Trio of Sorcery (18 page)

David was nudging Jennie's foot under the table in a way that told her he wanted them to take this case. Of course, stalkers would use the same kind of excuses and rhetoric: “I only want what's best for her, I want her to let me fix her life.” Her gut was telling her that this guy was on the level, but her gut could be wrong.

“I know that right now I sound like I'm a crazy person,” Begay said heavily. “I know I sound like a control freak. But there's something wrong. I can feel it. Why would she be chasing everybody off if there wasn't?”

Jennie kept from drumming her fingers on the table with an effort of will. Talk about being torn—her instincts said one thing, her head said another, and if David didn't stop nudging her under the table, she was going to dump her coffee in his lap.

Her instincts won out over her logic. “Provisionally, we'll take this,” she said, stepping hard on David's foot, which didn't do much since he was wearing boots. “If you've been on the level with us, we'll find out quickly enough.” She gave Begay just enough of a glare to let him know she was serious, and that just because he was Dineh,
they weren't going to let him coast. “For starters, you can give us a list of her friends, so we can ask them ourselves.”

If he really was a stalker or a control freak, she'd find out really fast. He'd either refuse to give her the names or he'd give her phony ones.

He was so grateful he didn't even argue over their fee, just handed over the retainer in cash, then wrote down a list of names and numbers from a little well-worn address book he kept in his shirt pocket. At the bottom, he added Caroline's address. It was in Cherokee County near the Spring River, between Vinita and Miami, but back of beyond nowhere, on a little section line road that probably wasn't even paved. “She has about sixty acres out there, all to herself,” Begay said, looking wistful. “I liked it. Peaceful. Green. Nice change from New Mexico.”

He must have noticed something in her expression and shrugged. “Before you ask, it isn't worth much. Too much rock to farm or graze if you were planning on running any size of herd. The only timber that'll grow there is blackjack oak and scrub. She told me a neighbor once got a nibble from a wildcatter—until they actually came out and took a look. Got right back in the truck. Told him they'd spend more on broken drill bits than they'd ever get out of the ground.”

Well, that solved
that
question—if he was telling the truth, and there was no reason to think he wasn't at this point. He wasn't after her land for the mineral rights.

Begay left in a battered old pickup truck with new Oklahoma plates. Jennie and David turned their attention to the lists. Most of Caroline Gray's friends—or at least the ones Begay had listed—were women.

They exchanged a look. “He wouldn't have given us women's names if he wasn't playing straight with us,” David pointed out.

“If they're not friends or relatives of his that will take his side.” She had to counter that but—David was right. Especially if
she
was the one who went to talk to them. “I have to be sure.”

David shrugged, then grinned. She could never resist that grin. He looked altogether too much like the actor Lou Diamond Phillips when he grinned like that. “I'm better at sneaking around than you are,” he pointed out.

“Under some circumstances, that wouldn't be a recommendation.” She bared her teeth at him. “All right, take my BRAT, you'll be able to hide it off the road easier.”

They had anticipated needing to split up, so they had brought both cars. David's five-year-old VW Fox wasn't exactly suited for off-roading, but though Jennie's Subaru BRAT was five years older than David's car, she'd kept it impeccably maintained and it would be perfect for David's mission. They swapped keys. “We really need to get cell phones,” David said, as they walked out to the parking lot.

She snorted. “When they aren't the size and weight of a brick, maybe.” They both had business-band radio, the kind that plumbers and other repairmen used. It made
her sigh, sometimes. Things had been a lot simpler when she'd been solo. “I can just see you tramping through the woods with a brick on your belt.”

“I could always use it for self-defense.” He gave her a two-fingered salute and slid into the driver's seat of her BRAT. Before she'd gotten into and started his Fox, David had already peeled out of the parking lot.

She had to smile a little at that. He'd looked like a kid given parental permission to play hooky. He had probably been going stir-crazy, confined to the office like that.

Well, he was about to find out how boring a stakeout could be. Within a couple of hours he would be envying her as he tried to find a place to watch this gal that wasn't infested with chiggers.

It might have been a trailer, but it was a good-looking one, comfortable, and clean enough to serve as a sales brochure. The tiny living room had two nice plush beige love seats with a drum with a Plexiglas topper serving as a coffee table between them, and gorgeous Pendleton blankets thrown over their backs. “I'm baffled,” said Terry Redwing, spreading her hands. “Honestly. Caroline's always been sort of a hermit, but not like this. I leave messages on her answering machine, I never get callbacks. I write, and I get no answers. And when I drive all the way the hell out there…she seems spaced-out. I don't know
what to think. I mean, when she's working on a design you can tell her mind is on that and not on your conversation, but…it's like she's in a fog now.”

Terry was the third of Caroline's friends to say virtually the same thing. Jennie decided to probe a little. “Not like…drugs?”

But Terry shook her head. “No, and not like booze either, and believe me, I'd know. Half my family is alcoholic.” She grimaced. Jennie nodded sympathetically. Alcohol was a big problem for Native Americans, on or off the rez. “No,” Terry continued, “it's an exhausted-type fog, like she's not getting any sleep. And…if I didn't know better, I'd say she was afraid of something. But what? It can't be poor Nathan; he hasn't been out there in a month.”

