The Cat Wears a Mask Read online

  “I see,” said Gail, plainly at a loss. It occurred to Miss Rachel that Gail had expected Bob Ryker’s Kachina letter to be missing, that she had leaped to the conclusion that Miss Rachel had taken it for examination. “Perhaps Pedro borrowed them for some job or other.” Gail half rose.

  Bob Ryker hadn’t moved; his eyes narrowed as he looked into the light. “Do you want to know what I think?”

  Gail put a hand on the desk. “Surely.”

  He lifted a forefinger so that it stood tall with a crook at the end. “Snake.”

  The silence closed in around the word. The room was breathless with heat, with stillness, while Gail stared at that lifted finger and Ryker grinned back.

  He went on. “I heard a funny noise when I first went into my room a while ago.”

  Miss Rachel remembered the slammed door from the gallery while she and Ilene waited for the repetition of the rattle.

  “It wasn’t a loud sound, wasn’t close. I couldn’t locate the source. It had an uncomfortably neat resemblance to the sound made by a nice big fat diamondback.”

  Gail shuddered.

  “Somebody got an idea from that sound, Gail—just as I did. Not the same kind, though. You understand now why my gloves are gone?”

  “No,” said Gail. “That’s … horrible.”

  He leaned forward in the chair. “Do you think you fooled any of us about this business with the house party? Don’t you know that we’re all perfectly aware one of us is a nut, a poison-pen nut, and that the purpose of the party is to find out who it is?” He turned to grin with wicked mischief upon Miss Rachel. “And your Dresden-china lady—I think Christine must be the only one who hasn’t placed her by now. Only she’s slow, Gail. Awfully slow.”

  Miss Rachel bristled. Then she quieted and looked thoughtfully at Bob Ryker.

  Ryker motioned to the row of Kachinas behind her. “I don’t have to be psychic to know what you two were talking about when I came in. The thing is, there’s going to be more than just the letters.”

  He was echoing Miss Rachel’s own words to Gail in Reno.

  “There is presently going to be some nasty hocus-pocus with a snake. For my own part, I intend to shut myself up with a bottle and get so pie-eyed drunk that a snake will take his life in his hands if he bites me. For you, Gail, you and Pedro and your famous Miss Rachel, For suggest a very quick and private snake hunt of your own. You just might locate the old boy before the fellow with my gloves does.” He stood up, still leaning faintly off center, and ambled off through the door to the hall.

  Gail’s eyes were frantic. “What shall we do?”

  Miss Rachel didn’t answer immediately.

  “You didn’t happen to hear the sort of sound he claims he heard?”

  “Oh yes. While I was with Miss Taggart in her room. She caught me rummaging in her belongings. I rummaged in Mr. Ryker’s, too, and I can vouch for the presence of those gloves. They were very heavy. The thing is, Ryker must have come down again after hearing the noise—in order for the thief to get his gloves.”

  “We were trying to get him to stop drinking for a while,” Gail explained. “He went up and brought down a quart of his own vodka. Then Dave coaxed him not to open it after all.”

  “Who went up first?”

  “Christine. She’d had an argument with Hal Emerson.”

  “What did Emerson do?”

  “I thought that he stayed in the garden, but I couldn’t be sure. I wasn’t watching the hall door particularly. He could have slipped in while I wasn’t looking.” She twisted her hands together in sudden urgency. “Could there be a—a snake loose in the house?”

  “The sound I heard wasn’t inside the house. The bedroom windows overhang the courtyard where the cars are parked. I’d say the noise came from there. Send Pedro out there now, just to be sure.”

  As if motion, doing anything, were a relief, Gail turned and hurried away.

  Miss Rachel picked up her cat and went out quietly into the hall. The house seemed filled with a sudden silence. Up the stairs—her shadow on the wall wore a tail now, Samantha’s, in an odd spot. She stopped before reaching the gallery. Two men stood where the light from an open archway illuminated them—Bob Ryker and Grubler. Ryker was doing the lifted-finger act (it took either practice or a kind of double-jointed-ness, she thought, to get that crook just at the tip so that it gave so much the effect of a peering snake), and Grubler was listening with all expression wiped from his face. Grubler couldn’t turn pale, being as white as he was naturally. Perhaps the frozen look was his reaction to shock. Or maybe he thought Ryker was too drunk to be believable.

