Dark Moon Crossing (31 page)

It was amazing. Just as Champ had described, his
long-term memory appeared to be intact. He jumped back and forth between tales
of his parents battling the elements on their first ranch in the searing desert
heat near Yuma, where they’d lived with no electrical power, no running water,
and a covered hole in the ground lined with watered-down burlap as their
refrigerator, to his own early memories of rescuing young calves from winter
floods and doctoring cattle for deadly screw-worm. With the telling of each
triumph and tragedy that accompanied the long drought of the 1930’s, his face
grew more animated. “This state has got a fascinating history. If you want to
have some fun sometime, get hold of a book called Arizona Place Names. I think
Champ’s still got a copy in his study. You’ll be surprised to find how many
names of mountains and rivers and canyons, a lot of ‘em right here in this
area, have been changed over the years, some of them three or four times from
the days of the early settlers.”

“Really?‌
Who has the authority to change them?‌”

He
pursed his lips in thought. “Well now, I’m not entirely sure of that.
Government bureaucrats, I guess, but in one particular case I know of, the
wives of some Army officers stationed near Yuma were responsible. Take a look
at a modern map sometime and you’ll find a mountain range called the Kofas,
which originally stood for King of Arizona. Nearby is another one dubbed the S
H Mountains. You know how they got to be called that?‌”

“No.”

“The spiky peaks stand all topsy-turvy and go every
whichaway,” he said gesturing with his hands, “and because of that, some of the
troops decided they resembled a bunch of outhouses, so they nicknamed ‘em the
Shithouse Mountains.” He cackled with glee and slapped his knee. “Now,
apparently the wives took exception to that and started a campaign to change
them to the Shorthorn Mountains. Sometime later they were shortened to just the
plain, old S H Mountains.”

He rambled on and on, regaling me with other examples
of towns and mountain ranges that had been renamed since the time of the
original settlers and I really was trying to pay attention, but soon found
myself daydreaming about Tally’s return to the ranch. How was I going to
handle this sticky situation?‌ Should I abandon my promise to Ginger and tell
him that I knew about the ring?‌ Distracted by my thoughts, I was only half
listening as he droned on and on about a place originally known as Cave
Springs. I think I’d pretty much zoned him out when something he said snagged
my attention. “…must be a hundred different versions of the legend of a
phantom black stallion supposedly seen there only on moonless nights.” He
chuckled. “Now if you want to hear more details, you need to talk to Felix
about how he and his two brothers used to cross over the border in the wee hours
on their mules to work in the mine. He swears they all saw the ghostly
creature galloping down the canyon hell bent for leather, snorting fire from
his nostrils and it scared the living daylights out of them.”

Something clicked in the back of my mind, but I
couldn’t think of what it was or why it was important. “I’m sorry. Where did
you say this place is located?‌”

He didn’t answer, just stared at me slack-jawed as if
I were suddenly speaking a foreign language. “What?‌”

“I
think you were talking about a place called Cave Springs?‌” I could tell by the
dull sheen of perplexity in his fixed gaze that something had happened. He
looked away, his mouth still moving, but no words coming out. After an
extended silence, I touched his shoulder. “Mr. Beaumont, are you all right?‌”

He
turned and peered at my face, murmuring, “Oh, yes, hello. What can I do for
you?‌”

Oh,
dear. The old guy was having one of his forgetful spells and it made me wonder
how much of what he’d told me earlier was actually factual. “It’s okay, ” I
said. “We can talk later.”

“Yes,
later,” he repeated vaguely, falling silent, apparently enclosed once more in
his own world. My throat tightened with sympathy and I sat with him another
five minutes or so before rising to my feet. “I’ll be right back.” I should
probably alert Felix or Lin Su to the old timer’s seemingly catatonic state,
but was hesitant to leave him alone. I got as far as the gate when Felix
appeared around the corner of the house. Relieved, I motioned to him and explained
the old man’s condition.

“It
happens more and more,” he said with a resigned sigh. I accompanied him back
to Cecil’s chair. “Meester Bo,” he said softly, shaking the old man’s arm.
“Time for you to come into the house. Dinner will be ready soon.”

Cecil
looked up and greeted him with a welcoming smile as if seeing him for the first
time that day. “Felix, it’s so nice to see you. How are you today?‌”

“Fine,
Meester Bo, just fine.” The elderly Mexican man and I exchanged a poignant
look before he led Cecil away. With sadness, I watched the two old men shuffle
back to the house. I stayed alone in the little garden a few more minutes,
soaking up the warmth of late-afternoon sunlight now casting long shadows
across the patio, and contemplating how lucky I really was. Poor old Cecil’s
deteriorating health put my present dilemma into proper perspective. At least
I had some control over my immediate future. He didn’t.

