At Ease with the Dead

by Walter Satterthwait

  Somehow this was not a compelling argument.

  Perhaps her death had nothing to do with my presence. Perhaps a burglar had caused it after all. She hears a noise in the living room, gets up to investigate, and walks unwitting from this world into the next.

  That was still less compelling.

  Death can come by chance, at the intersection of our lives, with a hurricane’s random path, a madman’s random logic. I couldn’t believe it had come that way to Alice Wright.

  I knew that her death was connected in some way to her father’s. And knew that by dragging that fifty-year-old murder up into the present, I had somehow triggered another.

  But how? Who gained something by her death? Who lost something by her life?

  Alice Wright had thought her mother killed her father. Her own death seemed to disprove that.

  But maybe her mother was still the key. Maybe one of her lovers—about which Alice had known nothing—had tired of a bit part and tried to take over the lead.

  But if so, where had he gone since? Her mother hadn’t remarried, hadn’t been involved, according to Alice, with anyone after her father’s death.

  But according to Alice, she hadn’t been involved with anyone before it, either. And according to Brian DeFore, she’d been involved with him. I tended to believe Brian DeFore.

  I couldn’t see him, however, as a murderer. Even if he could slip away somehow from the old folks’ home, he didn’t have the strength for it, or the memory. His killing would be self-inflicted; and that, it seemed to me, he had done already, many years ago.

  Sergeant Mendez’s father? He’d been the detective investigating Dennis Lessing’s death. Was it possible that he’d been having an affair with the dead man’s wife? That he’d killed Lessing to get her?

  I was spinning off into paranoia.

  Or was I? Hadn’t Mendez shipped me out of town? Afraid, perhaps, of what I might learn?

  All right. Forget Alice Wright’s mother for the time being. Anything I might’ve discovered about her would probably be buried with Alice. And even if someone else knew something, I was persona non grata in El Paso for the moment.

  Focus on the part of the problem you can do something about. The other factor in the equation. The father. The father’s affair with the woman on the Reservation.

  And try to find out how any of this had anything to do with the disappearance of a hundred-year-old corpse.

  Do the job you were hired to do. And maybe, just maybe, you’ll be able to do something about the murder of Alice Wright.

  When I reached Santa Fe at ten o’clock that Friday night, I was exhausted. Favoring both palms, which should have been impossible, and often was, I manhandled the suitcase into my house and dumped it beside the door. I shuffled into the kitchen, made myself a drink, carried it back out to the living room, and flopped down onto the sofa. I was kicking off my boots when I decided to call Rita and let her know I was back.

  Her phone rang long enough for me to start worrying. She never went to bed without turning on the answering machine. And she wouldn’t have left her house—Rita didn’t leave her house.

  I sat there picturing all the things that could happen to a woman whose legs were paralyzed. Finally, just as I was about to hang up and run out to the Subaru, the ringing stopped and I heard her voice.

  “Hello.” She sounded as flat and lifeless as Lisa Wright had sounded earlier today.

  “Rita?”

  “Hello, Joshua.” Still without emotion.

  “I’m back. I thought you should be the first to get the good news.”

  She sniffled as though she had a cold. “I’m glad. Could you call me in the morning, Joshua?”

  No one wanted to talk to me today.

  “What’s wrong, Rita?”

  “Nothing. Nothing.” She sniffled again, cleared her throat. “I just don’t feel very well.”

  “Rita, what’s the matter?”

  “Nothing’s the matter.” Another sniffle. “Really. I’m all right. I’m fine.” There was a quaver now in her voice.

  “I’ll be right over,” I said.

  “Joshua, no.” Sudden, insistent. “Please, I’m fine.”

  “Fifteen minutes,” I said.

  She wouldn’t answer the door either, not until I leaned on the bell for a solid two minutes. At last the door swung open. I stepped in and pushed it shut behind me.

  Her back was to me as she rolled the chair down the hallway and turned left into the living room. I followed her.

