A Murky Murder

by Constance Barker

  “Sure. You told me you had a dream about a man hanging himself, a guy we barely knew. I thought it was weird.”

  Charli let herself think back, pushing through the pain. The professor had been an odd man who had lived in China for many years. One night, for no reason she understood, he appeared in her dream. She was in the professor’s office and he looked up at her. The old woman had nudged her and pointed to him. “He needs to tell you something,” she said.

  She went up to the man and saw fear in his eyes. “What is it?”

  He stared back at her for a few moments and then said: “Nü gui is coming for me. She knows what I did.”

  Charli felt a chill, like a cold front moving in and saw a woman dressed all in white drift into the room. The professor saw her and turned white. She pointed a finger at him and said, ‘I’ve come for you.’ There was some kind of swirl of light and she was gone. Across the room Charli saw the professor dangling from a rope.

  As she turned away from the sight, the old woman sighed. “Learn the power of dreaming,” she said, spouting her old litany.

  “How does that help you?” She asked Elle now. “I dreamed that a man hung himself in his office after he told me a Chinese demon was coming after him. He just told me her name. I had to look her up to find out who she was. I wasn’t even right about where it happened. He hung himself at home.”

  “But you knew the key points. In the dream he told you he had been doing something bad and was going to pay for it.”

  “A lucky guess.” They’d found out later that he had seduced a young student and got her pregnant. When he refused to help her, she’d killed herself.

  “I’m hitting a wall—I’m out of options. I remember you were trying experiments that might let you direct your dreams.”

  “I read a book on lucid dreaming, yeah. I didn’t get far.”

  “Would you give it a try? To help me? Your summer break is here and maybe we can use your dreams to find out what happened.”

  Charli bit her lip to keep from telling Elle about the strange coincidence of her request, her case, to Charli’s latest dream. That would just encourage her. “I didn’t have much luck.”

  “But if you worked with me, helped me dig deeper, got to know the people involved, maybe it would make your dreaming a useful tool.”

  “What are you really after, Elle? There is more to this than leaving the paperwork unfinished, or not paying a death benefit.”

  “It was the shock of seeing your face when she told me about the legend... I know that's just something my subconscious was churning up, but what if someone is using this legend as a cover for murder?”

  Charli was torn. She understood how Elle felt, but the connection between her dream and this visit was unnerving. She was guessing about the exact timing, but it sounded as if Elle saw her face while she was in the dream state. As much as she didn’t like thinking that way, Elle might be right. This might be what the old woman had been after her to try all these years. “How would you explain my involvement to people?”

  “I’ll call you a consultant.” That much was at least true.

  Charli sighed. “And how did you think we should proceed? So I dig into the legend a bit more?”

  “That and go with me to another round of interviews.”

  “Interviews?”

  “I need to get official statements from the police, the rangers at the park who searched for him, the guys who went fishing with the missing guy, his wife, and anyone else who might have a clue what could’ve happened to him.”

  “Have you thought of dredging the lake? It might be easier.”

  Elle shrugged. “Yes, I did. In case anyone asks, Reelfoot Lake covers 15,000 acres, with a maximum depth of 18 feet and an average depth of 5.5 feet. It is the only large natural lake in Tennessee. Estimates for dredging it are far more than the amount of the insurance claim.”

  Charli laughed. “So now you are stuck with me. I assume my role is not for public consumption? You don’t want your boss to know you are hiring psychics?”

  “Forget my boss. Do you have any idea how Lester would react if I told him you were helping me on this as a dreamer?”

  She laughed. “I don’t even want to try and picture that.”

  Elle picked up the menu. “Let’s get another dessert. We're going to need it.”

  That sounded great. “I’ll find something expensive.”

  “Take your best shot; I’ll bill the meal to the company.”

  “It would be more fun to bill Lester,” Charli said.

  “You are mean about him,” Elle said. “But he is stuffy. I’ll set up the times for the interviews and call you.”

