The Blue Corn Murders

by Nancy Pickard

  “It’s not really true, is it?” Teri pleaded.

  Madeline opened her mouth, but Genia leveled her with a stern look, and she closed it again.

  Susan wouldn’t let them carry the discussion any further. Saying they had to make the top before sunset, she urged them on, starting off without them when they didn’t begin to move.

  Genia felt shocked at the news they had been given, but for some strange reason not entirely surprised. But she didn’t like what Susan was doing, and she agreed when Lillian objected, calling after her, “Susan! We have to go back! If they need to talk to us, we have to be there!”

  “No!” The archaeologist shouted angrily over her shoulder. “No, we don’t! Anyway, it’s too late now. You can’t. Can any of you find your way back without me? No, I didn’t think so. Not to mention that I have the keys. You’d better start moving now, or I’ll be gone and you’ll be lost.”

  “My God,” Judith said. “What’s wrong with her?”

  “What’s wrong with everybody?” Teri echoed, sounding near tears.

  But they all realized Susan spoke the truth. With nervous, worried glances at one another, they shifted their backpacks into place and followed their leader up the rocky slope.

  “She’s lost her mind,” Madeline said behind Genia. “Maybe she did it. Maybe she killed Gabby, and now she’s leading her only witnesses to the top of the damn mountain to pick us off, too. Hell, I’m not dressed for this.”

  Genia almost admired her plucky humor at that moment.

  “We’re not witnesses to anything!” Teri cried, behind Madeline. “We didn’t see anything!”

  But Genia thought that Teri might be wrong. Any one of them might have seen something important, perhaps even without realizing it. Wasn’t that the staple of mystery novels? The witness who didn’t know what she saw, and then was killed for her dangerous knowledge? It was also the staple of real life, she reminded herself; didn’t she read in the newspapers about unfortunate witnesses who were killed before cases came to trial? Fiction or nonfiction, it happened. She spoke to Lillian in front of her. “We ought to be going back.”

  From the head of the trail, Susan shot back, “Well, you’re not! Not until tomorrow. So climb, dammit!”

  Genia heard the sounds of someone beginning to cry. She dropped back far enough to squeeze side-by-side near Teri on the trail, so she could comfort the frightened woman. “I’m scared,” Teri whispered, miserably, “and I’m tired, and my back hurts, and I don’t know what’s going on, and I hate this!” Again, she seemed to be the plainspoken honest one who voiced what everyone else was thinking.

  “I know,” Genia said in heartfelt sympathy. “Me, too.”

  “This is ridiculous,” muttered Madeline. “Let’s jump her and hold her down and grab the keys and force her to take us back.”

  “You’d get your outfit dirty, Madeline,” Judith said.

  “Oh, well, never mind.”

  They actually managed to share a laugh, behind Susan’s back. It was as if, Genia thought, none of them—not even she herself—could believe that what was happening was real. She knew, however, that her left shoulder hurt where her backpack was rubbing against it. That was real, and she almost welcomed the pain, which connected her to something substantial she knew she could count on: more and more discomfort before this strange and endless day was over.

  There was a purpose, it turned out, to Susan’s forced march. She didn’t, apparently, want to push any of them off the cliff. Instead, when they reached the summit, she turned to face her mutinous hikers, who dropped to the ground on the pine needles, groaning and cursing.

  “We’re going to put it all together,” Susan told them, looking every bit as exhausted and grim as they. “In a Talking Circle. We were the first people to see her. We’re the only ones—except for Jon and Naomi—who knew her. We’re going to figure it out, dammit, who killed Gabby and where Jon and the kids are.”

  They stared at her; she had to be kidding.

  “Impossible,” Madeline declared flatly. “Take us home, dammit.”

  “Susan!” protested Lillian. “We can’t possibly accomplish that. We don’t know enough. We don’t know anything.”

  “We might,” Genia said to their obvious surprise and dismay. “Truthfully though,” she added, “I would be surprised if it would prove to be enough. That’s a very ambitious plan, Susan. Don’t you agree the police are more likely to draw out of us any assistance we could give?”

