by Webb, Betty
The old gods were not banished to the Underworld—they were still alive and living in the Arizona sky, its mountains, in the Pimas’ hearts.
And on my Jeep.
Weeping didn’t go over big with the Pima so I struggled for control. “You have honored me,” I managed.
The soaring hawk above lost its fascination for the Pimas and they walked slowly over to the Jeep, a rarely revealed pride in their eyes.
“You know them, then, the old gods?” one asked, a man of about sixty. “We’re all Christians now, and even most of our own tribe has forgotten them.”
Thanks to Jimmy, I knew them. I began calling out the gods’ names and telling their stories. “After the flood destroyed First World, Elder Brother angered Earth Doctor by making a new race of people,” I recited, Jimmy’s lesson fresh in my mind. “But these Second World people, they were as selfish as most of the First World people were wicked, and they did not appreciate the life Elder Brother had given them. So they rose up and they killed their creator. They reduced Elder Brother to nothing but bones.
“But it’s hard to kill a god. After several seasons had passed, the bones of Elder Brother rolled towards one another and Elder Brother sprang up, resurrected. Oh, he was angry!” I pointed to the jagged lightning they had painted above Elder Brother’s head.
“Seeking vengeance, he traveled east to the road of the sun and he walked that road all the way across the sky to the west where it went into the Underworld. There he found Earth Doctor and the few good First World people the gods had allowed to escape the flood. With them, Earth Doctor created an army.”
Here I paused and smiled. “The army traveled to Second World and gave Elder Brother the vengeance he desired.”
Now the Pimas were all smiling at me. Genuine smiles, not business ones. Except for one, a young man with a shaved head, wearing gang colors.
He frowned. “I didn’t know that.”
Mr. Sisiwan gave him a long, hard look. “You would if you listened to your elders.”
Now the frown turned on Mr. Sisiwan. The young Pima glared at him for a moment, then walked back towards the shop. Apparently my glib and perhaps insensitive recital of Pima legend had landed me squarely in the middle of a family dispute.
My discomfort must have shown plainly on my face, for Mr. Sisiwan said, “Paul is Jimmy’s brother. Are you as familiar with Christian legend as you are with Pima?”
I nodded, remembering the Baptist family I used to camp with. They’d drilled me in scripture for two years, and then gave up in disgust when they discovered all that Bible reading I’d been doing was concentrated on one book, the X-rated Song of Solomon.
“Then you remember the story of the Prodigal Son, who was welcomed home with open arms.”
I nodded again. Where was Mr. Sisiwan leading?
Now Mr. Sisiwan looked grim. “A lot of the times people forget that not everyone was glad to see the Prodigal Son return. His brother, who had been living at home and behaving himself, resented the big fuss the family made over the Prodigal.” He paused, began to say something, and then apparently changed his mind. “It is good that you like your Jeep. We enjoyed painting it for you. Now. Let us go settle up the bill.”
The other Pimas went back to their various work assignments and I followed Mr. Sisiwan out of the glare and into the shop. When the bill turned out to be surprisingly low, I began to argue, but he would have none of it. The paint job was a paint job. The Jeep didn’t have much surface area, so they’d saved on materials. And the petroglyphs? An opportunity to bring the old gods alive again and maybe educate the Anglos at the same time. Why charge for that?
As I drove my freshly painted beauty away, I remembered something the writer Dorothy Parker had once replied, when a friend of hers, who had been having trouble with her family, turned to Parker and complained, “Oh, Dorothy, life is hell!” Parker, whose parents were both dead, grinned and said, “Not for orphans.”
Parker knew something I was just finding out, that belonging to any family set you up for disappointment, anger and heartbreak. So why did the whole world insist on singing the praises of family? As a counter-argument, why not take a look at Clarice, Evan and Serena. Their parents had a marriage intact enough to please the Pope, but what good had that done the siblings? Had the lack of divorce truly kept the family together? Hadn’t the family’s very intactness helped set up a system of dysfunction that wound up crippling them all? Serena was certainly a mess, and Evan wouldn’t be winning any medals come Mental Health Week. And poor Clarice? She had been so desperate for love that she’d run straight into the arms of a psychopath.
