Finding Casey (2 page)

“
Por supuesto
,” Jenny said—of course—“but as is common with Santa Fe homes it's actually a carport. There's also a casita, a guesthouse. Follow me.”

They made their way through the snowy yard on no discernable path. Skeletons of hollyhocks rattled their seedpods in the wind. Yellow-headed rabbit brush and sage lay dormant under snow, waiting for the sun to bring them back to life. She'd have to employ one of her father-in-law's goats to mow down the weeds, but beneath the icy crust, she just knew there was a
garden waiting. She pictured rows of vegetables. Window boxes cascading with flowers she was still learning the names of. There was room for a few chickens. She could put in three dog kennels, and someday resume rescuing and rehabilitating death-row dogs as she had in California. Halfway across the yard they brushed snow away from a shapeless mass that turned out to be a fountain, clogged with leaves and muck. Now that Glory no longer lived near an ocean, any running water would be a comfort, plus it would attract birds. She particularly loved New Mexico's array of hummingbirds, and planned to hang several feeders.

“Let me call my husband,” Glory said, taking her cell phone out of her handbag. “Then we can go back to your office to write up the offer.”

Jenny Montoya smiled and reached into her shoulder tote. “No need. I brought the contract with me.”

That very afternoon, Jenny the realtor, who was one of Joseph's cousins' wives' in-laws, presented the offer to the out-of-town sellers by fax and within an hour they accepted the offer without a single concession. There were Vigils in mortgage, lending, banking, and home inspection, and they closed escrow in nine short days. Jenny had done everything correctly, signed and filed and faxed and notarized, performed her “duty to disclose” by listing the defects in the house. Call it splitting hairs if you like, but she
had
mentioned the ghost.

Just not any details about the ghost.

Glory and Juniper had waited until Sunday to visit the two-day art event because on the last day prices were always more flexible. She'd heard longtime Santa Feans refer to it as “Indian Mark-up,” but anyone who worked on their art all year and hoped to sell it to afford another year of making art had Glory's respect and support. She had been hoping to find the perfect micaceous bean pot for her husband so he could cook the Santa Maria pinquito beans her friend Lorna had sent them from Jolon. Because today was Glory's birthday, Joseph was making her a fancy dinner. There would be Vigil relatives everywhere laden with cakes, side dishes, and chiles her in-laws grew on their farm in Hatch. Birthdays were nice, but
tomorrow
was the day Glory was looking forward to. It was Glory and Joseph's third wedding anniversary, the year you were supposed to give leather (traditional) or glass (modern) to your beloved. Glory had bought Joseph a braided leather key chain with a silver concho shaped like the sun, surrounded by rays. Tradition said you were supposed to be married eight years to give pottery, but what could possibly happen if she gave him pottery five years early?

“You hungry?” Glory asked Juniper as they completed the
first lap of Spanish Market, having found no candidates for the micaceous pot.

“A little. I never had breakfast.”

“Why?”

Juniper smiled. “I wanted to get my run in before it got too hot.”

“That's no excuse for skipping meals. Should we go to the Plaza Bakery?”

“Are you kidding? Look how crowded it is. Let's try Pasqual's. I love their food and they have that community table so we shouldn't have to wait.”

“Good idea.” Glory was thinking of ordering a side dish, a quick bite to tide her over until dinner because her stomach was a little upset. She kept a careful watch on Juniper, who'd entered college at age sixteen due to acing entrance exams and Joseph's pull at the university. Stress was part of college, but was Juniper ready for it? Glory worried about eating disorders. The books said overexercising was one of the symptoms, and skipping meals, well, that was a no-brainer. Outside the restaurant, a line of hungry people snaked around the corner of Water Street and Don Gaspar. Glory excuse-me'd her way to the counter. “Is there any room at the community table? We just want a quick bite.”

The waitperson pointed. “There are two spots you can have right now. Follow me.”

