Richfield & Rivers Mystery Series 3 - Venus Besieged Read online

  "Okay, but it wants to tell me something, I know that."

  "Yes, it makes you think that. More likely it wants something else. Remember, women have disappeared but bodies are not found and—"

  "What women?"

  Callie stopped talking, apparently unaware of what she was saying.

  "There's only the Native American woman, right?" When Callie didn't answer, I asked, "Are there other women? Talk to me, Callie."

  "Someone else was killed...a long time ago. Manaba's high-school friend, Kai, they called her Willow." She seemed to be pulling this information in on some cosmic thread, saying the words slowly so as not to scare them away from her.

  "By wolves?"

  "No...I don't know." She seemed confused. "Then Manaba's grandmother died. It doesn't make sense, does it?" Callie whispered. "The natives say they found blood and her grandmother's torn clothing, but that could be rumor." Callie's voice had grown soft and reverential.

  "Was it her blood or wolf's blood?" Even as I condemned the wolf, I found it hard to believe that something so beautiful— something with soft eyes like a human's—could be the killer.

  "The other woman, I feel a strong energy about her," Callie said, and I sensed she wasn't talking about Nizhoni or the grandmother, but about Kai and something that went beyond the present.

  "How did you know about her?"

  "Manaba dedicated one of her teaching classes to her and said she was killed very young. Everyone thought auto accident or something like that, but one of the women in the class who lives here said she committed suicide."

  "You said 'was killed.'"

  "I don't know why I said that." Her mind seemed to drift and like a cosmic net encircle fragments of information from the universal consciousness, plucking relevant information for comment. "He knows about the first wolf visitation and he's mimicking it." Callie's tone was quiet.

  "He who? Who are you talking about?" I begged.

  As if orchestrated by some force beyond our knowing, the wind attacked the pine trees and the needles whistled as if calling forth the dead; air blew up around our bodies with an electrical charge that made my every hair stand up in fear. Powerful centrifugal gusts seized the treetops now, and I expected to see the pine needles part and the devil descend as climax to the electromagnetic anticipation that rolled over me, nearly rendering me immobile.

  "Quick, get inside!" Callie ordered, and we jogged back to the cabin as I worried what in hell we'd gotten into and what evil was bearing down on us, borne on the wind.

  Chapter Seven

  The knock at the door uncoiled me and I sprang for my gun. Taking several long strides across the creaking wooden floors, I slung open the door where Manaba stood smelling of smoke and tobacco and some kind of incense, looking like a centerfold for Northern Exposure.

  Exotic in leather and feathers, she'd apparently long ago discarded traditional Navajo dress for native-eclectic, taking from her grandmother's culture those things that worked for her and eschewing the rest. She stood in the doorway completely without makeup and showed no sign she owned a hairbrush, her entire presence sensual; yet her dark, knowing eyes seemed troubled.

  Callie entered the room and stopped abruptly, as if opposing energy fields kept them at bay like the wrong ends of a magnet.

  "I don't want to be involved with this energy," Callie replied to Manaba's unspoken question, and I wondered if she meant the personal energy between the two of them or the energy of whatever was happening around Nizhoni's death. "I cannot unearth the truth when the truth is withheld by those who know it."

  I didn't know much about Navajo tradition but I was pretty sure insulting a shaman wasn't a great move, and it sounded like Callie had accused Manaba of withholding information. I also noticed when Callie was around Manaba she started talking like a fortune cookie, and I began to fantasize how bad foreplay would sound with Manaba. She who takes off her clothes may experience the pleasures of the dancing valley, or something like that.

  There was a long pause.

  "Nizhoni," Manaba said, then uttered something in her native tongue that I couldn't understand, much less repeat, but I sensed she spoke Nizhoni's name with love. Callie seemed mildly surprised and finally nodded her acquiescence. Manaba's shoulders noticeably relaxed as if a burden had been removed.

  "What's she saying?"

  "Nizhoni, the woman she says was recently killed...was Manaba's lover," Callie said, finally revealing the truth Manaba had withheld. Now my mind really took off—the Indian maiden and the shaman in a lesbian affair—wow.

