“Anything else?”
“The man that shot at me and Lucy when we were in the camper, the one that wounded Lucy, I forget his name, but he’s the sheriff.”
“Farris Tribue?”
Parker slowed the car and turned off the interstate down a ramp.
“That’s right,” Gracey said. “A tall man with the Elvis hair. All geeky and gross. That’s the one who shot at us.”
“You’re sure of that, Gracey?”
“See what I mean? You never believe me.”
Parker assured her they did believe her. And what’s more they loved her very, very much.
Charlotte reached back and patted Gracey’s knee, but the girl recoiled from her touch.
“You don’t believe anybody. Everybody’s a liar. Making things up, imagining things.”
“I believe you, Gracey. One hundred percent. I swear.”
She tried to hold Gracey’s eye, but the girl looked away. So after a moment more, Charlotte turned back around.
“Call Frank?” Parker said.
“Not yet. We need to fill in a few more blanks.”
“You’re not going to tell me why we’re here.”
“If what I think is true, we should know in a few minutes. If it isn’t, I don’t want you getting in an uproar over nothing. Okay?”
Parker looked over at her, his stern face melting into a smile.
“Whatever you say, Officer Monroe.”
Five minutes later, as they pulled off the two-lane country road onto the college grounds, Gracey was quiet, looking out her window, occupied by the scenery.
Asheville Women’s College was a brick and ivy affair that seemed mired in an antebellum fantasy with Southern belles in hoopskirts and tight corsets moping for hours with their girlfriends about the total lack of suitable beaux.
From what Charlotte could see on the shady entrance drive that led to a plantation mansion and a cluster of charming dormitory buildings, the college occupied the only land for miles around that wasn’t mountainous.
The rolling green pastures were fenced for the dozen or so horses that nibbled at sprigs of new grass or basked in the clear spring sunlight. Snaking through a grove of poplars and maples were pathways overhung with trellises that would probably soon be tangled in wisteria and honeysuckle.
As they approached the main buildings, they saw college girls strolling here and there, hugging books to their chests and chatting with their friends.
“Jeez,” Gracey said as Parker eased into a visitor’s parking slot, “they’re all wearing dresses.”
“This is the factory,” said Parker, “where they make the Stepford wives.”
“Funny, Dad.”
“Don’t look now—we’ve been spotted.”
A uniformed security guard came marching across the lot and stopped just outside Parker’s door.
“Help you?” he said through the open window.
“We’re looking for a Professor Milford.”
The guard made no reply but walked to the rear of the car and jotted down their plate number.
He stayed back there and used his walkie-talkie.
“Are we under arrest?” Gracey said.
“It feels that way,” said Parker. “We may be needing a good attorney.”
“Too bad we don’t know any,” Charlotte said.
Parker smiled at her. What grieving he was doing for his lost son, he was concealing down in some secret canyon of his heart. The manly way. Only the faintest echoes of pain lurked in his eyes.
The security guy had red hair and a twitchy mouth.
“Dr. Milford’s in class,” he said, this time without stooping down.
“Is there somewhere we can wait?”
“You got an appointment?”
“Do we need one?”
“For tribal assessment you do.”
“What’s that?” Parker asked.
The guard made no reply, so Charlotte leaned across Parker and smiled up at the young man.
“We’re deciding on colleges for our daughter. Dr. Milford suggested we have a look at where she worked.”
The guard bent down and gave Charlotte a careful appraisal, trying for a moment to peer past the surface of her smile. But she kept it rigidly in place.
“Her office is over there. One-oh-four Tribue Hall. Somebody’ll help you.”
“Tribal assessment?” Parker said as they walked down the shady path.
“I wouldn’t go to this college for a million bucks,” Gracey said. “You can’t force me.”
“I just made that up, Gracey, so the guard would leave us alone.”
“Not for ten million dollars,” she said. “Look at all these goofballs.”