  “Not the police!” Teri pleaded. “Maybe we can do it.”

  Lillian and Susan cast her curious glances, Genia thought, but of course they didn’t know about the LSD.

  Judith rushed to support her friend. “At least we could try it Susan’s way. She has us here, and as she said, we can’t easily leave without her. What have we got to lose by trying?”

  “Quite a lot,” Genia responded with some heat. “We could pollute the testimony we will give the police. We could influence one another’s memories and opinions. We could waste time that could be spent solving this crime.” She pushed herself to her feet and looked the archaeologist squarely in the eye. “Take us back.”

  “We can’t get back to the van by dark,” Susan said calmly.

  Genia sat back down again, heavily.

  But then Lillian stood up. “Susan, this is crazy. It’s a mistake.”

  Nobody stood up and joined her, though several nodded.

  “You participate,” Susan told them, “all of you, or I leave you here on your own.”

  “Susan!” Lillian sounded shocked.

  But the young woman stood her ground, her eyes filling, her lips set in a firm line. Genia heard desperation in her next words. “We have to find Jon. I have to. And you have to help me do it.”

  “All right,” Genia said, thinking that the quicker they got this exercise in foolishness over with, the faster they could go back to the campus where they might be needed. She looked at Lillian, who nodded in understanding. “You win, we’ll do it.”

  “When we get back down to civilization,” Madeline said to Susan, “I’m gonna sue your ass.”

  Genia would have laughed, if she hadn’t seen Teri Fox crumple onto the rocky, painful ground. She was quietly and helplessly crying as if she couldn’t take this any longer.

  But then Madeline suddenly recalled what the others were too tired to remember.

  “Wait a minute! We’re not dependent on Susan. Bingo’s coming. With our dinner. Screw you, Susan, we’ll ride back with Bingo.”

  That made Genia feel better, but Susan only laughed, as if she knew something they didn’t. When the chef arrived shortly after they crested the ridge, they saw the reason for Susan’s laughter.

  “Damn,” Madeline said for all of them.

  Bingo wasn’t driving a roomy van. She had her own car: an old VW “bug,” from which she had removed all the seats but the driver’s, so that she could pack it with coolers and other supplies. There was no way the five of them were going back in that.

  “Boy,” said Bingo Chakmakjian as she alighted from her cramped little car, “is everybody pissed at you guys!”

  Thirty-one

  As twilight cast the slot canyon below them into purple shadows, and while a little sunlight lasted on top of the ridge, the women chose their spots to place their rubber mats, pillows, and bedrolls, which Bingo had brought along with the food. Lillian advised Genia to join her a good fifty yards away from the cliff’s edge.

  “You wouldn’t want to get up to pee in the dark and get confused and walk off the edge.”

  The very suggestion gave Genia the willies. Obediently, she followed Lillian to stake a claim on a parcel of pine needles in a clearing.

  Judith and Teri wandered off saying they were going to look for wild flowers. “And a taxi,” Teri bravely joked.

  Madeline found a thin patch of late sunshine and lay down in it, her body on the soft fragrant pine needles, her head on her backpack, her eyes closed, looking i
mprobably relaxed.

  Lillian dug a paperback book out of her backpack and propped herself against a boulder to read.

  But Genia set out to do what none of the rest of them wanted to do: talk to their “captor.” Her excuse was her artifacts.

  “May I?”

  The archaeologist sat on the very edge of the cliff, her legs and feet dangling over. In the last of the sunshine, she squinted up at Genia and nodded. Cautiously, Genia lowered herself to sit beside Susan. Then she held the plastic bag out for her to see.

  “What’ve you got here?” Susan asked, taking it.

  “It’s what surfaced on my ranch.”

  Her treasures received a cursory glance, a shrug, and were handed back to her. “Hohokam. This red on buff is their distinctive pottery, but the seashell is the giveaway. They etched it, covering their design with pitch and then applying fermented cactus juice—probably—as an acid to eat away the shell around the design. What you are holding, Genia, is one of the first examples of the art of etching in all of history.”

