Edith and Willa had had long conversations about this cultural happenstance, sometimes with Mabel, sometimes alone. Local Hispanos would be offended by the way Willa planned to portray Padre Martinez in her new novel. Padre Martinez was much beloved in northern New Mexico but not by the French-born Archbishop Lamy, the subject of her novel and the center of its moral universe. Padre Martinez may have been the first to create education opportunities for northern New Mexicans and the first to bring a printing press into the state, but his interpretations of canon law, defiant lifestyle, and political activism brought him into direct confrontation with Lamy. Lamy first distrusted Martinez, then condemned him. The clash between the two was public and fierce, and in 1858 Lamy drove Martinez from the church and excommunicated him.
Many northern New Mexicans never forgave Lamy for that. Now, Mabel pointed out, those same New Mexicans would think Willa mistaken to tell her story from Lamy’s point of view, even if her story was meant to show how Lamy’s view changed and grew. Willa had no choice but to stay true to her character’s perspective, though Edith agreed that doing so was like dangling her toes over a bear trap.
Now, with these murders at hand, if the locals were to trust him, Agent Dan would have to avoid taking sides of any kind. Yet here he was staying with Mabel and Tony and their Anglo friends. Clear evidence, Edith guessed, of starting out all wrong.
“I think Tony is magnificent, don’t you?” Willa picked up the conversation they had begun while changing into their dinner dresses a few minutes earlier.
Edith welcomed the shift in subject.
“And I understand his adherence to pueblo cultural codes,” Willa paused. “But sometimes it seems to me Tony could be a little more forthcoming. Not to say more about Mr. Manby,” Willa seemed to be searching for words, “and then to ignore Agent Dan’s question about his friends at the pueblo.”
“I suppose Tony might have said he couldn’t answer because he is a Taos Indian.” Edith glanced at Willa and tried a tentative smile.
“He could have,” Willa rocked forward in her chair, deep in concentration. “Tony has often said his pueblo believes that speaking of evil draws evil. I am beginning to understand how he feels,” she added with a grimace.
Willa’s response surprised Edith. She tried again. “I guess Agent Dan should have known better than to ask Tony about headless bodies.”
“He might as well have asked Tony if he believes in witches. The answer would have been the same. Nothing.”
“Yes.” Edith hesitated. “Beheading is one of the greatest evils to them.”
“Just to haul those bodies to town must have been extremely difficult for those men, given their taboos and fear of witchcraft.” Willa tipped her chair back and began to rock again.
“Well,” Edith shifted her focus, “I for one don’t think anybody from the pueblo could have beheaded those women except a witch.”
“I for one don’t believe in witches.” Willa stood and brushed her hands down her skirt to smooth out wrinkles.
“Well, I for one can’t imagine witches in the pueblo, so I don’t think anyone from the pueblo killed those women.”
“And I want no more talk of witches or murders now.” Willa took a step off the porch and shook her shoulders as if to loosen a spell. “Let’s cross over. It must be time for dinner.”
“A New Mexico dinner tonight!” Spud greeted them at the main entrance from the portal. “Blue corn enchiladas and calabacitas,” he exclaimed. Agent Dan rose from his chair and made a slight bow as the women entered the living room.
“Enchiladas,” Willa echoed with enthusiasm. “Wonderful.”
“Sí.” Edith said out loud and immediately felt silly. She usually kept her enthusiasms to herself, especially in a foreign language.
“The Fechins are spending the evening with the Blumensheins.” Spud explained their absence. “And Mabel and Tony will be a bit delayed. John Collier will join us for dessert. But we have been invited to sit,” Spud made a flourish with his hand.
Spud and Willa led the way down the few stairs into the big dining room. Agent Dan offered his arm to Edith. The formality made Edith feel even sillier, but she put her hand lightly on his arm and followed suit.
“I think we clean up rather well, don’t you agree?” Spud turned to Agent Dan as they reached the bottom step. “Nice shirt,” he touched the starched white of the agent’s shoulder. Dan took no notice of the gesture.