Gracey matched Charlotte’s stride, and the two of them followed Parker to Tribue Hall, a two-story version of the main house, an outbuilding that once might have housed the favored slaves.
In the foyer, a family of Native Americans sat on a bench in jeans and matching flannel shirts. The father stood up when they entered.
“I’m Rufus Youngdeer and this here’s my family. Sally, the wife. Flora Mae and Bailey. I come back with the right figure this time.”
With a shy smile, he extended a white envelope fat with greenbacks.
“She’s the wrong one,” the man’s wife said. “That’s not her.”
“You Milford? The professor lady?”
“No, I’m not,” Charlotte said. “Sorry.”
The man drew back the cash and hunched forward into a bow.
“Sorry,” he said. “Sorry, missus.”
She and Parker and Gracey trooped down the polished wood hallway and found 104 at the very end. Charlotte knocked, then tried the door, but it was locked.
“Kick it in?” Parker said.
“I’m tempted.”
Gracey stared out a hall window at the college girls in their spring frocks. Passing to and fro like bright reef fish cruising an aquarium.
“Hello?”
It was a woman in her late forties with pink cherub cheeks and flat blue eyes. Her curly hair was permed into a tight mass of jet-black curls. She was barely five feet tall but probably outweighed Parker by twenty pounds. Her black suit looked expensive but was a size too tight, buttons straining. She was studiously avoiding eye contact.
“We’re here to see Dr. Milford.”
“For assessment?”
The woman’s eyes were circling the room as though following the flight of an invisible bee. For a moment Charlotte wondered if she was blind.
“What’s an assessment?” Charlotte said.
The woman paused for a moment and her face hardened, then just as quickly it relaxed as if a jolt of voltage had passed through her system. She looked at the air just above Charlotte’s head and smiled.
“Tribal registry,” the woman said. “Validating roots.”
“That’s what Milford does? Decides who’s Cherokee, who’s not?”
“Oh, yeah. It’s big around here.”
“What does that cost?” Parker said. “Validating your roots?”
“Varies,” the woman said.
“A hundred dollars, five hundred?”
“Oh, more than that. I don’t know exactly. But they make it all back with the casino payouts in a couple of years.”
The woman giggled, then it turned to a real laugh. Then ceased abruptly.
“What’s so funny?” Gracey said.
Charlotte held up a hand and sent her a look. Don’t ask.
“I’m Charlotte and this is Parker, and this is Gracey, our daughter.”
“Oh, I know Parker already,” the woman said. “Remember me? I’m Sissy Tribue.”
The woman put out her hand, then immediately withdrew it, her eyes still following the spiraling path of the insect.
“Hello, Sissy. It’s been a long time.”
“A long time,” Sissy said. “A long time, yes, a long time.”
“You work with Dr. Milford?”
“I�
�m her gofer.” A smile came to her lips, then slipped away.
“Could we talk to you while we wait?”
“Don’t see why not.”
They followed her into a sunny office space. Books neatly shelved, a single framed picture on the wall. Sissy and her father, Uncle Mike, standing side by side in their Sunday best.
“We were very sorry about your father’s death.”
Sissy beamed at the wall.
“Oh, that’s okay. He was old, and he knew he was going to be killed. He expected it.”
“He did?” Charlotte said. “Why?”
“For telling Jacob Panther the truth about his lineage. But Daddy had to do it because it was the right thing to do. He always did the right thing. Daddy was a good man. He was good.”
Gracey stood at the window and looked out at the stream of campus beauties passing by.
“What was Jacob’s lineage? What is it your father told him?”
Sissy settled into the swivel chair behind her oak desk. Her eyes were roaming the upper quadrant of the room. She swiveled to the right, then swiveled back to the other side like a kid trying out new furniture.
“Genealogies, that’s hard work. Tracking down ancestors.”
Sissy chortled again. Then her face went neutral.