  Chapter 3

  An Item for Pawn

  There are times when you feel life tugging at you. Most of the time when she felt it, Charli didn’t think it was usually anything important, and she thought it probably was always there. But once in a while, it got strong enough that she noticed the little edges of attraction and repulsion that swirled around her, nudging her one way or another. If you had a goal, a purpose, you could ignore them. But other times...

  That Monday morning, for instance, something vague, yet compelling, caused her to walk along a street she seldom traveled. She’d been to the local library to get a book on Indian legends from the area. It promised to shed more light on the Lake Woman. When she got home, she decided she would make a chicken stir-fry for lunch, but she didn’t have any noodles. It seemed silly to drive the two blocks to the store so she walked straight there. She bought the noodles and some wine for the evening. When she’d seen the wine on sale, the idea of curling up with the book and a glass of wine later in the evening sounded wonderful. Then, coming home, she found herself taking a longer route, one she’d never taken before.

  The new track took her along a peaceful, tree-lined street. When she got to the middle of the block, she came across a small and unfamiliar store. ODDS, MIDDLES, AND ENDS — PAWN, the sign said. She gave it no thought, but the odd assortment of things in the window caught her attention. There, among the old iron, the kind a person heated on a fire, a Monopoly game, a frilly dress, a bike, and a broken zither, in the very front, she saw a small fish carved out of a whitish stone, with one coal-black eye.

  Intrigued, she walked in. From inside the window was open; she picked up the fish and hefted it. There was a vague sense, a power radiating from it. It wasn’t strong at all. In fact, it was so subtle that she wondered if she was imagining it.

  “Do you like it?” A man asked from behind the counter. “It’s a new piece for us and unusual.”

  “It’s a Zuni fetish,” she said.

  The man behind the counter nodded. “You have a good eye—a trained one.”

  The idea struck her that he was flattering her, but that didn't matter. She carried it over to the counter and held it out, almost challenging him. “Why is it here in Tennessee? I don’t understand. The Zuni are from the Southwest.”

  The man laughed. “My neighbor moved here from Bangladesh and brought a number of religious carvings with him. They came a lot further than this fish.”

  She nodded. “But someone left this by the lake. To continue your analogy... if your neighbor left his religious carvings near a church...” She caught herself, interrupting her rambling. The familiarity of this fish distracted her. Where had she encountered it? Seeing it made her oddly uncomfortable—as if she’d forgotten something important.

  “It’s a public lake and that isn’t a valuable piece. Someone might’ve been wearing it around their neck.”

  She stared at him. A green neck. That’s where she’d seen it. How was that possible. She’d dreamed about the Lake Woman because she’d been reading about her, but this fetish wasn’t mentioned. She dreamed of it before she saw it.

  She rolled it over in her palm. It wasn’t incredibly well carved, but it had been done by hand. Perhaps the energy she sensed was from the carver’s spirit. “I suppose you’re right. Still...”
>
  “You’re still wondering how it got here.”

  “Yes. I’m just being silly.”

  “It seems that you have a reason to think this fetish is significant?”

  She wasn’t about to talk about her dreams with a stranger. “It’s about the history. Even this was made by some Zuni in Arizona or New Mexico. Then someone bought it here and lost it at the lake.”

  “Right.” He rolled his eyes, thinking. “Yesterday a kid brought the fish in to sell it. He and some buddies were out hiking by Lake Reelfoot and found it in the bushes. Unlike you, they assumed it was just a carved fish, but he hoped it might be worth a few dollars. Like you, I recognized it for what it was—a fetish. The kid was disappointed at what I offered. Hand-carved fetishes from the old days are worth quite a bit, up around two thousand dollars. He thought I was cheating him, but I showed him tons of them online... all modern ones, and no big deal. More of a souvenir, as you said.”

  “But you bought it.”

