Three Sisters (29 page)

As Charlie Moon’s Ford Expedition topped Six Mile Mountain, the church van dropped Sarah Frank off at Daisy’s home. The skinny little girl was surprised to see the snazzy Cadillac parked in the front yard.
I wonder who’s visiting us.
She soon found out. Wow! While receiving a perfunctory pat on the head from Miss Cassandra Spencer, she was brusquely informed by Daisy that “Soon as I get some things together, me and Cassie [first-name basis now] are going up to Granite Creek.” Sarah’s eyes popped as the psychic’s new sidekick explained about the contract she would be signing. “And don’t forget to watch us on the TV tonight. I won’t be back till Sunday, but there’s plenty of food in the house and you know how to take care of yourself.”

Though quite grown-up for her age, Sarah had come dangerously close to whining as she pleaded, “Can’t me and Mr. Zig-Zag come with you?”

Cassandra, who was fond of neither children nor cats, made no attempt to conceal her apprehension at this suggestion.

Reading Miss Spencer’s face, Daisy was characteristically blunt. “No, you can’t.” And that was that.

More than a little miffed at not being invited along for the overnight trip, Sarah sulked. Neither of the women took any notice of her melancholy effort, so, in search of what small comforts life had to offer, the fifteen-year-old put Mr.

Zig-Zag on her lap and a grape Popsicle into her mouth.

It so happened that when Daisy Perika’s telephone rang, Sarah was sitting close to the instrument. She picked it up, spoke around the purple Popsicle. “Hebbo.”

A gruff, familiar voice spoke into her ear. “Sarah—is that you?”

She removed the frozen obstacle. “Uh-huh.”

“This is Charlie’s buddy—Scott Parris. Is Aunt Daisy there?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Good. Now listen close. I’m going to ask you something really important, but all I want is a yes or no. Don’t mention any names. You got that?”

“Sure. I mean yes.”

“Okay, now here’s the question: Besides yourself and Daisy, is anybody else there?”

She considered the warm fluff of fur in her lap, decided Scott Parris probably did not consider cats as persons. Even so, the answer was: “Yes.”

“Cops?”

This struck her as a peculiar question. “Uh—no.”

Dammit! Charlie’ll blow a gasket
. “Okay. Now again, just yes or no.”
Please, God—let the answer be no.
“Is Cassandra Spencer there?”

How did he know that?
“Uh—yes.”

Scott Parris felt a sharp look from Charlie Moon. “Anybody else there besides Cassandra?”

“No.”

Thank you, God.
He cupped his hand over the phone, said to Moon, “Moxon’s not there.” Back to the cell phone: “Sarah, can Cassandra hear what you’re saying?”

“Yes.” She watched the white woman get up from a chair, stride across the parlor. “Not now. She went into the kitchen.”

“Good. Now tell me what she’s doing there.”

“I just got back from a picnic, so I don’t know everything they’ve been talking about. But she’s going to take Aunt Daisy to Granite Creek.”

The chief of police shouted in her ear, “She’s
what
?”

Duly startled, Sarah repeated her previous statement, added, “They’ll be leaving in a few minutes. Daisy’s going to be on her TV show tonight.”
And I have to stay here and do my homework
. Major bummer.

“Is that a fact?”

Sarah watched Cassandra Spencer return with a glass of water. “Yes!”

Parris, who had never had a “way with children,” shifted to his pedantic tone: “Sarah, when I say ‘Is that a fact,’ that’s what we call a rhetorical question. Which means you don’t need to answer it.”

“Yeeessss!”

Realizing that she had reverted to the yes/no mode, he asked: “What is it—Cassandra back where she can hear you?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. And if you don’t mind me saying so, you’re a pretty smart kid.”

Sarah smiled. “Yes.”
Yes I am
.

“Heh-heh. Now pay attention. Here’s what I want you to do—get Daisy on the phone so I can tell her what’s happening. But don’t say my name out loud, because I don’t want Cassandra to know it’s me on the line.”

The girl yelled. “Aunt Daisy—somebody wants to talk to you.”

The old woman emerged from her bedroom with a battered suitcase. “Who?”

Sarah felt the psychic’s stare.
I wonder if she can read my mind.
“Uh—he won’t say.”

“Then it’s one of them pesky people who want to sell me something. Or a poll-taker that’ll want to talk to me for thirty minutes, asking what I think about this or that.” She set the suitcase down, headed for the bathroom. “Hang up on him!”

Sarah murmured into the telephone, “She said hang up on you.”

“I heard her. Listen, kid—I don’t have time to tell you the whole story, but here’s the bottom line—Cassandra is bad news. You get my drift?”

“Uh—yes.” The Ute-Papago teenager dared not look at the white woman, who was sipping from the water glass.
I wonder what she did. Murdered somebody, probably. And cut up the body and burned all the pieces to cinders and buried them in her garden and—

Parris’s voice interrupted Sarah’s lurid plotline: “Any minute now, some cops will show up, and me and Charlie will be there in about half an hour.”
If he don’t run this big car off the highway and wrap it around a telephone pole and kill both of us.
“But whatever happens, you’ve got to make sure that Charlie’s aunt don’t leave with Cassandra.”

