Changing Woman (28 page)

Rose smiled at Lena and nodded. “You know me so well. It’s easy to talk to you. You see things in the same way I do. Most important of all,
you understand what I’m fighting for. If we don’t protect the Navajo way of life, it’ll simply disappear.”

Lena smiled slowly. “That’s true enough, but that’s not why you won’t let this matter drop. There’s a personal reason, too.” Lena gave her friend a long, knowing look. “You won’t back down from this fight because you’re afraid that, if you do, it’ll prove that old age means you’re no longer
useful, and that courage belongs only to the young.”

“I won’t deny what you’ve said, but there’s more at stake here than my pride,” Rose said. “I really believe that allowing gaming on the Rez is a huge mistake. The way we’re going, the Navajo way of life will become like those plastic plants people put in their homes and on graves. A bad copy that just isn’t the same—without roots and incapable
of growth.”

“So what will you do next?”

Rose smiled slowly. “I told you about the warning the politician gave me. Now I intend to send them one of my own.”

“You’re going to go stir up even more trouble, aren’t you?” Lena leaned forward. “Okay, count me in. What’s your plan?”

Rose’s smile widened. “I’m going to wear traditional clothing—my long skirt, velvet blouse, and my silver-and-turquoise
jewelry—then go to the fund-raiser the modernists are having at the old high school to launch their campaign promoting gaming on the reservation. I’m not going to contribute to their cause, mind you, but I want to be there for their business meeting.”

“But you won’t get anywhere with them if you go dressed like a traditionalist. In fact, you’ll stick out like a sore thumb,” Lena said, then stopped.
“And, of course, that’s exactly what you want.”

“I don’t intend to go so I can pick a fight. My being there will be statement enough. It’ll make them think of what they’re doing—and what they’ll be giving up.”

“But how will you get there? You can’t grasp the steering wheel with your injured hand and driving with one hand is dangerous, especially on our bad roads.”

“I was hoping you’d join me.”

Lena smiled. “I have a little bit of a problem seeing clearly at night these days, but if you help me watch the road, we’ll be okay.”

“Then we’re set. Come on. You can wear some of my things. We’re still the same size.”

Once they were dressed, Rose left Dawn with Jennifer, and set out with Lena. Although it was only six in the evening it was completely dark outside this time of year.

They drove
slowly toward the main highway, Rose guiding her friend carefully.

“Stay in the middle of the road. There are several holes up ahead on my side,” Rose said.

Lena managed to hit them all with unerring precision anyway, and Rose groaned as they bounced around. “Try to surprise me by missing a few of these ruts.”

Lena muttered under her breath. “Be quiet, old woman.”

“What’s with the ’old woman’?
I’m exactly your age.” “Yes, but I’m not the one complaining,” Lena answered. “You do realize that you’re going to make some of them very angry tonight. Are you sure you’re prepared to deal with the fallout from that?”

“Sure I am.” Rose laughed nervously when Lena gave her one of her skeptical looks. “I didn’t say I wasn’t scared. I said I could deal with it.”

“Now I know where your daughter
gets her courage—and her stubbornness,” Lena said.

“That’s the real curse in our family,” Rose said with a wry grin.

Rose made sure the door slammed loudly behind her as she and Lena walked into the auxiliary gym now filled with at least two hundred men, women, and children. Everyone automatically looked back to see who’d just come in and a small rumble of disapproval went through
the room as
Rose’s presence was noted. Even the speaker stopped.

Rose nodded to the speaker, who cleared his throat and continued. Although the crowd grew silent again, many were still watching the newcomers.

Rose had brought her cane—a reminder to people there of the accident a drunken driver had caused—and stood silently against the wall. Lena remained beside her, tall and proud.

A well-rounded Navajo
man wearing a sports coat got out of his metal folding chair in the front row and approached them hesitantly. He had on a name tag that identified him as a host. “We’re having a fund-raising meeting here,” he whispered. “Are you lost?”

“No. Not at all,” Rose said, her voice soft and sure.

“I think you must be,” he insisted, this time his whisper a bit louder. “This is a meeting for those of
us working to bring gaming to the Navajo Nation. I’ve heard that you’re an opponent of gaming.”

