Richfield & Rivers Mystery Series 3 - Venus Besieged

by Andrews

  Callie watched, her mind seeming to wander, then said, "Barrett, see if there's enough juice left to check her messages."

  Barrett glanced at Callie and a moment of hope crossed her face. She flipped open the case, then quickly put it down. "I don't know her code so there's no way for me to pick up her message, even if she left one."

  Callie was silent for a moment. "Does she have text messaging, or notepad, or a draft file?"

  Barrett clicked through the options and found the message. Find me S. shadow lodge pines clearing. Man armed. The sender ID was blocked.

  "Let's go!" Barrett was on her feet along with the rest of us. Manaba, too weak to travel, insisted we leave her there and she would follow.

  "Will she be alright?" I asked Callie, then remembered Manaba's war with Luther. "What am I thinking, she'll be fine."

  Back in the car, Elmo took up his post next to Barrett. I asked how Callie had ever thought about checking Ramona's own cell phone for messages.

  "Uranus in the chart indicated technology. But when we discovered her phone, it told us nothing and I kept wondering why, thinking the answer was in there, but we didn't know it. She's smart and she knew someone might find the phone, so she left a text message for them."

  We backtracked up to the main road, where I pulled a GPS out of my glove box and plugged it into the cigarette lighter.

  "You have a navigation system?" Callie was stunned.

  Self-conscious, I admitted I had bought one.

  "But you take directions from no one, you check nothing out and you're constantly lost, and all the while you have a nav system in your glove box?"

  "For emergencies. Put in Shadow Lodge. Please."

  Twenty miles later the woman on the GPS, whose voice sounded as if she'd happily had a lobotomy, informed me I should turn left in one-quarter mile, then right, and proceed up the hill. Callie watched me as I obeyed the robot-woman and stared at me as if trying to decide how she'd missed this little piece of my personality.

  "What?" I asked as I continued to follow directions.

  "It must be her dispassionate tone."

  "No. I trust she knows where she's taking me."

  "Although she's a disembodied voice in a box."

  "You two are meant for each other." Barrett spoke for the first time. "You go back and forth like you've been married for fifty years."

  "Makes you glad you're unattached?" I asked.

  "No," Barrett said, and I detected a loneliness that made me feel bad for having joked about it.

  A visitors' parking area fanned out below the spot where tourists climbed up a few steps to experience the view from the ledge overlooking the canyon.

  We jumped out of the car, leaving Elmo safely inside, and went to the edge of the ridge to try to find the area described. Nothing surrounding this tourist attraction seemed to match the text message Ramona had left us.

  Checking the backside of the hills behind the parking lot, I saw a patch of scrub pines and rocks near an open expanse of land. I waved my arms to signal the others to join me, and we walked without talking down the slight slope toward the forest. I felt for my gun, a habit that hadn't done me any good during the most recent battle, but I was counting on it now. Little Horse, good guy or bad, had to be more mortal than the people I'd encountered.

  "Stay with me." I took Callie by the hand and could feel that Barrett was sticking right behind us. We moved through the pines that ringed the expanse of barren land, careful to stay away from open spaces, and I hoped Elmo would be okay as we went farther away from him, and we would be okay as we went closer to something we couldn't name.

  I pointed toward a single fallen log that looked almost petrified. Barrett nodded, understanding there could be something behind it. Tense and nervous, I motioned them to stay back and crouched down, half crawling around the outer edge of the log so I could see what was there. After a quick peek around it, I jumped back out of gunshot range, but I'd already glimpsed something—a body in a blanket lying up against the log.

  "Over here," I whispered, and Barrett and Callie ran to help me.

  "Oh, no," I heard Barrett gasp as we rolled the body over, not knowing what to expect.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The blanket was slightly wet. The contents' stillness and weight suggested that if someone had been alive in there, they were now long gone.

  We rolled the blanket toward us and peeled back the edge, catching sight of a bound ankle, and I could tell by the way Barrett recoiled that we had to be unveiling Ramona Mathers. As we continued to work the blanket loose, we heard a stifled moan. Barrett dug in now, ripping at the blanket as if it were Christmas.

