Read Death Along the Spirit Road Online
Authors: C. M. Wendelboe
Death Along the Spirit Road (7 page)
Willie said that on the side opposite the driveway flower boxes would be cupping each windowsill to catch the rising sun. Lizzy had bought the house as a fixer-upper, and did all the work herself. He bragged about her prowess with a hammer and saw. Every piece of window trim was mitered, the siding matching up perfectly with the flashing.
For a moment, Manny would have traded his suburban colonial and all the hoopla of D.C. for her secluded home. He would have traded the smog and hubbub of Arlington for the serenity and quiet of this summer day. He would drink the morning air without having to spit out the grit of pollution.
But now Washington defined Manny Tanno the FBI agent as Pine Ridge had defined Manny Tanno the Lakota. He had tried walking the Red Road here at Pine Ridge. Tried and failed. Now he was just homesick to return to Virginia.
Elizabeth bent over a laundry basket under a clothesline. She wiped the line with her daisy-printed apron and reached into a canvas bag that hung on the line. She fished out some clothespins and hung a wet top. The stiff breeze lifted her midback black hair, and the sun reflected reddish highlights, a product of her Scottish father and Brulé mother from Crow Creek. Saltand-pepper flecks around her temples only added to her beauty.
She bent over to grab another top from the basket and spotted him. She smiled and waved, a smile that made him feel as giddy as he’d felt the first time he saw her with Reuben, a smile that could have lured any man into her arms if she wanted. Manny blushed like a schoolboy caught peeking into the girls’ locker room. She waved him on and ran to his car. He climbed out and she wrapped her arms around him and hugged.
“Look at you.” He held Elizabeth at arm’s length. It had been years since he had last seen her, but her figure and her complexion had remained youthful. Matte mauve lipstick showed off her not-too-pouty lips, and smudged eggplant eyeliner accentuated her almond-shaped hazel eyes. She never had needed much makeup, and she remained the poster child of beauty and health. He swayed as he caught scent: subtle, inviting, distinctive. Sweet lilac perhaps. Maybe some prairie berry that had brushed against her on one of her runs. He was a teen when she and Reuben married. She was Manny’s first crush, until Desirée Chasing Hawk pushed that crush aside. His face flushed at the memories.
She stepped back and looked at him. “And what’s your secret?”
“Secret?”
“You haven’t aged one whit. Not one. Why hasn’t some lucky lady scooped you up by now?”
Manny laughed. “Reality’s the only obstacle to happiness. I’d get too close to someone, and remind myself that familiarity breeds children. I don’t cotton to kids much. But what about you? Why didn’t you remarry?”
“I’m married to the tribe.”
“Willie said you’d got your degree after Reuben was sent up.”
She nodded. “I had to do something after we were divorced. People got so used to Reuben and me being joined at the hip. It didn’t look right for me to mooch off the tribe. So I made up my mind to do something about it.”
“Well, good for you. Bet it keeps you hopping.”
“All I have time for is work and work out. But how do you keep looking so young?”
Manny laughed.
You really wouldn’t think I looked young if I took off my hat
. “Hitting the road for some daily pavement pounding. And getting a hug now and again from some foxy lady, keeping foxy by running, I see.” He exaggerated his gaze as he looked from her face to her toes to her face.
You really wouldn’t think I looked young if I took off my hat
. “Hitting the road for some daily pavement pounding. And getting a hug now and again from some foxy lady, keeping foxy by running, I see.” He exaggerated his gaze as he looked from her face to her toes to her face.
“Most days. Willie said you’d be driving out this way. Got coffee on.”
Before Manny could answer, she wrapped her arm in his and led him up the steps across the deck to the back door. “Excuse the door,” Elizabeth said. “With the land falling away like it was, I couldn’t make that east door the main entrance.”
“Don’t apologize.” Tradition dictated that the sacred entry into a Lakota home was to be on the east side, and she was genuinely sorry for not having her front door facing that direction. Elizabeth had kept up with the old ways, something Manny had not done as a city Sioux.