She lowered her voice to little more than a whisper: “How?”

“I don’t know, kid—use your imagination!” A crackle of static. “We’re going into a canyon, and my phone’s losing signal. Do whatever you have to—me and Charlie Moon are counting on you!” This declaration was punctuated by a sizzle in her ear. The kind you hear when the fat is in the frying pan.

Keeping his eye on the center line, Charlie Moon said, “Fill me in on what I didn’t hear.”

Scott Parris summarized. Finished with: “Don’t sweat it, Charlie. Daisy won’t leave the place with Cassandra. Sarah’s got the right stuff—she’ll get the job done.”

“You sure of that, are you?”
Like you were sure the place would be crawling with cops.

“Sure I’m sure.” The chief of police crossed his fingers. “One hundred percent.”

Sarah Frank looked up to see Daisy emerge from the bathroom, watched the Ute elder hurry back to her bedroom muttering, “I’ll need to take my blood pressure medicine. And my necklace of turquoise and jet beads.”

Cassandra—evidently about to perform that last-minute preparation for travel that is too delicate to mention—entered Daisy’s bathroom, closed the door.

The teenager stared blankly at the grape Popsicle.
Charlie Moon is counting on me!
How great inspirations come, and where from, one can only speculate. But in an instant, Sarah Frank knew what she had to do, how to do it, and got right to it.

You know how it goes. Let’s say it’s mid-August. You’re in the Audi, tooling along in middle of the Mojave Desert. You slow for that rusty Stop sign at the intersection, look left. Then right. All the way to the far horizon, not a vehicle in sight. You roll
almost
to a stop and then proceed—and who pulls out from behind the Last Chance for Gas for 99 Miles billboard? You know who. John Law, on his shiny black motorcycle. Do not attempt to reason with the no-nonsense officer behind the badge and plastic visor—this will annoy a fellow who’s right at the ragged edge of heat-stroke and has an automatic pistol strapped to his hip. Write it off to experience, prepare your mind to pay the fine.

But when the services of a policeman are sorely required—such as at 2:45
A.M.
when the three-hundred-pound maniac on crack cocaine is breaking through your bedroom window with a crowbar—you know where the cops will be. Elsewhere, that’s where. But to be fair, these are very busy public servants, who—in addition to having to deal with endless paperwork, petty bureaucrats, substandard equipment, low pay, and the list goes on and on—have more than sufficient troubles of their own. Such as spouses who complain of long hours alone.

Consider a Case in Point: On his way to Daisy Perika’s remote homestead, SUPD Officer Danny Bignight had blown a bald tire by Capote Lake, run off the highway, wreaked havoc upon an innocent cluster of aspen saplings. Only to discover that his radio was on the fritz and a $#&%$ $#&#% %&%#$! (thoughtless fellow officer!) had removed the spare tire from the trunk. Also the jack. And had not put them back.

Consider a second Case in Point: State policeman Elmer Jackson had been diverted by a DWI who, for obscure reasons known only to herself, had chosen to park her Avis rental car in a ditch just west of Pagosa Springs. The sophisticated lady behind the wheel had flung a one-liter wine bottle at the black cop’s head. A
half-f
one-liter wine bottle, which had clipped him on the left ear. And though Officer Jackson may have been tempted, he had not strangled the inebriated citizen, who happened to be a prosperous psychologist from Los Angeles, California, whose PhD thesis title was: “The Breakdown of Civility in Post-Modern Society and Ancillary Effects upon the System of Criminal Justice.”
Ancillary?

After handing the mental-health professional over to a not-overjoyed Archuleta County sheriff’s deputy, Officer E. Jackson (this was not his lucky day) happened to be the first to arrive on the scene. At Daisy Perika’s residence, that is. The first thing that caught his eye was the sleek, black, 1957 Cadillac Eldorado Brougham sedan. The hood was up. A mismatched pair of women stood by the Detroit City machine, hands on hips, glaring darkly at the motor as if it had committed some despicable offense.

Cassandra inquired of her host what that policeman might be doing here.

“I don’t have no idea.” Daisy recognized the black lawman as one of her nephew’s friends. “You’d be surprised how many oddballs drop by here.”

Jackson donned his spiffy state-trooper hat, joined the ladies, peered under the hood. The means of locomotion, which looked much like any other fifty-year-old V-8 engine, provided no obvious clue. “Got some car trouble?”

Daisy Perika said to the state cop, “No, we’re just a couple of grease monkeys, talking shop.”

“Ha-ha!” Not only did sarcasm roll off Jackson like water off the oily mallard’s back—he also enjoyed the experience.

Hoping for some expert help (all men could fix mechanical things, couldn’t they?), Cassandra Spencer was more helpful: “It won’t start.”

“Aha,” Jackson said.
Now we are getting somewhere. Probably a loose battery terminal.
“Won’t turn over, huh?”

“I don’t know.” The white woman held up Exhibit One—a key chain with a lucky rabbit’s foot and several brass keys affixed to it. “It was just fine on the drive down from Granite Creek. But now I can’t get this into the little slot.” In case he did not entirely get the picture, she made a jabbing motion with the ignition key and explained, “I push it and it won’t go.”

