The Coyote's Cry

by Jackie Merritt

  Bram went into the barn and brought out a bale of hay. After cutting the strapping on it, he lifted it over the fence, then entered the compound and spread the hay with a pitchfork. He checked the water trough and spigot, and then reached down to pat Nellie, for she had brought in the horses and they were all eating hay.

  “Good girl,” Bram said to his collie.

  He returned to the house, and this time let Nellie come in with him. He had no more than closed the door behind him when his great-grandfather shuffled out of Gloria’s room and announced, “I’m ready to go home.”

  Bram didn’t waste his breath in issuing an invitation to stay overnight, because he knew there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of George WhiteBear veering from Comanche ritual at a time like this. Bram merely nodded, opened the door again and let his great-grandfather go out first. Catching sight of Jenna from the corner of his eye, he sent her a glance and said, “I’m going to drive Granddad home.”

  “Take that vicious dog with you,” Jenna said, wide-eyed.

  “Nellie? She wouldn’t hurt a flea.”

  “Then why did you tell me to give her a wide berth?”

  “I honestly don’t know. To tell you the truth, Jenna, I honestly don’t know much of anything these days. See you in about an hour.”

  He got George settled in his SUV and began the drive.

  “I did not expect to meet the golden fox so soon,” George said when they were away from Bram’s house and on the highway. “These things usually take more time. Sometimes years.”

  “Yes, Granddad,” Bram agreed, simply to sidestep a debate or argument. He really didn’t want to discuss Jenna with his great-grandfather, especially since George believed heart and soul that he had just met the human form of the magical golden fox he’d encountered during the renewal of his original vision quest.

  “But we must always be prepared for the unexpected,” George said stoically.

  “That’s true.”

  “Even a golden fox could be sly enough to sneak up on a man.”

  “You’re right.”

  “But Jenna didn’t sneak up on me. I entered your house and there she was. I was very surprised to see her there. It indicates a very close connection to the family, but I haven’t yet figured out what it could be.”

  Bram cleared his throat. “The connection is with Gran.”

  “And maybe you?”

  Bram felt the old man’s dark eyes on him. Lying to his great-grandfather was something he could never do, and he said, “There’s a connection with me, yes, but it’s not an unbroken chain, Granddad.”

  “Ah, problems. Too bad you will have to go through so much trouble to win her.”

  “Granddad, I’m not sure I want to win her!”

  “That’s rubbish. Of course you want to win her. She’s the golden fox. It would bring great honor to the family to have her join her hand with yours in marriage.”

  “Marriage! Granddad, Jenna and I hardly know each other.”

  “I detect something not said in your voice, which leads me to believe you know each other much better than you can admit to me. Treat her honorably, for her heart is true and kind. I knew seeing the golden fox would bring good fortune to the family. Her first name is Jenna?”

  “Yes.”

  “And her second name? Who are her father and mother?”

  Bram hated telling his great-grandfather who Jenna’s father was, for every Native American in the area had a very low opinion of the man, even though they shopped at his stores and banked at his bank. Carl Elliot had a monopoly on the area’s banking and retail businesses, however, which left most of Black Arrow’s residents very little choice in who they dealt with. People of means took most of their business to Oklahoma City and points beyond. It was the Native Americans who were more or less trapped into making Carl Elliot richer every day of every year.

  “Bram?” George prompted. “Didn’t you understand my question?”

  “I understood just fine, Granddad.” He drew a breath to answer.

  Back at his house Jenna was warily eyeing Nellie. “So, my pretty little friend, what’s the truth about you? Are you naughty or nice?”

  Nellie lifted her head from her front paws and pricked up her ears.

  “You look friendly,” Jenna said, and took a step toward the collie. “But are you?”

