The Walt Longmire Mystery Series Boxed Set Volumes 1-4 (70 page)

* * *

“What if I want the special rather than the usual?”

Dorothy crossed her arms and smiled at me like a magician forcing a card. “The special is the usual.”

I nodded, looked at Maggie Watson, and raised an eyebrow. “I’ll have the usual special.”

She looked to Maggie. “Me, too.”

Dorothy opened the waffle iron, set up for Belgian. It wasn’t the usual usual. I looked at the menu absentmindedly and wondered, if I were a breakfast, which one I’d be? Probably the usual. “So, how are our abandoned safe-deposit boxes measuring up?”

She sipped her coffee. “Pretty boring, actually.”

“How much longer do you think you’ll be?”

“Maybe two days.” It was quiet in the little café. “How’s your case going?”

“Don’t ask.” A thought occurred to me, and I looked at the chief cook and bottle washer. “Hey Dorothy, who in this county is bigger than me?”

She was still but didn’t turn. “Bigger in what way?”

“Taller.”

“Brandon White Buffalo.”

I took a sip of my coffee, glanced toward Maggie, and dismissed that suggestion. “Anybody else?”

She sat the bowl against her hip and tilted her head. “There was a guy in here about a week ago, construction worker, really big.”

“Not a local?”

“No.”

“Working around here?”

“Maybe. Outside work; wearing those big arctic Carhartts.” She motioned to the farthest stool at the end of the serving counter. “Sat down there, kept to himself.”

Maggie was watching me prime the pump. “Did he say anything that might’ve given you an indication as to who he was or where he was working?”

She shook her head. “No, he hardly said a word, and it was busy.”

I decided to go with the big indicator. “What’d his hat say?”

“I don’t read every ball cap that comes into this place, life’s too short.” She poured the batter into the waffle iron, closed it, and then turned back to look at Maggie. “Asks a lot of questions, doesn’t he?”

When they had stopped steaming, she flipped the Belgian waffles from the iron, drenched them in maple syrup, and dressed them with confectionary sugar and a few strawberries for good measure. She slid the hot plates in front of us, reaching back for the pot after noticing our cups were about empty.

I started eating as she watched. Dorothy liked to watch me eat, and I’d gotten over it. Maggie seemed to be enjoying her usual usual. “You ever hear of Jolie Baroja, the cousin?”

She poured herself a cup. “Some talk about the ETA. He was over there for a few years during and after the war.”

“That’s a nasty little terrorist group for a priest to be tied up with.”

“Like I said, just talk.” She took another sip of her coffee. “He must be older than dirt. He did the mass at the Basque festival a few years ago in Euskara. As a matter of fact, I don’t think he speaks English, at least not anymore.” She glanced at Maggie, who was doing her best to ignore us. “You know what they say about the Basques; like a good woman, they have no past.”

* * *

I dropped Maggie off at the Durant State Bank and picked up Sancho at the office.

St. Mathias is near the creek where the giant cottonwoods tower over the aged stone buildings that make up the abandoned portion of the Pope’s compound. They built a new church back in the sixties, a really ugly one, the one I always associated with Pancake Day, but the old rectory and chapel still stood by the creek where they always had.

I froze as Saizarbitoria dipped his fingers in the water, knelt, and crossed himself. I stroked my beard and felt like a Viking, there to raid the place. I followed him down the aisle and passed through the sunlight that skipped onto the hardwood floor. The stone pillars stretched to a small gallery where there were ornate stained-glass windows. They were not the usual Jesus lineup but were odd, with strange depictions of biblical passages foreign to me; at least I couldn’t remember any parts of the Bible where Goliath stacked rocks or tiny angels flew around people’s heads.

We shook hands with the amiable blond-bearded priest and followed as he led us to the kitchen where Father Baroja was seated at a table with some hot cocoa. He paid us little attention as Father Thallon put the kettle on and pulled out a few more mugs. “Jolie, you know you’re not supposed to operate the stove without Mrs. Krauss.” The old priest gave no response. “We had a little accident about a month ago.”

