But now the diary was gone, and I had nothing.
A sentence from the diary came to mind: Move the heart first.
Abruptly, I set Bella on the bed and got dressed. On the way through the kitchen, I made a fist and banged the top of the automatic cat feeder in just the right spot. An unscheduled helping of cat food spewed into the bowl. Bella leapt on it. I hoped she never learned that trick. There would be no living with Bella if she could outsmart the timer.
I made a cup of tea, ate a slice of cinnamon toast, and licked a large gob of peanut butter from a spoon. Then, fortified, I walked down the stairs and into the yoga studio. I settled on my mat, legs in lotus, palms up; closed my eyes; and breathed.
Hours passed. I waited.
Someone entered the studio. I felt a presence. Without opening my eyes, I said, “Not now, Jorn.”
“When?” he asked.
“Later,” I said.
More hours passed. Once, in the ashram with Guru Bobastani, I sat in meditation for thirteen hours. For more than five thousand years, men and women have practiced yoga in order to be strong enough to sit in meditation. That is the purpose of yoga. It was never meant to compete with forty minutes on a Stairmaster. You can’t strip the spirituality out of yoga. It always seeks the union of spirit, mind, and body.
As I slipped deeper into meditation, I heard buzzing. Whispers. Then the buzzing again. I remained in lotus, no longer feeling my body, as my mind fell back into the buzzing like a body into a lake, arms stretched wide, eyes closed, lips smiling, sinking down to the quiet bottom. And there I stayed.
When I finally surfaced, the first thing I saw was Jorn, across the room, sitting on the floor, his back against the wall. He was watching me.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, my voice raspy.
“I thought you might start levitating,” he said. “I didn’t want to miss it.”
“I heard whispers.”
“That was your mother.”
“You called my mother?”
He checked his watch. “You haven’t moved for five-and-a half hours. At least, that I know of. Who knows how long you were ‘om-ing out’ before I got here?” Jorn rubbed his knees. “I don’t know how you can take it.”
“Years of practice,” I said.
“Evie said you were okay. Obviously, she’s seen this kind of weird behavior before.”
“Of course, I’m all right,” I said. “Just working on some things.” I flipped over onto my hands and knees and moved through a few Cats and Cows, poses for limbering the spine. Bella came trotting in and butted me with her head. I sank into Child’s Pose, my legs curled under me, my forehead on the mat, and sighed.
“Working on what?” Jorn asked.
Without lifting my head, I mumbled into the mat, “My next step.”
“You mean about the diary?”
I pushed into Down Dog, felt that delicious relaxation ripple through my body, then stepped to my hands and swept up to standing. Hands held in Prayer Pose, I bowed my head in namaste then strode across the room. I looked down at Jorn with a smile and offered a hand up. “Yes,” I said.
When we entered the kitchen, the oven was on warm and something smelled heavenly. Evie had left vegetarian lasagna and garlic bread. My mother knew how hungry I’d be after a marathon meditation session. I invited Jorn to join me. We ate in silence at first. The transition from the meditative world to the concrete world can be like those first few moments after taking off roller-skates. You have to remember what the nonrolling world feels like. Jorn kept eyeing me, waiting for me to speak. Finally, I reached for my second slice of garlic toast and said, “One of the last entries in the diary was a message from Tum to me. He told me to trust.”
Jorn’s forehead wrinkled. “Trust whom?”
I shrugged. “This whole situation has a bad vibe, a terrible energy.” Spicy pasta slid across my tongue. “But I’m the keeper.”
Jorn stopped, his fork in mid-air, and stared at me. He set the fork down.
“You’re going after the diary,” he said.
“Who else is there?”
“Alone.”
I seldom ask for help from anyone other than my family. I figure I was put on this cosmic roller coaster to hang on, ride it out, and keep the other riders from flying off, if I can. Yet, for some reason, the diary and Jorn were mixed up in my feelings. He was meant to help me; I just knew it. And I always act on my intuition. Sometimes we are the teacher, and sometimes we are the student. In this case, I didn’t know which of us was which.
