Max was shaking his head before Father John had finished the question. “Denise wasn’t gonna sell that lady nothing, so she would’ve been wasting her time. I sure wasn’t gonna send her to Denise. More than likely, somebody got real mad at T.J. for holding up jobs out at the gas fields. People need jobs around here, you know. I figure somebody was out to teach T.J. a lesson. Man’s pretty broken up. Blames himself ’cause Denise was the one who got killed when it was supposed to be him.”
He cleared his throat and peered into the space between them, as if a new thought had pushed into his mind. Then he said, “You probably heard, Father, things weren’t so hot between her and T.J. Now he’s gone off to the mountains to grieve. Vera’s been calling all over the rez, asking if people seen him anywhere, wanting him to come home. She don’t understand how it is with warriors. T.J.’s blaming himself ’cause it was his job to protect his wife. So he’s grieving hard. He’s asking the spirits for a vision so he can know what he’s gotta do next. He’s gone where nobody’s gonna find him, and he’ll come back when he’s good and ready.”
What the elder said made sense, Father John thought. It was logical. And yet, he had a sense of things left unsaid in the way that Max kept his eyes on the vacant space, as if there was more—something he didn’t want to put into words. Father John felt as if he’d run into an alley, certain of a way out only to find a brick wall that he couldn’t get around.
After a long moment, he gathered up his jacket and hat, got to his feet, and thanked the elder for the information he’d chosen to give. “Please don’t get up, grandfather,” he said as the old man fiddled with the handle to the footrest. “Stay where you are.”
“Come back anytime, Father,” Max said.
They might have spent the time discussing the weather, Father John thought, waving his hat toward the old man. He let himself through the door and hurried through a corridor of sunlight to the pickup, shrugging into his jacket as he went. A sense of futility weighed on him, a heavy load. He’d had a hunch, and the hunch was wrong: Max Oldman hadn’t sent Christine to Denise. Christine could have been on her way to meet any one of dozens of Sharp Nose descendents when she disappeared.
20
VICKY SPOTTED THE large, black letters painted across the plate glass window at the end of the strip mall: GREAT PLAINS INSURANCE. She drove down the row of vehicles in the parking lot, past a dress shop with naked mannequins in the window, past a beauty salon with heads bobbing under the dryers inside, past a deli where a man in a leather jacket was holding the door open for a little kid with yellow, curly hair. She pulled into the vacant space with a sign on the sidewalk: RESERVED FOR GREAT PLAINS.
The evergreens in the planters on the sidewalk seemed greener in the October sun, the leaves on the spindly trees around the periphery of the lot were a deeper shade of red. Even the air seemed lighter, tinged with gold. Vicky made her way to the glass door and stepped into an entry with plastic chairs pushed against the window and a counter blocking the way to a corridor. On the wall behind the counter were five or six black-and-white photographs of smiling faces with a row of names below. Over the photographs, a banner read, TRUST YOUR FRIENDLY GREAT PLAINS AGENTS.
A short, pudgy-faced woman who looked as if she’d been a teenager not long ago emerged from the corridor. “How can we help you?” she asked, setting both hands on the counter and pulling herself upward, as if eagerness had propelled her to her tiptoes.
“I’d like to see one of your agents,” Vicky said. She had no idea of the agent’s name. White woman, blond, works at the insurance agency in the strip mall over in Riverton, was all that Vera’s friend had said.
“Mr. Ringer isn’t busy at the moment. I’ll take you to his office.” The receptionist rolled back on her heels, shrinking at least an inch as she moved to the end of the counter and reached for the wood gate.
Vicky glanced at the photos. Four men, three women. Two of the women were brunettes. One was blond. Below the photo was a name.
She said, “I’d like to speak with Marnie Rankin.”
“Marnie? She’s on conference call.” The receptionist walked back and peered down at a phone on the ledge below the countertop. “Looks like she might be done. I’ll check to see . . .”
