The Blue Corn Murders

by Nancy Pickard

  “Hiroshi Hansen.”

  “I’m Mrs. Potter.”

  “Okay. Well, thanks. It’s really a good luck charm? I mean, it really worked for you?”

  “As I said, I’m still here.”

  “Yeah.” He nodded, smiling at her. “Okay.”

  She couldn’t help but ask him, “Do you feel a little better now?”

  “Yeah. Kinda. Although I still have this weird feeling …” He glanced at her. “It’s like, one time I had this same sort of feeling, it’s like in my stomach, almost like I’m going to be sick or something, and one time I felt like this, and I found out my uncle died. He’d been sick. And he died, right at the same time I was feeling like … this.” He touched the key chain to his abdomen, to indicate where the bad feeling was. “It’s like, something bad is going to happen, or it’s already happening, like right now. What if it means somebody else has died? Like, what if it’s somebody else in my family?” He swallowed so hard she could see it. “What if it’s my mom or dad? Or what if I’m gonna die? On this camping trip? I hate this feeling, I really do.” He stared down at the key chain in his hand, took a deep breath, and then shrugged. “Maybe this’ll help.” He stuffed the talisman down inside the pocket on the front left side of his shirt, then changed his mind, took it out, and placed it into one of the tighter, more secure pockets at the back of his jeans, as if he didn’t want to take a chance on losing it. Then he looked at his watch and reacted with almost comical panic. “I gotta go!”

  Quickly she held out her hand to shake his, which was firm and smooth. “Hold on to the key ring, Hiroshi, and make a lot of noise in the woods. I hope you have a great time.”

  “You, too.”

  He trotted off toward the lodge, and Genia got up and headed off in the opposite direction, toward the hogans.

  Maybe, she thought, as she approached the closed door of hogan one, Hiroshi had only humored an “old lady,” as she knew she probably must look to him. But on the other hand, if he woke up in the middle of the night and started to feel afraid, maybe he would find the little silver circle and hold it and feel better. She didn’t know if there was actually any such thing in the universe as good luck or bad, but she had seen plenty of proof in her lifetime that a strong belief in either one of them could produce a particular attitude that almost ensured one or the other. A positive, confident attitude seemed to make “good luck” more likely; a negative, tentative attitude almost guaranteed “bad luck.”

  She reached for the iron door handle.

  If he had been her son, she couldn’t have done more.

  Sometimes, Genia thought, as she started to pull the door open, the only thing that adults can give to children, as they go off into the world, is their own sense of confident trust in the future. She hoped she had passed that on to Hiroshi. She decided not even to think about the fact that it was a sterling silver key ring.

  Fourteen

  “Oh, Genia, hi!” She walked into the hogan to discover that Teri Fox was down on her knees looking under Genia’s own pillow. And that Judith Belove was quickly moving her hands away from Gabby Russell’s cosmetics kit. Judith started straightening things here and there, as if she were trying to pretend that she hadn’t been doing what she had obviously been doing.

  They both looked flushed.

  “I lost some shampoo,” Teri said from her crouched position.

  “We were just looking for it,” her friend said, with a nervous smile.

  “I thought it might have fallen onto one of the beds.”

  “I thought maybe Gabby picked it up by mistake.”

  Genia acted as if she hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary about the little tableau she had just walked into. “I have plenty of shampoo,” she offered, “which I’d be glad to share.”

  Teri quickly got to her feet, brushing off her hands.

  “Thanks a lot,” they chorused.

  Genia crossed over to her own belongings, to gather together the water bottle, camera, and few other things she wanted to take on the hike. She hoped it was only her imagination that made it look as if her possessions had shifted slightly, as if someone had picked through them in her absence.

  Conversation in hogan one was a little stilted after that.

  When they all walked back toward the main lodge together, Genia felt the two friends were practically stumbling over themselves to be congenial to her. It was clear they were horribly embarrassed, which, Genia thought sternly, they richly deserved to be. Did they honestly think she would hide shampoo under a pillow?

