Vicky waited a moment before she headed down the stairs. The sidewalks were clear; no sign of Gail anywhere. She had disappeared as quickly as she had appeared. Just past the third building, Vicky spotted the domed roof of a tennis club and the white flash of Gail’s tee shirt as she emerged out of the shadows into a column of sunshine, then disappeared past the door to the club.
Vicky hurried along the walkway, aware of the sense of peace that pervaded the complex, the slopes of the Grand Tetons rising like a jagged wall of boulders and pines, and the sky an endless blue sea. The quiet was broken by a chirping bird and the buzzing noise of sprinklers watering the nasturtiums and petunias along the front of the club.
Seated behind the counter just inside the door was a young man who looked about twenty-five, with bleached-looking blond hair, skin tanned the color of bronze, and a name tag that said Kip. He glanced up as Vicky approached, a quizzical look in his blue eyes. “Help you?” he said.
“I’m looking for Dave,” she said.
“Yeah?” Kip did a half turn toward the computer screen and tapped at the keys. “Looks like he’s got a private over at a client’s court.” He turned back. “Usually stops in to check messages before he knocks off for the day. Check back in about an hour.”
“I’ll do that.” Vicky pulled the small leather wallet out of her bag and handed her business card across the counter. “Tell him I’d like to talk to him for a few minutes.”
“You a lawyer?” Kip said. He held on to a corner of the card, as if it had just caught on fire.
Vicky said she would be back in an hour, then started for the door. She turned back. “Would you happen to know where Sloan’s Electric is located.”
“Three or four blocks off the square,” he said, still staring at the card. “Turn north when you get back to town. It’s on the corner. You can’t miss it.”
THE AREA WAS easy to locate, an assortment of warehouses and hardware stores clustered together, a few blocks from the boutiques and restaurants. She spotted the sign painted across the window on the corner shop and pulled into the parking lot. The bell jangled as she pushed open the front door into a small reception area with a polished wood floor that reflected the light from crystal chandeliers dangling overhead. An older woman, heavyset, with curly blue-white hair looked up from a small desk. “Welcome,” she said. She had a bright smile that took ten years from her age. “How can we help you?”
“Is the manager in?” Vicky walked over to the desk, conscious of her footsteps tapping the floor.
“Curly?” the woman said. “Who shall I say wants him?”
Vicky gave her name, fished out another business card and handed it to the woman who was half-standing now, gripping the edge of the desk. She studied the card a long moment, something between annoyance and fear moving through her expression, and Vicky looked away. It always surprised her, the way people reacted to the words printed on the card: Attorney-at-Law. Then the woman headed for the door on the side. She was no longer smiling. The door slammed behind her, and Vicky could hear the quick, smothered exchanges. Finally the door opened and the woman stepped out. “Go on in,” she said.
“Ms. Holden.” The man stood behind the desk, staring down at the card he held in one hand. He was probably in his mid-fifties, with broad shoulders and extra pounds around his middle. His hair had receded into a horseshoe that curled above his ears. “I’m the manager here. Curly Dobbs. Is there some problem?”
“I’d like to ask you a few questions about Ned Windsong.” Vicky closed the door behind her. The office was small and cluttered with papers and file folders that spilled over the tops of filing cabinets and piled around the desk.
Curly Dobbs started shaking his head. He dropped with a soft thud into the chair behind him and began rolling it from side to side. “Poor guy,” he said, motioning for her to take a side chair. “Bad luck, I’d say. Run into a couple of crazies on the rez. Should’ve stayed here. He was doing great right here. They caught them guys yet?”
“Not yet,” Vicky said.
“The FBI agent, what’s his name . . .”
“Ted Gianelli.”
“I’ve already told him everything I know about Ned. It’s not much. He only worked here a couple months. So why are you here? Is there some kind of lawsuit? I did not fire him, if that’s what you think. I treat all employees the same. Indian, white, black, Hispanic. Don’t make no difference to me, long as they do a good job. Ned was a real good apprentice. No complaints about his work. He left of his own free will, and I was real sorry to see him go.”
