The Tooth of Time

by Sue Henry

  “Ford?” Pat’s eyes widened. “Surely you can’t think that Ford has anything to do with any of this? I don’t know anything that would help you one way or another, but everybody likes him. He’s a great person and a fine weaver.”

  “Fine weaver or not, his name appears in this journal as somebody Shirley had questions about. Evidently he wasn’t too happy when she took up with Cole.”

  Letting it go for the time being, though I knew he had no intention of ignoring it, he paused and turned to me.

  “By the way, we are sure now that the body found in the vat was Cole’s—or, as I told you the other day, Earl Jones, who was using “Anthony Cole” as an alias, among others. And I still have that hundred-thousand-dollar motive in mind. But it’s also possible that someone else killed them both, wanting it to look like Shirley killed him, then took her own life.”

  “So Shirley really didn’t kill herself?” Pat asked.

  “No,” Herrera told her. “But I thought she might have killed Jones—or Cole, as you knew him.”

  “Why?”

  It was something I hadn’t explained, so we told her about the stolen money and how upset Shirley had been about it.

  “What happened to the money?” I asked.

  Herrera shook his head. “I don’t have an answer to that yet. The check she gave him was cashed, but what he did with the money we have no way of knowing. It’s always possible that he was killed for it, so I’m keeping that in mind. A hundred thousand dollars goes a long way as motivation for murder.”

  He was right, of course. Still, I couldn’t help thinking that there were easier and more permanent ways to dispose of a body than dumping it into a vat full of water. That it was sure to be found made you think the killer had meant to make a point of some kind by putting it there.

  “Was he dead when he was put into the vat?” I asked. “Or did he drown?”

  Pat gave me a glance that told me she thought the question ghoulish but interesting.

  “Not much gets past you, does it, Ms. M?” Herrera said, a slight smile lifting the corners of his mouth.

  “We are sure that Doris Matthews, the woman who owned the vat, had nothing to do with it. Whoever did it not only wanted him to be found but wanted him to know he was going to die. His hands and feet were tied together behind his back, so he couldn’t get leverage to stand, and his mouth was taped shut, so he couldn’t make a lot of noise. Then he was methodically held under water over and over again until he finally couldn’t hold his breath any longer and drowned—which may have been an attempt to make him tell where the money was. We think it happened that way because of the number of bruises on his head and shoulders and the force with which they were made in holding him down.

  “He struggled as much as he could, for as long as he could. It wasn’t a quick or merciful way to die. I’m inclined to believe that whoever wanted him dead also had vengeance as a motive, which is why the stolen money made me look at Shirley for it.”

  “Wait a minute,” Pat said, suddenly sitting up straight and turning to Herrera. “That’s the second time you’ve said you ‘looked at Shirley’—as in the past tense: You said you ‘thought she might have’ killed him and that ‘the money made’ you ‘look at her.’ Does that mean you don’t think she killed him anymore?”

  “Very perceptive,” he answered, nodding. “Maxie, do you remember my telling you what we learned about the fingerprints we found after your break-in?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, the same prints were found again—on and around the vat where the guy was drowned. Now that we have Shirley’s body to compare them to we know that they’re not hers.”

  “Whose are they?” Pat asked.

  “They belong to another woman—a Sharon Beil. Ever hear of her?”

  “No. Who is she?”

  “A woman with a record in California.”

  “Shirley said she was from California. Did this Beil woman kill Shirley too?”

  “Good question,” Herrera told her, reaching to pat Stretch, who had curled up next to him on the dinette bench.

  He soon went off with the journal to do some further sleuthing both in and out of its pages.

  Pat left Mary Ann in charge of Weaving Southwest and drove ahead of me to her place by a back road rather than through downtown Taos. As she had said, it was a much better place to park the Winnebago, pretty much off the beaten track and out of sight, where few people would ever think to look for a motor home. I was soon hooked up to water and electricity and had been offered the use of her kitchen and bathroom.

  I called the car rental agency and had them bring me another compact car, so I had wheels, just in case I needed them. Having an anonymous mode of transportation wasn’t a bad idea, considering that the Winnebago was large and obvious with its Alaska plates.

  We sat down with a cup of tea and I had just started to fill Pat in on a few more details of Shirley’s death when the cell phone in my bag rang. Still a little nervous from waiting for the kidnappers to call, I was startled.

  Hesitantly, I answered it, thinking it might be Herrera. “Yes?”

  “Hey! There you are—finally. Where’ve you been? I’ve been trying to reach you since sometime yesterday,” Butch Stringer’s voice said in my ear.

  My breathing slowed and my blood pressure dropped back to its normal level.

  “Would you believe I’ve been to Cimarron and the Great Sand Dunes in Colorado?” I asked. “It’s been an interesting couple of days.”

  “Side trips, huh? Did you see the Tooth of Time in Cimarron—well, just outside of Cimarron? It’s up behind the Philmont Scout Ranch on part of their land south of town.”

  “What the heck is the Tooth of Time?”

  “An awesome formation on a ridge of the Sangre de Cristos that looks like a tooth. It was a landmark for the early pioneers. You really should take the time to see it if you go through there again.”

