Shallow Grave-J Collins 3 (5 page)

His hazel eyes were on my hair. Like all impulsive little kids, when he saw something he wanted, he just reached out and touched it. “Pretty,” he said softly.

My breath caught, startling him back to the safety of his mother’s skirt.

“Sorry. He’s kinda curious.”

“It’s okay,” I said, thinking of Martinez’s obsession with my hair. “I’m used to it.” I off ered my hand, using the ruse that worked with my seven-year old neighbor, Kiyah. “I have mini-marshmallows. I’ll even let you put in as many as you want.”

Jericho’s head popped out like a prairie dog’s. “Really?”

“Really.”

He ignored my hand and tugged Abita toward the steps by her skirt. “Mama. Come on.”

I breathed a slow sigh of relief. Once they were inside, I wouldn’t let them leave until I had some damn answers.

Kevin was slumped in the recliner, drinking my 39

beer. He gave me a strange look, but ever the gentleman, he left his comfy spot and rose to his feet.

“Abita,” I said, “this is my partner, Kevin Wells.”

“Nice to meet you,” Abita said.

“Th

e pleasure is all mine.” He smiled. “Who’s this little guy?”

Jericho lifted his head and looked right at Kevin.

“Holy crap,” Kevin said, easing some of my doubts that I’d imagined the resemblance between the boy and Ben.

“Sorry.” Kevin sent Abita a sheepish smile. “He looks so much like . . .” His eyes connected with mine.

“Ben.”

“You knew Ben too?” Abita asked.

“Yes.” Kevin hadn’t looked away from me.

“I’m fi ne.”

“Where’s the marshmallows?” Jericho demanded.

“In the kitchen.” I said to Kevin, “I promised Jericho hot chocolate.”

We marched into my little kitchen. Abita and Jericho sat at my chrome dinette.

I scrounged around in the back of the canned goods cabinet and snagged three boxes of Girl Scout Th in Mint

cookies. Not my favorite, but I was a sucker for the neighborhood girls looking so offi

cial and proud in those ugly

uniforms, I ended up with a dozen boxes every year.

On autopilot, I grabbed the bottle of Hershey’s choc-40

olate syrup and milk from the fridge. Kevin unhooked a saucepan from the hanging pan rack. We worked in tandem like an old married couple. He matched up the cups and saucers; I lined the spoons and marshmallows on the serving tray. It felt normal until I glanced over and saw a mini-Ben staring at me.

My hands shook. Kevin gently took the tray.

Jericho slid me a sly smile and proceeded to put eleven mini-marshmallows in his cup.

Cheeky little thing.

We didn’t bother to fi ll the empty air with mindless chatter.

Once Jericho had slurped the last glob of chocolate and stuff ed eight more marshmallows in his mouth, I decided I’d waited long enough. “Do you let him watch cartoons?”

“Sometimes. Why?”

“Because we need to talk and it might be easier if he was otherwise occupied.”

“Mama, I wanna watch ’toons!”

Her nervous gaze fl icked to the door.

“Th

e TV’s in the living room. You can put your chair in the doorway, so you can keep an eye on him if you’d like,” I added as an incentive.

Kevin helped her get Jericho situated. I stayed in the kitchen, adding a healthy shot of peppermint schnapps to 41

my hot chocolate. I fi red up a smoke. For the briefest moment, the taste combo brought me back to high school.

Abita returned and primly sat in the same chair she’d vacated.

I’d cracked the kitchen window and wiggled my backside into the countertop. I was too restless to sit.

Pacing irritated the shit out of me even when I did it.

“How long have you two been partners?” Abita asked.

“About seven months.”

She frowned at Kevin. “But, you said he knew Ben.

How, if you’ve only been together a short time?”

Kevin laughed. I choked on an exhale.

“Julie and I are business partners. But we’ve been friends since we were twelve, so I knew Ben.”

“Oh.” Abita blushed. “Sorry. When you said ‘partners’ I assumed . . .”

“Natural mistake,” he assured her.

An assumption most people made. In years past we went out of our way to convince skeptics we really
were
just friends. But in the last few months, we’d stopped the denial. Kevin and I had a long-term intimacy that defi es explanation. If our relationship confused the hell out of us, why should we bother to clarify it for others?

