Wife of Moon (13 page)

“Leave the folder and get out of here.”

“You think you're man enough to take it away from me?”

“Don't try me, Loftus,” Father John said, locking eyes with the man. God, it was like facing a stone wall. But this was a game of bluff, like the games on the streets of Boston when he was a kid and some bully blocked his way home from baseball practice in the half-light of dusk, traffic screaming by. Whoever blinked lost the game, and he'd learned not to blink. He had the sense that Loftus had learned the same lesson.

There was the
swoosh
of the front door opening, the click of footsteps crossing the entry. Father John kept his eyes on the man a few feet away. He could sense the weight of bodies displacing the air behind him and hear the quick intakes of breath.

“Everything all right, Father?” Leonard's voice.

“This man's just leaving,” Father John said.

Loftus shrugged and set the folder on the desk, his gaze on the four Arapahos in the doorway. “Next time I'll remember that you have body guards,” he said. Then he swung around and, shouldering his way past, walked into the entry. The front door slammed shut, rattling the window.

“You okay, Father?” Leonard patted Father John's shoulder as if he were checking for some injury.

“I'm fine,” he assured the Indian.

“We seen you going to the museum and decided we'd better check, make sure everything was all right. Museum's supposed to be closed this time of night. Who was he?”

“Eric Loftus. He's married to the curator.”

The man's eyes softened. “Poor sonnabitch. He's gotta be worried sick.”

“He's looking for her.” Father John flipped off the light switch and walked the Indians across the entry and out onto the porch. They waited while he locked the door. “Thanks for coming in,” he said as they started across the grounds in a perfect V, Leonard and the others heading down Circle Drive for the pickups, Father John cutting through the field toward the residence. Through the cottonwoods across the grounds, he could see the lights of an SUV turning onto Seventeen-Mile Road.

 

LIGHT FLICKERED FROM
the living room into the dimness of the entry. The television was on, a low growl of voices talking over one another. Father John pitched his coat onto the bench and went into the room. Damien was slouched on the sofa, gripping the remote in one hand. On the television screen, Senator Jaime Evans flashed a smile from across the country, dodging down a corridor past a cordon of reporters who thrust out microphones and shouted questions: “Is it true you intend to announce your candidacy for the presidency, senator?” “Senator, senator, will you be making the announcement next week in Wyoming?” “What chance do you have of winning your party's nomination?”

“Gentlemen!” The senator stopped walking and slowly turned toward the crowd of reporters. He lifted one hand, palm outstretched, patience and exasperation mingling in the handsome face. His light-colored hair looked wind tossed, as if he'd just gotten in from riding across the pasture. But he looked comfortable in a dark suit and
white shirt with a red tie knotted smartly at his throat. He waited until the medley of voices subsided. “I see we have ladies here.” He flashed another smile. “Gentlemen and ladies, all in good time, all in good time. I will announce my decision next Monday in my home state of Wyoming. As for my chances of winning my party's nomination, let me say that should I seek the nomination, I would fully intend to win. Thank you!” He gave the crowd a wave and slipped inside a massive door that closed behind him.

“And there you have it.” The scene switched to a reporter standing on the grounds of the capitol. “Senator Evans has refused to confirm the rumors that he already has a campaign staff in place and will formally launch his bid for the nomination next week. Back to you . . .”

Damien clicked the mute button. “There goes the next president,” he said.

FATHER JOHN PARKED
in front of the small house that might have erupted out of the plains, with siding the caramel color of the bare dirt yard. He left the engine running, the tape player on the seat beside him still playing the selection of Verdi arias he'd been listening to on the drive from the mission. The duet,
Deh! la parola amara,
was about to end when the front door opened. The bent figure of an old man stepped out of the shadows into the sunlight splashing over the stoop and motioned for him to come in. Father John turned off the engine and the tape player on the last haunting note.

“Hungry, Father?” Max Oldman wanted to know as Father John walked past him into the living room.

Father John laughed. Arapahos were always trying to feed him. “Elena made her usual delicious oatmeal this morning.”

“You're a lucky man, Father. Even when Josephine was alive, I didn't get delicious oatmeal every morning.” The elder headed across the small room, dodging a coffee table covered with newspapers and
Styrofoam cups. There was a jump in his walk, as if he were dragging his left hip. He was close to eighty, Father John guessed, frail and calloused looking, with deep wrinkles in the back of his neck between the frayed collar of his blue shirt and the uneven line of his gray hair.

