A DEAD RED MIRACLE: #5 in the Dead Red Mystery Series (17 page)

"Can you get out of here this afternoon?" I asked. "I want to talk to Naomi White and I'd like you to go with me."

"Today? I'd like to. Where's she live?"

"It's off Highway 10, up Texas Canyon, at the turn-off for the Amerind Museum."

"We should go back there when they have the Chiricahua celebrations."

"Sometime soon, I think. I'll call the museum. So what do you think? Can you get away?"

He tilted his head. "Wasn't that where you lost the Alzheimer's patient?"

Yes, I'd been in the area recently. Hours of trekking in the cold and dark and I've been dreaming about him ever since. "Yes. Same area. Can you come? I'll fill you in on what we learned about Pastor Jefferson."

Caleb understood that for me, this would be revisiting a site I'd just as soon forget. "Give me five minutes to clear my calendar and I'll go with you."

"Great," I said sweeping the crumbs and wrappers into the lunch bag. "My Jeep or your SUV?" I asked, hoping I could avoid another tank of gas on my no salary job.

He patted my cheek as he passed. "We'll take my ride. It's official business, isn't it?

.

Chapter Twenty-five:

On the drive to Naomi White's home near the Dragoons, I told Caleb that Harley Aldrich identified Jesse Jefferson helping Naomi and her son escape the shooting.

Caleb nodded. "I think everyone knew Jesse was helping church members get out of that cult, but if he was there to help Naomi and Damian escape, someone besides a twelve-year-old kid must've seen them."

"I can think of two people who might've seen him: Wade Hamilton and Andy Sokolov. And I've got a theory. Either Jesse shot Damian's dad and the other two have been keeping his secret. Or one of the other two killed the dad and Jesse agreed to keep it a secret because he was there helping Naomi get away from her husband."

"Naomi White has been interviewed several times by Homicide and so far she's never admitted to having any connection to Jesse or Wade or Andy."

I was thinking of my search and rescue partner's comment about how reticent Native Americans are to give up information, especially to local law enforcement. Left with only speculation, we followed the interstate highway east into Texas Canyon. Erosion has scoured away the dirt, leaving boulders stacked one on top of the other, looking like a giant had deliberately placed them there just to please visitors. My favorite time to drive through the Texas canyon was when the late afternoon sun flamed the stacked rocks red and left the others in shades of lavender.

Taking the turnoff for the little hamlet of Dragoon, we passed the Amerind Museum, reminding ourselves to come back for a visit.

Forty minutes later and a wrong turn that ended at a locked gate, we found the entrance to Naomi White's place. Passing under a striking metal arch of interwoven arrowheads, I felt I should know the place.

"Could it be the same property?"

"I didn't go to the man's house, or meet his daughter. Besides, it's so dark out here everything outside of our headlights simply vanishes."

I caught a glimpse of an old weathered shack behind a triple-wide modular home. Next to it was a giant metal arrow someone had planted in the earth to look as if it had been shot from the quiver of the boulder stacking giants of Texas Canyon.

We knocked and the door was opened by an attractive woman in her late sixties, her graying hair pulled back into one long braid, her calloused hands gripping the collar of a very alert German Shepherd. Her eyes were large in her face, very dark and heavily fringed by thick straight lashes. Casually dressed in jeans and a simple white linen blouse, she managed to look elegant, her only jewelry consisting of multiple bracelets banding both wrists.

When she spoke, her voice was low and modulated in that way of someone whose English is a second language. "I was expecting a private investigator, not Wishbone's police chief. Is this an official visit, Chief Stone?"

"I have a couple of questions that you can help with," Caleb responded. "May we come in?"

"Of course," she said, lowering her eyes so that the thick lashes lay artfully against the high cheekbones. She gave a soft command and the dog trotted over to a bed of old blankets, curled up and with head on paws, kept us in his line of sight.

Lifting a languorous hand she waved us inside.

The interior of her home was sparsely furnished with a coffee table in front of a sofa. There was no TV, but an iPad was hooked up to a couple of small speakers and Native American flute music softly played.

