Three Sisters (37 page)

During a fine supper of slow-roasted prime beef and baked potatoes (the tasty twosome soaked in thick brown mushroom gravy), boiled pinto beans, and made-from-scratch biscuits, Scott Parris and Charlie Moon talked about everything but subject number one. Weather. Politics. Cop gossip. Aunt Daisy. Parris asked how the tribal elder was getting along.

“About the same as usual.” Charlie Moon wondered what it would be like to have a normal aunt. Sweet little old white-haired lady who knitted her nephew socks and sweaters. And never got into trouble.

“You two smoked the peace pipe yet?”

The tribal investigator shot his guest a look.

“Hey, Charlie—I’m a professional cop.” A smirk. “You can’t keep any family secrets from me.”

Moon twirled a teaspoon into the honey jar, transferred a big gob of bee-product to his coffee. “Tomorrow morning, I’ll pick up Aunt Daisy and Sarah—bring ’em back to the Columbine for a few days.”

“That should be fun.” Like wrestling alligators.

“Yeah.” The Ute stirred the dark liquid. “The kid likes to ride horses.”

“And bake rhubarb pies.” Parris chuckled.

Moon smiled. “That too.”

“Does Sarah like to wash dishes?”

“What?”

Parris waved his hand at the table. “I figured maybe we could leave this pile till she shows up tomorrow.”

Nice try. While Moon washed, Parris dried.

Then, to the parlor and fireplace. It was time.

As they warmed their knees, the chief of police said, “Okay. Tell me how you managed to find Andy Turner.”

The Ute provided his friend with a truthful but deceptively sparse account of how (with the aid of his hound’s highly sensitive nose) he had discovered Bea’s missing husband in a long-abandoned mine shaft. But, true to his promise, he made no mention of Bobbie Sue, or the fact that the entrance to the mine was concealed behind a tumbledown shack. The tribal investigator repeated Turner’s claim that when he had rounded the curve on that snowy night, he had swerved to avoid a collision.

“With what?”

“Some deer.”

“Deer, huh?”

“That’s what the man said.”

“I guess that makes sense.”
More sense that a Bigfoot in the Spencer driveway. Or a couple of witches floating above it.
Parris was half mesmerized by the hypnotically alluring dance of a pair of wavering flames. “Lucky thing for Turner that he got thrown clear. I was sure he was down in the Devil’s Mouth with his Corvette, frozen stiff as a post.” He experienced a sudden chill.
That fire needs some more wood
.

The Ute got up from his comfortable chair, selected two chunks of split pine, placed them just so.

Sometimes it’s like Charlie can read my mind.
The town cop cast a sly glance at the Indian. “But there’s something a little peculiar about it.”

Moon jabbed an iron poker at a cluster of rosy embers. “What’s that?”

“How does Turner, after he gets tossed from his Corvette—bunged up and all—crawl across the driveway in a blizzard, clamber up the side of the mountain and into a mine shaft.” Parris took a sip of coffee.
This’ll keep me awake half the night.
“How do you figure he managed it, Charlie?”

“I don’t.” Moon leaned the sooty poker beside its fellows—a leather bellows and an iron ash shovel. “Figuring is your department.”

“How do you figure that?”

Moon eased himself back into the rocking chair. “Way I see things, I’m just a humble deputized helper. I draw twelve-fifty an hour to do your flunky work—like finding a missing person you figured was stone-cold dead in the Devil’s Mouth. ‘Figuring’ isn’t mentioned in my job description.”

Scott Parris was certain that his friend was holding a little something back.
But when Charlie ain’t ready to share his thoughts, there’s no point in pressing him.

