Richfield & Rivers Mystery Series 3 - Venus Besieged (20 page)

After
ringing Barrett and getting no answer, I left a message for her to stop by our
cabin or call us the moment she got this. Then we drove by her cabin to see if
she was there with her cell phone off. Her car was gone, and we decided it was
possible she'd picked Ramona up and they'd gone off for the day.

Relaxing
a little, I decided that maybe Dwayne-Wayne was some local guy who was mentally
two bricks short of a load.

"I
mean, what was all that stuff about Manaba having the wolf with her like a
trained attack dog? The whole wolf thing's got me baffled anyway," I said.
"The wolf is a woman with really nice eyes, next thing you know the wolf
is Luther Drake, now the wolf is the shaman's attack dog, then he's the phantom
that sent me over the cliff—hell, this is the busiest damned wolf in the woods.
So do you think this Luther is—"

"Don't
keep saying his name."

"Why?"
I was a little irritated, the hocus-pocus level having about pegged out on my
fun meter.

"If
you say a name, you give it energy. You communicate with it."

I
rolled my eyes so far up in my head they were in danger of getting stuck there.

"If
you say, T wish my mom would call' and then suddenly she calls, you say, T was
thinking about you.' That seems normal. You said her name and drew her to you.
Why is it abnormal if I don't want to say the name of someone because I don't
want to draw him to us?"

I
didn't have an answer and drove back to the cabin.

Stepping
out of the car, I saw movement by the creek and quietly approached the pine
trees as a figure came out of the woods a few feet from us. I spun and grabbed
it by the arm, and the scream was instantaneous and high-pitched. I let go
immediately, having attacked Fern Flanagan.

"Jeez,
Fern, I'm sorry."

"You
almost blew out my pacemaker!" Fern panted.

"Are
you okay?" Callie asked.

"Do
you have a pacemaker?" I asked, worried.

"No.
All my body parts are real. I got no inflated boobs, hair plugs, bacteria in my
lips, fat outta my hips, no Botox, fake cocks... only what the good Lord gave
me and I'm usin' it up at a great rate." She loped over and plopped down
on the steps. I glanced at the tightly rolled pink fabric in her hand.

"Came
to give you this, my boy found it down by the creek." I recognized it as
the L.L. Bean shirt jack I'd bought Callie.

"Thanks,
Fern. Must have fallen out of the car and something carried it off. Tell your
son thanks, too."

"Aw,
he's workin' today at the grocery." She laughed good-naturedly and the sun
picked up a glint of red in her graying hair.

"Is
your son redheaded? I think he was our checker the other day." I left out
the part about him being so damned dumb he couldn't ring up carrots, because
from the light in Fern's eyes, I could tell she thought her son was the Second
Coming.

"Yeah,
I work a few extra hours each week to help him out, till he gets on his
feet," Fern said proudly, and I wondered what the hell it was about grown
boys that kept a mother happily in bondage her entire life.

"Well,
I'm betting your son will grow up to make you real proud, Fern. It'll all be
worth it." I made myself say it, wanting Fern to feel like her life was
rewarding.

I
caught Callie looking at me sweetly as Fern said, "Well, thank you. Better
get a move on." She hoisted her frame off the porch steps, caught her
balance, and bounded off into the woods after wishing us a good day.

"I
love you, Teague Richfield," Callie said.

"Because
I occasionally proffer the kind lie?"

"Maybe,"
she said as I handed her the slightly battered pink jacket.

"It's
a great color. And I even like the teeth marks."

I
snatched it away from her to see if the wolf had touched the jacket.

"Only
kidding." She giggled and this time I threw the jacket at her playfully.

An
hour later, in response to my call, Barrett Silvers burst into the cabin, talking
as she hit the door and not giving me a moment to tell her why we were
searching for her.

"I'm
glad you've come to your senses. I was going to phone you as soon as I got
dressed—slept in due to a very late night because Jacowitz rang me at two
fucking a.m. and wanted to go over his thoughts on your damned pages. That
conversation lasted until nearly four so I'm a little sleep deprived, and
excuse me if that comes out as pissed off with you.

"A
note you might want to jot in your diary—I put my personal life on hold at two
a.m. in order to go locate your e-mail with the pages you sent to Jacowitz and
proceed to sweep up your crumbling career, and here's all the man is asking. He
likes your writing, he likes your style, he likes you. Give him ten pages on the
alien sex scene with the housewife. Ten fucking pages. Would it kill you to try
it?"

"We
can talk about that later—"

"No,
we talk about it now." Her tone dropped an octave and she shifted into a
soft, seductive approach, since yelling was obviously not working. "Nun
sex, hooker sex, alien sex, who-gives-a-flying-fuck sex. Write the scene
between any two people you like, make it sexy, then change one of the names to
Alien. I don't care. What I care about is that you complete this movie and get
your picture on the screen, and I know what you're going to say. You're going
to say you don't want a movie on the screen if it sucks. Well, sucking is at
least a sound. Right now your career is silent."

She
flopped onto the couch and finally took a breath.

"Barrett,"
Callie said softly, "a man named Dwayne, some guy we've never met, was
here and said Ramona is missing and that it happened right after you left her
cabin this morning."

It
was clear from Barrett's expression that her brain had stripped its gears; she
couldn't get from Jacowitz and aliens, to Ramona and missing, in that short
time frame. We watched her as she sat silent, blinking, her mind seeming to
leave her body as if time traveling to the last place she'd seen Ramona. She
got to her feet, and for a minute I thought she was hyperventilating.

"Why
did I leave? Why didn't I stay over?" She paced, clasping her hands,
rubbing her palms together in a masculine wringing of them.

"Obviously
you left to help me with Jacowitz," I said, but she wasn't listening.
"And we don't even know for sure she's missing."

