The Old Gray Wolf (23 page)

Shrugging, the Ute elder spat out a lie without batting an eye. “I guess I must've slipped off into a little catnap and had a bad dream.” Which reminded her of that exasperating visitation during the wee hours.
I bet this white woman would like to hear about old Toadie showing up while I was in bed asleep.
And even if she didn't …
Sometimes Sarah likes to hear a good, scary ghost story.

All well and good, as far as it went—but Daisy's motives were more than a kindly intent to entertain those two ladies at the table. Her primary target was Charlie Moon.

Daisy's skeptical nephew did not (as far as she knew) believe in spirits, witches, spells, visions, or anything important that a sensible Ute ought to.
Charlie never wants to hear about the dead people who talk to me.
Which suggested a way for the mischievous old lady to spice up her otherwise bland breakfast.

 

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

DAISY PERIKA BAITS CHARLIE MOON

Why would an elderly woman who has benefited from so many of her nephew's kindnesses deliberately bite the hand that feeds her?

What a question—why
wouldn't
she?

But for those who demand a simple, direct answer, here it is: Daisy Perika harasses Charlie Moon because it's
fun
.

A somewhat mean-spirited form of amusement? A case could certainly be made for that point of view, and a jury of the accused's peers might well find tribal elder guilty as charged. Daisy would snort at such a decision. After all (she would ask), by what right does a dozen fussy old fuddy-duddies deprive a respectable senior citizen of a rare moment of innocent pleasure—particularly since the demise of her daily dose of Oprah? Tweaking one's uppity nephew is one of those inalienable Auntie's Privileges that is preserved in the Southern Ute Tribal Constitution.

*   *   *

While Charlie, Sarah, and Miss Whysper were dealing in their various ways with the stick-to-your-ribs morning meal, the tribal elder mentioned (with a calculated casualness) that in addition to their guest, the Columbine had been visited by
another
interesting person. “And only a few hours ago.”

Sensing an ensuing humiliation, Sarah cringed.
Oh, I hope she doesn't embarrass me in front of our guest
. A futile hope.

Charlie Moon stirred a second helping of Tule Creek Honey into his black coffee.
Here we go again.

Miss Whysper's ears had pricked at this report.
I didn't hear anyone come in.

Reading the question in the tourist's eyes, Daisy added, “It was another woman.” The practiced storyteller forked up a helping of scrambled eggs and gummed on it for a while. “This one showed up in my bedroom sometime after midnight.”

“A rather late hour for an arrival.” Miss Whysper took a ladylike sip of coffee that was mostly cream. And nibbled delicately at Daisy's delectable bait: “I suppose she's sleeping in.”

“I expect so,” Daisy said.
Six feet under, if Toadie did what I told her to.
She snapped off the pointy corner of a wedge of toasted Wonder bread. Masticated again. “But she's not sleeping
here
.”

Adding a quarter teaspoon of cane sugar to her cup, the guest smiled. “Oh?”

“No.” Wielding a three-tine fork, Daisy speared a plump chunk of ham. “
This
woman was dead as last week's roadkill.”

Her off-the-wall remark obtained a mixed result. Nothing whatever from Mr. Moon, a barely suppressed groan from Miss Sarah, and a wide-eyed stare from Miss Whysper, who was frozen with the coffee cup halfway between the table and a gaping mouth. “
Dead,
did you say?”

“You heard me right. As in
stone-cold.
” The Ute shaman waited for Charlie to offer the least hint that her report might be untrustworthy. A slightly elevated eyebrow would have been more than sufficient to provoke her counterattack.
Go ahead, you big gourd-head—make my day!
The instant he did, Daisy would strike back like an enraged viper—severely fanging her nephew.

Knowing her devious game, the poker player did not arch his eyebrow by a half millimeter, much less allow even the ghost of a smirk to find a place on his lips.

Which deliberate rebuff exasperated his expectant relative no end. So much so that Daisy lost her temper and played right into Charlie Moon's hand. “Well—what do you say to
that
, Mr. Know-It-All?”

“Please pass the biscuits,” saith Mr. K-I-A, and smiled serenely at his tightly wound relative.

Daisy shoved the biscuit platter at him.
Oh—he makes me
so
mad!

Miss Whysper was suspended in that state which is commonly described as speechless. But she was not without thoughts.
Three years ago, I awakened in the middle of the night to see a dead man standing by my bed. Or thought I did.