“Mr. Dobbs,” Vicky said. “I represent Ned’s fiancée, Marcy Morrison. She witnessed the killing.”
He gave a little nod, as if the explanation should make sense. “So what brings you here?”
“Did anything happen that caused Ned to leave?” Vicky said, studying the man’s expression for any hint that he knew Ned was involved in a burglary ring.
“Came in one afternoon after work and said, time to head back to the rez. I said, What’re you talking about? You need more money? What? Some of the guys harassing you? But he just said it was time to go. Wanted to get back to the Arapaho Way, whatever that means. Said he was gonna go home and prepare for the Sun Dance. Surprised me, ’cause he was doing real good. He was one of my most reliable employees. Soon’s he left the office, I called his uncle—”
“His uncle?”
“Old army buddy of mine,” the man said. “Jerry Adams. You know him?” He hurried on. “Rode into Kuwait together, Jerry and me, slogging rifles, a hundred and twenty degrees, dusty as hell. It was Jerry that called me and said his nephew was looking for a new job. Did I have any openings? Well, I can always use a good apprentice, so I said send him on up. When I told Jerry his nephew up and quit on me, well, he was as surprised as I was. Said he didn’t have any business doing that and he was gonna talk to him. That was the last I heard, until, well ...” He spread his hands. “I seen in the paper that Ned Windsong got shot and the FBI was looking for two Indians.”
“You’ve been very helpful,” Vicky said, getting to her feet. Ned must have confided in his uncle, she was thinking. Told him that he wanted to get away from the reservation, and Jerry Adams had helped him out. Odd, though, that he hadn’t told his uncle when he decided to leave Jackson. In any case, Curly Dobbs didn’t seem to know about the burglary ring.
She had started for the door when the man said, “That girl came around here a couple times.”
Vicky turned back. “Marcy Morrison?”
“Never knew her name.” He shrugged. “Blonde and real pretty. High-strung, though. A little crazy, you ask me.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Seen her out in the lot.” He crooked his thumb toward the rows of trucks outside the window. “Her and Ned got into a big row. She was shouting and screaming. I seen her take her bag and whack him a couple times. It was a real bad scene, and it happened more than once. I told Ned, keep his personal life away from work. I didn’t want her around. No telling what somebody like that is gonna do.”
“What did Ned say?”
“He’d take care of it.” The man gave another shrug. “Wasn’t long afterward he came in here and said he’s quitting.”
Vicky left the man standing behind the desk and walked back through the front office, ignoring the questions on the face of the blue-white-haired woman. The late afternoon sun was beating down hard. She hurried around the building and slid into the Jeep, imaging Marcy Morrison swinging her bag at Ned, shouting, crying. She had a breakdown, John O’Malley had said. The word reverberated in her head: breakdown, breakdown. Whatever had happened at the mission, it wasn’t the first time Marcy Morrison had lost control.
Vicky drove out of the lot and headed back up the hill toward Alpine Meadows and the tennis club. There were places in the girl, she realized, that she hadn’t seen.
27
“YEAH, DAVE IS here.” Kip gestured toward the hallway that ran into the bac
k of the building. “Go on out to the courts. You’ll see his office on the left.”
Vicky followed the directions down the hallway and through the glass door onto a platform with rows of chairs that faced two courts. Several spectators occupied the chairs, intent on the balls thumping back and forth. Women’s doubles on one court, men’s singles on the other. Gasps went up, followed by low sucking sounds, as if the spectators were trying to get their collective breath. The air was dry and stale.
She walked behind the chairs and knocked on the door with Dave Hudson in black letters on the pebbled-glass window.
“Come on in.” The voice sounded muffled, low-pitched and a little on edge.
Vicky stepped into an airy room that overlooked the outdoor courts. Gail was playing singles, her white tee shirt, blue shorts, and long legs flashing on the court. Across the room was a desk with a large polished surface that looked unused, and next to the desk, a tall young man with muscle-knotted arms and short-cut brown hair was bent toward a metal machine, stringing a tennis racket.
