Three Sisters (26 page)

The lawmen had finished their breakfasts and were enjoying second cups of coffee. Scott Parris looked around the eatery, decided that no one was close enough to hear, leaned across his plate, and said to Charlie Moon, “I expect you’re curious about what I saw on Spencer Mountain last night.”
What I thought I saw.

“It’s not so much that I’m curious, pard.” The full-time Hereford rancher, part-time tribal investigator who had recently been deputized by the Granite Creek chief of police, picked up the sticky plastic bottle of honey, squirted a generous helping into his coffee. “But if memory serves, that’s one of the reasons you called me last night.”
Just as I was going off to sleep.
Which reminded Moon that he had not had a wink in the past twenty-nine hours. He stifled a yawn.

“I’ll tell you, but on one condition—you won’t give me the big horse laugh.”

“You got my word.”

“You double-dog promise?”

The Ute raised the cup of sweet, steaming coffee. “Honest Injun.”

“Cross your fingers?”

“Crossed and double-crossed.”

Somehow, double-crossed didn’t sit quite right. “Swear on your mother’s—”

“Let’s don’t push it too far.”

“Right.” Gazing at his coffee, Parris was fascinated by the rainbow sheen shimmering on the black liquid. The dazzling iridescence—which would not have been present if the cup had been properly cleaned—was created by a thin film of grease. “What I saw, just as I got near the spot where Andrew Turner’s Corvette went off the driveway…” His pale face turned a pinkish tint. “Well—it’s kinda hard to describe.”

“Give it your best shot.”

Parris set his jaw. “It was big and hairy.”

“Big and hairy’s a good start.” Moon took a sip of honeyed coffee.
That is good stuff.
He had another helping. Big, mouth-filling gulp.

With an expression of deep, earnest concentration twisting his beefy features, the chief of police continued: “The only way I can get across what it looked like is to compare it to something familiar.” He considered several possibilities, then: “It looked to me like a gorilla.”

Gorilla?
Moon was trying to swallow the coffee. Could not.

“And what really gave me the willies—that big Gomer was totin’ something on its shoulder. It was all wrapped up—looked like a big burrito.”

The Ute spat the black liquid onto the table.

All over the restaurant, which catered to various sorts of toughs, offended patrons raised bushy brows. Baleful glances were cast, uncomplimentary innuendos muttered. In a few pockets, tattooed hands caressed concealed weapons.

Scott Parris regarded his best friend with a hurt expression. “Charlie, you promised.”

“I didn’t laugh, pard.” Moon coughed. “It was the coffee.” He found a paper napkin, wiped at his mouth. “It must’ve been too hot.”

“It was not. You laughed out loud.”

“No I didn’t.”
Had too much coffee in my mouth to laugh.
“But even if I had’ve, you’ve got to admit there’s something a little bit comical in what you said.”

“You can take it from me—it wasn’t the least bit amusing at the time.” Parris watched his friend use another napkin to mop coffee off the table. “Do you think you could hold up your end of a serious conversation—maybe for a whole damn minute?”

“You betchum.” The Ute put on a supremely somber expression, not unlike Geronimo’s when that Chiricahua Apache medicine man was captured by the U.S. Army in 1886. The effort made Moon’s face ache. “This thing you saw crossing the road, what do you think it was?”

“Only one single, solitary possibility comes to mind.” Parris lowered his voice. “It must’ve been one of them—uh…” What was the word?
Abominabubble
? No. That wasn’t quite right. Aha! “One of them abdominal snowmen.”

Abdominal?
The Ute put on his best poker face.
God, please don’t let me laugh.
After reconsideration, prayer resubmitted:
Don’t let me belly-laugh
.

Parris took the blank look as a question mark. “You know—a Sasquatch.” Still no indication that this Indian was getting the drift. “Folks in South Asia call ’em Yetis. Around here, these who’ve found their eighteen-inch tracks call ’em Bigfoots.”