“Take a load off your feet.” Max flicked a bony hand at the sofa under the window before dropping into a recliner that still bore the imprint of his back and thighs.

Father John sat down. He pulled off his jacket and cowboy hat and piled them on the cushion beside him. “How are you holding up, grandfather?” he asked, using the term of respect for an Arapaho elder, moving slowly into the reason for the visit.

“Okay, I reckon.” The elder nodded, then he went on about the way fall was hanging on real pretty this year, the whole earth turning red and orange, with ripples of frost cutting across the open prairie. Then he was onto the wind storm a couple of weeks ago and the broken cottonwood branches. Had to get out the ladder and cut the branches off before they crashed down onto the roof.

Father John winced at the image of the old man up on a ladder. “Call me next time,” he said. “I'll come over and help you.” He waited a moment until the time seemed right, then he said, “I'm sorry about Denise.”

A moist film glistened in the elder's eyes. They were light colored for an Arapaho, hazel shading into green and lit with intelligence. They gave him a startling appearance, unexpected in the wrinkled brown face. “Sure tough to lose one of the younger generation. She was the granddaughter of my brother, you know.”

Father John nodded. That also made her Max's granddaughter, in the Arapaho Way.

“Looks to me like you got your own problems, Father.” Max laid his arms over the armrest and tapped his fingers on the front edges. Long blue veins bulged on the top of his brown hands. “I hear that curator lady that was working for you went missing.”

“She's the reason I wanted to talk to you,” Father John said.

“You think she got enough of Indian ways and took off?”

Father John said that he didn't think so. He started to explain that Christine's apartment had been ransacked, then realized by the impatient way Max was bobbing his head that he'd already heard the gossip.

“Don't wish that white woman no harm,” Max said, head still bobbing. “But don't surprise me that she ran herself into trouble. She was a pushy lady.”

“She came to see you?”

“That what you want to know about?”

Father John smiled at the old man. It wasn't polite to push and prod. He was asking for a gift.

The elder shifted his frail body in the recliner, reached down along the side and pulled a handle. The footrest jumped up, and he crossed his legs and settled back. “The lady calls me last week and asks if she can come over and see me. Says she has respect for Chief Sharp Nose and being I come down from the chief, she's got respect for me, too. Says she's doing research and needs help. So I told her to come on out anytime she saw fit. Two hours later, she was sitting on that sofa, same place you're sitting. Says she's looking for old photographs. Called them vintage photographs. Says the photographs could be portraits of people in the photos at the Curtis exhibit.”

Father John leaned forward and clasped his hands between his knees. “Did she say she was trying to identify Sharp Nose's daughter in one of the photographs?”

An absorbed look came into the old man's eyes, as if he were watching a movie inside his head. “Her name was Bashful Woman,” he said, a note of reverence sounding in his voice. “The curator lady said she wanted to give Bashful Woman proper recognition. She was gonna identify her so her story could be told, one way or another. Went on and on like that. I didn't say nothing. Just sat here in my recliner and let her go on and nodded the way she'd think an old Indian like me oughtta nod.”

Father John laughed and waited while Max recrossed his legs and cleared his throat. Finally, the old man said, “Lady wants to know if I got any of them vintage photographs. Maybe one of Bashful Woman? Said she'll get me maybe a thousand dollars for one. A thousand dollars for an old photo? That's right, she said, and I oughtta be ready to sell right now. She knew galleries that was lining up to pay. Maybe I could use the money, she said, and she gives my place the old eyeball, like maybe things wasn't up to her fancy standards. All I had to do was get my old photos. Well, I got real tired of her pushing. I said, ‘That's all very well and good, lady, but I don't got any of them vintage photos, and if I did have images of my ancestors, I guess I wouldn't be selling them to no galleries.' She didn't like that none.”

Max cleared his throat again, and for a moment Father John thought that the story had ended. Then Max said, “That lady kept right on pushing. Wanted to know who else come down from Sharp Nose that might have old photos. I said, ‘Nobody, lady. Nobody's gonna sell photos of the ancestors.' I didn't like getting impolite, but I figured she was gonna sit on my sofa all day. So I said, ‘That's the end of the story, lady. That's all I got to say.' ”

“Thank you, grandfather,” Father John said. Quiet settled around them a moment, except for the faint ticking of a clock somewhere in the house. “I'm worried about her,” he went on. “The police and the FBI are looking for her, but she seems to have vanished into thin air. I keep thinking that maybe Christine's disappearance and Denise's murder are connected somehow.” He shrugged. It was a hunch, that was all, the old urge to find a pattern in random events. “Is it possible that Christine went to Denise looking for old photos?”