“Oh, Val!” Another woman came down the corridor, waving a sheaf of papers. She was tall—about T.J.’s height, Vicky guessed—with long blond hair cut in layers about her face and the kind of makeup that made her face look flat and colorless, except for the black mascara on her eyelashes. “I’d like you to contact . . .” She looked up. “Sorry, I didn’t realize you were busy.”
“This woman”—a nod toward Vicky—“wants to see you, Marnie. You got the time?”
Vicky could almost see the image of herself in the woman’s eyes: Indian, dark skin, black hair, nicely enough dressed in a dark wool coat, possibly able to afford insurance.
“Follow me, please.” The woman thrust the stack of papers at the receptionist, then opened the gate and led the way down the corridor. The sound of men’s voices—a loud bark of laughter—floated through the walls. “Call me Marnie.” She threw a glance over one shoulder. “Our agency does a lot of business on the rez. I’m sure we can help you.”
Vicky followed the woman into an office with a pair of small chairs in front of a desk wedged between two filing cabinets. Sunlight flared across the papers on the desk and dropped onto the floor, carving out a white triangle in the blue carpet. Behind the desk, the window framed a view of the green Dumpster in the parking lot.
“Have a seat,” Marnie Rankin said. She perched on the chair behind the desk, pushed an assortment of papers aside, and clasped her hands over the blotter. “I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage. You know my name, but I don’t know yours.”
“Vicky Holden,” Vicky said, dropping onto one of the visitor’s chairs and fishing a business card out of her bag. She handed the card across the desk. The office was suffused with an aroma of flowery perfume. She unbuttoned her coat and watched the other woman’s expression cloud with wariness as she studied the card.
“So you’re a lawyer?” Marnie Rankin tapped the card against her palm. The wariness gave way to a blank, unreadable expression, as if she’d taken out a towel and wiped all reactions from her face. “What can I do for you?”
“I’m here about T.J. Painted Horse,” Vicky said. No sign of recognition, not the faintest twitch of a muscle.
Vicky pressed on: “I believe you know T.J.” A leading question, she knew, but all she had was gossip, a rumor passed on by a friend of T.J.’s sister. Rumors could be wrong.
The business card stopped tapping. “I know a lot of people on the rez. I told you, we have a lot of Indian customers. Mostly we sell them auto insurance.”
“I believe you know T.J. personally.”
“I may have sold him an insurance policy. Look . . .” A new energy surged through the agent’s voice, propelling her forward against the desk. “I read the newspaper about T.J.’s wife getting murdered last Monday night. So what if I knew T.J.? What’s this all about?”
Vicky allowed the silence to settle between them a moment before she said, “You and T.J. were having an affair, isn’t that right?” A desperate gamble, she knew. She was playing hunches, probing for anything that might prove T.J. couldn’t have murdered Denise and stop the concern gnawing like a tiny animal inside her.
Marnie Rankin got up and marched around the desk. For a half second, Vicky expected the woman to ask her to leave. Instead, she closed the door and went back to her chair. “What did T.J. tell you?” she asked, something new—fear? nervousness?—leaking into her tone. But her face remained unreadable, a chalk-white mask.
“T.J.’s been protecting you,” Vicky said, still probing for the truth, waiting for the slightest crack in the mask.
“Protecting me!” The crack started to appear now, a slow shattering until the mask dropped from the woman’s face. She tossed her head and gave a howl of laughter. “
Oh, that’s rich,” she said, wiping at the moisture in her eyes, creating little dark smudges around the rims. “If T.J.’s protecting me, how the hell did you know to come here?”
“T.J. didn’t involve you,” Vicky said. “I’ve heard the gossip on the rez.”
For a moment, Vicky thought that Marnie Rankin might burst into tears. The woman slumped against the back of her chair and closed her eyes for several seconds. “I don’t know what I was thinking to get involved with a man like that. Married. Indian. Where was it going to go? We’d have to keep it secret forever.” She fixed her gaze at some point behind Vicky. “Oh, I can see my mother’s face if I ever brought T.J. to her house.”
