Death Comes

by Sue Hallgarth

  Of course, Mabel said, he’s always made quite a lot of money on the side with gambling. The word is nobody can beat him at blackjack. And nobody knows how many casinos he owns. All around here. Red River, Elizabethtown, even Embudo. Partners with Al Capone, according to the rumors. Capone? Willa and Edith echoed each other’s question. Al Capone, that’s right, Mabel had nodded. He’s supposed to be hiding out all around here. Anyway, whenever someone raises questions, John Dunn just closes his casino and opens a new one. The rumors may be wrong about Capone, but they are certain about John Dunn, Mabel grinned. That was one of his casinos a few years ago, she pointed to an abandoned adobe set back from the road. Now he’s sort of honest and sort of rich. Better than most in Taos. Successful, you know. Mabel’s rich laugh had ended her story.

  Edith marveled that Mabel felt comfortable in such a world. But then, Edith did, too. So comfortable she and Willa had actually been serious the previous summer about buying a house. Just a little adobe to use in the summers, Willa had imagined aloud. Five rooms, dirt floor, no electricity or plumbing. Nothing to take care of, really. Simple and quiet with beautiful surroundings and a few friends nearby. The sort of place they both loved.

  Taos still appealed to them, but this summer they felt less need. They were building just such a place on Grand Manan, the island in the Bay of Fundy where they had spent several weeks during each of the last four summers. Like Taos, the island was hard to reach. A world set apart. Away from the modern whirl insatiable in its appetite for everything noisy and new. But it was no longer clear, at least not to Willa and Edith, just how long Taos would remain a world away, not with Al Capone hiding out in the area and Fred Harvey’s touring cars carrying daily loads of easterners to see pueblos, Taos first among them.

  Mabel had found Taos in 1917, during the Great War. They found Grand Manan in 1922, and as soon as the opportunity came up to build their own cottage they leapt at it. Only a few miles off the coast of Maine, they would be Americans with a Canadian cottage, not expatriates abroad like so many of the artists and writers they knew. They wanted to remain in America, to feel the pulse of their home country.

  But like their friends, they also felt a need for distance from an America gone mad with Progress. It was, as Mabel said, like the world broke in two. The idyllic past had disappeared and no one knew quite how to be in the aftermath of war. America was all hustle and chaos. Everything had to be new and different and modern. It was difficult to find one’s footing in such an atmosphere, especially for creative artists and writers. Perspective, Willa and Edith agreed with Mabel, that’s what they needed. Distance bred perspective. The quiet of a world set apart, a world anchored in the traditions of pueblos and Hispanic households, would provide an opportunity to think and create. If only it would stay that way.

  “These just came in the post for you and Miss Cather,” John Dunn offered Edith a package containing books and a separate envelope with J. Walter Thompson Advertising Agency scrawled across the dotted lines intended for the return address. Its color and shape told Edith it contained the mock-up of a design she had been working on for Kodak and left for the editorial team to finalize in her absence. It pleased her that they were far enough along to send it to her for approval, but that also meant they were getting anxious for her return.

  “Thank you, Mr. Dunn,” Edith accepted the packages and stepped with them onto the portal. She wasn’t quite ready for him to leave. “May I offer you a glass of water or some other refreshment?”

  John Dunn removed his Stetson and backed to the edge of the porch before making a half bow, “Why, thank you, ma’am, no.”

  “Well,” Edith felt her face coloring a little. “Would you mind if I asked you a few questions? About the murdered women.”

  “The murdered women? Oh, I know who you mean. Yes?”

  John Dunn’s yes was almost as drawn out and filled with syllables as his yep. Edith waited. If he was really the desperado Mabel claimed, he might very well have picked up information no one else could, least of all the sheriff.

  “Yes,” he repeated. His eyes looked thoughtful now. “The sheriff said the two of you might be asking around about them. Murders,” he repeated after a pause. “Don’t know much about them. Nothing really,” he shook his head. “And anyway, you ladies don’t need to get involved in all that. Not a right thing for ladies to get involved in,” he shook his head again and replaced his Stetson.

