Richfield & Rivers Mystery Series 3 - Venus Besieged Read online

  "I guess I like their little ole hangy-down parts. Funny how we like one thing or another. Well, you girls have a great weekend." She headed back toward the road and then spun 180 degrees to face us. "Oh, forgot about the bear report. They're on the roam because of the fires up in the hills, so don't leave no food outside your cabin—attracts bears. No food in your car—bear'll rip open yer trunk. And for God's sake don't leave the cabin if you're havin' yer time of the month. Bears can smell blood and it gets 'em excited." She spun again and this time lumbered off into the woods as I suppressed laughter.

  Callie suddenly yanked me up against her chest as if we were performing a Latin dance routine and kissed me passionately. Heat surged through my entire body as she dragged me up the porch steps and into the bedroom and pushed me down onto the bed, flinging herself on top of me as if I were her personal trampoline and knocking all the breath out of me.

  "You are so cute and sexy when you get the giggles."

  "Easy." I giggled as she began tearing my clothes off and kissing me so fervently I felt like this might do it for me and any further arousal might be wasted energy on her part. The heat from inside my body reached inferno levels and ran a race to connect with the heat outside my body, and I broke into an intense sweat and thought if I didn't get packed in ice in the next fifteen seconds, I might blow out through the top of my own head.

  "Ahhhh!" I screamed, ripping myself from her grasp, leaping off the bed, and waving my arms around while I tried to pull off my remaining clothes.

  Callie's high-pitched laughter continued as she watched me pant and huff and sweat. "You're having a major hot flash."

  "No, it's just really hot in here and then you're so hot."

  "You didn't tell me you were going through the change."

  "I'm not. I'm in my early forties, for God's sake!" I looked at her oddly, wondering where that thought came from.

  "I know how old you are, darling." Her voice cuddled me as I crawled back into bed with her, wrapping my entire body around her and kissing her breasts. She slid her hands down my buttocks, and my skin, all of it from head to toe, became damp, clammy, ridiculously hot, like my personal thermostat had been struck by lightning and suffered a meltdown. "You are definitely going through the change, but the good news is you soon won't have to worry about bears," Callie said impishly.

  "My God!" I rolled away from her and she picked up a pillow and made an elaborate mock gesture of fanning me, telling me I needed to take something for the hot flashes.

  "I'm not taking estrogen—which is made from horse urine—in order to stop sweating like a horse."

  "You are inordinately stubborn," she said, no condemnation in her voice. "I'll get you something homeopathic. It's either that or we'll be making love only in our minds.. .a cerebral affair after all."

  I moaned in despair, then asked if she would mind turning on the overhead fan. The cool air whipped across the vast Sahara once known as my body as I refuted the fact that I might be going through the change and Callie educated me on why my symptoms were changelike.

  "If you're right," I said despondently, "then God has played a cruel trick on women, making them bleed for decades, then sweat for years, and finally allowing them to go dry. Proving, of course, that God is a man."

  "With a warped sense of humor. And the change could make you a little cranky."

  "How will we know? I'm cranky by nature. Menopausal could make me postal."

  Rocked in her arms, I felt the moisture between our bodies evaporate into one another until our colognes smelled like neither of us and both of us in a mixture of exotic oils and sensual hormones that kept my heart beating fast, even though I had been pulled from the race.

  "I wonder what makes a woman decide her life's work is cleaning up roadside-park facilities," I mused, thinking of Fern.

  "She seems happy." Callie kissed my shoulder.

  "I wonder why I had to be a screenwriter. I would have made a wonderful field general or rodeo cowboy or even a priest... I would have been a great priest."

  Callie chuckled, I was certain, over the direction my mind could take when relaxed. "You would have been a terrible priest."

  "Not true. It's theater, and I would have packed the house every Sunday. My first official act as a priest would be to get rid of hell as a destination, as in 'Go to hell.' Or 'It was hell on earth,' which sounds like a suburb. I would ask the pope to replace the word hell in all religious texts with the word shopping, which still has an element of hell to it. If you sinned, you would go to Wal-Mart. Twice, and you would go to Target. If you committed a really evil crime, you would have to go to that huge mall in Minneapolis, lose your car, and never get out."