Her skill with home improvement became apparent when he stepped into her kitchen. Marbled floor tiles blended with an arched doorway opening to the rest of house. Copper pots hung from a small ladder suspended over a butcher-block island counter. Light glistened off the pans and they banged together in time with the breeze from the nearby window. He challenged himself to find one thing that was out of place, one thing that was askew in her kitchen, but he couldn’t.
A calico cat with a stub tail sunned itself on the counter. When Manny reached to stroke it the cat hissed louder than the coffeepot perking. It bared its fangs and arched its back to spring. Manny backed away.
So much for an Oglala warrior having a special way with animals.
So much for an Oglala warrior having a special way with animals.
“I’m sorry. Mabel never acts like that.”
“I guess I have that effect on women. Even feline women.”
Mabel ran from the room, and Manny waited for Elizabeth to pour coffee. Across one countertop Elizabeth had arranged the coffeepot and blender and four-slice toaster. The other counter remained bare for food preparation. He sat in one of the heavybacked captain’s chairs situated around the oval oak table.
Simmering orange, maybe tangerine, potpourri enhanced the aroma of fresh brewed coffee greeting him. Elizabeth grabbed mugs hanging from a wooden cup tree on the counter. “Erica said you hadn’t changed.”
“Well, she sure has.” Erica and her new husband Jon met Manny last summer when they attended an Indian sovereignty conference in D.C. “She’s grown. I see why she did so well in those beauty pageants as a kid. How is she?”
“Just great,” Elizabeth answered, and placed a large coffee mug and a plate of oatmeal cookies in front of him. “She and Jon are getting along well, both involved in their own businesses in Rapid City.”
Manny wanted to ask more about Erica. But first he had to know what Elizabeth knew. “Tell me about Jason?”
“Jason?”
“I understand you two worked together on the resort project.”
Elizabeth smoothed her dress and sat across from Manny. She stirred a teaspoon of sugar into her coffee and waited until it dissolved before she answered. When she did, she spoke slowly, deliberately.
“Jason was never one of us. He was a rich kid. He was like the hangers-around-the-fort Indians in the old days.” Manny nodded. He sipped his coffee and waited for her to continue. She lifted her spoon from her cup and watched coffee drip down, creating tiny swirls in the liquid.
“He liked to be near the action, but not part of it. He quit the movement after a few years to attend college.”
“But you quit AIM to go to college, too.” Manny wished he could drag his question back, but he couldn’t.
A closed mouth gathers no feet
, as Unc said
.
Elizabeth’s lip quivered, and he knew he’d entered touchy territory.
A closed mouth gathers no feet
, as Unc said
.
Elizabeth’s lip quivered, and he knew he’d entered touchy territory.
“I quit AIM and everything else connected with Reuben when we split. Right before he murdered Billy Two Moons. I needed more than a clerk’s check from the tribe, so I got my degree. Not an expensive Ivy League education like Erica. I couldn’t afford that, but I did all right for myself.”
“You must have impressed the tribal council. Finance officer is a prestigious position.”
Elizabeth laughed. “LaVonne Drapeaux was finance officer back then, and I was her assistant. Everyone thought LaVonne would be there until she died. And she was—she died in that car wreck just outside Manderson. I got the job by default, so I guess you could say my degree paid off.”
Manny had read about LaVonne’s accident in the
Indian Country Today
eleven years ago. She had been driving her new Mercury on good roads, and when she came to the same hill where Jason’s parents wrecked and died, her car veered off the road and plunged into a thirty-foot gully.
Indian Country Today
eleven years ago. She had been driving her new Mercury on good roads, and when she came to the same hill where Jason’s parents wrecked and died, her car veered off the road and plunged into a thirty-foot gully.
“I got the job despite my ex-husband.”
Manny looked away.
“I didn’t mean—”
“Don’t worry. I still don’t talk to Reuben. I’ll have to see him during this trip, because he knew Jason back in the day, but I feel the same about him as you do.”
“Maybe not quite the same.” Manny read not a smile or a hint that she missed Reuben and their days as a couple, or that said she hated Reuben for what he had done to their future. For all Manny’s skills as an interviewer, he could interpret nothing in her expression. She had been asked about her relationship with Reuben after the Two Moons murder, and she’d rehearsed her answer so many times it was rote, devoid of any emotion. She took a slow sip of her coffee. When she continued, her voice wavered.
