A Rendezvous to Die For (12 page)

Only one way to find out. Ask the
man himself. I dialed Frank’s office and reached his assistant, who
told me Frank was a busy man. I cut to the chase. “This is
Cassandra Cassidy. A deputy sheriff is linking me to Frank in the
matter of Eric Hartfield’s murder. It is critically important that
I be able to talk with him about it. This morning, if possible.”

Thirty seconds later, I was given
my appointment. Frank would see me as soon as I could get to his
office. It was in northern Clayton County, not far from where the
Rendezvous took place. I was buckling the seatbelt in my Jeep by 8
a.m., to allow myself plenty of time in case I got lost.

Frank Kyopa made a memorable
impression. I’d photographed him in his reservation office, after
he’d been elected president for his second term. In one picture, he
was seated in a high-backed leather desk chair, his forearms resting
on the massive mahogany desk. Dressed in a custom-tailored gray suit
like the CEO he was—a man who steered the sizable fortunes of the
tribe’s casino—he gazed confidently at the camera lens. The
pinstripes in no way disguised his muscular physique. In my favorite
photo of him, he was standing near the window in three-quarter
profile, with the outside light reflecting on his sharply chiseled
face, brown as a walnut. The light bounced off his black hair, shot
with gray, and delineated the dozens of facial fissures formed from a
lifetime of smoking Camels.

By the time I arrived in Colton
Mills, Frank had already served as tribal chairman for four years. He
was respected by all factions . . . Indian, business, and government
alike. But his path to tribal respectability hadn’t always been
pretty. I’d learned that much from trying to winnow fact from
fiction in Eric’s news stories. A decade ago, the tribe was
wallowing in debt, a not uncommon condition for reservations before
casino gambling made some of them rich. Frank had left the rez after
high school graduation and received a business degree, thanks to an
athletic scholarship from the University of Minnesota. He worked for
a couple of corporations to learn the ropes, then started a
manufacturing business in the eighties. That company now employed
several hundred employees. During all this time, he had remained
connected to the reservation, returning for family events and to stay
current with the rough-and-tumble political shenanigans that
characterized the community. Trouble was, those who got the upper
hand, politically speaking, used their positions to line their own
pockets.

In 1990, Frank cut his ties to
the company he had founded, pulled up stakes, and moved to the
reservation. His return was not universally applauded, according to
articles printed in the
Minnesota Review.
Entrenched tribal
leaders resisted his “interference” and, sometimes, the going got
rough. Articles also documented the political carnage and trail of
victims, as Frank clawed his way through the ranks.

Eric hadn’t taken either side
in his articles. He had mocked the entire state of affairs, calling
tribal government a “Laurel and Hardy way to run a government.”
He had painted Frank as an opportunist, no better than the leaders
who had been feeding from the tribal trough for decades. He had
scoffed at Native American sovereignty, feeling the entrenched system
was bogus and most problems would be solved if the tribes were
governed by the U.S. government and managed by “professional
managers.”

Frank and I had become friends as
we ran into each other at powwows where I photographed the events. He
had bought several photos of urban Indians I’d taken in
Minneapolis. Our friendship had culminated when he consulted me about
Eric’s doctored photo a year ago.

Frank’s sense of power came through, as I shook hands with him now
in his wood-paneled office. “Cassandra, good to see you again, in
spite of the circumstances.” He motioned for me to be seated in the
chair fronting his desk. Then he took his place in the high-backed
leather desk chair. “My assistant told me Deputy Shaw has you on
his list of murder suspects and I am, somehow, linked to you in some
sort of subversion, I suppose. Tell me your version of the events.”

I filled him in on what I knew
and included the details of my unpleasant encounter with Eric at the
Rendezvous. He fiddled with a silver paperweight on his desk,
thinking. “Does anybody know why Eric was in the sweat lodge in the
first place?” he asked. “He must have been going there to meet
somebody, don’t you think?”

