Wild Mystic

by Sandi Ault

  “That piece of land, did it originally belong to Bata Romero?”

  “Yes. It was undeveloped land—a portion of it runs along the rim of Picuris Canyon and abuts with ours and the Pueblo lands there at the canyon rim. It had been leased seasonally for cattle grazing.”

  I paused a moment to take all this in. “And Abasolo’s own property?”

  “That was never a part of the original plan. The bed and breakfast charges for the visitors generated a little extra cash for us, but nothing regular. A little more money now and then to buy groceries or gas for the car.”

  “So, once she bought that piece of land for you and you had a practical economic plan in place, why did she also sign over her own property to the mission?”

  “That was so that we could have her water rights as well. We learned as we went forward with our plan that we needed more water not just to grow the crops, but also for the brewing process. Originally, we leased her water rights. But then, she came to me in early December and suggested that we could secure those rights in perpetuity if she deeded her house and land to us, with a provision that allowed her to live there as long as she wished. This ensured that no one could ever divert or block off the water from the acequia that fed the plot between her land and the vacant lot she had already donated to us. She has always been very generous, but I actually tried to dissuade her from doing this because I was concerned about her emotional state at the time.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I can’t go into that, I really can’t. It violates the sanc…”

  “But how could you accept a deed to her land if you didn’t think she was in a healthy state of mind?”

  “I didn’t say she wasn’t in a healthy state of mind. I think she always intended to give us her property. But she was dealing with…an emotional issue…toward the end of the year.”

  I considered this. “Was she in good health?”

  “I couldn’t say, really. She seemed all right to me. I have no information that would lead me to believe otherwise.”

  “Then what do you think drove her to do this while she was dealing with the emotional issue you mentioned?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know for sure. What little I do know, I cannot share with you, and it does not shed any light on the question anyway.”

  We both sat quietly for a few moments. Then I spoke. “So when did you first know she was missing? Exactly when did the housekeeper talk to you?”

  He cleared his throat. “I didn’t truly know that she was missing, as I said. The housekeeper talked to me when she came for her pay on the day the guests left.” He ticked off the days on his fingers. “That would have been on the fourth, and today’s the seventh, so three days ago. But I did not begin to surmise that she might really be missing until after you were here yesterday. We began a constant prayer vigil for Ms. Abasolo immediately after you left. There are novices in the chapel praying for her safe return now, as we speak.”

  “And her car?”

  “We have not seen her car either, which is what made me think she had gone on a trip.”

  “She drives a Mercedes, right?”

  “Yes, a silver one, rather large, new model.”

  “If she took a trip…do you have any idea where she might have gone?”

  He shook his head. Then he stood up. “I’m sorry to interrupt our conversation, Miss Wild. I know this is important, but I feel I’ve told you everything. I need to get back to our preparations for the Archbishop.”

  “You might be able to help in another way, Father.” I stood, too. “You said you frequently used Ms. Abasolo’s house for visitors. Is it booked for tonight?”

  “No, why?”

  “I would like to stay there with my wolf, Mountain. He’s very well behaved and doesn’t get on the furniture.” This was only stretching the truth a little. He didn’t get on the furniture, but he was only well behaved when he wanted to be.

  “Is this to do with your inquiries about Ms. Abasolo?”

  “Yes.” This was, at least, partly true.

  “I think that could be arranged,” he said.