  But by the time they reached the long veranda, she was ready to give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they really had been innocently—if rather tactlessly—searching the room. Genia’s initial feeling of suspicion and indignation softened into amusement. That must be some great shampoo, she thought.

  Gabby had descended from the woods and was sitting in a rocking chair off by herself at one end of the veranda, looking moody. Lillian and Madeline were rocking side by side, carrying on an animated conversation. Genia regretted to see that the two Dallas teachers had cornered the irascible trustee and appeared to be giving her an earful about something—no doubt the tale of Naomi and the letter with the misinformation in it. The trustee appeared to be taking it all in with a look of profound satisfaction that Genia found unpleasant to gaze upon, so she looked away.

  Susan Van Sant stood alone and quiet just inside the doorway, but then she stepped back out of sight, into the dining hall.

  After that, the group was all there, except for Susan, to wave a merry good-bye to the kids, who were all piling into three big golden vans. Naomi O’Neal came out of the dining hall to see them off, too.

  A tiny woman wearing a white apron came around one corner of the building in time to join the impromptu farewell committee. At first Genia mistook her for a child who’d better hurry if she wanted to catch the vans. Then she saw the “child” was wearing a chef’s apron, and only then did it sink in that she was staring at a petite adult, a woman under five feet tall. Her black hair, cut boy-short and pushed off her face by a white terrycloth headband, only heightened the impression of extreme youth. Staring a bit, Genia decided she was probably closer to thirty years of age. It was only the woman’s small stature that might cause one to confuse her with a child; in fact, she had an adult body and an interesting face, bony and full of planes and shadows, that appeared almost somber. Unlike most of the other adults gathered around the veranda who were grinning and waving madly, the one in the apron stood silently, her arms folded across her chest, frowning in concentration. Genia glanced quickly away when the woman suddenly looked around and caught Genia staring at her.

  From the driver’s seat of the lead van, Jon Warren waved back at everyone, flapping a sheet of what looked like computer printer paper out the window. He yelled to Naomi, “Are we sure about this schedule now, Naomi?”

  “We’re sure!” she yelled back.

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure, Jon!” She sounded embarrassed at his insistence, and in front of so many people. From his window he grinned appeasingly and nodded. “Just checkin’ one last time, chief!” He glanced back at the two vans behind him. “Okay! Round ’em up, and head ’em out! Ride ’em, cowboys!” In a cloud of gravel dust, Jon pulled away, followed by the other vans, each driven by a teacher who didn’t look very happy to be behind the wheel.

  In the back window of the second van, Genia glimpsed a handsome boy with black hair standing on end. She waved at him and got in return a big grin and then a flash of silver held up for her to see.

  “Bye, Hiroshi,” she called, and sent him a wish: “Be safe.”

  When the dust cleared from the road, Naomi O’Neal called out to all the women on the porch, “Is everybody ready to go? Take your last trip to an indoors bathroom, grab your packs, and then let’s take a hike into history!”

  Genia saw she had remembered the water bottle but neglected to put water in it. She hurrie
d back through the dining hall into the L-shaped alcove where the food was laid out cafeteria-style for meals. There was a soft-drink dispenser there, where she pushed her empty canister under the water spigot.

  On the opposite side of the now-empty and gleamingly dean food trays was the kitchen, entirely open to her view and hearing. While she waited for the water to trickle down, she counted five kitchen workers, all in white aprons, and all gathered around a handsome woman who was perched regally on a high stool. It was, Genia saw, the Medicine Wheel trustee, Martina Alvarez. Her black trouser suit fit her elegantly, her dyed black hair sat atop her scalp like a permanently styled wig, and her back was straight as a cookie sheet. In contrast, the kitchen workers generally looked as if they’d been steamed over a pan of boiling water. Genia saw red faces, flyaway hair, and the respectable disarray of people who have been laboring hard under pressure.

  They were all talking at once.

  The trustee appeared to be taking notes on a pad she held in her left hand.