  "I do not believe Nizhoni is dead." Callie directed her words to Manaba. "Not like your friend, Kai. This is different, she is alive."

  Nervousness in her body, Manaba shifted her weight. "Nizhoni's grave is in the valley vortex, I know that. I need the truth about Kai."

  "Ignore the recent death and focus on the old one?" I asked.

  "New is but the old revisited," Manaba replied in that circular way she had of answering questions.

  Silence ensued as if Callie was trying to make a decision, perhaps a decision about whether what she was thinking was right or wrong. Finally, she said quietly, "We must dig up Nizhoni's grave."

  "We do not desecrate the dead!" Manaba's voice showed its first signs of having any range above middle C, and I remembered reading years ago that ancient Navajo culture feared the dead, so maybe Manaba did too. I wasn't so hot on dead people myself, but apparently the Navajos went to a lot of trouble to stay away from their ghosts, and most certainly their graves. Manaba's nervousness was picking up speed as she paced, fretted, and appeared as if merely talking about the dead might suddenly bring the entire cemetery over for a ghost bust. "Proving my young friend was murdered, that is the long-buried truth that must be unearthed, not this fresh grave."

  "Do you want my help?" Callie challenged, ready, it appeared, to remove herself from Manaba's drama if she would only say the word.

  "Digging up the grave will tell you nothing." Manaba's tone was sharp, perhaps to cover her dread of digging up the person she loved.

  "It will tell us if Nizhoni is buried there, if anyone is buried there." Callie seemed to be standing up to Manaba for the first time, as if being drawn into this mystery meant she would somehow take charge.

  "I will talk with her family," Manaba said and left the cabin, slipping into the darkness.

  "She's not in the grave, I just know that."

  "You heard Manaba," I reminded Callie. "She was there, she knows the family, they buried the woman. How are you going to get a grave dug up?"

  "You have to help me get permission because I don't think it's on official Indian land. You were a police officer, what do we have to do?"

  "Grave digging wasn't my specialty. What makes you so sure the grave is empty?"

  "I don't know."

  "Good. That will give me lots of ammunition for whoever I have to convince at the Public Works Department or some tribal chief to let us dig up the dead. So the woman we're looking for who's not supposed to be in the grave was her lover, Nizhoni, who was killed after knowing Manaba, like Kai, who most likely was also her lover. Maybe Manaba killed them both—"

  Seeing Callie's startled expression, I quickly apologized. "Hey, I barely know Manaba. But it's odd that bad luck strikes twice and she's the common denominator."

  I immediately dialed the 918 area code and number for Wade Garner, my old police buddy—the only person I could call from anywhere on the planet and get help. Wade never acted surprised to hear from me and enjoyed exhibiting no reaction to what I told him, even if it sounded outlandish.

  "You're in a cabin? Did you get kicked out of your rental house? I want to talk to Callie," he rambled on, filling all the dead air space.

  "Listen to me, Wade, I need—"

  "Nope, I talk to the blonde or I talk to no one." He'd first met Callie on the Anthony murder case and had liked her then. Now he enjoyed pretending he was closer to her than me, to tick me off.
/>   I handed the phone to Callie, and her sweet voice took on an even more playful tone when she spoke to him. She said everything was fine with us and that I was writing a script and she was visiting friends.

  "She is a little difficult," Callie said, tossing me a smile to let me know I was the one being referenced.

  "I'm not the one who wants to dig up a dead body," I shouted loud enough for Wade to hear. There was apparently a response on his part, and Callie confirmed my statement and then, grinning, thrust the phone into my hand.

  "Tell me she's kidding," Wade said.

  "Dead people: she sees them, she talks to them, she digs them up."

  "Any particular reason, Boris, or are you both just bored?" Wade said.

  "Yeah, 'cause the body's not there," I said flatly.

  "And the body that's not there, did the family think it was there when they told it good-bye?" Not waiting for my answer, he gave me an exasperated follow-up. "Why would the body not be there?"