  "I love you," Callie said, smiling at me. "You know more than you know you know."

  "When will I know I know it?" I teased her.

  "When you open your third eye."

  "Don't tell me about that, I can't take it." I put a pillow over my head and could still hear Callie laughing, and soon she began to make love to me, slowly, deliberately, every move making me want her more.

  "I don't want to be a priest. I don't think they get to do this," I said, resting my cheek on her pelvis and hugging her hips to me.

  "Oh, honey, for an ex-cop, you are so naive."

  Chapter Six

  “We were curled up on the bed, my arm around Callie's shoulder, cozier than I'd felt in weeks, when I flipped on the ancient black-and-white TV on the rickety table in the corner of the bedroom, mostly curious to see if it could get reception. A recap of the news featured the story about the mall construction site.

  A bouncy, young news anchor, with a voice like Minnie Mouse, waxed on about the incredible run of bad luck that the construction company had endured, elaborating on how the Native Americans on the job recognized signs they should not be building the mall on this particular piece of ground because it offended the ancestors. The most recent death of a Native American woman by wolves was cited as further anger from the departed.

  "First it was one wolf, now it's wolves. Before it's over she'll have been carried off by ten thousand wolves brandishing spears," Callie said.

  “Is this mall going to be built over Indian ceremonial grounds?" the anchor asked the television screen. "We asked Cy Blackstone, owner of Blackstone Development."

  "Remember up on the ceremonial site when Blackstone told your friend Manaba that as a favor he wanted her to go on TV and settle things down? Looks like he's having to do it himself."

  The videotape editor cut to a pre-taped interview with Blackstone, and there he was in all his wiry, old-cowboy glory aw-shucksing the on-the-spot reporter in such a charming way I could almost like him. Easy to see why he was elected to the legislature.

  "If it turned out this was Native American ceremonial land, we would be the first to stop excavation and call in the tribal elders and do what's right because this great state is built on our Native American heritage. We in Arizona don't treat our people any way but with respect and honor. But we've checked that out thoroughly, and we are miles away from anything remotely related to that site." He tipped his hat at the end of the interview, to the cameraman, I supposed. It was a nice touch and apparently his trademark.

  Back in the studio, the mouse-voiced anchor said, "Some of the locals are saying this is reminiscent of Thanksgiving in ninety-seven when concrete wouldn't set up and Native American workers walked off the job due to the unexpected death of one of the elders of the tribe. Well," the anchor turned to her starched male co-anchor and bubbled, "sure hope things get better 'cause us girls like to shop at the mall. " She beamed and he laughed and they both moved on to the next story.

  "I don't think that little news clip will get it done if Native Americans are walking off due to their ancestors."

  Callie bolted out of bed and dashed to the computer, looking at the astrological chart. "Venus was squaring Saturn in the Venus-besieged chart—another heavy placement showing structural breakdown involving a woman." />
  "The mall seems to be the only structure causing women to have a breakdown," I quipped, but Callie took me seriously.

  "It could be a physical structure, or her grandmother's own structure—her death. Venus is squaring Saturn in the Twelfth House of something behind the scenes. Of course in matters like these something is always going on behind the scenes or we wouldn't be looking at the problem, so I don't know what that means, really."

  "So what does 1997 have to do with a woman being killed by a wolf years later?"

  "I don't know. The bigger question is who is putting these women under attack, because we know it's not wolves."

  "We do? I mean you say that, but I read the accounts and looked at the newspaper photo of the tracks found at the site."

  "Close your eyes," she commanded and I obeyed. "Clear your mind, relax, focus on the Native American girl, Nizhoni, who went over the cliff. Say her name in your head again and again and again." I did as she asked. "Drift.. .think.. .listen. Now ask the gods if Nizhoni was killed by wolves." Pause. "What do you hear, league?"

  "I don't hear anything but I think you're right. She wasn't killed by wolves."