  Dorian, the pawn shop owner, sighed. “The truth is that I wasn’t going to.” He waved at his overflowing shelves. “The last thing I need is more inventory, but when I held it, I felt something.”

  It still vibrated in her head. “What?”

  “Just a vague sensation. So I thought I’d study it, look up its meaning, learn how it was used.”

  “And have you?”

  “I haven’t had a chance. Do you know?”

  “It’s a charm that is intended to attract prosperity and specifically, to bring fishermen luck.”

  The man laughed easily, amused at himself. “Then maybe I was overthinking it a bit.”

  “That’s easy to do with legends. So many are little more than simplistic explanations of natural phenomena. But we want them to be powerful enchantments.”

  “Especially me.” He stared at her. “I guess I have a vivid imagination. When it comes to that stuff, you seem to know your beans though.”

  “And I’d better. I have a Phd. in anthropology and I teach a couple of courses in myths and legends at UT over in Martin.”

  “Ah. A devotee of the wisdom of the ages.” He held out a hand. “And I’m Dorian Palmer, owner, and sole employee of Odds, Middles, and Ends — Pawn. With your interests, I’m surprised I haven’t seen you in here before. We get all sorts of strange and curious things that might be related to legends and myths.”

  She hadn’t even known the shop was there before that day, but it seemed rude to say that. “You do?”

  “Look around you.” He pointed to a shelf on the side of the room. “Why, right over there on the second shelf from the top, is a WWII toaster that, according to a persistent local legend, once actually worked.”

  “I think that’s one of those things you could test for yourself.”

  “Well, I checked the wiring and I’m not about to plug it into a wall socket and find out.”

  She liked Dorian’s irreverence and sensed that the joking masked something deeper.

  “I’m interested in buying the fish fetish.”

  “Not only a powerful charm but alliterative name as well,” he said. “Is there an Indian tribe that begins with F?”

  She considered it. “I can think of the Flathead, Fox, and Fond du Lac.”

  He laughed. “So I’d love to find a Flathead fish fetish.” He pointed to the fetish. “By all rights, seeing as it is a bringer of prosperity, I ought to make a bundle by selling it, shouldn’t I?”

  “Not if you want to sell it in this town.”

  “True enough. So I guess I’d settle for getting back the two bucks I gave the kid for it.”

  She got out her purse and handed him a five. “See, the prosperity charm is working already. You just made three. I’ll probably make ten dollars just carrying it home.”

  He smiled. “Magical.”

  As she held her new possession, Dorian Palmer cocked his head and clucked his tongue. “You don’t want to tell me why you want it, do you?”

  That stopped her. “What do you mean?”

  “As I said, I know it has some power, but nothing strong. Still, somehow it was enough to draw you here, to buy it. I knew you’d buy it the moment you touched it.”

  “So a shopkeeper's experienced eye?”

  “Add that to the way you clutched it and then your ability to talk about the myths with a knowing look that, in my experience, transcends book learning.”

  “Hey, I’m a teacher. Don’t go insulting books in my presence.”

  “I’m certain you feel whatever the power of that thing is way better than I do.”

  “It’s power? Are you a student of myths too?”

  He smiled. “Changing the subject? No, not of myths.”

  “Then?”

  He put his hands in his jeans. “I have a passion for apotropaic magic.”

  “Okay, showoff. Now that you used it you get to explain that term.”

  “Apotropaic magic? It’s a collective term for the kind of magic that wards off evil and harm. Lucky charms, fetishes, even mirrors intended to ward off the evil eye or dark spells or attract good luck.” He pointed to the fish. “Like that.”

  “You’re a magician?”

  “Not at all,” he laughed. “I’m just a fan, a collector of the objects that the shamen of various cultures use. They vary so much, and each is as an expression of people’s hopes and fears. I’m not interested in the baggage that goes into sorting out the conflicting stories of why they work. It would be too much work for me, as I’m not sympathetic to their power, the way you are.”

  “Sympathetic?”

