A Murky Murder

by Constance Barker

  “You saw her.”

  “Did I?”

  “You told me you did. Is that what you see in your dreams? Is that what it’s like?”

  “I’m not sure what you saw. How can I know?”

  “It was spooky. I couldn’t keep from going to her when she called out. But it made no sense.”

  “Dreams are like that.”

  “Your dreams?”

  She sighed. “Just like that.” The coffee pot began to roar; she turned her attention back to the stove to pour the coffee into two mugs, handing one to Elle.

  She took it. “I’ll never tease you about your dreams again,” she said.

  Charli made breakfast and then, as they took down the tent, Elle asked the obvious question. “I got the crap scared out of me.”

  “On the plus side, you didn’t get eaten by a bear.”

  “True, but I hope you got something useful out of it.”

  “I’m not sure yet,” she said. “You saw how vague things are in dreams.”

  “She said he was in the lake... her new husband.”

  “Yes. But that’s not new.”

  Then she told Elle about her first dream, the one she'd had before Elle had asked her to work on the case.

  “That’s why you agreed.”

  “Partly. And now I need to let the turmoil settle and think about things, but I’m feeling like we took a step forward in the case.”

  “Really?”

  Charli laughed. “Really.” They started breaking down the camp, folding the cots and stacking everything outside the tent.

  “I can’t stand this, Charli. You need to share what you think you’ve learned.”

  “It isn’t clear. But some of the things are putting the pieces together in my subconscious. It needs to bubble up by itself, I can’t force it.”

  “Ah, that kind of progress.”

  “Well, there is one thing I am sure of—if there were poachers out there the night Carter Block disappeared, the three of them knew about it. It’s impossible to imagine that they would miss the ruckus, even if they’d been drinking.”

  “From his expression when he showed us the spot, I got the sense that Ranger Tanner already came to that conclusion on his own.”

  That was Charli’s thought too. “Probably. He’s no idiot.”

  Elle grinned. “And he’s rather cute, even if you won’t admit you notice.”

  Charli was happy to let Elle tease her. It was relaxing her. “I’ve made an important decision.”

  “About what?”

  “In my next life I intend to surround myself with dumber friends,” Charli said. “They’ll one-hundred percent be less perceptive.”

  “Friends who don’t see through you.”

  “Exactly.”

  Chapter 14

  In the Morning Light

  As Charli drove out of the park, she noticed the ranger station was open and Roger’s truck was parked in front. Although seeing him would be nice, she didn’t really have anything important to tell him and it would seem like she was making excuses to see him. Not with Elle there. If she was going to embarrass herself, she preferred to do it when it would give her a chance to see him alone. Still, she felt a small tug as the station disappeared in her rear view mirror.

  After dropping Elle off at her house Charli drove home to shower and change. Then she drove down to the pawn shop to return the gear and give Dorian an update.

  He smiled and shook his gray head as she came in. “How was the camping?”

  “The camping was better than I expected.”

  “The way you sounded when you got the gear, I doubt that was a very high bar.”

  She ignored the jibe. “And things happened, but I didn’t get the resolution I was hoping for.”

  “Who does?” He laughed. “And we are talking about legends and dreams, here. It’s hard enough to get that in daily life.”

  “True enough, but in my world, the dreams and legends are starting to get jumbled together,” she said.

  “How so?”

  So she explained how the Lake Woman and the old Indian woman had both shown up. “And, given that Elle saw the Lake Woman, it seemed to transcend dreaming. But she didn’t see the Indian, which is confusing.”

  “Maybe she was distracted?”

  “It was weird, too. While I was panicking that Elle might be in danger from a myth I’d dreamed, and therefore felt oddly responsible for, the Indian woman spoke to me calmly. She tried to make the whole thing a teaching moment.”

  Dorian walked with her out to the car. She opened the back and they started unloading the gear. “I have to say that does sound unnerving.”

  “On top of which, the Lake Woman didn’t provide any new information. I think she thought Elle was the man’s wife.”

  “So what do you know?”

  “Carter Block had a girlfriend and his wife found out about it and kicked up a fuss. She made herself a love amulet for the discussions and, according to her, they patched things up. He agreed to dump the girl and the marriage was back on. Then he went fishing with his two long-time friends, Shorty and Ralph out at Reelfoot Lake, which was kind of normal for them. Ranger Tanner verified that much. It turned out that there were poachers in the area, likely hunting deer. The fishermen claim they didn’t see or hear anything. In fact, the only thing anyone seems to have heard was that Carter woke everyone in the middle of the night claiming he heard a woman screaming. He went out to investigate, the buddies go back to sleep, and Carter is never seen again. The Rangers find tracks down by the lake and nothing else other than evidence of the poachers.”

  “Some interesting contradictions there,” Dorian said, concentrating.

  “I suppose that’s accurate. So after time passes, Elle comes to get me on the case and we learned that the Monday following his disappearance his girlfriend didn’t show up for work. She is nowhere to be found. We think she might’ve caught a plane to Mexico.”

  “And during your night at the lake, you had a dream.”