Sarah had something to say, and said it ever so gently: “I doubt that our guest is interested in hearing a ghost story.”

“Oh, you do—do you?”
Who cares what
you
think, Miss Manners!
Pointedly ignoring both Sarah and Charlie, Daisy turned her wrinkled countenance to the out-of-towner. “A lady who writes stories about cold-blooded killers ain't afraid of ghosts—is she, Miss Whisker?”

As Miss W. was about to open her mouth, Sarah nudged Charlie's aunt. “Whysper.”

The snake who'd been denied the opportunity to bite her nephew shot the Ute-Papago girl a poisonous look. “I will not!” She banged her fist on the dining table. “Why should I? Nobody in this house is napping.”

This small comedy provided a modicum of relief to all the diners except Daisy.

Miss Whysper's sweet smile outdid Moon's.
She is so cute.
“Please tell me about the ghostly visit.”

Now that's more like it.
Daisy got off to a good start, admittedly embroidering her account with a few stomach-churning bumps in the night, several spine-tingling banshee howls, and a description of the apparition that would have terrified Dracula, had the count happened by to drain a nutritious snack from some unwary contributor's vein. Having entirely captured the attention of Sarah and Miss Whysper, the storyteller launched into the raw meat of her eerie tale with the same gusto with which Charlie Moon was attacking his ham and eggs. Being of the firm opinion that a delicious meal deserves a man's entire concentration, the enthusiastic diner wasn't paying much attention to his aunt's latest ghost story.

After describing her initial conversation with the specter, Daisy was touching up and expanding upon the poor soul's belief that she was trapped in an automobile. “She said she was locked inside that truck to rot like some dead animal—and wanted me to go let her out.” The storyteller was deep into the well-known groove—and about to reveal how this trapped-in-a-motor-vehicle element was the critical clue to
identifying
the ghost—when a wide-eyed Miss Whysper suffered the same sort of affliction that Sarah had experienced when Charlie Moon announced his engagement to Patsy Poynter.

That's right—Miss Whysper
choked
—as if a morsel of her hearty breakfast had made a wrong turn in her throat and ended up in that dark tunnel labeled Windpipe on the anatomist's chart. Was the lady about to experience the same sort of bronchial crisis that had humiliated Sarah? Would she require a hearty slap on the back from Charlie Moon, and if that didn't do the trick, would the distraught diner be subjected to an on-the-spot tracheotomy with the razor-sharp C101 Manix 2 Spyderco folding knife that Dr. Moon keeps in his pocket for emergency veterinary surgery? Hard to say.

But things are looking a bit dicey.

Yes! It appears that we are about to witness one of those do-or-die surgical procedures whose drama will rival the fabled appendectomies conducted on WW II diesel-powered submarines by nineteen-year-old sailors who'd never so much as lanced a painful boil.

Or perhaps not.

Things are looking up. Miss Whysper does not appear to be on the verge of projectile vomiting, nor does her pale complexion appear to be taking on that bluish tint that suggests imminent suffocation. Indeed, she seems to have washed the errant morsel down her gullet with a gulp of disgustingly pale and tepid coffee.

The medical crisis averted, our plucky storyteller was about to pick up her narrative where she had paused during the guest's distress, and regale those present with an account of how she cleverly realized that the spirit in her bedroom last night was none other than Hester “Toadie” Tillman, whose fresh corpse had—only a few days ago—been pulled from the wreckage of a pickup truck. Daisy had just opened her mouth to commence with this gripping finale when, wouldn't you know it—

The #&$@% kitchen telephone rang. (Please excuse the salty expletive; that heartfelt oath is one of Daisy's favorites.)

Charlie got up to take the call, and seated himself at the wall-mounted telephone for what promised to be an extended conversation.

After draining her coffee cup, Miss Whysper excused herself and hurried away.

Well. If Daisy's laser glare could have burned holes through expensive gabardine, human skin, flesh, et cetera, the Columbine guest would have suffered severe physical injury. Thankfully, in this instance the old woman's injurious powers were limited to the psychic kind.

Which raises the question: is there any more-hurtful insult to an enthusiastic storyteller than a sudden, cruel display of audience disinterest—and right at the critical twist of the plot? Probably not. In this instance, being deprived of delivering her masterful and self-aggrandizing finale was like a hard slap in Daisy's face. It is hard to imagine an equal calamity to the tribal elder's vanity. But the offense that Sarah Frank was about to commit was at least a close runner-up.