His cocked his head. “If your key won’t go into the ignition switch, why are you lookin’ at the engine?” Silly fellow—to ask such a question.

The wrinkled Ute elder and the pretty young white woman gave him looks that said it all:
When a car won’t start, the first thing you do is lift the hood and take a look at the motor, to see if anything looks out of whack. Any dang fool knows that!

Accepting this silent chastisement with characteristic grace, Elmer Jackson tried to think of a way to deal with the delicate situation. The guiding principle was that a policeman must never let on that he considered a member of the public to be less intelligent than a run-of-the-mill amoeba. While the hopeful diplomat was marshaling his thoughts, other brains were also hard at work. Cassandra Spencer’s, for example.

The TV psychic had recently heard a statistic on National Public Radio (or had she read it in the
National Enquirer
?) to the effect that a significant percentage of all automobile failures could be blamed on a particularly troublesome component. Thus armed with authoritative knowledge, she spoke with some confidence: “I think I know why my key won’t go into the little slot.”

Officer Jackson encouraged the motorist to share her thoughts on the matter.

She did, and with some intensity: “I think it must be the radiator.”
Whatever that is.

After he had recovered from a sudden coughing fit, which was accompanied by copious watering of the eyes and mild abdominal pain, the gentleman regained his composure and admitted that in his time, he had experienced lots of trouble with radiators. He politely asked whether he might borrow the lady’s car key and see what he could do.

Though lacking great expectations of help from what was evidently a mechanically challenged member of the hammer-and-wrench gender, Cassandra nevertheless rendered up the object.

Elmer Jackson, who had overhauled more than two dozen internal combustion engines, slipped inside the magnificently restored sedan.
Wow-wee, what a Jim-dandy automobile!
He inserted the ignition key into the “little slot.” It went about halfway in, stopped. Now, in addition to being a better-than-average shade-tree mechanic, Mr. Jackson had, once upon a time, been an Eagle Scout, and Be Prepared was practically his middle name. He produced a much-used Swiss Army pocket knife, worked for a while with blade, then the nail file, but as is quite often the case it was the tweezers that did the trick. He extracted several wood splinters from the ignition switch.
Purple
wood splinters. In lieu of talking to himself, the state policeman sometimes preferred to whisper: “Now, how in blue blazes did
that
get in there.” He considered a few unlikely possibilities, settled on: “I bet that white woman took something out of her purse, thinking it was her key, and jammed it into the ignition switch. One of them colored wooden toothpicks, maybe.” A smile. “But you can bet your bottom dollar I ain’t gonna ask her about it. No, sir—
my
momma didn’t raise no fools!” By the time he had extracted not quite enough of the broken-off Popsicle stick to render the switch useable, SUPD Officer Danny Bignight had arrived, followed almost immediately by Charlie Moon and his passenger, Granite Creek Police Chief Scott Parris.

Cassandra was quite astonished at the sudden gathering of lawmen, and wondered what might have brought them to this out-of-the-way place. Did the old Indian woman dispense complimentary doughnuts to the local constabulary?

Daisy, who did not waste time in idle speculation, got right to the point: “What are all you cops doing here?”

Having taken note of the disabled Cadillac (the hood still gaped like an alligator’s mouth) Charlie Moon tipped his black Stetson: “I don’t know for sure, but my best guess is that we must’ve all picked up the same emergency call: Attractive lady motorist needs help at Daisy Perika’s residence.” He winked at Cassandra, who blushed rosy pink. “So here we are, to find out what’s the matter with the snazzy car.”

Officer Jackson laughed. “Well, you’re too late—I ain’t quite got it fixed yet, but I already got it figured out.” He pocketed his pocket knife/tool kit. “There was some splinters of purple wood in the ignition switch.”

Cassandra echoed, “Splinters of purple wood?”
How perfectly absurd
. She listened every week to Click and Clack the Tappit Brothers, and those clever
Car Talk
mechanics on NPR had never diagnosed an auto problem as caused by wood splinters. Purple or otherwise.

Scott Parris noticed that Sarah Frank had, at the appearance of Charlie Moon, emerged from Daisy’s house. “Wonder how a thing like that could’ve happened.”

The state policeman shook his head. “Beats me, Scott.” But having four children and six grandchildren, and knowing what scamps young folks can be, he shot a mildly suspicious look at the teenager.

Ignoring both the black man and the white, the fifteen-year-old Ute-Papago girl smiled shyly at her favorite man on the entire planet.
You can always count on me, Charlie.
She could see that he was very pleased. If she had realized that for the first time ever, the object of her affection wanted to hug her, Sarah might well have fainted.

It was just as well that the orphaned teenager, who had suffered many bitter disappointments, did not know that Charlie Moon was merely grateful for what she had done to prevent his aunt from being carted off by the TV psychic.

It was just as well that Charlie Moon, who had troubles enough, did not know that Sarah Frank was determined to marry him someday. Or the first chance she got. Whichever came first.

First chance she got, Sarah slipped Moon the broken Popsicle stick.