When it came to sitting at the community table, your fellow diners might be strangers when you sat down, but not by the time you pushed your chair out to go. Glory had lived in Santa Fe long enough to resist making snap judgments about anyone. That crusty old cowpoke in the scuffed boots sitting next to you might own three hotels. The woman in the Chanel sunglasses
and cowboy hat pulled low could be a movie star, because New Mexico catered to the industry for mutual benefit. The middle-aged balding guy scribbling notes on his napkin might be writing the next Pulitzer Prize—winning novel, because in this town you couldn't help but run into a writer, artist, or both. UPS had once accidentally delivered them a package addressed to George R. R. Martin, the famous science-fiction fantasy writer. Juniper squealed when she got to take it to his house, even though it turned out he wasn't home at the time. For a solid week the only words out of her mouth were:
How many people can say they live down the street from George R. R. Martin?
Until Joseph pointed out that their house was worth a quarter of what his was, Juniper got a lot of mileage out of being neighbors. “You think he's the only writer that ever lived in Santa Fe?” Joseph said. “Google that topic, and come back and tell me what you find.”

“P. L. Travers, Donald Hamilton, D. H. Lawrence, Cormac McCarthy, Tony Hillerman, Judi Hendricks, Rudy Anaya, Gary Paulsen, John Nichols, Sharman Apt Russell, William deBuys, Lynn Stegner, Roger Zelazny …”

“Now you get the idea,” Joseph said. “I'd tell you to search artists but you'd die at the keyboard of old age.”

That was life in the oldest state capital in the nation. New Mexico had history and infamy in every corner, from train robbers to Spanish conquistadors to aliens. Visitors traveled from around the world to mix with the Wild West, explore the site of religious wars and the fabled Cities of Gold, petroglyphs, adobe architecture, and Georgia O'Keeffe—there was drama aplenty to fuel great books, breathtaking landscapes for film backgrounds, and here, ethnicity had clout. A twelfth-generation Santa Fean trumped the wealthiest retiree. Tourism was key to
the economy, but also drove up housing prices. Longtime families who had occupied houses on Acequia Madre and Canyon Road now lived in Pojoaque, Española, Rio Rancho, or even farther out. Galleries were filled with art the majority of people could never afford, but relied on the few who could. Every Indian Market there would be a newspaper story about some art dealer waiting in line all night to buy the grand-prize-winning pot or straw crucifix or turquoise nugget nestled in sterling silver. Meanwhile, grimy musicians sang in the Plaza with their guitar cases gaping open for spare change. Indians sat in the shade of the Palace of the Governors with handcrafted jewelry spread out on black cloth as they had for hundreds of years. For some it was an easy place to live, but to Glory it was a little lonely, even though she quickly got to know her multitudes of cousins and in-laws that came along with her marriage. After four years in Santa Fe, she could almost remember their names. She called her sister in California twice a week, and exchanged e-mail with Lorna Candelaria, who kept her up to speed on the doings in Jolon, California.

Glory studied the menu. What tasted good when it was ninety degrees in the shade? A side of flour tortillas dripping with butter? Flan? A chile relleno did not appeal to her today. “Could I have the cheese omelet, hold the tomatoes and onions, please?” Glory asked their server, a lanky Latino guy who looked harried. He nodded. “How about you, Juniper?”

“I'm not all that hungry. I'll just have a Diet Coke.”

“Blue Sky okay? We don't carry Coke products,” the waiter said.

“Hold on,” Glory interrupted. “You skipped breakfast to run and you were hungry ten minutes ago. Order something.

We can take the leftovers home to your dad.”

“We make half portions of everything,” the waiter said, tapping his fingers against his order pad.

“Fine,” Juniper huffed. “I'll have half a BLT, half a side of cole slaw, and a whole iced tea. You guys should start carrying Coke. Blue Sky soda tastes like vitamins.”

Glory smiled at her adopted daughter's sass.

“
Bueno
,” the waiter said. “Be about fifteen minutes. We're really slammed today.”

When weren't they? If Glory had a choice for dinner out, Pasqual's was where she wanted to go. Whether you were sitting at a side table in candlelight, or in the bright sunshine with colorful Mexican
papel picado
banners hanging like laundry across the lofty ceiling, she loved this place. Maybe it wasn't always a good place to have a quiet talk, but once the food arrived, who cared? Lucky for the people lined up around the corner, a couple of shops had awnings, offering shade. Glory and Juniper had filled the last two seats at the community table. To her left a couple of seniors were going on about their recent weekend in Pagosa Springs. In the talkative air around her, Glory heard Spanish, German, and Japanese. She was getting better at Spanish, but the other two languages were beyond her reach.