  Nellie got up suddenly and Jenna gulped. Hastily she held out her hand. “Go ahead and sniff me,” she said nervously. “If you let yourself like me, I might even give you a nice piece of roast beef. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

  Nellie approached the dangling hand, sniffed it, then started licking it wetly. Jenna grimaced. “Are you resorting to kissing already? Well, you’re no threat, are you?” She knelt down and petted Nellie, who was so delighted with the attention that she couldn’t keep her hind end still. “In fact, you’re a little love, a little sweetheart,” Jenna said. “I should be much more afraid of your master than of you, shouldn’t I? If you could talk you would agree, I just know you would.”

  With her newfound friend, Jenna went to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. She couldn’t think of a reason in the world not to feed both Nellie and herself a decent dinner.

  Even with a deep breath inflating his lungs, Bram found it hard to say the words. But he knew he couldn’t put it off any longer and so he just blurted it out.

  “Jenna’s mother is dead and her father is Carl Elliot, the whitest white man in Comanche County.” He expected George WhiteBear to at least look disappointed, but that wasn’t what happened at all.

  To Bram’s everlasting surprise, his great-grandfather smiled—a rare event on any day—and it wasn’t an ordinary smile, either.

  It was one so rife with mystery that Bram blinked to clear his vision, to take another look at it.

  Too late, it was gone. But it was a smile that Bram knew he would never forget, nor ever get over wondering about.

  Chapter Seven

  Preparing her own dinner before Gloria’s would be negligent, so Jenna set to work steaming some vegetables, which she then mashed and flavored with appropriate seasonings. Jenna tried the dish herself and found it to be quite tasty. Gloria just might like it, she hoped. Adding some apple juice and a small dish of lemon pudding she’d made earlier in the day, Jenna carried the tray into the master bedroom and put on a big smile.

  “Here’s dinner, Gloria,” she said brightly. Setting down the tray, she tucked pillows around Gloria to put her in a better position for eating. Sitting on the edge of the bed for convenience’s sake, Jenna scooped a small portion of the vegetables onto a spoon. “Here you go, Gloria. This is very good. I tried it myself.”

  Gloria accepted the bite, and Jenna said, “It’s good, isn’t it?”

  She got no response from her patient, but Gloria accepted a second bite and also a drink of apple juice, which was very encouraging for Jenna.

  “I’ll bet you enjoyed your father’s visit,” she said, and scooped up a third helping of the vegetable dish.

  Gloria turned her head and Jenna’s heart sank. “Gloria, please, two bites of food are not enough. Here, try the lemon pudding.”

  But Gloria refused another bite of anything. Sick at heart, Jenna finally gave up, rearranged her patient into a more comfortable position, lying down, and then decided to postpone her and Nellie’s dinner even further by getting Gloria ready for sleep. Gently she bathed the elderly woman with a soft washcloth, then massaged her limbs and back with soothing lotion and finally got her into a fresh gown. Gloria was no longer hooked up to an IV line, so Jenna offered a drink of water, and Gloria sipped it through a long straw. She looked at Jenna, and Jenna was positive she saw gratitude in the bedridden woman’s dark eyes.

  “Sleep well, Gloria,” she said, affectionately touching her hand.

  With tears clouding her vision, she picked up the tray of uneaten food and carried it back to the kitchen. Nellie appeared again, as if by magic, and Jenna absently realized th
at the little collie hadn’t followed her into the sickroom.

  “She won’t eat, Nellie,” Jenna said sadly, and then wondered if talking to a dog indicated some sort of mental abnormality. Feeling blue over Gloria’s disintegrating health and the situation in general—heaven knows coming out here hadn’t done her much good, nor was she doing Gloria Colton much good—Jenna took out ingredients for her own dinner.

  She moved slowly, though, because she couldn’t stop thinking about George’s belief that his daughter would die soon. Even Jared had seemed to accept the old man’s prediction, and probably so did Bram. She had to know Bram’s position on this, Jenna decided. Did he believe, as Jared seemed to, that every word George WhiteBear uttered was gospel? If so, what had the old guy meant with that golden-fox remark? But that wasn’t bothering her nearly as much as this other thing. All the Coltons loved Gloria, Jenna was positive of that, and they would mourn her passing when it happened. But why on earth was George so certain his daughter’s death was imminent?