  “Well,” Edith found it hard to continue. “Would you ask around to see if you know anybody who does know something? You know so many people we have no way of meeting. And I’d like to find out what I can. To be helpful, you understand.”

  “The sheriff was unbelievably difficult today,” Spud addressed the diners assembled around Mabel’s table that evening.

  “So we heard,” Mabel glanced at Tony, who smiled in agreement. They were again a matched pair, Mabel in blue satin, Tony with blue ribbons woven through his shiny black braids. “So we heard,” she repeated.

  “Difficult?” The question came from Nicolai Fechin, who ended a whispered conversation with Willa to ask it.

  “Why difficult?”

  “I’m not really sure.”

  Spud had been thinking about exactly that all afternoon. He didn’t know Santistivan well. Hardly at all, really. But he had never seen him be so opaque. It was almost as though, Spud thought, the sheriff didn’t want to have anything to do with those murders. And didn’t want anyone else to have anything to do with them either. Certainly not John or Tony or Spud. Maybe not that special agent fellow either.

  “Well, Nicolai, you can ask the man from the Bureau of Investigation the very same question tomorrow evening, if you like. Maybe he can give you an answer.”

  Mabel’s words entered Spud’s consciousness one at a time, slowly, as if he were hearing her under water.

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow,” Mabel assured everyone at the table. “When Tony told me what happened at the sheriff’s office, I put a call into the Bureau of Investigation’s Albuquerque office and invited their agent to stay here and take an occasional meal with us. They relayed the message to him and he accepted. He will be here sometime in the afternoon.” Mabel said it as though it was the most natural thing in the world for an unknown special agent to join them at Los Gallos.

  Tomorrow. Spud cut into one of the tomatoes nestled between the baked potato and large slice of roast beef that covered his plate. He had become a regular guest for evening meals at Los Gallos since Mabel took him on as her assistant. He thought of it as an unofficial part of his salary and he loved it. Not for the food so much as for the people, the conversation, and the constant intrigue.

  Mabel was well known for arranging surprises, sometimes malicious, and for doing the unusual, whatever the unusual might be. Here were all in one. A special agent who was bound to have interesting things to say, a murder investigation, and Mabel’s happy upending of the sheriff’s recalcitrance.

  Three murders, a special agent, and a sheriff who plays dumb. Spud couldn’t help his grin. What fodder for a satiric piece in his Laughing Horse magazine. He couldn’t wait to begin. Of course, he caught himself, he would need to get the necessary facts first. What luck to have the special agent right here.

  “Do you think this agent might need some assistance?” Spud ventured.

  “What a good idea,” Willa’s delight and raised fork added force to her words.

  “When you have the time free, I suppose he might, Spud.” Mabel’s reminder was less than subtle, but Spud knew Mabel would make up excuses to encourage his taking the time for adventures with the special agent. Spud would be the best conduit to information she could possibly arrange.

  VI

  THE SUN WAS high in a cloudless sky when Tony set the picnic basket in the trunk and ushered Willa and Edith into the back seat. Spud, whom Edith guessed was at least as curious as they were to see the haphazard graves where the women’s bodies had been dumped, joined Tony i
n front.

  Already Edith could see one small white puff hovering over Pedernal, a good fifty miles or more south and west of Taos. Clouds would begin to build soon with moisture from the Gulf of Mexico pushing north to bring the usual afternoon monsoon at this time of year.

  Well, Edith thought, a little rain never hurt anyone and Tony would carry a tarpaulin to attach to the side of the car if they needed cover. They were late getting started because Mabel had invited them to her room for a second cup of coffee and then Willa, as promised, spent an hour with Nicolai Fechin to compare schedules and make plans for his portrait of her. His idea was to sketch Willa while they were in Taos and then arrange for additional sittings in New York to paint the full portrait.

  “What a glorious day for a drive,” Spud gushed from the front seat.