  Rachel went back down into the hall and someone said, “Hello,” just beyond her elbow.

  She looked around. Hal Emerson had come out of the living room; he had a couple of books in his hand.

  “I’ve been hoping I’d run into you,” he went on. “Do you have time for a conversation?”

  Miss Rachel let her cat hop to the floor. “Certainly.”

  “Where would you prefer? Inside?”

  “The coolest spot seems to be the space under the gallery,” she pointed out. “And perhaps Florencia can fix us something cool.”

  “Some iced tea, then.”

  “I don’t know why people always think I should want tea. I’d like a sloe-gin fizz if Florencia and the bottled goods are up to it.”

  He looked at her blankly for an instant. “Of course.”

  “I think they confuse me with the grandmotherly type,” Miss Rachel went on. “Which I’m not. Any grandchildren I might have been inflicted upon would long ago have disowned me. Jennifer almost has. She’s my sister.”

  A few minutes later, as he handed her a pink fizzy drink, he asked soberly, “Am I forgiven now?”

  The cat, on the arm of the wicker seat, tried to get her nose into the glass too and had to be firmly set down. “I wasn’t really as cross as I seemed. Sometimes the grandmotherly pose comes in very handy.”

  He pulled over one of the keg-shaped seats which matched the redwood table. “I can see that it might. Gail, though—she wouldn’t be fooled, would she? I mean, you and she are old friends?”

  “I attended her baptism in the role of godmother.” Miss Rachel gazed reflectively into the pink fizz, “Almost twenty-eight years ago. The year everybody was bobbing their hair. I almost bobbed mine—I did cut the bangs, and then Jennifer caught on and hid all of the scissors. You said we were going to have a conversation.” She looked at him curiously.

  He smiled at her with a touch of embarrassment. “But there’s more, isn’t there? More than just family friend, I mean.”

  “Did you get a letter, an unpleasant letter made up of pasted words?”

  His smile went away. “So that’s it.”

  “Did you?”

  “Yes.” He downed his whisky-and-water abruptly.

  She put out her hand. “Show it to me.”

  “Wait a minute. I’m not in on your game. I can keep my problems to myself. I just wondered why Gail had asked this bunch of people here.” His wind-burned face was stubborn, aloof.

  “There isn’t time to be coy,” she answered sharply. “And there is something more going on than letter writing. Give it to me.”

  Somehow she knew he’d have it with him. He wore a sand-colored sport jacket, an old one; from its pocket he brought forth a note. Expensive paper, long-legged lettering, words that marched poisonously across the page.

  Heave-ho, my lad, the wind is free

  Though you’ve no lass upon your knee

  Make your mark with pick and shovel

  And let your love life go to the devil

  KACHINA

  “Dull, isn’t it?” he asked in a tone he had meant to be flippant.

  “The touch of advice is new,” she said thoughtfully. “The other two I saw were just cruel and sly.”

  He sat very still for a moment. “Was one of them … Gail’s?”

  Gail’s voice answered him. “
I’m sure there’s nothing in the affair to concern you.” She had come up quietly. Miss Rachel had seen her; Hal had not, since he had his back to the garden and the entry to the hall. He stood up swiftly, the color flowed into his face under the weathering of wind and sun. Gail went on, “I didn’t ask you here. I hate to be rude, even to an uninvited guest—but would you mind going?”

  He looked at her for a while; Miss Rachel could see him getting slowly mad. “Yes, I mind. I mind having my life kicked around, too.”

  Gail’s eyes were sick and hollow. “I won’t talk about that.”

  He seized her shoulders with his hands. He was stocky and hard in contrast to Gail’s thinness. “You never gave me a chance, never let me explain. I didn’t have any intention of humiliating you.”

  She was shaking now as if at the touch of a flame. “Let me go.”

  “It was such a minor damned thing, anyway.” The words spilled forth as if held for a long time in embittered readiness. “Why should we have lost seven years, hated each other? Why wouldn’t you ever see me?”

  “For shame,” Gail whispered, “in front of Miss Rachel!”