“Unless you want in.” I gave him a long look.
The silence that greeted my offer was nearly a solid thing. Just when I thought he was going to laugh me off, one eyebrow quirked and a gleam of interest streaked across his eyes. One dimple appeared.
He leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms over his chest, and pretended to be indifferent. “Help you find the diary,” he said.
“That’s the plan.”
“Partners.”
“I’d be the head partner, of course,” I said.
Jorn’s lips twitched. “Could it be dangerous?”
“Most likely.”
He gave it a long thought. “All right,” he finally said, picking up his fork and returning to his lasagna. “But I don’t do vibes.”
As we were finishing our meal, my phone rang. I snatched it up and saw that I had seven messages, all of them from Nico. And here he was, calling again.
“Where the hell have you been?” Nico growled when I answered.
“Meditating.”
“All day? You people are so strange.”
“What’s up?” I asked.
“We’ve got a situation, and I’m ready to tear the State of New Mexico a new one.”
“Breathe, Nico.”
“Don’t try to calm me. I enjoy righteous anger.”
“What happened?” I asked, putting Nico on speakerphone. Jorn leaned forward. He patted his coat pocket and pulled out a small black notebook and pen.
“I’ve been fucked by every official channel in the state. They cremated Tum, what was left of him, without my authority. Then they lost the fucking ashes. Can you believe that?”
“Oh no.”
“Don’t worry. I finally tracked them down in some pencil pusher’s office. Scared the shit out of that little guy. He’ll never lose one of my friend’s remains again.”
“So you have them now?”
“Scattered them on his mountain at sunset, just like he wanted.”
“I should have been there with you.”
“Tum wasn’t one for ceremony.”
“No,” I agreed. Still, I was ashamed that I had never even thought of how best to say good-bye to Tum. I had been raised better than that. When someone died in Whispering Spirit, we all paid our respects. Words were said. The individual’s goodness was remembered.
I couldn’t face saying good-bye, and now, I’d lost my chance.
With guilt in my voice, I said, “I lost the diary, Nico.”
“Lost it? How the hell—”
“Actually, it was stolen.”
“Tell me what happened.”
So I did.
When I finished, Nico said, “Makes sense with all the weird shit going on.”
“You mean the lost ashes?”
“They weren’t the only thing misplaced. I wanted a copy of the autopsy report. That mysteriously disappeared, too. As did the coroner, that two-bit, rat-faced . . .”
“Nico,” I interrupted.
“I know, I know, breathe.”
“Why did you want to see the autopsy report?”
“Because it didn’t feel right. I wanted to know how Tum died. We rode together, man. He was my brother.”
“And, there’s all this curios
ity about the diary.”
“That, too. So I went hunting. The coroner took a sudden vacation. To Hawaii. When I found that son of a bitch, I nearly shoved a flaming drink up his ass.”
“I don’t get it,” I said.
“He was paid to get lost for a while and to bury the report.”
“Why? What was in it?”
A sad sigh issued from the phone. “Tum was shot, Maya.”
“No,” I moaned.
“Point blank in the head.”
I looked at Jorn, and he looked at me. Then he began scribbling in his notebook.
I couldn’t believe it. Tum was murdered.
He had changed his ways. He had left the violent life. He had planned to go out of this world in a quiet way: happy, ready. Instead, he had been ripped from this existence. I closed my eyes as sorrow swept over me.
“And that’s not all, Maya,” Nico continued. “The fire marshal’s now calling it arson. One of the firemen told me they found Tum’s body tied to a chair. He didn’t have a chance, those motherfuckers.”
Long after Jorn left, I paced around the studio, Bella trailing in my wake. Nico suspected Tum had been tortured, probably for the location of the diary. “He wouldn’t have told them shit, Maya,” Nico reassured me. I knew he was right.