  Only one light was on, a small brass lamp on the table by the sofa. Without looking at me, she wheeled the chair around to face the sofa at that end, my usual seat. She wore a black silk robe and her black hair looked like she’d just brushed it. The skin around her eyes was puffy and the corners of her mouth were tight.

  I sat down on the sofa and the tightness went from her mouth to her eyes and she said, “Your face, Joshua. And your hands. What happened to you?”

  I shook my head. “Nothing. An accident. I’m fine.”

  Now both eyes and mouth were tight. “A fight.”

  “I’m okay. Tell me what’s wrong with you.”

  “Joshua,” she said, “there’s nothing wrong with me. I think I may’ve picked up a flu. All I need is some rest.” Her mouth tightened again. “And I asked you not to come over. You don’t have any right to come barging in here when I want to be alone.”

  “Rita,” I said. “This is me, remember? The tall guy? I’ve known you for four years. That flu story isn’t going to cut it.”

  She looked at me for a moment and then put her head back. She closed her eyes and said, “Please, Joshua.” Her voice was deliberate and strained, as though she were trying to keep it from cracking. “Please go away. If I’ve ever meant anything to you, you’ll leave me alone right now.”

  I said, “Rita, you know what you mean to me. It’s the same thing you’ve meant to me for a long time now. But I’ve always thought that whatever else we might be to each other, or might not be, we were friends.”

  She lowered her head and put her hand to her face, thumb against one temple, middle finger against the other. I couldn’t see her eyes now.

  “And I’ve always thought,” I said, “that friends were supposed to—”

  I stopped. Beneath her hand, tears were slowly rolling down her cheeks.

  She sat motionless and silent.

  “Ah, Rita,” I said. Her other hand rested on the arm of the wheelchair. I leaned forward and took it in mine. The rest of her remained still, but her thumb moved against my fingers.

  Neither of us said anything for a while. I could hear the tears lightly tap, one by one, against her gown.

  Finally she breathed in, deep and shuddery. She cleared her throat. “There’s some Kleenex in the bathroom,” she said. “Could you bring me some?”

  She never asked me to do anything for her; she wanted a moment alone.

  I stood up, padded across the room and down the hallway to the bathroom, plucked three or four Kleenex from their box, and padded back. I handed them to her and sat down again on the sofa.

  She wiped her eyes, blew her nose, put her hands in her lap. For a few moments she didn’t look at me. Then she did, and she was smiling. It was a sad, fragile smile. And once again, as often happened when I was around her, something turned, wrenching, within my chest. She said, “I don’t know what I’m going to do with you.”

  I smiled. “I’ve got an idea or two, if you’d care to hear them.”

  She shook her head, sniffled, blew her nose again.

  “So what happened?” I asked her.

  “Your friend, Mr. Begay. He happened.”

  “He called here?”

  She nodded, took another deep breath. “He’s in town. I asked him to come over. I wanted to meet him.”

  “So what happened?”

  “He came over. We talked. He told me about the woman on the Reservation. The woman having the dreams.”

  “Y
eah?”

  “Then he was asking me about the shooting. About my back. I told him what the doctors said. That I wouldn’t be walking again. I told him that I would. He asked if he could examine my spine.”

  I was trying, not very successfully, to imagine Daniel Begay as a letch.

  She saw my frown. She smiled that fragile smile again. “No, Joshua, nothing like that. I just bent forward in the chair and he ran his hands down my back. No clothes were removed. It was all very clinical.”

  “Right. And then what?”

  “And then he sat down and he said, ‘I’m sorry to tell you this, Mrs. Mondragon, but you’re fooling yourself.’”

  15

  I stared at her for a moment. “Jesus, Rita. So what? He’s not a doctor. What right does he have to tell you you’re not going to walk? What does he know?” As soon as I found out where Begay was staying, I was going to get over there and—quickly, neatly, as efficiently as possible—I was going to put out his lights.

  Rita was shaking her head, smiling the fragile smile. “No, Joshua, that’s not what he meant.”

