Bone Walker: Book III of the Anasazi Mysteries (47 page)

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Authors: Kathleen O'Neal Gear,W. Michael Gear

BOOK: Bone Walker: Book III of the Anasazi Mysteries
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She stood perhaps five-eight, slender, with ash hair. She wore a black wool coat. Slim black boots—the velveteen type more common to Fifth Avenue—made her feet look delicate. She had a long but pleasant face, and hauntingly familiar dark eyes.
When she spoke, it was with a delightfully modulated
English accent. “My, this is the absolute
end
of the earth!”
Ruth Ann’s hands clenched to fists on the table. “Why, Yvette, fancy meeting you here.”
“I know you,” Maureen said, her heart leaping. “You were at the funeral. I saw you reach down and touch Dale’s ashes. Who are you?”
“I’m Yvette Hawsworth, Dr. Cole.” She turned to Dusty and extended her hand. “Hello, dear brother. If I’d known you existed, I swear I’d have knocked you up for a chat long ago.”
Dusty just stared at her.
Yvette said, “Mum didn’t tell you about me, did she? No? Pity. It makes my father’s reasons a bit more understandable.”
“Reasons?” Dusty said. “Reasons for what?”
Yvette removed her gloves. “For wanting to kill her.”
 
 
STONE GHOST GINGERLY lowered himself to the pile of stones—part of a collapsed third-story wall—and peered out the window at the small party that straggled up the south road from Straight Path Wash. In the hazy moonlight, he had difficulty keeping count, and his eyes were not what they used to be.
“It looks like five walking and a sixth being carried,” White Cone told him, the Mogollon elder shading his eyes.
“I think so, too.” Stone Ghost sighed. “We will know soon enough.”
The sounds of battle had carried to them, though they had seen nothing in the darkness. For long hands of time, worry had eaten at Stone Ghost’s stomach.
So many things could have gone wrong. Battle plans
rarely survived the release of the first arrow, and Browser was the only family he had left. Through the hardships of the last two summers, a bond had grown between them that was even stronger than that of blood.
As the staggering party approached, a figure rose from the shadows of the outer wall. Slim and agile, she rushed out toward the leader. For a long moment they clung to each other.
Stone Ghost smiled in the moonlight. His world was still intact. Catkin and Browser were alive.
“Come,” Stone Ghost said. “Let’s go down and see who is hurt.”
White Cone grunted and rose, favoring his left hip. “Do you think they could be carrying Obsidian?”
Stone Ghost hobbled past White Cone and out into the dark hallway. “I pray that’s who it is. She should have returned many hands of time ago.”
 