I sat at the end of the table and studied the old man. He continued to look at his hot chocolate and pulled it a little closer as if we might take it away from him. He had a long face with a bulbous nose, dangling earlobes, and wrinkles that all congregated at his mouth. He looked like some ancient monk with a heavy wool cardigan that buttoned up around his neck. He could have been any of the hard men I’d seen on horseback in Mari Baroja’s photographs.

Gene Thallon had warned us that Basque was not his second language, or his fifty-seventh for that matter, but that he knew that the language had four distinct dialects, and that the vast number of grammatical tenses included a subjective, two different potentials, an eventual, and a hypothetical. I looked over at my secret weapon and hoped we could get out of there before Father Thallon had us diagramming sentences.

He brought over some cups for us and, with this ecumenical distribution of cocoa, the old priest loosened the guard on his own. It seemed rude to not say anything to the old guy, so I said hello.

He studied me for a moment but dismissed me for the cocoa. I looked at Father Thallon. The young priest smiled. “He can be a little incommunicative at times.”

“Kaixo, zer moduz?”
Saizarbitoria casually sipped his own hot chocolate and glanced sideways at Jolie Baroja after speaking.

“Zer da hau?”
The gravel in the old priest’s voice could have filled a driveway.

Sancho set his mug back down with a tight-lipped smile.
“Bai?”

Jolie Baroja’s head slipped to one side, and then he leaned in close to Santiago, placing a hand lightly on the young deputy’s arm.
“Ongi-etorri . . .”

They talked at an impressive rate for a solid five minutes before my translator turned back to me. “Was there anything specific you wanted to know?”

“What was all that about?”

“Cordialities. He thinks I’m a local, and I didn’t dissuade him.”

“Good.” I had watched Sancho carefully, the way he actively listened to what the old man had to say, didn’t interrupt, and maintained eye contact. It was all textbook and well done. It looked as though he had adopted the role of friend and ally with the old priest, a posture that would enable Jolie to speak freely within the coded language they shared.

I looked at Father Thallon, who had been watching the proceedings with great interest, and then back to Saizarbitoria. “Can you gently ask him about his cousin, any family contact he might have had?”

The kid looked at me for an extra moment, then turned and renewed the conversation.

“I had no idea you had deputies that could speak Basque.”

I nodded. “We try and stay close to the constituency.”

The old priest glanced back at me, and Sancho weighed his next words carefully. “He doesn’t like you.”

I glanced at him and then back to Santiago. “He doesn’t even know me.”

“He thinks he does.”

I stood and gestured for the younger priest to lead on. “Well, we know when we’re not wanted.” He paused for only a moment and then led me back into the cathedral. It was small by modern standards, but exquisite. It had been pieced together by the sturdy and articulate hands of not only the Basque but also the Scottish, Polish, Czech, and German faithful. They had been tough men who had brought the old ways with them along with the skills to build beauty such as this. I followed the king’s-bridge truss system of hand-adzed beams that held the roof and admired the wide-plank floors with no board less than a foot wide; the altar and the adjoining walls were local moss stone with the lichens flourishing in the cool of the open stillness.

I took a sip of my cocoa. “Must be tough with all these Basquos around.”

“It’s difficult, especially with the older parishioners; they’re still not sure if I’m going to last.” He smiled. “They have a saying, the Basque. That just because the cat has kittens in the oven, it doesn’t make them biscuits.”

I laughed and looked at him. “You’re probably wondering why we’re here. We’re interested in his relationship with his cousin, Mari. Did you know her?”

Thallon nodded. “Mari? Yes, I did know her. I visited with her last Friday. A terrible shame.”

I nodded. “Do you know any of the rest of the family?”

“I’ve met the granddaughter, the one that owns the bakery. Lana?”

“Seems like a good kid.” The priest remained silent. “Have you met either of the twins?”

“I’ve met Carol; she’s come over to meet with Father Baroja a number of times.”

“How many times?”

He thought. “A half a dozen or so, over a lengthy period. I would imagine that it’s very difficult to visit more often from Florida.”

“Can you remember when she was here last?”

He thought some more and exhaled very slowly. “About two years ago, I think.”

I thought about it. “Was Father Baroja very close with Mari?”