Moon pictured his herd decimated by mad cow disease, an IRS audit covering the past fifteen years, not a drop of rain for the next ten. That barely did the trick. The rancher said, “I’ve heard about Bigfoots.”

Parris’s expression reflected an inner intensity that his friend had rarely seen. “Way I see it, Andrew Turner rounds the curve, picks up this Bigfoot in his headlights, swerves to miss it, bops the tree, bounces off a boulder, and over the cliff he goes and down into the Devil’s Mouth.” He rapped his knuckles on the table. “It know it sounds pretty wild, Charlie—but every year, all the way from the Yukon down to Montana and sometimes even here in Colorado, there are sightings of these creatures.” Intake of breath. “There must be a family of them living up on Spencer Mountain!” He fixed a steely-eyed glare on the Ute. “What do you think?”

“Well, until we can come up with a better idea, I guess we’ve got to consider it a possibility.”
Mr. Sasquatch, carrying a huge burrito home to Mrs. Sasquatch and the hairy little kids.
“Especially considering how you saw the critter with your own two eyeballs.”

Parris used those same eyeballs to examine his friend.
Is Charlie Moon making sport of me again?

Charlie Moon was trying oh, so hard to be kind to his buddy. But the merry man could not resist the temptation to have just a little fun. “And like any good theory, the Sasquatch scenario rules out some less likely possibilities for what Turner might’ve seen when he rounded the curve.” The bait had been cast.

Parris was bound to bite. “Like what?”

“Well for one thing—Mr. Parsley’s witches.”

The theorist nodded. “Right.”

“Also King Kong,” Moon said with a straight face. “And Godzilla.”

It was a rib too far.

The chief of police gave the tribal investigator his stern look. The industrial-strength version, which was capable of turning ordinary men into pillars of chalk—and very nearly able to shame the Ute. But not quite. No matter. Scott Parris had other ammunition and did not mind using it. “Charlie, I hate to say this. But considering the gravity of the matter—and I refer to the fact that Andrew Turner is dead—your flippant attitude is…well…unseemly.” The Ute didn’t flinch. Parris fired the second barrel: “And unprofessional.”

Ouch.

“Uh—would it help if I said I was sorry?”

“Nope.” Granite Creek’s top cop leaned back in his chair. “But there is something you could do to make up for it.”

“Name it.”

“Okay, here it is. Strictly on the q.t., you and me take a hike onto Spencer Mountain.”

Uh-oh.
“Something tells me this ain’t for a picnic.”

“I’ll take some ham sandwiches and coffee. You’ll look for sign.”

“What kind of a sign?”
Don’t Disturb the Sasquatch?

“Don’t play dumb, Charlie. You’re a first-rate tracker and you know what
sign
means. A snapped-off sapling limb. Little tuft of hair caught on a juniper snag. Droppings.”

Playing dumb was fun. “Droppings?”

“Scat.”

“Oh, that.”

“And footprints.” Parris put both hands on the damp table, walked them to the napkin holder. Plop. Plop. Plop. “Great
big
footprints.”

Charlie Moon wondered how he got himself into these fixes. Probably something to do with ethnicity.
If you’re an Indian, everybody who’s seen a Western movie believes you can track a deer mouse over a mile of solid sandstone and shoot an arrow into its ear at fifty paces
. He kept the sigh inside.
I hope nobody ever finds out I went out tracking Bigfoots.

Nostalgia Is Not What It Used To Be

That afternoon found Charlie Moon in the Columbine kitchen, smiling. That’s right. Smiling. Why? Why, because he was at the kitchen sink, armed with a three-blade Case Stockman pocket knife, an assortment of wrenches, and a formidable ball-peen hammer. What was he up to? Our mechanic was installing a new, hand-crafted leather seal in the hand-operated pitcher pump—and such tasks pleasured him right down to the marrow.

