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  “What do you do, Gordon? Jim said you were connected with Chimney Rock, but I don’t know much about your work.”

  “I manage the park. With a lot of help. It’s a spectacular place and the work keeps me outdoors a lot of the time. I’ve been sharing a house on Lake Lure with my mother since my divorce, and it seems to work out well for both of us. Though all this is probably temporary. I like what I’m doing, but who knows what the future holds?”

  So he was still unsettled? A quality in a man that my mother had abhorred. Somehow I no longer minded. I felt unsettled myself.

  I wanted to ask about his ex-wife but didn’t dare.

  He smiled at me—rather a fierce smile that challenged me to comment—as he answered what I hadn’t put into words. “Betty deserved better than I could give her. She’s happily remarried now.”

  For a little while, we concentrated on our food, perhaps both of us too unsure of ourselves to speak. Then Gordon returned to the subject of Jim Castle. “Did you notice anything unusual in Jim’s last letters? I had a feeling that he was keyed up about something—like a firecracker getting ready to go off.”

  “He didn’t say anything specific, but the last time we talked on the phone he hinted that he was onto something important, perhaps even newsworthy. Is there any way to find out what it was? Do you think Roger Brandt would know?”

  “Brandt isn’t an easy man to talk to. Besides, all his contacts with Jim were at his house, and usually Camilla was present, so I doubt that Roger knew about Jim’s interest in the Indian village or that he’d struck up an acquaintance with Ty Frazer.”

  “Would it be possible for me to meet Roger Brandt, do you suppose?”

  Gordon’s smile was pointed. “You don’t plan to tell him you’re his granddaughter?”

  “I don’t think so. That might put him on guard. I can’t imagine that Camilla Brandt would welcome the appearance of Victoria’s granddaughter. What is she like?”

  “They were married out in California two years before he made the film with your grandmother. He was only twenty-one, but he’d been a big star since his late teens. In a way, Camilla’s fitted in here better than he has. She’s a very grand and beautiful lady who looks years younger than her age. Perhaps by now she’s forgotten that Victoria Frazer ever existed. Though I’m not sure about Roger. Rumor has it that he keeps a secret collection of Victoria’s films.”

  All this caught my imagination. It might be interesting to meet Roger Brandt without his knowing that I was related to him.

  We finished our meal and walked back to our cars. Gordon opened the door for me and held out his hand. He wasn’t mocking me now and some of the stiffness I’d sensed in him earlier had fallen away—as though he had begun to accept me without reference to the past. But could I accept him as casually?

  “Where are you going now, Lauren?” he asked.

  “Back to your mother’s shop. I want to see her again and explore that fascinating place.”

  “Good. I’ll try to get in touch with Natalie. If you aren’t busy tonight, would you mind if the three of us got together for dinner?”

  “Of course not. I’d welcome the chance to meet her—and to see you again.” I had meant to sound casual and friendly, but more feeling had come through than I intended, and he seemed to withdraw a little.

  “Fine. If I can reach Natalie, I’ll phone you at my mother’s. Otherwise, I’ll leave a message at the lodge.”

  I watched as he drove down into traffic, but I made no move to start my car. How did I feel about Gordon Heath now? He was no longer that young man I’d fallen in love with out in San Francisco. Neither was I the same young woman who had made a choice. The wrong choice, but that was over and done with. So why was I sitting here shaking?

  Impatient with myself, I started the car and followed the road Gordon had taken toward Lake Lure.

  4

  When I reached Finella’s shop, I found her busy with a customer, so I wandered back to the kudzu room to discover just how friendly the ubiquitous vine might be.

  The room was small, with a two-burner electric stove at one end, shelves where books tilted against one another—mostly cookbooks—rows of glass jars, and an oak table with a chopping-block surface. Obviously, cooking with kudzu was done in this room.

  A large poster asked whether I knew that

  Kudzu makes wonderful nonbloating forage for cattle?

  Kudzu is a healthy and tasty food for humans?

  Kudzu powder can be used in hundreds of recipes?