  He didn’t even look around, though Miss Rachel instantly put on an indifferent expression. “I don’t think this is shocking her too much. She’s got a lot of sense, Gail. She’s seen a lot of life. Listen to me. You didn’t see what you thought you did, that day in the canyon. The woman followed me, I hadn’t asked her.” He shook her now, angrily, impatiently. “Gail, it’s lives you’re throwing away. Our lives. We’re almost thirty. Time doesn’t wait.”

  Gail turned her head. “Let me go.”

  “I’ll let you go.” He pulled her against him and put his mouth against hers; and she fought him with fury.

  Miss Rachel sat on the edge’ of the seat. So did the cat.

  At about the time when Miss Rachel was considering a rear attack with something sharp, he let Gail go. She flattened away from him against a pillar. She wiped her mouth. “I hate you.”

  He looked at her calmly. “I’m not going until the others do.” Then he picked up the two books from the redwood table and went off into the hall.

  Gail remained against the pillar. Her eyes were unfocused; they seemed to regard some enormous horror. Miss Rachel got up and took her by the hand and led her to the wicker seat. She discovered that she still had Mr. Emerson’s note; she stuck it in the pocket of her skirt.

  “Did you and Pedro find a snake in the courtyard?”

  Gail raised an uncomprehending stare.

  “Snake. Remember?” Miss Rachel tried to do the finger trick as Bob Ryker had; it was a poor imitation, but something registered. Gail drew a breath.

  “No. Nothing.”

  “Who was the person you found with Mr. Emerson in the canyon?”

  Gail shook her head from side to side like a child denying guilt.

  “Under a manzanita tree, I think.” Miss Rachel waited and saw the sick shame that crept into Gail’s face, the cringing self-loathing. “Quit looking like that. If Mr. Emerson can endure to talk about it, so should you. Who was the woman who followed him, whom he didn’t want? What were they doing? What did the crack about kissing his, big black boots mean?”

  Gail was writhing as if Miss Rachel were applying a torch to her bare flesh. “Don’t—don’t say those things out loud.”

  “Who besides yourself and Emerson knew what had happened?”

  The mechanical headshaking went on, a numb reaction to inner agony. Outside of beating her with something solid, Miss Rachel felt that this was as far as she could go. The guard had been up for too long.

  They sat together in silence. It was very hot, the late end of the day when the desert blazes. Samantha went over to the sunken fishpond for a drink and then remained, fascinated, to peer into the water. Florencia began to rattle pots and pans in the kitchen.

  When Gail spoke, her voice was husky and trembling. “I’ve been a fool, a horribly stupid fool; but at least I know it now. I can’t send these people away, though I see that you were right and that they should never have been brought here in the first place. Tomorrow is the Snake Dance. Afterwards … they’ll go.”

  Miss Rachel looked at Gail and thought about what she had said and decided that Gail had either made up her mind as to who had sent the letters or simply could not stand Hal Emerson’s presence in her house. The latter, probably, since he seemed connected with an emotional problem she was unable to face.

  After a while Gail spoke more calmly. “Do you think we can get through the rest of it without any … trouble?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The shadow cast by the garden wall had begun to creep towards them under the gallery. The air was lazy and golden. Florencia sang snatches of a Mexican tune. The kitchen door swung open and Pedro came out with a stack of red pottery dishes and left them on the table. His teeth were very white in his brown face when he smiled at Miss Rachel. His eye on Gail was thoughtful, sober. Perhaps he considered the errand to look for the snake a little queer; or that the houseful of guests had made Gail overly nervous.

  At dinner it seemed to Miss Rachel that the pervading atmosphere was one of subdued attention, of listening, of strain. Bob Ryker was very quiet, thoroughly drunk, but watchful, Ilene took several surreptitious looks under the table. Dave Grubler asked Gail absently if all the bedrooms unlocked with a common key. Gail assured him they didn’t.

  No one said a word about snakes.

  Miss Rachel woke up hours later in her dark room, in bed, and remembered that according to the book she had read after dinner, by now the Snake priests of the Hopi tribe would have many dozens of snakes, many of them rattlers, in the under-ground temple on the mesa. Tomorrow they would be brought up, blessed, sent abroad with the Hopi prayers for rain.

