The Witch's Tongue (17 page)

Daisy Perika’s hoax on the hapless white policeman had backfired—it was the shaman who had been cursed by the lump of turquoise. All those invented afflictions she had warned Officer Wolfe about had come to plague her. Daisy could not sleep at night. She coughed. She itched. Now and then, her tired old heart would miss a beat or two. Worst of all, the Ute elder could not dismiss the gnawing worry that by some means, Jim Wolfe would discover what she had done. And the white man would return, full of rage—determined to have his revenge on a poor, helpless old Indian woman who had wanted only to protect a sacred Native American relic. It was so unfair.

Hoping it might help if she did not see or touch the Hasteen K’os Largo pendant for a week or two, she left the stolen object in the shoe box. This seemed to help. Day by day, Daisy’s symptoms began to dissipate. Her troubles, it seemed, were in full retreat. Until one sunny afternoon.

JIM WOLFE
tapped tentatively on the door. “Miz Perika—you there?”

She was not.

He twisted the knob. The door was unlocked.

The desperate man stepped into Daisy’s small kitchen, called out again, “Anybody home?”

Silence.

The old witch is probably out gathering eye of newt or something. But I can’t wait around here all day. Maybe she won’t mind if I just borrow what I need
. Having made his decision, the lawman crossed the small room in three long strides, opened the cabinet door, found the black shoe box. When he lifted the lid, he was astonished at what he found there. He smiled.
Well, well—you sly old thief
. He pocketed his lucky pendant, then proceeded with the more important business that had brought him to this place.

DAISY PERIKA
was prowling around on the narrow termination of Three Sisters Mesa, which towered above her home in the valley. The shaman had filled one of her apron pockets with wild buckwheat, another with seed pods harvested from dead stalks of spider milkweed. When she thought she heard the sound of an automobile in the distance, she was on her hands and knees, digging up the turniplike taproot of a storksbill. Daisy paused, cocked her head to listen.
I must have company
. Wondering who the caller might be, she hung the willow basket over the crook of her arm, hurried along a dusty deer path. She came to the end of mesa, looked down to see the aluminum skin of her trailer home gleaming in the sun. She squinted. There was no sign of an automobile.

Daisy was certain her ears had not played tricks on her. There
had
been someone there, but they were already gone.

Who would leave in such a hurry? Not her cousin Gorman Sweetwater. The silly man would have hung around till well after dark, in hopes of getting a free meal. And Charlie Moon would have called for her. Or, more likely, tracked her all the way up the trail to the mesa top. A happy thought occurred to the isolated woman: Maybe it was the UPS truck that had come and gone. Sure.
The man in the brown uniform has probably left me a package
. This possibility cheered the lonely soul. Aside from monthly checks from Social Security, Daisy did not get more than two or three useful pieces of mail in a month. And packages—well! Parcels with gifts inside were very rare treats indeed, usually appearing only on her birthday and Christmas. Why was there not an Aunt’s Day? She solemnly promised herself to write a letter to the president of the United States.

After descending the trail down the talus slope, Daisy mounted the porch steps, put the basket down, leaned on a stout oak staff.

Her door, which was rarely locked, was not quite closed.

The visitor had been inside.

Maybe he still is
. For a tense moment, she stood on the porch.
No, he must be gone or I’d have spotted his car from up on the mesa. Unless there was two of ’em and one stayed behind. But I can’t stand out here all day
. Daisy Perika took a deep breath.
Well, here goes
. Grasping the oak staff in one hand, she pushed the door open. As soon as she was in her kitchen, she had a strong sense that there was no one in her trailer. She stood very still. Looked around to see whether anything had been disturbed.

On the linoleum she had swept just this morning, there was something that did not belong there. A little spot of yellowish white powder. With a painful effort and much pathetic grunting, the old woman got down on her knees. Touched the tip of her finger to the gritty stuff, peered at the sample.
It looks like…
Daisy touched it to her tongue.
It is
. Instantly, she understood what had happened. She went to the cabinet over the sink, opened the painted wooden door, reached for the black shoe box. Opened it.