None of this was very comforting for a foster child searching for her real family. If I ever found my people and they turned out to be like any of the Hyaths, who knew what I’d do. Slink off into the sunset? Move somewhere and change my name?
When I arrived back at the office, I couldn’t bear to hide the Jeep in the parking lot so I parked it in front. A few tourists still milled around, checking out the galleries. Their faces lit up when they spotted the Jeep, and a couple of them wandered over to look at her more closely. Even Cliffie emerged from Damon and Pythias to ogle her.
“Well I’ll be damned!” he said, patting me on the shoulder. “You’re finally rid of that Pepto-Bismol pink. High time, neighbor.”
“Yeah, I was tired of being the neighborhood eyesore.”
Now he winced. “I’m afraid Clarice’s place was that.” Then he turned and went back into his gallery.
Leaving me wondering.
Just how far would Cliffie go to raise the tone of the neighborhood?
Chapter 18
The next morning, the Scottsdale Journal read like a Jay Leno monologue.
A hot air balloon sailing over a Phoenix suburb was struck by what the chamber of commerce called “the world’s tallest artificial geyser,” and had to make an emergency landing in a lake. Fortunately, all the tourists on board could swim.
The Arizona Puppet Theater was robbed, the thieves making off with Mr. Creepy, a ridge-nosed rattlesnake; Ms. Crawly, a desert tortoise; and Mr. Wild, a bald eagle.
Another article informed me that a new study had discovered that Arizona was the sixth most dangerous state in the nation. To help combat those statistics, the Arizona legislature had voted to chemically or surgically castrate the rapists of children.
I groaned, and said to Jimmy, “If you value your mental health, don’t read the paper this morning.”
“Already have. Which one bothered you the most? The new crime statistics? Or the castrated rapists?”
I thought for a while. “Nah. I’m all tore up about Mr. Creepy. What have we come to in Arizona when not even a puppet is safe?”
Still, the morning turned out to be fruitful. Jimmy’s check on Gerado Allesandro, Serena Hyath’s husband, revealed that yes, he was a bit of a crook. A naturalized citizen, he’d once been convicted of telemarketing fraud, although his attorney had been able to get his sentence reduced to time served and a lengthy probation. He was now the focus of a government securities investigation.
Those Hyaths. They certainly knew how to pick ’em.
The morning got even better. Alicia “Bunny” Germaine, the department store CEO’s missing girlfriend, had made recent charges on her platinum Visa, all local. Wonder of wonders, one charge turned out to be for the first and last month’s rent deposit on a luxury apartment not too far from Desert Investigations. Chortling with satisfaction, I picked up my carryall and headed over there.
After a few quiet knocks at the apartment door, a young woman answered it. She was blond, very pretty in a Hollywood starlet sort of way, and she looked like she’d just crawled out of bed.
“Miss Germaine?”
The young woman nodded. “What can I do for you?” Her voice was husky, filled with erotic promise.
I flashed my ID, and instead of looking frightened, she smiled. “Brian’s caught up with me already, huh? Well, come on in, Miss
Jones. You don’t have to keep standing out there in the heat like some encyclopedia salesman.”
Feeling oddly off-balance, I walked into an exquisitely furnished apartment. Bunny had either hired a decorator or she had a much more highly developed sense of taste than the average department store CEO’s mistress. The living room was decorated in cool off-whites, accented with dashes of turquoise and copper. Large bouquets of fresh flowers filled the air with subtle scent. And hi-de-ho, boys and girls, above the eight-foot-long cream brocade sofa hung a George Haozous almost as gloriously bloody as my own.
“Nice painting,” I said.
Bunny raised her eyebrows. “You think?”
“I’ve got a Haozous, too. Apache Sunset.”
She smiled. “Mine’s called Revenge. Tasteful, isn’t it?”
