At Ease with the Dead (16 page)

“The dying process,” I said.

She nodded, her face empty.

I said, “No, Rita.”

She frowned. “Wasn't it Nietzche who said that suicide is a wonderful thing—that the thought of it has gotten many a man through many a bad night?” She shrugged. “Many a woman, too.”

“You could've said something,” I said. “You could've talked to me. You know that all you have to do is call.”

A brief shake of her head. “I didn't want you to know how bad it could get. I didn't want to put that weight on your shoulders.”

“They're pretty good shoulders,” I said. “I get a lot of comments on the shoulders.”

Another faint smile. “They're fine shoulders, Joshua. But even if you brought them over here every night, and loaded them up, you'd still have to leave, sooner or later. And then I'd be all alone again. Me and my despair.” The faint smile, ironic now. “Me and my shadow.”

Until this moment, the two concepts,
Rita
and
despair
, would've been impossible for my mind to join together.

“Rita,” I began, and then realized I didn't have a finish. I didn't know what to say.

She smiled. She had never looked so painfully beautiful as she did at that moment. “Joshua, I'm all right. Really. After Daniel Begay left, I was fuming. Almost sputtering with anger. Not because he was wrong, but because he'd seen through me. And then I had myself a good cry. Wallowed in self-pity for a while.” The smile again. “Something I seem to've gotten good at. But I'm all right now. Talking to the man was probably the best thing that could've happened to me.”

“And what happens now?”

She took another long deep breath. “Well,” she said, “first you tell me what happened in El Paso. And then we proceed from there.”

“That's not what I meant. What do we do about this despair business?”

“I'm going to call Daniel Begay tomorrow, and apologize, and ask him if he and I can talk some more.”

“He's not a doctor, Rita.”

“No, but he knows things.” Another smile. “He even knew I'd want to talk to him tomorrow. He left his phone number. Here in Santa Fe.”

“So what is he, some kind of Navajo guru?”

She looked at me, her head cocked slightly to the side. “Joshua, don't resent him. He's a good man. You know that.”

I did know that, but it was difficult not to resent someone, a stranger to her, who could see things in Rita that I hadn't. From time to time we can be petty little dorks, we mountain men.

“Now,” she said. “Tell me about El Paso.”

“I'm sorry about Alice Wright,” she said. “You liked her.”

“Yeah,” I said. I studied the pattern in the Persian carpet.

“Stop blaming yourself. You didn't kill her.”

“No,” I said.

“Joshua.”

“What?”

“Look at me.”

I did. “What?”

“Stop it.”

“Shit, Rita, I did a hell of a job down there. I managed to get one old woman killed. If it hadn't been for her granddaughter, those three guys in the stocking masks would've turned me into chopped meat. If it hadn't been for a fat cop, I'd still be getting worked over by a goon with red hair and a badge. And then, on top of everything else, I get thrown out of town. I did a great job.”

We had shifted roles again. I was the one providing the self-pity, she was the one providing the thoughtful ear.

She said, “How much of this is wounded ego and how much is guilt over Alice Wright's death?”

“I don't know.”

“Who knew where you were staying when the tires were slashed on the Subaru?”

“What?” She was tricky, Rita.

She repeated the question.

“Alice and Lisa Wright,” I said. “But I can't see either one of them slashing my tires.”

“What about the archaeologist? Emmett Lowery?”

I shook my head. “I never told him where I was staying.”

“What was the name of the motel?”

“The Buena Vista.” I frowned. “Okay. Yeah. If he assumed I was staying at a motel, he could've looked up motels in the yellow pages and called them until he found me. Wouldn't take him long to reach the
B's.
But why go to the trouble? And why slash my tires?”

“We don't know that he did. It's possible that Alice or Lisa Wright told someone.”

“Lisa says they didn't.”

She nodded. “And we believe Lisa, do we?”

“Sure,” I said. “Why not?”

She smiled. “Lisa's pretty?”

“She's pretty.” I shrugged. “I didn't hold it against her.”

Another smile. “Of course not.”

