Mrs. Crane grabbed a bottle of Resolve from under the sink and a microfiber wash cloth. She had a kit of sanitary supplies in a beaded make-up bag ready to give Molly, since she turned nine. Here we go, she thought as she headed into the living room.
When Mrs. Crane entered the room, she was shocked to see Molly hanging off the sofa. Her feet were on the cushion, but her head was on the floor. The top of Molly’s head was lying in a puddle of blood. She was wheezing, struggling to breathe, and she sounded like a growling dog. Mrs. Crane was wearing a Bluetooth, her cell phone was in her sweater pocket, and she dialed 911 before taking another step. The ambulance arrived in four minutes. Molly survived another twenty hours in agony and then drowned in her liquefied lungs.
Chapter Nineteen
The rising sun reflected in the still water of the swimming pool at the Fairfield Inn in Las Cruces, New Mexico. John Osborne swam a few strokes under the water and let it lift him to the surface. He had driven four hours from Tucson to meet a collector of Anasazi ceramics. Now, he wanted a little swimming to loosen up his tense muscles and a huge breakfast before meeting with the collector. With luck, he might have most of the day to himself, before Eva Yellow Horn arrived from Tucson.
The collector he was meeting claimed to have several nearly unbroken pieces of Tusayan White Ware. If the collector’s claim was true, she had a Sosi Black-on-White bowl from the twelfth century. The Sosi pots were made from coiled lengths of clay, built up, then scraped smooth with a stone or stick utensil. The design was applied on the air dried bowl in four distinct design sections. The four directions of the compass were a core element of the Anasazi spiritual culture.
Zia Dezigns was a small storefront gallery, east of the city, toward the Organ Mountains. The proprietor was A. Marco; the first initial stood for Abigail. She bought the building when she was only twenty-four. It was a furniture and leatherworks establishment with a huge open second floor where the pieces were constructed and sewn. Abigail lived on the upper floor, moving from one corner to another, as she rebuilt it into an open studio space with two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a bathroom. She rented out both sleeping rooms to artists and rented studio space to others who had their own living arrangements. The last part of the building to be remodeled was the first floor, behind the gallery. This became Abigail’s apartment, painted the colors of copper, red clay, and bleached bones.
Abigail embraced the Internet as most young, successful entrepreneurs do – early and proficiently. She sold textiles and pots made by artists from all over the country once e-commerce began its online boom. She preferred the auction to straightforward sales, and believed artists routinely undervalued their work, and their broker’s commissions. Artists trusted Abigail to love and respect their work and to stalk buyers like a mountain lion. By thirty-two, A. Marco was an art business phenomenon.
When Osborne stepped into A. Marco’s gallery that afternoon, he reached up and held onto the little bell hanging from the ceiling where the door would hit it and alert Abigail of a customer. Osborne wanted to nose around a little before meeting A. Marco, who was famous in certain circles. On the wall opposite the front door of the gallery was a floor-to-ceiling built-in display case, which housed her collection of bowls, scoops, seed jars, and a couple of effigies. They were replicas of the pieces Abigail kept elsewhere. Osborne picked up one of the brochures from a table on the side of the display.
The original pieces of Sosi Black-on-White ware in the A. Marco collection were obtained by Eustace Parker. That would have to be Abigail’s great grandfather, Osborne calculated. Lt. Parker was a member of the Texas National Guard in 1916, which was called into active service in support of General Blackjack Pershing’s Mexican Expedition to catch the notorious Mexican outlaw and revolutionary, Pancho Villa. General Pershing failed to capture Villa, but Lt. Parker returned home with the pots he claimed he discovered. Mostly likely, Lt. Parker bought the pottery around Columbus, New Mexico, the site of one of Villa’s raids.
However the specimens were acquired, Lt. Parker carefully packed them away when he was mustered once again into active service in 1917. This time, Lt. Parker joined with the 36th Division and was deployed to Europe early in World War I. Lt. Parker was killed near Suippes in October of that year. His collection of Anasazi ceramics sat neatly crated until A. Marco’s mother inherited them. The pottery became the soul of her collection, which grew with subsequent acquisitions. A. Marco had the original pots copied in 1995 and put the copies on display in Zia Dezigns. The originals remain secured in a vault in an undisclosed location.