  “And Elle saw the Lake Woman or imagined she did, and since I saw her too, either she got into my dream, or I projected her, or something. Whatever it was freaked her out.”

  “And apparently this Indian woman thinks you can, and should, take charge of the dream,” he said.

  “She thinks I need to have a little sit down with the green girl and get her to calm down, not kill anyone else and see what I can learn.” She grinned. “I’m all for helping people, whether they are actually there or not doesn’t even matter, I’m not going to hold lack of existence against them, but if she isn’t real, I could wind up being declared totally insane. If she does exist, then she doesn’t mind killing people. Quite a lot of them.”

  “Apparently, your guide thinks you can deal with it, whatever the truth is.”

  “How can I trust her judgment?”

  He shrugged. “She’s been appearing in your dreams for a long time, right?”

  “Most of my life.”

  “Then it’s safe to assume she’s probably looking out for you.”

  “And if she isn’t?”

  He chuckled. “Then we have no idea what her powers are. The point being, she seems our best route, your best route, to some more information.”

  “Really?”

  “Unfortunately, without playing along, I don’t see how we can ever find out.”

  Charli slumped in her seat. “Somehow I knew you’d say that.”

  “That’s because, being a smart cookie, you’d already come to the same conclusion.”

  “There is that. As an additional bonus, she claims to be my grandmother.”

  “Any chance of that?”

  “That she is my grandmother? I don’t...” then an image of her mother popped into Charli’s head. She wore a worried look. It was an image from a moment when she’d been a little girl. “Right after we moved out here... I barely remember the move, but I had a dream.” With that, it came flooding back.

  C
harli lay in her bed watching her mother pace the floor, glancing at her with a stern expression. “What did this old woman look like?” Her mother asked. She sounded oddly concerned, as if the identity of the woman was more important than whatever the dream had been about. “Describe the woman in your dream.”

  She woke in her bed. She’d been walking along an unfamiliar ridge holding the old woman’s leathery hand. They were talking. Usually, the old woman said little, she was just there, a reassuring presence, somehow. The woman smelled of smoke and something else, something earthy. As they walked the woman pointed out animal signs and told her stories about the animals, what the signs meant. “Signs always have meaning,” she said. “Some meanings are just not meant for you.”

  Charli found the stories odd and although they were interesting, the reason, the lesson wasn’t always clear. One story was the wolf. The woman said that the wolf was their brother, yet in the story, he came to be fearful of people. The details were murky and the ending sad.

  “I don’t understand,” she told the old woman.

  “Sometimes understanding isn’t important,” she said. “Yet knowing the story is helpful.”

  It was confusing. “Why?”

  “You are questioning, just like your mother and yet more curious and more willing to listen,” the woman said, her eyes sparkling. “That is good.”

  Then she woke to find her mother’s face hovering over her, her concern visible. “What is it?”

  “You were talking in your sleep,” her mother said. “About wolves.”

  “No. She was talking about wolves, not me,” Charli said. “I was listening.”

  “She? Who were you talking to?” Looking concerned, her mother ran her fingers through Charli’s black hair. “Tell me.”

  “An old Indian woman.” Her mother pulled back and gasped. Charli felt the need to comfort her. “She was very nice and was telling me all about the animals, telling me their stories. She said...”

  Her mother took her hand and held it tightly. “I don’t want you to listen to anything that woman tells you, Charli,” her mother said. She sank down on the edge of the bed and let her face sink into her hands. “Don’t listen to any of it.”

  “She told me stories about animals,” Charli said. “I think she knows a lot about them.”

  “She wants you to... That old woman is trying to poison your mind. She doesn’t want you to stay here with me.”

  Clearly, her mother didn’t understand. “She didn’t talk about you, Mommy. It was just the animals.”

  “If you listen to what she says... she wants to take you away from me.”

  The child Charli touched her mother’s arm. “She just told me of the wolf and the signs of the animals.”

  “We don’t have them in our world, Charli. The old woman lives in a different place and doesn’t understand this world at all. She wants you to think about those animals and not about the things in our lives. So promise me.”

  It had seemed so important to her mother that Charli wanted to please her. “Okay. I won’t listen to her. I promise.”

  Tearfully, her mother turned to hug her. Hearing her sobbing was painful and Charli didn’t know how to make her mother happy. But the old woman was part of her dreams, and so was the world she talked about, the signs, the animals, the plants. She promised herself she wouldn’t disappoint her mother. She’d learn not to talk in her sleep. She’d never mention the old woman again. From that moment on, she would keep the two worlds apart.

  “Where did you go, Charli?”

  She looked up to see Dorian watching her, his eyes flickering with a mix of amusement and concern. “Somewhere in the past. I remembered an early dream, or right after it. That was the first time I saw the old woman in my dreams,” she said. “I can’t say more about it now.”

  Dorian nodded. “I understand.”

  She smiled at his kindness. “Perhaps you do,” she said. “On some level.”

  She wished that she understood her mother’s reaction. She would have to call her and find out what about that woman worried her. She knew that even though the woman was often in her dreams over the years, she never mentioned her again.