  He smiled. “You seem able to sense the confluence of an object and a myth.”

  “Is that what I do?”

  “Tease if you want.” He reached out and touched her hand that held the fetish, closing her fingers around it. It grew warm. “If you can articulate it, I’d love to know what the power is. I don’t have your gift.”

  “Gift?” Charli felt dizzy, was caught up in a rush, an overwhelming rush of emotions. He was striking too close to the bone. He knew things... more than he let on. She decided to push back a little. “Look, you are making an awful lot out of some coincidences.”

  “Really?”

  “Here’s all that happened, and it isn’t all that remarkable. I was researching the Choctaw Lake Woman legend for my lecture. Then I had a dream about it, about her. When I saw the fish, it reminded me of the dream.”

  “That’s an amazing set of coincidences you dreamed up.”

  “Funny.”

  “You’ll have to agree that it’s a strange connection. You had a dream that brought you here so you could learn that someone seems to have mixed the magic of one culture into a story from another.” He rubbed his jaw. “Did you happen to have that dream on Friday night?”

  “Why?”

  “Because I felt something. A disturbing feeling came from Reelfoot Lake on Friday night. It’s been a long time since I felt that.”

  Charli’s heart pounded. Her own rationalizations about her dream seemed to be trapping her. First, she’d been confronted by Elle’s vision about her, and now this man and a disturbing feeling at the same time that she was dreaming. What was going on? “That’s an interesting way to see things,” she said. “Should I be wearing a tinfoil hat?” She still wanted to keep this man from seeing into her so clearly. His insight was invading her conscious.

  “I doubt the Shaman care much about tinfoil. By the way, if it’s not rude, what tribe are your family part of?”

  “There’s no connection to the Choctaw or Chickasaw,” she said. “My parents were Mescalero Apache.”

  “Near Zuni territory,” he said.

  She laughed. “You are pushing hard against a tenuous and bogus link. My father died when I was little and my mother and I moved out to Tennessee.”

  “But your heritage...”

  “Is practically nonexistent. My mother has never liked talking about the family. She was focused on the modern world of the wh
ite man and isolated us both from all of that.” It dawned on her where Dorian was taking this. “Are you looking for a connection between this Indian legend and my personal life?”

  “I was just considering the possibility that there might be one.”

  The line of reasoning made Charli uncomfortable. It cut too close to what was starting to feel like truth. Worse, the idea made the dreams personal. She wanted the dreams to be impersonal.

  He was looking at her, looking into her eyes. “In your dream,” he said suddenly. “You saw her—the Lake Woman.”

  She sighed and held out the fetish. “She gave me this. Told me to return it to the wife.”

  Dorian paled. “Of that fisherman who disappeared? It’s been so long...”

  Now that she’d said that much, it seemed foolish not to tell the rest. “The morning after my dream, someone asked me to help her find him.”

  “His family?”

  “No, it was actually his insurance adjuster,” she laughed. “And probably just another coincidence as well as a bureaucratic request.”

  “The insurance company wants you to find him?”

  She shook her head. “The adjuster, a friend does. I’m not sure I can help. Dreams don’t work well in forms.”

  “I suppose they don’t.”

  “She thinks that I can find him or help prove he’s dead.” She looked at the fetish in her hand. “I can’t believe I found this today.”

  “In your dream, she gave it to you?”

  “To return to his wife. For some reason, she thinks that the woman left it there.”

  Dorian nodded glumly. “This is oddly complicated. If you don’t mind, I’d like to stay in touch. I’d like to know how your dream translates. And if I can be of any help... well, I do know something about talismans.”

  Clutching the fetish far more tightly than necessary, Charli nodded. “That would be good. If nothing else, it might be nice to have someone to talk to who isn’t going to be called to arrange for a padded room when I talk about dreaming myths.”

  “Fascinating,” Dorian said. “Anytime you want, I’m ready to talk. This feels almost as if a door just opened into some other world.”