Death on the Greasy Grass (23 page)

C
HAPTER
31

Manny squinted against the bright sun as he ducked under the crime scene tape. He reached above the door for the key and opened Harlan's shop.
So much for a secure building.

By habit, he paused just inside the door, listening. A radio in a far room played country music, and a sparrow that had made its home in the auction barn chirped as if feeding young. Somewhere in the back of the shop a fan circulated air. Manny dropped into a crouch. An odor hung in the air, the odor of something he'd noticed before that couldn't place. He only knew the hairs on his neck stood at attention for a reason. He'd gotten his street degree picking up on things others didn't.

He duckwalked farther inside the building. He leaned back against one wall while his eyes adjusted to the darkness. He strained, but caught no further odor, no sound besides the chirping. Yet, he couldn't ignore his instinct, couldn't get it out of his mind that someone else was inside Harlan's shop. His hand fell onto his empty holster. He had taken off the gun in the car, and could envision it lying on the seat. Just where he didn't need it.

His hand ran along the wall and he found a light switch, but he waited, ears catching something besides the fan coming from the office. A light played off the walls, flickering on and off, casting delirious shadows through the blinds over the windows.

Manny rubbed his eyes, his vision slowly adjusting to the darkness as he struggled to remember the layout of the shop. He could go straight in and buttonhook to the right, giving him good coverage of Harlan's office.

Manny drew his legs under him and wiped the sweat from his palms. He breathed once and sprung, flattening when he got inside the room. Chenoa Iron Cloud screamed and papers flew into the air. She stumbled backward and ran into a file cabinet. She dropped her flashlight just as Manny tripped the light switch. Chenoa looked wide-eyed at him, caught in some act that Manny knew she'd try sweet talking her way out of.

“Agent Tanno?” Chenoa turned around, her hands behind her. She dropped some papers on the floor. “What are you doing here?”

“I'm conducting investigations into several homicides. I'd ask the same of you, since you have a memorial service to conduct.”

“It's done.” Chenoa smiled, and Manny got the feeling it was as phony as those tourism smiles. “Jamie and Wilson are handling things while I . . .”

“Mourn for Sam in Harlan's shop?”

“I don't have time for this.” Chenoa brushed past Manny. He grabbed her arm and spun her around.

“Get the hell out of my way or I'll . . .”

“What? Call the BIA or tribal police? Tell them you got caught breaking into a crime scene? How about I make that call for you.” Manny took out his cell and flipped it open. She reached out and wrapped her hand around his. Manny's eyes found hers, as thousands had been drawn in before by posters and tourism brochures. And her cologne, the same he'd recognized on entering Harlan's shop, the same at Sam's memorial service, wafted past his nose. “Don't embarrass me by doing that. I'll tell you what you want to know.”

Manny closed his cell and stepped back. He didn't trust himself this close, and he brushed a Cheetos bag and candy wrappers off Harlan's desk before sitting on the edge. “Start by telling me how you got in.”

“Same as you.” She rolled Harlan's chair around and sat down, crossing her legs, the same dress she'd worn at Sam's memorial service riding over her knees. Manny looked away, and she smiled at his predicament. “We always knew Harlan kept his key above the door. Whenever I needed Sam to sign papers, I'd send Cubby over. If Harlan wasn't around, Cubby would grab the key and go inside. More often than not, Sam would be passed out in the spare room.”

Manny gestured around the room, and to the papers that Chenoa had dropped when Manny surprised her. “But there's no papers for Sam to sign now, is there?”

Chenoa started to speak, but looked away.

“Maybe you were looking for something else. A journal perhaps? Maybe land deeds that were stuffed inside?”

“All right. I was looking for the journal. I'm convinced it was Itchy who called me offering to sell it.”

“And you couldn't take a chance that he actually had the journal?”

She smiled, but her eyes darted around the room as if forming an escape plan. “Wilson told me you had talked with someone who had read the journal.”

Manny nodded. “And you were interested in the journal.”

She smoothed her dress. “What makes you say that?”

“Harlan kept a list of bidders, people who came into his auction barn prior to the sale. He might have been a slob, but he knew how to keep his business profitable. You came by two days before the sale by the looks of his sign-in book.”

“So I came by. A lot of people came by.”

“When I looked at Harlan's list, I saw the only thing you were interested in looking at was the journal.”

“Nonsense. I was interested in the entire Beauchamp Collection. It's an amazing piece of history of the Star Dancer clan. Who better to have it? I'm certain if I pushed it, the courts would award it to me under NAGRA.”

Under the Native American Graves Repatriation Act, relics and artifacts throughout the country were being returned to the rightful heirs. “But Pretty Paw gave the collection to the Beauchamps. You had no standing to get it returned through the courts. I'm sure Harlan told you the same thing when you confronted him about giving you the journal.”

Chenoa stood, and the chair rolled back and banged into the wall. “He smiled when he told me to go ahead and take my case to court. I could have slapped the smug bastard. But I held my cool. I made a respectful offer.”

“I understand Harlan intended donating his auctioneer fee to the tribe for the sale of the Beauchamp Collection. He have a change of heart?”

Chenoa shook her head. “That was before he knew the collection contained the Star Dancer journal.”

Manny flipped his notebook open. “I see you offered to buy just the journal before the auction. Harlan recorded it. Guess it wasn't enough for him.”

She turned and faced Manny, her arms crossed, no façade of the proper lady remaining. “Harlan laughed at me,” she blurted out. “Said it would bring five times what I offered at auction.”

“That make you mad enough to want him dead?”

Chenoa turned away.

“If he were dead, you might be able to retrieve it. Like now.”

