The Glass Flame

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  We went on together along the rim of the mountain, where it steepened into a rocky cliff that went straight down below us. There was a fallen tree near the edge and Trevor motioned me toward it. Now, for the first time in many days, we began to talk.

  “What are you going to do when you go back to New York, Karen?” he asked.

  I hadn’t thought about that. I hadn’t wanted to think. It had taken little persuasion on Nona’s part to get me to stay where I wanted to be, but now Trevor’s words brought me face to face with reality. All that frightened longing inside me that urged me to stay as close to Trevor as I could was sheer foolishness. To wait, to merely breathe and exist—until someday he would turn his head and notice me—was humiliating and useless. But now that he had done just that—it was with an impersonal question about what I meant to do back in New York.

  “I don’t know if I even have a job anymore,” I said.

  “Then you’ll find another one. You’re good. Someone will want you. But that’s for earning a living. Can you move ahead on plans to do something more with your talent? As a free lance, I mean? Photographing people the way you spoke of when you first came here?”

  “Houses are safer,” I said, and wondered if they were. Not burned-out houses.

  He smiled at me and his look was kind. “You’re still afraid of being yourself, of tackling living subjects, aren’t you, Karen?”

  Ever since I had come to Tennessee I had been furiously involved with life—and death. Peace and safety were all I wanted now. Or were they? If that was true, why did I stay on? Why didn’t I go home where there was nothing to involve me in turmoil of any kind—except my memories?

  When I didn’t answer, he asked me another question. “Don’t you miss working, Karen? I do. I get restless when I’m not at my drawing board, or conferring on the building of—something. Yet I haven’t been able to do anything for weeks.”

  “I don’t know whether work matters all that much to me anymore,” I said.

  “Maybe not to me either right now,” he agreed. “Other things have become more important. Nevertheless, not working disturbs me, both physically and mentally.”

  I could understand that in his case. But all that seemed to matter to me now was the intense moment in which I was living. This was what I had felt before. It was the now that mattered most—while I sat beside Trevor on a fallen log, with all that magnificent view spread out before us. With my love nearby. How could anyone be more foolish than I? Once, while Lori was still alive there had been a moment of closeness between Trevor and me. As though for a little while he had really seen me, perhaps even needed me momentarily. But now she was gone as David was—and I had a feeling that I had lost Trevor completely, even that in some strange way he was a little afraid of me.

  “You have to stop blaming yourself,” I said.

  He turned his head sharply to look at me. “What else can I do? I wasn’t able to help her, to stop what was happening, and two lives have been lost. Not by accident, either.”

  “I don’t think they were accidents,” I said. “But you weren’t to blame.”

  “Of course I was to blame. I should never have given Lori her head. I should have stopped her in the course she was taking and stopped David.”

  “How could you? You couldn’t lock her up, and no one could control David.”

  “I knew my brother. I knew everything he was and I knew he hated me. So I should have realized how susceptible Lori would be in his hands.”

  His words were spoken almost matter-of-factly—as though he judged himself objectively, condemning his own actions. This was no surface self-pity. It went far deeper and it was something I didn’t altogether understand.

  “It’s Chris who matters most now,” I said. “You’ve been busy with the police and with all that had to be done. Now perhaps you can make time for what’s troubling him.”

  “I’ve tried. I can’t seem to break through whatever it is he holds against me. Blame for everything that’s happened, I suppose. And how do I explain any of it away?”

  I drew a deep breath, bolstering my own courage, trying to state bluntly what couldn’t be glossed over. “Chris thinks you went off in a rage after your quarrel with David and followed him to the island. He thinks you killed him and dragged his body into that cabin under the kudzu. He thinks you set the house to explode and burn and put his body into it so that what you’d done would be concealed.”

  Trevor sat staring at me in shock.

  “Don’t look like that!” I cried. “No one else thinks it’s true. I’ve tried to talk to Chris, but you’re the only one who can convince him. So you’ve got to start working at it. He listens to me a little and I’ll help in any way I can. But you must convince him.”

  “I didn’t know. I never dreamed—” He spoke softly, helplessly. “Why Chris would believe anything like that—”

  While my courage still held, I had to ask a question. “Trevor, why haven’t you told the police about Chris finding David’s body?”

  I could feel him moving away from me. Everything in him was shrinking from me, as though I had suggested something appalling.

  “It’s not over,” he said at last, and ended matters abruptly by standing up. “I’ll see if I can talk to Chris now. Thank you for telling me, Karen.”

  He was being almost coldly polite and his eyes didn’t meet mine. Without another word he turned away from me, obviously not wanting to stay longer in my company. I sat on where I was, staring out at mountains where a sunset sky was beginning to fade—though I had hardly noticed. I felt limp and hopeless—and sore as well, as though I had been physically beaten. Trevor was gone from me more completely than ever before. He had looked at me with seeming distaste, repudiating the very small friendship I had been able to offer him. And I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand at all. Had he changed so much from the young man I had known? Changed even from the older, unhappy man I had found when I came to this place? What I had seen in his face just now was something that truly frightened me.

  As though, the words I had spoken so bluntly in order to make him understand what Chris was thinking might have carried something of the truth in them. And that consequently he was afraid of me.