  “So what did he mean?”

  “That I’d stopped believing it was possible. And that until I believed it again, it wouldn’t happen.”

  “That’s crap, Rita. You’ve been telling me for almost three years that you’re going to walk again.”

  Her fingers moved lightly around the balled-up Kleenex. She nodded. “I said the same thing. He just sat there smiling at me. A nice smile, fond and affectionate, like he was my uncle, and he knew better than I did what I thought.” She pressed her lips together. “I treated him like a bitch. I told him he didn’t know what he was talking about.”

  “He doesn’t.”

  She blew her nose again. “He ignored me. He told me that I had to put some time aside every day, and sit quietly and picture myself. Standing up. Walking. Running. He told me that everytime I stopped believing, I had to call up one of those pictures. Think about it. Breathe it in and out. Become it.”

  “Swell,” I said. “Does he do crystal healing on the side? Channeling? Does he talk to dead pharaohs?”

  She shook her head again. “Joshua, he’s right. I have stopped believing. I’ve been telling you that I’ll walk again. I’ve been telling everyone. Sometimes I even tell myself. But it’s all been a sham, a front. At night, when I’m lying there alone in the bed, and I can see the silhouette of the chair against the light from the window, I know I’m going to climb back into it tomorrow morning, and the morning after that, and the morning after that. Forever. Until I die. And sometimes I think it might be a good idea to hurry along the process.”

  “The dying process,” I said.

  She nodded, her face empty.

  I said, “No, Rita.”

  She frowned. “Wasn’t it Nietzche who said that suicide is a wonderful thing—that the thought of it has gotten many a man through many a bad night?” She shrugged. “Many a woman, too.”

  “You could’ve said something,” I said. “You could’ve talked to me. You know that all you have to do is call.”

  A brief shake of her head. “I didn’t want you to know how bad it could get. I didn’t want to put that weight on your shoulders.”

  “They’re pretty good shoulders,” I said. “I get a lot of comments on the shoulders.”

  Another faint smile. “They’re fine shoulders, Joshua. But even if you brought them over here every night, and loaded them up, you’d still have to leave, sooner or later. And then I’d be all alone again. Me and my despair.” The faint smile, ironic now. “Me and my shadow.”

  Until this moment, the two concepts, Rita and despair, would’ve been impossible for my mind to join together.

  “Rita,” I began, and then realized I didn’t have a finish. I didn’t know what to say.

  She smiled. She had never looked so painfully beautiful as she did at that moment. “Joshua, I’m all right. Really. After Daniel Begay left, I was fuming. Almost sputtering with anger. Not because he was wrong, but because he’d seen through me. And then I had myself a good cry. Wallowed in self-pity for a while.” The smile again. “Something I seem to’ve gotten good at. But I’m all right now. Talking to the man was probably the best thing that could’ve happened to me.”

  “And what happens now?”

  She took another long deep breath. “Well,” she said, “first you tell me what happened in El Paso. And then we proceed from there.”

  “That’s not what I meant. What do we do about this despair business?”

  “I’m going to call Daniel Begay tomorrow, and apologize, and ask him if he and I can talk some more.”

  “He’s not a doctor, Rita.”

  “No, but he knows things.” Another smile. “He even knew I’d want to talk to him tomorrow. He left his phone number. Here in Santa Fe.”

  “So what is he, some kind of Navajo guru?”

  She looked at me, her head cocked slightly to the side. “Joshua, don’t resent him. He’s a good man. You know that.”

  I did know that, but it was difficult not to resent someone, a stranger to her, who could see things in Rita that I hadn’t. From time to time we can be petty little dorks, we mountain men.

  “Now,” she said. “Tell me about El Paso.”

  “I’m sorry about Alice Wright,” she said. “You liked her.”

  “Yeah,” I said. I studied the pattern in the Persian carpet.

  “Stop blaming yourself. You didn’t kill her.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Joshua.”

  “What?”

  “Look at me.”

  I did. “What?”

