Richfield & Rivers Mystery Series 3 - Venus Besieged (23 page)

"Was
Dwayne-Wayne following Blackstone and lying in wait for him?" she asked.

"I
don't know, but I'd love to shoot the jackass for whaling on a guy forty years
older than him, even if it was Blackstone." I rechanneled my anger over
Striker.

"Notice
how everything ends up with you wanting to shoot someone?"

"Which
says I'm only a pressed shirt away from being kin to Dwayne-Wayne or Officer
Bug Squash, but you have to admit my killing plan does solve recidivism. If you
shoot 'em, they don't do the same shit again."

Callie
laughed at me and I enjoyed making her laugh.

"By
the way, have you noticed I'm punching out fewer people than I used to—I must
be evolving."

Callie
said nothing in reply, but graced me with a wry smile.

"We
need to locate your friend Manaba and find out what's going on. She and
Blackstone looked pretty friendly and then he goes off and gets bumped. Did she
set him up?"

"Manaba's
a healer—she's too trained, too honorable."

"Must
be the cop in me but I've seen priests, daycare workers, and doctors do
despicable things, yet I've watched hookers do some fairly decent ones. So for
me, it's not the profession, it's the person. She's a healer. Good for her.
She'll have to prove to me she's not a bad one."

"Barrett!"
Callie said.

"Damn,
I completely forgot about her."

"Under
other circumstances I would consider that a win."

Callie
smiled at me and I decided not to remind her that jealousy wasn't supposed to
enter her cosmic consciousness, all the while happy my lover felt a little
jealous. It was a sign she was paying attention.

I
drove up to the Little Mojo Grocery and hopped out, walking quickly through the
store to see if Barrett was around. She wasn't so I dialed her cell phone.

"Hi,
we came back for you. I'm at the Mojo."

"Thanks
a hell of a lot, Galahad. But you've been gone two fucking hours. Did you
expect me to be sitting there chowing down on a can of pork 'n beans?"

"Sorry,
but we had to follow Blackstone, who was attacked by Dwayne-Wayne—"

"What
kind of bubba name is Dwayne-Wayne?"

"A
guy who's nuts and drives a white truck—but not as nuts as Officer Striker
who—"

"I
got a lead on Little Horse's place," she interrupted, obviously not
interested in my desert sagas. "So I called a cab and got back to my car,
and I'm on my way out there now."

I
had to hand it to Barrett for sheer butch bravado. "Listen, don't go way
out of town by yourself," I pleaded.

"Oh,
thanks for caring, you who left me at the Mojave-mart," Barrett snapped.

"Listen,
which direction are you headed?"

"Signal's
breaking up. I'm heading toward the reservation. I've got to find Ramona."
And before I could answer, the line went dead.

"I
don't feel good about this," Callie said.

I
hated it when Callie and I had the same bad vibrations.

"Can
we get a cappuccino?" I asked, maxed out. "And we've got to get back
and walk Elmo."

"I
think we should go after Barrett. She could be in trouble."

"She's
fine. Caught in a skip zone. I'll ring her again later." I didn't know if
she was caught in a skip zone or not. I wanted to skip looking for her right
now.

"We
should find her."

"My
entire screenwriting hiatus in Sedona is a debacle and my love life isn't much
better, thanks to Barrett. She fucked up my screenplay, fucked the attorney,
and now she's trying to fuck my day."

At
Callie's reprimanding look, I spun the car around and headed back toward the
reservation to search for Barrett, saying nothing to Callie as we drove the
next thirty miles and I continued to call.

As
the vast landscape opened up around us with its spotty dwellings and side
roads, Callie spoke first. "This isn't getting us anywhere. We have no
idea which way she went. Even when I concentrate on her, I get nothing."

"Well,
if you're getting nothing, I'm sure not driving around in the sand any longer,
because I started getting nothing hours ago." Using a side road to spin
the car a hundred and eighty degrees, I headed for civilization. "I need
coffee."

Thirty
minutes later, we pulled up on a cliff flanked with chic adobe shops, parked in
the back near the store entrances, and went inside where the view included not
only merchandise, but beautiful valley vistas through the plate glass.

I
ordered a triple grande non-fat cappuccino, two sugars stirred in, and Callie
ordered a tall caramel frappuccino.

"I
wonder how many adjectives we can list preceding our drink before we become
suburbanite assholes?"

"Don't
say that," Callie warned.

"I'm
at three: triple, grande, and non-fat, if you don't count the sugars. I'm
damned near there. I think if I ever add 'with whipped cream and a mocha
topping,' someone should shoot me."

"There
you go with the shooting thing again. Energy draws energy."

"Obviously,
because I've got you drinking tall caramel fraps. Remember when you used to
order a Coke? See how simple that sounds. I'll have a Coke."

"Are
you feeling stressed? I notice when you're stressed you start overanalyzing
things and you get sarcastic."

"I
don't think it's overanalyzing. I think it's knowing at exactly what point in
my purchasing habits I become a shallow jackass. I'm on the lookout for
that."

"Take
it off your list, darling. I'll let you know if you ever get there.
I'll
look
out for it." She reached over and held my hand, and I figured maybe it was
these kinds of moments that being married might be like—having someone who
pledged to look out for me. Keep me from becoming shallow. What more could I
ask from matrimony?

We
took our drinks back to the car and proceeded to the cabin, where Elmo greeted
us with one open eye, not offering to raise his jowls off the floor, apparently
bored with our having to go out even more than he did. Callie took her cell
phone and disappeared into the bedroom.

I
tried Barrett's cell again, but apparently wherever she was required smoke
signals and that irritated me even more, as if it were Barrett's fault that
cell towers weren't readily available.

