Richfield & Rivers Mystery Series 3 - Venus Besieged (19 page)

When
Manaba quit chanting, she looked to the sky and offered up what I assumed was a
prayer of protection and forgiveness, then signaled the uncle to begin. As I
rationalized it would most likely take a lone man with a shovel hours to dig up
a grave, the dirt flew and in moments a concave indention formed around the
marker. I imagined he was working at triple speed to finish and elude the evil
spirits.

Moments
later, deeper still into the digging, his speed increased like a video on
fast-forward, his adrenaline obviously pumping as he got closer to the body.

Dirt
piled up off to one side of the deep hole, the shovel clanked against the top
of the box that held the woman killed by the totem that was her protector, and
I began to dread seeing what might be left of Nizhoni.

The
sides around the grave dug out, an animal howled in the distance, seeming to
mourn the dirt's removal, and the hair stood up on the back of my neck. But
that cry only foreshadowed the bloodcurdling yell that broke the night's
silence—a tortured sound that appeared to emanate from the hollowness of
despair and bespoke anger and anguish and raw aggression.

Flint
rattled against the bones of a breastplate, fringe slapped the sides of
deerskin leggings, a pair of well-worn moccasins stabbed into the earth, and
dirt sprayed over the elaborate beading of the intruder's shoes and into the
exhumer's face.

I
panned up to the angle of the intruder's hips, cut from granite; he was
bare-chested and muscled against the wind, a tall man with slick black hair
angled at his clavicle, a brow that jutted forward like the red cliffs, and
eyes as sunken as the caves buried within them. If the devil materialized, he
could take lessons from this man who reeked of death and danger.

Looking
first at me, he seemed intentionally to send a ripple of fear across my body,
and Callie clutched my arm. He was poised and tense as if ready to kill and
appeared to pray for the opportunity. Then as quickly he turned his attention
to Manaba.

She
glared at him, her eyes ferocious beyond the telling as he jumped down into the
dark hole, landed with a loud thud against the packed earth, took the shovel
away from the uncle, and used the tip like a crowbar, swiftly prying open the
lid at one end, shining a light inside and revealing a piece of bone.

The
uncle, apparently having barely managed to keep his apprehension in check while
hunkered in the dank dirt, mere seconds from seeing his decayed niece, gasped
as if fearful of what he had unearthed, or perhaps unleashed. He cast a
terror-stricken glance at the moccasined man, then scrambled squirrel-like out
of the hole and ran into the night, leaving us to the intruder.

Staring
down into the coffin at the bones, what was left of Nizhoni, the wild-eyed
warrior locked eyes with Manaba in an unspoken battle across the grave. They
exchanged fierce looks of what appeared to be anger and pain and revenge.

Suddenly
he took the shovel and tossed dirt back on the coffin with an alacrity that far
outstripped the uncle's efforts.

Manaba
waited until the last shovel full of dirt was back in place and then chanted
again, this time slowly and with great melancholy. He chanted with her and
while I felt his song was unwelcome, their harmonious sounds were undeniably
beautiful, as if they'd been trained to chant together and were now bound
against their will. Suddenly the chant ended, and he let out an unearthly
scream and ran from the grave, disappearing into the night. Callie's eyes met
Manaba's as the shaman turned her head away and strode from the gravesite.

Admittedly,
I was shook up, and I could see Callie was a little off balance as well. The
dead of night, exhumed bodies, bloodcurdling screams from a weird Indian
guy—anybody would be looking for a tranquilizer.

"Was
that...Luther Drake?" I whispered, and Callie nodded. "No wonder
everybody's afraid of him. Nice technique, squealing like a castrated pig when
he enters and exits. The hair on my arms is standing up like a whore at a
revival."

"That
sounds like your father," Callie said absently, her mind obviously
elsewhere.

"My
father would say someone ought to shoot that fucker and put him out of his
misery. So you see I'm an evolutionary step up." I put my arm around her
as we walked back to the car.