I
glanced at my watch again. Almost four o’clock. Tally should be getting back
any time now. It had been only six days since we’d last been together, but my
blood ran hot at the prospect of grabbing hold of his muscular frame and
pressing my lips against his sensual mouth. And that was just for starters.
Delightfully preoccupied in my fantasies, I made it out the gate and halfway
towards the front door when something Brett said earlier pounded at my dormant
brain cells like a ball-peen hammer.
‘It’s my favorite story and Uncle
Jason’s too.’
Holy smoke! I did an about-face and rushed back to the
garden, snatching up
The Golden Treasury of Children’s Literature
that
he’d left behind on the chair
.
How dense was I?‌ Was this book the
source of Froggy’s fractured rendition of
Little Boy Blue
and the
puzzling ditty in Jason’s e-mail?‌ My heart thumping erratically, I ran my
finger down the table of contents. Oh, yeah. I fanned to the story of
Rumpelstiltskin
and began flipping the pages, speed reading, until one particular phrase
leaped out at me:
Merrily the feast I’ll make, To-day I’ll brew, to-morrow
bake; Merrily I’ll dance and sing, For, next day will a stranger bring. Little
does my lady dream Rumpelstiltskin is my name!’”

My
hands trembled with excitement. Was I getting myself overly agitated or was
this the link I’d been looking for—the one connecting Froggy to Jason?‌ I
reread the verse. Something was different, but I couldn’t pinpoint it. I
wracked my brain, cursing the fact that all my pertinent notes were in the
trunk of my stolen car. Think.
Think, damn it.
My head felt like it
was packed with sludge from so many days of high fever, along with the
magnitude of events that had transpired since last Sunday evening. I must have
sat there for ten minutes sorting through the file drawers in my memory bank before
the vital detail finally emerged. Four days! Hadn’t Jason’s riddle said ‘
in
four days will some strangers bring
,’ not ‘next day’ like the original
text?‌ And if one interpreted ‘strangers’ to mean that someone was planning to
smuggle in a group of illegals then that meant…I counted the days backwards to
Sunday. Good Lord! Tonight! Something was going to happen tonight! But
where?‌ And when?‌ And, I still had no clue as to why.

I snapped the book shut, my heart racing full
throttle, the urgent need to take action overwhelming. But what exactly should
I do?‌ Report my suspicions to the sheriff or Border Patrol?‌ My shoulders
sagged. And just how did I intend to prove what would probably sound like a
ludicrous hypothesis?‌ They’d probably react to it the same way Tally had. I
could hear them laughing now. ‘Let’s get this straight, Ms. O’Dell, you want
us to act on suspicions based solely on woman’s intuition, the unlikely,
unsubstantiated testimony of a five-year-old illegal Mexican boy with a wild
UFO abduction tale and a few lines from a nursery rhyme book.’ Sure, they were
going to buy that.

Somehow
I had to find something incriminating to prove my theory. My thoughts circled
madly like a hamster racing on a wheel until the answer exploded in my head.
Jason’s room! Of course! And with him safely stashed behind bars, there was
no better time to search it than right now. I jumped up and dashed out the
gate, storming around the corner of the house so fast I practically bowled over
Lin Su. Gasping with surprise, I grabbed her arm to steady her. “I am so
sorry. I should have been paying more attention. Are you all right?‌”

“Yes.”
Undaunted as always, she righted herself and remarked with confidence, “Special
tea make heart, mind, body strong again, yes?‌”

I
grinned. “I don’t know what your magic potion is, but thanks to you I feel
great, and thank you for preparing such a nice lunch.”

She
nodded, acknowledging my compliment with a slight smile. “Phone for you in
living room. Lady with loud voice says come quick. Very important.”

Thinking
it must be Ginger, I dashed up the porch steps and hurried inside, passing the
open door to the kitchen where the delightful aroma of food cooking wafted out
and followed me down the hallway to the living room. I snatched up the
cordless phone, but when I said, “This is Kendall,” a voice I didn’t recognize
screeched at me, “You two-faced liar! This is all your fault, I knew I
shouldn’t have trusted you!”