  Well, even if everyone in the whole darn town was just waiting for the ax to fall for poor Gloria, she was not going to stand around and do nothing. Jenna marched to the wall phone and dialed Dr. Hall’s number. Just talking to Dr. Hall about Gloria and this most peculiar business with her family would help her nerves, Jenna felt.

  But she got his answering service, and all she could do was leave a message. “Please have Dr. Hall call me. It’s not an emergency, but I’m a nurse and I need to speak to him about one of his patients.” Jenna hung up with a heavy sigh.

  Nellie let out one quick little bark, obviously issuing a reminder to the only human present that she was a very hungry pooch.

  If it did nothing else, it made Jenna smile. “All right, girl, dinner’s coming up.” She went to the refrigerator again and set some things on the counter. One plate contained the remnants of a beef roast, which was now mostly bone. Jenna decided to throw it out, so when she brought some other dishes from the fridge and then accidentally knocked the old bone on the floor, she didn’t get upset about it.

  But in the next instant everything changed. Nellie, faster than greased lightning, rushed at the bone, picked it up in her mouth and ran from the room. Startled and worried that Bram might not let Nellie have bones—Jenna had friends who never gave their dogs bones—Jenna ran after the collie, calling, “Nellie, now you stop running! You can’t have that bone, do you hear me?”

  Nellie disappeared into Bram’s bedroom, and Jenna raced after her. Bram had left the closet door ajar, and Nellie squeezed through the opening. Jenna pulled the door wide and switched on the light. Nellie was crouched with her precious bone behind a blanketed bundle.

  Jenna stared at it. It was the bundle Bram had carried in from his SUV, the one she’d been so curious about.

  She was still curious, and she got on her knees and carefully drew back an edge of the blanket. Books? Smoky-smelling books with hardboard covers? Why on earth would Bram be carrying around smelly old books?

  The books were very large, very thick, she saw. What could they contain? She gave in to her curiosity, opened the top book without disturbing the others and saw a list of entries dated almost a hundred years ago, written in ink—faded but still legible—in a beautiful hand.

  Jenna was truly stunned. These books had to have been in the courthouse! The ancient entries—why, they must be extremely valuable! Why had Bram been carrying them around in his SUV, and then hidden them in his closet? Jenna sat back on her heels. She had always thought of Bram Colton as scrupulously honest, but wasn’t there an old saying that everyone had a price? Was Bram’s price the value of three old books?

  Wiping away a tear, wishing to high heaven that she had minded her own business and not seen these books, Jenna smoothed the blanket back in place, got to her feet, switched off the light and left the closet—leaving Nellie to gnaw on that bone till the cows came home.

  She was in no mood for a big dinner after that shock, and she desultorily put together a salad and made a pot of tea.

  Bram, on his way to his own ranch from George’s, decided to drive into Black Arrow and make an appearance at the station. He should check in, let everyone know about his change of plans and that he would be on call, after all. He parked and walked in, and was greeted by everyone in the place.

  He returned the greetings, but sought out the duty officer, who tonight happened to be Sergeant Roy Emerson.

  “Hey, Bram,” Roy said. “I thought you were out of town or something for the night.”

  “My plans got changed. How’s everything?”

  “Afraid we got a homicide on our hands. An anonymous caller used a pay phone and said there was a body down by the railroad tracks near the old depot. I sent a car to check it out and the deputy found a dead man with a small-caliber bullet wound in his head.” Roy picked up some papers and handed them to Bram. “This is the first written report to come in.”

  Bram read that the man was approximately fifty years old, without identification or valuables, and after numerous photos had been taken of the crime scene, the body had been transported to the morgue.

  “The autopsy will be done tomorrow,” Roy said. “It looks to me like a simple case of robbery with a deadly weapon. No sign of the perp, of course.”

  “Probably was armed robbery, but this isn’t common in Black Arrow. The first thing we have to do is find out the name of the victim. Were fingerprints taken yet?”

  “Yes, but they haven’t been processed. Lab’s closed for the night, same as the coroner’s office.”