I thought of the last time I had visited Tum, back in August. He had been so proud of the kiva he had just completed next to his house. We sat together in the circular pit on the stone bench that ran around the walls. It was a small personal kiva, maybe five people at most could meditate in it at one time. We had to climb down into the chamber using a ladder made of logs. There was no roof.
“To be a true kiva, I should enclose it. A sacred room,” he said. “But I like the sky, you know?”
I leaned back and absorbed the warmth of the sun-heated stone walls. Tum’s mountainside hugged me. “It feels good,” I told him. “Right.”
That made Tum smile. Then we closed our eyes and christened Tum’s kiva with its first meditation. We sat there until night came and the stars joined us.
Now that he was gone, the kiva was mine. I would go back there someday and say a proper good-bye.
But now there was work to do.
I pulled out the ladder and hammered a hook in the ceiling in the corner of the studio. Then, I dragged out my old punching bag and hung it.
It was time to train again.
Chapter 14
Waltzing with Matilda
I CIRCLED THE BODY BAG, jabbing, hearing Tum’s words in my head. “Focus on speed, movement, balance. Not power.” My wrapped fists ached. I swiped my forearm across my sweaty face without missing a punch, flowing into another drill. I whirled and kicked, followed it with a jab and a hard straight punch. The punching bag wobbled. I practiced the combination again and again.
Who paid the coroner? Punch. So far, Nico was coming up empty. Jorn had tapped some of his newspaper cronies in the Southwest, but they were no help. Jab. We needed to slide into some bank accounts and take a look around. It sounded like a job for Larry. Side kick.
I stopped and hugged the swinging bag. When my pulse settled, I lifted the bag from the hook and stored it in the closet. An hour later, I stepped into my parents’ house and shouted, “Hello, anybody home?”
My father yelled, “Up here.”
I took the stairs to the second-floor office where my father sat in the center of a circle of computer monitors. A web of cables spun out of power strips. The custom-made, C-shaped computer desk, which held devices of various ages, makes, models, and purposes, formed an electronic embrace around Larry. Every screen glowed in the dark room, and Larry was rolling in his office chair from one to another. A conductor pulling a symphony of information from cyberspace. Eventually, he noticed me, spun around, and smiled. I crossed the room and pecked his cheek.
“Whatcha need?” he asked.
“I want to trace some money.”
“Your credit cards?”
“Not my money. Someone else’s.”
“Ahh,” Larry nodded, his silver ponytail bobbing. “Even better.” He grabbed another rolling chair and spun it my way. “Give me the back story.” I sat and told him about Tum’s murder, the arson, the coroner sipping flaming drinks in Maui.
“I want to know who paid off the coroner.”
Larry leaned back and listened, arms folded across his chest and a foot propped on his knee. He wore the ubiquitous tennis shoes. The eternal California boy tackled slippery Minnesota snowbanks in worn sneakers.
“This is a job for Matilda,” he said. Matilda was one of Larry’s computers. “She loves the financial digging. She gets an account number in her bytes, and she’ll track it to the ends of the earth.”
He swung around and began tapping on a keyboard, presumably Matilda’s. “It may take a while. Matilda is one thorough gal.”
“No problem,” I said, but my father was no longer listening. He was staring with child-like fascination at the screen as numbers and code streamed by, swishing through digital highways and canyons. I was forgotten. My father was sixty-two years old, except when he was in this room.
Chapter 15
A Broken Innocence
BY THE TIME I left Larry, it was nearly four o’clock in the afternoon. The days were longer, now that it was April, and there was plenty of light. It was an easy mile walk to my house plus an extra mile if I took the route around the lake. I always opted for the lake when I had time.
As I turned onto the lake loop, I met Alice Dunkirk. Alice walked everywhere with a sturdy stride and swinging arms. She was trim even after giving birth to seven children, now scattered from the Twin Cities to Seattle. On holidays, Alice’s kids and their families filled her house to bulging. Alice baked and stepped over bodies in sleeping bags on the den floor. She let the grandchildren get away with stuff her kids never dared try. When she said her morning prayers, it took half an hour to cover everyone. Today she wore a coral jogging suit with a down vest and gloves.
