Wife of Moon

by Margaret Coel

  Father John got to his feet again. He felt as if he’d stepped off a riverbank and gotten caught in a current of rumors. “Gianelli’s a good investigator.” A one-man crusade, was more like it. Determined to rid the world, or at least the rez, of bad guys. “He’ll find Denise’s murderer.”

  IN THE OFFICE, Father John flipped through the papers waiting for his attention—yesterday’s mail, bills to pay, phone messages to return, Sunday’s homily to write—and tried to make sense of what Elena had said. The muffled sound of Father Damien’s voice floated down the hall from the back office—reasoning, pleading. “No, no, no. Whatever happened to the curator has nothing to do with the mission.” There was a pause, then Damien said, “Well, yes, it looks like T.J. Painted Horse’s wife could have been murdered, but that wouldn’t have any connection to Senator Evans’s visit. She probably surprised an intruder.” Another pause. “Yes, T.J. is a popular councilman. No. No. He couldn’t have had anything to do with his wife’s murder.”

  But the man could have had enemies, Father John was thinking. Nobody could speak out against the proposed drilling for methane gas, calling the environmental analysis “misleading and inadequate” and insisting on another study that could take months to complete, without making enemies. People were waiting on the jobs and the royalties. But T.J. had made some good points, Father John thought, talking about the millions of gallons of salty wastewater that drilling would pour onto grazing lands and hay fields, and the roads that would be cut through pastures for the heavy trucks and drilling equipment. The man wasn’t afraid to stand up for what he believed in, even with a powerful man like Senator Evans on the other side. Father John admired T.J. for that.

  “Thank God, things have been quiet lately on the rez,” Gianelli had said. That was last Sunday, over spaghetti dinner at the agent’s house. He’d helped Gianelli with a lot of cases over the last eight years. They were friends. Two transplants from the east. He, from Boston. Gianelli from somewhere in the Bronx. A baseball player who had once dreamed of the big leagues, and a one-time linebacker for the Patriots. Both opera fans, but Gianelli knew more about opera than he did by a long shot, a fact Father John didn’t like to admit, certainly not to Gianelli. The man’s wife made the best spaghetti in Wyoming, and dinner had been accompanied by the jabbering of four teenaged daughters and the music of “Madame Butterfly” in the background.

  Three days ago. Everything had seemed normal and ordinary.

  Father John pulled over the Rolodex and flipped through the cards until he had Vera’s number. He picked up the phone and tapped the buttons. A half ring, then: “Hello? Hello?” Vera’s voice, clipped with anxiety. “That you, T.J.?”

  “Father John,” he said, before launching into the purpose of the call. Now was not the time for polite pleasantries. “How’s T.J. doing?”

  “Grieving real hard for that wife of his, Father. Blames himself. Says some fool came looking for him and found Denise instead. Says he should’ve been there to protect her. Not bad enough Denise got herself killed. Now the fed thinks T.J. was the one that shot her in the head. Plain harassment, that’s what I call it.” There was a long intake of breath on the other end. “Easier to pin murder on an innocent Indian than go out and find the real killer.”

  “Where can I find T.J.?” Father John could feel a wariness settling inside him, like sand dropping into the pit of his stomach. The man was going to need somebody to talk to, somebody to reassure him. It would be easy in such a hard time as this—oh, he knew the truth of it—to look for reassurance in a whiskey bottle.

  “T.J. took off early this morning. Didn’t sleep all night. Crying and pacing the house like a caged lion. He chopped off his hair like a crazy man. He should’ve waited for the funeral when he could’ve sat in front of the casket, and the ceremonial woman with the special scissors would have cut off his hair. That’s the Arapaho Way. I don’t know what’s come over him. He drove off with nothing but a sleeping bag. Oh, I know where he went. Up into the mountains to do his grieving.” A short pause, another gasp of breath. “Like the ancestors in the Old Time.”