“You the lawyer wants to see me?” He gave her the sideways grin of a man accustomed to holding a woman’s attention with minimum effort. “What can I do for you? Nobody’s suing me, I hope. No players upset because they didn’t make Wimbledon.” He gave a snort of laughter at the little joke.
“I represent your former fiancée, Marcy Morrison.”
Dave Hudson brought a handle down hard and swung around, leaving the tennis racket balancing on the machine. The joking mood had passed, and in its place was the hardness of steel. He had blue eyes, so pale they were almost white. “What’s her beef? Breach of promise or some weird thing like that?” He took a moment, staring straight ahead, as if a new idea had materialized across the room. “Jesus, don’t tell me she’s pregnant. What is this? A paternity thing?”
“It’s nothing like that,” Vicky said. She could sense the tension melting out of him. Still the hardness remained in the set of his jaw. “I’m trying to find her. I hoped you might have seen her recently, or heard from her.”
Dave dropped into the chair behind the desk and ran a hand over the top of his stubbly hair. “You telling me she’s back,” he said finally.
“I take it that means you haven’t heard from her.” Vicky perched on an upholstered bench pushed beneath the windows.
“I don’t want to hear from Marcy Morrison,” he said. “Ever. Is that clear? You’re her lawyer, you give her the message. Better yet, don’t mention my name and remind her. I can only hope she’s forgotten me. Out of sight, out of mind, you know what I mean? So if that’s why you came around, to see if I know where she is, the answer is, I don’t. And I don’t want to know. End of discussion.”
He started to get to his feet, and Vicky said, “Marcy could be in danger. She witnessed a murder.”
“Murder?” He flopped back into the chair. “She saw somebody get murdered?”
“Her fiancé, Ned Windsong. Maybe you knew him?”
“That Indian she took up with? He got murdered? And she says she saw it?” He lifted both hands as if he wanted to stop an oncoming truck. “You believe that?”
“The FBI believes her. Why wouldn’t I?”
“Oh, let’s see.” He flattened both hands on top of the desk and leaned forward. “Maybe because she’s psycho and a pathological liar. She lives in Marcy world. You ever go there, you’ll get as crazy as she is.”
“But you were engaged to her,” Vicky said. In her mind was the blonde girl, pressed in the corner of the sofa at the mission guesthouse, huddled into herself with fear. “You must have seen some good in her.”
“Let’s get something real straight,” Dave said. “I don’t know what was going on in Marcy world, but in the real world, we were never engaged.” He pushed away from the desk, got to his feet, and started walking back and forth, elbows crooked, hands jammed against his waist. Finally he stopped and faced Vicky. “You want the truth? I met her in Denver. I was coaching at a club, and she came in for lessons. She was lousy at tennis, two left feet, stumbling all over the court, couldn’t connect with the ball. But I admit, she was pretty good-looking, so I bought her a drink and we went out a few times. That was it. The extent of my engagement, ’cause that was all it took to see that she was nuts. So I quit calling, and that’s when all hell broke loose.”
He was nodding, as if the rest of the story were self-explanatory. “What happened?” Vicky said.
“What happened?” He shouted. “What happened? She kept coming to the club, hanging around outside my apartment. I’d come out of the dry cleaners, and she’d be waiting on the sidewalk. Everywhere I went, she stalked me. Begging me to take her back, saying we belonged together, nobody ever loved her except me and a lot of crap like that. She was a bloodsucker, and I couldn’t get her off me. A friend of mine owns this place, so I quit the club in Denver and moved up here, thinking I’d ditched her. Two weeks later, she showed up. Same thing started up all over again. I was about to take a job in Arizona when she met that Indian. That was my lucky day, ’cause she laid off me and went after him. So the poor bastard’s dead! What’d he do? Try to break up with her?”
“Two men broke into the house, beat up Marcy and shot Ned,” Vicky said. “There’s no evidence she had anything to do with it.” Except, she was thinking, there could have been a motive if Ned had wanted to break things off with her. She pushed the thought away. “There was no weapon in the house, and no evidence that Marcy had fired a gun,” she said, wanting to convince herself, she supposed. God, Marcy, who are you?
