Hidden Heritage (23 page)

Chapter Twenty-eight

I tossed the pestle aside and reached to pull the tape off Jane.

Not smart. I should step back and check the surroundings first. Before I freed Jane. I knew that, but I couldn't focus. I shook my head to try to clear it. My fingers started to grow numb, then they trembled. I waited for my dizziness to subside, but still couldn't manage to grasp the end of the tape.

What had Francesca put in the tea?

Jane squealed. Her eyes widened.

I turned. But I couldn't make my feet work. Couldn't think. My legs were unsteady.

Oh no, oh no, oh no
. What had been in Francesca's tea?

I drifted in and out of my mind. First everything was sharper, then blurred and distant. Then there were hands under my armpits and a man's voice. No, two voices, I thought. There were two. And they were dragging, dragging me toward the well house. And Francesca, too.

Behind me she wailed, keened like some primitive animal.

We were shoved into the well house. The walls contracted, expanded, wavered before my eyes. The bricks glowed in ever-changing colors like iridescent crystal.

Francesca's voice sounded from a distance. Like it was coming from the well opening. But when I turned, she was right beside me.

Her eyes glittered. “I'll never tell. Never.” She lifted her ruined hands. “See these? Do you think if I were capable of enduring all this I would now tell?”

“No, you see this.” He aimed a shotgun toward her stomach. Then he glanced at her hands. Studied her hands. “Or perhaps you need something more. Now tell us where the map is.”

“I will die first.”

“No you will die after you tell, old witch. After.”

“I can choose. I
will
choose. I will die now.”

She seemed taller. Straighter. Then she faded in and out. She slipped, wavered before my eyes.

“Sadly, I'm leaving you between, Lottie Albright. In the mirror. But I must go now. And someone else must come after you.” Her voice was faint, distant.

“Francesca!”

She sank onto the floor. Her eyes fluttered.

“Leaving you between. God forgive me. You won't be able to stop it. Mirror.” Her voice was thick with pain. Her breaths were shallow. “In the mirror. Here or the other side.”

Her mouth stilled.

Then there were hands dragging me toward the ledge of the well. I could not resist. Could not think. I heard an owl hoot. Calling my name.

There were two men. Two men. I had seen them before. At the feedyard? No, at the funeral. They were the two men harassing Maria. The ones who claimed to be distant cousins while she insisted she didn't even have an Aunt Lucia.

Hadn't Sam said there were two men? Suddenly they loosened their grip.

I heard a car. More than a car—a monster—coming up the lane. A roaring coming up the lane.

Josie's Mercedes drove past the open well house door.

Elizabeth and Zola were with her. It didn't make sense. Why were they here? My mind wavered, cleared. My note to Keith. They had probably seen the note I left in the kitchen.

They were driving toward the Old House. Francesca's workroom. They would see my car. Think I was in there, and see all of the broken glass. Jane would thump her feet.

She would do something. Make some kind of noise when they called out.

My stomach lurched. Jane would tell them Francesca and I were in danger.
Please God, don't let those women come here. Don't let them come toward armed men.

Tears stung my eyes. But my brain sharpened, sorted, tried to decide how to protect them. None of these women would immediately think of going to the well house. None of the three of them had ever been here. No reason to decide to check inside the well house. Jane wouldn't know where the men were taking us.

Josie would know to call for help. Immediately. Her cell phone would be out of range, but she could use the satellite phone in my car. Would she think of that? In time?

My heart thumped in my chest. There was no reason for any of these women to immediately suspect we had been taken to this place.
Don't come. Don't come
. I chanted it silently over and over again, like a mantra.

But Tosca figured it out. Became a bloodhound in the space of a blood speckle.

Sick at heart, I heard the yipping little dog tearing toward us.

The men had been still up until then. But this was a game-changer. One of them stepped into the doorway and fired at Tosca.

He missed.

“Tosca,” Josie screamed. “Tosca. Tosca. Stop.”

She ran toward Tosca, scooped her up and held her tightly against her chest.

“Go back,” I screamed. “Josie, go back.”

I turned to the man holding the shotgun and lunged at him. “You bastard. Those women are unarmed. Defenseless.” I swayed. My words were slurred. “What do you want from us?” He back-handed me across the jaw. I hit the wall and began sliding toward the floor. I rolled to my feet.

“Josie, Elizabeth, Zola. Stay back.” Then my vision stabilized. All my senses sharpened and suddenly I could think again.

Shouldn't have used names. Shouldn't have let them know there were only three women. Unarmed women.