“You look quite fetching yourself,” Willa patted Spud’s arm and smiled at his bow tie and red suspenders.
Once Agent Dan had seated Edith and Spud had seated Willa, Spud settled into his own chair and opened the conversation with a question. “So, Agent Dan, what do you make of all this? Three dead women, two without heads, all found within, say, four or five hundred yards of each other?”
“I was about to ask the same question of you. Each of you.” He did not smile and paused to look each of them in the eyes.
“That was skillfully done, switching the focus back to us,” Willa chuckled, dropping her voice to its lowest register. “But we have no clue, as the saying goes. Edith and I discovered the first body a year ago, but we are not from Taos and until three days ago we were not here. When we returned we were shocked to find that no one had made any progress in solving that murder. No progress at all.”
“And then this,” Edith surprised herself by interrupting. “Two headless women. And discovered so near the first one,” she was almost breathless when she reached the end of her sentence.
“Surely the same person killed all three,” Spud broke in.
“Don’t you agree?” Willa turned the conversation back to the special agent in their midst. “You’re the expert in these things.”
“Perhaps,” Was all Agent Dan offered. “We must not jump to conclusions, you know. This is only the beginning of the investigation. I personally haven’t seen the bodies and know little about the victims or their circumstances. I don’t know much about Taos or the surrounding areas either. In those ways, you know more than I do.” The special agent’s glance took in the three of them but settled longest on Spud.
“Perhaps,” Spud offered in return, “but we don’t know what to do with what we know. How to connect the dots.”
“That’s probably because there are no dots,” the special agent nodded. “It’s too soon for that.”
After a long pause, Willa agreed. “I suppose.”
“But I want those dots,” Edith insisted.
From the kitchen they could hear a salad being tossed, and the rich aroma filling the large dining room in which they sat suggested the enchiladas were about to appear.
“Water, everyone?” Spud rose to pour.
Edith guessed there would be no wine tonight, not with a federal officer at the table. Local officials Mabel could handle, but not federal officers. Prohibition, after all, was a large part of a special agent’s job. Most people simply ignored the new law and drank whatever bootleggers supplied, but bootleggers and gangsters had recently become such popular heroes that newspapers chased after their stories while special agents chased them. Sometimes the agents even caught them, but most often gangsters just seemed to kill each other in highly dramatic ways. None of which seems to have anything to do with any of us, Edith decided. Especially not here, in Taos, in the midst of such tranquility. But even here, Edith glanced at Agent Dan, violence prevails. And unnerves. A vision of the scabbard on Manby’s horse proved her assertion to herself. We are an unlawful nation, half drunk on denial and the fear it produces.
Unnerved by her own thoughts, Edith placed her hands in her lap and waited silently for Spud to fill her glass with water.
“Actually,” Agent Dan studied Spud’s face and nodded his thanks for the water, “I have an easier time saying what I don’t know than what I do. For instance, I have no idea who those women were, where they died, or what killed them.”
“Or whether they knew each other,” Willa added to Dan’s list.
“And whether the same person killed all three.”
“Or why,” Spud finished filling Edith’s glass just as the kitchen door swung open.
With the dish too hot to pass, they waited to be served, then ate in silence. Lost in the savory mixture of spices in the enchiladas or lost in thought, Edith wondered. Both, she decided, and reached for her glass. There were no answers to any of their questions anyway, not yet.
VIII
MORNING BROUGHT A peach-colored sky over Taos Mountain. Puffs of cloud billowing above tapered off to the northeast. On the porch, Edith stretched her arms as high as she could reach, then let them descend slowly until they reached her sides. One way to ease the stiffness in her arms and back from the previous day’s outing. Not that she had done anything strenuous or travelled all that far, but Tony’s choice of off-road trails kept her tense and at times breathless, and that night gangsters and special agents had invaded her sleep. She took special pleasure in knowing this day would bring no explorations or frightening adventures.