The K’os Largo pendant was gone.

And that was not all.

LIFE WAS
good for Charlie Moon. He had a fine red pickup under him, was rolling along south on Route 151 toward the jutting thumb of Navajo Lake. Off to his right, Chimney Rock tickled the belly of a low-hanging cloud. A handsome raven was perched on a telephone pole; it squawked and stretched a wing as he passed—as if to direct the Ute to the Promised Land. Grateful for all blessings, Charlie Moon tipped his Stetson to salute the helpful bird.

Another mile of his life slipped by, a well-spent minute passed into history.

He lowered the window. Sage-scented air wafted in, sweet with the promise of rain. He turned on the FM radio, heard an NPR announcer in Washington, D.C. say something about trouble brewing along the border between China and North Korea, quickly poked the CD player button. LeAnn Rimes began to croon “Good Lookin’ Man.”
Yes indeed
. Moon hummed along.
Miss James beside me and this would be perfect….

But Miss James was not beside him.

Near-perfect moments are fleeting phantoms.

His cell phone made a burbling sound.
Like a fringed cockatoo choking on a peanut
, he thought. Just last year, Charlie Moon had witnessed just such a distressing event in an upscale Denver pet store. The magnificent, three-thousand-dollar bird had survived.

Again the cockatoo gagged.

Moon reached into his jacket pocket for the instrument. “Yeah?”

Aunt Daisy’s brittle voice crackled in his ear. “Charlie—is that you?”

“Yup.”

“Yup?” There was a derisive snort. “That’s no way for a grown man to answer a telephone.”

“Excuse me, please. This is Charlie Moon. To whom do I have the pleasure of speaking to—a shy lady admirer who’ll only talk to me on the phone?”

“It’s me, you big jug-head.”

“That was my second guess. What’s up?”

“Somebody has been snooping around in my house.”

The lawman’s smile faded. “Are they gone?”

“Long gone.”

“You sure?”

“Car pulled away, oh—almost half an hour ago.”

It would take about that long for whoever it was to drive the rutted dirt lane from Daisy’s home to Route 151, and Moon was three miles from the junction. Once he encountered the paved road, the intruder might head south and get a good head start. Moon pressed the accelerator. “Look, I’m not far away. Maybe I can—”

“And the scoundrel messed around in my kitchen.”

On the list of a hundred sure ways to get on the wrong side of the old woman, “messing around in my kitchen” was right up there in the top ten.

There was an uneasy pause before she continued. “He took something outta the cabinet over the sink.” As was her custom, she waited for him to ask.

“What was taken?”

Daisy would certainly not mention the famous Navajo shaman’s pendant, and she hated to tell her nephew about the other thing. But something must be done about this outrage, and Charlie Moon was the man to do it. “A little plastic bag.”

“What’s in the bag?”

“Uh…about half a pound of yellow cornmeal.”

Moon frowned at the long ribbon of asphalt stretched out ahead of the red F-350. “Cornmeal—that’s all?”

Daisy’s voice betrayed the fact that she was getting testy. “There was some baking powder in it. A pinch or two of salt. About a teaspoon of sugar. And just a little bit of paprika.” She groaned. “My legs are hurting from all the walking I’ve done today.”

“Maybe you’d better sit down and rest awhile.”

She leaned on the small dining table, seated herself in a straight-back chair, groaned with relief. “Ah—that’s lots better.”

“Good. Now do you have any idea who might’ve—”

“Sure I do.”

Silence.

Moon smiled at his reflection in the windshield. “Take all day if you want to. I got nothing important to do.”

“It was that
matukach
policeman you brought out here a while back—the one who needed doctoring.”

Charlie Moon thought this to be highly unlikely. “Officer Wolfe?”

“That’s the one.”