She stood up, went over to the desk and set her card down. “If you should hear from Marcy,” she said, “I’d appreciate it if you would give me a call.” Then she left Dave Hudson stationed beside the desk, like a statue, the tennis racket still balanced on top of the stringing machine.
The sun had dropped behind the mountain peaks by the time Vicky drove toward the town square, fit the Jeep into a vacant slot and walked to a little shop with black metal tables and chairs out on the sidewalk. She ordered a sandwich and soda, sat at one of the tables and tried to form a picture of Marcy Morrison from all the different pieces that the girl seemed to have broken into. Marcy Morrison, twenty-three years old, blonde hair and beautiful despite the bruised cheek and blackened eyes. Then a slow fade backward—seventeen, twelve, nine, six, until finally she was a little girl, barely a bump under the covers of her bed, crying in the night for her mother. That was the needy, frightened little girl that Dave Hudson had described.
Vicky finished the soda, crumbled the sandwich wrapper, and stuffed the trash into the metal container. Then she walked back to the Jeep and drove out of town. The air had turned cool; blue shadows rolled off the mountain slopes. She fumbled with the radio, finally tuning in a Western music station. She felt as if a hot iron had been set on her chest. Was that how it had been with her own children while she was in Denver going to school? She hadn’t known. She hadn’t known.
THE WHITE LIGHT of the TV blinked in the darkness of the living room, couples in tuxedos and long gowns dancing across the screen. The gray head of Bishop Harry poked over the back of the sofa. A bowl of popcorn sat in his lap. Father John leaned around the jamb. “I’m off to the social committee meeting,” he said.
The old man held up a fist full of popcorn and waved. “Do enjoy yourself.” He sounded as if his mouth were stuffed with cotton.
Father John hurried outside, down the steps and out to Circle Drive. Pickups and sedans were pulling into the mission, headlights flickering through the cottonwoods. Three pickups stood in front of the church. The air was cool, the breeze rustling the grasses, moving through the branches. He crossed the field, his mind on Vicky, wondering if she had located the girl, knowing that, if Marcy had gone to Jackson, Vicky would find her. This morning, at the feast at Eagle Hall after the funeral, Ella had told him she’d seen Vicky at the cemetery. What was she doing there? Ella had wanted to know. Why did she come? Couldn’t she see that the white
girl had something to do with Ned’s murder? He had tried to tell her that Gianelli would sort it out and if the girl was involved . . . He had stopped at the shuttered look in her eyes, the implacable set of her chin.
He picked up his pace and darted through the headlights of a pickup. He was halfway down the alley, the lights of Eagle Hall streaming over the gravel, when he heard the footsteps pounding behind him. “Father! Father!”
He turned around and waited for James White Eagle to catch up. “Heard the news?” the man called, thick arms pumping at his side. He limped from one bowed leg to the other, as if he had just gotten off a horse and wasn’t used to the hard earth under his feet.
“What news?” Father John said.
James waited until he was close before he said. “Them two Indians the fed’s been looking for.”
“What about them?”
“Shot to death out in an old barn on North Fork Road. My nephew’s one of the officers out there right now.”
Father John nodded. It was the way the moccasin telegraph worked. “Are you sure it’s Hawk and Lookingglass?”
“Oh, it’s them, all right. Buddy, that’s my nephew, says there’s no doubt. Guess they won’t be shooting any more Arapahos.”
Father John set a hand on the man’s shoulder. “Can you handle the meeting tonight? Betsy Burton will help. She knows who’s been taken to the hospital or needs food.”
The Indian nodded. “You gonna go out there and pray over them?” he said. “Seems to me that type don’t need prayers.”
“We all need prayers,” Father John said.
28
THE BARN STOOD at the end of a dirt track, the kind of abandoned building people had forgotten was still there, leaning sideways from the wind and snow that had pummeled it for decades. The old Toyota bounced over the ruts, fighting the wind that swept across the flat, open ground and whistled through the cracks around the doors. Father John had gone a half mile down the track before the glow of police lights materialized in the darkness. He followed the lights around a curve and across the bare dirt yard. He parked behind the coroner’s van.
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