  Father John was quiet a moment, trying to pull from his memory what the elders had told him. How a man, grieving for someone he loved, went alone into the mountains. He smeared the dust of the earth onto his face and wailed into the wind, begging the eagle spirit to help him find the strength to soar above the grief, to be steadfast and sure. He stayed in the mountains until the spirit answered his prayer and he felt himself ready to return to his village and a new life.

  “Give me a call, Vera, when he returns,” Father John said, ending the call. He hoped that T.J. didn’t take a bottle of whiskey with him.

  Gripping the receiver between his chin and shoulder, he dug through the notebooks and papers in the desk drawer and pulled out the local phone book. Then he thumbed through the pages until he had the listing for the Riverton Police and tapped out the number. Three rings, and a woman’s voice came on the line. He gave his name and asked to speak to the investigator handling Christine Nelson’s disappearance.

  Four, five seconds passed. Father John drummed his fingers on top of the desk. Finally a man’s voice: “This is Detective Porter. Any news on Christine Nelson?” he asked.

  “I was hoping you’d have some news,” Father John said. He could sense a feeling of dread coming over him like a dull ache.

  “We’re treating the woman’s disappearance as an abduction, Father. Every law enforcement agency in the area is working the case, including the FBI. Tribal police are gonna have officers at the mission this morning to check out the museum. I’ve got my men canvasing the neighborhood and talking to neighbors. Somebody might’ve seen something and didn’t realize what they were seeing. The state patrol’s looking for the woman’s Range Rover on every highway in Wyoming, and we’re checking Teton County records for a line on the license plate. We could get lucky, Father. I’ll let you know if there’s any new developments.”

  Father John thanked the man and started to hang up.

  “Hey, Father!”

  He pressed the receiver against his ear and waited.

  “You wouldn’t happen to know if the lady kept a day timer or calendar, would you? Might be she wrote down the name of the person she was going to meet Monday night.”

  “If she kept a day timer, she probably took it with her,” Father John said. He could still see her picking up her briefcase—the quick, impatient fluttering of her slim hands.

  “Might be a big help, Father, if you come across any names the lady might’ve jotted down. Could be she told somebody at the museum where she was going.”

  “Could be,” he said. He doubted it. He had the feeling that Christine Nelson told people only what she wanted them to know.

  He told the detective that he’d let him know if he heard anything, then dropped the receiver into the cradle and swiveled sideways toward the window. Beyond, the cottonwoods shimmered in the sunlight; even the air was tinted gold. Maybe Detective Porter had a point, he thought. Maybe Christine Nelson had scribbled a note about the appointment she’d been eager to keep on Monday night.

  Father John jumped to his feet, grabbed his jacket off the coat tree, and headed outside. He tossed his jacket over one shoulder and plunged through the corridors of sunshine and shade toward the museum.

  11

  THE MUSEUM WAS warm and bright under the white fluorescent ceiling lights. The murmur of voices mixed with the sound of hot air whooshing out of the vents. From the entry, Father John could see a scattering of visitors in the gallery—moving along the walls, pausing in front of the photos, nodding, smiling. Catherine stood near the photograph of the village. She reached out and swept her hand across the glass, making a point to the three middle-aged white women beside her. He smiled at the image. The woman seemed to be enjoying herself after all.

  The door to the office was open, and he went inside and sat down at the desk. Telephone on the right. The Plains Indian Photographs of Edward S.
Curtis on the left, and in the expanse of polished wood, a yellow notebook with two columns of names and telephone numbers on the top page. There were check marks next to the names. Parishioners. Catherine had probably been calling people, asking them to come for Senator Evans’s visit on Monday. Damien wanted a crowd.

  He opened the center desk drawer. Pens, pencils, paper clips, all arranged in neat compartments. No loose notes with the kind of scribbled reminders that he had left to himself. He slid open the side drawer. A few file folders arranged in alphabetical order. Budgets, expenses, inventory. Ah, here was something. An agreement with West Wind Gallery, the Denver gallery that had loaned the Curtis exhibit. He pulled the phone over and punched in the number on the letterhead. It was a long shot, but maybe somebody at the gallery might know something about Christine Nelson. He tucked the receiver into his shoulder and listened to the buzz of a phone ringing somewhere in Denver, thumbing through the pages for a name. There it was, on the last page.