"How
can I be so wrong about the grave being empty?"

"You're
not wrong."

"You
saw the bone."

"It
takes a corpse awhile to look like that. Depends on temperature, embalming
method, body size, humidity, and even geography, but bodies buried in boxes in
the earth don't turn into bleached bones in less than three weeks, so that
can't be Nizhoni's body."

"Then
whose body is it?" she whispered to herself.

At
dawn, Callie was in the cabin at her computer pulling up a current astrological
chart. "Look at this. Jupiter in the Twelfth House, complete protection in
the present. Right now the Moon is trapped, as Venus was back then, between two
heavy planets." I had to prod Callie to finish her thought. "Mars and
Uranus, male energy, something will happen quickly, bizarrely in the Eighth
House of death. A woman is about to be in grave danger."

"Speaking
of grave—who was in the one we dug up, if it wasn't Nizhoni?"

But
Callie apparently wasn't even aware I was speaking to her or was simply
ignoring me.

"Well,
Teague," I said, slightly irritated at the silent treatment, "I don't
know who's in the coffin. I'll get back to you on that, right after I finish
taking my own planetary pulse—"

"Are
you making fun of me?" she asked, turning her beautifully sculpted face in
my direction and making me feel like a brat.

"I'm
just hot and irritable and need to get some fresh air," I said, as my body
went nuclear again. As if on cue, Elmo wiggled and jiggled and whined, clearly
communicating that the lack of attention I was getting from Callie mirrored the
lack of attention he was getting from me.

Hooking
him up to his lead, I took him outside; his bladder relief was only
perfunctory, his real purpose for our trip apparently to tell me someone was
about to arrive. Being with Callie had made me realize Elmo was psychic when it
came to visitors. He could lie around all day, then suddenly for no reason sit
by the door and whine, which signaled he was picking up images of visitors
arriving. At first, it seemed coincidental, but now I knew that Elmo received images
of people long before they showed up, and in addition, he had a built-in dog
clock that knew what time they would appear. Usually he saw fit to give me a
heads-up about fifteen minutes out.

So
when Elmo parked his soft, furry derriere in the middle of the driveway and
watched the road, I knew somebody was coming.

"Good
visitor, bad visitor?" I asked. His deep, short, impatient reply sounded
fretful, which I always took to mean he wasn't happy about these particular
guests.

Moments
later, a white truck pulled into the driveway and the driver's-side door swung
open. A tall, sandy-haired young man with a limp—the kind that started at the
hip like a tractor had rolled on it—climbed out of the truck cab and strolled
across the rocky road and shook my hand.

"Ms.
Richfield, right?" he asked, and Callie must have heard the car tires
because she suddenly appeared on the porch. Upon seeing her, he tipped his hat
not unlike Cy Blackstone. "Ms. Rivers."

"How
do you know our names?" I asked.

"Small
town. I'm Dwayne Wayne Mucker."

My
mind could never store a lot of facts, but a few stuck with me because of their
bizarre nature, and one of those popped into my head at this very moment. Over
eight hundred and eighty-three accused murderers had the middle name Wayne.
Obviously, lots of other middle-name-Waynes were perfectly law-abiding
citizens; nonetheless a whole bunch of psychos, killers, and general nut cases
had middle-name-Wayne, and now it was possible I could be talking to one.

"Do
you all know a lady by the name of..." and he looked down at the small
leather book he carried. "I apologize..."

I
glanced over at Callie, somehow feeling this guy was screwing with us.

"Mathers."
He stopped, letting the upcoming bad news hang. "Missing, from what we can
tell, taken off by some Injun." He made it sound like she'd left with a
Hemi.

"You
a cop or a deputy or what?"

"Self-appointed,"
he said, and that's when I knew I was staring at
Wayne-the-insane-living-up-to-his-name. Wayne's eyes had the look of someone
who was self-medicating, with a large pharmacy at his disposal.