Charlie Moon was holding a lot back. Case in point: Bobbie Sue’s recipe for wrapping a man-size burrito. Though honor-bound by his promise not to reveal her presence on the mountain, he had no doubt that Andrew Turner would accuse some vaguely defined “it” of kidnapping, false imprisonment, and providing unfit nourishment. Once the chief of police had heard that alarming testimony, he would be obligated to organize a thorough search of Spencer Mountain. The most likely outcome was that Miss Bigfoot would be captured, nevermore to roam the shadowy forests, slay deer with her homemade crossbow, or dine on succulent snake flesh for breakfast. Properly sedated, Bobbie Sue would while away the rest of her days in a comfortable, barred room, consuming well-balanced meals, drifting from one drugged slumber to the next. Which, Moon thought, was a great pity. But it seemed that her dismal fate was sealed.

Not necessarily.

The future always has a few surprises concealed in its long, voluminous sleeve.

As Scott Parris was debating whether he should finish the potent cup of coffee, the cell phone in his jacket pocket produced a summons and was answered. The caller was the rookie officer on night duty at the hospital.

“Pinkerton reporting, sir.”

“What’s up, Pink?”

The unseen policeman, who never relied entirely upon his excellent memory, consulted neatly penned entries in his pocket notebook. His report was terse: “Mr. Turner’s been moved from the ER to the ICU.”

“Well, that sounds hopeful.”

“Beatrice Spencer showed up at nineteen hundred hours on the button. She’s been at her husband’s bedside ever since.”

“Has Turner said anything?”

“Not a word.”

“Anything else?”

Pinkerton flipped to the next page. “Dr. Jarvis reports that Mr. Turner has lapsed into a coma. Might live. Might not.” He observed that this diagnosis had all bases covered.

Parris’s voice lowered both in tone and in volume—a danger sign. “Officer Pinkerton, why did you not tell me right up front that the patient had lapsed into a potentially terminal coma?”

Pinkerton’s reply, which was stiff, made it clear that the do-it-by-the-book cop was miffed. “I make my notes in chronological order, sir—and that’s the way I read ’em.”

Rolling his eyes, the chief of police stared at massive pine beams supporting the Columbine headquarters ceiling.
Why me, God.

A rhetorical prayer-query cannot reasonably be expected to elicit a response. Even so, one should tend toward caution when addressing the Source of all that is.

Snyder Memorial Hospital Intensive Care Unit

For a slender, elegant, delicately proportioned woman who tipped the scales at 109 pounds, Beatrice Spencer was remarkably effective in throwing her weight around. It helped, of course, that the Spencer clan had been a major contributor to the annual hospital fund-raisers, and that a shiny brass plaque screwed to the wall of the ICU waiting room advised commoners and upper crust alike that Bea was personally responsible for outfitting surgical suites 1 and 2. For these fiscally sound reasons, not to mention her natural butt-heads-with-me-and-die charisma, when Beatrice had sweetly “asked” that Head Nurse Hortense Patten have a full-size couch removed from the visitor’s lounge and placed at her husband’s bedside, the request was approved without the slightest elevation of the boss nurse’s meticulously plucked, finely penciled eyebrow. This victory impressed the foot-soldier nurses, who referred to their superior as “General Patten.” Not to her face, of course, which heavy-jowled visage suggested a bulldog with a severe case of distemper.

Juice is what Beatrice had.

And a cold, calculated determination to have her way.

Which, in virtually every instance, she did. Those rare exceptions included Charlie Moon’s flat refusal to allow Bea and Cassie to enter Sister Astrid’s home, following the presumed bear attack.

The hospital staff, even including General Patten, were touched by the wealthy woman’s devotion to her seriously ill, perhaps dying husband. Beatrice rarely left Andrew’s bedside. During the daylight hours, she conducted business on her cell phone, patted his pale, limp hand, bathed his fevered brow with a damp washcloth, whispered in his ear as if the comatose man might hear her endearing words, et cetera. The most astonishing sacrifice was that the gourmet cook consumed the bland hospital fare without the slightest complaint. A case in point being macaroni that never managed to be either hot or cold, but always congealed into a yellowish cheeselike substance. Also, glutinous chicken à la king spilled onto charred Wonder Bread, and little plastic tubs of Jell-O in colors never seen in nature—some bearing small, dark, suspiciously semicrunchy objects that were most probably stale raisins but might just as well have been husks of recently deceased six-legged creatures.