  Genia overheard the words “morning memos,” and “always changing her damn mind,” and “drives us crazy,” and “waste and expense.” She heard Naomi O’Neal’s first name repeated, and there was no doubt about the object of the anger boiling out of the kitchen workers.

  Just as Genia’s bottle topped off and cool water spilled down her wrist, the same petite, aproned woman she’d seen outside entered the kitchen by the back door. Young as she was, from her first stern words it was clear this was the redoubtable chef, Bingo, of whom Genia had heard so much praise.

  “What’s going on here?”

  Her kitchen staff looked as startled as birds and flew off in all directions to their posts.

  Genia shook water off her hand and slowly and with great care and conscientiousness began to screw the lid back on the bottle.

  The chef strode over to stand directly in front of the stool where the trustee had enthroned herself. Even sitting down, the older woman loomed taller than the younger one. Still, it looked to Genia like a dead-equal standoff of intimidating personalities.

  “What are you doing, Mrs. Alvarez?”

  “My duty as a trustee.” The reply was dry and cool, clearly and deliberately enunciated. “I am interviewing employees on the subjects of waste and mismanagement. It is, I am sure you will agree, Ms. Chakmakjian, congruent with my fiduciary responsibility as a member of the board.”

  “We’re busy in here, Mrs. Alvarez. You need to interview my staff, you tell me about it first, and we’ll make an appointment, assuming I can manage to find the time for it. You’re about to miss your tour, you know. The van’s ready to depart.”

  “I am not going with them this morning.”

  “Is that right? We packed your snacks and a lunch for you. You want to talk about waste? How about starting there? Next time you decide to cut out of a scheduled meal, you let us know ahead of time, how ’bout that?”

  Genia, who hoped she was invisible, saw the trustee look down at her notebook. “Your people tell me that Naomi—”

  “You want to talk about Naomi, we’ll do it when she’s around to hear it. Otherwise I’ve got nothing to say”—Bingo gestured toward the ovens behind her—“and a lot of work to do.” Pointedly, she added, “Should we expect you for dinner?”

  Martina Alvarez stood up, getting down from the stool carefully, as if she didn’t want to muss her suit. In a carrying voice, which Genia was sure she wanted everyone in the kitchen to hear, she said to the chef, “You may want to remember, Ms. Chakmakjian, who your real employers are. Naomi may be your day-to-day boss, but she is not, ultimately, the one who is in charge here.”

  “Bingo! Can you come here?”

  One of the kitchen workers called out so urgently that Genia half-expected to see the sink on fire. Bingo responded immediately, leaving the trustee and rushing to the side of her employee. They entered into an intense, hushed consultation, although there didn’t appear to be an actual emergency. It occurred to Genia that the kitchen worker had managed, in a quick-thinking and kind of desperate way, to prevent his fiery little boss from shooting back a response they might all have lived to regret.

  Genia watched Martina Alvarez turn and walk with measured dignity toward the very alcove where she stood with her overflowing water bottle in hand. The trustee walked into the area, noticed her presence, smiled coolly, and said merely, “Hello.”

  Genia called upon her own reserves of sixty-four-year-old dignity and responded in kind. “Good morning.”

  As she followed the trustee out, a few steps behind, she heard the chef call out in the kitchen, “Who turned off my music?”

  Bingo encountered Susan Van Sant again, this time at the coffee machine only moments after her own confrontation with Martina Alvarez.

  “You’re having coffee?” she asked meaningfully.

  “The doctor says decaf’s okay.”

  “That’s what they said about—”

  “Never mind, Bingo. One cup of caffeine-free coffee won’t kill me or the baby.”

  “Why weren’t you outside waving good-bye to—”

  “Daddy?” Susan’s smile was impish, pleased. “Because Jon and I try not to be too obvious in front of the tourists. We’re going to be married, Bingo! He said so this morning, but I’m not supposed to tell anybody yet.”

  “Oops.”

  Susan grinned. “Oh, you won’t tell.”

  “I thought there was the small detail of a wife.”