  “I’ll remember that. Where are you?”

  “Still in Santa Fe. The run I was supposed to make to Phoenix got canceled because the customer added something to the load and it isn’t going to be ready till early next week. Thought if you were going to be around and wouldn’t mind company I’d take a couple of days off, come back up Thursday and stay till Sunday.”

  I assured him I’d enjoy his company and feel much safer with Butch than on my own.

  “Any news on your break-in? You haven’t had any more, have you?”

  “Well, now that you mention it, there was something else that happened, but it’s okay now.”

  “What happened?”

  “I’ll tell you about it when you come up.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, I’m fine, but I’m not at the RV park. I’m parked outside Pat Dozier’s house. You remember her from Weaving Southwest?”

  “Sure. Listen—have they caught whoever did it? No? Okay, that’s it. You can expect me before noon tomorrow. I’m not waiting till Thursday. How can I find you?”

  I handed the phone to Pat and she gave him directions.

  “What a nice man,” she said, when she had broken the connection.

  I agreed, feeling a huge relief at knowing I would soon have Butch as backup again.

  It is truly amazing how much stress you can feel and not realize it until it begins to go away. I had felt very stressed when I left Taos, but as I went farther west it had lessened and was almost gone by the time I arrived in Colorado. I had picked a lot of it up again in coming back, but once again I refused to surrender to it.

  “What do you know about a landmark called the Tooth of Time?” I asked Pat. “Butch says I should go and see it when I go through Cimarron again.”

  “Oh, you should. It’s a pretty impressive hunk of rock that crowns the ridge behind the Philmont Scout Ranch and is sort of a symbol for them. They use it on pins and badges, and take Scouts on hikes up to it. Someone told me once that they tell the boys that if they look over their shoulder at
it before leaving they’re sure to come back sometime.”

  “Who named it?”

  “I have no idea, but it’s a good one.”

  It was—and, probably because we had been talking about Shirley, it reminded me of how determined she had seemed to appear younger than she actually was—avoiding the bite that time and getting older have for most of us seniors in one way or another. Filing away a mental reminder to search out that rock sometime in the near future, I let it go for the moment and asked Pat about the big loom and shelves of yarn and other weaving supplies that took up a significant portion of her two-story residence, which was not large, but suited her well.

  She showed me around, including her small backyard surrounded by another coyote fence, where she had a large kettle that sat on a rack over a propane burner to heat water for dyeing her own yarn. It was much smaller than Bettye Sullivan’s, but large enough to hold water and yarn for the purposes of a single weaver.

  “I think,” I told her, “that I’ll be glad to leave the dyeing to you and buy my yarn from a great shop I have discovered in Taos.”

  She laughed and said they would be happy to fill any orders I might have.

  “Why don’t you get your loom and I’ll get you started on what we were going to do yesterday,” she suggested.

  So I retrieved it from the Winnebago and, after showing me what to do, she went to her own loom and we spent the afternoon happily weaving, while Stretch explored or took naps, ignoring and ignored by Pat’s fluffy cat.

  TWENTY-SIX

  IT IS AMAZING HOW COMPLACENT YOU CAN GET WHEN you feel secure.

  Pat and I had gone to bed quite early, having heard no more from Herrera. It was comforting to have my own living space parked in a place I felt was out of harm’s way, and I appreciated it. Stretch and I had climbed into the Winnebago, I locked up, closed all the curtains and blinds, and we readied ourselves for the night. I turned out the lights and everything was quiet as I drifted off to sleep feeling fairly confident.

  But just when you think you’re safe . . .

  It was dark. Except for one thin finger of dim light that slipped in from a distant streetlamp through the narrow edge of a window blind, the bedroom space was inky blackness.

  I woke abruptly, already sitting up in bed, my heart pounding as I listened intently, alert for a repetition of the small, surreptitious sound I had heard, almost felt, in my sleep. A dream? Possibly, but I thought not, for it seemed to have none of the hallmarks of a dream and all of those of reality.

  Stretch whined softly from his basket, but did not bark or go running forward, as he would normally have done to confront any intruder prowling outside. That small sound from him seemed odd, but not unreasonable, I thought, given that he would probably be shy for a while after his ill treatment at the hands of strangers.

  I sat perfectly still, listening for another sound and waiting to feel any motion at all in the motor home. But I knew that I had stabilized it when I parked next to Pat’s and there would be little or no motion if someone were cautious enough to step inside slowly and carefully.

  Nothing.

  Then, almost in the air against my skin, there was a hint of movement without a sound of any kind and I was instantly aware that someone besides Stretch and myself was a part of the extreme darkness. That slim finger of light was broken as someone passed in front of it, then it returned whole, and I was able to just make out a vague silhouette of someone standing at the foot of my bed.

  I froze, my breath caught in my throat.

  How had this person, whoever it was, gotten in?

  Before going to Cimarron I had returned the shotgun to its normal traveling location in my secret hiding space and had not taken it out again, feeling more secure parked outside Pat’s place. Now I fervently wished that it were within reach. A frightened senior woman holding a shotgun pointed at me with trembling hands is nothing in front of which I’d want to stand. But I had nothing but a pillow to throw at whoever it was that was standing there so close.

