Spider Woman's Daughter (25 page)

Bernie kept talking as she pulled her ID out of her backpack. “I’m tracking a missing woman who may have a locker here. Ellie Friedman, or perhaps she registered as Eleanor Friedman-Bernal or EFB Appraisals. Please check.”

“I don’t need to check,” he said. “You just missed her. She couldn’t remember the locker number. No wonder. She hadn’t been here for years. Pays the rent, though.”

“She’s here? You’re sure?”

“She showed me her ID,” the man said. “She’s a blonde now and used to be a brunette in the photo. You know how women are.”

He gave Bernie the number, told her where to find it.

Where did Davis get Ellie’s ID? she wondered. The obvious way would have been murder. Chee must have figured out that Davis killed Ellie. She’d learn the reason later. That was why Davis needed him out of the picture.

Bernie said, “She was driving an SUV, right?”

“Right,” he said. “Silver Lexus. Nice car.”

Bernie said, “You’re sure she hasn’t left already?”

“She’s here. Everyone has to go out the back. That gate sets off a noise up here. Drives me crazy.”

Bernie took the gun from the backpack and put it in her pocket. “I need you to call the local police. Tell them they need to provide assistance to me right now. You got it?”

“Wow,” he said. “But the phone—”

His words hung in space. Bernie left at a dead run.

The storage yard consisted of six long pods of lockers, each composed of smaller units with metal doors and larger units with garage-style access. Trailers and RVs had their own section on the north end of the lot; the entrance to Ellie’s locker would open to face them.

She slowed to a jog as she approached the lockers with the lovebird view. She’d seen other cars and a few people as she raced by, but no sign of Davis’s car, Davis, or Chee.

She reached the end of the row, flattened herself against the wall, and peered around the corner, searching for the Lexus. Bingo. Davis had parked the vehicle with its silver nose outward, driving about halfway into the garage-size locker.

Bernie felt the weight of Louisa’s pistol in her pocket, tried not to consider the idea that she might be depending on a gun she had never fired before to save her life and Chee’s. She crept along the wall toward the SUV, sticking as close to it as she could, skirting plastic bags and faded fast food wrappers that had drifted in against the doors. She heard the wind, the occasional rumble of distant traffic, and finally the high-pitched clatter of a radio coming from Ellie’s open garage door. She reached the edge of the open doorway and crouched beside the car, listening for signs of Chee or Davis. She slipped off her backpack and set it down in a pile of weeds, noticing the electrical outlet on the wall above. In case the worst happened, the backpack could be a sign to someone that something was wrong.

The clatter was classical music, violins broadcast over tinny speakers. She heard no talking or arguing, no moaning. She stood up slowly and peered in the car’s darkened windows. On the front passenger seat was a big turquoise purse, clearly not Davis’s style. A navy duffel sat on the floor. The rear seats lay flat, and the back hatch was open.

She squatted down again and moved enough to bring part of the garage into view—a long row of dark filing cabinets along the rear wall, brown cardboard boxes neatly stacked on top. A table covered with clear plastic held rags and a pile of loose papers. She found the source of the music, a small black cassette player. On the cement floor beneath the table were several buckets and boxes with dirt inside. Not dirt, she thought. Clay. A setup for pottery making.

Davis’s voice startled her. “I’m almost finished here, Handsome.” The woman herself came into view, a cigarette dangling from plump, lipstick-red lips. She had an armful of manila folders. She flipped the folders upside down, letting the paper flutter out and pile onto the worktable. “A few more of these. Ellie saved everything. Then I’ll box up the clay babies and we’ll be on our way.” She laughed. “Except, of course, we’re not going to the same place. You, my dear, are going to hell. What a waste of a sexy man.”

Bernie pulled Louisa’s pistol from her pocket and released the safety.

“I should have put you to work, big guy. Next time, I’ll have to think about that. Not that I plan a next time.” Davis glanced toward the car. Bernie froze. Then Davis turned her attention back to the table.

Bernie shifted, straining to find Chee. If Davis was talking to him, he must be alive. She saw a galvanized bucket full of broken bits of pottery. Green garden hoses neatly rolled. A black guitar case. An old sled with rusty runners. Two red gasoline cans in a corner. A yellow kayak. She moved farther from the car to take in more of the room. Now she could see the edge of a mattress and a boot and the shape of a leg in blue jeans. She shifted again and saw Chee on top of the mattress, lying on his back. A wide piece of black duct tape covered his mouth. Davis had wrapped more tape around his ankles. His arms were pinned behind him, fastened at the wrists. She noticed a bloody place on his left forearm. She willed him to open his eyes and look at her.