Moxie is what Beatrice had. By the truckload. Plus a focused, passionate resolve to be present when (if?) Andrew opened his eyes, murmured his first coherent words.

Which she was. Present. When he did.

The electrifying event occurred on the third day following his rescue by that strange, taciturn Indian policeman. It happened just after lunch (boiled chicken, cold spaghetti floating in a reddish yellow liquid that suggested the vital body fluid of some lower form of life. Oh, and blue Jell-O).

While Beatrice was manfully (yes,
manfully
) using a three-tined green plastic fork to place the last bite of something or other into her mouth—her husband, almost as if he were being force-fed the writhing spaghetti while blindfolded and being told that he was eating earthworms (an innocent prank played on those young unfortunates who are being initiated into the ranks of certain Greek-letter university fraternities), uttered that first, postcomatose word. Well, not a word one could look up in Webster’s or American Heritage. And he did not exactly
say
it. He screeched like a nudist who has seated himself on a bristling cluster of prickly pear cactus. “Heeeaaah!”

Simultaneously, he flung out his right arm, knocked a lamp off the bedside table, which impact fractured the sixty-watt bulb, which shorted and exploded with a resounding flash and
pop!
(thus deserving the descriptor “electrifying event”). As if the first remark might have gone unnoticed, he repeated it, verbatim—“Heeeaaah!”—flung the other arm, sent a sturdy IV stand careening into a corner.

Needless to say, even cool-as-ice Beatrice was startled by this unexpected and energetic display of shrieks, fireworks, and toppled objects. But not enough to drop her fork, or emit a little yelp, or swallow too suddenly. The woman was extremely well bred. But she did look up. Somewhat sharply, and with an expression of frank disapproval. Putting both plate and fork aside, she leaned close to her roommate, used that tone mothers adopt when piqued with naughty children. “Andrew!”

No response.

“Can you hear me?”

“Mmm-hmmm.”

“Does that mean ‘yes’?”

“Mmm-hmmm.” The left eye opened, the dilated pupil shrunk in the bright light. Then, the right. Both eyes blinked.

The wife reached out to touch her mate’s clammy forehead. “Andrew, I’m so…so
pleased
that you are finally able to speak.”

“Foog.”

She turned her preferred ear (the right one) toward his mouth. “What?”

“Izmell foog.”

Almost of their own accord, Bea’s perfect lips smiled. “Are you trying to say that you smell food?”

“Mmm-hmmm.”

The smile slipped away, the lips pursed to reflect an inner worry.
I hope he has not suffered brain damage.

To avoid unnecessary suspense, it will immediately be revealed that he had not.

Andrew Turner was heavily sedated; “narcoticized,” for those who are thrilled to learn a new technical term. His power of speech would return, as good as ever. Indeed, within a few hours, Bea’s husband would be counted once again among that glib large-vocabulary clique who are assumed to be highly intelligent. But that popular misconception is neither here nor there. What is of some significance is that the chief of police was not there but here.

Clarification: Scott Parris, who only a half hour earlier had been
there
(in his office, having a lunch of rice cakes and low-cal banana yogurt), was at this very moment
here,
in the ICU. Following Moon’s discovery of a still-living Andrew Turner, Parris’s recovery from injuries suffered in the Moxon encounter had been remarkable. He had regained his full quota of energy and optimism. Also copish tradecraft. Having heard snippets of the semiconversation between Beatrice and her husband, Parris stepped softly. Entered the room with hardly a sound.

The patient had focused his eyes on the pretty woman at his bedside. “Bea?’

“Yes, dear.” She squeezed his limp hand. “How do you feel?”

“Awwfuum.” The eyelids drooped.

“Before you…ah…drift off to sleep again, tell me—do you remember anything about your accident?”

The head on the pillow attempted a nod. “Mmmm hmmm.”

“What happened?”

Turner’s eyes blinked, the voice quavered. “Goss!”