  Dorian was smiling, being reassuring and she began to feel that she was moving in the right direction, heading toward understanding what her dream life was about, what it meant and how it related to the world she was in when she was awake. That was good.

  At least she hoped it was. Reality and mythology were overlapping and she needed to learn how to control it, or at least interpret it. Perhaps it was just that, at night, her misgivings, as well as information, were spelled out in mythical terms. And yet, according to the myths, learning the truth, even searching for it, could unleash massive troubles on the world. Just ask Pandora.

  Chapter 15

  The Ubiquitous Fetish

  The next day, Charli called Elle. “I need to talk to Melly Block again. There are a couple of things I'd like to clarify.”

  “Fine. You pop on over and have a chat with her. You have my blessing. I’m on my way to Mexico.”

  “You found Christine?”

  “Not only that, but we found out that Carter Block took out another insurance policy with a different company just a few months ago. That policy named Christine as the beneficiary.”

  “So she has a motive for killing him.”

  “Assuming he’s dead and knew about the policy. Certainly, it makes the idea that he was giving her up a joke. You might see how the wife takes that news. And see if she knew that he was selling off the stock from his car lot even at a loss. The investigators said the books are a mess.”

  “Wow. I guess we missed out on a chance to get a deal on a car.”

  “He fired most of his sales force, so it appears that he was winding down the operation and getting all the cash he could squeeze out of the business. It sure smells like he was planning to disappear; he was burning bridges left and right. He needed to disappear because soon he’d be head over heels in debt with no cars to sell.”

  “So you think he made a run for it?”

  “That’s one theory and it needs checking out.”

  “And the other would be...”

  “That his wife caught wind of it all and either killed him or had him killed.”

  “We haven’t checked into his buddies closely. Maybe she worked with one of them.”

  “So investigate all those great theories. I feel like we are onto something.”

  “While you get a tan in Mexico?”

  “Hey, I’m the lead investigator here and licensed. I deserve some perks.”

  “While I do the work.”

  “While you figure out what that damn witch I saw out at the lake has to do with this.”

  “Maybe she did kill him. She confessed, after all, in a manner of speaking. Should I have her arrested?”

  “If you can manage that, then I’ll send you to Mexico on my dime.”

  Charli didn’t mind chasing this lead by herself and thought it might be even easier to confront Melly Block without Elle there.

  A quick phone call established that Melly would be happy to talk. “Anything to get the insurance company off the dime,” she said. “I’d like this settled.”

  The house looked the same as before, and so did Melly Block. Although she didn’t appear exactly grief-stricken at her loss, Charli knew that people grieved in different ways. Even if she was glad he was gone, that didn’t mean she’d killed him. As Melly led her into the house she took a closer look at the charms and fetishes.

  “You like my talismans?” Melly asked.

  “I’m interested in them,” she admitted. “I work with myths and legends and the fetishes are part of that.”

  “And it’s your heritage.”

  That caught Charli off guard. “Why do you say that?”

  “Two reasons. First, you’re obviously at least part American Indian and so, by definition, it is part of your heritage. Second, I can tell that you recogni
ze some of them.”

  “That’s more my education than heritage. I’ve studied them.”

  “I thought you were an insurance investigator.”

  “I’m helping with the investigation. But I teach cultural anthropology at the University.”

  The woman grinned. “Ever wonder why you chose that field of study?”

  “I found it interesting.”

  “But why did it attract you?”

  The question went deeper than Charli wanted to go. “Why is anything interesting?”

  “That’s easy,” Melly said as they sat in her living room. “Things are interesting to a person because they have a connection to them. It doesn’t matter if it’s airplanes or hunting...”

  “Or myths.”

  “Right. You are drawn to them. And, since myths aren’t inanimate, because they have a power of their own, there is a mutual attraction. I’d bet you couldn’t have studied anything else. Myths permeate your being, Ms. Gordon. You live, even dream them.”

  The insight was unsettling. “I came to talk about you,” she said.

  She snorted. “Fine, change the subject.”

  Charli held out the Zuni fish fetish. “I think this was yours.”

  Melly Block sat back, looking at it with obvious surprise. “I might have had something like it once.”

  “It’s Zuni. I was wondering how it got here.”

  “The one I had that was like it, you mean?”

  “That will do.”

  She turned her head, remembering. “On our honeymoon, Carter and I went to the Grand Canyon. I got him to rent a car and we went to see Four Corners. I’m fascinated by the shamanic goodies.”

  “I can tell.”

  Melly faced Charli, but the glazed look in her eyes suggested she wasn’t seeing her. She was seeing a younger self on her honeymoon visiting a historic place. “We went into several of the trading posts. I saw lots of lovely turquoise and silver pieces—squash-blossom necklaces galore. None of that was of interest to me. Then I found a fish like that one... crudely carved out of stone. The owner said it was a fetish that women carved for their fishermen husbands, to bring them luck.” Changing the subject brought Melly back to the present. Her eyes cleared.