The Blue Corn Murders

by Nancy Pickard

  Madeline Rose laughed. “And call it Archaeology World?”

  Just about the time the dining room had settled back into normality, the swinging doors into the cafeteria slammed open and the trustee stalked out again. “Naomi!” Even the teenagers across the hall looked up. “Tell that chef of yours to serve me breakfast! She says it’s after nine o’clock and I’m too late to eat!”

  The beleaguered executive director got slowly to her feet, after having swept bits of egg, toast, and bacon back onto a tray. She brushed herself off before she answered the woman. “Martina,” she said with surprising dignity, considering the circumstances, “given a choice between making you angry or making Bingo mad, I’ll take my chances with you. The breakfast doors close at nine. That’s the rule, and we all have to follow it, even members of the board of trustees. You can still get coffee, and maybe I can scrounge up some cereal for you. Will that be all right?”

  The dark-haired woman fumed, “I can’t believe this.”

  She turned on her expensive-looking heels and walked out of the dining hall, exiting through the front door, without another word to anyone there.

  After a long moment in which even the teenagers were quiet, Genia heard the sound of soft clapping.

  It was Jon Warren, applauding his boss.

  “Go, Naomi,” he cheered in a quiet voice that everyone could hear. At Genia’s table Madeline Rose also began to clap, and soon the large room was ringing with whistles and applause. Genia observed that Susan Van Sant had long before left the room, without helping to clean up any of the mess she’d made.

  Susan leaned heavily against the back wall of the lodge. She felt sick enough to throw up but prayed she wouldn’t. She told herself to calm down. She was being hysterical, she thought; she was making much of nothing. But still she felt ill, queasy with panic.

  If somebody saw her like this, what would she say?

  “I look like death warmed over because I just saw my whole career flash before my eyes?”

  No, she couldn’t say that.

  She couldn’t say she was frightened of the damage one stupid lime Wannabe could do to all of her secret ambitions, hoarded and nurtured for three years. She couldn’t say it, because then she’d give it all away too soon, even quicker than that stupid girl could do.

  Susan made herself take long, deep breaths, forcing the air past the knot of nausea. She made herself slow her breathing again … inhale … exhale …

  Dammit!

  She whirled around and slammed her open palms against the wooden planks of the building. If Gabby published that crazy gambler story, no reputable scientist would ever believe anything like it. She’d ruin everything, everything.

  Susan’s hands stung.

  She bent over and threw up into the closest bush, just as Bingo Chakmakjian walked out the back door.

  “Suze!”

  She felt the chef’s small hands on her bent back, patting her, trying to soothe her.

  Susan finally straightened up, avoiding Bingo’s concerned gaze.

  “What’s the matter, Suze? You got the flu? Couldn’t be food poisoning, not from my kitchen.”

  The archaeologist said the first truth that popped into her head.

  “I’m pregnant, Bingo.”

  “Ohmigod. Jon?”

  “Jon.”

  “Do I congratulate you?”

  “Don’t buy any strollers yet. He doesn’t know.”

  “You going to tell him?”

  “When he gets back from this trip with those kids. Don’t say—”

  “Anything to anybody. Of course not. But you’re sick—how are you going to manage …”

  “It usually passes. Literally.”

  “Tell ’em you’re hung over.”

  Susan nodded miserably.

  “I’ll get you a glass of water.”

  But when the chef returned, the archaeologist was already gone. Bingo stood for a moment listening to the strains of Alan Hovhaness’s Exile Symphony no. 2, played by the Seattle Symphony, Gerard Schwarz conducting. It sounded as if he were conducting it in her kitchen. Beauty is simple, Bingo thought, and if that’s the case, this situation is not beautiful. Because it wasn’t going to be simple. Jon Warren was married. Separated. They’d never seen the wife, he never talked about her, Bingo didn’t even know the woman’s name or where she lived. But Jon never claimed to be divorced. And now with a pregnant archaeologist girlfriend throwing up in the bushes.

  Bingo shook her head in disgust. You’d think a scientist would be more careful. You’d think a scientist would know better. You’d think a scientist would know how to control her experiments. You’d think!

  Teri Fox, who had left pancakes on her plate, sliced into them, saying, “I’ve waited long enough. I’m hungry again.” But when she lifted a bit toward her mouth, she exclaimed, “My God. They’re blue!”

  Lillian laughed at her reaction and hurried to explain that they were made from blue cornmeal. “One of Bingo’s favorite ingredients.”

  Teri made a face and joked, “My great-grandmother always said, never eat blue food.”

  “Your great-grandmother,” said Gabby archly, without appearing to think first, “was not a Native American.”

  “Boy, is that ever the truth!” was Teri’s ironic, good-humored reply. She was wearing a white baseball cap and a white T-shirt that made the rich walnut shade of her complexion look even darker than usual. “My ancestors were definitely imported, not native.”

  Gabby’s face reddened, and she tightened her lips. “The Native Americans,” she said angrily, “have suffered more than anybody, and they still suffer more.”