  “Well, it was damned stupid of the victim to get himself murdered in Black Arrow, wasn’t it?” Bram drawled. Unlike bigger cities, Black Arrow didn’t have round-the-clock lab facilities. Frowning at the report in his hand, Bram added, “I wonder if he lives…or lived…here.”

  “Hard to say. So far, no one who’s seen the body recognized the man.”

  Bram thought a minute, then said, “I’m going to drive down to the old depot and take a look at the scene of the crime. It’s cordoned off, I hope.”

  “Supposed to be, yes. I’ve also got two men scouring the ground for anything suspicious in all directions from where the body lay.”

  “Good.”

  “Figured that’s what you would’ve done.”

  “It is. I’m going to swing by the morgue on my way to the old depot. Talk to you later. Oh, I’ll be taking a patrol car. Tell dispatch.”

  “Will do.”

  After plucking a set of keys from the vehicle board, Bram hurried out to a patrol car and drove to the morgue. The night watchman, the only person who was actually alive and breathing on the premises, let him in.

  “Hi, Jake. I’d like to take a look at—”

  Jake waved his hand. “I know, I know.” He led the way and showed Bram the body. The victim was a stranger to Bram, a small man with pale blond hair. But what really caught Bram’s eye was the man’s clothing. It was good-quality stuff, obviously expensive.

  “Do you have his shoes?” Bram asked Jake.

  “Yep. They’re in a bag over there.”

  “Let me see them.”

  The shoes were Italian leather loafers. This man had not been a transient, nor had his killer been, Bram concluded. Those shoes alone would feed a roaming criminal for at least a week. Unless the victim’s wallet had been so fat the killer hadn’t bothered with the shoes.

  Bram heaved an internal sigh. A murder to solve before the killer got out of town was the last thing he needed right now.

  “Okay, I’ve seen enough. Thanks, Jake.”

  Bram returned to the patrol car and drove down to the old depot, called “old” because it was early vintage, practically falling down. The railroad had constructed a smaller but much more modern depot to handle freight and passengers about eight years back. Bram had been pleading with the town council to insist that they raze the old structure for years, as it drew the dregs of society like a flame drew moths.

  Not that Bram
begrudged a decent guy down on his luck a place to sleep, but Black Arrow had several shelters for the homeless, and the town had never been so overrun with indigents that those charities hadn’t filled the need.

  When he drove up to the old eyesore of a building, he turned on the vehicle’s flashing red lights and got out. Walking over to the crime-scene tape, he heard the approaching footsteps of the two officers sweeping the area for clues with high-powered flashlights.

  They all said hello, and Bram asked if they had found anything. They each had a large plastic bag practically full of much smaller plastic bags containing heaven knew what. Bram soon heard what they contained, however.

  “Just a lot of junk,” he was told by both men.

  Bram hadn’t expected any glaring clues that would easily lead law officers to the killer, but given everything else going on in his life at present, he would have liked just one break.

  “You guys got an extra flashlight? I’d like to look around some myself.”

  “Here, take this one. I’ve got another in my car.”

  Bram accepted the flashlight and began walking toward the old depot.

  “We checked that out already,” one of the young deputies called.

  Bram stopped and turned. “Was there anyone in the old depot when the body was found?”

  “Not a soul. My feeling is that anyone in there at the time of the murder got the hell away from here the second it happened.”

  “Which means there could have been witnesses.”

  “Yeah, but just try to find them.”

  “I intend to.” Bram continued on to the old building and went in. There were no lights to turn on, of course, no electricity, and he slowly moved the flashlight’s beam around what had once been a passenger waiting room. Old newspapers and paper cups and bits and pieces of rags lay everywhere. “More junk,” Bram mumbled, but covered the area with the flashlight to make sure.

  There were two other rooms, and he checked them both with equal caution. Something shiny in the third room gleamed in the sweep of the flashlight’s beam, and Bram hastily returned the light to it. It was a small round object, and he walked over to it and peered down at it without touching it.