“You're sure of that?” Jennie probed.

“As sure as I can be without tailing him,” Terry replied decisively. “There's a lot of powwow people out that way and they all know his truck. If he'd been by there, I'd have heard drum talk. There's a lot of us worried about her. Something's not right.”

Jennie nodded. Begay either had all these women buffaloed, or he'd been on the level. Just as her instincts had said.

So, all things considered, maybe it was a good idea to start looking at other possibilities. “How much do you know about Caroline's family?” she asked.

By the end of the day, she had learned a lot about Caroline and her family. There was no record of mental illness in the Gray family so far as the records at Vinita or the Indian hospital at Claremore were concerned. Of course, if Caroline had gotten hold of some bad peyote at a peyote rite, all bets were off—but no one, not even the people who had reason to know and would talk to her off the record, had seen Caroline at any of the rituals. A few folded bills handed over at the liquor stores near where she lived produced nothing useful. The rest of the Grays seemed to be down near Muskogee, which was a bit of a drive just to go harass a relative on a daily basis. But none of her friends had seen or heard anything to lead them to think that any member of Caroline's family was stalking or abusing her.

So. Begay was out. Peyote was probably out; in fact, most drugs were probably out. No history of mental illness—though that didn't mean she wasn't having a schizophrenic, psychotic, or manic-depressive break, just that it was less likely. Family abuse was out. What did that leave?

Not much. Or at least, not much that Begay could fix. Still…maybe Caroline had a secret, one she didn't want Begay to learn. Some teenage indiscretion? A pregnancy? Maybe a child?

That seemed the likeliest. As Jennie drove down to the QuikTrip where she and David would meet and swap cars, she debated whether or not she should just tell Begay they hadn't found anything. What gave them the right to invade Caroline Gray's privacy if she had a child or some other secret she needed to keep? Nothing, that's what.

But her instincts kept nagging at her. Surely, if Caroline was hiding something like that, one of the people she'd spoken to today would have given her a hint of it. But they were all as baffled as Nathan Begay.

She pulled up to the pump and refueled the Fox, then pulled aside. She got a cold drink from the station's convenience store and waited for David with the college public radio station on, but not really listening to it. She was so deep in thought that she jumped when David tapped her shoulder.

“The most exciting thing that happened all day was when the gal came out to fill the bird feeders,” David said, looking overheated but oddly energized. “I'd say come home when her lights go out.”

Jennie sighed. “I probably will. All I got was a big fat nothing.” She detailed the results of her interviews, while David sucked down the drink she handed him as if he'd been sitting on the surface of the sun all afternoon.

When she finished, he tossed the cup into the nearest trash bucket and passed her the keys to the BRAT. “I'm debating something, 'cause I don't want to skew your impartiality,” he said as she got out of his car.

She fastened him with a look. “Do not hold out on your partner,” she said flatly.

He grimaced. “Okay. I'm not Grandfather, and I'm not you. But something down there feels like bad Medicine.”

She blinked. “Surely not—”

He shook his head. “Whatever it is, it has to be new. There's no sign, and no ‘feel' of burial sites, a village, or anything out there. And she's lived out there for years without any problems—”

“Until now.” She sucked on her lower lip. “All right. I'll keep that in mind. You get some food. Make sure the Little Old Man doesn't talk you into making nachos and calling it dinner. I'll be back when I'm back.”

He nodded. He knew to keep the base station tuned to their frequency,
especially
when she was on a nighttime stakeout. Of course, if she
did
run into trouble, he couldn't do much more than call the county sheriff, but at least that was something….

She drove off in the ruddy light of the setting sun, and as she made her way down unpaved section line roads, with weeds growing up on either side of her, something else occurred to her.

Caroline was all alone out here. She'd be easy prey for someone who wanted an isolated place for a pot farm. Someone who would threaten to hurt people she loved if she narked on them. Organized crime, for instance. Around those in the know, that country song “Okie from Muskogee” was a laugh, especially the line “We don't
smoke marijuana in Muskogee” because if pot wasn't the number one cash crop in this part of the country, it was only because nobody was trying all that hard to count the money coming from it.

Even more likely was someone putting a meth lab on her property.

If either of those were true, it would account for the fear, the sleeplessness, and the isolation. She wouldn't dare let anyone come around, for fear they would discover what was going on. Or worse, encounter the people who were responsible.

Well, she couldn't do too much to check that out tonight. And she wasn't going to do that alone at any event. That would be a two-man job, maybe three or more. She could call in some favors, do a very discreet search, and if she found something, talk to Caroline—there were ways to make contact without getting Caroline in trouble….

Hell, if it's a meth lab, I can just blow the sucker up,
she thought grimly.
One Molotov with a long-burning fuse and that would be it.
That would bring the fire department and the sheriff and there would be nothing they could lay at Caroline's door.
And if it's weed, well, I'll tamper with the water supply so it all dies.
Out on rock like this, the weed would all be in pots, each pot watered by a drip system, and all of it under the trees so it couldn't be spotted from the air. Easy enough to put something in the reservoir that would kill the roots. Lose the crop often enough and they'd give up, try somewhere else.