Buffalo Bill's Dead Now (A Wind River Mystery)

by Margaret Coel

  Julia gave another shrug. “Trevor went back to his ranch in Colorado and called me every day. After about a month, I went out for a visit. Short version, I never went back to Kansas City. Except to sell my store and the lovely things I had accumulated.” A hint of sadness and regret ran through her words. “I became a dealer in Indian artifacts, Trevor’s right-hand woman. I was second best. Customers always demanded to talk to Trevor. They relied upon his word that the artifacts we were selling were authentic. He was an expert. Who did the Denver Art Museum and the Museum of Nature and Science call upon to authenticate items they were considering? Trevor Pratt.”

  “What about the illicit side to the trade?”

  “What about it?’

  “Why would Trevor know who stole the Arapaho artifacts?”

  The bell clanged and a stream of warm air flowed into the store. Julia jumped to her feet. “Excuse me,” she said, sweeping past Vicky toward the woman and small girl standing hand in hand inside the door. “Welcome,” she said in a tone exuding confidence and good cheer. “Anything in particular you’re looking for? I have a large variety of Victoriana,” she said, waving her hand like a flag over the contents of the store.

  “We’re interested in the yellow house in the window,” the woman said. The little girl clutched a cloth doll to her chest and looked up at Julia with big, hopeful eyes. “How much do you want for it?”

  “Oh, the Henders house,” Julia said. “Lovely, isn’t it? Hand built in 1892. It’s a miniature replica of a house in Ann Arbor, Michigan, which no longer stands, I’m afraid. Would you like to see the inside?” She took hold of the top of a painted divider screen and shifted it away from the window.

  “Don’t go to any trouble,” the woman said. “I just wanted the price.”

  “I’m afraid the house is rather expensive, given its provenance. I purchased it directly from the great-granddaughter of Cecil Henders who built it. It’s worth at least $1,500, but I could let you have it for $1,350.”

  “My goodness.” The woman took a gulp of air and turned to the little girl. “I told you, Amy, that it was probably more than we could afford. I’m afraid we’ll have to keep looking.”

  “I really like that house,” Amy said. She craned her neck to look around the screen as her mother pulled her toward the door.

  “Thanks so much for your time,” the woman called out as the door shut. The bell jingled a moment before the sound was swallowed into the quiet.

  “A thousand? That’s my best price,” Julia said, under her breath. She moved back to the red velvet chair and plopped down. “I’ve got to take it out of the window. Draws too many looky-loos who don’t appreciate the value of antiques. I need serious connoisseurs wandering around the shop, touching the patina on the cabinets and the velvet on the cushions, and discovering the yellow house. Quelque surprise! Someone who says: ‘I’ll give you two thousand on the spot. Deal?’ What were we talking about? Oh, yes. Thieves that Trevor might have known. Obviously you didn’t know Trevor long enough to learn how to read between the lines. Thieves? That depends upon whether you’re referring to the new Trevor or the old.”

  “I’m not following,” Vicky said.

  “Don’t feel bad,” Julia said. “I was married to the man for almost two years before he told me the truth. His real name was Thomas Plink. The day he walked into my shop marked his first anniversary as a free man after a year in jail for illegally trafficking in Indian artifacts. He assured me he had turned over a new leaf, become a new man. He was building a new business under a different name, of course. No one would trust a convicted thief. You should see the resume he invented for himself: Trevor Pratt, Ph.D. in cultural studies of indigenous Americans, or some such fancy degree. From Athabasca University in Canada, because he figured nobody would bother to check with a Canadian university. Ten years as curator of First Persons artifacts at a museum in Alberta. Nobody questioned the resume because Trevor could deliver the goods. He knew what he was talking about. He was the best.”

  Vicky felt as if the air had been sucked out of the store. The world seemed like an untrue place, a funhouse with sofas, chairs, and furnishings from another time rising around her, taking on lives of their own, mocking her. Another Trevor Pratt? Different from the man who sat in her office and told her he needed legal help to make certain all the shipping documents and insurance forms were in order for a half-million-dollar purchase of Arapaho artifacts?

  It was a moment before she could say anything. “Where did he get his expertise?”

  “‘School of hard knocks,’ he used to say. Little Tom Plink, growing up in East Texas, Comanche country, kicking up arrowheads and stone tools with the toes of his boots, selling them to folks passing by on their way to somewhere better. He learned how to study each artifact for its special markings. Nobody could tell you more about a stone club than Trevor. He was still in high school when he graduated into digging up Indian graves and became an expert on beaded clothing, headdresses, Indian harnesses and saddles, all the valuable things Indians like to be buried with. He had quite a business in the illicit artifacts trade when the feds caught up with him.”

