The Blue Corn Murders

by Nancy Pickard

  “Oh, yes!” Mrs. Hansen appeared to be both surprised and comforted by that revelation. “That must be so! As long as he is not harmed—” Her face threatened to crumple again, and she grasped one of Genia’s hands and gripped it painfully hard. “As long as he is all right, he will conduct himself with courage.”

  As they parted, Genia looked at Mr. Hansen and asked sympathetically, “How are you managing to hold up?”

  “Drugs,” he said with a harsh air of blunt candor. “I’m tranquilized to within an inch of my life, and it still isn’t enough. But at least it gets me through the day. She”—he briefly touched his wife’s shoulder—“refuses to take anything, even though I keep telling her it would help—”

  “I need to feel,” Tomasi Hansen said in her barely audible, shaking voice. “I need to feel him in my heart. If I can’t feel him, I will be afraid he is dead.”

  The two women embraced. Mrs. Hansen felt birdlike and breakable in Genia’s arms. Some of the parents had been given beds in the hogans, Genia learned, and upstairs in the dormers, but apparently it was difficult for them to live on campus because reporters wouldn’t leave them alone. The Hansens wanted to find a motel, but everything close by was taken—by journalists—and although kind people in Cortez were opening their homes to the families, Mrs. Hansen particularly craved more privacy than that. At the same time they wanted to be available, in case the vans carrying Hiroshi and his schoolmates should miraculously pull into the parking lot. It was a conundrum they didn’t know how to solve, and Genia realized it was probably going to be her problem as well.

  Upon leaving the Hansens, Genia desired very much to be alone, to rest, to let her feelings wash over her, to go home.

  She knew it was not to be, not yet.

  Now there would be no avoiding interviews with the police. She didn’t mind that, it was her responsibility; it was talking to the press that she most hoped to avoid. Keeping to the back way, holding her head down, and trying to look inconspicuous, she successfully made her way back to hogan one without being intercepted by strangers.

  She intended to pull out Gabby’s notebook with its “story ideas,” but it was gone. The suitcase was still there, but the notebook was missing from where she herself had hidden it. Her roommates and their belongings were also missing, but they’d left a folded note on her pillow: “Dear Genia, We can’t stand it around here. Martina said we’re not supposed to leave, but nobody in a uniform has told us that directly, so we’re going to find someplace else to stay if we have to drive to Tucson to do it.” It was signed, “T & J.” There was nothing else to it, no good-bye, no hint of personal feeling toward Genia. The hikers were frightened of one another now, she supposed, and suspicious. She’d felt it on the long ride back to campus. None of them knew what to think—about Gabby’s and Susan’s deaths, or about one another. Their congenial little band had broken up. Yet she was glad not to have to face Judith and Teri across the room. She didn’t know what to think of them any more than they apparently knew what to think of her.

  She concentrated on the startling fact of the missing notebook.

  Had they gone through Gabby’s things, found it, and taken with them the one remaining piece of “evidence” that pointed to the LSD they’d brought on campus?

  Or had a reporter nosed about in the unlocked room?

  It was amazing, Genia thought, that Martina had not thought to remove Gabby’s things yet. It demonstrated how easily the girl’s death had been superseded by the drama of the missing children, but it might also hint of a young woman who had had nobody to care deeply about her life or her death.

  Genia felt herself caring very much.

  It was no longer a matter of waiting to be asked to speak to the police; she knew now that she must seek them out. But she didn’t want to just grab the first police officer she saw—she wanted to talk to the right one.

  She had to gird herself to go out the door again.

  Madeline Rose was still on campus, Genia knew, because she’d seen Madeline—dressed to the nines in yet another outfit—giving an animated interview to several microphones at once. The diversion had helped Genia to escape unnoticed from the lodge. As for Lillian Kleberg, Genia had lost sight of her.