  '"Cause the woman's not dead."

  "And we know that because..." Wade dragged out the words.

  "Because...we...do." I grinned at Callie, aware my devotion to her had me not only accepting cosmic craziness but also looking like a nutcase in front of my police buddy. Wade let out a big snort, the kind that always preceded a rude remark, so I stopped him in his derisive tracks.

  "If you've got no pull in the human-excavation department, say so and can the comments," I ordered brusquely.

  "Hey, Captain Marvel, I was about to say you're going to need someone in that part of the world who can run interference with the local government officials, or the Indians, and fill out the paperwork, and it might even take—hey, was she murdered, because that's a—"

  "Attacked by wolves."

  "Where the hell are you?" Wade's voice rose two octaves.

  "Sedona."

  "That's right, because I talked to your mom and she said she's brokenhearted you didn't invite her there for Thanksgiving—"

  "Okay, cut it out," I said in response to his teasing.

  "She said you called her the other night to complain about having to write dirty scenes in a movie, is that true? Are you writing a porno movie?"

  "Jeez, Wade, why do you call my mother and have these little talks? Is it to torture me? You know she gets every conversation upside down, and you egg her on. I told her the director I worked for wanted—never mind, I got bigger fish to fry here."

  "Okay, okay, I'm making notes. Need contact for digging up Native American woman we don't believe is dead. When in doubt, dig 'em out. You're gonna need an attorney, as much as I hate to say that word. Somebody who can do business in Arizona and knows people. Come to think of it, I might know someone who has a cabin in Sedona and could even be out there for the holidays. I'll check it out and get back to you."

  "You're great—once you get to the damned point." I hung up before the snorting began.

  The phone rang in the middle of the night, and as I grabbed it I thought it might be Wade. Despite the electronic breakup, I could make out Jeremy Jacowitz's voice. Apologizing profusely, he said he was overseas and could never figure out what time it was. A famous director should get a clock that tells him, or a secretary who tells him, I thought but remained politically correct, saying only, "No problem."

  "Barrett forwarded your rewrite of the opening scene, the therapist and the hooker, and I think it's brilliantly done. Brilliant!"

  I held my breath. There was a day when words like brilliant coming from a director would send me into a double backflip and have me high-fiving Elmo. But after years in Hollywood, I understood exaggeration was the norm and, further, that it was sometimes used as a left hook to set me up for the right punch.

  "I'm over here in Paris seeing so many avant-garde films— films that take chances, break barriers, change the way people think.

  Groundbreaking work and I'm thinking, my God, this film Teague Richfield is writing has that same quality, that potential, and so I wanted to call you while I'm still enthused from my last screening and give you une petite matiere a reflexion.

  He chuckled at turning a cliché like "food for thought" into something that sounded a lot sexier. "We're not driving enough young people to the theaters because we're frightened, don't you agree?"

  I never thought about young people or theaters, being interested in neither. I only thought about stories: writing them, living them, breathing them, but my breath alone would not resuscitate a screenplay into a motion picture. It was Jacowitz whose creative CPR counted. So I agreed with him and then hated myself for agreeing, because I had no idea what I was agreeing to—to Jeremy Jacowitz, I guessed—agreeing that whatever he wanted me to agree to was fine so long as he liked my first draft. I was no better than any other Hollywood wannabe, and it put me in a bad mood.

  "We're afraid to be borderline, we're afraid to say everything is okay, we're afraid to commit in the most fundamental, elemental, raw way. I want us to be fearless, Teague, break open our heads..."

  I was getting more irritated as Jeremy Jacowitz led me on a forced march through his mental recesses, a trip short on scenic variety. Give me the notes. What the hell are you trying to say? I know you’re working up to something that undoubtedly involves six-inch heels and a spiked ball.

  "...and so I feel strongly that we go back to the abused wife—"

  He'd apparently said several paragraphs between the time I was listening to him and the time I was listening to myself.

  "You're right. It has emotional purity," I interjected, feeling myself grow calmer.

  "And an alien comes down and has sex with her."