  Fresh kudzu shoots, picked right off the vine, are delicious in a salad?

  Kudzu flowers can be pickled in vinegar?

  Kudzu roots can be steamed?

  Kudzu can be used as treatment for many bodily ailments?

  Cloth can be woven from kudzu fibers?

  I was beginning to see why kudzu was considered friendly. A stack of books and pamphlets, including The Book of Kudzu: A Culinary and Healing Guide, stood on a display table.

  When her customer had gone, Finella found me leafing through the kudzu material and her eyes brightened. “If you like to cook, you must try some of those recipes.”

  I smiled at such missionary fervor. “I can tell from your enthusiasm that it must be delicious.”

  “You can buy the flour in health-food and specialty shops and have a ball. It’s such an inexpensive way to feed people and animals and it’s the best way to stop the vine’s needless encroachment where it isn’t wanted. Some of us are trying to spread the word. Harvesting would be so easy in the South and kudzu is free!”

  Finella’s red hair moved with its own grace as her animation grew, and I warmed to her all over again. “I’ll take some flour home with me,” I promised.

  “Did you find the Indian village?”

  “I not only found the village but I saw your son. It doesn’t seem possible that you’re old enough to be his mother.”

  Her smile rewarded me. “I like that! He was born when I was seventeen and didn’t have much sense. Neither did his father, and we didn’t last long together. I’m glad he’s turned out as well as he has. In a way, we grew up together, so we’re good friends. What do you think of him?”

  So she really had no idea that he’d known me eleven years ago in San Francisco. The subject of my feelings about her son was something I didn’t want to get into, so I was relieved when the bell on the shop door sounded.

  Finella looked out toward the door. “That’s Ty now with my new batch of kudzu. He keeps me supplied. You’ll have to come meet this remarkable mountain man.”

  Obviously, Finella didn’t know of my relationship to the Frazers, either, and I was glad that Gordon had been discreet.

  “We’ve already met—in a way,” I told her, following her across the shop. “He was playing a drum up in the village, but he rushed off before I could talk to him. Gordon told me a little about him.”

  As she went to greet Ty, Finella waved me toward a table. “Those are some of Gordon’s drums over there.”

  I walked over to the area she’d designated. The drams were so big and heavy that they’d been arranged on the floor. Gordon hadn’t mentioned that he’d made the drum I’d seen, and now I could admire more of his meticulous work. Each dram was different, each beautiful in its own way. I tapped my fingers lightly across a sectioned surface, catching the faint musical echo.

  Ty had come into the shop with his burlap bag of kudzu vines. He heard the sound and looked over at me. “What’s she doing here?”

  “Mrs. Castle is a friend—she’s Jim Castle’s wife. You remember Jim, don’t you?”

  His eyes widened as he looked at me from beneath his bush of eyebrows and hair. “She shouldn’t have come here.”

  I walked toward him cautiously, not wanting to alarm him again. “Why is that?” I asked quietly.

  He seemed to dismiss me and spoke directly to Finella. “I thought I’d bring you another batch before there’s a nip in the air and it goes to sleep for th
e winter.”

  “Thanks, Ty. Will you put it in the bottom of the refrigerator back there so it won’t wilt before I can get to it? The flour is beginning to sell pretty well.”

  Now that I knew of my relationship to this wild-looking character, I watched him with all the more interest. It hardly seemed possible that he was related to the legendary Victoria. My mother had come to Lake Lure just once. It was when I was about ten, and when she returned she had only harsh things to say about the place. She’d said nothing about Ty and little about Gretchen, the one relative she’d seen when she was here.

  I wondered what Ty’s reaction would be if he knew that I was not only Jim Castle’s wife but also his own great-niece.

  On his way to the kudzu room, something caught Ty’s eye and he dropped the bag to give his full attention to the painting by Natalie Brandt that Finella had been framing when I walked in that morning.

  “Hmph!” It was both grunt and comment. “She paint that?”

  “You mean Natalie?” Finella said. “Yes—it’s pretty good, isn’t it?”