Yes, a hand pump. No, Mr. Moon’s home was not what a euphemistically inclined (is there any other kind?) realtor might refer to as rustic. Definitely not. The headquarters was equipped with the essential amenities of modern plumbing, with ice-cold water provided by a pair of deep wells, each served by a 220-volt submersible electric pump that could deliver thirty-five gallons per minute into eighty-gallon pressure tanks, but the antique cast-iron muscle-operated appliance was a reminder of those bygone days when everybody knew how to prime the pump and folks managed to get along just fine without electric bills. Yes sir. Candles and kerosene wick lamps for light. No TV. Great big 1936 Airline Movie-Dial, 32-volt, battery-operated console radio. If you had a crank phone, the thing might ring once in a week, and lonely folks on the party line would listen in to hear the news and pick up gossip. If a neighbor without a phone wanted to say howdy, he’d generally get onto his horse and make a twenty-mile ride, talk for hours, stay for supper, maybe overnight. And not only that, in those days there was no such thing as computers or—Wait a minute. What was that nerve-jangling noise? Well wouldn’t you just know it. The telephone.

The wrench slipped, Moon jammed his knuckles on a sharp corner, watched blood ooze from the gash.

Which just goes to prove the point. Whatever the point was.

He stomped to the nearest extension, snatched up the instrument. “Columbine Ranch.”

“Uh—Charlie?”

He grinned. “What’s up, Sarah?”

“Oh, nothing much.” She spent twelve minutes telling him about nothing much. And then: “Oh, by the way—do you still have those DVDs?”

A frown. “What DVDs?”

“The
Cassandra Sees
DVDs. The ones Mr. Sax gave Aunt Daisy as part of her gift for being on the TV show. Aunt Daisy gave them to you.”

“She did?”

“Uh-huh. And you put them in your jacket pocket. The gray jacket with black buttons.”
That looks so nice on you.

“Then they must still be there.” This was great fun. “Why d’you ask?”

“Um…well, I thought maybe the next time you come to see us, you might want to bring the DVDs to Aunt Daisy.”

“Mmm-hmm. You think she’d like to watch all those old TV shows again?”

“Oh, sure. Especially the program she was on that night.”

“Consider it done.” Charlie Moon remembered that Gerald Sax had also given something to Sarah. “You enjoying your big picture of the lady’s eyeball?”

“Oh, yes!” Sarah Frank went on to describe every detail of the hugely magnified orb. Including the intriguing fact that there were “strange lights” in the psychic’s eye.

We Don’t Know Why

It might simply have been the girl’s mention of “strange lights.” Or perhaps the motivator was something entirely
other.
Sometimes operating on autopilot, at other times prompted by a subconscious command, human beings will do things without knowing why. So we don’t know why Charlie Moon felt compelled to turn on his little-used high-resolution television, also the DVD player, and, with the aid of an almost incomprehensible manual, stayed up late that night, until he had mastered every function. Including how to freeze a frame, move the little red triangle to identify a region of interest, select
MAGNIFY
from the menu—and watch the enlarged segment fill the entire screen. Having educated himself almost to the level of an eight-year-old TV viewer, he commenced to watch studio recordings of
Cassandra Sees,
which included scenes that had not been broadcast for viewing by the general public. The tribal investigator was fascinated by a number of items. Count them:

(1) From the most recent program: Daisy Perika with her head and shoulders under Cassandra’s coffee table.

(2 through 13) All twelve of these were close-ups of Cassandra’s attractive face.

(Back up to 9) This was the
really good one.
During that sensational broadcast where the psychic interrupted an interview to report her vision of a Denver warehouse fire. For just a fleeting moment, the Ute thought that he saw flames
in her eyes!

Moon yawned.
I’ve been staring at this stuff way too long.
It was time to call it a day, hit the hay.
But not before I get a closer look
. The dandy freeze-frame feature came in handy. Not to mention the 4X magnification.

In the neighborhood of 3:00
A.M.
(a quiet, peaceful district), Charlie Moon switched off the modern electronic appliances. For quite some time, he stared unseeing at the blank TV screen. Reflected upon what he had seen.