  Left hook, right jab, KO! "An alien?" I said, reeling.

  "Aliens represent our primal fears, our alien selves, and this woman represents our inner core as we confront that fear—"

  "She's raped by—"

  "Attacked at first, but then it's consensual." Jacowitz was serious.

  "She has consensual sex with an alien?"

  "And because she's been abused and no one has believed the abuse, why would they believe she's had sex with an alien?" he said.

  "SHE CAN'T HAVE SEX WITH AN ALIEN!"

  "EXACTLY!" He had obviously mistaken my shouting for enthusiasm and was matching it with his own. "So of course they COMMIT HER!" He shouted as triumphantly as if the curtain had rung down on Gone with the Weird.

  "I should be committed for ever selling you my story. I can't write this screenplay!"

  "Don't worry, we can hire a cowriter. I know a great guy—"

  "I want out. I quit! My attorney will call your...aliens."

  I hung up and turned to Callie, who seemed completely untroubled by my giving a huge motion-picture director the figurative finger. "I'm fucked. I unsold my screenplay."

  "You did the right thing."

  "How can I prostitute myself any further? It's ridiculous. I don't want to write movies about abused women who have consensual sex with aliens, even if it attracts every date-night teenage boy on the planet."

  "What happens now?"

  "My attorney calls and yells at me. Barrett Silvers calls and yells at me. People threaten that I'll never work again and I fret."

  "Great business." Callie tried to pull me down on the bed and kiss me but I fended her off reflexively, wanting to pace. "Come over here and lie down," she said, wanting, I surmised, to relieve my tension in ways I should have loved but couldn't focus on.

  "Sorry," I said as she got up and followed me, trying to be close. "I'm too freaked." We both went back to bed, but this time it was me propped up against the headboard with my arms clutching my legs, chin resting on my knees, wondering how something as great as a green-lighted screenplay could end up a convoluted, corrupted mess.

  "I've never seen you this upset," Callie said, making no further attempt to hold me. "You're seething."

  "I'm pissed that I continue to walk into the same blind alley again and again. Nothing worth shooting happens through this studio system.
It's designed by little boys, for little boys, to play into little boys' fantasies. Because of the boys at the studio, Xena Warrior Princess had to leave Gabrielle and have sex with a guy, and then, she was so confused that in real life she went out and got pregnant."

  "I think she got pregnant because she's straight."

  "Xena is not straight and don't start spreading that rumor."

  "Come here to me." She pulled me into her and I reluctantly gave in this time, but remained in the vertical fetal position up against her.

  "I need to get you some herbs. Going through the change makes everything seem bigger."

  "Yeah, well, fuck the change," I said, and Callie kissed me and consoled me as she would a fussy child.

  We couldn't do much to help Manaba at the moment, at least the way I viewed it. Government buildings, Indian Affairs, and anyone with a brain had closed all offices for the holiday. Nizhoni was dead—seemingly, Kai had died a long time ago, and Manaba's grandmother had been out of the picture for years, so why get hysterical over the historical. No woman was in immediate jeopardy despite whatever planets were trapping Venus and wrestling her to the ground.

  Besides, the day before Thanksgiving was supposed to be about celebrating, and I'd surfaced from my funk, never wallowing in self-pity for more than a few hours. Callie and I were in a festive mood despite the death of my screenplay. No one had phoned to chastise me after my director decoupling so I was feeling free and vindicated, looking forward to being snugged in the cabin with Callie and Elmo and cooking our first Thanksgiving turkey together.

  We found a fairly large supermarket outside of town, and by noon we were skipping down the aisles literally tossing food into our basket: frozen cranberries, a sack of potatoes, fresh corn, broccoli, and carrots.

  "Somebody must be coming," she said.

  And I replied that I hoped it would be me, as I picked up the largest turkey I could find.

  She giggled over my sexual reference and grabbed my behind as we danced down the aisle in full view of more disciplined and serious shoppers who undoubtedly had relatives coming, in a far more traditional sense—and judging by the sour looks on their faces, relatives they could do without.