“T.J.’s family would have felt the same way.”
“What?” The woman locked eyes with Vicky a moment, then shrugged and looked away. “It doesn’t matter. T.J. and I are old history, he says.”
“Why don’t you tell me about your relationship,” Vicky said.
“What happened between us is nobody’s business.”
“It could be your business.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Sooner or later the FBI agent is going to hear the same gossip that I heard and he’s going to be at your front door.”
The woman winced, and Vicky pushed on. “A mistress might equal a motive for T.J. to kill his wife. The fed might even start thinking that the mistress was an accomplice.”
Marnie opened her mouth as if she were about to laugh. A tight, strangled noise erupted from her throat. “How dare you accuse me. . .”
Vicky cut in: “I’m telling you what the fed might conclude. I want to help T.J., Marnie, and I might be able to help you. When did you and T.J. get involved?”
Vicky could see the argument playing out behind the woman’s eyes. There was a moment when she thought again that Marnie Rankin would tell her to leave. Instead, the woman looked away and said, “T.J. came to the agency about six months ago looking for insurance.”
“What kind?”
“A life insurance policy.” The agent hesitated, then went on: “On Denise, for one hundred thousand dollars.”
Vicky felt her heart lurch. God, T.J., she thought. What have you done?
The woman was still talking, and Vicky tried to follow. Something about T.J. saying they were going to buy policies on each other. In case anything happened, they wanted to be sure their families were taken care of. “They always helped their families,” she said. “I liked that about him. We started talking, and we ended up going over to the deli for coffee. We hit it off. He’s smart and ambitious. Handsome,” she said, smiling at whatever memories were washing over her. “He was very interesting.”
“So he started calling you?”
“I called him.” Marnie gave her a frank look. “I’m not ashamed of it. If a woman finds a man attractive, there’s no reason she can’t call him.”
“He was married.”
“He wasn’t committed to her.” The woman spit out the words. “The marriage was over, except for the divorce.”
“Divorce?”
“T.J. didn’t tell you about that? Denise was going to divorce him. She’d had enough of his . . .” She paused. “Cattin’ around, she called it.”
Vicky fingered one of the buttons on the front of her coat. Another motive. Motives piling up like bricks. Denise had wanted to talk to her about filing for a divorce. What if T.J. hadn’t wanted a divorce? What if he’d thought that if Denise divorced him, it would hurt his chances of being reelected to the council?
T.J. had come over, the woman was saying. Tapping the business card into her palm again, punctuating her words. They’d gone to dinner, and one thing had led to another.
“You went to bed together.”
“What are you, a nun? What do you think happens when two people find each other attractive?” She shoved the business card into the pocket of the blotter. “The problem was . . .” she broke off, moisture pooling again in her eyes. “I fell in love with the bastard, which turned out to be just about the stupidest thing I ever did, but I couldn’t help it. I still can’t help loving him.”
“What about Monday evening, Marnie? Did you see him then?”
The other woman raised her eyes to Vicky’s. “What does he say?”
“I’d like to know what you say.”
The woman swallowed once, twice. “He must have gotten to my place about six and he stayed late.”
“He didn’t leave the office until after six-thirty,” Vicky said.
“So he got to my place later. Maybe around seven.” The woman shrugged. “I don’t remember exactly.” She slumped back against her chair again. The tears were starting now, like water spurting out of a faucet. “He told me it was over between us. What we had was . . .” She ran one hand over her face—eyes, nose, mouth. “It was nothing. He said what we had was nothing.”
“Why, Marnie? What happened?”
The woman gave a strangled laugh. “If you think he wanted to fix things with his wife, you’re dead wrong. He found somebody else. I knew that’s what it was all about. I always know,” she said, glancing away. “Somebody else comes along that’s sexier, better looking. I told him that whatever happened, whatever he decided, I would always be here for him. He can always count on me.”