“What is your business?”

“We’re private investigators.”

She blinked. A garbled phrase, which sounded sus-42

piciously like foreign cuss words, tumbled out of her mouth as she made a circle on her forehead.

“Excuse me? What did you say?”

“It’s a Hopi saying. Loosely translated, it means,

‘Coincidence is fate in disguise’.”

I shivered.

“About six months ago I thought about hiring a PI to fi nd you, Julie.”

“Is that how you found her?” Kevin asked.

“No.” She looked at me. “Th

e casino explosion

in South Dakota was big news in the Indian newspapers across the country, including Arizona. I recognized your name. Ben mentioned you often enough, but he’d said you lived in Minneapolis and I didn’t know your married name. So it kinda threw me that you hadn’t changed it.”

I hadn’t taken my ex-husband’s name. Julie Tooley?

Eww. No thanks.

Abita added. “So I convinced myself I wouldn’t be able to fi nd you even if I tried.”

I sucked in a deep drag. Blew it out. Decided to push her a little to see if she’d wobble. “You could’ve gotten in touch with me through our father at any point.

His name hasn’t changed.”

“I know.” She glanced at her hands, tidily folded in her lap, and clammed up.

43

Shit.

Kevin said, “I know Julie has a million questions, so why don’t we start with the most obvious one? How did you meet Ben?”

Th

ank God Kevin was here. He’d keep me focused and if things turned ugly, he’d stop me from doing something rash. He’d also hold me up without me having to ask.

“I met him in our village when he fi rst visited my uncle.” She cleared her throat. “I should explain that our village is open to tourists who want to come and have a real experience with the Hopi people. We’re still primitive as far as most modern tribes go. Anyway, we’ve got crafting areas and a cultural center. But visitors are separated from our school, our houses, and the ceremonies aren’t part of the tour.”

“Did Ben live there?”

“Not at fi rst, he lived on the Navajo reservation about 100 miles south. He’d come to Arizona specifi -

cally to see how the Navajo Casinos were run. But after a couple of months he tired of the politics and stuff and was interested in how our Hopi leaders are able to sustain our tribe’s treasury without gaming. He moved in with my uncle.”

My cigarette froze halfway to my mouth. “Without gaming? But I thought there were tons of Indian casinos 44

in Arizona?”

Abita nodded. “Th

ere are. However, our tribe is

not part of the other Arizona tribes who have a gambling compact with the state. We’re a bit of an anomaly. Bit of a throwback to the ‘old ways.’ Some of our members don’t even have electricity.”

Working with the Navajo? Th

en living with the

Hopi? Ben hadn’t told me why he’d gone to Arizona. His lack of disclosure about that part of his life still hurt me.

I squeezed my eyes shut. Would I ever be able to think of Ben and not associate it with pain?

Metal chair legs screeched on the linoleum. I sensed Kevin in front of me. “You okay?”

I shook my head.

“Let me have this before you light yourself on fi re.”

He removed the cigarette from between my fi ngers. I’d forgotten it was even there.

Abita said, “I didn’t mean to upset you. I’ll go. I’m sorry.”

I opened my eyes and leaned sideways around Kevin’s to look at her. “Don’t go. I’ve tried for years to get
any
kind of information on Ben. Now you’re here . . .”

My voice cracked.

“I’ll just go check on Jericho.” Abita scooted from the kitchen.

“You’re starting to hyperventilate, babe. Calm 45

down. She’ll tell you what you want to know. But you won’t learn a damn thing if you’re passed out on the fl oor.” He grabbed the bottle of Don Julio.

Whoo-yeah. Sanity in a jug.

Kevin poured a generous amount of silver liquid in my empty mug and handed it to me.

I knocked it back. Not the best way to drink $100

tequila. But the smooth fi re blended surprisingly well with the chocolate.

Abita probably thought I was some kind of freak.

But as long as she told me every detail about the last months of Ben’s life, I honestly didn’t care what she thought of me.

“Everything all right?” she asked, hovering in the doorway.

“Fine,” Kevin answered. “Julie just needed a break.

Go ahead and fi nish what you were telling us.”