That's
when it dawned on me that I owed Wade a call, and as I dialed, our last
conversation replayed in my head. Wade answered immediately.

"What's
up with Ramona?"

"Missing,"
I said, and intentionally went quiet. He breathed. "Okay, it's obvious you
and Ramona are buds because otherwise how would she have known I had a basset
hound and that it was a he? I never told her that. So you two must chat each
other up." Silence ensued and it crossed my mind that Wade could have
slept with Ramona, but I quickly pushed that thought away. "So are you
gonna tell me what you know about her disappearance, or do you just want me to
flounder around in the sand out here?"

"She
has a client in Sedona, an Indian guy she helped on some deal about his hunting
ground. He called her up and said he was in trouble and needed her help. She
called me that night she was supposedly kidnapped to say she was going off to
meet him, and she swore me to secrecy for his safety. I didn't get the damned
name." Wade's voice clearly said he was beating himself up.

"So
it's possible she's on a business trip and she's okay?"

Both
of us were silent this time, not believing it.

Through
the window, I saw Manaba approaching and I finished up with Wade, telling him
I'd be back in touch, as Callie jumped up and greeted her at the door.

"Twenty
years ago..." Callie said softly, and it amazed me the way Callie and
Manaba began conversations in the middle with no preamble.

Manaba
bowed her head as if praying or contemplating or perhaps ignoring us. Finally,
she said, "We were seventeen, and I was in love with her. He hated her for
that, and when she died he was accused of her death but acquitted."

"But
he did it?" Callie asked, and Manaba didn't answer.

"Why
does Luther have such a hold on you?" I asked, and his name seemed to
propel Manaba across the floor as if she was running from him right now. It was
obvious she was hiding the truth and, unable to exit through her mouth, it was
finding its way out through her incessant body movements.

"If
truth is your own personal territory, maybe you will visit it more often."
I paraphrased her admonishment to me. She looked at me in that dead-stop stare
she always gave Callie, the look that went into me and through me, and seemed
to decide perhaps I was more than she had seen on her first cursory visit.

"My
grandmother had two daughters: my mother, who was raised by my grandmother in
the tradition and gave birth to me, and my mother's sister, who had a child—the
child of a white man. My mother's sister died in childbirth." Manaba spoke
in a formal way about her aunt. "My grandmother raised the baby, named him
Yiska, meaning 'the night has passed,' and treated him as a Navajo child in the
old ways. Grandmother insisted Yiska would be Indian, even though Yiska's birth
caused her daughter's death."

Manaba
sat quietly awaiting our questions, but out of respect neither of us said
anything.

Finally,
she spoke again. "He wanted to be me, following in my grandmother's
footsteps, but he is a man and not fully of the blood. He has powerful anger
and his anger brings his power."

"Did
he kill Nizhoni?" I asked.

"No,"
she said emphatically, and as if the wall had opened up and let him in, Luther
Drake appeared, frightening us all with his stealth and cunning.

"Are
you telling the story of our growing up?" His voice dripped with revulsion
as he pulled up a chair and straddled it, resting his arms on the back of it,
his forearm revealing a long, recent scar as if slashed by the teeth of a wild
animal. Placing his chin on his hands, his dark eyes fathomless caverns, black
holes, he said, "You ignored me in school for her, then you ignored me
again for the next one. But Nizhoni is not dead at all, is she, Manaba? I might
not have known, had it not been for your newest one." He indicated Callie
with pursed lips, in what seemed a mockery of old Navajo ways.

My
thoughts raced back to the day we dug up the grave and how Luther was the man
who had jumped into the pit and pried open the lid where the bones lay.
Whose
bones were those?
My mind no sooner registered that question than the
answer flew from his lips.

"You
and I know the bones of animals."

"She
went over the cliff when the wolf attacked her. You know that, you were
there," Manaba said flatly, and I looked at Callie, questioning if she
knew Luther had been at the death scene.

"And
you threw your cape across her and hurled her over the cliff. So you murdered
your lover when she wouldn't leave you alone, as you murdered your lover Kai,
and you wanted everyone to believe I did it, when all the while it was
you!" He thrust a finger at her in a violent gesture. "Evil cannot be
suppressed forever, and your evil lies are the source of my anger!"

He
stood up, knocking the chair over, and whirled out the back door, the air in
the space he occupied inverting on itself, sucking all oxygen into a small
vortex that seemed to pull the breath from my own chest. A small black crow
feather fluttered to the floor.

When
I looked at Callie, I saw something even more frightening. She was clutching
her throat and gasping. Jumping up to perform the Heimlich maneuver, not
knowing what she might have swallowed, I was held back by Manaba, who leaned in
quickly and grappled with something unseen at Callie's throat, blocking it in
the air with her forearms and wrestling it away. Callie took her hands from her
throat and sucked in air.

"Are
you alright?" I asked and hugged her to me.

"He's
trying to frighten you," Manaba said.

"What
are you talking about?" I asked, but Manaba ignored me.

"Is
what he said true? Did you hurl her off the cliff?" Callie asked.

"Yes,"
Manaba replied quietly, and then she too turned and walked out of the cabin.

I
shivered. "What the hell happened to your throat?" She rested her
cheek against my chest, her small arms pulled in tightly, her fists balled up
and tucked between us as if she wanted to be shielded by as much of me as she
could.

"An
attack," Callie said, and I knew she was referring to the same kind of
attack that had occurred while she was sleeping. "He believes Manaba loves
me."

"He
and I are on the same page when it comes to that."

"She
admitted to killing Nizhoni," I said, but Callie softly refuted Manaba's
confession, saying she had only admitted to hurling the girl off the cliff.

"'Hurled'
is pretty final. She's lying to you," I said without malice.