  28: The Key to the Place

  As I drove back down the long road from the monastery, I mulled over the few details I knew that might help me to find Adoria Abasolo. Unfortunately, I couldn’t name many people who knew her. She wasn’t a regular at Tanoah Pueblo or Momma Anna or Yohe would have known who she was. The abbot and at least a few of the monks at the monastery knew her, but given that many of them were under vows of silence, there wasn’t much more to be gleaned there than I had just learned from Father Anthony. The woman at the Bear’s Paw knew who she was, but since Adoria had been ostracized by the locals after buying Bata Romero’s land, she didn’t trade with the few area businesses. Peñasco was a small, tight-knit community of folks, many of whom traced a common heritage back to the settling of New Mexico by the Spanish conquistadores; no surprise the villagers had sided with Eddiejoe in his dispute with Abasolo. Had she known any of the Picuris? Was that how she had learned about the peyote ceremony at Tanoah Pueblo? I tapped my chin, wondering how to proceed. I decided I would try to encounter Mrs. Munoz when I stayed at Abasolo’s house and see if I could get any further than I did the first time I tried to talk with her. Beyond her, the only person left who seemed to see Abasolo with any regularity was the neighbor, her writing student Susan Lacy.

  There was something about Lacy. In a place that was so often sharply divided along ethnic lines, I couldn’t tell which group she belonged to. With her coloring, she might have been Hispanic, or partly so. Her facial features were delicate, unlike those of the local Indians. I supposed that she could have been Anglo, but her complexion was swarthy enough that she might not be entirely so. She had no discernible accent—if I had to guess, she was probably raised somewhere in the west, but not New Mexico. And that bike of hers! Definitely not from around here.

  When I reached the end of the Monastery’s road, I decided to return to the ranger station to use one of their computers. As soon as I turned south onto State Road 75, a black Humvee sped past me going the other direction, almost certainly the same car that had been tailing me. With its tinted black windows, I couldn’t make out the driver. I looked for a place to make a U-turn so I could get behind it to see the plates, but there was not even a wide place in the road that was safe enough to try it for well more than two miles. The Hummer was long gone by that time. I struck the steering wheel with my palm and swore aloud. “Damn!”

  Mountain raised his head from his nap in the back.

  “It’s okay, Buddy,” I said. “I’m not upset with you.”

  At the ranger station, I let Mountain out to run in the pasture with the horses. I noticed that the fence on the far side had been repaired, and Ibanez’s cows were gone. When I went inside, I asked receptionist Vicky Kasza if I could use one of the computers.

  “Let me check,” she said, dialing a number she obviously knew by heart.

  I walked to the window that looked out onto the pasture and saw Mountain sniffing along the fence line.

  Vicky must have gotten a green light. “Okay, Jamaica. Right over here,” she said, and led me into one of the small cubicles behind her. She stood over the desk and typed in a password. “You’re all set.”

  “Do you know when Ibanez moved his cows out of your meadow?”

  “Well, in spite of what he promised Gomez, he didn’t move them yesterday. It must have been sometime this morning before daylight, because the cows were here when the sheriff’s deputy did a routine check of the premises just after midnight. And they were gone when I opened the office at seven.”

  “Do you have security cameras on the exterior?”

  She laughed. “The inspector for your car fire asked me that, too. Remember this is the Peñasco ranger station,” she said. “We barely have staff to cover the day shift half the time, and less than that in the winter. There’s no budget for anything like that. That computer you’re using
is practically an antique. It will be a cold day in a very warm place before we get security cams.”

  First, I checked my email to see if there was a message from Kerry, but my inbox was empty. I wrote him a note:

  Dear Kerry,

  In case you’ve tried to reach me, I wanted to let you know that my phone got damaged. I’m not working out of the Taos field office right now, so I won’t get another one until I get back there, and that might be a few days. I’ll try to check my email whenever I can. Please send me a note when you get a chance!

  I miss you. Mountain misses you, too.

  Love, Jamaica

  I pushed send and sat motionless. I could feel the seconds passing, but I didn’t move. I wanted so badly to talk to Kerry. We’d spent a year trying to maintain our relationship over the long distance between here and the northwest. Then our too-brief reunion, then him leaving again…

  I reigned in my thoughts and typed Adoria Abasolo’s name into a search field. Her Nobel Prize win topped the list of links, followed by another few regarding her recent naming as United States Poet Laureate, a link to her publisher’s website for selling her books, and more for other bookselling sites. Below that, I saw a tag from a story published by The L.A. Times just a few months previous: Reclusive US Poet Laureate Declines Interview. I clicked on the link and saw a fuzzy photo taken many years ago; Abasolo looked to be in her twenties or early thirties. Another, in which she looked considerably more mature, was taken when she accepted her Pulitzer Prize. The article said that she hadn’t appeared in Stockholm to accept the Nobel Prize, and hadn’t done public appearances with the release of her last several books. The L.A. Times reporter had contacted her editor for an interview and reported the same thing that my librarian Carla had recounted to me: that Adoria Abasolo did not do public appearances, signings, or interviews. There was much more to the article.