“As a matter of fact, I didn't hold anything against her.” I smiled back, comfortable now with self-righteousness. “Including me, if that's what you're implying.”

“Joshua, your social life is none of my business.”

“It could be, though,” I said. “If you'd let it.”

“Are you planning to go off to the Navajo Reservation?”

Tricky. “That's a non sequitur, Rita.”

“Are you?”

“Yes.”

“What if Daniel Begay decides to give this up?”

“I'm still going.”

“Because Alice Wright was killed.”

“Right.”

“Do you think that you'll be able to learn anything about some woman Dennis Lessing knew sixty years ago?”

I shrugged. “Won't know until I try. Did you ask Daniel Begay about Peter Yazzie?”

“Yes. He doesn't know him personally, but he knows his family. He lives in Hollister.” Hollister was past Gallup, in Arizona, and not too far from the Ardmore Trading Post. “I've got the phone number,” she said. “It was listed.”

“You call it?” I asked her.

“Yes. No one answered.”

“Been a lot of that going around.” I shrugged. “Okay. So I'll stop at the Ardmore Trading Post and then I'll drive on to Hollister.”

Rita nodded. “When do you plan to leave?”

“Tomorrow. After I talk to Daniel Begay.”

Another nod. “When you go,” she said, “bring the gun along.”

I smiled. “You figure the Navajos are restless?”

“Someone killed Alice Wright. Unless you're willing to believe that her death was coincidental, it seems likely that someone is very unhappy with this investigation.”

I nodded. “I'll bring the gun.”

Early the next morning, after I showered and dressed and ate a breakfast of scrambled eggs and scrapple, I made some telephone calls. I dialed the first number Rita had given me and reached a very young girl. When I asked her for Daniel Begay, she dropped the phone onto what sounded like concrete. A few moments later Daniel Begay was on the line. I asked him if he could meet me in the office at noon. He said he could.

I dialed the second number, Peter Yazzie's, in Hollister. No one answered.

I dialed Arizona information and got the number for the Ardmore Trading Post. Probably I should've called the place earlier. Maybe if I had, I would've gotten through. I didn't get through this morning. A busy signal droned at me.

I found my notebook, flipped through it, located the Michigan number Grober had given me. Dialed it. The phone was picked up on the third ring.

“Hello?” A young woman's voice. Daughter? Granddaughter?

“Hello,” I said. “May I speak to Lamont Brewster, please?”

“Just a sec. I'll get him.”

I waited. Lamont. A great name. The Shadow's first name. Who knows what evil lurks within the heart of man?

Me. I do.

“Hello?” An old man's voice, raspy with age.

“Mr. Brewster?”

“Hold on a minute now. Ears aren't what they used to be. Gotta adjust this thing. Picked it up at Radio Shack, greatest little gadget ever made. Hello? You still there?”

“Mr. Brewster?”

“Yes, sir. Speaking.”

“You can hear me all right?”

“Clear as a bell. What can I do for you?”

“Mr. Brewster, my name is Joshua Croft.” This was long-distance—I might as well be impressive. “I'm an investigator licensed by the State of New Mexico, and I'm trying to obtain information about the death of Dennis Lessing in Nineteen twenty-five. I understand that when you were a student, you went on one of Professor Lessing's field trips to the Navajo Reservation?”

“Uh-huh.” The voice neutral, giving away nothing.

“Mr. Brewster, I have information that while Lessing was on these trips, he was seeing a young woman who lived somewhere on the Reservation. Did you know anything about that?”

“Okay now,” said the voice, “let's just backtrack a little here. You're calling from New Mexico?”

“That's right.”

“Licensed by the state, you said. That doesn't mean you actually work
for
the state, now does it?”

As Chief Dan George once said, sometimes the magic works, sometimes it doesn't. “No,” I admitted. “It doesn't actually mean that. I'm a private investigator.”

A smoky chuckle came over the line. “Oughtta be ashamed of yourself, trying to fool an old man.”

“I am, Mr. Brewster.”