Flinching defensively, I countered the accusation.
“Who is this?‌”

“Don’t
play games with me, missy. You know damned good and well who it is. What have
you done with him?‌” came a high-pitched snarl. “Where is he?‌”

My
senses swam in recognition. “Sister Goldenrod?‌ What’s going on?‌”

“You
told that woman about him, didn’t you?‌”

“Whoa.
Back up. Who are you talking about?‌”

“That…that UFO woman…Mazzie…something or other,” she
blubbered, her sobs rising to a panicked wail. “How else could this have
happened?‌” A tremor of unease fluttered inside me. “Take it easy. Tell me
what’s happened.”

“He’s gone! Javier is gone!”

A pang of distress ricocheted through me as I stood
listening to her terse explanation. After leaving Javier in Celia’s care,
she’d driven to Tucson on church business. When she’d returned about three
o’clock to bring him a snack she’d discovered the room empty. Celia claimed
she’d checked on him about one-thirty. I checked my watch. That meant he’d
been missing for less than three hours.

“Is it possible he’s just wandered off someplace?‌” I
asked hopefully.

“Not likely. The poor tyke was terrified of his own
shadow. In fact, he had another nightmare last night and screamed so loud he
woke up the whole house. I couldn’t get him calmed down so I finally let him
sleep with me.”

With an impatient snort she dismissed my suggestion
that relatives may finally have come for him, or that he’d attached himself to
one of the many other Mexican families passing through the mission. The
optimistic approach would be to embrace the idea that his sudden disappearance
was simply a coincidence, but the timing bothered me. “What makes you so sure
Mazzie La Casse has anything to do with it?‌”

“What other explanation is there?‌”

Sadly, I didn’t have one. “Sister Goldenrod, I swear
to you that I did not tell her where Javier was.”

“This is a real small community, Ms. O’Dell. By now,
everyone knows that you and Lupe were here. She may have put two and two
together. How do I know she didn’t sneak in here while I was gone?‌ What’s she
going to do, use him for one of her UFO experiments?‌ What do you really know
about this woman anyway?‌”

Not a whole hell of a lot, I had to admit to myself,
wincing as a guilty noose tightened around my heart. Had something I’d said or
done inadvertently given away Javier’s hiding place?‌ “Well, if she does have
him, I can’t imagine any harm will come to him, but before you panic and point
fingers, are you sure you’ve looked everywhere on the grounds?‌”

“Of course I did!” she barked. “I’ve turned this
place upside down, inside out and every which way.”

“Have you notified the sheriff’s department yet?‌”

A derisive hoot. “And tell them what—that I’ve been
harboring an illegal alien?‌ You know I can’t do that.”

“You said Javier woke everyone up last night. Did
that include Froggy?‌”

A pause. “I suppose so.”

“Is he there now?‌”

“No, it’s his day off,” she said, sounding puzzled,
and then she sucked in a startled breath, catching my drift. “Oh, dear Jesus
in Heaven. That drunken asshole’s probably been at the bar all day. By now
he’s blabbed it all over town! Well, shit! That means the Border Patrol got
wind of it or maybe those sneaky INS people raided the place again while I was
gone,” she said, her voice ripe with disgust.

“Wouldn’t Celia have noticed something that obvious?‌”

“How?‌ The undercover people don’t wear uniforms and they
drive unmarked cars. They could have marched right through my kitchen and she
wouldn’t have known any difference.”

I desperately wanted to believe that Javier was safely
in the custody of the Border Patrol, or even Mazzie La Casse, but I could not shake
the insistent sense of foreboding. After advising her to continue searching
and to call me if anything new developed, I hung up and forced myself to
refocus on the more serious problem at hand. Bent on searching Jason’s room, I
got no more than a few steps from the phone when it rang again. Thinking that
Sister G may have forgotten something, I scooped up the receiver and was
surprised to hear a male voice ask for me. “Speaking.”

He identified himself as a deputy with the Pima County
Sheriff’s Department. They’d found my car. “Oh, thank God,” I exclaimed with
relief. “Where did you find it?‌”

“A few miles east of Amado.”

“Where’s that?‌”

“Near Arivaca Junction,” he informed me, “but when I
say we found it what I mean is we found what’s left of it.”

My stomach tensed. “What do you mean?‌”

“It was completely stripped.”

“What exactly are you saying?‌”

“The people who stole it took everything but the
actual body of the vehicle.” His blasé monotone indicated that this was not an
unusual event.