“It’s very, very hard work,” Sissy said. “Marriage records, birth certificates, Civil War pension archives, different reservation rolls the government did over the years. Land transfers, police records. These days, she’s super busy. So many people pretending they have Indian blood, wanting a cut of casino cash. But Dr. Milford can always tell who’s who. Weed out the bad ones.”
“Yeah,” Charlotte said. “The ones without envelopes.”
Charlotte was having little success reading the young woman’s face. Her empty smile, and those senseless laughs, and eyes that glistened without depth or guile.
“Tell us about Tsali’s relatives,” she said.
The question hit an inflamed nerve. Sissy stiffened and went still. Her dazed look hardened into rock.
“Is she okay?” Gracey said.
Charlotte dug through her backpack and found her wallet, flipped it open, and laid it on Sissy’s desk with the badge exposed.
“Sissy, I’m a police officer. You can talk to me. It’s okay, it’s safe.”
Sissy rocked sideways to glimpse the badge, eyes hidden, chin down.
“I’m not allowed.”
Charlotte drew her Beretta and laid it on the desk beside the badge. The least threatening threat she could think of. But Parker still looked aghast.
“When a police officer asks you questions, Sissy, you know you have to tell the truth. Or you could go to jail.”
“I know,” she said quietly.
“So, tell us about Tsali’s ancestors?”
Sissy considered it a moment more, and shot another glance at the pistol, then she reached into the collar of her blouse and drew out a key on a gold chain. Grunting, she wrestled the chain over her head. Her face was flushed, and sweat glistened on her upper lip, her jaw locked.
Parker leaned close and whispered angrily.
“You’re terrifying the girl.”
Sissy rose from her chair and walked on tiptoes around her desk, her hands raised to her shoulders as if she were being held at gunpoint.
Charlotte scooped up her wallet and pistol and tucked them into her backpack, and she and Parker followed Sissy out into the hall where Sissy used the key to open Dr. Milford’s office door.
She stepped through the door with her palms held at shoulder height.
Milford’s office seemed to be professionally decorated, with pale blue curtains and marching chairs and an Oriental rug that felt two inches deep. Her cherry desk was wide and gleamed with fresh polish; her leather chair was high-backed and deeply padded. On her shelves, the books were lined up with the spines perfectly flush.
Moving with the languor of the weightless, Sissy eased around behind the professor’s desk, slid open a drawer, and drew out a small booklet.
“That’s good, Sissy,” Charlotte said. “Now pass it over here.”
Sissy slid a slim document to the edge of the desk. Printed in bold type on its cover was THE TRIBUE PROJECT.
Charlotte opened the booklet and found that the pages unfolded to triple their width. On each one was printed an intricate diagram. Names with dates of births and deaths on solid lines that branched into other solid lines. Cause of death was listed for many of them or else labeled “unknown.” Fathers and mothers and their children. From a quick look, it seemed that each page covered maybe a quarter century. The booklet was apparently a single family tree that ran back to 1800.
Charlotte paged through the document for several moments, then stopped near the end, tilted it up for Parker to see, and jabbed her finger at a name on one of the final pages. Walkingstick.
Gracey appeared in the doorway and came over to see.
“What is that thing?”
“What we’ve been looking for. The list you mentioned.”
Parker said, “The last page. Look.”
And there were the three of them, the final three branches of the tree.
Diana, Parker, and Gracey Monroe.
“This is why you insisted on coming here? You figured this out.”
“I had a hunch.”
“You were the hardest, Parker,” Sissy said. “You and your mother and your little girl. Like somebody went to the courthouse and stole all your birth records and other documents. That’s what Dr. Milford thought, but she located everything eventually, on microfilm stored away in the basement of some courthouse. She’s good, she doesn’t give up. She found you like she always does. Sooner or later. Sooner or later. Sooner or later.”
“Oh, she found us all right,” said Parker.
Sissy watched the imaginary bee circle the overhead light.
“Aunt Roberta wasn’t nice,” Sissy said. “She wasn’t a good person.”