Osborne’s nose nearly touched the glass of the display, when A. Marco entered the lobby of the shop.
“Dr. Osborne. It’s nice to meet you,” she said, extending a muscular, tan arm covered in silver and turquoise bracelets halfway to her elbow.
“I’m not a doctor, medical or otherwise,” he said. He seemed almost proud of his under-achievement.
“May I call you John?”
“Of course. These reproductions are brilliant. One might almost say criminal.”
“I hired a counterfeiter to make them. His engraving skills transferred to ceramics quite well, don’t you think?” A. Marco was proud of her collection and of herself. “When do I meet Eva Yellow Horn?”
“She’s on her way. She stopped at Las Cruces to visit family, but she will be here for the reception tomorrow night.”
“Excellent.”
“Any chance I could see the originals before then?” Osborne asked.
“None,” said Abigail. “Would you like some tea? I have some other pieces you might find interesting.”
Osborne followed Abigail to the back of the gallery. She was sinewy, like a long distance runner or a strict dieter. Osborne did not like the discipline required for either. He liked women with a few curves. That did not mean he would not cast his charm before A. Marco and see what happened.
* * *
Back in his room at the Fairfield Inn that afternoon, Osborne answered his cell phone. The caller was Dr. Arellano.
“Great work, Osborne, getting the Parker/Marco. You must be more charming than I realized.”
“It was all Eva,” said Osborne. He stepped out of his room onto the outside hallway that connected the rooms. He hated air conditioning. After years on desert digs, he became acclimated to heat. He thought air conditioned air stank and said so at every faculty meeting.
“How are you and Eva getting along?” Dr. Arellano asked.
“We’re okay. It helps to have a common goal. It also helps knowing the gig is temporary. How is my hole in the ground?”
“The dig is fine. I heard they found a mastodon skeleton last week, and it was wearing a saddle with a golden conch.”
“Very funny,” Osborne groaned.
“We’ve got lots of press lined up for tomorrow’s event. Take lots of pictures of the hand-over.”
“I got it, boss man.”
“This is huge for the university.”
“The pots are being returned to the people. That’s how Eva tells it. Getting these pots back is going to dry the Trail of Tears. I’m telling you, Eva is hard core.”
“That’s exactly what we need for this job.”
“Yeah, well, Eva could teach Jewish mothers in Brooklyn a thing or two about laying on the guilt,” said Osborne. He leaned over the railing in front of his room. A family had come out to the pool. The little boy of the family just executed an enormous cannon ball off the diving board. Drops of water reached up to the second story where Osborne was standing.
“Send me your pictures right after the reception, will you?” asked Dr. Arellano.
“Sure. Say, have you resolved my student problem, yet?”
“Working on it,” said Dr. Arellano. “Talk to you later, man.”
Osborne grabbed a couple of lungs full of natural air and returned to his room. He picked
up his camera and scrolled through the gallery of photos. He thought he had a shot of the dig that included Miss Tank Top. As soon as he found them, he pressed delete. “Are you sure,” the camera asked him. “Damned sure,” Osborne answered.
* * *
The second time Osborne was at the Zia Dezigns gallery, he was surrounded by artists, academics, and indigenous people. They mingled, munched on tiny sweet tamales, spooned posole from small hollowed gourds, and sipped agave tequila margaritas from hand blown stemware, which was available for purchase.
Abigail left the guests to show Eva Yellow Horn the treasures that were brought to the gallery for the ceremony. They were kept locked in the gallery office except for the few minutes of the actual hand-over and accompanying speeches.
Abigail was clearly star-struck by Eva, as she was an authentic indigenous creation. Abigail was aware of her low standing among natives, not because of her ancestor, but because she prospered from the plunder so openly and unashamedly. When they returned to the guests, Eva began by smudging Abigail and her VIP guests. Abigail had asked her to do so.