  "She's alive." Barrett's voice cracked and I too recognized the moan as Ramona's. Pulling out a pocketknife, I sawed away on the rope bindings around her wrists and ankles as Barrett pulled the tape off her mouth. It looked like a bad episode of Miami CSI. We all asked the standard questions in rapid fire: Was she okay? Who had done this to her? Did she know where Nizhoni was?

  She said Little Horse had come to the cabin to ask her help after Luther saw the animal bones, because he knew Luther would be looking for Nizhoni again to kill her. Little Horse asked Ramona to come talk to Nizhoni to see what she could do to help him find her a place out of state and to prosecute Luther. On their trek, a man intercepted them and tried to kill him.

  "This man who attacked us wanted the girl and became furious when Little Horse led him in circles, so he bound me and left me for dead, not wanting the burden of dragging me around, then told Little Horse to take him to the girl or he would kill him on the spot. Law enforcement here obviously has its issues," she said dryly, exhibiting her first sign of humor.

  I asked Ramona if the man who attacked them had a limp, and she confirmed the description of Dwayne-Wayne. Luther had apparently enlisted Dwayne to expedite the killing of Nizhoni, and more than likely that's why Dwayne had attacked Cy Blackstone— in an attempt to get him to reveal where Nizhoni was.

  "Did you get my text message?" Ramona asked.

  "Yes, you're brilliant!" Barrett hugged her. "I'm going to find the man who did this to you and kill him."

  "Delighted that you're going to take up the gauntlet to protect me." Ramona tried to sound jaunty, and she put her arm around Barrett, who held her up lovingly. "The night was so cold, I had to think of everyone I'd ever slept with to stay warm. You kept me the warmest."

  Barrett kissed her gently and rubbed Ramona's wrists and ankles to restore circulation, then got her coat and put it around Ramona. The coat, a rugged corduroy garment with leather piping, hung jauntily over the beleaguered Ramona's shoulders. As she draped it around her, Barrett's arms followed, holding the tall, slender Ramona who, even with her hair awry and no makeup, had a fascinating elegance. Like a great silver heron, she bowed her head, her body still stiffly at attention, and rested her forehead on Barrett's shoulder.

  "You two stay here. Callie and I will get the Jeep and pick her up. I don't think she can walk."

  "I'm perfectly capable—" Ramona began.

  "We're picking you up because we want to, not because we need to," Callie said, and we left them alone in the moonlight and walked back to the car.

  I assimilated the pieces like a crime-mosaic. "Sounds like Little Horse was pulverized by Dwayne-Wayne, who in addition to being Luther's friend could be his dealer."

  "What makes you think so?" Callie asked.

  "Watching Luther, I'm thinking he's on PCP—horse tranquilizer—makes the druggies nuts. When I was on the force and we got a call to deal with some guy on PCP, it took six grown men to bring him down."

  "I went to get your menopausal herbs and saw a man picking up something, and it dawned on me it probably wasn't for hot flashes."

  "That would explain a lot of Luther's power."

  "But not all," Callie said.

  I rang Wade and told him the good news about Ramona. He felt relieved enough to take credit for the entire operation, and I was reli
eved enough to let him.

  When our car came into view I pulled my keys out of my pocket and clicked the automatic door lock. The cab light came on and I froze. Seated behind the steering wheel was a large, perfectly still figure. My first thought was that whoever it was had come to kill us, and my second thought was for Elmo's safety.

  I pounced on the car and yanked the door open. Manaba was slumped in the front seat unconscious. Elmo was sound asleep in the backseat, and my next thought was how in hell she got into my locked car. But she stood in fire, so Chrysler engineering was probably nothing to her.

  Both began to stir when they heard my voice. Manaba offered an apology, saying she hadn't meant to startle us. She and the dog, as she termed Elmo, were fine. Apparently Elmo didn't buck spiritual leaders even if they invaded his space. He was smarter than me in that way.

  We told her what had been going on and that Dwayne had forced Little Horse to take him to Nizhoni somewhere up in the canyon. I refrained from telling her that most likely Dwayne-Wayne had killed them both. Manaba remained quiet.