“She died last year about this time?”
“Everybody dies,” Sissy said. “My mother died, my father died. Everybody dies. Animals die. Pets and birds. There’s nothing that doesn’t die, unless you count rocks.”
“Tell us about Roberta. Why do you say she wasn’t nice?”
Sissy scrubbed both hands hard across her face as if trying to wipe away a nightmare. She took her hands away from her reddened flesh and said, “When Aunt Roberta was sick, Farris and Martin went into her room and closed the door and she told them things and when they came out they were different.”
“How were they different?”
Sissy’s eyes were growing cloudy and vague.
“They were angry after that. All the time. Angry, angry, angry.”
Sissy bent forward and chopped the side of her hand against Milford’s desk several times to demonstrate what angry looked like.
“There’s our major event,” Parker said. “The thing that set this off. Roberta dies.”
Charlotte nodded but kept her eyes trained on Sissy. The girl wouldn’t meet her gaze, but somehow she seemed to know that Charlotte’s eyes were bearing down on her.
“Do you know what your aunt told Farris and Martin?”
“My daddy told me. My daddy tells me everything. He never hides things from me like most people do. He treats me normal. He told me.”
“What did he tell you?”
“There’s sick blood in our veins. It’s the reason I’m like I am and the reason Farris and Martin are like they are and the reason Shelley is like he is.”
“Who’s Shelley?”
“He’s retarded. He’s got a mental deficiency.”
“Who is he?”
“He’s my cousin Farris’s little boy. Shelley. He’s mentally deficient.”
“How old is Shelley? When was he born?”
“That summer,” she said. “The summer of the fire, when camp closed.”
Parker’s jaw was working as if he were chewing a wad of gristle.
<
br /> “Shelley was born, then the fire happened?”
“Yeah, Shelley, then the fire. Shelley’s mentally deficient.”
Charlotte dug through her backpack until she found the silver locket. She clicked it open and passed it across the desk. Sissy snuck a look at it, then hid her eyes again, staring at the bookshelves.
“Who is that, Sissy? Do you know?”
“That’s Molly Tribue. She was a prostitute. Lived in a cathouse and got syphilis. Aunt Roberta blamed everything on her, on the venereal disease she got. But my daddy said she was wrong, the sick blood was in her veins before Molly ever went to the whorehouse. There was something wrong with her, and she passed it on. And we all caught it.”
“But your cousins didn’t believe that.”
“Martin and Farris were angry. Very, very angry.”
“And they blamed Tsali. And Tsali’s ancestors.”
“They were very angry. Men do things when they get that way. Bad things.”
Gracey had moved to the window and was holding aside the curtain to stare out at the silent sashay of all those entitled young ladies. Their spring dresses glowed more vividly than the blooming flowers, brighter and cleaner than anything natural.
Charlotte moved over beside her and put her arm over her Gracey’s shoulder. Her daughter, the last descendant of a Cherokee martyr.
The clack of heels echoed on the wooden floor of the corridor and Charlotte turned to see a rail-thin woman coming into the doorway. Her black hair was knotted in a bun, and her suit so severely cut it didn’t give her room for a full breath.
“Sissy? Is there some good reason why you’re in my office?”
Flustered, Sissy rose, and her face went scarlet. She took a deep breath and shut her mouth like a diver about to submerge. Eyes looking heavenward.
“And who are your friends?”
With painful shyness, Sissy began to sputter something, but Charlotte cut her short.
“We were just leaving.”
Milford had the impatient eyes and rigid mouth of a woman rarely challenged. There was nothing innocent in her face, and when she saw the pamphlet in Parker’s hand, all vestiges of civility vanished.
“What have you been doing, Sissy?”
She reached out and snatched the booklet from Parker. Then rattled it at the petrified girl and was about to launch into a tirade when Charlotte stepped between the professor and Sissy Tribue.
Forests of the Night Page 32