The man with the handgun walked outside and motioned to Josie. “Get inside with her. Now.”

Carrying Tosca, Josie stumbled into the well house. Her sobs echoed off the stone walls. She carefully laid the trembling shih tzu on one of the stone benches.

She stood next to me and I reached for her hand, hoping to transmit some of my newfound strength.

“Well now, ain't this something.” The man with the shotgun was red-faced with a large stomach and arms like hams. I remembered his face now. His rudeness toward Maria Diaz at the funeral. His thighs bulged in his jeans. I decided it would be a mistake to think he was slow because he was so big.

The dark-haired man with the handgun edged back for a better look. He looked eager to spring, like a pit bull. Hair-trigger eyes. Excitable. He transferred the gun to his other hand. I looked away, not wanting to give him an excuse to hurt us.

“Yes. Indeedy. This is something. Can't believe our luck. Can you, Leon?” He looked at Josie, then me, then back again. “One for each of us.” Their eyes traveled over our bodies. “And just think. One of them probably has some information.”

“We're entitled to this information,” Leon snickered. “How long do you think it's going to take, Jerry?”

“A while. A good long while. And I believe it requires enhanced interrogation techniques.”

“Very enhanced.” Leon pulled out a pocket knife. He pulled Josie toward him and ripped her blouse down to her waist. Then he slit the front of her bra. Her breasts glistened in a ray of sunlight coming through the slit at the top of the well house. “Oh my, yes.” He looked at me. “Double the enhancement.”

“But let's not take any chances on leaving those other two alone. They might be dreaming up all kinds of mischief.”

“Only way out is to drive past us, Jerry. No problem.”

“No, we'll tend to them now. Right now. Or sort of take care of them. I think they would be happier back here, don't you? With their friends?”

Leon looked around and eyed the ropes hanging from the pulley system. He stepped forward and ran his hands over Josie. “Yes, they will all be happier united with their friends.” He pinched one of her nipples. “God, I want to make this woman happy. Right now.”

Jerry gave a soft chuckle. “The other women first.” He turned to me. “What did you call them? Elizabeth? Zola?”

“Tie them up,” he ordered Leon. “Don't want no slip-ups. You'll get your reward. Promise. Two for you and two for me.”

They took the rope from the rotating beam and tied our hands above our heads. Then they hoisted it over the beam and swung us over the well. The pain was excruciating.

They went outside. “Oh Zola, Elizabeth, darling. We're coming for you.” Their voices receded. I fought against the pain. My breath was coming in tortured gasps. They had guns. There was absolutely nothing Zola and Elizabeth could do to defend themselves. Nothing but hide.

My head bent and all I could see beneath us was black. Not good to look down. I wouldn't do it again.

Suddenly there was a soft whoosh of air, a movement behind us. Someone was swinging me away from the well. Zola came round in front and lowered me to the ground and untied my hands. She did the same thing to Josie. Her hands were steady, her mouth a straight line. She unfastened the rope from the beam and coiled it so fast she might have been doing it all her life.

Had
been doing it all her life, I realized.

“Stay here,” she ordered.

We struggled into a sitting position and watched her slip through the door. I didn't see her cross the yard and knew she had slipped around to the front of the well house and was probably moving quietly toward the Old House.

I was the first to get to my feet. I looked at my sister. “Don't try to come after me.”

Too eager to get two more women, the men had gotten careless, over-confident. They weren't making any attempt to be quiet. Gravel crunched beneath their feet. “Oh, Elizabeth, Zola. We've got something for you.”

Jerry guffawed. I ran behind George's Spanish bungalow and came up to the Old House just as they shoved the door open.

Elizabeth was standing behind it, holding one of Francesca's granite pestles. She bashed Jerry in back of the head and grabbed the shotgun as he fell.

Leon rushed forward and aimed before Elizabeth could raise the shotgun to her shoulder.

The air parted, zinged, and a rope fell over his shoulders pinning his arms to his side. He was still clutching the handgun, when I rushed through the door and picked up a piece of broken glass.

“Drop it. Now. If you want to keep those fingers.”

He did.

Zola walked toward Leon, coiling the rope as she went. When she was ten feet away, she sent it sailing around and around the length of his body and yanked him off his feet. He hit the floor with a thud. She was on his back in a flash and tied his arms in back and then bent his legs backward and secured them to his hands.

“Grand champion calf-roper,” she said, shooting arms away from her sides, as though she were being judged in a 4-H event. “Five years in a row.” There was nothing modest about her grin. “Grandfather would be proud.”