“Can he count on you to lie for him?”
“What do you mean?”
“Can he count on you to give him an alibi?”
The mask returned, frozen and white, except for the black smudges below her eyes. “T.J. was at my place Monday evening. How could he murder his wife when he was with me?”
The question hung between them a moment, like sunshine drifting over the desk. Vicky stood up, pulled on her coat, and started for the door. She turned back. “I suspect the fed will be around to talk to you. My advice would be . . .”
“I didn’t ask for your advice.” The other woman was on her feet, like a martinet, stiff-necked and unflinching behind the desk.
“. . . to tell the truth.” Vicky finished the thought. “For your own sake, Marnie. Making a false statement to the fed in an investigation is a felony offense.” She wheeled around, opened the door, and started for the front. A door slammed shut behind her, and a gust of cold air whipped down the corridor.
In a couple of minutes, Vicky was turning into the thin line of traffic on Federal. Her heart was beating in her ears. She wanted to believe in T.J.—God, she wanted to believe in the man. He was an old friend. He’d stood by her in that dark time. He’d always been a man she could trust. She needed him to be innocent. Not a cheater and a liar. Not a man who’d bought a hundred thousand dollar insurance policy on a woman who was later shot to death.
God. God. God.
She pulled her cell phone out of her bag on the passenger seat and, stopping for a red light, tapped out Vera’s number. The minute that Vera picked up, Vicky knew by the tone of the woman’s voice that T.J. was still in the mountains. She went through the motions: asking about T.J., reminding Vera to have him call when he got back. Then she hung up and headed south out of town.
Turning into the reservation now. On automatic, it seemed, as if the vehicle had received an electrical impulse that sent it into a right turn, then, after a mile, a left into St. Francis Mission without any direction from her. She was holding her breath. She had to talk to John O’Malley.
“Be here, John,” she said out loud over the noise of the tires churning over the asphalt on the straightway through the cottonwoods to Circle Drive, sun and shadow rippling over the mission grounds ahead. She could almost sense his presence—the calmness and strength of him—as if he were sitting in the Jeep beside her.
21
FATHER JOHN TOOK the curve on Seventeen-Mile Road and eased on the brake, Giorni poveri vivea playing on high volume. Looming over the road ahead was the sign for St. Francis Mission. As the Jeep in the oncoming lane, red signal blinking, swung across the road, he saw Vicky at the wheel: the shape of her head, the set o
f her shoulders. He would know her anywhere.
He drove after her through the tunnel of cottonwoods, golden in the sun, and out onto Circle Drive. Vicky was getting out of the Jeep in front of the administration building as he parked next to her and hit the off button on the player, the notes of the aria lingering in the cab for a half-second, like a memory. It took him by surprise, as it always did, at how beautiful she was.
“I’ve got to talk to you, John,” she said when he walked around the front of the pickup. “As a priest. In private.”
He threw a glance at the SUV and three pickups parked on the other side of the Jeep. Father Damien had called a meeting of the volunteers who had agreed to help with the senator’s visit. There could be people in the corridor, craning their necks to see who was in the pastor’s office and speculating on the reason. Then he remembered that Catherine had an appointment at Indian Health Services this afternoon, and he’d told her it was okay to close the museum for as long as she needed.
“I know a quiet place,” he said. He took Vicky’s arm and guided her into Circle Drive. She seemed small and light beside him. He made himself turn away from the sun dancing in her black hair and from the familiar aroma of sage about her. He’d told himself that he’d forgotten all of that.
The museum was cool, with shafts of sunlight falling into the shadows and the dusty odor of the old building. Father John shut the door behind them and ushered Vicky into the office on the right. The instant he flipped the light switch, the fluorescent fixture overhead suffused the room in a white glow.
“Have a seat,” he said, but she was already pacing. Desk. Door. Window. She always paced when she was upset, or trying to work something out. How well he knew her, he thought. So many little things about her memorized.
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