.

  “Go on,” I said. “You have to tell me.” I couldn’t let her off now.

  A little of her control had cracked as she continued and I heard the edge of fright in her voice. “It wasn’t hard to get under the vines. Somebody had been there before me—Chris, I supposed—and they came up easily. So I crawled beneath them and found the cabin. At first I felt like a kid who’d just discovered a secret cave. It was dark inside and I couldn’t make anything out until my eyes got used to the dimness. I knew someone had been there though because the smells weren’t just those of heavy vegetation and old, damp cabin.” She paused and raised her head, breathing deeply again of pine-scented air, as though to free herself of remembered odors.

  “Sandalwood?” I asked softly.

  “Yes. Mostly that. And another, awful smell. I knew what it was when I saw him—the smell of blood and death. He was lying on the floor, half under a table, and there were ants crawling around that ring Lori gave him. David was a big man—it must have taken a terrible blow to wound him like that. I got out of there as fast as I could and ran back to where I’d left my car near the causeway.”

  I had begun to feel almost as sick as Maggie looked and I had to hold on to my own emotions.

  “But you didn’t tell anyone?”

  She looked at me with terror glazing her eyes. “No! I didn’t dare to until I’d thought about it for a while. I—I had to figure something out.”

  “Who had killed David, you mean?”

  She didn’t answer me directly. “Later on there didn’t seem to be any reason to tell what I’d seen—because when the house exploded that seemed to account for his death. So what was the use?”

  “The use is the exposure of murder. What happened to the house was arson, but by itself it wasn’t necessarily murder. David’s being there could have been unintentional. But his being dead with his body hidden in that cabin under the kudzu—that was murder, and the explosion was intended to hide it. Just as Lori’s death was murder too. So why didn’t you tell?”

  She ran both hands through her tangled mass of hair, turning her head from side to side. When she spoke it was with a visible effort.

  “I didn’t tell for the same reason you haven’t told. And Chris hasn’t told.”

  “But I have told,” I said. “I’ve told Trevor and Nona, and now you.”

  “But no one has told the police—isn’t that right?”

  “Yes,” I admitted reluctantly. “And I don’t know why.” Or was it that I didn’t want to know why. “I suppose we all think we’re protecting someone. Or at least Chris thinks he’s protecting his father. And that’s foolish, of course.”

  “But you haven’t said anything to the police?”

  “For Chris’s sake. Not because I think Trevor had anything to do with it. What Trevor’s purpose is in holding back, I don’t know, but I think he could be on the trail of somethi
ng. Someone. This Bruen, who keeps popping up and disappearing, and who is an expert at starting fires.”

  Maggie jumped to her feet as though she couldn’t sit still a moment longer. “Yes—of course that’s it. We don’t really need to worry, do we?”

  “Anyway, not about Trevor,” I said.

  “Naturally not about Trevor! Come on, Karen. Let’s find Chris and take some pictures before we eat lunch.”

  Her change of mood was a screen, and I didn’t think she had stopped worrying. Her concern, I knew, wasn’t for Trevor.

  After that we joined Chris determinedly in whatever he wanted to do. We took pictures and hiked through the woods, returning hungry to eat Maggie’s sumptuous lunch. In a sense this was a respite for the three of us—if it’s ever possible to take a respite from evil. I’d begun to feel that I could almost sense it in the air around me from day to day, yet without knowing from what direction the sensation emanated. It certainly couldn’t be photographed—not yet.

  During the next few days there was a lull that could only seem ominous to me. Too much that was figuratively explosive lay beneath the surface. The police withdrew again and I could go home if I wished. Nona said, “Don’t go. Stay. You’ll never forgive yourself if you run away now. Chris needs you. Trevor needs you.”

  Much as I wanted to, I couldn’t agree. Trevor didn’t need anyone. He moved in his own world of inner torment—where no one could reach him. I made no real attempt to do so until one afternoon when I saw him go off alone on the woods path that led away from the house. This time I dared to follow. There was so much soreness, so much that was hurtful now, yet we both needed to touch someone else—if only in sympathy.

  When he heard me coming he stopped and waited for me, and we walked together in silence for a little while. Not a companionable silence, I thought sorrowfully, for he had gone far away from me since Lori’s death, and I hardly knew him anymore. We passed the driveway to the Caton house, and he didn’t look up toward the overhang of the wide deck. I did, but saw no one there, though there were cars parked in the carport.