  Stretch whimpered and moved, but did not leave his basket.

  I wished he had been sleeping on my bed, where I could have reached a hand to reassure him. Instead I forced myself to take a deep breath.

  “Who’s there?” I asked in a voice that, to my relief, came out sounding more confident than I was feeling, so, with a bit of bravado, I added, “And what the hell do you want?”

  There was a long moment of silence, then a soft voice instructed, “Turn on a light.”

  I fumbled to locate the switch for the overhead reading light and turned it on.

  Shirley Morgan—the woman I knew was dead because I had found her body in a bathtub full of bloody water—was standing at the foot of my bed.

  I was so shocked I could do nothing but stare at her, blinking like an owl, my mouth open even wider than my eyes, as my brain stripped gears in an attempt to rationalize her reality.

  “What have you done with my sister’s diary?” she asked.

  “Diary?” I managed to croak out, trying to see if this specter had a weapon. Her hands were empty.

  It was beginning to dawn on me that this was not Shirley, though seen in half-light it looked so much like her it was terrifying. This had to be the older woman whose picture Herrera had showed me several days before, who I had thought might have been Shirley before a face-lift. Sharon, I remembered—Sharon Beil.

  She was fairly tall, a strong-looking woman in her late fifties or early sixties with large, square hands. Her hair was brown, not bleached as Shirley’s had been. Her face was attractive, slightly different from Shirley’s in shape but otherwise similar, especially the eyes. Though she couldn’t look so much like Shirley and not be her sister, no face-lift had made her look younger than her actual age, but she was clearly the older of the two. She looked tired and unhappy, but there was a hint of inflexible determination and resolve in the way she held herself and looked steadily at me.

  How she had found me, I had no idea.

  “Her diary—her blue journal. Where is it?” she demanded.

  Now that it was no longer in my possession there was no reason not to tell her, was there?

  “The police inspector has it. Shirley hid it here, but I found it and gave it to him yesterday.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure.”

  She sighed as if relieved and sat down suddenly on the foot of the bed.

  “Good. Then he’ll know who to look for.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  She simply shook her head. “He’ll know. And he’ll find them.”

  “He’s already looking.”

  “You know who I am?” she asked.

  “I think I do. You’re Shirley’s sister, Sharon.”

  “Yes, I am. And thank you,” she said, unexpectedly.

  “For what?”

  “For giving the diary to him and for taking care of my little sister when I couldn’t.”

  “All I did was take her home from the hospital that day. She only stayed with me one night before she disappeared. I still don’t understand why.”

  “I know, but it kept her alive long enough to hide the journal here, where she hoped no one would think to look. They did, but she must have done a good job, because they didn’t find it, did they? And I couldn’t find it either. Where did she hide it, by the way?”

  I told her about finding it disguised in the wrong book cover.

  “It was clever enough to fool whoever tore this place apart looking for it.”

  Sharon nodded sadly. “She always was the clever one, my baby sister—except about men. She was never clever about men—always too trusting and gullible.”

  I thought about the ways I knew that was true.

  Stretch, following my lead, had accepted her presence and gone back to sleep.

  As she stood up again, he woke, wagged his tail, and looked up at her.

  “Hello there,” she said to him. Then to me, “I have to go. You c
an tell your policeman that I was here if you like. I won’t be staying in Taos more than a few hours. Except for one thing, I’ve done what I came here for.”

  “What is that?”

  I couldn’t resist asking, but she gave me an odd sort of smile and turned to leave.

  “Wait,” I said. “Does anyone else know where I am? How did you find me?”

  “I don’t know if they do, but it wasn’t that hard,” she said, gave me a quick nod, and left the bedroom without another word.

  I heard the coach door close a moment or two later.

  When I went to lock it and looked outside, she was nowhere to be seen, but the key I had found missing after the break-in had been carefully laid on the countertop in the galley. Had she, then, been the person who tore apart my living space? If so, who had been with her and why had they worn gloves when she hadn’t?

  I put the key on the hook where it belonged and went back to bed, where I lay awake for some time, thinking—wishing for answers I still didn’t have.

  The next morning Pat came to give me a key to her house and stayed for a quick cup of coffee before going to work at Weaving Southwest. I didn’t tell her about my middle-of-the-night visitor, preferring to keep it to myself for the time being.

  “I’ll be back about four,” she said as she left. “Call me if you need—well, help, or anything.”

  I promised I would and waved her off from the door of the Winnebago.

  It was a sunny morning, but one by one dark clouds that looked as if they might hold rain were creeping in over the mountains. Far out over the mesa west of town I could see several that were already releasing the water they carried as they moved slowly along, but much of it seemed to be evaporating before it ever reached the ground. Walking rain, I thought, remembering that I had wondered at the term, but now it made perfect sense.

  There were no trees near Pat’s house and, therefore, no birds hanging out in them like the ones in the RV park that had warbled cheerfully overhead in the mornings. I missed them, but felt it was worth their absence in trade for the security of my current location.