Richfield & Rivers Mystery Series 3 - Venus Besieged Read online

  "Are you okay?" Callie whispered. "You're tense."

  "Sorry," I breathed. "Must be flying down the highway all night, thinking I was about to be shot by an intruder, then jumping into an ice-cold shower."

  "Clear your mind, darling." Callie kissed my closed eyes, down my nose, and onto my lips and suddenly, thankfully, I mentally re-engaged and slid my knee between her legs. Arms around me, she kissed me—that hot, wet, wild kiss that uncoupled all my synapses—the touching of tongues igniting a lust that began at my loins and exploded through me, an insane heat that would make me do anything, promise anything, searing common sense right out of me and soldering my soul to hers.

  Our hearts beat in the same rhythm, our breathing simultaneous; wired and wanton she slid in and out of me in a rhythmic pulsing that increased in speed and intensity until I thought I would pass out from pleasure. Then, trembling, my body begged her to do it again. Sexually spent, I lay still, attempting to breathe as she gently stroked my chest and hips. "I think you missed me."

  "I can see that you're very proud of yourself." I smiled, slowly rolling her onto her tummy as she protested, insisting I should relax and enjoy the feelings she'd created while I assured her there were other feelings I would find equally thrilling.

  Straddling her back, I held her hips tightly between my knees and let my hands begin at the base of her head, massaging her delicate ears and beautiful neck muscles before straying briefly to brush my hand between her legs. Then on the way back up I squeezed the muscles in her arms and released them slowly, massaging down her spine, every bone, and intermittently stroking between her thighs, finally focusing on her small soft buttocks, massaging their round perfection with my right hand, while I slipped my left hand underneath her and performed a slowly orchestrated, erotic kneading.

  Her body responded immediately, telling me she could only give in as I slid on top of her and inside her, pushing with my pelvis against her back with every stroke of my hand as she moaned and surrendered with one final thrust of her small and sensual body. Rolling off her, I lay by her side, loving her, I now believed, like I had never loved anyone.

  "I want this every night," she whispered.

  Dappled sunlight came through the window and for the first time I could see Callie clearly—her gorgeous blond hair in damp curls, her eyes dreamy, and her body thoroughly sated. She kissed me and clung to me.

  "I swear I could stay like this for weeks and never sleep or eat," I whispered.

  "We have to get Elmo. He's been in the car for over an hour, unless you've lost him."

  "He needs a girlfriend." I sighed at having to leave. "I'll go get him and the luggage. Don't move. I want to come back to you exactly like this."

  I got out of bed and grabbed my jeans off the rocking chair in the corner of the small bedroom as a dark figure whooshed past the window like a shadow, a person without form. I gasped and drew back.

  "Someone's outside," I whispered and threw my clothes on as Callie reached for hers. "I don't think we locked the door." I should be a hell of a lot smarter than that. What kind of crazy fool goes to a cabin in the woods and leaves the door unlocked? Someone who’s in love, I thought.

  "There shouldn't be anybody around here. The cabins are all empty until midweek for Thanksgiving."

  "Well, there is. Damn, I left my gun in the other room. I crept into the dark living room and groped from surface to surface until I felt the barrel of my .38, palmed it, headed for the back door, and swung it open, pinpoints of morning light penetrating the valley darkness. Seeing no one, I dashed for the car and clicked open the lock to check on Elmo, whose teeth were chattering.

  "Relax, I'll be right back," I told him. Striding around the entire cabin, with the gun aimed midair, I searched for signs of humanity. When I panned down to the ground I spotted the fresh tracks. Large paw prints like those of a dog, but too big for anything but a wild animal.

  "Teague, are you alright?" Callie stood on the porch above me.

  "Check out the size of these prints." I pointed the flashlight at the ground only now beginning to take on light.

  "Looks like a wolf," Callie said quietly.

  "So you know what a wolf's paw prints look like, because I don't."

  "Yes, a wolf." She stared into the woods but her mind had traveled much farther, searching the ethers for answers while I was left to examine the ground.