She returned to her chair. “I don’t remember where I was.”

A laugh track blared from the living room. She gave the wall a narrow-eyed look, as if she could see through the sheetrock.

“What Ben was doing in your village,” Kevin prompted.

“Oh. He mostly tagged along with my Uncle Wen-dell. Th

ey were always going on about boring business stuff , mostly about what he’d been doing working in 46

some new casino outside Big Pine. Th

at Navajo tribe has

bingo and a Class 3 Gaming license, but it is a commute from our village.”

From working with our biggest client, Greater Dakota Gaming, I knew Class 3 Gaming meant slot machines on the premises, as well as dog and horse betting.

“You know what I don’t get?” Kevin looked as if he’d been mulling everything over. “Ben hadn’t been involved with any of the tribal casinos around here. Seems a strange career direction for him.”

“Th

at’s not entirely true,” Abita said. “Some tribal organization back here had sent him to Arizona to learn the casino business from the inside; that’s why he was working in the Navajo casino.”

Another piece of news I hadn’t known. “What tribal organization?”

“I don’t know if he told me. At any rate, I really don’t remember. When we were together, we didn’t talk about casino stuff .” She blushed.

“What did you talk about?”

She blushed harder. “Everything. Nothing. He’d come in and watch me weave. We started out friends.

Although my tribe holds to the old traditions, no one thought anything of letting us spend time together.”

“Why not?”

“I was—I am pretty shy. I’ve never had the type of 47

face or fi gure that men notice. Besides, Ben was in his late thirties, I was seventeen; he was old enough to be my father, so we were basically unchaperoned.

“We kept it our secret for months. Before he went back to South Dakota, he promised to come back. He promised we’d be together.” Abita gazed at the wall, lost in the past. “A month went by and I hadn’t heard from him. I was mad, especially when I found out I was pregnant a few weeks after he left.

“I didn’t know who to call, what to do, and I didn’t have any money, so I did nothing. When it got back to us he’d been murdered, then I was scared to death.

Nothing like that had ever happened to me before, or to anyone I’d known.”

Some might say death is death, but violent death opens up a whole diff erent set of questions and problems.

“My family found out I was pregnant and sent me away. I’d intended to give the baby up for adoption, until I learned more Indian babies were up for adoption than there were Indian families who could adopt. After Jericho was born I knew I could never give him up.”

Kevin set a box of Kleenex on the table between us.

Abita dabbed her eyes.

I didn’t know what to say. I’d fi gured she’d tell me a sob story about how my brother had done her wrong.

Not once had she played the “poor me” card. She didn’t 48

seem to be living in sorrow and self-pity either.

“Abita, after keeping Jericho a secret for three years, why are you in South Dakota now?”

“Curiosity.”

I blinked with confusion.

She added hastily, “Back to the ‘coincidence is fate in disguise’ school of thought. Th

ere’s a master weaver

from Norway who hosts classes every couple of years. I applied, but didn’t count on getting in. It seemed like a sign when my application was selected.”

Th

e weaver she spoke of was highly sought after to teach seminars all over the world. Abita must be a tal-ented weaver to be asked to study with a master at such a young age.

“How long will you be here?”

“A couple of weeks.”

“Where are you staying?”

“In a dorm at the business college in Rapid City.

Th

ere are other women in the program who also have children so there’s even daycare.”

Th

rough the tightness in my throat I asked, “Have you contacted the Standing Elk family?”

“No.”

“Do you plan to?”

“I don’t know.”

“You should. Th

ey have a right to know about Jericho.”

49

Shy Abita disappeared beneath a shrewd gaze. “Does the right to know extend to your father?”

Th

at fl oored me.

Abita unfolded from the chair. “I should go.”

“Hang on.” I rifl ed through my purse for a business card. I neatly wrote down my home and cell phone numbers on the back. “You will come back? Stay in touch?” I asked as I handed her the card. What I really meant was: you won’t take the one link I’ve got to Ben and vanish?

“When I can. Th

e schedule is tough and when I’m

done with classes I’ve have to take care of my son. I’m not used to being away from him for so many hours at a time during the day. It’s all very . . . strange.”

“And I’ll bet it makes for a long day,” Kevin said.