The incubation period for Daisy Perika’s illness fell somewhere in between that for influenza and chicken pox. While determining the onset of flu and pox can be problematic, there was no uncertainty in this instance—the insidious infection had occurred at the very moment the tribal elder had discovered the stray earring on Cassandra Spencer’s carpet—and the TV psychic’s most closely held secret.

If stubborn pride had not prevented Daisy from revealing her discovery to Charlie Moon, she would have been inoculated against the sickness. Following that missed opportunity, the progress of the disease was more or less predictable.

During breakfast at the Columbine on day one, the symptoms included a notable lack of appetite and the glaze-eyed expression of one who has
other things
on her mind. Before lunch, the old woman’s heart was palpitating with anticipation of how a clever person like herself (always alert for the unexpected opportunity) might use the secret knowledge to personal advantage. That same day, as Charlie Moon drove his silent aunt, a talkative Sarah Frank, and the paw-licking Mr. Zig-Zag to church in Ignacio, thereafter back to Daisy’s reservation home at the mouth of
Cañón del Esp’ritu,
her sly old mind was hard at work. Wickedly efficient little ratchets clickety-clicked perversely, crooked little wheels turned and twisted—sometimes in reversely.

By day two, the patient was suffering from a frenetic fever of mental activity. From dawn to dusk, she would hastily contrive a plan, consider it from various angles, discard that flawed design for another that was worse, and so on,
ad infinitum,
deep into
la nightum.

Days three through six were sufficiently similar to day two to require no further description.

On the afternoon of day seven (a Friday), the acute illness reached its climactic peak (so to speak) when Daisy decided to play the discordant piece by ear. Sadly, when it came to orchestrating an ingeniously clever plot, Mrs. Perika was kindred soul to neither Mr. Bernstein nor Mr. Hitchcock. Indeed, it would not be overly harsh to suggest that the results of her best efforts tended more toward comic opera. As it happened, the Ute elder was not aware of this shortcoming. Another, more admirable aspect of her personality combined with this deficiency to create a truly volatile combination—Daisy was a Woman of Action.

It was time to make the call. She did not need to search her purse for that scrap of paper whereupon she had scribbled the TV celebrity’s unlisted number. That critical piece of information was engraved deeply into her memory. Daisy picked up the telephone, mouthed the digits as she pressed the buttons. Waited.

What We Have Here is Not a Failure to Communicate

One ring.

After she says, “Hello,” I’ll just say, “This is Daisy Perika.”

Two rings.

The tribal elder’s mouth twisted into a roguish grin.
I bet Miss Fancy-Pants will be surprised to hear from me.

Three rings.

Well aware that there was always an “on the other hand,” Daisy scowled.
Or maybe she won’t even remember my name.

“Why, hello, Daisy.”

The caller very nearly dropped the telephone.
That white woman really
is
a witch!
Another possibility occurred to Daisy:
Or she has caller ID, just like me.

Cassandra Spencer listened to a few seconds of silence, then: “Daisy?”

“I’m here.” About to lie, Daisy crossed her fingers. “I thought I’d call and find out if you was feeling okay.”

“How very thoughtful of you. I’m feeling just fine.” Cassandra’s smile modulated her response: “I’ve been intending to call and thank you—and your gallant nephew—for tending to me after I fainted. I’m most particularly grateful to you, dear lady, for completing the broadcast. I just don’t know what I could ever do to repay you.”

You will before we hang up.
The old woman’s grin had returned from wherever grins slip away to.

“Daisy, please excuse me for just a moment.” The psychic was receiving a competing message from an intimidating presence who had just entered her parlor. No, not a spirit. This was a large, flesh-and-blood man, who carried a long-stemmed wineglass in his hand. Nicholas Moxon arched the left, hairless brow ridge—as if to inquire of his client:
With whom are you yakking on the telephone and about what, pray tell?
Of the pair, this was his highly expressive hairless eyebrow.

Cassandra cupped her hand over the mouthpiece, responded to the telepathic query: “It’s Daisy Perika—the old Indian woman.”

The
right
naked eyebrow arched, as if to say,
Ah.
This was his taciturn brow.