  The black schoolteacher looked astonished, as if she couldn’t believe that Gabby had pushed even further into her original faux pas. Anger crossed her face, too, but then she merely said, even rather gently, “Well, it’s not a contest, is it?”

  Gabby shrugged with an ill grace that made Genia want to grasp her firmly by the shoulders and pack her off to her room and leave her there until she found her manners again. There seemed to be two Gabbys—a sweet thoughtful one who made sure her roommate didn’t miss breakfast, and a rude fanatical one.

  The awkward moment passed quickly, because Teri kindly made it so, by steering the conversation along other lines. Gabby, however, remained stiff-jawed and silent as the other women went on getting to know one another. “Where are you from?” Genia asked. She learned the answer to that was Salt Lake City for Lillian, Tulsa for the teachers, Denver for Madeline, and Santa Fe for Gabriella, who didn’t answer for herself but allowed Lillian to answer for her. It turned out that Madeline was in real estate, Lillian was a retired government employee, and that Gabby truly was a freelance writer specializing in stories about Native Americans, mainly for “alternative” magazines.

  “Ah,” said Judith, as if that explained something.

  “Do you have children?” It was Lillian who bravely asked that question, and it was Madeline who said, “Not a one, thank God. How about you, Lil?”

  Genia felt herself holding her breath. It was clear that Lillian had not confided in her roommate last night. Madeline obviously didn’t know about the tragic death of Lillian’s daughter this past year. Genia sensed that Judith and Teri were also waiting tensely.

  “Two boys,” was the soft reply, and then after a slight hesitation, “and I have a daughter.”

  “Me, too,” said Judith, quickly, and went on to tell them all a funny—and distracting—tale about her youngest child. The delicate moment passed without causing any obvious problem among them. Genia thought that the two teacher friends were being very kind and gracious to everyone this morning. She was proud of them and felt glad they were her roommates. After that, the women talked and laughed about many things, until they realized how little time they had left to get ready to leave for their first hike. One by one they dumped their dirty dishes in the tubs labeled “paper,” “silver,” and “plates and cups,” and followed each other out the
door. Genia thought it amazing that she could already feel so fond of this disparate group of women, when they’d all known one another less than twenty-four hours. Even Madeline had her good points, namely a sharp sense of humor and a lively intelligence, and Gabby was, well …

  Sweet, Genia thought lamely, trying to come up with something nice to say about the difficult child. Yes, sweet. Sometimes.

  “You know,” Madeline remarked to all of them as they briefly gathered again on the veranda, “we tell each other we’re this, or that, or the other. But the truth is we could be anybody. We could be crooks or liars or thieves. Nobody knows us here. Even the ones who’ve been here before—you don’t really know each other, do you? So we could give any name, and we could say we had any occupation—doctor, lawyer, Indian chief—and who’s to know if we’re telling the truth?”

  There was a moment of nonplussed silence as the truth of what she was saying sunk in among them. But then Lillian grinned at her roommate. “If that were true of you, Madeline, why would you choose to tell us you’re a realtor?”

  Madeline laughed. “Lack of imagination, Lillian.” Then she grinned wickedly. “But I never said I was lying, only that any of us could, and that none of the rest of us would know.”

  Teri smiled. “I think we’re all pretty sure I’m not an Indian chief.”

  Madeline winked at her. “Yeah, Teri, good thing you didn’t try to get away with that one. But are you really a high school science teacher, as you claim to be?”

  “You’ll never know,” declared Teri, with mock haughtiness, as she stepped off the veranda onto the stairs. She accidentally tripped and had to grab hold of the railing, completely spoiling her dramatic moment but giving all of them a good laugh once they knew she wasn’t injured. All of them, that is, except for Gabriella, who frowned disapprovingly at them from the doorway.

  Thirteen

  After breakfast, Genia found herself walking up the path with her youngest roommate. Soon she was scurrying to keep up, because the girl’s long-legged stride was more like an angry stalking than a simple walk.

  Gabby’s silence finally ended halfway to their hogan.

  “She doesn’t understand! Her people wouldn’t even be here in this country, there wouldn’t have been slavery, if the Native Americans had killed all the Europeans. That’s what they should have done. They should have killed all of us. They should have wiped us out the first time they laid eyes on any of us.”

  Gabby broke into a run then, as if she could no longer restrain herself. Genia watched her race toward the shadows beneath the pine trees above the hogans.

  Feeling winded in more ways than one, Genia took the first bench she came to and sat down.

  She intended to sit there only long enough to catch her breath and to admire the view, east to Mesa Verde. But the bench had one other occupant, a teenage boy, who also seemed to be mesmerized by the horizon. He looked about fourteen, she thought, and there was an Asian cast to his handsome features. He wore baggy blue jeans, hiking boots, and a plaid flannel shirt that looked about five sizes too big for him. His black hair was cut to about a three-inch length, and all three inches stood up straight on top of his head. Not being entirely conversant with current teenage fashions, Genia couldn’t be sure if he’d styled it that way or if he’d just gotten out of bed.

  “May I share your bench?”

  “What?” he asked, with a perceptible drawl.