“
Beats me,” I said,
shrugging. “And it’s as mysterious to me that Shaw is interested
in exactly how friendly
we
are. What’s that all about?”

“
I’m also on Shaw’s list of
suspects.”

Stunned, I stammered out a response. “I-I . . . I don’t know what
to say, Frank. Because of . . . your past history with Eric? Or . . .
or that fake picture fiasco?” Their shared history was volatile, to
say the least. I suddenly remembered a confrontation between the two
that had taken place in March during a hearing about the proposed
development at the reservation. Eric had been baiting Frank with
questions.

“Why do you think the Indians have more right to this property than
tax-paying American citizens do?” he had said to Frank, who was
leading the meeting.

Frank had responded angrily. “You
know damn well we may own a small portion of the land around the
lake, Hartfield, but that is because the land was unfairly taken from
us a century ago.” He had shaken his finger at Eric not two inches
from his smirking face. “When we try to buy it back, asking prices
go higher and higher. Now this development corporation comes in with
its money and its plans to build houses for a few rich Americans. If
it turns into houses for city people, they will bring their noisy,
polluting jet skis and motorboats. They will clog the winter ice with
their icehouses. It is our right to enjoy the same clean water,
natural resources, and pristine environment as our ancestors enjoyed.
And we don’t need a creep with the morality of a fencepost to come
up here and tell us there’s a better use for that land than leaving
it just like it is.”

Frank’s voice jolted me back from my
daydreaming.
“From our past dealings, Deputy Shaw could
surmise I had a motive to see Hartfield dead, I suppose. Everyone
knows we had no love for each another. Our war of words was always
made public.”

I nodded. “You were quoted in
the paper, once, as saying you’d just as soon slit Eric’s throat
as look at him.” I tapped my pen against my notebook and grinned
wryly. “That gives the sheriff a lot of ammunition.”

“
A lot of people would have
liked to slit Eric’s throat,” Frank said, pulling on an ear. “He
was always out to agitate people and start a controversy.” He
scratched a cheek and gazed directly at me. “They’ve got
something else on me, too, Cassandra. I was in the vicinity about the
time of the killing.”

“
You were at the Rendezvous,
too? I didn’t see you.”

“
You know that I participate in
traditional ceremonies whenever I can. I was at the sweat lodge the
night before the Rendezvous and had returned in the morning to
retrieve a hat I forgot in one of the teepees where I’d changed
clothes. Somebody evidently saw me in the parking lot with the hat in
my hand and informed Shaw of my presence.”

“
I know you’ve got a thing
about an old Stetson with a beaded hatband. Is that the one you left
behind?”

“
The very one. Kind of a lucky
hat, I guess, and I didn’t want to lose it.”

“
So, because of
that
you’re a suspect, too? But, why are they connecting you to me?”

He tented his fingers and brought
them to his chin. “Has to be the court thing where you identified
Eric’s fake photo. That’s the only connection I can think of.
It’s also widely known that Eric didn’t take kindly to the
verdict and losing his job at the
Star-Tribune
. He blamed both
of us for the demise of his career.”

I sighed and slumped in my chair.
“Whatever happened to that development business? It sounded like it
was going through, even though you were adamantly opposed to it.”

“
That development got
postponed, maybe even cancelled.”

“
How’d that happen?” I
evidently hadn’t kept up on county events.

Frank stood and walked to the
wall of windows in his office, a frown on his face. “Not the way
you’d think. The county hosted an open house in the spring.
Complete with little sandwiches, cheese balls, and stuff like that.
Whenever there’s free food, Kenneth Good Heart shows up. You know
him, Cassandra. Big mouth. A lot of stories.”

I did know him. I’d been
hearing about his stories ever since I came to Minnesota. I could see
his craggy face. Long, gray, stringy ponytail. Dancing, impish brown
eyes. He always wore a derby-like hat. He’d long ago gotten false
teeth, but usually left them in his pocket. I pictured him with his
head back, roaring about some joke he’d just made, his hands
slapping against his skinny jeans-clad knees.