On the wall were framed magazine covers with her picture and several framed award ribbons from Native American jewelry contests. In striking contrast to Andy's wheelchair bound accuser there were no photos of her son, Damian. Not on the walls or in frames on her mantle. I thought it telling of this woman's character, or maybe I was making too much of it.

The rest of the living room was devoted to a long workbench, tools and boxes of supplies. It all looked costly, but Ian did say she made a good living at it.

"The bracelets you're wearing are lovely, are they your designs?" I asked.

She held out her arm for me to see, laying a slender, tanned finger on one silver and turquoise cuff. "Only this one. The others are gifts from friends."

She pointed to her workbench and showed us her tools. "This is a sand cast for silver. I draw my design, work it in clay and then carve it from Utah sandstone. It is very soft to carve and gives a wonderful natural look to the silver, but like a lot of things in this life, it doesn't last very long."

"The boxes," I asked. "What's in those?"

She folded her hands in front of her and in that softly modulated voice said, "I keep silver and stones in those boxes against the wall. A photo on the front of each box describes what's inside. Silver birds, buttons, various sizes, shapes, The colored stones I put in alphabetical order: fluorite, malachite, opal, tanzanite, tourmaline and turquoise."

"I hope you have security for your home," Caleb said.

"I have security lights," Naomi said, "but if there are intruders bent on theft I have Artemis over there on his bed and a loaded rifle I keep by the door."

She glanced down at her calloused hands and then up through the proud dark eyes. "I was already interviewed by Detective Hutton. I have an alibi for the day Ron Barbour was killed. Then again, why would I want to kill him? I paid good money for him to find my husband's killer."

Caleb said, "Your interview with Sierra Vista Homicide said that you were at a jewelry show in Phoenix. I'm more interested in where you were this morning."

Her chin lifted, a defiant gesture meant to show that she wasn't going to be cowed by the likes of a police chief. "I don't have an alibi for this morning, Chief Stone. I was here all day, alone, so there is no one to vouch for me."

"All right," I said. "But you knew Pastor Jefferson, didn't you?"

Her head came up and her response to my question wasn't answered at once, but in an instant her demeanor morphed into that of someone softer, weaker, as if she had been crushed by circumstances beyond her control.

Her arm came up again to indicate that we should sit.

Caleb and I took the sofa and waited for her to continue.

She stared at her hands while she talked. "I was seventeen when I met Damian's father. He was stationed at Ft. Huachuca and about to be transferred to an Army base in DC, so we married. Unfortunately, that's where he met Mother Beason and her Miracle Faith Church. Her sermons about the repressed and downtrodden clicked with him but not me. I could not believe he could be taken in by the woman's lies, but then he revered my shaman father, too." She stopped talking, her eyes apparently interested in the shape of her fingers.

"But you came back to Arizona with your husband?" I asked to keep her talking.

"Only after I found out I was pregnant. I had my son and things were better for a while, but then the trouble started between the police and the church. Jesse Jefferson knew that I wanted out, but I couldn't find a way to leave without my husband threatening to kill me. By the time the deputies came, church members were lined up with rifles and shotguns refusing to allow anyone to come onto the property.

"With my suitcase and my son, I ran for Jesse's car. But my husband saw us and aimed his rifle at us. He was willing to murder his own son if it kept me from leaving. He would've too, but thank God someone else shot him first. Whoever shot him saved my life and maybe my son's as well."

"Does Damian know the details of that day?" I asked.

"I told Damian how his father died, but he's determined to find his father's killer."

"What's to say the man who shot Damian's father hasn't moved away? Or maybe he's already dead?"

"I believe Ron Barbour had a name," she said, quietly.

Ron could've been lying to get her money. There were plenty of times when he'd done exemplary work as an investigator, just not in the last few years.

"Have you and Pastor Jefferson kept in touch?"

I was surprised to see annoyance momentarily flash in her eyes. "I could never repay Jesse for what he did for me and my son, but after that day, we moved back here and I never saw him again."

Her words didn't match the look, but I wasn't about to call her on it now so instead I kept my questions to something less confrontational. "Did you live here with your father?"

