At Ease with the Dead (7 page)

“I thought at first he was asleep,” she said, taking a final drag on the cigarette, then carefully stubbing it out in the ashtray on the teakwood table. “At that age you've heard of death, certainly, but you don't expect actually to meet it. And your own immortality extends itself to everyone close to you. Even when I saw the blood, I didn't know, didn't understand, what it was.”

There had been, she said, quite a lot of blood, black and clotted, along the floor.

She tried to wake up her father, discovered she couldn't, then at last noticed the depression at the back of his skull. She ran upstairs to her mother's room, woke her up. Her mother had come quickly downstairs, examined the body, and telephoned the police. They arrived, a plainclothes detective and three uniformed officers, soon after.

“What did the police decide?” I asked her.

“That my father had walked in on a burglary and that the burglar had killed him.”

I frowned. “He was still wearing the clothes he'd worn the day before, you said. And he was hit from behind.”

Smiling faintly, she nodded. “It wasn't a theory into which a great deal of thought had been put. I've always felt that a burglar was most unlikely. But really, you know, the police had nothing else to go on. There'd been a phone call that night, around ten-thirty—both my mother and I had heard the phone ringing. It stopped after two rings, so presumably my father answered it. But whoever made the call never came forward.”

“What was the weapon? What had your father been hit with?”

“The police never determined. A blunt object, they said. Whatever it was, it was never found.”

“Could it have been part of the skeleton?” A macabre thought, but maybe possible.

She thought for a moment, considering this, and then shook her head. “I shouldn't think so. The bones were all quite fragile.”

So someone had gone there with a weapon, or with something that could be used as one, and taken it away with him. I asked her, “You didn't hear anything else that night?”

“No. I fell asleep while he was downstairs. And I was a sound sleeper even then.”

“Was anything taken beside the remains?”

“My father's wallet. Some pottery and some jewelry that he'd found buried with the man.”

“Would it've required much strength to carry the remains off?”

“No. I could've done it myself. The skeleton, as I say, was fragile. It didn't weigh much and some of the bones had become disjointed. They were all in a cardboard box perhaps two feet wide by three feet long. Perhaps a foot high.”

“Your father kept the box in his study?”

“Yes.”

“Was anything ever found? The pottery? Your father's wallet?”

“Nothing.”

“The police ever make an arrest?”

“No. So far as I know, the case is still technically open.”

Which, since the records were missing, meant nothing. I asked, “Did you ever have any suspicions, yourself, as to who might've been responsible?”

“Not initially,” she said, and sipped at her sherry. “Later, however, I became quite certain that my mother had killed him.”

6

I
asked her, “What made you think that?”

“My father was having an affair and my mother found out about it.”

“With whom was he having the affair?”

Alice Wright smiled and asked me, “Are all private detectives so careful with their pronouns and infinitives?”

“It's part of the code,” I said. “Like putting notches on our guns.”

She laughed and then she shook her head. “I never knew her name. But I believe she was an Indian woman. I know that he saw her on the Navajo Reservation, whenever he went on one of the field trips with his geology students.”

If this were true, it would explain what had brought Lessing back, again and again, to the same small area in northeast Arizona. “How do you know?” I asked her.

“I found a letter she'd written to him. Hidden in one of his books, in the study. This was a year or two after he'd died. The woman who'd written it was very nearly illiterate, but there was no mistaking the sincerity of her feelings. Nor their nature. And from what she said, their relationship had been going on for some time.”

Across the room, Lisa Wright sat impassively. If she was surprised to learn that her great-grandfather was an adulterer, and her great-grandmother a possible murderer, she didn't show it. Maybe she'd already known. Maybe they were separated from her by so much time that they were curios rather than people. Whatever her thoughts were, she kept them buried below the smooth untroubled surface of her beautiful face.

I asked Alice, “The letter was explicit?”

She smiled. “For a twelve-year-old girl, it was a revelation.”

“Did it have a return address?”

“No. But the envelope had been postmarked in Gallup, New Mexico.”

“When?”

“February, Nineteen twenty-five.”

“What happened to the letter?”

“I kept it for years. It was destroyed in the forties, in a fire. I was out of the country at the time and didn't find out about it until I returned.”

“And the woman, whoever she was, didn't sign her name?”

“No. She signed it, ‘Your Heart.'” She smiled. “I've always thought that was rather fine. If I'd wanted to, I suppose I could've found out who she was. But it would've seemed like prying, like intruding on something very private and personal.”

“How would you've gone about finding out?”

“My father had a Navajo guide. Raymond Yazzie. He came to El Paso once with his son, Peter, a boy about my age. A very nice boy, very clever. We got along and Peter and I began writing to each other. We corresponded for quite a while, up until the time I graduated from college. If I'd asked him about the woman, I feel sure he would've told me.”

“Would he've known about her?”

“I suspect so. He often went along when his father acted as a guide for mine.”

I nodded. “You said your mother learned about the affair. Do you know that for a fact?”

“Yes. I heard them fighting about it, downstairs, the day he returned from that last trip. Usually they were careful not to argue in front of me, but presumably this time they thought I was asleep. Or perhaps they were both so angry they really didn't care. My mother was shrieking, howling like a madwoman. I'd never heard her scream like that before. Nor curse like that, either—the phrase ‘that filthy bitch' came up with a certain frequency. I knew she was talking about a woman, but I had no idea then specifically who she meant. Finally, she threw something at him, a vase or a plate. I heard it shatter. He stormed out the front door and left the house.”

“And then?”

“He came back sometime during the night—he was there at breakfast, when I came downstairs. He was very subdued, very quiet, and he remained that way all week, until just before he died.”

I nodded. “If you're right, and your mother killed him, why would she wait a week?”