  "Now ask the gods, ask your inner self, if Nizhoni is dead or alive.. .dead or alive.. .dead or alive?"

  "She's alive." My eyes popped open and I was startled by what I'd said.

  "Yes, she's alive," Callie said firmly and smiled at me, seemingly in appreciation of my newfound ability to know things. "You're tuning in."

  "So where is she?" I asked, uncertain what exactly I'd tuned into.

  "I don't know..." Callie said in a tone that seemed to deny what both of us had said.

  Having no idea how we might determine if the woman was alive and who had shape-shifted into a wolf, I headed for my laptop to work on the screenplay—another equally hard-to-explain story, I thought.

  "Do I go ahead and make the nun a therapist and the housewife a hooker?" I asked Callie, sighing as I spoke.

  "What happens if you don't?"

  "They pay me Writers Guild minimum, thank me, and tell me good-bye. Since they've optioned the story, they can hire someone else to be the writer and—"

  "Someone who will happily make the nun a therapist or a wildebeest, for that matter?"

  "Yes, so I might as well give it a shot," I said, and Callie shrugged as if that kind of change was infinitesimally important in the scope of things.

  Knuckling down, I knocked out ten pages...not the opening ten pages, but the ten pages midway through the screenplay when the two women have their first physical contact. Callie was at her computer when I finally looked up and read what I'd written out loud.

  "So the way I've got it worked out is the hooker is lying on the therapist's couch and the therapist is sitting beside her, legs crossed, her notebook in hand.. .kind of bookish and interesting but professional. And the hooker in the midst of answering the typical therapy questions suddenly says, 'You've got nice legs. You could have been a dancer.'

  "The therapist looks down, shy, and starts to speak but the hooker says, 'Or a hooker. Men like nice legs. Long legs that disappear up into the...unknown.' She runs her hand over the therapist's calf and then up her thigh and stops as she says, 'Men like adventure.' She lets her hand drop to the couch and leans back as if she meant nothing by it and is merely ready for the therapist to ask her the next question.

  "Of course now the therapist is totally confused and has trouble collecting her thoughts, and she ends the session abruptly, saying 'I think our time is up.'

  "The hooker says, 'I have ten more minutes.'

  "And the therapist says, 'I'll make it up to you next time.'

  "The hooker smiles and says, 'That's what I say to my clients.'"

  I looked up at Callie. "So what do you think?"

  "It's sexy and provocative. You've developed a sophistication beyond what I thought you'd be able to do with it. It's really good, Teague."

  "But I didn't have her say cunt or pussy?"

  "Why would she?

  "Because she's a hooker!" I shouted, imitating Barrett, and Callie laughed. "Jacowitz wants lurid language. Now that I think about it, I remember Barrett telling me about the studio rumor that he's into S&M."

  "Jacowitz? The guy I met with the nerdy glasses and the battered briefcase? He looks like Willie Lowman in Death of a Salesman"

  "Rumor says he likes to get naked and have a woman in spike heels walk across his back and flagellate his buttocks with a riding crop."

  "I understand pain and pleasure, but not how one evokes the other."

  "Yeah, like having a vasectomy and a lap dance in the same half hour. I'm so glad you like the pages. I'm sending them off to Barrett."

  With a ping, the e-mail with the ten pages attached was on its way. "Gone. My dilemma is now sitting on Barrett's laptop, let's get back to yours," I said, referring to the shape-shifter.

  "Looking at this chart," Callie said, "I know the woman is besieged, but I have this calm feeling when I think about her, as if she's alive but time could be running out."

  "I know, but being alive is a bit tricky when you fall over a canyon ridge into a 2000-foot free fall before you hit the jagged bottom. The vultures almost have enough time to pick you clean before your bones ever bounce off the riverbed."

  "Teague, that sounds terrible!" Even Elmo was sobbing, a sign that my mental imagery had made him need a bathroom break.

  "He hates heights," I said, hooking him up to his lead. "We'll be right back." We headed out into the dusky evening, not straying far from the cabin.