  "Can you travel and look for them?" Callie asked, and I had the feeling she meant by mind, not Mazda.

  "I'm very weak, but I'll try," Manaba said, clearly stating her condition as fact, not a source of sympathy.

  As we drove back to get Barrett and Ramona, Manaba seemed to be out of her body again and I was silent, thinking about that particular skill set. Why couldn't people travel out of their bodies without people like me thinking they were nuts? If we'd been riding around on horseback in the 1700s and suddenly told our companions that one day they could walk on the moon, they'd have made fun of us. So maybe these tribal people were way ahead of us.

  "I like what you're thinking." Callie took my hand.

  "I like that you always know what I'm thinking. It saves a lot of time." I glanced down at the zipper on her small jeans. "What am I thinking now?"

  "The thing you never stop thinking," she whispered and rested her hand in my lap. Electrical current rushed through my body, exciting every cell.

  I would have expected Barrett and Ramona to be sitting on the first red rock with their thumbs out, anxious to get out of the middle of nowhere, so I was surprised to find them out of the general view, pretty much where we'd left them, huddled in each other's arms.

  But I didn't expect to see them sucking each other's lips off, their sexual fervor evidenced in the tight body grip, mouths welded, Ramona's blouse open and her bra askew. Her skirt was hiked seductively, Barrett's arm under it locked around her hip and, guessing from the way Ramona shifted and moaned, beneath her panties, in exploration of the entire topography of her sexual landscape.

  The woman who had hit on me and struck out and the woman who'd hit on me and scored were now only interested in one another, and in an inexplicable way, I was happy for them. I took a moment to watch them in a deep, sensual embrace, Barrett now tenderly kissing Ramona and not so tenderly reaching inside her clothing to stroke her body. I wanted to shout, "Give the woman a break, she's been bound and gagged," but Ramona Mathers didn't look like she wanted a break.

  "Curfew, kids," I said, and the two of them broke apart sheepishly and followed me back to the car, where I dug into my pocket and gave Callie the hand-drawn map.

  The five of us and Elmo were pretty packed into the Jeep. Callie put him in the front seat with her and he sat on the floorboard, his paws up in her lap facing her. She stroked his head and talked to him and explained why his transport suddenly looked like a city bus.

  "I think Little Horse had Nizhoni at his place. If we could read this map, we could get there," I said.

  Callie handed the map to Manaba, who only glanced at it for a second, then said, "Straight ahead and cross the goat path running diagonally southwest to northeast. Then leave the car and we will proceed on foot."

  "How could she read that chicken scratching?" I said.

  "She went there as a bird and the map was a reminder," Callie said.

  "You travel as a bird?" Ramona asked Manaba, reviving enough for a slightly caustic side to resurface.

  "She shape-shifts like her grandmother, who taught her," I said flatly, realizing as the words came out of my mouth that I'd joined the ranks of the incurably insane. "If everything on earth is made of protons and neutrons, whether it's a table or a human, and we can put a table in a molecular chamber and raise the vibrational level up so high the object actually disappears, then humans can obviously vibrate at a level that would make their bodies disappear, leaving their spirits free to roam, and if the spirit was talented enough to enhance and harness that energy, then it could basically...do stuff the rest of us can't." I stopped for breath.

  "Very good," Callie breathed.

  "Had to be able to sort of justify it in my mind," I said.

  "Beats pledging a sorority," Ramona quipped, and Barrett grinned widely, obviously believing everything she said was witty. I was reminded that love makes fools of even the most sophisticated.

  Ahead a small adobe dwelling, smoke coming from the fireplace, rose in the sand. We pulled up and cut the motor, slipping out of the car as quietly as possible. Having had all the stalking around in the sand I could take for one day, I attacked the small wooden door of the adobe house as if this were a drug bust: kicking first with my foot, jumping back against the wall, then shooting down into the lock and blowing off the doorknob. When I slammed my shoulder into the door and entered, the Indian man facing me looked completely dazed and fearful.

  "You Little Horse?" I asked, and he nodded yes. Eyeing the four women who came in behind me, he must have thought he'd been busted by women's bridge night.