  Willa opened her window. Edith followed suit. The breeze would feel good. Tony pulled out the choke and pushed the starter. The engine caught immediately. What a blessing to have electric starters. Turning a crank made starting cars both difficult and dangerous. Edith was glad neither she nor Willa ever had to learn to drive. They walked or used public transportation to get around New York City and took trains everywhere else. Yellow cabs had been available in the City for almost twenty years, but they rarely chose to use them. They were skeptical, too, of Fred Harvey’s new Indian Detour campaign to draw people off trains and into his Harvey Hotels. In spite of difficult roads, Harvey Indian Detours were popular. Worse, they had learned from Mabel, Taos Pueblo was already a favorite destination.

  Cars are not safe, Willa had declared, with a statement that covered all New York cabs and Harvey Indian Detours. Especially unsafe, Edith thought to herself, with drivers like Tony who drove wherever he wanted regardless of whether there was an actual road. Tony also drove as fast as he could. But in a place like Taos, Tony and his car were gold. He was a wonderful guide. He had so much personal knowledge about the mix of people and their rich history in northern New Mexico. Without Tony they never could have reached the places he took them. And, Edith finished her rambling thought, his passengers usually arrived where and when they intended without injury. She smiled. At least the two of them had experienced only mud and inconvenience when Tony’s car fell into a ditch near the ceremonial cave the previous summer.

  Tony was clearly never timid about driving. Monsoons made no difference to him, even when the roads turned into deep slurry and threatened to carry the car into an embankment or slide it off into a ditch. Not everyone was like Tony, of course. They had had to wait for two and a half days at the Laguna Pueblo before anyone dared to take them to Acoma less than twenty miles away.

  Caliche clay, the driver explained. Too slick, too sticky, too dangerous. He was right, of course. It rained hard for several afternoons in a row, and flash floods destroyed roads and cut new channels through arroyos. Even Tony might have delayed that trip. Caliche, sand, and rock seemed to be the only footing for roadbeds in New Mexico, and all three could prove dangerous. But no matter what was happening, Edith knew that when Tony took the wheel he would remain unperturbed and even serene. Tony loved his car and nothing pleased him more than an expedition. And a picnic. Without a picnic, this trip would be much too somber.

  Adam set his easel under the canopy of the giant pine tree in front of Lawrence’s cabin. Sun filled the valley below but he stood in shade. The tree was so huge nothing else dared grow there. He dipped the tip of his brush in linseed oil and swished it in quick little circles on his pallet to lighten the shade of green he meant to use next.

  He no longer had to think about what he was doing with his hands or brushes, but landscapes always posed a puzzle. How to get the suggestion of detail and movement and depth in a painting that contained no tangible images and whose surface simply covered a flat board. Some days he wished he had been born a century earlier and could be content with capturing exactly the scene in front of him. But then he would just have had different problems to solve. There were always problems and he enjoyed his experiments, turning colors and shapes into images that were just suggestive, nothing concrete.

  The sounds at his back were pleasant, Maria sweeping the porch and singing softly. So delightful after yesterday’s fright. Maria didn’t mean to be heard, and he couldn’t understand her words anyway. A lullaby? Perhaps. Had she a child somewhere? A husband? Family?

  He knew nothing about her. Not where she came from, how she got there, or who the brute was that brought her. Good riddance to him. Nothing had given Adam greater pleasure than hearing the sound of Blade’s horse’s hooves retreating down the trail and away from the cabin. His own horse and pack mule had nickered but not followed. He figured they knew evil when they smelled it.

  To deepen the mystery, Maria had shown Adam a series of scratches on the interior wall of the little cabin where Maria continued to stay. Maria shook her head vehemently when he pointed to them and looked at her. They were not hers. They were down low behind the door. No one would notice them when the door stood open.

  He wouldn’t have noticed had she not taken him by the arm and led him to them. One set with six vertical scratches, with a seventh scratch crossing through the cluster. Seven what, he wondered. Days? Why? When he looked again at Maria, she wiped her eyes as though she had been crying. But then she shrugged and so did he.