Max was shaking his head before Father John had finished the question. “Denise wasn't gonna sell that lady nothing, so she would've been wasting her time. I sure wasn't gonna send her to Denise. More than likely, somebody got real mad at T.J. for holding up jobs out at the gas fields. People need jobs around here, you know. I figure somebody was out to teach T.J. a lesson. Man's pretty broken up. Blames himself
'cause Denise was the one who got killed when it was supposed to be him.”

He cleared his throat and peered into the space between them, as if a new thought had pushed into his mind. Then he said, “You probably heard, Father, things weren't so hot between her and T.J. Now he's gone off to the mountains to grieve. Vera's been calling all over the rez, asking if people seen him anywhere, wanting him to come home. She don't understand how it is with warriors. T.J.'s blaming himself 'cause it was his job to protect his wife. So he's grieving hard. He's asking the spirits for a vision so he can know what he's gotta do next. He's gone where nobody's gonna find him, and he'll come back when he's good and ready.”

What the elder said made sense, Father John thought. It was logical. And yet, he had a sense of things left unsaid in the way that Max kept his eyes on the vacant space, as if there was more—something he didn't want to put into words. Father John felt as if he'd run into an alley, certain of a way out only to find a brick wall that he couldn't get around.

After a long moment, he gathered up his jacket and hat, got to his feet, and thanked the elder for the information he'd chosen to give. “Please don't get up, grandfather,” he said as the old man fiddled with the handle to the footrest. “Stay where you are.”

“Come back anytime, Father,” Max said.

They might have spent the time discussing the weather, Father John thought, waving his hat toward the old man. He let himself through the door and hurried through a corridor of sunlight to the pickup, shrugging into his jacket as he went. A sense of futility weighed on him, a heavy load. He'd had a hunch, and the hunch was wrong: Max Oldman hadn't sent Christine to Denise. Christine could have been on her way to meet any one of dozens of Sharp Nose descendents when she disappeared.

VICKY SPOTTED THE
large, black letters painted across the plate glass window at the end of the strip mall:
GREAT PLAINS INSURANCE
. She drove down the row of vehicles in the parking lot, past a dress shop with naked mannequins in the window, past a beauty salon with heads bobbing under the dryers inside, past a deli where a man in a leather jacket was holding the door open for a little kid with yellow, curly hair. She pulled into the vacant space with a sign on the sidewalk:
RESERVED FOR GREAT PLAINS
.

The evergreens in the planters on the sidewalk seemed greener in the October sun, the leaves on the spindly trees around the periphery of the lot were a deeper shade of red. Even the air seemed lighter, tinged with gold. Vicky made her way to the glass door and stepped into an entry with plastic chairs pushed against the window and a counter blocking the way to a corridor. On the wall behind the counter were five or six black-and-white photographs of smiling faces
with a row of names below. Over the photographs, a banner read,
TRUST YOUR FRIENDLY GREAT PLAINS AGENTS
.

A short, pudgy-faced woman who looked as if she'd been a teenager not long ago emerged from the corridor. “How can we help you?” she asked, setting both hands on the counter and pulling herself upward, as if eagerness had propelled her to her tiptoes.

“I'd like to see one of your agents,” Vicky said. She had no idea of the agent's name. White woman, blond, works at the insurance agency in the strip mall over in Riverton, was all that Vera's friend had said.

“Mr. Ringer isn't busy at the moment. I'll take you to his office.” The receptionist rolled back on her heels, shrinking at least an inch as she moved to the end of the counter and reached for the wood gate.

Vicky glanced at the photos. Four men, three women. Two of the women were brunettes. One was blond. Below the photo was a name.

She said, “I'd like to speak with Marnie Rankin.”

“Marnie? She's on conference call.” The receptionist walked back and peered down at a phone on the ledge below the countertop. “Looks like she might be done. I'll check to see . . .”

“Oh, Val!” Another woman came down the corridor, waving a sheaf of papers. She was tall—about T.J.'s height, Vicky guessed—with long blond hair cut in layers about her face and the kind of makeup that made her face look flat and colorless, except for the black mascara on her eyelashes. “I'd like you to contact . . .” She looked up. “Sorry, I didn't realize you were busy.”

“This woman”—a nod toward Vicky—“wants to see you, Marnie. You got the time?”