But it sure was to me. Engulfed with fury at the loss
of my precious little car, not to mention everything else that had been in the
trunk, I was left speechless for long seconds. “Well, this is just friggin’
wonderful,” I groused, blinking back tears. “What am I supposed to do now?‌”

“Take it up with your insurance company.” He gave me
the name and address of the towing company where my car, or rather the remains
of my car was being stored in Tucson. Steeped in self-pity, I slammed the
phone down. Time to find Tally. A cursory glance at the kitchen revealed only
the Mexican girls and the laconic-faced Indian woman preparing dinner. A quick
search of the grounds outside confirmed that he had not yet returned. Drat!

The waning afternoon sun, hovering in a splendid
tangerine sky, streaked with patches of silver-rimmed clouds, gradually
relinquished its heat, allowing the early evening chill to set in. I rubbed
the mass of goose bumps skimming along my arms and headed back inside. It was
closing in on five o’clock. Where the hell was Tally?‌ I tried not to think
about him out there with Bethany working her beguiling witchcraft on him,
instead wrestling my mind back to the business at hand. Evidence. I had to
find some hard evidence or no one was going to take me seriously. Ever. I made
it half way up the staircase when the clamor of quarrelsome voices outside
stopped me. I turned around just as Twyla Beaumont marched in the front door
followed by Jason. Shit! My heart dropped as the opportunity to explore his
room evaporated before my eyes.

“I told you I can’t, Ma,” he whined as his mother,
appearing tired and distraught, slammed a pile of folders onto the entry
table. “I got other important things to do tonight.”

“No excuses,” she snapped, massaging the back of her
neck. “I’ve had about all I can handle for one day and right now I can only
hope and pray we can get your father released tomorrow as well.” When she
glanced up and saw me, her eyes rounded in surprise. “Oh, hello,” she said,
re-modulating her voice to a pleasant level. “It’s nice to see you up and
about. Are you feeling better?‌”

I mustered a polite smile. “Much.”

Jason’s reaction to my presence was telling. He
flinched violently and stared up at me, aghast, the emotions in his eyes
shifting in quick succession from shock to anxious disbelief before settling
into fiery hostility. Momentarily taken aback, I glared back as the
discomforting realization fully registered. If I’d had any doubts before, the
ferocious gleam in his close-set eyes put them to rest. He hadn’t expected me
to be here. No. I was supposed to be dead, locked away forever in the
tumbledown jail in Morita, just as he and his conniving sister had planned.
All at once, the convenient theft of my car took on a far more sinister
connotation. What a rotten pair.

“Well, that’s good, dear,” Twyla murmured absently,
turning away. “Jason, get out of those filthy clothes and put on something
nice. We’re going to need your help this evening with the hayride.”

“I told you, I can’t, ” he complained, turning the
threatening stare on his mother. “I don’t have time to entertain a bunch of
pansy-assed tourists.”

Unaffected by his little hissy fit, she smacked a
bunch of keys onto the wall hook and swiveled to face him. “I am in no mood to
argue with you.”

The fact that I was witnessing their personal exchange
earned me a look of extreme irritation. He puffed his chest assertively. “I’m
goin’.”

“Don’t talk back. The last thing I need is for you to
go out drinking and gallivanting around with your buddies. You can’t take a
chance on getting into trouble again,” she insisted wearily. “Now, I’ve got
enough on my mind, so we’re not going to talk about this anymore.” Satisfied
that she’d made her point, she disappeared through the kitchen door.

Snuffling hard through his nose like an angry bull,
his fists clenching and unclenching, he wheeled around and charged up the
stairs, peppering the air with obscenities and making sure he deliberately
bumped me against the railing as he passed. When he slammed the door to his
room I couldn’t suppress a twinge of impish pleasure that my presence irked
him, but at the same instant apprehension gripped me as his angry words rang in
my ears. He had something important to do
tonight.
Not tomorrow,
tonight
.
Was it just a fluke or was I trying to make something out of nothing just to
prove to myself that there really was something sinister afoot?‌ I’d been in
this predicament twice already in the past six months, and like my other two
big stories, I’d had not one speck of tangible evidence to validate my macabre
theories. But, I’d been right. Okay. I’d arrived at another of those
momentous introspective roadblocks. Time to decide whether to just forget the
whole thing or have faith in my gut instincts.