“I understood that this was a public meeting, and this is certainly a public building. I’m here to listen to what your people have to say.” Rose matched his voice level with her own.

“They’re here to spy,” someone sitting close by hissed.

Rose couldn’t see who’d spoken. It could have been any of
a dozen sitting near that side of the gym. Instead of replying, she said nothing and remained standing where she was.

The speaker at the front stepped away from the podium, and waited. The meeting had come to a stop.

“I’m sorry, but you’re disrupting our meeting,” the man in the sports coat said, all thought of subtlety lost. “Would you please leave.”

Rose felt no need to whisper either. “I’ve
only spoken when spoken to first. Are you and the speaker so uncertain of your position and yourselves that you won’t allow two old Navajo women to watch and listen?”

The man expelled his breath in a long whoosh, then looked at the speaker and shrugged.

“She has no business here,” a woman near the front row said, standing and glancing toward Rose. “We can’t speak freely with the opposition standing
here listening.”

Rose gave her a sad smile. “And that’s the problem. You see me as ’opposition’ instead of as another member of our tribe. Whether we stand for gaming or against it, we’re all
Dineh,
and that puts us on the same side when in council.”

“We are Navajos, as you say, but we’re divided on this issue. Refusing to acknowledge that is pointless,” Atsidi Benally said.

Rose recognized
the white-haired man in the jeans and flannel shirt immediately. He taught the Navajo language at the college and until that very moment, she had believed he was a traditionalist.

As if reading her thoughts, he said, “I
am
a traditionalist, but necessity forces me to accept change.”

Rose shook her head slowly. “We will lose more than we gain.” To emphasize her point, she took a step forward,
leaning awkwardly on her cane, using her uninjured hand.

“For the record, not all nontraditionalists want gaming,” another woman said, standing up in the middle of the second row and turning to face the majority of those attending. “Quite honestly, I don’t think bringing casinos and liquor onto the Rez is a good idea. There are too many drunk-driving accidents here already.” She glanced at Rose.
“I know you need a cane to help you walk because of what a drunken driver did to you. My own cousin was hit by a drunken driver while he was crossing the street in front of his own home. He was in the hospital for weeks. Like you, I came tonight for a chance to demonstrate my opposition.”

The speaker called for order as a heated argument began between Atsidi and the last woman to speak over
whether alcohol service was to be a part of the gaming proposal.

As the argument escalated, Rose glanced at Lena, nodded, and together they headed for the door quietly. “I’ve done what I came to do,” Rose said as they began walking back to Lena’s car. “They’ll now have to consider the alcohol issue along with gaming, and their debate won’t just ignore the facts that they don’t want to face.”

The car was a distance away and they walked slowly, but the night air was bitterly cold and by the time they reached Lena’s old sedan they were both looking forward to the warmth of the heater. Lena opened the door for Rose, but they suddenly both jumped back. The seats were covered with what appeared to be ashes.

Lena shuddered, then forced herself to take a closer look. “This isn’t skinwalker
magic. These ashes aren’t from bones or a body. It’s just a nasty prank.” As she brushed the black debris out onto the asphalt of the parking lot, she added, “It came from somebody’s fireplace. There are pieces of wood still in it, and what looks like charred newspaper.”

“Whoever it was probably didn’t know enough about traditional beliefs,” Rose said slowly, clearing away the black, sooty flakes
with her handkerchief. “Had it been daytime, spilling ashes here would leave a trail for Poverty to find us. But by putting them out at night, ashes will help us scatter any evil.”

“Let’s get this off the seats and go home,” Lena said. “I’ve had enough for one day.”

“Me, too. But at least it ended well for us,” Rose said, thinking about Ella and wondering how she was doing tonight.

Ella stood
and walked casually around the dingy living room in Andrew Talk’s rental house while he went to the bathroom.

“We’re almost done here,” she said, glancing over at Justine. “I just want to make sure we get all the information we can out of him before we leave.”

“He’s so scared I don’t think he’s holding anything back.”

Andrew came back into the room, having washed his face, combed his hair,
and tucked in his shirt so that he looked like a neat drunk rather than a sloppy one. Ella focused on him.