  The buzzing stopped, and a man’s voice came on the line. Father John asked to speak to Linda Novak.

  “Linda’s on vacation at the moment.” The words were precise and clipped. “Perhaps I can be of help to you?”

  Father John gave the man his name and said he was calling about Christine Nelson, who had arranged for the Curtis exhibit . . .

  “Yes, yes, yes,” the man interrupted. “Linda is in charge of our Curtis collection. I’m afraid you’ll have to speak with her. Shall I connect you to her voice mail? She sometimes checks her messages.”

  Father John repeated what he’d said into the vacuum of a machine, then dropped the receiver into the cradle and got to his feet. Apart from the abrupt sound of laughter that burst from the gallery, the office was quiet, an unoccupied feeling about it. Books stacked in the bookcase across the room, a pair of chairs with worn brown cushions pushed against the side wall. There was nothing of Christine Nelson, nothing she might have left behind. The woman might never have walked into the office, picked up her briefcase, grabbed her coat from behind the door. It was as if she was being erased from the image he carried in his mind, disappearing, the way she’d disappeared Monday night.

  Well, that was crazy, he told himself. Christine Nelson had to be somewhere, and chances were, whoever she’d gone to meet on Monday night knew what had happened to her.

  He started across the entry toward the front door, the hum of voices floating around him like a familiar melody. He turned back and stepped into the gallery. Next to the door, on a small metal stand, was the guest book and a stack of brochures. He nodded at Catherine, who had thrown him a sideways glance before turning her attention back to the visitors. Then he picked up the book and a brochure and went back into the office. Settling into the chair he’d just vacated, he began glancing through the book, trying to make out the names scribbled down the left side of the pages. As indecipherable as hieroglyphics. The names of towns on the right were easier to read. Towns in Nebraska, Montana, Idaho, Colorado.

  He hunted now for the local towns, checking the names next to Riverton, Lander, Fort Washakie, Ethete, Arapaho. Next to Arapaho, on the second page, was scribbled Eunice Redshield.

  He stared at the name, another image beginning to take shape in his mind. Monday night, and the college students studying the photographs, jotting notes in notebooks, arguing. And the dark-haired young woman saying that one of the warriors was Thunder, her ancestor. Saying that her grandmother, Eunice Redshield, had told the curator.

  “Here’s the pastor.” Catherine stood in the door, a group of women crowding around her. “These folks came down from Montana,” she said, tossing her head from one side to the other. “I’ve been telling them how Curtis could’ve been taking the photographs yesterday. Black Mountain looks just the same. Nothing’s changed. That old log cabin that Curtis stayed in is still there.”

  “Good to have you here,” he said to the visitors, who smiled and nodded before flowing back into the entry with Catherine. He was thinking that, like the log cabin, descendants of the people in the photographs were also here.

  He picked up the brochure and folded it into his shirt pocket. Then he grabbed his jacket from the back of the chair and headed for the front door, giving Catherine and the group of women a little wave as he walked past. Back outside, he pulled on his jacket as he hurried toward the pickup.

  12

  THE REDSHIELD PLACE was at the end of a two-lane road close to the Little Wind River. Sheltered under a cottonwood was a small, rectangular house with brown siding and patterns of sunshine running down the sloped roof. There was a barn in the back that looked like a larger version of the house, and beyond that, nothing but the blue sky dipping down to the ground tipped in gold and red and vermilion as far as he could see, as if the earth were on fire.

  Father John pointed the pickup into the tire tracks that crossed the yard and parked next to the house in a patch of dirt where a vehicle had obviously been parked not long before. He got out and slammed the door hard—a brittle sound that reverberated through the silence—to let whoever was inside know there was a visitor. He’d called Eunice from his cell as he’d turned out of the mission grounds. She’d be here, she told him. Maybe out in the barn.