  By now Callie's connection to the cosmos and the messages she received through some intergalactic-wireless-weirdness were almost routine to me. No longer shocked by her comments about messages she received from the dead or the near-dead, I accepted her and all she knew, felt, or divined.

  I guess that means I'm finally ready for her. I thought about our very first meeting when she'd admitted we were destined for one another, but insisted I wasn't ready.

  "Go back inside while I get Elmo. I don't want you wandering around with a wolf in the area."

  Callie didn't obey, her antennae always up for signs she was being bossed, commanded, or diminished.

  "Please, for me," I added quickly.

  This time she stepped back inside the house and I went to the car, hooked Elmo up, and let him sniff around the pine needles and relieve himself before I unloaded the luggage. It only took me about ten minutes but Callie, unable to stay inside, was once again standing on the porch staring into the woods.

  "In Native American cultures, the wolf often represents wisdom, death, dying, rebirth, and outwitting the enemy. It also confers the ability to pass unseen." Callie seemed to be remembering things she had heard long ago.

  "Passing unseen worked for this one. So, based on the size of those tracks, the wolves here must get as large as bears."

  "Wolves can be a totem—a personal-power animal for tribal people."

  "Why are they roaming around at dawn instead of off getting a latte at the lake?" I said as I retrieved kindling from the cabin porch and carried it inside for a fire. Callie preceded me, holding the door open so I could make several trips.

  I immediately located a small desk and hooked up my laptop, creating a space where I could work and see the creek; put a few bottles of wine in the small fridge, along with the cheese; then stacked crackers and other items I'd brought in the cabinet. I was happy to see Callie had already provisioned it; she was far smarter about what foods we needed to actually create a meal.

  My idea of food was singular in nature: crackers I could eat out of a box, cheese I could slice and eat out of a package, or a frank I could eat wrapped in nearly anything that would bend and be digestible.

  Callie's language about food always sounded less like eating and more like dating—broccoli went with cream sauce and complemented the filet, asparagus picked up salmon's flavor and could be accompanied by brown rice, and certain foods could absolutely not go together or the evening would be ruined. The whole idea made me smile, and I sneaked up behind Callie and kissed her on the neck.

  "What are you smiling about?" She turned, giving me her full attention, and gazed into my eyes. "What were you doing right before you left L.A. to come here?"

  Her intense focus took me by surprise. I froze. Does she know about Barrett, has her cosmic connection kicked in? Maybe she mentally saw me with Barrett.

  "What do you mean?" I replied, aware I sounded guilty.

  "Just that. You told me you had a meeting last night with Barrett about the script."

  "I did meet her. We went to dinner just before I left to come be with you."

  "Is she why you left L.A. early?"

  "What do you mean?" I realized how completely stalling and stupid I sounded, but she'd caught me off guard. She came at me obliquely, so she knows something's up.

  "This is a pivotal time for women, Teague. We have to be very careful. People will try to steal women's power."

  I saw it first and, following my startled expression, Callie whirled in time to see it too—the shadow-shape flashing past the window despite the fact it was morning now. Its timing wa
s bone-chilling as we spoke about danger to women, but my salvation because it obliterated the Barrett topic.

  Reaching again for my .38 on the desk, I swung the door open suddenly and almost tripped over the newspaper, which made me relax. Newspaper boy, I thought, not wanting to find danger lurking in this quiet town at a time when I was focused on my lover and my work. The shadow was obviously benign and merely associated with the delivery of a morning rag with a masthead reading The Sedona Sands.

  Callie took it from me, rummaging through its pages while answering my other questions about who owned this cabin and how she'd found out about it, explaining that she'd rented it from a woman she'd met one summer who now lived near the reservation.

  From where I was standing I could see the picture in the newspaper: a crime scene with police standing around some shrubbery next to a cliff, torn pieces of material on one of the bushes, and an inset photo of a wolf's head. The headline read WOLF KILLING STILL MYSTERY.