"And
why do you think she's missing?"

"Neighbor
personally told me that around two in the morning another gal..." he
checked his notebook again. "...Ms. Silvers left, and that's when the
Injun fella must have got her."

"Who's
the neighbor?"

"Confidential.
There's an element up here, ma'am, is why I'm believin' Ms. Mathers is in
trouble. Now don't get me wrong. I'm for red people exceptin' a few. But when
this Mathers woman went for permission to dig up a grave on Injun land, I knew
that'd put her in the crosshairs of that element."

Part
of me wanted to write this guy off and believe that Ramona was fine, but why
would this nutcase take the time to come to our cabin unless someone had
her—maybe even him.

"How
did you know she asked permission to dig up a grave?"

He
gave me a big grin. "This is a little ole one-horse town out in the
desert. By the way, permission denied, right?"

"Sounds
to me, Dwayne-Wayne, like the song says, you got friends in low places."

"You're
friends with the shaman lady, ain't ya? You see the news today? Rumor that she
was standin' next to the girl before she went off the cliff.. .and the shaman
had the killer wolf with her. Right beside her, like it was a trained attack
dog or somethin'. Makes you wonder, dudn't it—is she siccin' the wolf on
people? Anyway, if Ms. Mathers shows up, do me a favor and leave word for me at
Cy Blackstone's office."

"How
do you know Cy Blackstone?" I thought an awful lot of people, including
Ramona, claimed a connection with Blackstone.

"Do
some work for his family." He handed Callie a card. "If we find her,
might lead us to the Injun." He tipped his hat like a Blackstone wannabe
and got in his truck.

Not
waiting for Dwayne-Wayne's tires to clear the driveway, Callie and I headed for
Ramona's cabin, dialing Wade Garner from the road.

"Yeah,
he wasn't a cop of any kind, and he was obviously looking for Ramona under the guise
of helping to find her. So what do you make of that?" I asked Wade.

"I'm
catching the first flight out. Ramona's helped me out on a couple of occasions
and I owe it to her," he said flatly, anger in his voice, devoid now of
all horsing around.

"Stay
put. If it looks like there's been trouble I'll let you know. I thought since
you talked to her before she came to our place maybe she mentioned going
somewhere else."

"She's
always on some Indian's legal case when she's out there—a real bleeding heart.
A do-gooder liberal." Wade snorted but I could hear affection for her
beneath the derisive sound. Having been a cop alongside Wade, I knew his soft
side and, despite who Ramona might take to dinner, to bed, or to court, he'd
never mistake her mansion for her morals.

Wade
seemed worried a little too quickly for a cop. As I ended the call an alarm was
already going off in my head that said Wade knew something he wasn't telling
me, and something Ramona knew had gotten her into trouble.

We
pulled up in front of the cabin Ramona had described the evening she'd visited
and saw her black Mercedes parked in the driveway, which made me feel somewhat
more relaxed. I bounded up the steps and knocked on the door, but no one
answered. The interior lights were off, the cabin dark. I circled it once but
saw nothing unusual.

"Do
I break in?" I asked Callie, looking around.

"Yes,"
she said nervously.

Careful
to keep my fingerprints off the doorknob, I took out a credit card and popped
the lock that apparently our cabin's locksmith had installed with equal haste
and waste, since it was useless as protection. I flipped on the lights and we
looked around: everything tidy, no signs of struggle, nothing that indicated
she'd left hastily.

In
her bedroom, the down comforter was tossed back as if she'd gotten up and
decided not to make the bed. It crossed my mind that she and Barrett had
probably warmed those sheets. The kitchen had a few orange and yellow
Fiestaware plates with leftover toast and eggs stuck to them, communicating
only that she wasn't the quickest to tidy up. Feeling awkward now that we were
definitely breaking and entering, I suggested we leave and lock up.

"Doesn't
look like anything weird. What if she simply went shopping?"

"Maybe
give Barrett a call and see if they're together," Callie said.