  I looked left over my shoulder, right over my back, up to the treetops, and down to the ground searching for something, anything that remotely looked like a wolf. Though Callie said the wolf was a human, I still didn't want to see him or her. Elmo seemed calm and completely unconcerned, so I relaxed and gazed up at the stars, thinking it a beautiful, cold night down by the creek's wide, frigid waters.

  Large flat boulders leaned out from the land, forming beautiful rock sunbathing shelves all along the creek bed, and Elmo and I walked ten feet out onto one and stared into the water below—by day crystal clear, sweeping fish downstream, by night invisible, only sound rushing over the rocks.

  On our return, Elmo lifted his short, chubby leg draped with extra fur folds, watered the ferns, and threw some creek sand high up into the air with a few well-placed flicks of his hind feet.

  "You're still a studly, guy," I said admiringly and we climbed the cabin steps, where I unhooked Elmo's leash, pushing the door open, and he strutted through it as if he'd accomplished something extraordinary.

  The cool air settled in my bones as I walked back down the porch steps and around the side of the cabin to the car, then clicked open the lock to retrieve my windbreaker. Rummaging around on the floor of the Jeep, I found the neatly rolled shirt-jack sack that held my army green windbreaker, yanked it out, extracted the pink one I'd purchased at L.L. Bean for Callie before I left L.A., the only pink item I'd ever seen at L.L. Bean, and slammed the car door. I turned and yelped into the face of the largest wolf I'd ever seen.

  The broad, furry face not three feet from mine seemed as large as a ceremonial mask. Frozen in my own footsteps, fearful the wolf would kill me without Callie here, I tried to scream for help, but the sound came out a hoarse squeak. The wolf cowered slightly as if to assure me with its body language that it had more to fear than I, while with hypnotic eyes it seemed to beckon me.

  I backed up a few feet, maintaining eye contact. Its face intelligent and focused on me, the wolf carefully turned to walk away, then paused, looking over its shoulder as if to beg me to follow. When I didn't move, it stopped and pivoted to face me, the moonlight slicing down on its thick gray coat, the black-tipped hairs standing up like tiny knives from the field of silver fur.

  Through the exquisite white facial markings, flashing eyes stared into mine, and I thought I heard a voice telling me not to be afraid. Is the wolf talking to me? Is it a voice inside my own head? I
s it something I want to hear so I put it into my own head?

  It turned its backside to me again, then glanced over its shoulder and slowly moved ahead as if cajoling me, training me. The wolf couldn't have asked me more plainly to follow if it had spoken fluent English.

  Almost involuntarily, I took a step toward it, then another. When I stopped, it stopped and looked over its shoulder and into my eyes again. I was literally dancing with a wolf—following its footsteps. Soon lightheaded and nearly euphoric, I trotted behind the wolf, who had picked up the pace, heading through the woods with me right behind it, almost gleeful like a child, when in the distance I heard Callie shrieking my name.

  Her voice was high-pitched, loud, urgent, and terrified, and the wolf's fur twitched across its shoulders as it looked back at me, sensing I was slowing down. The tenuous thread between us stretched thin, near the breaking point, and it hesitated, as if reluctantly making a decision, then turned and ran, seeming to know I would no longer follow—our dance ended. Callie's frightened voice interrupted the enticement, the lure, the longing to tap into something beyond my knowing. My experience with the animal shattered in the night air like pottery on pavers.

  Turning back, I headed for the cabin and halfway Callie raced toward me, flinging herself into my arms, her hands cupping my neck, hugging me to her.

  "What were you doing?" she asked, breathless, her voice a reprimand and not a question, seeming to know without my telling that I had followed the wolf.

  "The wolf—it's human and it—"

  "You mustn't follow it! Do you hear me, do not follow that. It's a spirit, Teague, a person who has shape-shifted, but you don't know which person and you don't know its intent."

  "But you said it wasn't evil and you didn't feel anything bad around it and that tribal people shape—"

  "Swear to me you won't do that again!" Callie's voice came in breathless bursts and sounded more terror-stricken than I'd ever heard it.