  She listened uneasily, but there was no sound anywhere. No stealthy rattle, no scaly scrapings … nothing.

  The thing she and Ilene had heard in the afternoon—whatever it was—was silent now.

  Chapter 6

  Miss Rachel chose a blue dress of fine lawn, a blue straw bonnet, blue lace mitts, a miniature parasol sprigged with forget-me-nots. This outfit had caused Jennifer to snort loudly when she had first seen it, and to wonder aloud how demure Miss Rachel could get. “You’re pre-Civil War in that garb, Rachel.”

  “I know. Lots of people think we are, anyway.” Thus shutting Jennifer up for that time.

  Her cat followed her as she went out upon the gallery.

  Christine Ryker was at the next door, locking it. She looked thin, distinguished, and striking in a flame-colored linen suit and a big red cartwheel hat without any crown. The effect, as Miss Rachel had marked in her gestures and make-up, was a little overdone. The impression she made was made quickly, with impact, and then there wasn’t anything to draw your eye back to her. She glanced at Miss Rachel. Little old ladies weren’t one of her enthusiasms, perhaps. She made a face.

  “What the devil are you staring at?”

  It was bald rudeness, but Miss Rachel smiled. “I was admiring your hat. It’s quite unusual.”

  Christine spoke through her teeth. “Some sneak got in and took the feathers off it.” Her glance fell to the cat. “I’ll bet your cat … she slipped in and saw the feathers ruffling there, and tore them off.”

  “I’m sure my cat didn’t damage your hat,” Miss Rachel defended. “Your door’s been locked all the time.”

  A stupid break. Christine’s eyes widened in outrage. “Yes. How did you know it?”

  “I—ah—kept mistaking it for mine.” Rachel’s face felt hot, blushing.

  Christine curled her lip. She dropped the key to her room into a big leather purse, cartwheel-shaped like the hat and almost as huge, hanging to her shoulder by a strap. “Did you?” she said flatly, and went off, down the stairs ahead of Miss Rachel to the hall.

  Her husband was there, just fastening the catch on a little brown straw lunch hamper. “What’s that thing?” Christine demanded.


  He looked up at her with a touch of dry mischief. She was still on the lower step and he below. “Refreshments. Liquid stamina. Do you think I’m going to sit for hours looking at snakes without anything to brace me? I borrowed the basket from Gail, but if you put up a fuss I’ll carry the bottles in my hands. Two of ’em.”

  Her long red nails scraped the wrought iron of the railing. Her figure stiffened as she looked at the hamper. “If you feel yourself growing noticeably stinko, dear, please keep away from me. I want to enjoy myself.” With an angry gesture she walked on to the courtyard.

  Ilene came down, wearing the high-collared suit of dull brown, carrying the huge brown bag with the worn edges, as hot and travel-worn, apparently, as though she had made the trip and returned. Bob Ryker ambled towards her. “Poor li’l old Ilene. Want me to rub the forehead?”

  She looked up shyly, a grateful light in her eyes, as if she were glad he’d noticed her discomfort. “Thanks—I’m all right.” She turned towards the doorway. “Christine seems awfully cross today, doesn’t she?”

  “Must be the heat. I’m about as usual, and she’s used to that.”

  Ilene glanced sidelong at the hamper. “It’s bad for your heart to drink in hot weather.”

  He bent closer, mockingly. “I didn’t know you were interested in my heart, darling.” While she blushed, he took her hand and led her outside.

  Miss Rachel gave her cat a parting pat. “Watch yourself while I’m gone; and whatever it was that rattled—leave that alone.”

  Samantha’s eyes narrowed as if she understood.

  In the courtyard the group was dividing itself between Dave Grubler’s dark blue sedan and Christine’s station wagon. Miss Rachel saw that there was going to be some awkwardness—Hal Emerson was obviously waiting to see which car Gail intended to ride in and she meant to thwart him by grabbing the last place, when one was almost full.

  “Silly, aren’t they?” murmured Bob Ryker’s voice into Miss Rachel’s ear. “Shall we share the rear seat in Dave’s car? I don’t crave a lecture, and besides, you smell good. Lavender. Mmmm.”