  Father John waited a moment, then headed down the side of the house for the barn. Through the open door that had scraped a halfmoon into the dirt in front, he could see the woman moving about, a bucket hanging from one hand.

  “Hello,” he called, giving the door a rap and stepping inside.

  Eunice Redshield lifted up the bucket, eyes round with fear, chest rising inside the folds of a denim jacket. “Oh, my goodness! Scared the bejeebers out of me, Father. How come I didn’t hear that old pickup of yours? You didn’t get yourself a new car, did you?”

  “Afraid that’s not in the budget.” He laughed at the idea of a budget. Hay was scattered over the dirt floor, and the walls were covered with shelves filled with ropes, tack, and blankets. Two geldings bent into a trough of oats. The air was warm and humid with the horse’s breath and the odors of manure and hay.

  “Just got the boys their breakfast,” she said, throwing her head toward the horses. She dropped the bucket on top of a large bin. “I got coffee brewing in the house.”

  He followed her across the yard and into the kitchen. “Have a seat, Father.” Eunice nodded toward one of the chairs at the table, then hung her jacket on a hook behind the door and worked at tucking the ends of her T-shirt into her blue jeans. She was a short woman with a squared look and thick legs encased in the jeans. Probably in her fifties, he was thinking as he draped his own jacket over the chair she’d indicated and sat down. She had a weathered look, with curled gray hair and worry lines etched into her forehead. Old enough that the kids on the rez would call her grandmother.

  “You been doing okay, Father?” she asked, stretching upward on her toes to reach a shelf and pull down two mugs.

  The question took him by surprise. “What makes you ask?”

  “I hear that new priest you got at the mission is pretty much taking over. Got involved with the business council to get Senator Evans over to the mission.” Eunice poured coffee into the mugs and set them on the table. Then she dropped with a loud sigh onto the chair across from him. “Gossip says you might be getting ready to leave. That true?”

  “I’m not planning to go anywhere.” He forced a little laugh and took a gulp of coffee. He could feel it burning somewhere deep inside his chest. The gossip on the moccasin telegraph that reached him was always about somebody else, never about him. He didn’t want to think about leaving St. Francis. Fitting himself again into a teaching job at a Jesuit prep school or university. Finding his way again, his place somewhere else.

  “Father Damien’s a pretty good priest,” she said. Then she took a sip of coffee and reached over and patted his hand. “People hereabouts like that other priest fine, but we’d sure hate to lose you, Father.” She seemed to contemplate the possibility for a moment, the lines in he
r forehead frozen in concentration.

  Sitting back, she worked at the coffee, then she said, “Hear that white woman at the museum went off somewhere. Hope nothing bad happened to her. She was one of them nervous types, you know, face all pinched and white like the blood drained out of her. Looked like she was running fast with an evil spirit right behind her. Hear somebody tore her place up. Think the police’ll find her?”

  He said that he hoped so, trying for as much reassurance as he could muster. Then he pulled the brochure on the Curtis exhibit from his jacket pocket. Smoothing out the shiny paper, he pushed it across the table. “I understand one of the warriors is your ancestor,” he said, tapping at the photograph of the village on the front.

  The atmosphere seemed to change, as if the warm air blowing through the vent had turned frigid. Eunice stared at the photo for several seconds before she started tracing the figure of the warrior on the right with one finger. “My great-grandfather, Thunder,” she said. “Don’t mind telling you I was real surprised when I walked into the museum and seen his photo. I went into the curator’s office and told her she had my great-grandfather on the wall.” The woman looked away, gathering the memory. “I remember she went on about how Edward Curtis never got around to identifying a lot of people in his photos, and she was sorry but the Arapahos weren’t ever gonna be identified. I said, you got that wrong, ’cause I know my own great-grandfather. I got another picture of him. She got real interested then and said she’d like to see my picture, so I said, ‘Come on over any time you want.’ Hold on a minute, Father.”