Another chuckle. “Now tell me this—why would anyone want to know what happened to Dennis Lessing sixty years ago?”

“It's a long story.”

“Time is one thing I've got plenty of, my friend. And we're talking on your nickel.”

“A client of mine is trying to locate the remains of a Navajo Indian that Lessing disinterred in Nineteen twenty-five, in Canyon de Chelly. Those remains vanished the night Lessing was killed. His murder was never solved. Early yesterday morning, Lessing's daughter was murdered. I think the two deaths are connected, and that both of them may be connected to the woman Lessing was seeing on the Reservation back in Nineteen twenty-five.”

“Alice Wright?” said the voice. “The anthropologist? She's dead?”

“Yes.”

“Damn. Read her books. Smart lady. Murdered, huh? That's a damn shame. What's the world coming to, you wonder.”

An end, if Alice Wright was right. “Mr. Brewster—”

“This client. Why's he want those remains?”

“For religious reasons.”

“He'll be a Navajo then.”

“Yes. Mr. Brewster, did you know about the woman Lessing was seeing?”

“I never did feel right about taking those bones back to El Paso.”

“You were there? On the last field trip?”

“Sure was. I was with Lessing when he found the body. Laid out in a kind of hollow there, in the rocks. Wrapped in cotton, but that was mostly rotted away by then, naturally. There was still some skin on the bones, all dried out, like parchment. And some hair on the scalp. Made my own hair stand up, I don't mind telling you. Didn't bother Lessing any, though. Wanted it for his daughter. Alice. Crazy, huh? The archaeologist working the dig, David Bedford, he screamed bloody murder, but Lessing just scooped everything up and stuck it in a big cardboard box. Carried it all the way back to El Paso in the back seat of the Ford. Sat next to it myself, half the time. Heard it rattling around in there, all the way to the Rio Grande.

“Like I say, I never felt right about it. Stealing a body that way. I remember thinking, nothing good's going to come of this. And nothing did, either. A week later Lessing was dead.”

“Did you give any thought, at the time, to who might've killed him?”

“Burglars, they said.”

“You don't know of anyone who might've had a reason to kill him?”

“Nope. And if I did, no offense, but I wouldn't say so to a stranger on the telephone.”

“Mr. Brewster, what about this woman on the Reservation? Do you know who she was?”

“What makes you think she's got anything to do with this?”

“I don't know that she does. I'm trying to learn as much about Lessing and what went on back then as I can. If she's still alive, I just want to talk to her. If she's not, I'd like to talk to someone who knew her.”

“I can tell you straight off she didn't have anything to do with him dying. She was crazy about him.”

“I understand that she was a married woman.”

“Be an awfully short life if we had to live it without making any mistakes, don't you think?”

“All I need is a name, Mr. Brewster. I know her first name was Elena. What was her last name?”

I could hear him breathing at the other end of the line.

“Mr. Brewster?”

“Hold on, hold on. I'm trying to remember. Damn. Well, look, shouldn't be all that hard for you to find out. Her husband owned a trading post out there, and it had the same name he did.”

“Ardmore?” I said. “Was it Ardmore?”

“That's the one.”

16

S
he was petite and blonde and with her white skin and her red lips she had looked, Lamont Brewster told me, like a china doll. For his defensiveness when he spoke of her marriage, and from the hush in his voice when he described her, he had probably been more than a little in love with her himself.

The students and Lessing were camped near Piñon, and Lessing had asked Brewster to come along with him for supplies. In one of the field trip's two Fords they had rattled over dusty roads for forty miles to the Ardmore Trading Post. She had been behind the counter, a trim tiny figure in a blue gingham dress. A young woman, early twenties. When she looked up and saw Lessing, Brewster told me, “I've just never seen so much happiness on a human face in my whole life. Almost hurt you to look at it, a happiness like that. Didn't seem possible that a human being could be that happy and stay alive.”

She had rushed around the counter and greeted Lessing with an embrace, and then, blushing, stammering, acknowledged the introduction to Brewster. Afterward, she had run to get her husband from the back room.