  But this was a thought I couldn’t harbor. It was false and I knew it.

  Gradually I came back to my surroundings, aware of them as I hadn’t been for some time. Aware of something changed—of something new that had been introduced. The sensation of someone watching me made me turn—to find Giff Caton standing a little way off at the edge of the woods.

  He gave me his quick, always ready smile. “I didn’t mean to startle you. Do you mind if I join you?”

  He waited for no invitation, easing his tall person down on the log beside me. There he sat quietly, admiring the splendor in the sky. I didn’t trust him, yet he was the one person who might have been in his cousin Lori’s confidence.

  “How long were you standing there?” I asked.

  “Listening, you mean? Long enough. I heard what you told Trevor about Chris. Poor kid. He’s devoted to his father, and this makes everything a lot rougher—more than he can handle. Maggie thinks it’s a good thing you’ve been spending time with him lately.”

  “I suppose Maggie has talked about everything by now?”

  “Indeed she has. She’s been spilling the beans in quart measures all over the place. Eric has a hard time shutting her up.”

  “Then why haven’t you—one of you, at least—told the police about David’s body being found on the island?”

  His smile had a slight edge to it and he cocked one blond eyebrow mockingly. “For a very bright girl, you ought to be able to figure that out. It’s the same reason that’s keeping Trevor silent. Though I must say I think he has more cause to worry than the rest of us.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Of course you do. Trevor is the wronged husband and the two who wronged him are dead. We can still take thi
s sort of thing a bit hard in the South. Unfaithful wives, I mean. But as long as David’s death seems to have occurred under circumstances Trevor had nothing to do with, they won’t be picking him up. The minute Chris talks, however, what the boy fears will come through. The police are already puzzling over that door that Trevor claims was jammed. But since everything was burned there’s no way of checking.”

  Giff’s expression had sobered, but only for a moment or two. Then he went on in the light, careless tone he so often adopted.

  “Once the police know about David’s murder, they’ll begin to add things up pretty fast, and Trevor may not stay out of jail for long. Of course we’re not going to talk to them ourselves and get him into that sort of spot. We stick by our kin, you know. Even kin by marriage.”

  His words left me shaken. How basically callous he was, I thought. That two people had died—one of them a cousin with whom he’d grown up and always been close—seemed to have made so little emotional impact that he could talk about these matters as though he were an outsider. Or was that perhaps what Giff Caton really was—an emotional outsider? An observer who never permitted himself to become seriously involved?

  “You’re not much of a participant, are you?” I said.

  He blinked involuntarily, as though I had touched a nerve, and then his easy smile was back in place. “You’re probably right. Most of the time I find it more amusing to stand on the sidelines.”

  “Amusing? At a time like this?”

  “Sorry—wrong word,” he said, and at least had the grace to look uncomfortable.

  I returned to what he had been saying about suspicion against Trevor. “Besides, I’m sure you don’t want anyone asking Eric all the same questions they might ask Trevor. You’d like to avoid that, wouldn’t you?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” He was almost jaunty now. “It could be that my father has a few things to explain himself, so of course he and Maggie will keep still. But I hardly think he’d go so far as to harm Lori—now would he?”

  “Not unless she became a serious threat to him,” I said.

  Giff laughed as though my words were funny. He rose from the log, pulling me to my feet, and for the first time I sensed in him a barely suppressed excitement—the sort of excitement I remembered seeing at times in Lori.

  “Enough of all this gloom! You need a change, Karen, and so do I. Let’s go into town for dinner. I’ll take you back to the house so you can change and let Nona know you’ll be out. Then I’ll pick you up in half an hour and we’ll go to the hotel old Vinnie built on the edge of town. You haven’t been to the Greencastle, have you?”

  His behavior astonished me. “I really don’t want—” I began, but he put one long finger against my lips.

  “Hush now. No arguments. Doc Gifford has prescribed and you’re coming with me. I promise you’ll enjoy every minute. I can be better company than you might expect. Besides, I might have a surprise or two along the way. Maybe I’m more of a participant than you think.”

  He seemed to be promising me something. I had never seen his eyes so bright, never before sensed this electric charge flowing through him, moving him to some purpose I couldn’t guess. It was disturbing to see something so unfamiliar surface in him, and I found it puzzling that the current should be directed toward me.

  “Why?” I asked him bluntly. “Why do you want to take me out to dinner at a time like this?”

  For an instant the bright look turned to annoyance. “How direct you can be, Karen. Do you really need to ask that? Just look in your mirror sometime, honey. If you hadn’t been so single-minded about Trevor, you might have noticed me watching you. I know a lot about you, Karen Hallam—more than you might think.”

  “Stop it!” I told him. “Don’t play games. I can’t believe you’re as callous as you seem.”

  His look lost none of its brightness, but he was suddenly in earnest. “Will you have dinner with me, Karen? It would please me very much. And I want to show you something of importance. Something you may find interesting. Something you ought to know.”

  I hesitated for a moment longer, his very earnestness persuading me. Whatever it was that Giff Caton was up to—and I didn’t think it was the pleasure of spending an evening with me—I needed to discover what it was.