  Ty stared fixedly at the painting with its storm blues and midnight purple overcast, through which the glowing elliptical shape slanted toward the top of Rumbling Bald Mountain.

  “Sure is,” he said. “Looks just like I saw it when those space people came down. Too bad they disappeared. I’d like to’ve had a closer look.”

  Finella spoke softly. “I didn’t know you saw the ship, Ty.”

  “Sure—I was on the mountain. I was keeping an eye on Justyn and Roger. Brandt-watching! So I saw it come down in the storm.”

  “Finella was telling me that no trace of the ship was ever found,” I said, cautiously entering the conversation.

  “Who knows what those army fellas found—or didn’t find. Maybe they missed a thing or two.”

  Something in Ty’s voice seemed to alert Finella. “Would you know where to look, Ty? Was something left up there on the mountain?”

  He waved his long arms, startling us both. “Don’t you go poking into stuff like this. That’s what that young fella from California did. And look what happened to him!”

  I spoke softly, to not excite him further. “Gordon told me what you believe, Ty. I’d like to know more about my husband’s death. That’s why I’ve come here.”

  He ignored me, studying the painting again. “How come she could do it like that?” he asked Finella. “She wasn’t even born when it happened.”

  “Imagination,” Finella said. “And perhaps Natalie’s extrasensitivity. Artists can see things in their own minds. Besides, I’m sure Roger and Justyn have talked a lot about what happened. I must ask Justyn what he thinks, now that I’ve seen his daughter’s painting.”

  The old man turned a sudden close scrutiny upon me, coming closer, so that I could smell the aura that floated around him—of pine needles and forest growth, with perhaps a hint of moonshine thrown in.

  “You were the one up in the village. When I was playing the drum. You look like her.”

  This was startling—did he mean Victoria? “Who do you think I look like?”

  He had a way of not answering direct questions. “You better go home real soon—before something happens to you, the way it happened to young Jim.”

  “Please tell me about that.”

  His mouth seemed to clamp shut in the mat of shaggy whiskers and he picked up his sack and walked past me toward the kudzu room.

  Finella shrugged and rolled her eyes graphically. Just as Ty returned, clearly in a hurry to get away, a man came into the shop. For an instant, the two stared at each other, and I could sense the tension, the animosity that leapt between them.

  The newcomer scrunched up his face and waved a hand in the air as if to clear the room of a bad aroma. He wore a billed nautical cap and his face had the weathered look of an outdoorsman. Ty seemed to have caused his grim expression, for he smiled cheerfully enough at Finella as Ty went out the door, muttering to himself.

  Finella shook her head despairingly. “Hello, Justyn. Is the old feud still on?”

  Justyn? So this was another relative on the Brandt side—Roger’s son and Natalie’s father.

  “It’s not likely to end,” he told Finella. “Not as long as there’s a Brandt or Frazer alive.”

  And what, I wondered, if there was someone alive who was both Brandt and Frazer?

  Finella introduced us. “Justyn, this is Jim Castle’s wife, Lauren. Justyn Brandt.”

  As he took my hand, he gave me a look that I couldn’t fathom. A look of suspicion, of distrust?

  “What brings you here now?” he asked abruptly.

  I didn’t tell him that a note from his daughter had summoned me. “I suppose it was time to come.”

  Clearly, he considered this no answer. He continued to study me, his eyes hidden beneath the bill of the cap he hadn’t bothered to remove. His scrutiny made me uneasy, but now he seemed to make up his mind about something.

  “While you’re here, you ought to see the lake,” he said as abruptly as before. “There’s a boat leaving in twenty minutes. Would you like to come?”

  This invitation out of the blue seemed puzzling. I looked at Finella, but she appeared to see nothing unusual.

  “Go ahead, Lauren. Justyn conducts tours of the lake, so you’ll be in good hands.”

  Perhaps this was a way of getting closer to the Brandt establishment. “I’d like that,” I said.

  “Good.” He sounded somehow unenthusiastic. “I’ll take you over to the boat. Finella, my mother wanted me to stop in and see if you can be available when it comes to supervising the decorating of the old barn. Lake Lure has been using it for storage for years, but now it’s all to be cleared out so we can hold our big party there.”