"We
have to find her." Barrett looked genuinely distressed.

For
the first time since I'd known Barrett, I saw a vulnerability, a chink in her
business armor, a spot that the older, more sophisticated, more elegant Ramona
Mathers had apparently penetrated, among other spots, I was almost certain.

"I'm
hiring a PI," Barrett said and executed a one-eighty, leaving the cabin in
an over-the-top reaction typical of stressed studio executives.

"A
private eye? How about you call her cell phone first before you marshal an
army?" I shouted after her.

"I've
been calling her cell phone all day, and I drove by several times. I thought
she might be...blowing me off."
So, after a night of sex with Ramona,
Barrett is hooked and worried that Ramona isn't and, worse, that Ramona is
avoiding her.

Barrett
jumped into her car and peeled out of the gravel drive.

"What
next?" I asked Callie.

"I
think we should meditate together. Combined energy has great power."

I
didn't know about that, but I never turned down an opportunity to get into bed
with Callie, especially for mutual vibration.

We
lay flat on our backs next to each other, our arms touching, and she told me to
close my eyes and ask our guides to tell us what they wanted us to know. I did
it kind of halfheartedly and then, tired, found myself drifting off. In a
twilight sleep it hit me—I was falling backward off the ravine, weightless and
terrified, spinning, falling, grasping, about to smash into the floor of the
riverbed when suddenly—I sat up in bed and gasped for air.

"What
did you see?" Callie asked as I tried to breathe but could only pant like
a nervous pup and then shake my head as if that would knock all the fearful
images out of my brain.

"I
keep having that falling-off-a-cliff sensation." I clutched at my heart.
"Feels like I'm suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome or
something. If I'm meditating and asking for answers and I'm getting that
horrible image, then what does that mean?"

"That
the message is about the fall. We need to find the Indian man who pulled you
out. I think he's involved with Ramona, and other people are looking for both
of them."

"Why
do you think that?" I drank water from the bedside table.

"Dwayne-Wayne—he
doesn't care about Ramona. He wants the Indian man but he knows we'll want
Ramona. So by engaging us in the search for her, we'll help him locate the poor
Indian guy he's after."

"I
wouldn't want to be wanted by Dwayne-the-insane," I said. "Why do I
have the feeling that Manaba's not coming clean with us?"

Callie
didn't defend her, seeming to know I was right. The shaman's truth serum was
obviously a quart low.

First
we drove the short distance down to Ramona's cabin, which still looked calm,
quiet, and vacant. But in the melancholy light of late afternoon, it looked
less like Ramona had merely made a trip to the grocery store and more as if
she'd left permanently.

Callie
suggested we find Manaba and see what she could tell us, and I sensed that my
needling about Manaba's on-and-off truthfulness was in the back of her mind. I
turned the car toward the cemetery and headed northwest of the goat path, where
the sunlight cast lengthening shadows on the scrub brush.

Finally,
Callie said we should park the car and walk. I wasn't so hot on leaving my Jeep
in the middle of a sand dune and traipsing out over the desert, but Callie was
already walking ahead so I locked it and jogged to catch up with her.

"Where
the hell are we?" I asked, annoyed at the sand and grit seeping into my
shoes as my feet sank in the soft ground.

"It's
the place where Manaba's grandmother raised her. No one ever comes out
here."

"Yeah,
not a great time-share. So are we one thorn tree and two iguanas from where
we're going?"

Before
I could come up with another smart remark, I glanced up from the sandy soil and
right in front of us was a small, but beautiful, oasis, as if the LPGA had
decided to underwrite an incredible putting green in the middle of nowhere.

A
gnarly old tree bent over the small pool of water, the grass was thick and
green, and rocks that were obviously used as chairs could not have been more
artistically arranged if Hermann Miller had stopped by and placed them himself.
Embers burned in a tiny rock circle, and something was steaming in a pot
outside the dome-shaped earth-and-bark hogan, supported by four posts
representing the Navajos' four sacred mountains.

"It
was her grandmother's. The hogan is never deserted." Callie walked ahead
of me making a slight clicking sound. Moments later Manaba stepped out of the
hogan.

She
said something to us in her native language, which could have been a greeting
or simply Navajo for "What the hell are you doing here on the ninth
hole?"

Callie
asked how she had been, and Manaba replied she had been participating in a
healing ceremony at the hogan to help her deal with danger and restore balance.
She looked a little more settled to me—maybe that meant balanced.

"A
guy named Dwayne came to see us," I said. "He claims that Ramona
Mathers, a friend of ours, is missing."

Manaba
nodded to her right and Callie seemed to know that meant "take a
rock," so we sat down. Manaba produced two wooden cups that looked like
they were carved out of half a croquet ball, but were lightweight. She dipped
them into the liquid in the pot and handed one to each of us.

I
had no intention of drinking from a dripping bowl, particularly since I
couldn't see what was in it, but Manaba indicated I should drink, and somehow I
felt rejecting the offer would be a personal insult. Taking a sip, I had to
make myself swallow, imagining this bitter brew that looked like green tea and
tasted like pond scum was good for me.

Callie
didn't drink any of it and was signaling me not to, but it was too late—my
Midwestern manners had overridden my common sense. I'd slurped some of the scum
to avoid offending my hostess, and for a moment I wondered why not offending
someone was more important than my own safety. My upbringing could have
conceivably killed me, Midwesterners preferring death to social disgrace.

"She
is alive," Manaba said, and as I wondered if she knew for certain that
Ramona was alive, she gave me a signal that meant drink up.

The
second sip of the tea wasn't as bad, perhaps dread being the bitter taste and
the tea only a drink. Manaba stoked the fire with large pieces of wood, then
lit a long pipe and blew smoke into the sky. I was beginning to relax and
nearly forgot why we were here.