 
DUSTY LAY IN his sleeping bag, staring out the window at the moonlit darkness, wondering about Dale. If Ruth Ann had been right—that Dale had taken Dusty into his life because he’d believed Dusty was his son—why hadn’t Dale every spoken of it? Obviously, he wouldn’t have told Dusty when he was a grief-stricken boy still wounded over his mother’s defection and his father’s suicide, but what about later? Maybe by putting off the discussion for so many years, it had simply become impossible for Dale.
And it didn’t matter. He was my father, and he knew it.
Dusty flopped onto his back, trying to find a comfortable position.
As the trailer shook, Maureen called, “Dusty? Are you all right?”
“This is like a bad mescaline hangover.”
Her voice returned, “Really? I wouldn’t know. Drugs are too scary for me.”
“After tonight? Are you kidding? Drugs don’t seem scary at all.”
To his relief, she chuckled.
He draped an arm across his forehead. “What did you think of sister Yvette? I don’t know what to make of her.”
“She likes the ‘good life,’ that’s for certain. London, New York, Paris. Her clothes are not made in the good ole USA. They’re very expensive.”
Dusty turned his head slightly, as though he could see her through the wall. “You mean, like L.L. Bean expensive?”
“No, like Versace or Vuitton expensive.”
Dusty’s brows raised. The only “labels” he knew were Carhartt, Wrangler, and Levi’s.
Dusty tossed to his left side and glared at the wall. “Do you think it’s true? That Dale’s my father?”
Maureen was silent for a moment. “You don’t really look like Samuel Stewart. I don’t know. There are ways of finding out. Blood tests. DNA. Things like that.”
“It’s just so strange. When I was growing up, I used to wish with all my heart that Dale was my father—as though that would have somehow changed our relationship.”
“And now?”
“It’s going to take some time to come to terms with.”
She took a deep breath. “You know, all of this: Dale’s death, the investigation, the revelations, the heartache and grief … it will pass.”
“I know.” He paused. “I’ve been trying to imagine what it must have been like for Dad … I mean Sam. There he is, watching Ruth Ann’s belly grow, knowing it isn’t his, and Dale, his best friend, is slipping away to screw his wife. I feel like I’m in a soap opera.”
He heard the cushions on her fold-down bed shift, as though she’d sat up or rolled over. “Well, don’t hold it against Dale,” she said gently. “The guilt must have nearly killed him. Not only had he betrayed his best friend, he’d also sired a child on the man’s wife. Then, after Ruth left, Dale took care of Sam as best he could. Think about how hard it must have been to commit the man he helped destroy. Imagine how he felt after Sam’s suicide.” Maureen paused. “No wonder he never had a steady woman in his later years.”
“Afraid to, eh?”
“Maybe.”
Dusty ground his teeth for several seconds, then said, “But it would have helped so much if Dale had just said, ‘William, I’m sorry. The man you think was your father couldn’t get it up, so I had an affair with your mother. You were the result.’”
The floor creaked as Maureen walked down the hallway. She appeared in his doorway dressed in a white T-shirt that fell to the middle of her thighs. Her long black braid stood out against that pale background. She leaned against the door frame and said, “Dale was a very good person, Dusty. He loved you. If he hid things from you, it was because, in some way, he thought he was protecting you.”
“Protecting me from what? Finding out my mother was a slut? Or that my father was impotent? I might have cared when I was twelve, but when I was thirty, Maureen?”
She folded her arms, as though the night’s chill was eating into her flesh. “Personally, I think Dale knew you inside out. Children tend to feel guilty about things
that aren’t their fault. I suspect he wanted to spare you that.”
Dusty sat up and leaned against the cold wall of the trailer. Maureen’s eyes glistened in the darkness, watching him.
She said, “Dusty, do you think Samuel Stewart is alive?”
“Good Lord, how do I know?” He lifted a hand uncertainly. “Even if he could have faked his death, why wait until now to deal with Dale? A really pissed husband usually picks up a pistol and settles the dispute immediately.”
“Tell me about what happened after your mother left? Did your father hate Dale? Throw him out of the house, shout at him, that kind of thing?”
Dusty shook his head. “No. I don’t know how, but they were still friends.”
“Do you think he knew that Dale and Ruth Ann were lovers?”
“My guess, and it’s only a guess, is that even if he did, he blamed himself. He probably thought his sexual problems had sent her running to Dale.”
Maureen came in and sat on the foot of his bed. Her long brown legs shone in the moonlight streaming through the window. She stared at the floor for a time, then turned to Dusty. “May I ask you a tough question?”
“What tough question?”
“At Dale’s funeral, Yvette touched Dale’s ashes in a very tender way. She ran her fingers across them, looking sad, and then turned and left. It didn’t make sense at the time. But, now …”
Dusty gave her a quizzical look, then, as her meaning dawned, he blurted, “You mean, you—you think …” He searched for the right words.
Maureen nodded. “I’m sure Ruth Ann told Carter Hawsworth the child was his, and he believed it—that’s why Yvette carries his name—but I’m not so
sure Yvette believes it. She touched Dale’s ashes like she was saying good-bye to a father she had never known.”
Dusty rubbed a hand over his face, as if to wake himself from a nightmare. “But what could have happened to suddenly make her think Hawsworth was not her father?”
Maureen shrugged. “I assume someone told her.”
Dusty’s thoughts jumped around, trying to figure out who and, more important, why someone would have done that after all these years. Who would want to stir a thirty-year-old pot?
Dusty said, “I noticed that there was no real love lost between Ruth Ann and Yvette.”
“So did I.”
Maureen looked out the window and seemed to be examining the moonlight on the cliff. “How old do you think Yvette is?”
“Younger than I am.”
“That’s what I thought, too.” She tilted her head. “After the 10K3 site, I did some research on Ruth Ann. Dale’s comments had piqued my interest. There’s a sizable body of literature about her, but none of it mentions a daughter. Nor does a daughter appear in the much more limited information on Hawsworth. That’s strange, don’t you think?”
“Yes.”
Maureen grabbed the blanket folded at the foot of Dusty’s bed and spread it around her shoulders. “She does look like Dale, don’t you think?”
Dusty’s brows lowered. “Yes. Especially her eyes.”
“If Hawsworth just recently found out he’d raised Dale’s child, would he take it out on Dale? Is that motivation for murder?”
“Possibly.”
She let out a breath that frosted in the moonlight. “There’s another question I’d like to ask you, Dusty, but I’ve been dreading it.”
“Go ahead, it’s the perfect night for awful things. What do you want to know?”
She turned and moonlight slivered her face. Her aquiline features—the straight nose, full lips, and dark eyes—gleamed an eerie white. “Dusty, please answer me honestly. Are you
certain
that Dale never had a relationship with Sylvia?”
Dusty’s hands turned to fists as he felt his anger rising—and wondered why the very idea coaxed such rage from his heart. “Dale knew about Sylvia’s childhood, Maureen. He would never have risked hurting her. I
am
certain of that.”
“When Sylvia opened Dale’s journal and asked about ‘Melissa,’ your eyes immediately went to the passage. Who was she, Dusty?”
He ran a hand through his blond hair. “A graduate student he was having an affair with. Dale knew he had to end it, but she had apparently asked him to be on her dissertation committee. He was trying to figure out whether or not he could stand being close to her for another two years.”
Maureen’s gaze drifted over the bedroom while she absorbed that. “By now, Nichols knows that Dale did have affairs with students. He will be watching Sylvia like a hawk.”
“I know.”
“Is that what the murderer wanted us to find in the diary? Or is there something else there that only you would understand?”
“I’ve been waiting for Nichols to return—”
“I don’t think he’s going to, Dusty. Not until this is over.”
Dusty nodded and let his chin rest on his chest while he waded through the morass his insides had become. “Well, he can’t trust me. I guess I understand that.”
She stood up, pulled the blanket from her shoulders, and spread it over the foot of his bed again. “I think
it’s time we both got some sleep. Tomorrow is going to be another long day. Good night.”
“Good night, Maureen.”
She disappeared down the hallway, and he heard her bed groan as she sat down on the old foldout.
But he didn’t close his eyes. He stared out the window at the cliff and the stars that gleamed above the rim, and wondered why he had reacted so emotionally to her question about Sylvia. It was as though, just by asking, she had soiled Dale’s integrity.
Which is ridiculous, she did no such thing.
But somewhere deep inside him, he’d felt she had, and he’d defended Dale. Would he always feel compelled to do that?
Probably.
For despite all the things he had learned about Dale, he could not believe Dale would do anything to deliberately hurt another human being—and certainly not for his own gain. Dale did not use people. Not even Ruth Ann’s stories would change Dusty’s mind about that. Dale was a decent human being. Period.
Or was it just that Dale had been decent to Dusty?
Did one person ever really know what another person was capable of?
His thoughts returned to Sylvia, and Rupert’s words:
“A witch hides by misdirection.”
Dusty knew the stories. A really good witch, one filled with power and evil, could stand right beside you, and you’d never know.
Sylvia wouldn’t have had any trouble carrying Dale’s weight from Casa Rinconada up to Bc60. She was studying witchcraft, for God’s sake! And if that deep-seated terror that lived inside her had sneaked out …
Dusty bit his lip. Yes, he admitted to himself,
Sylvia could kill someone if they hurt her badly enough.
But then, so could he.
 