  “Of course I’ll help,” Finella agreed. “I’ll give her a call and see what I can do. Lauren, let me get you a sweater and scarf before you leave. It can be cool and windy on the water.”

  She went to a closet and came back with a white sweater and flowered scarf, and I thanked her.

  “We can walk across to the dock,” Justyn told me when we were outside. “Just leave your car here.”

  I had a feeling that he was on the verge of disliking me—yet wanted contact at the same time.

  “What is this party you mentioned?” I asked as we crossed the highway together.

  “It’s a fund-raising affair for the Lake Lure area,” he told me. “A costume ball that my mother’s been cooking up. The barn behind the inn used to be used for square dances way back, but this will be more spectacular. It’s less than a week away, so all the invitations have gone out. Will you be here, Mrs. Castle?” He gave me a sidelong look as he asked, and I wondered about his odd, not-altogether-friendly interest in me.

  I said I wasn’t sure. But I was thinking it might be fun, if Gordon was still my friend.

  Near a strip of water where the Showboat was moored, several blue-haired ladies sat on a bench, watching ducks on the water as they waited to board the boat.

  “I’m Captain Matt now,” Justyn warned me. “Otherwise, the Brandt name causes too many questions.”

  “Are people still interested in Victoria Frazer?” I ventured.

  “Yeah, I reckon they are. Of course all sorts of stories are told around here. Just don’t believe everything you hear. I always point out the place where she’s supposed to have drowned. My passengers expect that.” He sounded dismissive, as though this was something he did reluctantly.

  “I’m staying at Rumbling Mountain Lodge,” I told him, “so I’ve met Gretchen Frazer. It’s strange to think of her and that peculiar old man who brings the kudzu to Finella as the sister and brother of Victoria Frazer.”

  Justyn didn’t comment—he was busily greeting the women and two men who waited to come aboard. A green carpet along the dock contrasted with a band of red paint at water level on the boat. Railings and seats were a sparkling white and a yellow awning spanned the central section’s rows of seats.
/>   I heard my name called and looked toward the road. Finella was hurrying across as I went to meet her.

  “Gordon asked me to catch you if I could. He wanted you to know that dinner’s all planned. Natalie and you and he will meet at the Lake Lure Inn at eight. Is that still good for you?”

  “Oh, yes. Thank you for coming to tell me. I’m looking forward to meeting Natalie.”

  “Well, have fun,” she said as she dashed off with a quick wave.

  Justyn handed me aboard and I went to sit on a wide, upholstered sofa set in the stern, above the outboard motor. Two women sat down next to me, one explaining to the other what we could see from the boat. I listened unobtrusively.

  “That’s the Lake Lure Inn over there,” one told her friend, pointing. “You can see the red roof just above those willow trees. In the old days, all sorts of celebrities used to stay there. There’s new management now and it’s waking up again.”

  I looked with interest at the great white building with a red tile roof that suggested Spanish architecture. It had been built imposingly in the old, grand hotel style. I would be dining there tonight with Gordon and Natalie, and a small stirring of excitement ran through me. A great deal might hang on whatever happened at the inn this evening.

  Having seen everyone aboard, Justyn continued his Captain Matt role—cheerful and garrulous. Clearly, this was something he enjoyed doing, and his rather morose manner had disappeared.

  Once the motor was running, he told us, no one would be able to hear him, so he would point out a few things to watch for now. There would be other pauses on the way, when he’d turn off the motor and explain a bit more.

  The ducks paddled away on rippled water as we started off, apparently familiar with human antics and not alarmed. In a moment, we were out on the lake, and I was glad to slip into Finella’s sweater and tie the scarf over my head. Except where our wake stretched white and frothy beneath where I sat, the water was calm, reflecting the greenish cast of trees that grew thickly down to the lake’s edge. At the far end toward the gorge, where I’d been this morning, high peaks cut into the sky. A scene of dramatic beauty.