Her skills as a translator were improving by the second. “Are you trying to say
ghost
—or possibly
ghosts
?”

“Yesssss,” he hissed, and pointed at the apparition that floated in his memory. “Goss-es…in fonna my car.”

A voice boomed out, “You saw ghosts in front of your car?”

Scott Parris’s thunderous query made Bea’s heart do a flip-flop, but she neither lurched nor made an audible exclamation. She turned to glare at Granite Creek’s top cop, inquired, “Where on earth did you come from?”

The lawman tipped his battered felt hat, gave the question due thought. “Before I headed west to Colorado, which was five days after I retired, I was with Chicago PD. Back in 1960, I was a mere slip of a lad in East Pigeon Creek, Indiana.” There were several notable spots in between that he did not wish to address at the moment.

No great fan of Parris’s notion of humor, Ms. Spencer managed a long-suffering smile. She also anticipated the query hanging on the tip of the lawman’s tongue. “Andrew regained consciousness about a minute ago.”

Parris eyed the broken lamp on the floor, the upended IV stand. “What’d he do, wake up throwing punches?”

“Yes. More or less.” She returned her attention to the patient. “Mr. Parris is here.” Taking note of Andrew’s blank look, she enlarged on the news: “He is, for better or worse, our local chief of police.”

Ignoring the jibe, the big, beefy cop knelt by the bedside. “Hey, Andy—what’s all this stuff about ghosts?”
You told Charlie Moon you saw deer on the driveway.

Andrew Turner blinked at the policeman, shot a glance at his wife, dropped his gaze to the blue sheet over his thin form. “Dummo.”

Parris scowled. “What’d you say?”

“Andrew has been heavily sedated,” the wife explained. “But I believe he was attempting to say ‘dunno,’ which was intended to convey the message that he ‘does not know.’”

Parris was staring holes into the patient. “Anything you might remember about that snowy night when you ran your Corvette off the driveway would be very interesting to me.”

Turner licked at dry lips; his fingers played with the hem of the sheet. “Don’ meremmer noffin’.”

The cop didn’t buy a word of it. “You must remember Charlie Moon finding you in a mine shaft.”

Fear glinted in Andrew Turner’s eyes. “Huh-uh. Don’ meremmer noffin’.” He heaved a great sigh, closed his eyes. His head rolled sideways on the pillow.

“He’s fallen asleep,” Beatrice whispered.

“Yeah.”
Or he’s playing possum.
With a grunt, the big man pushed himself erect. Parris stood with thumbs hitched in his belt, watched Turner’s pale face for some indication of deception.
I guess he is asleep
. “When he wake ups and starts talking again—try to remember everything he has to say.”

“Certainly. I will write it down.”

Parris shifted his gaze to her attractive, upturned face. “That night when we were driving up the hill—and you skidded to a stop near where his car had hit the tree…”

She waited. “What about it?”

The policeman had a hard time asking the question. “Did you see anything—uh—unusual?”

“Unusual?” Beatrice smiled. “Like what?”

“I just wondered if you might’ve seen something—”
Like a big ape, carrying something on its shoulder.
He felt his face blush. “Maybe a large animal near the site of the accident.”

“If I had, I would have told you.” She stared at the policeman with an intense expression. “Did
you
see something?”

“Uh—I thought so.”

“I suppose the accident might have been caused by an animal in the road.” Bea glanced at her husband.
But poor Andrew believes he saw ghosts. Imagine that
.

“Maybe Andy’ll remember something in a day or two. When he’s feeling better.” Scott Parris scratched at an itchy stubble of beard on his chin.
I forgot to shave again.
“Well, see you later.” He took a parting look at the frail figure in the bed, grunted, turned on his heel, and was gone.

Beatrice Spencer watched the door close behind him, listened to the thumping of his boots on the tile hallway floor.
What an extraordinary man.
Coming from a connoisseur of the beard-growing gender, this was no small compliment. One the chief of police—who had a goodly share of male vanity—would have appreciated.