  Dreading the next few minutes, she slowly pushed open the hogan door. She felt as exposed as a mouse in the desert. And like that creature, she had a sense of danger, even to her own person. She needed to move quietly, watchfully, and with care. Like a mouse, Genia felt a shadow of something large moving about, something evil, moving with swift deadliness from its previous concealment into the open.

  Thirty-three

  Genia sought out the one person on campus who always seemed to know everything.

  “May I enter your kitchen?”

  With a fierce scowl, Bingo glanced up from where she had been staring glumly down into an empty bowl. She looked relieved to see it was only Genia standing in the doorway.

  “Enter, Genia. Grab a stool.”

  Genia did that; soon she, too, was staring into the empty bowl.

  “This is the most peaceful place on campus. How have you managed it, Bingo?”

  “I threatened the reporters with botulism.” A satisfied little smile appeared on the stern face. “It appears I am intimidating, in my own small way.”

  “I’ll say. Where’s your staff?”

  “I sent them home. They needed a break from this place. So, Genia. As the kids would say, T’s’up?”

  “I want to talk to somebody in a police capacity, Bingo. Who should that be?”

  The chef raised her glance from the bowl and fixed it on her visitor. “You want to talk to a badge? Personally, I can’t imagine that. Well, the one you want is gone right now, but he’ll be back, I imagine.”

  “Should I wait just for him?”

  “I would. Unless you have information about where the kids are. But if you did, you wouldn’t be talking to me, you’d be running to tell somebody who could actually do something about it.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Neither do I.”

  There was a silence between them, during which Genia enjoyed the music that was playing. It seemed perfectly to fit the mood in the kitchen at the moment.

  “That’s lovely music.”

  “Hovhaness.”

  “I thought it might be, or maybe Dvorak.”

  “Dvorak? Interesting. Yeah, I can see a certain similarity, probably because they were both inspired by folk music. American, especially Negro and Indian. Eastern European. I’m Armenian by ancestry, like Hovhaness. There’s a parallel, you know, between my people and the Ánasazis, or maybe I already gave this lecture? My staff says it’s practically the only thing I ever talk about except recipes, but that can’t be true. Now and then I’m pretty sure I mention the weather.”

  A very slight smile cracked the somber young face.

  “Anyway, what you’re listening to is the music of tragedy, and of longing and of memory.”

  Genia listened, nodding. “I can hear it. Do you think the Ancient People had music like that, full of longing for their old cities and homes?”

  “Interesting thought, Genia. Why not? You can certainly hear it in contemporary Indian music. All that pain. The deaths. The anger. The melancholy. I love that kind of music. My staff says it depresses them. I tell ’em to grow up, life’s like that.”

  “When you get older,” Genia surprised herself by saying, “and if you survive fairly intact, you’ll be able to hear the notes of gratitude, too, and of the kind of joy that surmounts all odds.”

  “I’ll have to take your word on that.”

  They stared at the bowl again, while the music played.

  “You’ve probably answered this a million times, but where’d you get your nickname?”

  “It’s my real name. My mom had five sons, and she really wanted a daughter. So when I popped out, the obstetrician said, ‘Bingo.’ ”

  Genia smiled. “It suits you.”

  �
��I guess it does. Could have been worse.”

  “Eureka? Hallelujah?”

  “I was thinking more along the lines of Blackjack or Royal Flush.”

  The gambling terms brought vividly to Genia’s mind her last conversation with Susan Van Sant. Now she, Genia, was the repository of Susan’s discovery. And what good did that do anybody? She didn’t know how to find it. She should tell someone—shouldn’t she?

  “What shall we do, Genia?”

  She felt startled, so close to her own thoughts were Bingo’s words.

  “Do?”

  “Was Gabby murdered?”

  “I believe so.”

  “Yeah. How about Susan?”

  “Oh, my.” She sighed unhappily. “That would mean—”

  “One of you guys.”

  “She may have tripped.”

  “Right.” The word was sarcastic. “About as likely as suicide.”

  Again, they just sat there.

  Then Bingo seemed to brighten. “Let’s cook something. You want to cook with me? You want to help me fix something?”