She turned back, her face contorted, clenching her fists, and spit flew from her mouth. “I told you, I wanted the entire collection.”

Manny stood and pocketed his notebook. “But the offer was just for the journal. I wonder why that is the only thing that interested you. Was it because the journal revealed things you didn't want made public?”

Chenoa walked to the Montana Tourism calendar on Harlan's wall and seemed to be talking to herself as she kept her back to Manny. “I didn't know what was in the journal. Harlan never let me—or anyone else interested in it—read what Star Dancer had recorded.”

“But you had an idea there was information in that journal that shattered the notion of Star Dancer purity? It showed there was a White man in the Star Dancer lineage?”

She turned around, hands on her hips, hair falling over her chest, and Manny averted his eyes. “If it ever got out that the Star Dancers weren't as pure, weren't as holy as people thought, they would shun you, would they not? And calls would be made to the state, and your lucrative tourism contract would be canceled. Am I right so far?”

“I've had enough of this.” She brushed past Manny and headed for the door. “Call the tribal police if you wish.” And she headed out of the auction barn.

Manny sat back on the edge of the desk looking after her. He had seen a side of Chenoa few people saw, and her professional world—that of the face of Montana and the face of Crow purity—was in danger of toppling down around her. If she had read the journal. Manny believed her when she said Harlan let no one read it prior to the sale, but someone had told her what Levi had written. Harlan, when he put the bite on her for money?

He closed his eyes and tried to imagine their argument when Harlan refused to sell her the journal outright. Had he wanted a piece of the Star Dancer Ranch in exchange for the journal, and for keeping quiet about what it contained? Manny made a mental note to check into Chenoa's bank records and, in particular, any payments to Harlan White Bird before his death.

Manny stood and stretched before turning to the spare room that Sam and Itchy had often crashed in. The plastic chest of drawers lay on its side minus one drawer, overturned since the last time he and Willie and Stumper had been there. A pile of dirty clothes in one corner had been kicked apart, one sock dangling nose-high from a nail sticking out of the wall. Ceiling tiles had been ripped down, and one section of wallboard had been cut open.

He sat on the edge of one bunk, unsure if it was Itchy's or Sam's. Someone had been in Harlan's shop looking for something. But it hadn't been Chenoa, at least not today. Her clothing had been as clean as when he talked with her at Sam's memorial service, not a spot of dust or ceiling tile or wallboard on her.

So someone else had ransacked the room, and Carson Degas floated immediately to the top of the dung heap. He had been seen coming out of Harlan's shop the day before the man was killed, and Degas would know where Harlan kept the key. Had he been looking for the journal? The safe in the corner of the office had been opened, a place where Harlan probably kept the one thing valuable to him: the writings of Levi Star Dancer. Nothing else from the collection was missing.

Manny used the edge of the bunk to stand, and a crackling sound accompanied him. His knees? He felt over the cot and his hand replicated the sound, coming from under the green wool army blanket. He stood and turned the cot over. Stuffed between the canvas cot and the blanket a business-size-envelope lay crumpled. He opened it and held it to the naked lightbulb swaying from the breeze coming in through the broken window.

He pulled the lined notebook paper out. Scratching from a shaking hand had scrawled across the paper, the envelope addressed to Cubby. The writer demanded a thousand dollars, explaining how damaging the information in the journal could be to the Star Dancers. The note had been signed “Your Estranged Brother.”

Manny tapped the envelope against his leg. So Itchy had blackmailed Cubby, or so it seemed. Did Itchy have another copy that actually had gotten delivered to Cubby? Or was this a practice note so Itchy could get it right when he delivered the actual blackmail letter to Cubby? Or had Itchy hid this note where someone could find it in case anything happened to him?

Manny stepped around dirty clothes and the overturned plastic dresser, pacing as best he could, tossing the possibilities back and forth in his mind.
Mental ping-pong.
Itchy had been content to have nothing to do with Cubby, relying on Harlan for his drug money. But with Harlan dead, Itchy had to do something, and this might be the boldest thing he'd done in his short life. Manny needed to reinterview Cubby.

He slid the letter back into the envelope and slipped it inside his shirt, his hand poised beside the chain dangling from the weak light. He studied Harlan's office one last time, noting what had been rummaged through, before pulling the chain and plunging the room into darkness. He shuffled into the shop, skirting rows of tables, their relics slowly becoming more than shapes as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. He felt the wall and made his way toward the lighted E
XIT
sign above the door.

A noise bounced off the far wall, a scraping noise, unnatural for a building. Unless someone was in there with him. He paused, his ears straining to locate the source of the noise, willing his breathing to slow, willing himself to think, to evaluate. He wished his gun, only a short ways from the door in his car, were in his hand as shuffling neared.

An artifact fell from a table that Manny couldn't make out. Something rolled along the floor. Closer.

Manny kept his back away from the wall, careful to avoid contact, careful to avoid making any noise, working his way toward the E
XIT
sign, when his back ran into a picture hanging on the wall. It crashed, glass breaking. Manny instinctively dropped to his knees a moment before a shot splintered a support beam beside his head, sending splinters into his cheek.

He sucked in air, the veins in his neck and head pounding. Footsteps neared, sounding as if they echoed off every wall in the large shop, and Manny crawled on all fours away from the sound.

He squinted in the darkness. Tables covered with auction items blended into the darkness to become mere shapeless outlines. His legs cramped as he peeked over a table.

Another shot, and pottery next to him shattered, shards falling down his shirt collar, cutting into his skin. He dove to the floor and scrambled away from the table. He crawled under the first row of tables and paused on the other side, rising off the floor so his heaving chest could gulp air.