I slumped down on the steps, chin resting in my
hands. As things stood now, I could do nothing to stop what I strongly
suspected would be a replay of whatever evil had befallen Lupe’s relatives and
Javier’s mother. Javier. Poor little Javier. What could have happened to
him?‌ My heart ached as I pictured him cowering in the farthest corner of the
closet, lost and motherless, bedeviled by nightmares, afraid of his own shadow,
afraid of bug-eyed monsters, afraid of black horses.
Afraid of black horses?‌
I frowned. Why did that sound so familiar?‌

As I sat there mulling over each lead, each incident,
each conversation, and together with what I’d learned these past five days,
something kept hammering at the perimeter of my subconscious. I don’t know if
it was the result of my recent illness or preoccupation with Tally, but I
couldn’t fit the pieces together into any cohesive order. “Come on,” I urged
myself, squeezing my eyes shut. “Concentrate!”

I went over every point carefully a second time and
all at once I sat bolt upright, tingling all over as Cecil’s rambling tales of
long ago jumped to mind.
The legend of the phantom black horse!
Was it
possible that the one thing in this mystifying puzzle that had made no sense to
me from the very beginning was actually the missing ingredient?‌ My heart began
to knock against my chest. There had to be a connection. If my hunch was
correct, Felix was probably about the same age as Javier’s great-grandfather.
Hadn’t the little boy said that the location of the special crossing place had
been handed down through generations of migrants using word of mouth?‌ And
hadn’t his mother said it was safer to make the journey during the dark of the
moon?‌ Oh, my God! Cecil had said the legendary phantom horse was only seen on
moonless nights!
I sprang to my feet and almost took a header down the
stairs. My sudden appearance in the kitchen doorway startled the Indian cook
so badly she dropped a pan lid. “Where’s Mrs. Beaumont?‌” I demanded, breathlessly.

She stooped to retrieve it and eyed me curiously.
“Outside in the barn preparing for the buffet dinner and dance.”

I glanced out at the thickening twilight. Okay, no
time to hunt her down. “Can you tell me which room is Mr. Beaumont’s study?‌”

Again, the inquisitive look, but she shrugged and
pointed. “End of the hall, last door on the right.”

“Thanks!” Trotting along the dim corridor, my pulse
thudding in my throat, I prayed that my hunch was right. And if it was what
would I do?‌ I hesitated in front of the closed door. As a guest in the
Beaumont home, I really had no business rifling around in Champ’s private
study, but if I found what I was looking for I’d be in and out in a jiffy with
no one being the wiser. I glanced over my shoulder one more time before
pushing the door open and then closing it quietly behind me. I crossed to a
massive desk and switched on a lamp that flooded the oak-paneled room in golden
light. Three walls were lined floor to ceiling with bookshelves, while the
fourth was plastered with large movie posters. I scanned them quickly,
recognizing
THE LAST ARIZONA COWBOY
as the one Champ had mentioned, so
that most likely meant the others had been filmed here on the ranch as well.
It would have been fun to study them, but a grinding pull of urgency had me
searching frantically through the book titles. “Come on, come on, where is
it?‌” Fifteen minutes and two bookshelves later I hit pay dirt. With sweaty
palms, I pulled out the copy of Arizona Place Names and flipped through it
until I found locations that began with C. I ran my fingertip down the pages.
Camp Verde, Canyon Diablo, yeah, yeah, Castle Butte, Cavecreek originally
founded, blah, blah, later changed to Cave Creek in 1962…and then there it
was. Named after a series of caves and natural springs, discovered in 1871,
Cave Springs was
re-named
to Wolf’s Head in 1949 to reflect an irregular
promontory. Yes! A thrill of triumph shot through me. I guess I’d known all
along that Morita held the key to the puzzling disappearances. I clapped the
book shut. Now all I needed to know was the immigrants’ exact crossing point.
I was busy replacing the book and rewarding myself with a mental high five when
I heard a slight movement behind me. I jerked around and my heart swooped with
alarm. Jason Beaumont, his face contorted in anger, loomed in the doorway.
“What the hell are you doing snooping around in my dad’s things?‌”

“I’m…I’m not snooping. Your grandfather suggested….”

I knew I was in trouble when he strode in, kicked the
door shut and advanced on me, chest heaving. “You’re lying. I knew you were a
government spy.”

I gulped, “You’re wrong….”

He body-slammed me against the wall and grabbed my jaw
in a painful grip. Teeth bared, his sadistic face only inches from mine, he
snarled, “You goddamned wetback- lover. I’ve been on to you from day one. You
got my folks fooled, but you ain’t foolin’ me, not by a long shot. I want your
ass out of here tonight.”