“Where's Jane?”

“We untied her and told her to stay in the room. She's not exactly combat-ready and we didn't want to take a chance on her being used for bait.”

I walked to the car and used the satellite phone to call the house. There was no answer. Keith was probably still in the pasture. Sam didn't answer either. It was supposed to be his day off. In cooler weather he usually went fishing, but I suspected he was holed up in a movie theater today. Betty Central was dispatching. I called and asked her to send an ambulance for Francesca's body. “Then get ahold of the sheriff in Copeland County and tell him to come to the Diaz Compound. He needs to pick up two men and take them to his jail.”

Josie and I ran back to the well house. She knelt beside Tosca, who was trembling with terror.

“I'll help load Jane into your car so you can take her to the emergency room. I believe she's okay, but I want her checked out really well. After you take care of her, go find Keith. He's probably in the north pasture. Tom will likely be there, too. We have everything under control here.”

“Okay.”

“Watch your driving. Remember you're on gravel roads. Elizabeth and Zola will keep watch until the Copeland County sheriff gets here.” I hesitated. “One last thing. There's a hand mirror in the Old House. Please put it in my Tahoe. And there is a red crystal jar of herbs next to it on the counter. Please flush them down the sink.”

“Are you okay?” She glanced at me as she picked up Tosca.

“I'm fine. Just a little woozy. I'll wait in the well house where it's cool.” I waved her on. I managed to walk back and pass through the door. I sank to the ground and cradled Francesca's head in my lap. I felt for a pulse long grown silent and began to weep.

Then the walls of the well house shifted colors again and I swirled down.

Down into total blackness.

Chapter Twenty-nine

I hear Josie whisper, “She's had a nervous breakdown.”

I am in my own bed floating on a feather sea. I turn my head to one side, too weary to wipe the tears that stream down my cheeks.
Nervous breakdown is not a professional term
, I think wearily. Josie shouldn't use it.

I fight to retain my thoughts. My thoughts are in the hand mirror at my side. I pick it up one more time. I am still in the mirror. Francesca left me there. But there is no one who will come after me. I've worn a groove scratching it over and over with my wedding ring.

“I think we should take it away,” Josie says. “She's obsessed with that damn mirror.”

No, no, no
. They don't understand…Keith comes into the room and gently removes it. He leans over the bed and softly kisses my forehead and smoothes back my hair. I cannot make them understand that my soul is in the mirror. I cannot stop the trickle of tears and cannot speak.

He gently closes my door.
I'm doomed. There is no way out now. I'm left in the mirror forever. I need Francesca.

I sleep again. My need for sleep seems to be insatiable. It's too deep. Is this what it feels like to die? From a distance I can hear Keith's guitar. Oh, my darling, my husband. I want to come back. I'm not through with this world yet. I want to stay here. I struggle and struggle. I know the song. I know it.

“
You'll call my name and I won't answer. You'll call my name but I'll be gone.”

His voice is deep. Tragic.

I won't go. I'm not ready yet. Please I'm not ready.
I'm asleep again now. It's too deep, not a natural sleep and I'm being sucked under. I don't want to be pulled under. Under and yet away. Then I hear a violin. It's not Josie's. The style is different. The melody is incredibly sweet. Keith's guitar is fading away. Fading.

From a distance, I see a white horse galloping toward me. It has an iridescent aura. I know when I mount, it will carry me up into a star-strewn sky. Then the stallion stops, neighs, rears on his hind legs and stays frozen like a polished marble statue. It has come for me. We listen to a last perfect note from the violin. The sky is utterly empty. There are no people and it breaks my heart. There is no sound but the violin. Just the deep void. I do not want to go. Grief floods through me as I walk toward the horse.

Then I see a man coming down the road the horse traveled. He looks shabby and disheveled. He does not belong on this beautiful star path. He is an Earth person. He draws closer and I realize it is Old Man Snyder. He has come for me. Exhilaration pulses through me like I've been struck by lightning. Francesca has sent someone.

Then he stops and listens and in a bit, I hear it too. From afar another fiddle, begins. Old Man Snyder doffs his old fedora, looks at me and gives a slight bow. He lifts his bow.

The other fiddle launches into a tune so exotic it might have come from the East, from another culture. And I understand that this entity is challenging Francesca and would like me to stay in the mirror.

Old Man Snyder nods his head and matches the complexity of the minor composition that captures the poignancy of Gypsy violinists. Snyder launches into an insulting, repudiating bluegrass tune with his signature double-bow technique that jolts all my senses. He is of the Earth and proud of it.