 
THE FIRE IN the cracked gray bowl had burned down to a red glow. Matron Blue Corn pulled again at the tight cords binding her wrists. Catkin hadn’t shown either respect or sympathy when she’d knotted them.
Blue Corn winced as she tried to shift and the pain shot up her leg. The way they’d bound her ankles and run a cord up to the wrists left her in excruciating agony.
“My warriors will be back to rescue us,” Horned Ram promised from across the room. He, too, looked like a macaw bound for travel. When traders brought the brightly plumed birds north, they often tied them up into bundles to keep from being bitten and scratched.
“You didn’t acquit yourself well. It wouldn’t surprise me if they didn’t set you free just for the privilege of knocking your brains out of that worthless head of yours.”
A smile displaced the pain on Horned Ram’s frog face. “My people know my value. And it isn’t as a corpse laid out on the ground after some fight.”
She grunted, wondering what was happening, how it all could have gone so wrong so quickly. Gods, she’d been sitting there like a wounded goose when they had surrounded her. She had looked up through tear-blurred eyes to see Deputy Catkin and three armed Fire Dogs surrounding her.
She had opened her mouth to scream and stared down an arrow shaft pulled back to its head. Catkin’s soft “I wouldn’t do that” had carried more threat than a vile shout.
With nothing but death as her lot should she resist, she had meekly let them drag her to her feet, bind her
hands and feet, and stuff a rag cut from Black Stalk’s bloody garments into her mouth.
Only after darkness masked their movements did they ease her down the stairway, and that process had left her blind with terror. In the charcoal blackness, a misstep would have meant a fall and death.
They had been at the bottom when Horned Ram had run straight into their arms. In his fear and excitement, he just assumed they were allies, crying out, “Quick. The fighting is that way. They are White Moccasins! First People! Hurry so you don’t miss the opportunity to kill some!”

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