“Ah, Officer Manuelito.” Davis’s voice came from behind her about the same time Bernie felt something hard press against her ribs. “I have a weapon. Drop yours and walk ahead of me into the garage. Do it now.”

In one quick motion, Bernie turned toward Davis. But before she could shoot, Davis jumped back. Then hot pain knocked Bernie to her knees. She felt liquid fire spreading from her shoulder to her scalp and then to every molecule of her body. She recognized the Taser experience before she collapsed: she’d been shocked to a lesser degree in police training.

She heard Louisa’s gun skid across the concrete floor behind her, out the open garage door. Bernie’s nervous system, on overload from the electricity, ignored the command to rise and fight for her life.

Davis stood over her, pointing the weapon at Bernie’s chest.

“My ex loved this new three-shot Taser. One of the few good things that came from that relationship.”

Bernie heard the squeal of violins and willed her brain to focus on anything except the clamoring noise and the wave of raw pain. She knew she had to relax. Relax and wait for her nervous system to straighten out.

Davis walked closer, keeping the Taser pointed at Bernie’s chest.

She grabbed Bernie’s left arm and then the right and began to drag her farther into the garage.

“You’re lighter than I thought you’d be,” Davis said. “Just a slip of a girl. It would have been easier to shoot you, but I don’t want to disturb the neighbors.”

Bernie yanked her arms free from Davis’s grip and rolled, ready to rise from the floor. Davis jumped like a panther.

This time, the Taser sucked the air from Bernie’s lungs and every cell in her body, replacing it with sizzling agony, a searing river that started above her head and ran to below her feet. Bernie heard herself scream, then heard Chee moan. She willed the sound to stop, willed her eyes to open and stare at Davis.

“It took Handsome a while to understand the power of technology, too. Women’s bodies have less capacity for this sort of thing.”

Bernie felt a hard kick in the ribs, a new sensation of pain. “Roll over, facedown.” Bernie forced herself onto her belly and felt Davis roughly grab her, wrenching her arms behind her back. Davis pressed her wrists together, binding them with duct tape. Bernie saw the empty tape roll bounce along the concrete floor.

“Tasers are handy little items. I kept this in my car along with my gun and the demolition kit for the happy day when I could make sure none of Ellie’s phony appraisals were traced to me.”

Bernie tried to think, ignoring the pain from her ribs piercing her chest each time she inhaled. Demolition kit?

“That Ellie. She had everything except an extra roll of tape. But this will do.” Bernie stayed limp, nonresistant, as Davis looped a bungee cord around her ankles, pulling it tight.

“Roll over so I can see your face.”

The weight of Bernie’s body made the hands trapped behind her back hurt more than she imagined they could. She saw Davis walk to the improvised shelf and carefully peel back the tablecloth, rolling it to keep the dust from flying. Beneath it were four black-and-white pots, similar in style, different in decoration.

Davis stood admiring them as the violins wailed. She pulled a cigarette from her pack of Camels, lit it with a match from a paper book of matches, put the pack and matches back in her pocket.

“Beautiful,” Bernie said. Talking above the clatter of the music took effort. She felt as if someone had parked a car on her forehead.

“These are the real thing, honey,” Davis said. She looked down at Bernie, took a long draw on her cigarette. “Your lieutenant was the only one who realized there was a problem with how much Ellie thought the pots were worth. Her stupidity and his meddling gave me a chance to settle up with both of them for what he did to my Randall.” She took another deep lungful of smoke. “And then your hunky husband helped me figure out where Ellie kept the photos I took. Nice!”

Davis put down the cigarette and pulled a pair of black cotton gloves from her pocket. She picked up a pot and held it toward Bernie. Bernie noticed the hearts on her bracelet. The black gloves. The final pieces of the puzzle.

“Take a look at this beauty. It was the first one Ellie copied.” Davis laughed. “I haven’t seen it for years. Look at these tiny black stripes inside the triangles. Perfect. But Ellie’s copy was almost as good.”