I sob at the incredibly sweet strains of the foreign fiddle, a ballad now. Poignant. Exquisite. All the heartbreak of every lover who has been betrayed, been lost. This is how Keith will feel if I must go.

Oh, I don't want to go, my darling. I do not want to leave this world.

There were a few discordant strands, violent and urgent, and I understand then that some kind of deadly contest has begun. Whirling, first brave, and then frantic. The pace picks up and then it's impossible to take in. Earth and hell blend. Heaven and the white horse are fading away. The instruments become as one.

And I understand now that before God created heaven and Earth, he created music. In the beginning there was music. That is how the world began. With a spherical hum, a vibration that set the worlds spinning.

I can only see Old Man Snyder. I cannot see the Other. But I know who he is. Francesca had told me about him. Tried to warn me. He was there when I fought the urge to hurt Angie's husband. My own Book of Common Prayer warned me. He was there. He is here.

Then there is silence. Not the silence of finality, but the breathless expectation that prefaces the beginning of an aria in a great opera. Or that expectant hush before the conclusion. Old Man Snyder seems to listen for an instant and then the two fiddles duel once again.

And the Bible says Jesus descended to hell for three days after he was taken from the cross. The necessary hell that put the anguish in music. The discord, the melancholy. The wild despair. Was that why the Father sent you there? To bring back what was missing from a sweetly perfect heaven?

I want life. All of life. My quarrelling stepchildren and sunshine and drought. My crazy contradictory Kansas. Little children and silly dogs. I want the blend of Earth and heaven and hell.

I am the one who should be meeting this spirit. Old Man Snyder is taking my place. It is not right. The music winds down, fades. He looks at me across some dimension I don't recognize and tips his old fedora.

He walks off with his fiddle tucked under his arm.

***

When I awoke the next morning, sunshine was streaming into the bedroom. There was no one around. Weakly, I shoved my feet into my slippers and walked to the bathroom. I lowered myself onto the stool with the help of the towel bar, then managed to walk to the sink where I washed my hands and brushed my teeth. I wanted to shower, but I was too unsteady. I reached for my pink summer seersucker robe and walked to the top of stairs.

I could hear voices coming from the kitchen. Keith, Josie, and Zola putting in her two bits. I eyed the steps and decided they would be too risky.

“Hey,” I called. “What does it take to get a cup of coffee around here?”

“You've been out of it for five days,” Elizabeth said. “We were worried sick. I don't know who has been the most frantic, Dad or your sister. How much do you remember?”

A dream, I wanted to say. I tried to remember fragments of a dream. It was slipping away. What I did remember sounded crazy, even to myself.

A fever dream.

“Francesca? What about Francesca? She's dead, isn't she? I sort of remember some of what happened.”

Her face was solemn. “Yes. I'm sorry. I know how much she meant to you.”

“That poor woman. That lonely old woman.”

“The cause of death is undetermined. The men wanted to throw her down the well, I'm sure, but she died before they could get the job done. The KBI had hoped to pin murder charges on those bastards. Not that they don't have enough attempted murders charges to put them away for life or more.”

“Tosca?”

Elizabeth grinned and filled me in. For once she had enough sense not to refer to Tosca as “that worthless little dog.”

“She's going to be fine. She's playing the most recent traumatic experience for all it's worth, of course. I understand she and Keith had reconciled before her latest misadventure.”

“Oh, yeah. Big time.” I told her about the buddy poppy.

“That's my dad.”

“And Jane? What about Jane?”

“She's fine. Scared as hell. Seems as though she was returning some articles and when Francesca saw them, she fell down like she had been clubbed. Jane started running toward the house to get to a phone. The two men had been lurking around. They wanted to catch Francesca alone. But they thought Jane had seen them. So they tossed her into the ante room off of Francesca's workroom.“

Tears trickled down my cheeks. “She had a hard life. She didn't deserve to have a hard death, too.”

Elizabeth looked at me and scowled. “We're not too sure what all you remember, Lottie.”

“Still just bits and pieces. What made all you women dash in like the cavalry?

“We found your note you left for Keith. Believe me, I wouldn't have had the guts to step foot on the place otherwise. Remember when I said I had to make that flying trip back to Kansas to tell Francesca she had no basis for pursuing a lawsuit? She fired me on the spot and told me never to darken her doorway again.”

“You said you had other business to tend to also.”