“It is my honor to return these artifacts to their people,” Abigail said to Eva, with a slight bow of the head.
Osborne usually balked at displays of the old noble savage theory of Indians. The notion that the first Americans were wiser and closer to their gods because they walked in quiet dignity upon the Earth was so much white-guilt crap. Osborne believed natives were no more noble, no wiser, no less selfish, and no less violent than any other group of humans. They did take it in the breech cloth at the hands of whites. There was no doubt about that, but in reality, the great decimation of Indians after Columbus was from disease. Europeans could hardly be blamed for the natives’ lack of antibodies to measles and smallpox. Yes, treaties were broken, and whites lied through their teeth. The relocations were beyond inhuman. Osborne believed cutting open a person’s chest with an obsidian knife and pulling out his steaming, beating heart – as was done to thousands of victims in Mesoamerica – was a crime against humanity. There was plenty of guilt to go around.
Osborne was glad to have something to do during the ceremony. He took picture after picture. Eva’s long hair covered her face in most of the shots. He tried to get her to push it back, but she ignored him. Osborne had not exactly grown close to Eva Yellow Horn on this trip. She was not an easy person to like in a conversation-over-coffee kind of way. Eva was never off; she never relaxed from her tense defense of her people. Watching her now with A. Marco and the press, cradling the ancient ceramics in her weathered hands as if they were tiny baby birds, Osborne was reminded of how much the old lady loved her people, living and dead.
She’s the Earth Mother, he thought. It has always been the old women like Eva who brought new life into the world and dressed the dead to leave it. Neither one is a job for the delicate. Maybe the old gal isn’t so bad.
Still, it made Osborne shrivel to think what secrets were in that old gray head. Eva Yellow Horn was a powerful force, and it was worth the effort to stay on her good side. Maybe, if he behaved himself and showed her proper respect, Eva would let him ask what she had hidden in that cave above the canyon where she kept her medicine house.
After the photo opportunity with the artifacts was finished, Eva, Abigail, and the handful of special guests returned to the gallery. Osborne slipped out early. He drove out of town with a bottle of Amidor and a bag of Oreos. With any luck, there would be a meteor shower over the sierra. Osborne was a spiritual man in his own, very pedestrian way.
Chapter Twenty
Theo Walcz, CEO of Socoro Pharmaceutical Solutions, was a first generation American. So pampered was he by his Polish mother that “his feet hardly touched the floor” as a child. His hard-working parents paid his way through college. He spent two summers in Israel during high school, and Theo fell in love both summers with different girls. For weeks after he returned, Theo kept kosher and went to synagogue. His religious experience, however, came when his Young Republicans went to New York, and he got to ring the bell at the New York Stock Exchange. He spent the rest of his life trying to attain the high of that moment.
Theo was not heartless. He sat with his mother in the hospital during her final illness. He read Soap Opera Digest to her. Between stories, he walked to the nurses’ station and flirted with the older ones. They thought he was an angel for being so attentive to his mother. Theo watched them prepare medication trays and asked questions about the pills they carefully loaded into tiny paper cups. He realized that every tablet, capsule, injection, IV drip, and suppository was golden. They were the elixirs of life, the water from the fountain of youth, the powdered horn of the immortal unicorn, and patients would pay anything, even hospital pharmacy markup, for the promises they made. Theo Walcz decided at a nurses’ station at Cedar Sinai that he would devote his life to making and selling medicines to a population that was both growing older, living longer, and craving ever more of the magic medicine that staved off death.
Rachel had never met Theo Walcz. She did not attend shareholder meetings, although much of her retirement savings was invested in Socoro stock. In the two weeks since the FBI nosed through her files, Rachel had done no real work. She went to meetings and talked to managers in accounting, representatives of the Schoolcraft Foundation, and one local television reporter from Baltimore whose husband worked for the Foundation.