Moxon’s client returned her attention to the caller. “Sorry for the interruption. I’m so busy that I hardly have time to breathe.”

“Well, I won’t keep you long.” Daisy told another untruth: “I also wanted to thank you for having me on your TV show.”

“You are quite welcome.”
Is that all?

It was not. Not by a long shot. Daisy was getting down to business. “Oh, I almost forgot.” She felt her hands go cold, the thumpity-thump of blood pumping in her neck. “I’ve got something I need to give to you.”

Now it was Cassandra’s turn to raise an eyebrow. This one, though plucked and penciled, was—in contrast to Mr. Moxon’s poor showing—a well-endowed black crescent. Hair-wise.

Daisy continued: “I think you might be interested in how I come to have it. See, right after you had your fit and—”

Cassandra bit her lip, which made it hard to say, “I beg your pardon—”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Daisy didn’t
sound
sorry. “I guess I should’ve said ‘seizure.’” Young people these days were so sensitive.

The epileptic was making a valiant attempt to preserve some semblance of civility. “I fainted.”

“Whatever you say. Anyway, after you
fainted,
and Charlie Moon carried you off to your bedroom, that little white man asked me to finish the show for you—”

“Which you did—and very capably, I might add.” The star of
Cassandra Sees
shot an exasperated glance at her business manager. “For which I shall be eternally grateful.” That particular eternity would terminate in less than a minute.

Though highly disposed to compliments, and able to bask happily in unabashed flattery, Daisy brushed this aside. “And then what’s-his-name…that little white man—”

“I presume you refer to Gerald Sax, the show’s assistant director.”

“Right, he said I ought to sit in your chair.” Daisy paused to recall the moment. “And I did, but on account of those commercials, I knew I’d have a hard time concentrating.”

“Commercials—what do you mean?”

“Advertisements.” With admirable patience for one of her cranky disposition, Daisy explained, “You know, when they butt into your favorite TV program and try to get you to buy things—like soda pop and shampoo and automobiles.”

The psychic closed her eyes, mentally sighed. “Yes, dear. I know what a commercial is.”

“That’s good,” Daisy said, and frowned at a framed picture of Big Ouray hanging on her parlor wall. B.O. had been Cousin Gorman’s prize Hereford bull, long since dead. “What was we talking about?”

Despite the dull, throbbing hint of a headache coming on, Cassandra managed a wan smile. “I believe you were saying something or other about commercials.”

“Ah, that’s right! The commercials on that little TV under your coffee table was flipping over and over, and that was giving me the flutters. And when I get the flutters, you know what happens?”

The psychic shook her head.

As if she had seen this negative response from afar, the Ute shaman said, “My bladder gets all upset and I can’t hold my water. So I have to run to the bathroom.”

Cassandra nodded.

“I said to myself, ‘I’ll have to stop that TV picture from flipping.’ So, old and stiff as I am, I got down on the floor and stuck my head under the coffee table and found the right knob and turned it. I got the picture nice and steady and my face was so close to the screen I could read the words on those little ribbons they put on the bottom of the picture sometimes, that say things like ‘winter storm warning—expect ten inches of snow above eight thousand feet,’ or Mrs. So-and-So has an albino crow that talks to her. Stuff like that.”

“Yes. I see.” And she did.

“And that was when I saw it.”

From someplace far away, Cassie heard her little-girl voice say, “Saw what?”

The tribal elder had shifted gears. “Something round and shiny. It was on the floor, under the table. I thought it might be a button that come off the TV, but then again, it might be something valuable that somebody’d lost, so I picked it up.” She added, “For safekeeping, until I could give it back to you.” She paused, waited for a few heartbeats. The silence on the line fairly shrieked. “But I expect you know what I’m talking about.”

Cassandra: “I’m not certain that I do.” This was untrue.

Daisy knew that she knew. “It was your earring.”