“Yes, she had asked me to prepare a will. I took Zola with me that day so she could witness the signature.” Elizabeth reached for the bedspread and twisted it a little before she looked me in the eye. “And I'm glad I did. After Francesca threw her little hissy fit, Zola managed to calm her down and came up with another solution. She has an uncle in Meridian who is a lawyer and she contacted him the very next day.”

“Who did she leave her estate to? Cecilia or George?”

“I don't know. Zola doesn't either. She wouldn't say if she did. All she did was witness Francesca's signature after her uncle was done. What I took out was just a boilerplate will with the intentions of making all the alterations and additions while I was there.” Elizabeth gave the little half-smile I so adored in Keith. “That was before everything blew up.”

***

Everyone had gone home and now there was just Keith and me and Angie in the house. All the daughters had fussed over me like I was a total invalid, but Elizabeth and Bettina had day-jobs to get back to. I wanted to rebuild my strength but had to force myself to get out of bed. I felt oddly drained of energy. It was still too hot to walk even in the evenings. Zola wouldn't hear of my touching a thing around the house.

I had missed Francesca's funeral. It was private and limited to the family. They couldn't find a church that would allow a service because all the denominations worried about saying words over a pagan. She was buried on the compound in the little fenced cemetery where her husband and children were laid to rest. Even though it was well past her time to die, I would feel the loss.

Reduced to watching old westerns, I sank into my chair and switched on the TV. I bypassed
Gunsmoke
and
Paladin
, and settled on
Little House on the Prairie
. Overly sweet perhaps, but it suited me right now. I couldn't handle much turmoil. The episode ended and rolled through the names which gave proper credit to Laura Ingalls Wilder, who wrote the classic books on which the series was based.

It was like a bolt of lightning striking a tree. Laura Ingalls Wilder. How could I have been so blind? Her father was the famous Kansas senator, John J. Ingalls.

Senator Ingalls had written a long essay about Regis Loisel and the family squabble. Ingalls detested the man and regarded the “filthy hildagoes” as forerunners of the border ruffians. It was the most lengthy complex lawsuit in Kansas history.

How many times had this show come to mind when I heard Francesca's string of names? Doña Francesca Bianco Loisel Montoya Diaz. Her father was a Loisel. And her mother's family was Montoya.

Francesca was a descendant of the French Canadian fur trader Regis Loisel who had received an enormous land grand from Spain! I had goose bumps despite the heat. Montoya. Montoya was another great land grant family. If the two families had intermarried, it was hard telling how much land was involved.

How many times had I heard her and Cecilia say “We have always lived here”?

Francesca was the heir to the Loisel fortune and had proof of the location of the lost land.

The infamous Loisel land grant was due to a historical dirty trick: the Treaty of Fontainebleau in 1762. When “we” were the British and there was no America. When the French knew they would lose the French and Indian War to the Brits, they gave “Louisiana” to Spain in a secret treaty. Louisiana then covered the entire Mississippi Valley from the Appalachians to the Rockies.

The next year, when the war ended, “we” and France hammered out the Treaty of Paris, which ended the French and Indian War. The Brits got everything east of the Mississippi, and France got everything west of it. Eastern French Colonists who didn't want to live under British rule were given eighteen months to move west where they thought they would be governed by France.

Then, surprise! They were in Spanish territory, not French. The cagey French King Louis wrote a charming note to the governor of the territory asking that he play nice with the settlers there, as he had given a good chunk of the country away to Spain.

All hell broke loose. Treaties flew around like politicians' promises. French settlers tried to throw out the newly appointed Spanish governor. By the time President Thomas Jefferson and Napoleon agreed to the Louisiana Purchase, land-ownership was quite muddled. Maddest of all were the families who had received enormous land grants from the Spanish government due to the Treaty of Fontainebleau.

The Spanish government had given Regis Loisel a huge tract of land after receiving his petition claiming it was his just reward for doing whatever it took to get along with the Indians and “in the interests of future commerce.”

No doubt about it. Loisel had been a real humdinger. He had extended fur trade from the Missouri River to the Rocky Mountains.

Just like that, he received a staggering number of acres. The governor told him not to bother with having it surveyed.

Loisel made a will on his deathbed leaving everything to his wife and two daughters and named his business partners, Jacques Clamorgan and Auguste Chouteau, executors. Clamorgan stole the whole grant from Loisel's heirs by buying the land for ten dollars' worth of deer skins.

With the Louisiana Purchase, land grants made by the French and Spanish were honored, but Clamorgan's claim simply didn't sound right to confused government officials. Loisel's land sold without his family knowing—for a mere ten dollars? Really!