Vicky could almost see the image of herself in the woman's eyes: Indian, dark skin, black hair, nicely enough dressed in a dark wool coat, possibly able to afford insurance.

“Follow me, please.” The woman thrust the stack of papers at the receptionist, then opened the gate and led the way down the corridor. The sound of men's voices—a loud bark of laughter—floated through the walls. “Call me Marnie.” She threw a glance over one shoulder.
“Our agency does a lot of business on the rez. I'm sure we can help you.”

Vicky followed the woman into an office with a pair of small chairs in front of a desk wedged between two filing cabinets. Sunlight flared across the papers on the desk and dropped onto the floor, carving out a white triangle in the blue carpet. Behind the desk, the window framed a view of the green Dumpster in the parking lot.

“Have a seat,” Marnie Rankin said. She perched on the chair behind the desk, pushed an assortment of papers aside, and clasped her hands over the blotter. “I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage. You know my name, but I don't know yours.”

“Vicky Holden,” Vicky said, dropping onto one of the visitor's chairs and fishing a business card out of her bag. She handed the card across the desk. The office was suffused with an aroma of flowery perfume. She unbuttoned her coat and watched the other woman's expression cloud with wariness as she studied the card.

“So you're a lawyer?” Marnie Rankin tapped the card against her palm. The wariness gave way to a blank, unreadable expression, as if she'd taken out a towel and wiped all reactions from her face. “What can I do for you?”

“I'm here about T.J. Painted Horse,” Vicky said. No sign of recognition, not the faintest twitch of a muscle.

Vicky pressed on: “I believe you know T.J.” A leading question, she knew, but all she had was gossip, a rumor passed on by a friend of T.J.'s sister. Rumors could be wrong.

The business card stopped tapping. “I know a lot of people on the rez. I told you, we have a lot of Indian customers. Mostly we sell them auto insurance.”

“I believe you know T.J. personally.”

“I may have sold him an insurance policy. Look . . .” A new energy surged through the agent's voice, propelling her forward against the desk. “I read the newspaper about T.J.'s wife getting murdered last Monday night. So what if I knew T.J.? What's this all about?”

Vicky allowed the silence to settle between them a moment before she said, “You and T.J. were having an affair, isn't that right?” A desperate gamble, she knew. She was playing hunches, probing for anything that might prove T.J. couldn't have murdered Denise and stop the concern gnawing like a tiny animal inside her.

Marnie Rankin got up and marched around the desk. For a half second, Vicky expected the woman to ask her to leave. Instead, she closed the door and went back to her chair. “What did T.J. tell you?” she asked, something new—fear? nervousness?—leaking into her tone. But her face remained unreadable, a chalk-white mask.

“T.J.'s been protecting you,” Vicky said, still probing for the truth, waiting for the slightest crack in the mask.

“Protecting me!” The crack started to appear now, a slow shattering until the mask dropped from the woman's face. She tossed her head and gave a howl of laughter. “Oh, that's rich,” she said, wiping at the moisture in her eyes, creating little dark smudges around the rims. “If T.J.'s protecting me, how the hell did you know to come here?”

“T.J. didn't involve you,” Vicky said. “I've heard the gossip on the rez.”

For a moment, Vicky thought that Marnie Rankin might burst into tears. The woman slumped against the back of her chair and closed her eyes for several seconds. “I don't know what I was thinking to get involved with a man like that. Married. Indian. Where was it going to go? We'd have to keep it secret forever.” She fixed her gaze at some point behind Vicky. “Oh, I can see my mother's face if I ever brought T.J. to her house.”

“T.J.'s family would have felt the same way.”

“What?” The woman locked eyes with Vicky a moment, then shrugged and looked away. “It doesn't matter. T.J. and I are old history, he says.”

“Why don't you tell me about your relationship,” Vicky said.

“What happened between us is nobody's business.”

“It could be your business.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Sooner or later the FBI agent is going to hear the same gossip that I heard and he's going to be at your front door.”

The woman winced, and Vicky pushed on. “A mistress might equal a motive for T.J. to kill his wife. The fed might even start thinking that the mistress was an accomplice.”

Marnie opened her mouth as if she were about to laugh. A tight, strangled noise erupted from her throat. “How dare you accuse me. . .”

Vicky cut in: “I'm telling you what the fed might conclude. I want to help T.J., Marnie, and I might be able to help you. When did you and T.J. get involved?”