He stood tall, attempting to restore some lost dignity. “If I’d had something to do with Betty’s death, I would have been smart enough to get myself a really good alibi. I wouldn’t have left myself open like this. Give me credit for some intelligence.”

“There are crimes of passion.”

He
waved his hand in the air, disgusted. “That’s not my style. Talk to people who know me.”

“Rest assured, I will,” Ella said.

“What you really need to do is find out who was blackmailing me. Maybe Betty found out who he was and he killed her, or maybe he killed her to get revenge because I took away his hold on me. Or maybe he’s trying to scare me into doing what he wants by letting me know I’m
in danger now.” Even as he said it, he looked over to the window, his voice starting to shake slightly. “Do you think I’m going to need police protection?”

“Unless you can prove you’re in direct and immediate danger we can’t give it to you. You should know from your position on the Tribal Council that we just don’t have the manpower. But you shouldn’t assume you’re in danger—at least not yet.
There’s just not enough evidence to support it.”

“That’s easy for you to say. It’s not your neck on the chopping block.” He dropped down on the couch again, loosening his collar, which he had only buttoned a few minutes earlier. “Are you sure the police can’t protect me?”

“We can step up the patrols around this area until we get a big call, but if you want a bodyguard you’ll have to hire one
yourself.”

Concluding with Talk, who locked the door immediately behind them as they left, Ella and Justine walked out to their unmarked police unit. “We have to go back and question his wife again.”

“Tonight?”

“Yeah. Did you have other plans?”

Justine shrugged. “I was supposed to meet Wilson, but he’ll understand,” she said flatly. “Do you think Lorraine did it?”

“I don’t know, but she’s
high on my list of suspects right now. She’s in good shape and is trained in martial arts. What I need to find out now is if this murder is simply the outcome of a domestic problem, or something greater.”

“You think the circumstances were engineered to produce results?”

“Let’s say I’m open to the possibility.” Ella glanced at her watch. It was almost eight. She’d have given anything to call
it a day and go home, but there was still work to do.

They drove back to Lorraine Talk’s home in silence. Ella’s thoughts were on Dawn when her cell phone rang, interrupting her musings. Ella picked it up and heard Kevin’s voice.

“I’ve got a little free time this evening, and I’d like to come by and visit my daughter. Is that going to be a problem?”

“When?”

“I can arrive around eight-thirty.
How about it?” “Yeah, that’s fine. I should be home by then and, with luck, she’ll still be awake. But don’t get her too excited playing, or she’ll never go to sleep later.”

“Okay.” Kevin paused, then added, “I understand your mother caused quite a stir a little earlier tonight.”

“Huh?” The comment took Ella by complete surprise.
She’d assumed Rose was at home. “What happened? What are you talking
about?”

“You haven’t heard? A patrolman had to go to the valley elementary school—the old high school—to quiet things down. One of the programing groups rented the auxiliary gym for a fund-raiser, and your mother showed up.”

Had he told her that Rose had become a magazine centerfold, he couldn’t have surprised her more. “My mother went
where?”

“You heard me right. Oh, she didn’t get arrested
or really start anything. Apparently she brought up a few issues, people started arguing, and she left. People are saying that she must have cast some Navajo magic on them.”

“Oh, please.”

“I thought you knew about this already, Ella.”

“I’ve been out working a case, Kevin. I don’t keep up with every call from Dispatch,” she said, then muttering a quick good-bye, broke the connection.

“What
was that all about?”

She told Justine what Kevin had said.

“Your mother? Rabble-rousing? No way.”

“I know, it threw me for a moment too. But if Mom did that, it was just to make them think. I’ll never believe that she went there just to cause trouble.” Yet even as she said it, she wondered what her mother’s reasons had really been, and if she’d ever find out.

When they arrived at Lorraine
Talk’s house, the woman answered the door while talking to someone on a cordless phone. Lorraine gestured for them to come inside, then hung up quickly.

“We’ve just come from talking to your husband,” Ella said.

“I know. That was him on the phone.”

“You lied to us, Lorraine,” Ella said flatly. “That’s not a very smart thing to do.”