  “Can I print a few things off?” I called out to Vicky, who was back at the reception desk.

  “Just hit print. The copier is out here,” she called back.

  I printed two items: the story I’d just read from The L.A. Times, and a biography on her publisher’s web page. I cleared the history on the browser and closed the application, then went out to the printer behind the reception desk where the pages were whooshing and clacking as they shuffled out. I grabbed them up, eager to get them before Vicky Kasza saw them. I had to talk to anyone I thought might have information about Abasolo, but I didn’t want to reveal anything to those who were not involved. “This will do me for now,” I said to Vicky. “Thanks.”

  I went out to check on Mountain and found him wet and muddy, lying contentedly in the shade next to the stock tank that watered the horses. I retrieved an old dirty towel from under the mat in the back of my Jeep, kept there for just such occasions. As soon as he saw me at the gate, the wolf ran toward me. I grabbed him by the collar and wrestled with him to towel off his feet and lower legs, getting most of the moisture and mud off. “Come on, Buddy,” I said. “Let’s go check into our digs for tonight.”

  The housekeeper was standing in the entry door when Mountain and I arrived at Abasolo’s house. “You going to bring that dirty lobo in esta casa?” Her hands were balled into tight fists planted on top of her ample hips and her face wore a stern expression.

  “Hello, again, Mrs. Munoz. I’m glad we can understand one another today, since we had so much trouble with the language barrier yesterday. Yes, Mountain and I will be staying here together, with the abbot’s permission. We’ll try not to make a mess.”

  “Aye!” she said. “Can you at least wipe his paws?”

  “I did the best I could with a towel from my car. I’ll clean up after him if he leaves any dirt on the floor.”

  She wheeled on one foot and went inside. “Let’s get you a place to sleep in here.” She led the way down the hall to the first bedroom.

  The bed that had been left rumpled the day before was now made, and a stack of clean towels rested on the folded blanket at the foot of it. The beer bottle was gone from the nightstand and a carafe of water with a glass had replaced it. “This will be perfect,” I said. “Thank you.”

  “I put some tamales in the refrigerator. There’s some rice and beans, too. You just have to heat them up in the microhorno. Aye! You know what I mean, the….” She wagged her hand in frustration, and before I could let her know that I understood, she snapped her fingers loudly and exclaimed, “the microwave.”

  “That will be great. Thank you so much. I just have…”

  “For guests, I do the breakfast at seven. Otherwise, if that is not good, you will find it in the kitchen whenever you want it, okay?”

  “Okay, that’s great, but I just…”

  “I don’t have the dog food for that one,” she pointed a finger at Mountain, “but El Padre told me to take some hamburger out for him, so that is thawing now in the sink. This should be all you need.” Without waiting for me to respond, she turned and started back down the hall toward the entry lobby.

  I hurried to catch up with her. “There is one more thing I need.”

  She spun and looked at me. “And what can that be, Señorita?”

  “I was wondering if you could tell me anything about the young woman, the neighbor, Susan Lacy. The one who comes here every Monday to study with Señora Abasolo?”

  “I don’t know anything. I just bring the food and clean the house and make sure the guests are taken care of.”

  “How about where Ms. Lacy lives?”

  “She lives not too far, I think. She comes on a bike.”

  “From where, exactly?”

  “Over that way.” The housekeeper pointed south. “She comes down the highway. Not from Peñasco, the other way. I think maybe she rents a room. Maybe a casita.”