She hesitated, glancing around the room as if looking for someone who should be there.

"I returned to live here when my husband died. This was my father's property but he wouldn't have anything to do with living in my new home. He had dementia, so I shouldn't have been surprised. He forgot what day it was and some days he did not even know me. Then a few days ago, when he was completely lucid, he walked away."

Now I felt a chill run over my skin. "How did he die?"

The woman's black eyes went darker as she thoughtfully appraised me. "He took his ceremonial costume, led a search and rescue team all the way up to the Cochise Stronghold, then leaped to his death, right in front of them."

Caleb and I exchanged a glance. I hadn't seen Ian Tom that night, but as Cochise County's sheriff, he would have been with the first responders, yet he never mentioned his relationship to the old man.

"I was part of that search and rescue team," I said, trying to cover my shock. "He said something as he went over, but I couldn't understand it. My team partner speaks some Navajo and he thought it might've been Apache."

Naomi's dark eyes gave me a thorough going over. "He spoke to you?"

"Well, sort of, but like I said…."

She moved a hand impatiently. "Did he speak to anyone else?"

"Uh-well, I don't think so. I'm still not sure why he chose to say anything to me."

Her eyes raked mine as if trying to understand the foreign language I was speaking. "And now you dream of him."

My breath caught in my throat. "I-I, well, uh, I think it was the shock of seeing him leap to his death in front of us."

She leaned forward, her eyes now wide with interest. "I am not a religious person. The old ways of my people seem childish and I hated my husband's fanatical church. I didn't listen when my father warned me of the trouble that would come of marrying. I thought he was just trying to keep me away from the man I loved. When I moved back here, he chose to live in the shack behind the house and we did not talk much. Yet, in your dreams he speaks to you. What does he say?"

"Nothing really. It was only two or three times. I think. In one dream, I'm sitting on the bottom of a lake, or maybe it's the ocean, which is weird since apparently I could breathe underwater. He sticks his head into the water and tries to speak, but of course, he can't, so he sputters and withdraws."

"Perhaps he is trying to tell you something."

"I should stay away from water?" I said, trying to make light of it.

"Perhaps," she said, and moved away from me.

Perhaps with her father's death she was having a religious reawakening and I had offended her. Until this minute, I'd forgotten about my own long dead mother rousing me from a drugged sleep so that I could escape from a burning house. This felt different and yet it wasn't. I guess I should start paying attention to my dreams.

<><><><><>

On the way home, Caleb warned me against doing any such thing.

"Why do you say that?"

"Because you get sidetracked from the main issue."

"I think there's a reason why I continue to dream about him," I said.

"I think it's due to the shock of seeing him go over that cliff. So what did you think of her story?"

He was trying to pull me back on track.

"Oh, well," I said, thoughtfully. "For one thing, she doesn't strike me as the helpless type."

"Who said she was helpless?"

"Ian did," I said. "You were there. He said she was fragile, remember?"

"There's Gabby Hayes's account of the abusive husband," he said.

"Yes. Didn't you find it strange that there were no pictures of Damian? Only pictures of herself and her jewelry awards. What mother doesn't have photos of their only child?"

"What're you getting at?" he asked.

"Her brother said she was fragile, Jesse saves her from an abusive husband and someone else, maybe Wade Hamilton, or Andy Sokolov shot the man they saw as a monster ready to kill his own wife and son. What if this was what she meant when she told Gabby that she had her own plans for her husband?"

"You think she hired one of them to shoot her husband?"

"Hired? Oh, no I don't think so. She was young, very beautiful, still is for that matter. An affair between her and one of the men could've taken care of that problem. Or," I said, considering another angle, "what if she was the one with the rifle? She owns one and admitted being a competent shooter. So she hands Jesse the weapon and tells him it's her only chance to be free, once and for all."

"Someone had to have seen it happen. How was it kept secret?"

"I think that's why Ian came up with these three names: Wade Hamilton, Andy Sokolov and Jesse Jefferson. He knew, or suspected that these three men had something to do with the shooting."