Vicky could see the argument playing out behind the woman's eyes. There was a moment when she thought again that Marnie Rankin would tell her to leave. Instead, the woman looked away and said, “T.J. came to the agency about six months ago looking for insurance.”

“What kind?”

“A life insurance policy.” The agent hesitated, then went on: “On Denise, for one hundred thousand dollars.”

Vicky felt her heart lurch. God, T.J., she thought. What have you done?

The woman was still talking, and Vicky tried to follow. Something about T.J. saying they were going to buy policies on each other. In case anything happened, they wanted to be sure their families were taken care of. “They always helped their families,” she said. “I liked that about him. We started talking, and we ended up going over to the deli for coffee. We hit it off. He's smart and ambitious. Handsome,” she said, smiling at whatever memories were washing over her. “He was very interesting.”

“So he started calling you?”

“I called him.” Marnie gave her a frank look. “I'm not ashamed
of it. If a woman finds a man attractive, there's no reason she can't call him.”

“He was married.”

“He wasn't committed to her.” The woman spit out the words. “The marriage was over, except for the divorce.”

“Divorce?”

“T.J. didn't tell you about that? Denise was going to divorce him. She'd had enough of his . . .” She paused. “Cattin' around, she called it.”

Vicky fingered one of the buttons on the front of her coat. Another motive. Motives piling up like bricks. Denise had wanted to talk to her about filing for a divorce. What if T.J. hadn't wanted a divorce? What if he'd thought that if Denise divorced him, it would hurt his chances of being reelected to the council?

T.J. had come over, the woman was saying. Tapping the business card into her palm again, punctuating her words. They'd gone to dinner, and one thing had led to another.

“You went to bed together.”

“What are you, a nun? What do you think happens when two people find each other attractive?” She shoved the business card into the pocket of the blotter. “The problem was . . .” she broke off, moisture pooling again in her eyes. “I fell in love with the bastard, which turned out to be just about the stupidest thing I ever did, but I couldn't help it. I still can't help loving him.”

“What about Monday evening, Marnie? Did you see him then?”

The other woman raised her eyes to Vicky's. “What does he say?”

“I'd like to know what you say.”

The woman swallowed once, twice. “He must have gotten to my place about six and he stayed late.”

“He didn't leave the office until after six-thirty,” Vicky said.

“So he got to my place later. Maybe around seven.” The woman shrugged. “I don't remember exactly.” She slumped back against her
chair again. The tears were starting now, like water spurting out of a faucet. “He told me it was over between us. What we had was . . .” She ran one hand over her face—eyes, nose, mouth. “It was nothing. He said what we had was nothing.”

“Why, Marnie? What happened?”

The woman gave a strangled laugh. “If you think he wanted to fix things with his wife, you're dead wrong. He found somebody else. I knew that's what it was all about. I always know,” she said, glancing away. “Somebody else comes along that's sexier, better looking. I told him that whatever happened, whatever he decided, I would always be here for him. He can always count on me.”

“Can he count on you to lie for him?”

“What do you mean?”

“Can he count on you to give him an alibi?”

The mask returned, frozen and white, except for the black smudges below her eyes. “T.J. was at my place Monday evening. How could he murder his wife when he was with me?”

The question hung between them a moment, like sunshine drifting over the desk. Vicky stood up, pulled on her coat, and started for the door. She turned back. “I suspect the fed will be around to talk to you. My advice would be . . .”

“I didn't ask for your advice.” The other woman was on her feet, like a martinet, stiff-necked and unflinching behind the desk.

“. . . to tell the truth.” Vicky finished the thought. “For your own sake, Marnie. Making a false statement to the fed in an investigation is a felony offense.” She wheeled around, opened the door, and started for the front. A door slammed shut behind her, and a gust of cold air whipped down the corridor.

In a couple of minutes, Vicky was turning into the thin line of traffic on Federal. Her heart was beating in her ears. She wanted to believe in T.J.—God, she wanted to believe in the man. He was an old friend. He'd stood by her in that dark time. He'd always been a man
she could trust. She
needed
him to be innocent. Not a cheater and a liar. Not a man who'd bought a hundred thousand dollar insurance policy on a woman who was later shot to death.

God. God. God.

She pulled her cell phone out of her bag on the passenger seat and, stopping for a red light, tapped out Vera's number. The minute that Vera picked up, Vicky knew by the tone of the woman's voice that T.J. was still in the mountains. She went through the motions: asking about T.J., reminding Vera to have him call when he got back. Then she hung up and headed south out of town.