“As much pain as Reuben caused me, I still miss him now and again. I was a giddy eighteen-year-old when we first met. He was a star with AIM and I cherished being with him. I loved people looking at me like I was somebody.”
Manny shrugged. “Most teen girls are pretty impressionable. I remember Reuben sometimes brought you over to Unc’s for supper. I can still hear the kids grilling me about Reuben’s new squeeze.”
Elizabeth smiled. “We were in the movement together. Indian rights and all that. Going places for the cause. Making it hard for society to take advantage of us Skins. And in between the protests and the letter writing and the newspaper interviews, we partied. And grew to love one another. I knew—just knew—we’d always be a couple. I just knew Reuben and I would cross onto the Spirit Road together. Even after he killed Two Moons, I knew Reuben was no good for me. But it didn’t matter. I’d have still been with him if he hadn’t been convicted. That sound bad?”
“Not at all. People always called Reuben charismatic, like he could charm a used-car salesman out of his commission. He was a lot like Jason in that way. He used you.”
Elizabeth turned her head, and tears formed at the corners of her eyes. He wanted to ease her pain, convince her that she still meant something to him despite her breakup with Reuben, but Manny couldn’t find the words. He had shifted from the loving ex-brother-in-law to the investigator who needed answers, and he felt as much like a rat as Billy Two Moons had been. “You were telling me more about Jason.”
“Of course.” She dabbed at the corners of her eyes with a napkin and began to nibble on a cookie. “The three of us were inseparable when we were in AIM, doing all sorts of nasty things in the name of Indian rights. Bad things. Jason used to come around when he knew Reuben was gone, but he knew Reuben would kill him if he ever found out he came around and flirted like he did. That’s when I started disliking him as much as Reuben did.”
“But I thought they were buds?”
“They were. Until Jason got the ultimatum from his folks: go to college or forget about taking over the family business. That always grated on Reuben. He became angry when he thought of Jason selling out his traditional values for the quick Red Cloud buck, and Reuben never forgave him.”
Manny chanced another cookie. Oatmeal cookies were made with oatmeal, and oatmeal was healthy. “When was the last time you saw Jason?”
“A week ago, last Thursday night in the finance office.”
“Night? Like after-hours?” Henry Lone Wolf told him about Erica and Jason arguing, but not about Elizabeth and Jason meeting there.
Elizabeth laughed. “Not what you’re thinking. Jason often came around when he thought everyone else had left. The office the tribe let him use was next to mine. He had a snoot full that night like he usually did, but he left before he got too frisky.”
Manny recalled Jason’s bruised cheek and nose in the crime scene photos. “Did Lumpy Looks Twice help him leave?”
Elizabeth sipped her coffee. She toyed with her spoon as if reading the ripples again. “Jason came into my office drunk. He put his arm around me, and I tried to push him away, but he weighed twice as much as me. When I smelled his sickening sweet whiskey breath I managed to push him off. He lost it. Jerked file drawers open, tossed folders all over the floor. Mean things. Then Lumpy came in and tossed him out. For once Jason was drunker than Lumpy. They fought, though it wasn’t much of a fight.”
“Did Jason often come on to you when he drank?
“When he drank?” Elizabeth laughed. “Jason came on to me whenever he had a free moment.”
“Then why didn’t you deal with his assistant, this Clara Downing, if he was so obnoxious?”
“Clara? Never. I wanted the resort to succeed. She’d only muck things up.”
“She must have something on the ball to have become Jason’s executive assistant.”
Elizabeth’s lip quivered. Her eyes narrowed as she fixed them on Manny. “She’s got no formal education. None. Jason hired her right out of high school. She rose to the top of one of the most esteemed development firms in the West with not even one semester of college.”
Manny recognized Elizabeth’s resentment and quickly changed the tone. “When did you start dealing directly with Jason?”
“He started coming here two months ago, when he first started his project.”
“That when he started to get frisky?”
Elizabeth nodded. “He put on a lot of weight since his AIM days, but he still dressed to the nines. He figured most women would fall for his money and his charm.”
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