  “But you have no idea which house…”

  “I don’t know anything more.” She went to the coatrack in the corner and lifted a heavy wool coat and a black scarf from one of its arms and put them on. “I have to go now, so I hope you have everything?” Without waiting, she opened the door and stepped through.

  “One more thing,” I said. “A key?”

  She turned around and shook her head. “No, this is not how we do it. The guests come in the evening, sometimes I make the dinner for them or maybe this is not required. I make up the fire, I show them the rooms, and then I come back in the morning to make up the fire again and to serve the breakfast. Then they leave.” She said this last emphatically, as if she could hardly wait for me and Mountain to go.

  “But I might be here for more than one night.”

  “I will come back tomorrow evening and let you in. What time, Señorita?”

  “I’d prefer to come and go as needed. Is there a spare key?”

  “Eee a lah!” She said as she bustled back in the door and into the kitchen. Before I could follow her, I heard a cupboard door slam and she came back holding up a key by an attached bit of cord as if it was a dead mouse.

  I offered my palm and she dropped the key into it. “Thank you,” I said to her back as she shut the door behind her.

  I turned to look at Mountain, who was sniffing around the place, trying to figure out where we were and who had been here before us. “We have one more errand to run before we settle in here,” I said to the wolf. “And when we come back, we’ll find someplace to park the Jeep where it can’t be seen. Come on, buddy, let’s go for one more ride.”

  29: El Cuervo (the Raven)

  It wasn’t that far a drive to the village of Agua Azuela, where Esperanza de Tecolote lived. I figured if we were in luck, Mountain and I could get to her small casita before sundown and we wouldn’t have to climb the steep slope to her place in the dark. That much went as planned, but when I topped the knoll that offered a view of the curandera’s place, I was startled to see Tecolote standing on the portal with a raven’s talons clutched in her fist—the big black bird violently flapping its wings in an attempt to escape. A flurry of conflicts flitted thro
ugh my mind at once: did she trap it, and was she going to eat it or make medicine of the bird? Was she planning to keep it captive, or intending to try to train it? Ravens are a protected species under a federal migratory bird treaty, and it was illegal to hunt or trap them; I was a resource protection agent, sworn to defend all wildlife, including ravens. Even if Esperanza was only training it, the capture of a raven was still an issue. As I hurried closer, the creature began to calm and the old woman began to speak to it, gesturing with her open hand emphatically. By the time I got to the pair, the situation had become less strained but even more strange. The bruja uttered a string of words that I couldn’t make out and the raven replied with a series of clucking noises. Tecolote spoke again, still so softly I couldn’t tell what she was saying, and the bird huffed, expanding its shaggy neck feathers and then answered with a muffled ka-ka and a throaty half grumble. The two were talking!

  Mountain stopped, sat, and looked from the mujer to the bird and back again as if he, too, were trying to discern the details of their discourse.

  After a few back-and-forth exchanges, Esperanza released her hold on the raven’s talons and her feathered companion lifted gently off of her fist and swooped away. The bruja looked at me but didn’t speak. Instead, she stumbled across the portal and through the door of her casita, which she left standing open.

  I hastened after her.

  Tecolote started lighting candles against the darkness that had already begun to overtake her cottage interior in the late winter afternoon. She coughed raggedly several times, as if something had lodged in her throat. “Siéntese aquí,” she rasped, pointing to the chairs. Her voice sounded exactly like the raven’s.

  I was so flummoxed that I couldn’t think what to do or say, so I simply took a seat.

  Mountain slunk in the door with his ears down and sat beside me, staring at me with pleading eyes, telegraphing: let’s go, let’s get away from here!

  The bruja turned from her candle-lighting to regard me. “It will soon be night. Estoy muy cansado. El intercambiar just now with El Cuervo, this has cost me my strength. I am weak now, very weak. Espero recuperar, pero soy una mujer vieja, después de todo.”