  “All right,” I said. “I don’t feel very lively or gay, but I’ll go along with the game for now, whatever it is. You needn’t walk me back to the house. I’ll hurry and be ready in half an hour.”

  For an instant triumph shone in his eyes and I winced, remembering Lori.

  “Wear that watermelon pink you had on a few days ago,” he said, and waved me on my path. “Run along now.”

  I didn’t run as I followed the way back to Trevor’s. I could look forward to an evening with Giff with nothing more than uneasy curiosity.

  Nona, when I reached her, was not pleased with my plans. “Watch yourself with that one,” she warned. “Lori and he were a pair made for trouble ever since they were young. Lori used to take the lead, but in that lazy way of his, Giff was often the one who thought up their pranks.”

  I patted her shoulder. “This isn’t the start of a love affair,” I said and hurried off to my room. The watermelon pink hung in my closet, pretty and frivolous. It didn’t suit my mood. I wore the black silk suit I’d brought for David’s funeral, brightening it with gold earrings and a yellow chrysanthemum from the garden pinned on my shoulder. When I went upstairs Giff was waiting for me and he raised an eyebrow at the way I’d dressed, but made no comment.

  From the first he bent himself to being attentively good company, yet he couldn’t hide the inner current that I had sensed earlier, and my uneasiness increased.

  The Hotel Greencastle had been Vinnie Fromberg’s last fling, built some ten years before, when he was in his late eighties. I had noticed its conspicuous place on a hill outside of town the few times I had been in Gatlinburg, but now Giff gave me something of its story.

  “What Vinnie wanted was a local office for himself. Nothing he had used really suited him, so he built a hotel around the office he wanted. The town had a fit when he put that thing up there against the mountains, but he only laughed at those who objected. He painted it green, built on a couple of turrets and gave it its name. The whole tenth floor belongs to Fromberg Enterprises, and he had his own apartment adjoining his office. Of course at the very end, when he finally gave up, they took him back to the house on the island to die. That’s where his heart always stayed, anyway.”

  “I’m sure this hotel isn’t one of Trevor’s creations?”

  “Good lord no! Trevor would never go in for the splashy and spectacular. But it’s been a success. Not so much for its outward appearance, but because guests can count on the luxury we give them inside. And the tremendous view.”

  “We?”

  “Dad’s at the helm, of course, and I’m errand boy, as usual. Management is delegated, but we keep an eye on things, and Dad’s office is in the building too.”

  Giff’s station wagon wound its way up the climbing road to the hotel, and when we reached it he used his own parking space. Through revolving doors we stepped into a huge central atrium, with eight or more floors circling around it before a ceiling closed it in for the business floors above. The open cages of elevators overlooked the space on one side. We went into the hotel dining room on the main floor, its spaces softly lighted, and the head-waiter seated us with a flourish in respect to Gifford Caton. Our banquette curved about a round table, and the menu was impressively enormous in size. Giff suggested the local mountain trout, and I let him order for me.

  But all the while that I looked and admired and listened, I waited for something that so far hadn’t emerged. I still didn’t know why I was here. Giff’s earlier excitement had subsided a little, though I sensed that whatever it was that had so stirred him still lay ahead. Nothing was going to happen while we were eating our dinner, and I tried to relax. Now and then, I noticed, he looked at his watch.


  “Have you an appointment?” I asked after the third time.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to be so obvious. Yes, in a sense I suppose you could say that we do have an appointment.”

  “Then why not tell me what and where?”

  His eyes sparked with Lori’s teasing impudence. “All in good time,” he said.

  I didn’t like either his excitement or the faintly ominous postponement, but I knew that no urging would make him give me an answer until he was ready. All I could do was pretend that this was a social evening and try at least to enjoy the food.

  The waiter boned our trout expertly. The biscuits were light and melted, buttery, in my mouth. The spinach was creamed and nutmeg flavored, and we had saffron rice instead of potatoes. At least I managed to eat, putting away from me whatever lay ahead in the evening. When the time came and I had to make decisions, I would make them, and I didn’t mean to let Giff Caton lead me down any road I didn’t want to take.

  In spite of that eye he kept on the time, our dinner was long and leisurely. Nevertheless, I sensed that he was glad when it was over. As we walked into the atrium that formed the lobby, he turned toward the elevators.

  “Wait,” I said. “Where are we going?”

  He smiled at me almost tenderly. “What a suspicious young thing you are. Don’t you want to see Great-grandpa Vinnie’s office—around which all this elegance is built?”

  “I’ll manage to live if I don’t see it,” I told him, and not until he gave me an odd look did I hear the echo of my own words. Living—and dying—were so close together in our minds just now.

  “Come,” he said. “The floor upstairs is well lighted and patrolled. And I’m really not the firebug they’re looking for. Don’t be so silly, Karen.”

  His words stung and his impatience had begun to show. I went ahead of him into the elevator. It was true that I couldn’t see Giff in the role of arsonist, or as the murderer who had left David’s body under those vines on the island. Nor could I see him harming Lori. Yet I was not altogether sure that he might not have hired someone else to do whatever his father wished.