  “Bingo, I’d be honored.”

  “You should be.”

  They both laughed a little. Together, guided by Bingo’s barked instructions, they prepared batter for three different colors of cornmeal: white, yellow, and blue. Carefully, like artists mixing colors, they poured the separate batters on top of one another into baking dishes. At Bingo’s urging, Genia tried any combination of colors she wished: blue on yellow on white; yellow on white on blue; blue between yellow and white. While they were companionably working side by side, Genia told Bingo about Gabriella’s “story ideas.” Bingo wasn’t named on the list, so it seemed all right to Genia to trust her with the information.

  “That girl got herself killed,” Bingo declared, when Genia finished talking.

  “Because of one of the articles she was going to write?”

  “I don’t know about that, Genia. I can tell you how hot to preheat the oven, I can tell you to sift the cornflour until it’s fine as baby talcum, but I can’t tell you why anybody in her right mind would want to kill that silly girl. I just think she put herself in the path of evil.”

  Genia heard Bingo’s words reverberate among the pots and pans: her right mind, she had said. Her. The pronoun seemed to harden the cement that was forming relentlessly around Genia’s own suspicions about the little group of women hikers.

  “Have you heard from Naomi?” she asked the chef.

  Bingo, busy with a hand-held sifter as big as her head, did not reply.

  Genia didn’t wait around for the tricolor corncake to bake. For one thing, the kitchen workers began to trickle back in to start supper preparations, and she was in the way. For another, and as much as she hated the idea of it, Genia determined that the person to whom she must tell Susan Van Sant’s “dream” was the irascible trustee herself, Martina Alvarez.

  Thirty-four

  Genia bearded the lion in its borrowed den.

  She located Martina Alvarez in Naomi’s vacated office. As Genia expected, the trustee was at first uninterested in “having a word with” any member of the women’s hiking group that had caused the Wheel so much trouble and adverse publicity. But she became very interested, indeed, upon hearing of the late archaeologist’s claim.

  “Dr. Van Sant has to have written something down somewhere,” the trustee stated unequivocally. “She didn’t have her own office here. Naomi was far more willing to give offices to cooks than to scientists.” This last was said bitterly. “Her home would be the logical place to look. Let us go there and determine if she adopted Naomi’s no-lock policy and took it home with her.” The latter was even more caustically said.

  “What? You want me—?”

  “Mrs.—what is your name?”

  “Potter. Eugenia.”

  “Mrs. Potter, I cannot easily move around. I have an especially difficult time stooping and bending over. Ordinarily I would not inflict my personal problems on you, but someone has to search for that information before it is scattered and lost, and I cannot do it without assistance.”

  “The police—”

  “What about them? The careless woman turned in the wrong direction on that cliff last night and stepped off the edge. It is of no concern to the police, any more than is the accidental—though entirely preventable—death of that other young woman by a wild animal. Both are regrettable incidents, I’m sure, at least as far as their families are concerned, but not matters for police investigation.”

  “The fact that Gabriella was struck on her head—”

  “She hit her head on a rock, which the animal must have carried away with it.”

  That amazing hypothesis left Genia speechless. A quiet little voice speaking in her own head, however, was telling her in equally certain terms not to allow this old bulldozer of a woman to meddle about in Susan Van Sant’s house without a witness. So Genia, who did not feel anywhere near as cavalier about the police as did both Bingo Chakmakjian and Mrs. Alvarez, permitted herself to be pushed into Martina’s car and driven off the campus.

  It was a sweet little two-story Victorian house on a Cortez side street, with many neighboring dogs barking at the intrusion of two unfamiliar women on the block. It occurred to Genia to worry, for the first time, whether Susan had kept pets that would need care, and she was relieved to find no evidence of them, either in the unfenced yards or inside the house.

  At Martina’s unnecessary bidding, Genia rattled the loose front doorknob and pushed.

  “Hmmph,” said the trustee when the door opened.

  The rooms that were revealed to them looked as if the occupant had priorities other than picking up or cleaning.