  He looked startled, as if he hadn’t even noticed that she’d sat down there. Genia was sorry she’d disturbed his reverie.

  “I was asking permission to share your bench.”

  “That’s okay.” She didn’t really expect him to say anything more, but he spoke right out, sounding frustrated. “We’re all supposed to do this imagination thing. It’s like an exercise. We’re supposed to pretend we’re ancient Indians and try to see everything through their eyes. Like, you see a bird, and instead of thinking, ‘Wow, bird,’ you think, ‘Wow, food.’ ”

  Genia inwardly smiled. It had always amazed her how her children, as teenagers, would just start talking right in the middle of one of their own inner dialogues, as if they assumed she always knew, at any time, what they were thinking. They had been so impatient, too, when she dared to inquire, “What is it we’re discussing?”

  The boy ran his hands through his hair, making it stand up even straighter. “Yeah, and it’s like, ‘Squirrel! Yum!’ And like, ‘Pond! Fish!’ You know? But I mean, so what? Like, what’s the point?”

  Somehow, she was able to translate the idiom.

  “You make it sound,” she said, smiling, “as if they were thinking about food all the time.”

  He mused on that for a moment, and then his face cleared and he burst out with a laugh at his own expense. “I guess that’s the point.” He whacked the side of his own head, to demonstrate his own obtuseness. “Duh. To experience how different their life was, even at the most basic levels. Yeah, I guess they’d have to be thinkin’ about food all the time, ’cause it’s not like they could cruise on down to the grocery store or order out a pizza, you know?”

  “That’s true.”

  “Although”—he grinned at her—“if they thought about food all the time, how’s that so different from me?”

  She laughed with pleasure at his perception. He had, she thought, the most wonderfully lively and intelligent face. She recalled her own Benjamin at that age, disguising his natural sweetness behind cynical jokes and a deadpan expression. This boy didn’t seem to hide many of his feelings. “Are you here with that Texas group?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am.” Suddenly he sat up straighter, as if he had just realized he was dealing with a grown-up. Genia rather regretted the change. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard a child address her as “ma’am,” unless it had been during a trip to his home state of Texas. It seemed that children there continued to be schooled in “yes, sir” and “yes, ma’am.”

  “We go to Longhorn Prep School in Dallas,” he told her formally. “There’s a whole bunch of us. We’re all honor students”—she detected a hint of swagger to the words—“and we earned almost all the money to come up here. We’re going to hike and camp out and explore … Hisatsenom … ruins for six days.”

  “That sounds wonderful.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  There was something new in his tone, a shading of doubt, that made her ask, “Isn’t it?”

  “I guess. I’m kind of scared,” he confided, glancing at her, then quickly away. His eyes were gracefully slanted, and the irises were nearly as dark as the pupils. She saw him look around, as if checking to make sure that none of his friends could hear his admission. “I have this feeling that something awful is going to happen.”

  Genia took her time before replying. “It’s normal to be scared, if you’ve never done anything like this.” She thought about what might be frightening him. He seemed such a sturdy, confident young fellow. “Have you ever camped out before?”

  “Oh, yeah, sure, lots.”

  A bit of bravado there, she thought.

  “What scares you, especially?”

  He shifted uneasily on their bench. “It sounds so stupid.” He rolled his eyes, as if to say he knew he was being really dumb. She didn’t think he was dumb at all. “The deal is, I’m kind of scared about sleeping out at night in the mountains. You know, they’ve got wild animals in Colorado.”

  At least one mountain lion, Genia thought, but didn’t say it. She found it easy to imagine how miserable a person could be, lying in a bedroll in the darkness, away from home, far from his parents, and hearing strange animal sounds in the night.

  “Well,” she said, “most wild animals are scared of us, especially when we’re in big noisy groups. Can you think of a noisier group than sixteen teenagers?”

  He laughed at that and looked a little more relaxed.

  Genia suddenly thought of something that used to work with her own children, even when they were nearly as o
ld as this boy. She put a forefinger up in the air, as if she had just then had a bright idea. “I know what will help.”

  “Really? What, you got some pepper spray or something?”

  “No, better than that.” She dug through the pockets of her utility jacket until she came up with an item that might work for the purpose she had in mind, and she held it up for him to see. Mentally she crossed her fingers and hoped she could be persuasive. “Now I know this looks like an ordinary key chain. Just a silver circle. But it is not. Believe me, it is not. It was given to me, for luck and safety, many, many years ago.” Her tone was extremely serious, as befit the importance of what she was saying. “And as you can plainly see, I’m still alive and kicking. I’m going to remove my keys”—she struggled to match the deed to the words—“and present this to you. Put it in your backpack, or keep it in your pocket. With this to protect you, you won’t have to be scared anymore.”

  He looked torn between skepticism and a wish to believe. “You really think that’s true?”

  She looked at him as if she could hardly believe her ears.

  “I have never,” she said emphatically, “had a single accident in any car I drove using this key ring. Never.”

  It passed from her hand to his.

  “You’re really giving this to me?”

  “I want you to have it. These sorts of things have to be passed on, when the time is right. What’s your name, by the way?”