  Seven what? Nothing occurred to him but an attempt to keep track of time. Why a need to track time? Had someone or some ones been imprisoned in that cabin? That wouldn’t have happened when Lawrence was there. Spud told him that cabin had been occupied by Lawrence’s friend and hanger-on, a deaf woman, a painter named … what. Adam had to think. So many whats in his mind. Brett, that was it. A bit odd, Spud said. Used a hearing horn. But surely not odd enough to scratch seven short lines on the wall near the floor of her cabin. For no apparent reason. She’d have had to do it on her knees. Adam found his thoughts coming in spurts. Then they stopped altogether.

  Another sound had begun to interfere with Maria’s song. This one came from the valley below. Adam could see nothing moving there, but the noise grew louder and closer and Adam finally recognized it as the rat-a-tat of a woodpecker. Probably a pileated woodpecker, he guessed, though he didn’t think they inhabited this area. But banging like that could only be made by a large bird, a strong one.

  Finally he saw a rustle of leaves in a distant cottonwood and caught a glimpse of red and buff as the bird burst out and flew to another tree. Not a pileated woodpecker but a flicker. Big, too, and with the same rat-a-tat. Birds of a feather, Adam smiled, but he also realized just how tight his nerves were, how much he was on edge. Noises, movements, minute changes in his surroundings. He noticed them all with a flinch.

  Damn that Blade. This was supposed to be Adam’s return to nature with freedom from people and material worries. He put down his brush and leaned against his stool to study again the scene below. Well, he would ignore the mystery of Maria and focus … FOCUS … on his work. He knew how to be disciplined. And he would be. That’s all there was to it.

  The trail had become increasingly narrow by the time Tony took his foot off the gas pedal. “Maybe here?” he finally asked.

  Willa poked her head out the window behind him. “Up there,” she gestured, “that’s it.”

  The car tilted at a rakish angle and Edith had to raise herself up from her seat to see where Willa was pointing. She hadn’t remembered that the trail ran along such a steep ridge. Maybe it was the perspective from horseback that made it seem different. But there it was. A shallow depression a couple feet below the car on the driver’s side, with yellowish dirt and small rocks that clearly had washed there from higher up. And where Willa pointed, a deeper depression, one that had just barely held the woman’s body the summer before.

  Tony Luhan’s Car

  Tony pulled the parking brake. The wheels on the driver’s side rested on the trail, the high point of the ridge. The ground fell away quickly on the other side, where cascading stones also suggested a l
ack of stability. The Cadillac listed dramatically toward the passenger side. Clearly this was no place for a car to be. But there they were. Edith opened her door and slid out. Willa tumbled right behind, almost landing on top of her. Spud was already standing, his feet braced. He helped Edith and then Willa right themselves. Tony didn’t move.

  “You look.” Tony rested his right hand on the steering wheel. That was his only motion.

  They first had to edge their way along the side of the car and use its fender to help them reach the center of the trail. Once there they didn’t quite know what to do.

  “Well,” Willa said, walking a few feet up the trail, “it’s been a year. Probably isn’t anything to see, really.”

  Spud stepped into the depression, squatted, and ran his hands through the dirt and stones along its sides. Edith watched him for a moment then let her eyes wander over the area beyond the depression and back down where they came from. Dirt and stones from the depression had surely washed that way. If anything had been left behind when they retrieved the woman’s body it would be farther down the shallow ditch.

  Edith moved slowly down the trail looking for signs of where rainwater might have created a runoff. A couple of tiny, dry rivulets ran off toward sparse bunches of blue grama grass, but they held only a few small stones that were indistinguishable from the rocks. She turned back. Willa had already returned to the depression where Spud squatted, still running his hands through the dirt. Willa was sitting on the side of the trail, her feet planted next to Spud’s. Edith joined them and saw that Willa’s eyes were closed.

  “Meditating?”

  “Shhh,” Willa responded before opening her eyes. They were deep blue at the moment. She pushed a stray hair under her hat and brushed off her jodhpurs. “Just trying to get the feel of the place.”