“
Ken is eighty-five, you know,”
Frank said, turning to face me. “I think what’s kept him going
all these years is bugging government bureaucrats. Last year—it was
really dry, if you remember—he and two of his cousins performed two
rain ceremonies in front of city hall to end the drought. When rain
finally came, the last week of September, they sent a bill for
$32,000 in expenses to the county, pointing out that their ceremonies
had created the rainfall.”

I chuckled. It could have
happened that way. “Did they pay?”

“
Hell, no. But it’s typical
of the way Kenneth tweaks the government. Anyway, at this particular
city event, Kenneth got to gabbing about the old days. In the early
1950s, the tribe got a grant and built a paint manufacturing company
on the reservation. It hung in there for about five years and went
belly up. But here’s the clincher.” Frank returned to his desk
and pounded a fist onto the surface. “Kenneth said the plant
disposed of its wastes on the property outside the reservation. It
amused him to contemplate the developers’ reactions when they
discovered the mess they’d have to pay to clean up.”

“
And did they?”

“
Well, it didn’t get that
far.” Frank reseated himself. “One of the commissioners at the
event overheard the conversation and used the information to derail
the whole development. I knew all about the paint factory and always
assumed it was common knowledge. I did
not
know about the illegal dumping.”

“
So what happened?”

“
At the next meeting, this
commissioner—Marty Madigan—dropped Kenneth’s bombshell on the
entire commission board.”

I nearly choked when Frank
mentioned Marty. This was the connection I was looking for.
Marty
knows Eric!

“
Madigan had been against the
development from the get-go and used Kenneth’s information to force
the county to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement based on
evidence that chemical wastes were dumped into the very wetlands that
was slated for development.”

“
Why was Marty against the
development?”

“
Two reasons, as far as I can
tell.” Frank lifted his hand and extended his index finger. “One,
Madigan’s kind of an ornery bastard and just likes to make waves.”

“
And the second reason?”

He lifted a second finger,
punching the air with his hand. “He didn’t trust Guy Strothers,
the president of the Bridgewater Land Development Company. He had
swept the commissioners off their feet with his fancy charts and
promises of tax revenue. They never took the time to thoroughly check
him out. Anyway, the time it will take to research the EIS could
sidetrack the project until it’s too late to do anything about it
this year. And if the outcome is finally negative, it could scuttle
the project for good.” He folded his arms on the desk.

I settled back in my chair. “I
imagine that didn’t sit too well with the developers.”

“
Guy Strothers was livid.”

“
Do you by any chance remember
when that commission meeting took place?”

“
I might.” Frank closed his
eyes and drummed his fingers on the desk. “It was before Memorial
Day weekend, but after my wife’s first day of work. That would make
it about May 25th. Somewhere around there.”

I did some quick arithmetic in my
head. That meeting was two weeks before the Rendezvous. Had Marty and
Eric planned to meet at the sweat lodge? Maybe the meeting got out of
control and Marty’ temper got the best of him. I considered other
possibilities as I drove back to the carriage house.

Both Marty and Frank had tempers
that erupted spontaneously, if they were pushed too far. Both found
Eric exceedingly irritating. Eric had publicly humiliated both of
them by working to expose a project they were against in a negative
light. If Shaw had this information, why was he working so hard to
involve me? And if Shaw had acquired knowledge of their verbal wars,
why was he singling out Frank as Eric’s murderer and me as his
accomplice? Randy’s name kept popping into my mind. What did either
of these men have against Randy?

Other questions came to me, too.
What was the motive? It was unlikely that two murders only days apart
could be assigned to an eruption of temper. And, lest I forget, how
would Frank have gotten a hold of Marty’s tomahawk? And why, if
they were on the same page, would he deliberately set Marty up to
take the fall? Maybe he simply found the lost tomahawk and didn’t
know it belonged to Marty.