“Like Acoma?” Bernie’s voice sounded far away. Speaking intensified her headache, but as long as Davis was talking about the pots, she wouldn’t kill them.

“Right,” Davis said. “I read once that some Indians consider pots living beings, the union of clay and water. The potter’s hands provide the magic, transfer life into the vessel. The firing gives them birth, and when they break, they return to Mother Earth.”

Davis carefully picked up the next pot.

“This dates to around 1100,” she said. “You can see why those greedy bastards wanted this. Exquisite. Archaeologists used to believe that the Indians used these as drums. Now we know that the women made them for drinking chocolate, beans brought all the way from Mexico. Ellie did well to save it, to save them all. When Leaphorn came sniffing around, I told her to ignore him, that I could use my pull at the AIRC to fix things. Just give me the old pots. I would have put these in the McManus collection when it got to the museum, given her the copies. Simple. But she’d changed. She wanted to keep these. I took her to Chaco to talk some sense into her, hoping that seeing the place where the pots were born would change her mind. I tried to get her to tell me where they were and where all the photos were, too.”

Davis looked at the pot. “I remember the day I met this one. It was the first time Ellie asked me to go along with her to take the pictures for the appraisal. It’s always been one of my favorites.”

Bernie forced herself to speak. “Bird?” She felt her stomach churning. If she had to throw up, she was glad Davis hadn’t taped her mouth.

“What? Hard to hear with this music. Oh, this?” Davis moved her gloved finger above a design. “Ellie and I decided it was a macaw. They traded scarlet macaws up from Mexico, too, raised them for their feathers at Pueblo Bonito. Archaeologists found their hollow bones, but never found any signs that they reproduced.”

Davis looked down at Bernie. “Even some of my colleagues argue against calling that design ‘macaw.’ Academics can be so closed-minded. But I don’t care. Once it’s in our collection, I can see it every day. Won’t that be wonderful?”

Davis wrapped the pot and boxed it, handling it as gently as a mother would an infant.

Bernie realized that if she turned her neck all the way to the left, she could see Chee. His skin had a gray hue, and droplets of sweat glistened on his face. She scanned the floor, looking for a tool, an idea, some way to get out of this.

“This is one of my favorites,” Davis said. She held the cylinder so Bernie could see the zigzags inside. “A classic rain design.”

“Acoma?” Bernie said. How odd, she thought, to spend her last minutes of life talking about pottery.

Davis sat down in the folding chair. “You are a smart one. Acoma potters use this quite a bit, and their variation is closer to the ancient ones than those you see at other pueblos. Take a look at these beautiful little handles.” She adjusted the pot so Bernie could see them. “Very rare. Ellie and I figured it must have been some sort of clan connection. Relatives teaching other relatives the technique. No way to prove it, but an interesting theory, isn’t it?”

Bernie felt a firm nudge in the ribs from the toe of Davis’s boot. The pain made it hard to speak, but she squeaked out, “Yes. Interesting.” She thought of the message she had given the attendant. Had he called for help?

Bernie watched Davis pick up two cardboard boxes and heard the dull echo of her boots against the hard floor during a pause in the music. Ten steps away. She listened to the scraping of the boxes against rubber mats as Davis pushed them into the back of the car. Bernie felt her chest tighten and fought the rising panic, shifting her focus to the dead numbness in her hands and agony in her side. She heard Davis’s footsteps again. Saw her gather up the final two boxes.

Bernie twisted to look at Chee. His eyes were open. He winked at her.

Davis returned with the turquoise purse and the duffel bag Bernie had noticed on the floor of the front seat. She put them down on the littered wooden table and picked up her Taser. “I’m glad I ran out of duct tape,” she said. “I enjoyed your questions.”

Bernie said, “Jackson’s car?”

“What?”

“For shooting.”

“Oh, that Benally guy with the sedan. Clever, wasn’t I?” Davis smiled. “Jackson offered to let me use his car at the ranch in exchange for gas money. I hated to drive the Lexus over those terrible roads, so I used it for errands, always with my researcher gloves. I made a copy of the key. I drove to Bashas’ on the day I knew he parked there. Left my SUV, borrowed Jackson’s car, and brought it back to the same parking place. I knew Ellie had been at the ranch, too, so I figured she would have had the same access I did to make her a suspect.”