  In the corner on a small cot, a dark-haired woman lay in the shadows. Manaba moved quickly to the tattered bed, knelt down, and felt the woman's forehead. She took something out of a leather bag at her waist and forced it between the woman's pale lips.

  As Little Horse moved closer to the lamplight, I shouted, "You're the guy who rescued me and the one who dug up Nizhoni's grave." I wanted to find out every detail of what happened below that cliff—how he caught me and why, but he seemed terrified that I knew him and grasped a sheaf of gray stalks, set it aflame, and let the pungent smoke fill the room, then moved from one corner of the room to the next as he swung the sage through the air, apparently too paralyzed with fear to speak and now only able to chant for protection.

  "Where's the guy who kidnapped you?" I persisted in addressing Little Horse. "Look, Ramona vouched for you and said another guy kidnapped you." But Little Horse was mute and, if not terrified, at least preoccupied with driving away evil.

  Manaba, ignoring all else, talked softly to the woman on the cot, telling her we would be taking her out of here. A sound at the door and Barrett made a quick move to put a chair up against it, but the door was blown open from the other side. Standing before us was Dwayne, his frame filling the doorway, and I realized what had Little Horse so nervous.

  "Gotcha all in one spot. Good."

  Dwayne-Wayne might have been nuts, but he was no match for three women with PMS. He reached for his gun as Barrett picked up a chair and swung it at his midsection and Callie brought both arms down full force on his forearm in the same move she'd used on Luther, which momentarily threw Dwayne off balance. He took a second to recover before making a staggering attempt to aim at her. I was waiting for him and yanked him inside the cabin and slapped him over the head with the butt of my gun, which put him on his knees and split his head open.

  "Anybody got a belt I can borrow?" I asked the room at large and Barrett removed hers. Glancing at it before tying Dwayne up, I realized this was the most expensive rope ever used on anyone, but Barrett probably wouldn't need it. Gathering from her glances at Ramona, she'd have her pants off at the earliest convenience.

  "We may have to tie you to the hood of the car like a deer, since we're flat out of seats," I told Dwayne.

  Manaba seemed oblivious to the commotion as she helped her lover to her feet and began w
alking her to the door, Manaba's inner strength visibly overcoming her outward fatigue. Callie reached for the door and I noted that Little Horse was shaking so badly the smoke was almost making rings.

  No time to digest that thought before the door exploded open again and nearly splintered off its hinges. A huge, ominous, raging energy mass filled the room, the blast followed by Luther Drake. He stood in the cold night air, bare breasted, face painted, a black crow feather in his hair, his dichotomous grin a warning he could smile while ripping the skin off your face.

  Manaba never flinched, but I personally was one large goose bump, having thought the sonofabitch was dead. Hell, for all I knew, maybe he was dead and this was more weird energy returning to haunt us. Callie grabbed me by the arm and pulled me away from the door.

  "Surely you didn't think I had drowned?" he asked Manaba.

  She handed Nizhoni to me, and I felt as if I had been deemed guardian by a parent who knew she was about to die and was entrusting me to care for her child. I shook that feeling off and helped Nizhoni to her bed, then returned to guard Callie. Ramona and Barrett retreated to the corner as if observing a horror movie and Callie stepped forward, afraid of nothing in the spiritual realm.

  "The grandmother spirit asks that you release your hold on this woman, Nizhoni, and let her live," Manaba said.

  "The grandmother spirit wants the land back." Luther leered and mocked her.

  "You threatened and tricked her into signing, telling her the developers were coming for the land and you would fight them."

  "The grandmother wants your lover to live, wants me to give up my power, but the grandmother spirit is dead, and her granddaughter does not honor what I know and bring. I am the same as you."

  He swung his fist down on Manaba's head and blood spewed from her scalp, the blow smashing her to the ground. The sound of her body hitting the floor seemed to be the downbeat for an orchestral symphony of sights and sounds. The wind picked up exactly as it had before, but this time it blew papers around the room and people's hair back and the lights out as if we were in a cyclonic wind tunnel. Light bounced around the room, its source unknown, illuminating the room sporadically and allowing us to see the whites of Luther's eyes and the gleam of his teeth.