  Feeling like a maidservant, Genia cleared off a chair for Martina, who sat in it for the next two hours, imperiously issuing orders.

  “Bring me those files over there, Mrs. Potter.”

  “Mrs. Potter, put this back where you found it.”

  “Look in that cabinet. Open those drawers. Search the closets.”

  Genia would have rebelled had she not known what might be at stake: American history, a mysterious chapter explained, nothing less than that. She still might have refused to be treated in such a manner, if not for her being the repository of Susan’s dream come true.

  There were two computers, but she couldn’t get into them. Where was her computer-whiz offspring when she really needed him?

  She noted, with sadness, the evidence of Jon Warren’s presence in Susan’s life and was glad Martina wasn’t with her in the bedroom to cast a contemptuous eye on it. The left side of the unmade double bed must have been his, she guessed, if the shirt lying across it was any clue. It was the same shirt he had worn at the first Talking Circle, so he must have spent that night with his lover. She noted a few of his hairs on the pillow.

  Feeling awful for the lost mother and child, Genia looked at the book Jon had been reading the last evening he saw Susan alive: Legends of the Little People: Tales of the Fremont. Without even waiting for Martina to bid her so, she opened a manila folder on his side of the bed and noted within it the copies of tourist registration cards, including her own. She saw a paper with a list of dates (and assumed them to be future tours) with names and addresses beside them, and she wondered if Jon would ever be able to come back to get them. Obviously, he was a man who took his work home with him. How awful the moment of return would be for him, she thought sympathetically, when he learned of Susan’s death.

  If he himself was still alive.

  Genia had, unfortunately from her point of view, had previous experience with police investigations, and she knew that once “evidence” was impounded, it could take forever to be returned to its rightful owners. This folder looked as if it contained registration information that the Wheel would really need in the near future. If they didn’t have it, would they even know who was coming to their tours?

  Hardly believing she was even doing it, she tucked the folder under her arm.
What possible use could it be in an investigation of Susan’s death, anyway? She would give it to Jon when he returned, or to Naomi when she reclaimed her job.

  Genia, old girl, you are an optimist, she informed herself.

  Underneath the folder there was a huge pile of new catalogs, including the very latest from Neiman Marcus, the fabulous store in Texas. Genia, who did most of her personal shopping by mail rather than drive all the way to Tucson or Phoenix, filched it, sticking it into the folder. She would give that back to Jon, too, she virtuously promised her conscience, which retorted in skeptical and impolite terms.

  She found evidence of the life of a vital young woman, a dedicated scientist, an ardent lover. But she didn’t find any map, photo, drawing, or description of a hidden wall of pictographs with a three-foot-tall pot standing intact in front of it.

  “Mrs. Potter, now look—”

  “No, Mrs. Alvarez. We’re finished here, or I am. Will you drive me back, or shall I call someone to come and get me?”

  The pot had crumbled in Susan’s hands, Genia thought sadly, as Martina grudgingly drove them both back to the campus. It had turned to dust, just as it had in her dreams when she was only ten years old.

  Genia’s interview with the “right” law enforcement officer early that evening was swift and businesslike. She told him about the list in Gabby’s notebook and who was on it, and—up to a point, beyond which she found herself unable to go—why. She confided how, during the night when Susan died, her heart had pounded at the frightening sound of rocks falling down the cliff and how soft footfalls had made her think someone had returned safely to their bedroll after that. Now she wondered: Was it Susan’s fall she had heard? And whose footsteps after that? In retrospect, she told him, they seemed stealthy.

  There were things she didn’t have to tell him because others already had: Susan’s liaison with the missing assistant director; her pregnancy and her claim that they would marry; the contretemps between Madeline Rose and Gabby; and the lesser tension between Gabby and Teri Fox over whose people had “suffered most.” The officer already had in his possession the notes that Lillian Kleberg had written down when she and Genia had formed a team to “investigate” Red Palace Ruins, and he had Teri and Judith’s notes as well.