“I think that what happened, probably, was that she believed she'd won. That she'd convinced him not to see this woman again. And then, the night of the seventh, I think he told her he wanted a divorce.”

“Did you hear him say that?”

“Not actually hear him, no. But it makes sense. That day, the seventh, my father suddenly stopped sulking and became his old self again. As though he'd come to an important decision. He and my mother talked for a long time in the study before she came up to bed.”

I said, “And you really feel your mother was capable of murder?”

She smiled. “I think that given the proper circumstances, anyone is capable of murder. And my mother was not a terribly pleasant woman, I'm afraid. She was rigid and unyielding and physically withdrawn. The classic Ice Maiden. She hated to be touched, by me or by my father. And sex, good Lord, sex was something that only happened to animals. It was at her insistence that they slept in separate rooms.”

“Which doesn't mean she killed him.”

“No. But she also hated Indians.” She smiled. “Along with blacks, Jews, Catholics, and Democrats, in approximately that order. I think she must have found it especially galling that my father would leave her for a physical relationship, and with an Indian woman. I think that brittle reserve of hers must've simply shattered.”

I nodded. “And so during the night, you think, your mother went back downstairs and killed him. And took the stuff from the study to make the death look like a burglary.”

“Yes. She knew how to drive, and in the middle of the night no one would've seen her leave. She could've easily gone down to the river and tossed everything in.”

“But why take a boxful of bones?”

“Perhaps she wasn't thinking clearly. Or perhaps she just wanted to get them out of the house. I know she hated having them around.”

“But with your father dead she could've gotten rid of them any time she wanted.”

She shrugged lightly. “As I say, perhaps she wasn't thinking clearly.”

“If she killed him, what did she use for a weapon?”

“I don't know. An old candlestick, perhaps. A hammer. The police had only her word for it that nothing of that sort was missing from the house.”

“Did you tell them any of this?”

She shook her head. “My mother's lawyer kept them pretty much away from me.” She smiled. “For my own sake, of course.”

“They searched the house?”

“Yes. And the grounds. And so did I. Frequently, over a long period of time. Whenever my mother was out.”

I had a sudden sad vision of a young girl, as the years passed around her, slowly searching through a silent house for bits of pottery, splinters of bone, a dead man's missing wallet: something, anything, that might be prove her mother a murderer.

What would she have done had she found it?

Alice Wright misread my reverie, and smiled more softly than she had before. “You'd rather she wasn't the one responsible, wouldn't you?”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“I'm sorry to say so, Joshua, both for your sake and for Mr. Begay's, but I think those remains are somewhere at the bottom of the Rio Grande. I don't think you're ever going to find them.”

“Did your mother ever remarry?”

“No.”

“No boyfriends, no male companions?”

“No.” She smiled. “She was one of those women who come into their own with widowhood.”

“Hi. This is your dreamboat speaking.”

“Wilbur?”

“Rita, Rita, Rita. Here I am, all by myself in a empty motel room, a stranger in a strange land. And all you can do is make jokes and play bumper cars with my heart.”

“Why alone? Why aren't you and Grober out hitting the
boites
of El Paso? I'm sure he knows all the elegant night spots.”

“I haven't talked to Grober yet. But I spent part of this afternoon with Alice Wright. She's Dennis Lessing's daughter.”

“I know. The computer gave me that, off the database. She was an anthropologist. Apparently a very good one. Studied with Ruth Benedict at Columbia.”

“If you've got a computer to give you all this good stuff, what do you need me for?”

“I'm not entirely sure. Banter?”

“What else did the computer have to say?”

“Why don't you tell me what you've got first.”

I told her what I'd learned from Alice Wright about her father and mother.

“She's right, Joshua,” Rita said. “If her mother did it, you're never going to find the remains.”

“But maybe her mother didn't do it. We're talking about things that were seen through the eyes of an eleven-year-old girl and then filtered through an awful lot of time.”

“She was trained as a professional observer, Joshua.”

“Not when she was a kid.”

“You're going to assume she's wrong then.”

“Wouldn't you?”

A pause. “For the time being, I suppose. If you assume she's right, there isn't much point in your staying down there.”

“Way I figured it.”

“So what are your plans?”

“I got a couple of names from Alice Wright. First off, there's a guy named Peter Yazzie, a Navajo. The only address she had for him was a trading post on the Reservation, and that was fifty years ago. But maybe we can locate him. I tried calling Daniel Begay, in Gallup, but there was no answer.”

“Give me the number,” she said, “and I'll see if I can reach him tomorrow.”

I gave it to her.

“And why are we trying to find Peter Yazzie?” she asked me.

“He was the son of Lessing's Navajo guide, and he went along with Lessing and his father on those field trips. If he's still alive, he may know who this woman was, the one Lessing was seeing.”

“You're thinking that jealousy, if it actually were the motive, could work just as well from someone on her end.”

“Did I ever tell you how much I admire clever women, Rita?”

“But this woman's husband, or boyfriend, or whatever, why would he steal the remains?”

“If he was a Navajo,” I said, “he might've known what they were. Maybe he wanted to bring them back to the Res.”

“Wouldn't someone on the Reservation have known about it if he had?”

“Maybe he didn't tell anybody. Maybe he was afraid he'd get busted for killing Lessing.”

“If the remains have been back there all this time, then that woman's dreams are meaningless.”

“Meaningless dreams happen all the time. You should see mine sometime.”

“I'll pass, thanks.”

“I'll show you mine if you show me yours.”

“You said a couple of names. Who else?”

“A man named Martin Halbert. The head of Halbert Oil. His father was the guy who sponsored Lessing's field trips, and Lessing sent him regular reports. Maybe I can pick up something there. Alice knows him, he used to be one of her students. She called him up and arranged for him to meet me tomorrow morning.” Lisa had left by then, off to some cocktail party.