  Genia felt amazed at her own good fortune and impressed at the talent and ingenuity of those ancient artists. “Susan, where I found these, I detected three sunken circles in the ground. What do you think—”

  That drew a slightly more interested look. “Yeah? They had large communities, but they also had outlying settlements for their agriculture. Those sunken round places are indicative of a little settlement, probably a single family, maybe two or three families. Outliers. I’d say you had some farmers there a long time before the land ever saw cattle.”

  They had a little discussion then—temperate, instructive—about why her artifacts weren’t from any other culture, not the Anasazi, the Mogollon of New Mexico, the Fremont of Utah, or the Sineaqua of northern Arizona, and of what else Genia might possibly expect to find there, along with its relative importance and what she could do to report and preserve it. When the air between the two women seemed mild enough, Genia ventured to say, “Susan? This action you’ve taken. I suppose you know it could be construed rather seriously.”

  She felt the woman beside her stiffen.

  “Like, kidnapping, you mean?” Susan laughed derisively. “Genia, come on, there are more of you than there are of me. If you really want to take the keys, you’ll take them. Who are you kidding? How do you think it’s going to sound when you tell the cops that one woman, all by herself and without a weapon, made five helpless little females climb that big bad mountain and eat steak dinners at the top and hold a conversation around a campfire and sleep out all night under the stars.”

  “Logically, that’s true, Susan, but the idea of us physically tackling you? You’re pregnant, for one thing. And none of us wants to hurt you.” Genia’s voice turned a shade wry. “Even if some of us might like to kill you, so to speak. No, we’d let you ‘force’ us to spend the night here, before we’d do anything that might harm any one of us. You know that perfectly well, I suspect, otherwise you’d never have attempted this foolish stunt.” Genia heard her own words sounding braver and reminded herself that she was seated right at the edge of a thousand-foot cliff with a young woman who was not behaving in the most rational manner. “We are going back tomorrow, aren’t we?”

  “Sure. I just want this Talking Circle. Before everybody else ‘pollutes’ our memories. Can’t you do this for Gabby?”

  “It’s not for her, though, is it?”

  “No. Genia, I need to tell somebody a secret, and I need to tell it soon. You’re here. It may as well be you.” Without waiting for a reply, Susan went on eagerly. “Genia, I may have found the true, provable solution to the mystery of why the Anasazi abandoned their dwellings.”

  Genia could only stare at her. “What?”

  “Yes, please don’t tell the others, because it will come out soon enough. I’ll tell you this much: It would prove the Great Gambler legend of the Navajos to be true.” She smiled slightly. “You have artifacts, Genia? So do I, hidden away where nobody, not even Jon, knows where to find them. I have to get the money to launch an expedition to retrieve them, and to study them, and then—if what I think is true—I have to introduce the proof to the scientific world in just the right and acceptable way, so that my peers will respect me and my findings. I’ve got it, Genia, I know I have the solution and the proof of it.”

  “How—”

  “Pure blind luck. Oh, hell, I’ll tell you what it is—Jon knows this much—just not where it is. It’s a pot, Genia, three feet tall, perfect condition, full of ancient gambling tokens, and it is located—completely intact—in a hidden canyon where the pictographs on the walls depict the exact story of the ancient legend and the uses of the gambling tokens in sacred ceremonies! At least I’m pretty sure that’s what they depict. They will have to be studied by Native Americans, if I can get any of them to cooperate with me; and the pot, the walls, the pieces will have to be dated, all of this before I dare go public with it. Oh, Genia, it’s so important, do you see?”

  “Oh, yes, I do. But why tell me?”

  Susan glanced at her with brimming eyes. “If Jon’s … gone … even dead—then I’m the only person alive who knows. Now one other person knows.”

  Genia felt astonished, overwhelmed. “I feel as if someone has just told me where to find the key to the inner chambers of the pyramids.”

  “Not where.” Even with tear-filled eyes, Susan’s smile was impish. “I’m not that trusting. Or generous. As far as I’m concerned, if I die tomorrow, the location can just die with me. I’ll be the legend then, the archaeologist who had the answer, and nobody else will take my credit from me.”