There was hardly any publicity about the investigation of misappropriated Foundation funds, thanks mostly to Ted Fuller, except a small article in the business section of a couple of Connecticut newspapers. The Baltimore reporter never filed a story nor called back to schedule Rachel’s interview.
The embezzler was quickly discovered along with her partner in the Accounting Department. It was a boring tale of drug addiction and stealing to support a cocaine habit. Both culprits were put on unpaid leaves of absence from Socoro, and the rest became a jurisdictional fight between the FBI, the SEC, and other alphabet organizations. Socoro apologized to the Schoolcraft Foundation and offered to name them prominently in all print publications about ROMeze.
Socoro remained under investigation by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Private foundations were more forgiving when their money was misused, but the NIH gave out taxpayer money. Any university research project of a pharmacy company that saw their NIH money go away soon died of starvation.
Rachel was still under investigation, too. The FBI still suspected she was involved in the embezzlement of government research grant funds. Maybe, they wanted a bigger fish than a lab tech and a data entry clerk. Ted continued to tell Rachel she had nothing to worry about, to stay available, and tell the truth.
During the whole ordeal, Rachel and Ted saw each other often at work. They had dinner together once and kissed in Ted’s car afterward. They decided, jointly, that it was still too early in the relationship for sex.
Now, Rachel received an email from Mr. Walcz. He wanted to see her in the small conference room next to his office. The email was sent to Ted, also, as a “cc.” Would Ted be there, Rachel wondered. She remembered Ted told her that in the event of her being named in a lawsuit, he represented the company, not her. Should she ask him for that recommendation of a lawyer, now? She had a contract with Socoro. Suddenly, she wished she read the thing.
Chapter Twenty-One
When Rachel entered the conference room, Cella Troost rose from the table to greet her. An assistant sat behind a large Apple monitor. It must have been the biggest monitor Apple made because only the top of the assistant’s head was visible. She was entering something on the computer and was either multi-tasking or taking very detailed notes. Subject entered board room at 9:02 a.m. Greeted Ms. Troost, unenthusiastically.
“Thank you so much for coming,” Ms. Troost said. “I’ve been hoping we might meet, and now here you are.”
“Is Mr. Walcz joining us?”
“No, he has turned you o
ver to my care, and I couldn’t be happier. I feel we are going to do good work together and, maybe, become friends.”
Rachel shook the limp, manicured hand offered to her. She was always wary of someone who professed impending friendship within thirty seconds of meeting her. Of course, Cella Troost had the advantage of knowing who Rachel was.
“Is this meeting about the new clinical trials?” Rachel asked. She almost asked if the meeting was about the FBI but decided this woman might not know about the investigation. Cella wore black, tailored trousers, a crisp, white button down, and a coral pashmina draped precisely over her shoulders. Rachel did not look down, but she imagined Cella wore patent leather, kitten heel pumps.
“I’m the Marketing Director, and this is my assistant, Reyna. Please sit down. I see that Theo did not fully inform you about this meeting. I’ll start at the beginning. Forgive me if I am staring, but you are just about the most perfect person for what we are launching here today. Isn’t she, Reyna?”
Reyna kept typing, without looking up to verify whether Rachel was, indeed, the most perfect person. Apparently, her agreement was not necessary.
“What are you launching?” Rachel asked, careful not to include herself in the pronoun.
“You, my dear. We are launching Dr. Rachel Bisette, KOL.”
“KOL?”
“Knowledge Opinion Leader.”
“I see. That’s in place of Dr. Bisette, MD, PhD.?”
“Heavens! You have a Ph.D.? Get that, Reyna.”
Rachel saw the top of Reyna’s head bob. She must have been nodding behind that 27-inch screen.
“Please, sit down. Coffee, tea, chocolate?” Cella asked.
“I’ll get some coffee, thanks. Go ahead. Start at the beginning.”
Rachel moved to a sideboard and poured coffee into a Socoro mug with its maroon logo. She added some hot water to the coffee. She couldn’t risk a caffeine headache before she found out what Socoro was up to. She wanted to see clearly the advertising on the bus she was about to be thrown under.
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