  “Oh,” said the archaeologist, blithely, breezily. “Her?”

  Bingo laughed and shook her head. “You guys are trouble on wheels, you know that?”

  The other woman looked hurt. “You think so? We can’t help it if we fell in love, Bingo.”

  The chef merely shrugged. “Let me know what flavor to make your wedding cake.”

  “Almond,” said Susan, taking a sip of coffee.

  “The fragrance of cyanide. I know that from reading old Agatha Christie novels. You planning on poisoning the wife?”

  Susan looked a bit nonplussed. She thought of Jon’s joke that morning: We’ll have to kill her.

  “Don’t be silly, Bingo.” Susan took another sip. “I’m an archaeologist. The last thing I need is more dead bodies.”

  Fifteen

  Housekeeping swept—literally—through the hogans with cheerful efficiency that morning, starting about the time the women boarded their van.

  Two women and a man, armed with brooms, bags, rags, and cleansers, started together on hogan one, familiarly and quickly working their way around the various messes left by the tourists, like droppings from big birds. One of them dusted, another one picked up wet towels and hung them up to dry on wall hooks and then swept the floor, and a third checked for burned-out lightbulbs, empty tissue boxes, litter on the path, and flowers that needed watering around the outside of the hogan.

  The designated duster was by nature an incorrigible “neatener,” and so when she saw the little green-and-white-plastic bottle lying under Gabby’s belongings—and assumed it belonged to that particular tourist—she picked it up and went to the trouble of thoughtfully putting it into Gabby’s pink cosmetic case. She tucked it way down at the bottom, so it wouldn’t get loose again.

  “Come on!” her compatriots called to her from the doorway when they were finished. “Will you stop straightening everything up? They’ll never find their stuff if you keep moving it.”

  She hurried after them, making sure all the lights were turned off and the door was firmly snapped shut behind them. No money ever got wasted on electricity and no raccoons ever got into a building after she cleaned it. If Naomi wanted to run the place like a spendthrift, that was her business—and that’s exactly what this member of the housekeeping crew would tell that trustee at their appointment this afternoon.

  Only one full-size van was required for the small group.

  The archaeologist drove, and Lillian rode in front with her. On the bench behind them were Genia, Madeline, a
nd Gabby, while Teri and Judith had the back bench all to themselves. Their feet rested on coolers that were reported to hold a picnic lunch. Additional coolers of beverages were stuffed into the space behind the last bench and the back door.

  As they bounced along, driving farther and farther down unmarked dirt and rocky roads, the cool morning air blew pleasantly through the open windows, keeping the van comfortable in spite of the rising sun. They were going, first, to Half Watch Tower and the Two Spruce Settlement, or so Susan had informed them as they boarded. After lunch, the women would climb higher, she promised, up to some petroglyphs she wanted them to see at a ruin she called Last Man Standing.

  “I’m already hungry,” Madeline Rose remarked in the van.

  It did, in fact, already seem a long time since breakfast.

  Genia wondered, only half-facetiously, if Teri and Judith could be trusted not to sneak into the coolers and eat the food. If they got caught with a cooler lid up, would they claim they were searching for shampoo?

  The women rode in the van for more than an hour, first past farm fields that were still green even in late September, and then climbing higher into Gambel oak and aspen forests that were starting their swift turn into autumn colors of rust and gold. The women talked quietly to their seatmates and pointed out sights of interest to one another.

  Genia learned that Madeline Rose, a real estate saleswoman in the Denver suburb of Aurora, was thirty-eight years old, married to a man whom she described vaguely as being “in management,” and had no children, nor wanted any. She let drop hints that of the two of them, husband and wife, she was the real moneymaker, the more successful one, and that he had to be constantly prodded—by her—to get ahead in life. Genia would have been willing to reciprocate by sharing bits of her own history of a long, happy marriage, children, and the years of widowhood since Lew Potter had died eleven years ago. Her seatmate didn’t, however, ask any questions that might elicit such responses, and Genia didn’t want to bore her if she wasn’t interested.