“I especially love the nicely placed arrow through the cavalry captain’s eye. Look, Ms. Germaine, we have to talk about a certain diamond necklace.” Without being asked, I sat down on the sofa. It turned out to be filled with down and I sank about two feet. Just the kind of sofa I needed in my place. I made a mental note to look at her credit card receipts again; I wanted the name of her furniture store.
Still smiling, Ms. Germaine sat down next to me. “Call me Bunny.”
“Well, Bunny, I’m sure you know why I’m here. Your boyfriend needs his diamond necklace back.”
She didn’t look in the least embarrassed or frightened. Instead, her smile broadened as a voice with an English accent interjected, “You mean my diamond necklace, don’t you?”
I turned to see another woman emerging barefoot from the hallway. She was wrapping a pale violet robe around an obviously naked body. “My husband gave me that necklace for my fortieth birthday, and quite frankly, I think it was terribly tacky of him to loan it to Bunny. Even though she’s certainly worth it.”
Although she had to be in her fifties, the woman was still beautiful, with the perfect oval face of a china doll, and a willowy figure any twenty-year-old would envy. Her eyes, with their penetrating hazel irises, were permanently crinkled at the corners, betraying a lively sense of humor.
I was feeling more and more off-balance. “Your necklace?”
The woman sat down next to Bunny and after giving her a quick nibble on the earlobe, stretched diamond-studded fingers towards me. I didn’t know whether I was supposed to kiss her hand or shake it. I settled for shaking it.
Her smile was blinding. “I’m Gwendolyn. Mrs. Meeks, dear. Don’t look all shocked on my account.”
As she told me her story, it turned out that several months back, Gwendolyn, a.k.a. Mrs. Brian Meeks, suspecting that her husband was cheating on her, had hired a detective. After receiving his report, she’d confronted Bunny herself.
It had been love at first sight for the both of them.
They’d used the Platinum Visa Mr. Meeks had given Bunny to set up their little Scottsdale love nest and were now planning a vacation in Paris. Both art lovers, they were dying to spend some time in the Louvre.
“How long did you think you’d get by with this?” I asked.
Gwendolyn shrugged her elegant shoulders. “I was hoping we’d get by with it for as long as Brian got by with cheating on me, but now that you’ve uncovered our dirty little secret…”—here she flashed that blinding smile again—“…I guess the jig, as you so charmingly say in America, is up.” She turned to Bunny. “Time for Plan B.”
Bunny leaned against her and giggled.
“What’s Plan B?” I asked, intrigued.
“Plan B: When lies stop working, simply tell the truth,” Gwendolyn answered. “What the hell. My children are grown and have enough problems of their own to keep them from obsessing about mine. So I think it’s time for me to divorce Mr. Department Store and go back to England. With Bunny, of course.”
They treated me to a perfectly brewed cuppa before I left. Without the diamond necklace.
Once back at my Jeep, where several roller bladers had gathered to study its gleaming petroglyphs, I checked my watch and discovered that I had more than two hours left before my lunch date with Eleanor Hyath.
After interviewing Dulya Albundo, I’d grown curious about the Museum of Western Art, so I decided to swing by on my way to the Hacienda Palms. It would be interesting to see if their collection was worth the life of one old lady.
The museum was less than five minutes from Bunny’s, and by the time I’d turned into the parking lot, the Jeep’s seats hadn’t even begun to cook. Then again, it was still early and only about 105 degrees out.
The exterior of the museum didn’t bode well, I thought, as I slid my Jeep into a too-tight parking spot. The building had been purposely designed to resemble a stage set for a movie about the Apocalypse, with portions of wire netting protruding from raw concrete, and dimly lit green fiberglass panels designed to represent… Represent what?
Urban decay?
I winced and averted my eyes from the architect’s “artistic statement.” I paid my fee at the front and rushed in, hoping things were better inside.
To my surprise, they were.
Whoever had pulled this collection together, it hadn’t been Clarice. One long, cool gallery after another showcased the best and the brightest of modern Western art.
In the first gallery hung a massive Paul Pletka oil which depicted a religious procession of Hispanics bearing a life-size crucifix. In brilliant deformity, each of the marchers’ hands were painted twice their normal size, signifying unleashed power.