Cassandra tried to speak, coughed. Her throat was sandpaper dry, and dots of light were appearing in front of her eyes.
I mustn’t collapse. Not now, with Nicky watching. I just can’t.
She heard the old woman’s voice in her ear: “The cameo clip-on.”

Cassandra felt her knees about to buckle, reached out to a brass floor lamp to steady herself. “Oh. That one.”

“That’s right. One of the pair ol’ Daddy Warbucks gave you in the restaurant. It’s a pretty little thing. Must’ve cost a lot of money.” The Ute woman had not enjoyed a conversation so much in years. “I imagine you’ll be happy to get it back.”

“Yes. I will.” Cassandra struggled to regain her composure. “I suppose it must have fallen off when I had my seiz—” She turned away from Moxon. “My fainting spell.”

“I could put it in the mail.” Carefully timed pause. “But I’d hate to take any chance of it getting lost. Maybe we’ll be seeing each other someday before too long, and I could give it to you then.”

“Yes, I suppose—”

“Or I could get Charlie Moon to drop me off at your place some Saturday afternoon. That’d give us time to have a cup of coffee. And maybe I’d get to stay and watch you do your TV show.”

“That would be delightful.”

Feeling Nicholas Moxon’s warm breath on her neck, Cassandra said, “Would you mind holding for just a moment?”

“Okay, but don’t take too long. Us folks who have to get by on Social Security don’t like to run up big phone bills.”

“Tell you what—I’ll call you back in a few minutes.”

“That’ll be fine.” Daisy hung up on the psychic, smirked.
I think that went pretty well.

After putting the torch to Rome, Nero reportedly made more or less the same observation.

Nicholas Moxon reached out to touch Cassandra’s arm. “What is it?”

She recoiled from his caress, avoided the stare. “Daisy Perika has my earring.”

He was silent for some time, rolling the possibilities over in his mind. Summarized: “That shouldn’t be a problem. But we’ll have to get it back.”

Cassandra shook her head. “She knows.”

“Knows what?”

She could not meet his gaze. “How we do it.”

The bald man’s painted-on mannequin expression—the frozen-corpse smile, the viper’s flat-eyed stare—did not waver. “Just from finding your earring?”

“I doubt it.” The woman spoke barely above a whisper. “When I fainted during the broadcast, I had not switched the video monitor off.”

“Tell me what she said.” He cocked his head. “Word for word.”

To the best of her recollection, Cassie did.

At the mention of the albino crow—an obvious reference to White Raven—the man who signed his confidential messages with that moniker lost the smile. “That is unfortunate.” Familiar with the dark side of human nature, Moxon posed the essential question: “What does she want?”

“Daisy mentioned how poor she was, so I suppose she’s angling for a payoff. She also hinted about making another appearance on the show.” Cassandra looked to her partner for guidance.

“Then we’ll give her what she wants.” Moxon examined the immaculate nails on his right hand. The pinky needed just a touch of the diamond file. “Call the little old lady back. Thank her for finding your expensive earring. But she should definitely not put it in the mail. You will be happy to drive to her home and pick it up.”

“I will?”

“Of course you will. And while you’re there, you’ll offer this clever Indian woman a contract. For a half-dozen weekly appearances as special guest on
Cassandra Sees
. At five hundred dollars a pop.”

“And you think that will keep her quiet?”

As the bald head nodded, the smile returned, this time reflecting genuine amusement. “For about six weeks.”

“What then?”

“That will be sufficient time to come up with a permanent solution to our problem. But don’t worry about the details, Cassie. Leave everything to me.”

“Very well.” But she was worried. “I’ll call Daisy back and make an appointment.”

“Tell her you’ll show up tomorrow to pick up the earring.” He raised the glass to his lips, downed the final sip. “But don’t mention the six-week contract on the telephone.”
She’d tell all her gabby friends and neighbors.
“Save that for your face-to-face with our spunky old blackmailer.” He set the glass aside, reached out to grasp the attractive woman by her shoulders. “Cassie—this is very, very important. Tomorrow, you must bring Daisy back to Granite Creek with you.”