“Still a nip in the air,” Alice said.
“Yup,” I said, picking up the pace to keep up with her.
Alice wasn’t much for idle chit-chat. So we walked in companionable silence along the unpaved trail, still soft and muddy in some places from the melting snow. The lake was thawed in several spots, and I squinted into the water diamonds glistening in the low sun. The red-winged blackbirds were back from their winter vacation, and their conk-la-ree calls echoed across the icy water. I was smiling at them when I heard it.
A sob.
I placed a hand on Alice’s arm, stopping her in mid-stride. She looked at me. “What?”
More sobbing.
This time Alice heard it as well. She snapped her mouth shut and immediately began scanning the woods around us. It sounded like a child. We slowly and quietly turned in circles, searching the surrounding area. The trees were just budding, and the underbrush was still sparse. We should be able to see the child.
Suddenly, Alice tapped my shoulder and pointed. I turned around and saw her.
Olivia.
She was huddled on the ground against a log about forty feet off the trail. Alice and I crashed up the slope through the leaves and brush. Olivia, hair tangled and jacket ripped at the shoulder, twitched in surprise when we reached her. Her right cheek was violently red, and there was a scrape on her chin.
“Olivia, what happened?” I asked in a quiet voice.
She shook her head and began sobbing again. Alice draped an arm over Olivia’s shaking shoulders and pulled her close. Our eyes met over Olivia’s head.
“Let’s get you out of here,” Alice whispered to Olivia. “We’re not far from my house. We’ll go there and get you fixed up, dear. Good as new.”
Together we helped Olivia to her feet and back to the trail. It was slow going; Olivia was limping. But in fifteen minutes,
we were on Alice’s porch, and she was unlocking the door to her two-story Colonial home. She guided us into an immaculate living room—a study in pastels, lush swags atop the windows, and silky fabric stretched over delicate French Provencal furniture. I glanced at our muddy boots in dismay. Olivia and I automatically toed off our boots. Even distress could not supersede some habits in Minnesota.
“Now, you sit right here,” Alice said, settling Olivia onto the sofa. She unzipped her down vest and flung it on a nearby chair. “I’m going to heat some milk for hot chocolate and get the first aid kit.”
Olivia had stopped crying on the way to Alice’s house. Now she sat in silence, head bent, staring at her dirty hands and torn fingernails. I sat beside her, not touching her. I leaned closer and whispered, “Please, Olivia, talk to me.”
Olivia’s glance skittered off me, and she shook her head. The fingers of one hand began tapping as if typing some invisible text on her leg.
Alice breezed into the room and sat down on the other side of Olivia. “Here we are,” she said. She pulled several antiseptic wipes from a box and began gently cleaning Olivia’s face and hands. Olivia let herself be cared for, sitting perfectly still, as Alice swept away the dirt and blood and administered healing cream. All the while, Alice told stories of her own children and their many mishaps: scraped knees, broken arms, cut heads. Such a clumsy bunch, she said with a laugh. Finally, with a kiss to the forehead, Alice finished and left to get drinks. She returned with three mugs of hot chocolate on a tray, which she placed on the coffee table. She handed Olivia one mug and me another. Both were piled with miniature marshmallows.
Taking her place again on the other side of Olivia, Alice took a sip from her drink, which had no marshmallows, and said, “Now, Olivia dear, it is time to spill the beans.” Florence Nightingale had been replaced by Mother Superior.
Olivia looked at her in panic. Her leg began a jittery beat.
“We have to know what happened to make it better,” Alice said.
“No one can make it better,” Olivia whispered.
My heart clutched. Please, Spirit, not that. I placed my hand to calm the pulsing leg just as I would do in yoga class.
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