In the next room hung a bright collage by Juane Quick-to-See Smith, an amalgam of Plains Indian symbols overlaid on a gouache wash. Next to the Smith hung several Fritz Scholders, documenting that artist’s evolution from abstraction to post-modernism. While providing a delight for the eye, the multi-layered glazes on the Scholders hinted at varying takes on perception.
My favorite painting, though, turned out to be the goofy Anne Coe, which showed a wry cowgirl staring at a Scottsdale pool while two steaks carbonized on a barbecue grill. Her horse stretched hungry lips towards a parboiled sun worshipper with hair the color of straw. As usual, Coe had captured the true heart of the tacky New West.
I was still laughing when an elderly docent, one of the great legions of Scottsdale volunteers, walked over to me. “Would you like me to explain the work to you?”
I wiped my eyes. “You know what they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.”
The docent’s eyes twinkled and he said, “Yes, that’s what they say.”
I had an idea. Pulling my card from my carryall, I asked to see the curator. “If he’s in.”
“She.”
The docent took my card away and returned in less than five minutes, during which time I’d worked myself over to the haunting pastels of Lynn Taber-Borcherdt. Pastels or not, Borcherdt’s work was reminiscent of William Turner, and I fell in love with a near-abstract rendering of a storm over the Santa Catalina Mountains. She’d used the same colors Turner had when he’d painted his breathtaking view of ships burning at sea.
Studying the painting, I was reminded of my Baptist foster parents, who’d once taken me camping in the Catalinas. The memories rose up before I could stop them.
Here was the problem.
Like so many foster home kids, I preferred to live in the present. Opening the door to happy memories, such as camping with the Baptists or learning color theory from Madeline, also opened the door to other memories not quite as pleasant: The foster father who’d raped me, the foster brother who’d set my kitten on fire. What lunatic would want to remember shit like that?
Being only a partial lunatic, I’d long ago decided it was pref-erable to forget all my joys as long as it meant I’d also forget all my pain.
But the siren song of painting worked like a back-alley mugger. Art knocked you over the head when your guard was down.
I’d shut my eyes against the Taber-Borcherdt when the docent returned. “Anne Amherst, our curator, has a few minutes free right
now.”
We left the main part of the building and entered a long, hushed corridor, where Anne Amherst’s office took up a goodly portion of the northern side of the building. As I entered, I noticed that the large windows overlooked the remains of the orange tree orchard that had once separated the Hispanic neighborhood from their Anglo neighbors.
“Pretty,” I said, turning towards the woman sitting behind the massive desk.
Anne Amherst was leafing through a Sotheby’s auction cata-logue. She was as brown and skinny as an old piece of rope and her pale blue eyes missed nothing. “But you don’t approve.”
I sat down in the chair the docent pulled out for me and wiggled my fingers at him as he returned to the galleries. “You’ve got a nice collection here but I’m afraid I miss the old neighborhood.”
She winced. “Miss Jones, are you in the employ of Dulya Albundo? If so, I must warn you that I simply cannot discuss any museum business that might be part of her lawsuit. You’ll have to speak to our attorneys.”
I reassured her, explaining my connection to the Clarice Kobe case. “I’m just trying to find out more about Clarice. You see, at one time I thought I knew her well. Turns out I was mistaken.”
But hadn’t that been my fault as much as Clarice’s? I’d always been most comfortable with relationships that demanded little of me, preferring acquaintances to real friendship. Whenever anyone attempted to get too close to me, I withdrew. In her way, I guess, Clarice had been the perfect friend. Like the Lady of the Manor, she delivered her little gifts to Desert Investigations and then returned to her own turf, leaving me untouched, unthreatened.
Poor Clarice.
Poor me.
Amherst shocked me out of my musings. “Clarice Kobe was a heartless bitch.”
I sat up straight in my chair. This from a museum curator?
She expanded on her theme. “A heartless bitch who has done untold damage to the Arizona arts community. Do you have any idea what she made us look like? It’ll take years to recover from the bad publicity that woman’s actions have caused.”