After they finished dinner the night before, John Collier had joined them for dessert and they decided among themselves that Agent Dan would try another visit with the sheriff and take with him the small silver cross Tony found. Collier, who as usual would spend his day at the pueblo, agreed to see if he could pick up any rumors about strangers or odd activities in the area. Spud would stay at his desk catching up on Mabel’s correspondence. Mabel declared herself vaguely interested but not yet caught up by the mystery. She wanted details, lots of details, especially details about sexual misdeeds, then she would be happy to pay attention. For today she would work on her memoir while Tony checked on his crops and cattle. Willa and Edith were free to do as they liked.
The morning air was so inviting, Edith stretched again as tall as she could reach, then let her body sink into the closest chair. Willa would be along shortly so they could have a leisurely breakfast before starting out. Willa had planned to read for an hour or so and then meet Nicolai Fechin in his makeshift studio. Edith expected to join them later but first she wanted to go to the pueblo with Andrew Dasburg, who had sent an invitation through Mabel for Edith to spend part of the day sketching with him and Ida Rauh.
Edith had enjoyed several pleasant hours the previous summer sketching with Andrew. Sometimes she managed to entice Mary Foote to join them, and Ida, who lived in an open relationship with Dasburg, often made it a foursome.
“Open relationship!” Edith’s mother had scoffed, all the while shaking The New York Times in Edith’s face. Ida Rauh’s picture had jigged with each shake across its front page. “You know her? How could you!” Her mother’s voice rose and fell. “She’s a tramp, that’s what we call women like her. When we are being polite.” Edith’s father had laughed and said something like, “Now, now, Mother, our little Edith is all grown up. She edits one of the most important magazines in New York City, after all. That is how you know someone like Ida Rauh, isn’t it?” Edith remembered her father squinting a little when he said that. It all passed in a moment and it had been years since she edited Every Week Magazine, but Edith never laid eyes on Ida Rauh without also seeing her mother and hearing those words. She hadn’t even had time then to respond.
Edith first admired Dasburg’s subtle use of colors and Cubist forms in the 1913 Armory Show in New York. She either knew or knew of Mary Foote and Mabel and Ida by then, too. Mary Foote, a successful portrait painter, set up her studio very near where Willa and Edith first lived on Washington Square. Ida Rauh, actress, lawyer, union activist, and now sculptor, had lived nearby and been as public as Mabel Dodge about her private life and as strident in demanding better conditions for garment workers after the devastating Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.
The Triangle Fire happened on Washington Square on March 25, 1911. One hundred forty-six young immigrant women flung themselves off ledges and out of windows on the eighth and ninth floors of the Asch Building. They had no choice. Employers had locked all the exits to keep workers from taking work breaks. There was no way out. Many who jumped were already ablaze. Others simply jumped to their deaths. Hundreds of people watched. It was horrendous, the deadliest industrial disaster in the nation’s history. And it happened where and when Edith, Willa, Mabel, Ida, and Mary lived right there in Greenwich Village.
They weren’t all acquainted then, but they knew first hand about the Triangle Fire and about the garment workers’ strike that followed. They also knew that something else had happened, something like a miracle. Women were united in protest. Not just Ida Rauh and Mabel Dodge, who were already involved in protests and the demand for women’s voting rights. Edith and Willa and even Mary Foote, none of whom were the least bit political — professional, yes, Edith acknowledged, but not political — even they felt the need for immigrants to be treated better and for women to gain equality with men. After all, Edith and Willa agreed, we are all human. And within months of the Triangle Fire, Willa set to work creating her strongest female characters, both immigrants, first in O Pioneers! and then in My Antonia. And what a miracle those novels proved to be. Edith smiled at the memory.
A narrow beam of light touched the edge of Adam’s blanket. He had overslept. He was about to yawn and stretch when the beam jolted his memory. He turned his head to stare at the window. The makeshift shutter he had built was still in place. He rose on his elbows to check the rest of the room. It was as it had been when he fell asleep — window shuttered, door barred, ax snug on its pegs above the door.