Aware of Aunt Daisy's anguish, the compassionate young woman reached out to pat the tribal elder's hand. “Please don't leave me hanging—I want to hear the rest of your story.”

Our prior estimate of comparable distress is hereby retracted; being humored by the girl was even more mortifying than being ignored by Charlie Moon and abruptly abandoned by Miss Whysper—just as she was getting to the
good part
. Even worse, Daisy could not think of a graceful exit. The victim had no option but to continue her tale and explain how she'd deduced that the haunt was Toadie Tillman. What should have been a triumph was more like a slow, whimpering death, draining the narrator of the last grain of enthusiasm. The shaman's formerly riveting ghost story had faded to an anemic shadow of its former self—bled dry of the least essence of spine-tingling vitality.

Bad enough? Yes indeed. But the situation accelerated from worse to worser.

In an attempt to escape her embarrassment, Daisy Perika hurried to The End—when Sarah Frank patted her hand again and smiled like an indulgent mother complimenting a cute eighteen-month-old tot who has just offered Momma a hard-as-rock, dusty crust of bread in a plump, grubby hand—a nauseating morsel that the little darling had discovered under the dining table whilst foraging for a tasty beetle or moth. “My goodness—that was a
really
scary story!” Sarah effected a transparently counterfeit shudder. “Mrs. Tillman's ghost at
my
beside would've kept me awake for the rest of the night!”

Well. For a vain senior citizen, there are few humiliations more soul-piercing than being patronized by a wet-behind-the-ears do-gooder who apparently believes the pathetic elder is exhibiting symptoms of incipient senility. Daisy Perika's defeat was utterly complete. What could she do but roll her eyes at the ceiling and pose one of those pesky hypothetical questions to which there is no satisfactory reply:
Why do I even try?

 

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

A PRELUDE TO CALAMITY

And, despite all the grim forewarnings—not one that Charlie Moon, Scott Parris, or any other lawman hereabouts could have seen coming. Only one person in Granite Creek County had a general notion of the carnage that was likely to occur before the bloody day was done, and even that murderous felon was in for a few surprises.

*   *   *

While he conducted a muted telephone conversation with Columbine foreman Pete Bushman (who was calling from the Big Hat Ranch), Mr. Moon was unaware of Miss Whysper's discreet departure from the dining room, Aunt Daisy's distress with her ghost story's lukewarm reception, and Sarah Frank's big-eyed gaze, which was fixed on his back. When the routine business with Mr. Bushman was completed, the rancher unfolded his long, lean frame from the straight-back oak chair by the wall-mounted telephone—and noticed the empty spot at the kitchen table. “Where'd Miss Whysper slip off to?”

“Don't ask me.” Daisy barely refrained from telling her nephew where she
wished
the woman had gone. (Not heaven.)

Sarah glanced at the hallway. “To her bedroom, I think.”

“Thanks.” Charlie Moon headed down that twilight corridor—for once leaving Daisy and Sarah to tend to the breakfast dishes without his assistance. Tapping a calloused knuckle on the guest's bedroom door, he invited Miss Whysper to accompany him on a walk.

The lady accepted.

THE
WALKAROUND
(
SUBTITLE
:
A
SHAM
)

Like their breakfast, the morning stroll began innocently enough, with the proud rancher pointing his chin in various directions as he described the eighty sections of pasture over yonder, how the precipitation had been fair-to-middling lately on the eastern range, to which patch of buffalo or grama grass the Columbine cowboys would be moving a detachment of prime Herefords to graze on during the next few days—and so on and so forth. After exhausting that reservoir of conversation fodder, Charlie Moon resorted to listing the features and advantages of his “new” (three-year-old) horse barn, the comforts of the Columbine's shotgun bunkhouse, the practicality of the all-steel-machinery barn, the location of the blacksmith's shop (where quarter horses were shod and rusty old pickups repaired), and why he preferred one brand of tractor over another. Let it be noted that during this entire discourse, the lady did not yawn. Not one time. Which is evidence of either real class or incredible feminine fortitude or (more likely) a combination of both virtues. Like any deliberate man who likes to work his way gradually up to a point, Moon eventually got around to it. “Well—I suppose you'll be going into town today and start gathering material for your book.”