Juniper was leaning on her hands, elbows on the table, a vacant expression on her face. “Hey,” Glory said. “Are you tired of Indian Market? We can go home if you want.”

“No,” Juniper said. “You still have to find Daddy Joe's pot, and I lost one of my porcupine-quill beaded earrings. I want to see if I can find another just like it.”

“I bet you can. Anything bothering you?”

“Not really. Just thinking about, you know, her,” Juniper said.

“Tell me.”

“When we were little kids, Casey always wanted to be the
Indian, never the cowboy. She would have loved Indian Market. She would have gone both days, even if it was a hundred and ten degrees out.”

When Glory and Joe formally adopted Juniper, she had been convinced that moving out of state and changing her name would release her from the grief of Casey's disappearance. She thrived in the anonymity that came with their move from California, where her tragic family history would always define her as “the sister of Casey McGuire, the girl who never came home.” That was one of the reasons she'd asked to take both Glory and Joseph's last names when they adopted her. “If I drop Tree”—her middle name—“and McGuire”—her father's surname—“I can start over brand-new,” she said the day that the papers were filed. Glory and Joseph had looked at each other knowingly, but they agreed, it was her decision.

Directly across the table from Juniper sat the prototype Santa Fe dude, rail-skinny, craggy face, Levi's worn smooth over many launderings, leather vest with clay pipestone beads, a silver bracelet crawling with turquoise, and long hair tied back in a ponytail. He had taken off his cowboy hat, leaving that telltale dent of longtime wear. His face was lined from the sun, and he could have been anywhere from forty to sixty. He was staring at Juniper with a glint in his eye that Glory did not like.

“Something I can help you with?” she asked loudly.

He chuckled at her protectiveness. “Sorry, ma'am. I didn't mean to stare. I noticed the young lady's tattoo. A mountain bluebird, right? My favorite bird. That's all.”

Immediately Juniper covered it with her hand and looked down at her napkin and silverware. Glory kept her gaze on the man, but he did not back down. “Thank you for the compliment,” she said in a voice that conveyed exactly the opposite.
Like the porcupine, the mother in Glory sent the man a warning: Come any closer, and you'll have a mouthful of quills instead of that relleno. Joseph's grandmother, Penelope Manygoats, who had died years before Glory met Joseph, had told her grandson a story for every creature on the planet. The mountain bluebird was an “angry bird that thinks it's a hawk,” but the porcupine was an “ingenious survivor.” One day, the story went, Porcupine climbed a hawthorn tree to escape Bear, and discovered that the thorns on the tree discouraged the bear's pursuit. Porcupine called out to the Creator, who spread white clay on his back and attached the wonderful thorns. The thorns evolved to microscopically barbed quills, and Bear never bothered Porcupine again.

“I haven't seen you around here before,” Glory said to the still staring man. “Are you local?” For such a spread-out town, Santa Fe had a small-town atmosphere. Eventually you'd run into someone with a familiar face at Trader Joe's or La Choza. You recognized the regulars, but this man was not one of them.

He smiled. “Not far. El Guique.”

“That's right next to the Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo,” Juniper said. “The Rio Grande runs through it, right?”

“Yes, it does,” he said. “My fourteen-acre property has three hundred feet of riverfront.”

That's a valuable piece of land, Glory thought. Another person you'd never guess as wealthy. “So you're here for Indian Market, collecting, I take it?” she asked, wishing Juniper had not entered into the conversation.

“Actually, ma'am, I'm here to show.”

Ma'am. As if he thought that would make up for ogling a teenager? If he were the least bit Indian, she would eat his hat. “Oh. What tribe are you?”

“Cherokee.”

They always said Cherokee. If he had any Indian blood in him, it had to be a microscopic drop. “What kind of artwork do you do?” she asked.

“A little pottery.”

“Really? Well, we don't want to keep you from losing any sales,” Glory said as their plates arrived. “You'd better hurry so you can get back to your booth. Best of luck.”