It seemed like a really dumb question. “Uh—here’s what I don’t understand. Why would Jim Wolfe—or anybody for that matter—drive all the way out to your place to steal a handful of cornbread mix?” He laughed. “Did he take some lard? Or a frying pan?”

“I am old and tired and cranky. Don’t you get smart with me.”

“Okay. But you have to admit, it seems like a pretty doggone strange thing for a person to do.”

The old woman tried to sound as if her interpretation of the theft was the most logical response imaginable. “Maybe he thought he was stealing corpse powder.”

Moon’s pickup topped a steep hill, hurtled down the other side. “Would you please repeat that?”

“Maybe because—”

“Just the last part.”

“Corpse powder.”

Corpse powder?
The tribal investigator attempted to digest this assertion. It still didn’t make any sense. Unless…well of course. He smiled at a mental image of his aunt spoofing the superstitious white man. “I wonder—what would lead Officer Wolfe to believe you kept something in your kitchen like…ah…corpse powder?”

The shaman hesitated. “Who knows why these crazy white people believe all the peculiar things they do?” She sighed, shook her head. “Charlie, they are not like us.”

Moon encountered a black-and-white Subaru Forester heading north. “I’ll talk to you later.” He jammed his boot heel on the brake pedal, did a skidding 180 on the two-lane.

Jim Wolfe parked his Subaru half a mile from Butterfield Mesa, took exaggerated care to close the car door quietly, making a barely audible click. He stood quite immobile—a mere shadow-man, infected with a palpable emptiness.

A dry breeze rattled the pulpy leaves on a dwarf oak.

Wolfe turned his face toward that place where he had left the Indian’s mortal remains. He stuck his hand in his jacket pocket, felt the reassuring lump of the plastic bag.

Might as well get the job done
. He trudged off toward an uncertain destiny.

CHARLIE MOON
stood on the bushy side of a ridge, his slender frame masked by juniper and piñon and the instincts of a thousand generations of painted warriors, stealthy mammoth hunters, sly prowlers of dark forests. The modern Ute raised a pair of binoculars to his eyes, turned the knurled focus knob. Jim Wolfe’s wispy form jumped into startling clarity. The tribal investigator frowned over the eyepieces. Wolfe was standing by an oblong cairn of stones. Maybe this was not a fool’s errand.

The white man stared at the pile of rocks, leaned over as if to pick up a stone, hesitated.

Moon watched through the excellent German optics.

Wolfe straightened his back, removed a glistening packet from his jacket pocket.

Okay. Give him enough rope to hang himself with
.

The watched man poured a bit of gritty powder into his palm. Began to sprinkle it onto the stones.

Moon grimaced.
That’s not the way
. Had Aunt Daisy forgotten to tell him the rules? Corpse powder had to be sprinkled directly onto the body.

As if he had heard Moon’s thought, Jim Wolfe paused, assumed the stony-faced expression of one who must do the unthinkable. He squatted, began the grisly task. In no hurry, he removed one stone. Then another.

Moon was greatly relieved that Wolfe was doing the thing right. Not that there was any such thing as a magical powder that would keep a malevolent ghost from tormenting his enemy’s soul. Haunts and magic potions—it was all old-women’s talk, invented to frighten unruly children and relieve credulous folk of their money.

Jim Wolfe was making two neat piles of stones. One on his right, another on his left.

This could take a long time
. But Charlie Moon had no option except to stay where he was, watch the white man uncover the corpse—presumably of some unfortunate he had killed. But one must not jump to conclusions. Though a sizable portion of homicides are cold-blooded murder, a few are accidental and others justifiable as self-defense. But violent deaths of human beings have this in common: Every one must be investigated by the legally constituted authorities. The tribal investigator would wait until Jim Wolfe began putting corpse dust on the body before he approached to make an arrest. He imagined how surprised Wolfe would be to see him.

It was the Ute who was surprised. Moon blinked, readjusted the binoculars.
What’s going on?

Jim Wolfe was on his hands and knees, flinging stones this way and that. From a hundred yards away, Moon heard the man screaming what seemed to be a mix of pleas and curses.