  I leaned in to read the body copy about the possibility of wolves roaming the area in packs and residents who insisted they weren't taking out the trash at night without toting a gun. There were other quotes from animal-rights activists who insisted that stories like these turned people against perfectly peaceful animals who were already endangered due to overdevelopment of their native habitat.

  Callie looked perplexed and finally said, "Women are under attack from men, not wolves—"

  "And you know that because—"

  "I feel it."

  I tapped the inset photo of the wolf's paw print. "As much fun as it is to blame things on guys, I don't know any whose feet are triangular with four toes." But Callie was preoccupied and went to the computer she'd set up on the countertop, its surface made from a long, lacquered split log. The counter separated the kitchen from the large main room whose floors were six-inch planks of darkened wood worn smooth from decades of boots scraping across them.

  Slivers of light sliced through the panes in the big wooden window casings, defying the orange burlap draperies. The invading ribbons of light wrapped around me and across the burnt-orange leather couch and armchair and splayed across the arrowhead-shaped slats of a weatherworn oak rocker that had most likely set the tempo for more leisurely days.

  "Are you looking at an astrology chart, because every time you look at the planets my love life goes south."

  "I'm looking up wolves. Did you know they can travel twenty miles a day searching for food?"

  "I do that when I leave the Valley to eat in Bev Hills," I said, kissing her to distract her.

  "And their jaws exert 1500 pounds of pressure per square inch so that they can break open the bones of large animals and eat their marrow."

  "I don't do that. I don't even like to take a nutcracker to a lobster claw."

  From her expression, I could tell Callie was about to chastise me for constantly horsing around, but before she could deliver the message, my cell phone rang and I answered to Barrett Silvers's voice.

  For the first time since I'd known Callie, I felt like I was sneaking around on her. I had nothing to hide but, because I feared Callie thought I was concealing something, I began behaving as if I had something to cover up, and before I knew it, I was code-talking.

  "Hi. Good. Same here. Yep. Safe trip. Good. Really. I'll start work tomorrow and let you know." My words came out cryptically, and I sounded, even to me, like I was in covert activities for the CIA. When I hung up, Callie was staring at me with a questioning look—the kind that asked if I had anything I'd like to share.

  "Barrett Silvers wanting to know if I'd gotten here and if I'd started writing."

  "Doesn't sound like strictly business," she said as a statement of fact, then picked up the newspaper and headed for the deck.

  "Damn," I groaned softly. "Look," I began as I blocked her path to the porch, "Barrett's a very strange woman and she has the hots for every writer she works with and I'm simply another writer she'd love to screw if she could but—"

  "You've forgotten I'm psychic."

  "Your being psychic is irrelevant because I didn't sleep with her."

  "Did you have any sexual contact with her?"

  As I was about to deny I had, my mind flashed on Bill Clinton when his squirming psyche, bad timing, and the need for an immediate response forced him to utter those infamous words, "I never had sexual relations with that woman." I felt empathy for Bill.

  If I could have Tivoed the entire Barrett telephone scene, I would have been able to point out to myself that cryptic phone conversations could only result in my ending up like horny politicians. From Callie's expression, I intuited that the only acceptable cryptic phone conversation might be to tell a neighbor her house was on fire or to give quick instructions on how to staunch bleeding. Otherwise, I had better talk long enough for Callie to determine what I was talking to another woman about. Her obvious jealousy seemed out of character for a psychic woman whose desire to be with me had seemed, from the beginning, intermittent at best.

  "This is so unlike you," I said, remembering the best defense is a good offense.

  "No, it's exactly like me. You've asked me to commit to you, so I'm asking you how truthful you've been."

  At that moment I realized, for me, truth came in Starbucks' sizes. I could serve up a tall truth—"She likes me." Grande truth— "She kissed me." Or venti truth—"She fucked me." I couldn't go venti; the words wouldn't come out of my mouth.