Maria lay on a pallet near the door. She smiled at him.
“You slept?” Adam complimented himself for making the words sound normal.
“Slept?” Maria asked.
“Sí,” Adam made his hands into a pillow to show her what he meant. She nodded.
He slipped out of bed and skirted Maria’s pallet to reach the window. With the shutter open, he could see that as usual sunlight and shadow danced together beneath the tall pine. Grasses swayed. The day was already beautiful. When Adam removed the bar from the door and stepped out onto the porch he took several breaths and exhaled slowly. All clear, he announced to himself.
But it hadn’t been so during the night.
Maria had awakened him in total darkness. She had already dropped the bar into place on the inside of the door, closed the shutter, and crouched next to Adam’s head. He felt her hand on his mouth and her whispered “shhhh” brushed against his ear. At first he could hear nothing, not even the familiar night yip of coyotes or the soft hoot of a screech owl. Then he, too, heard hooves on the trail below. They were approaching. Slow. At a walk. Then voices, male, conversing. Two, maybe three. Adam couldn’t hear their words. He felt Maria clutch his arm. He reached for her hand and held it. The sound of hooves came to a halt.
“Blade!”
Adam felt the shouted name reverberate through the room. It bounced from wall to wall to wall. Then he realized the person shouting had been repeating it, louder each time. Maria’s nails dug into his hand.
“Blade! Open the door, damn it. Blade!”
Adam rose from the bed, Maria’s hand still in his. They crossed to the window. Through the narrow slit in the shutter, moonlight allowed him to see what seemed to be enormous shadows at the edge of the porch. The riders were still mounted. Then a horse stamped and backed. Getting restless, Adam thought. Soon the riders would dismount and try the door.
Terror struck Adam’s knees. He put his free hand on them to stop their shaking and dropped his voice to its deepest register. “Blade’s gone!” It was the loudest he had ever shouted. “I’m the caretaker! You need to leave!”
“The hell, you say.” The sound of restless stomping increased. One horse began to paw. “Where’s Blade?”
“Gone! You need to leave!”
“Gone! The hell. Where’d he go?”
Adam released Maria’s hand, sidled to the door, and reached for the ax above it. He would be no match for these men, but he would have to try.
“Oh
, what the hell.” This time it was a different voice. “Let’s head for the Hole. Blade’ll turn up.”
“Blade left.” The first voice again, softer. A saddle creaked. Then loud again, “Anyone with him?”
“No, nobody.” Adam felt his throat contract. He saw Maria crouch lower by the window.
“Don’t sound right.” A horse stomped and shook its head. Its bit jingled.
Oh, God, don’t do any thinking, Adam almost said it aloud. His fingers tightened on the ax and he pressed his free hand over his mouth. Beneath his fingers, he felt the tight clench of his teeth. His jaw began to ache.
“What the hell.” The first voice muttered this time. His saddle creaked and he turned his horse away from the porch. “Let’s head for the Hole.”
Adam crept to the window to watch the shadows recede. “That’s right,” he whispered aloud as the sound of hooves retreated, “and crawl right into it, wherever it is.”
Adam didn’t expect Maria to understand his words, but it made him feel better to say them. Unaccustomed to his own bravado, he decided he liked it.
Once the sound of hooves faded, Adam removed the bar from the door and, with Maria alongside, slipped out to check on his own horse. In moonlight dimmed by clouds he lit no lantern but found nothing amiss. Smokey nickered from the corral and Adam and Maria went to the fence. The big gray strode over to press his muzzle against Adam’s cheek. Feeling the horse’s warm breath against his neck, Adam shuddered and leaned against the fence. He patted Maria’s shoulder and found that she too was leaning into the fence. When Maria started for the house, Adam waited a minute, then followed.
Death Comes Page 9