With a suddenness more eerie than his outburst, the white man fell eerily silent.

WOLFE GOT
to his feet, reeled like a drunk, stared at the stones. He began to turn his head. The terrified man examined the twilight landscape of swollen ridges, arroyo scars in the earth’s skin, mesas stitched like black patches onto a blue velvet sky. The white SUPD cop took another long, thoughtful look at the scattered stones. Feeling like a child caught in a nightmare, he tried to think straight.
This is crazy. It doesn’t make any sense at all
. He turned to look down the broad valley, to the spot between the massive sandstone mesas—where the Apache had left his truck.

Felix Navarone’s 1957 Chevrolet pickup was not there.

MOON WATCHED
through the binoculars as the drama unfolded.

Wolfe had broken into a headlong run. He tripped over a twisted piñon root, tumbled down the bank of a dry arroyo, scrambled to regain his footing, ran like a man pursued by an invisible
something
. Wolfe disappeared from view. A minute later, Moon heard the off-duty cop’s Subaru start up, tear off toward the highway.

TRANSFIXED WITH
wonder, Charlie Moon tried to make some sense of what he had witnessed. Jim Wolfe was a pretty tough customer. What could such a man have found under the stones that would scare him half to death? As he made long strides toward the ridge that Wolfe had vacated in such haste, images of a rotting, half-human corpse flitted through the dark corners of the Ute’s mind. Moments later, the tribal policeman planted his boots where Jim Wolfe had stood. He stared. There was no corpse. Only a scattering of stones.

SUMMONED

HIS FINGERS
resting lightly on the leathered steering wheel, Charlie Moon maneuvered the machine along the gravel road, north into the gathering darkness. The truck engine hummed contentedly.

He mused about Jim Wolfe’s peculiar behavior.
There’s something going on here—something I should be able to see
. Despite the puzzle of a man who stole cornbread mix from an old woman, drove into the reservation wilderness, threw a bunch of rocks around, then ran off like a grizzly was snapping at his shirttail, Moon was not disturbed. On the contrary, the drive was soothing. This being so, he was relaxed and at peace with the world. Until…

The telephone called to him.

He pressed the black, antennaed bug to his ear. “Hello.”

Though the fidelity of the connection was excellent, the gender of the caller was uncertain. “Am I addressing a Mr. Charles Moon?”

“Who wants to know?”

“This is Bertram Eustace Cassidy.” There was an expectant pause, as if the name was expected to carry some weight. “I am calling on behalf of my aunt, Miss Jane Cassidy.”

Cassidy
. Sure—those people whose museum had been burgled. Those
wealthy
people. The sort who—after they paid their bills—still had piles of money left over. “Mr. Cassidy, what can I do for you?”

The caller’s tone was mildly doubtful, as if he might have dialed a wrong number. “Is this Mr. Charles Moon—the Indian policeman?”

“This is Charlie Moon, the tribal investigator.”
And all-around good fella
.

“Mr. Moon, my aunt would like to confer with you.”

“Confer about what?”

“It is my impression that Auntie Jane would prefer to tell you herself. Do you know where we are located?”

“Sure.”

“I suggest that we set up an appointment, here at our estate.”

Estate?
I can hear the cash register ringing
. “How about tomorrow afternoon?”

Bertram E. Cassidy replied, in the self-assured tone of a man accustomed to calling the shots, “This evening would be much better.”

“I’ll be there in about an hour.”

“Auntie Jane is somewhat finicky about appointments.” A pained hesitation. “Could you be somewhat more precise?”

Moon calculated the miles between here and there, consulted Betty Lou’s digital dashboard clock, which was synchronized with WWV. “I will knock on your door at eight-fourteen.” He grinned. “And twelve seconds.”

Bertram Eustace Cassidy did not bat an eyelash. “Eight-fourteen-twelve. That will be quite satisfactory.”

Charlie Moon heard a click in his ear.