  As if saved by the gods, I heard a knock at the door and we both turned and looked toward the sound, then at one another as Callie opened the door. Standing in the doorway was a tall, broad-shouldered woman of indeterminate age, with long straight hair that flowed over her right shoulder like black, silky fringe.

  Wearing deerskin pants, a pelt slung serape-style over one shoulder, and an array of interesting teeth and feathers strung around her neck and down to her waist where a knife with a bone handle was stashed in a scabbard hanging off a braided leather belt, she reminded me that I hadn't seen anyone dressed like that since Scout Cloud Lee appeared on Survivor. The woman in our doorway was pretty hot looking in a woodsy kind of way, charismatically exotic due in part to the long, straight Cher-hair.

  "You knew to arrive early," the Indian woman said.

  "I felt you calling me," Callie said softly.

  That remark stuck in my head like an arrow as I stepped forward to ask who she was and what she wanted, but Callie added, "How have you been?"

  The long figure seemed riveted on her.

  "There are problems..." She glanced at me and became silent.

  "Come inside," Callie said, and I felt as if I wasn't even in the room with the two of them.

  "You will come to the ceremony tonight," the woman stated rather than asked, not offering to take off her pelt, which I assumed was the equivalent of an overcoat, but then who knew.

  "I..." Callie paused, uncomfortable, and for the first time they both looked back at me, the Indian woman not moving or offering to introduce herself, Callie finally taking charge of the formalities.

  "Teague." She waved me forward. "This is the woman whose cabin we're renting—my spiritual teacher from summers ago. She is Manaba, some call her Shaman. She is a spiritual healer trained under her powerful grandmother, Eyota, a Navajo elder."

  Manaba nodded and I did the same. She took her eyes from me, as if not only through with me for the moment, but perhaps for an entire lifetime, and locked her gaze back on Callie.

  "Tonight, dusk, the ceremonial ground."

  Callie pursed her lips almost imperceptibly, seeming to indicate she understood.

  Pausing as if wanting to say something more, Manaba suddenly changed her mind, turned, and left.

  Callie stayed at the door with her back to me for a good ten seconds, the energy between them obvious from the way their eyes engaged and their bodies threw off electricity. To say I didn't like what I saw was an understatement. I didn't like anyone but me sending sparks Callie's way.

&nb
sp; "You have a connection with Barrett," she said, not bothering to face me, seeming to reside in my head these days, refuting what I had never said aloud.

  It’s fine for me to have a connection with Barrett because it means nothing, but I don't want you having a relationship with anyone but me.

  "Male view," she said quietly about my thoughts.

  "So tell me more about LaBamba," I said, intentionally twisting her name.

  "Manaba. It's Navajo, meaning 'Returns to War.'"

  "She's going to have war alright if she keeps looking at you like that." I made a mental note that the shaman wasn't getting near Callie.

  Chapter Three

  “So what did she teach?" I asked casually, instead of what I really wanted to know—namely why the fuck Pocahontas was staring at my lover as if she were corn pudding.

  "Energy flow and creating a balance between the land and its people. She's unique, like the Berdache, transvestite males valued as spiritual leaders and recognized for their wisdom and nurturing."

  "Manaba is a transvestite?"

  "Teague, do you always have to snatch key words out of our conversations and create your own meaning, or could you listen to the entire paragraph?"

  "Sorry, not trained in paragraphs, proceed."

  "Manaba is not a transvestite, to my knowledge," Callie said, clearly trying to regain her composure. "Navajo Berdache tradition was made up of people who were both male and female by nature, and they were awarded an elevated status in their people's culture. We don't know very much about Native American lesbian culture, but I was making the point that with Manaba's talent and the respect her people have for her, she might be likened to the Berdache."

  "Oh," I said, slightly hurt by her criticism. "So how did you meet the shaman?"

  "I attended a workshop on Navajo culture, and a young Native American woman told me about Manaba and introduced me to her. I spent time studying under her."

  "Literally?" I couldn't keep the snide tone out of my voice.