  Genia closed her mouth on comments about the fleeting quality of vanity and asked instead, “What does this have to do with the Talking Circle you want us to hold? And finding Jon?”

  “I think Jon’s going to be the next director of Medicine Wheel, Genia. And if he is, I’m guaranteed the money and authority I need to launch my expedition. Naomi’s been backing other horses: the archaeologists who claim it was ecological conditions that precipitated the abandonment. I can’t depend on her to open her mind to my ideas, or even to believe me if I tell her what I’ve found. She might think I’m making it up, just to wrangle grant money out of her. No, Jon’s my man in every way. He has to be alive, and I have to find him. I don’t want anybody else coming in to take his place, if Naomi is out now.”

  “So this is not about love?” Genia couldn’t help saying it.

  She saw Susan’s face flush. “First things first.”

  “Science, then love?”

  “I have things to do, Genia. Prove the legend. Get famous. Obtain a father for my child. It all fits together in one package by the name of Jon Warren, and I intend to have him.”

  Genia felt chilled both by the fading sunlight and by the naked ambition in Susan Van Sant’s plan for her future. After a moment she suddenly remembered something. “Susan!” she said. “Your dream!”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve actually seen this pot with your own eyes?”

  “Yes.” Then she added reluctantly, “From a distance. Binoculars. There are complications. It’s on a reservation. But it’s there, and I saw it.”

  “You couldn’t have seen the gambling pieces, though?”

  “No. But there’s an Indian who took me there. He showed me one of the pieces, and he told me the jar was packed with them. This is what I have to prove, Genia. And it’s going to take money and time and patience and influence to do it, and I’ll have to go about it in just the right way, not by trivializing the legend in stupid little magazine articles like that idiot was going to do.”

  “Gabriella, you mean?”

  So that was the reason Susan had reacted with such shock the morning she had dropped her tray in the dining hall. Susan never answered Genia’s question, however, because Bingo called them to dinner.

  Dinner was simple: steaks dredged in fresh chopped garlic and grilled over an open flame; corn on the cob cooked in fo
il over the fire; green salad that Bingo had prepared back on campus; and pecan brownies iced with chocolate.

  “What d’ya expect in the wilds, on a minute’s notice?” she demanded, when Madeline said, half-petulantly when she accepted her plate, “I can’t eat this stuff. It’s fattening and it causes cancer in laboratory rats.”

  “Be happy,” Bingo advised her, “you’re not in a laboratory.”

  Genia and the others were vocally appreciative.

  While they ate, Bingo told them what happened at the Wheel after they left. “It’s a zoo back there. Dinnertime for the reporter animals. They’re feasting on this. Sixteen kids missing. Parallels to ancient history. It’s so dramatic, they’re slobbering all over themselves. We’ve got cable news. Foreign press.” She named two spectacularly famous network news anchors who had flown in for onscene reporting. As if she were reading the headlines from newspapers, Bingo called out: “ ‘History Repeats Itself! Disappearance, Just like Nearly 800 Years Ago! Where Did They All Go?’ ”

  The women listened, astonished at it all.

  Angrily, Bingo added, “They’re driving the poor parents insane. There’s no place to get away from them, not if you want to stick around in case there’s any news about the kids.” But then she smiled wickedly. “Martina blew a gasket when she found out you guys had departed for parts unknown. I didn’t tell her because nobody asked me. They didn’t know I knew.”

  “Thanks, Bingo,” Susan murmured.

  “I wouldn’t have lied for you,” the chef said, making things perfectly clear. “If they’d asked me, I’d have told them, but nobody did.” She paused, looking doubtful. “Well, maybe I would have lied. I’m not crazy about uniforms and authorities. Must be my Armenian blood.”

  “How’d you get away?” Judith asked her.

  Bingo tore off a piece of beef fat and tossed it on the fire, where it sizzled and popped. “Why shouldn’t I leave if I want to? I made sure everybody got supper. Nobody needs me until lunch, and I’ve got breakfast covered in the morning. I can use these few hours of time off, believe you me. I may not stay with you tonight, though. I may decide to go off on my own.”