“No.”

“That was a pretty definitive answer.”

“I think there was some tension there.” He glanced back toward the chapel as Saizarbitoria entered from the doorway.

Sancho asked about the church, the congregation, and the community. As they talked, my attention was drawn back to the stained-glass windows. The stone church wouldn’t get long beams of sunshine today; only short blasts of golden light that illuminated first one window, then another. I watched the seemingly random pattern and wondered if I concentrated would I get the message. Probably not.

When I looked back, Father Thallon was looking at me. “They have a name for you, you know.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The Basques around these parts, they have a name for you.”

Saizarbitoria was all ears. “They do?”

We waited a moment, before the priest said it very carefully. “Jentillak.” They both laughed.

* * *

I adjusted the heat in the truck and looked at the Basquo. “Well?”

“What do you want to know first? There’s a lot of ground to cover.”

“When is the last time he spoke with his cousin?”

“Nineteen seventy-nine.”

I stared at the fog on the inside of my windshield. “That takes care of a lot of the other questions.”

“That was the last time he saw her alive.”

I turned up the defroster. “And what does that mean?”

“She comes to him in his dreams.” He misinterpreted my stare. “He said that she visits him when he sleeps, that she asks for forgiveness. The dreams he described were very vivid, very detailed.” He turned and smiled at me; he was a handsome kid. “I think the old man may have some demons.”

I thought about my own dreams, about the house and the scarf. “Don’t we all.”

He adjusted his jacket and mindlessly fingered the knob of the glove box. “He said she was immoral. That he had tried to save her his whole life, that the family considered her their greatest failure.”

I drove across the unplowed snowpack of Durant’s side streets. Santiago studied the road ahead. “The old priest doesn’t like you because he thinks you’re Lucian.”

Of course. I nodded and thought about it. “Well, he and Lucian probably didn’t get along.” I thought about filling the kid in, but it still seemed early, so I changed tack. “The old guy seems pretty sharp?”

He paused, the way I was learning that he did whenever you did something to him and he wanted you to know that he knew it. “Well, yeah, kind of.” Santiago sniffed and glanced back at the dash as the windshield began to clear. “He told me to be careful, that there were
laminak
in the room.”

I turned to look at him. “
Laminak
?”

He chewed his lip. “Fairies.”

I sighed and made a turn. I had the Old Cheyenne, he had the fairies, and it was all in how you looked at it. “Anything else?”

“I think that about covers it.”

I pulled out onto the main drag and started for the office, barely being missed by an inattentive truck driver. He slowed after he saw the lights and the stars. “All right, what the hell does
Jentillak
mean?”

He smiled to himself, happy to know something I didn’t. “There are these dolmens, like Neolithic monuments, all over the mountains back in the Basque lands.” He continued to smile. “The
Jentillak
are a people that once lived alongside the Basque. One day a strange storm cloud was seen in the east and the wisest of the Jentillak recognized it as an omen that their time had ended. They marched off into the earth, under a dolmen still there in the Arratzaran valley in Navarra.” I glanced at him, and he savored the moment. “Jentillak means giant.”

I drove along silently and thought about it. “Giant, huh?”

“Yeah.” He looked back out. “There was a Jentillak who was left behind whose name was Olentzero, and he explained that they had all left because
Kixmi
had been born.”

I nodded. “Who was this
Kixmi
character?”

Santiago looked out into the slight sifting of snow and Christmas lights. “Jesus.”

* * *

I dropped Sancho off at the office just as Vic was heading out to a chimney fire on the south side of town. I waved as Saizarbitoria jumped in her unit, and she flipped me off.

It was a quiet day at Durant Memorial, with only a few cars in the lot. “ Janine, is Isaac Bloomfield still wandering around in here?”

She traced a finger down the register and smiled. “You’re in luck, he’s making his late morning rounds.”

I thought about the eight-five-year-old man who had been knocked unconscious only two days ago. “His rounds?”

She nodded. “He has been stalling out in the B Ward dayroom about this time.”

I leaned against her counter and rested my chin in the palm of my hand, happy to discover the Doc was human. “Well, we’re none of us getting any younger.”