  “Stop it.”

  “Shit, Rita, I did a hell of a job down there. I managed to get one old woman killed. If it hadn’t been for her granddaughter, those three guys in the stocking masks would’ve turned me into chopped meat. If it hadn’t been for a fat cop, I’d still be getting worked over by a goon with red hair and a badge. And then, on top of everything else, I get thrown out of town. I did a great job.”

  We had shifted roles again. I was the one providing the self-pity, she was the one providing the thoughtful ear.

  She said, “How much of this is wounded ego and how much is guilt over Alice Wright’s death?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Who knew where you were staying when the tires were slashed on the Subaru?”

  “What?” She was tricky, Rita.

  She repeated the question.

  “Alice and Lisa Wright,” I said. “But I can’t see either one of them slashing my tires.”

  “What about the archaeologist? Emmett Lowery?”

  I shook my head. “I never told him where I was staying.”

  “What was the name of the motel?”

  “The Buena Vista.” I frowned. “Okay. Yeah. If he assumed I was staying at a motel, he could’ve looked up motels in the yellow pages and called them until he found me. Wouldn’t take him long to reach the B’s. But why go to the trouble? And why slash my tires?”

  “We don’t know that he did. It’s possible that Alice or Lisa Wright told someone.”

  “Lisa says they didn’t.”

  She nodded. “And we believe Lisa, do we?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Why not?”

  She smiled. “Lisa’s pretty?”

  “She’s pretty.” I shrugged. “I didn’t hold it against her.”

  Another smile. “Of course not.”

  “As a matter of fact, I didn’t hold anything against her.” I smiled back, comfortable now with self-righteousness. “Including me, if that’s what you’re implying.”

  “Joshua, your social life is none of my business.”

  “It could be, though,” I said. “If you’d let it.”

  “Are you planning to go off to the Navajo Reservation?”

  Tricky. “That’s a non sequitur, Rita.”

  “Are you?”

  “Yes.”

  “What if Daniel Begay decides
to give this up?”

  “I’m still going.”

  “Because Alice Wright was killed.”

  “Right.”

  “Do you think that you’ll be able to learn anything about some woman Dennis Lessing knew sixty years ago?”

  I shrugged. “Won’t know until I try. Did you ask Daniel Begay about Peter Yazzie?”

  “Yes. He doesn’t know him personally, but he knows his family. He lives in Hollister.” Hollister was past Gallup, in Arizona, and not too far from the Ardmore Trading Post. “I’ve got the phone number,” she said. “It was listed.”

  “You call it?” I asked her.

  “Yes. No one answered.”

  “Been a lot of that going around.” I shrugged. “Okay. So I’ll stop at the Ardmore Trading Post and then I’ll drive on to Hollister.”

  Rita nodded. “When do you plan to leave?”

  “Tomorrow. After I talk to Daniel Begay.”

  Another nod. “When you go,” she said, “bring the gun along.”

  I smiled. “You figure the Navajos are restless?”

  “Someone killed Alice Wright. Unless you’re willing to believe that her death was coincidental, it seems likely that someone is very unhappy with this investigation.”

  I nodded. “I’ll bring the gun.”

  Early the next morning, after I showered and dressed and ate a breakfast of scrambled eggs and scrapple, I made some telephone calls. I dialed the first number Rita had given me and reached a very young girl. When I asked her for Daniel Begay, she dropped the phone onto what sounded like concrete. A few moments later Daniel Begay was on the line. I asked him if he could meet me in the office at noon. He said he could.

  I dialed the second number, Peter Yazzie’s, in Hollister. No one answered.

  I dialed Arizona information and got the number for the Ardmore Trading Post. Probably I should’ve called the place earlier. Maybe if I had, I would’ve gotten through. I didn’t get through this morning. A busy signal droned at me.

  I found my notebook, flipped through it, located the Michigan number Grober had given me. Dialed it. The phone was picked up on the third ring.

  “Hello?” A young woman’s voice. Daughter? Granddaughter?