  “How about insurance scams?” Vicky could hear the tightness in her voice.

  “Once, but the feds never caught on. Made a couple thousand dollars on artifacts he had purchased legally and shipped to a buyer. The artifacts never arrived. He didn’t like doing it. Too risky, he said. Too many people involved. Too many chances for a leak. Anyway, the new Trevor had left all of that behind.” Julia clasped her hands in her lap. They disappeared into the folds of her skirt. “The business was strictly legitimate. He said he had to redeem himself.”

  “By donating artifacts back to tribes?”

  “Exactly,” Julia said. “One of the big issues we argued about. He blew a couple of our best deals by returning Apache and Hopi artifacts. Gave them away. The tribes got enough old stuff, I told him. They’ll just sell what you give them. He wouldn’t listen. He’d trafficked in enough stolen Indian artifacts that it kept him awake at night. He said he needed his sleep.”

  “Is that why you left?”

  “That and lots of other reasons. Let’s just say, Indian artifacts and Victoriana don’t mix. Our divorce was amicable. We remained friends. Still are.” She hesitated and blinked hard. “We were. Trevor gave me a fair settlement. I found this little shop for sale, so I moved to Dubois and started over. Two years ago, Trevor decided to buy the ranch outside Lander. Colorado was getting too crowded, he said.”

  “What about the people he used to work with?”

  “You mean the crooks?” Julia gave a snort of laughter. “Whoever they were, they didn’t come around. Except…” Her eyes slid sideways in thought. “One time two creeps showed up at the ranch. Trevor had gone to La Junta ten miles away. I was alone. They pounded on the door. The minute I opened it, I knew they were trouble. You don’t grow up in a city like St. Louis without developing survival instincts, and my instincts went on red alert. I told them Trevor was on his way home, which wasn’t true. I didn’t expect him until evening. They said they’d wait, and I said I wouldn’t advise it. Trevor didn’t like men hanging around the ranch. I guess they knew Trevor well enough to believe me ’cause they got in a beat-up old pickup and drove off. I got out the shotgun and sat on the porch, waiting for them to come back. When Trevor got home, he told me not to worry. They wouldn’t be back.”

  “Did he say who they were?”

  “Hol Chambers and Raphael Luna. Artifacts thieves.” Julia glanced away. “I remember, because I kept looking for their names in the newspaper, thinking sooner or later they were probably gonna murder somebody. Trevor said, forget them. They weren’t important. They were from that other time.”

  ANOTHER TIME. ANOTHER man. What else had Trevor Pratt neglected to mention? Vicky kept her foot on the brake along Ramshorn Street, trying to stay a comfortable distance behind the car ahead. The red sedan behind her seemed to be crawling up her trunk. The win
dows were down. She preferred the smells of the prairie and sage and empty spaces to air conditioning, but exhaust fumes mingled with the air blowing through the Jeep. She tried to focus on Trevor Pratt. The man had hired her to shepherd the artifacts safely from Berlin to Riverton. He wasn’t required to lay out his background. Oh, by the way, I was a thief in another life. The fact he’d been involved in an insurance scam in the past would have raised a lot of red flags, had he told her. She laughed out loud. Why would he have told her? According to his ex-wife, he had never been charged. As a matter of fact, there was no proof it had ever happened.

  The line of traffic ahead finally reached the main intersection and Vicky crawled through the turn south. In a few minutes, she was at the edge of town, still following SUVs, campers, and pickups. She dragged her cell out of her bag and called Gianelli. “You have reached the Lander office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Please leave your name and telephone number.” She waited for the beep then told the fed she had just spoken with Julia Hyde, Trevor Pratt’s ex-wife. Then she gave him the names of Trevor’s past associates. “Dealers in stolen artifacts,” she said. “It’s possible they’re the men Father John and I saw racing away from Trevor’s ranch.”

  Traffic started to speed up. She ended the call, pressed down on the gas pedal, and went back to trying to figure out Trevor Pratt. She tapped the steering wheel. You never knew about people. Trevor Pratt, expert on Indian artifacts, collector, dealer, rancher. Thief. A chameleon, changing colors. He had left that other life behind, his ex-wife said, but it had still been there, hadn’t it? Still a part of him, like a bag of tricks he hauled around, ready to pull out when the chance to move artifacts on the black market and still collect a million dollars insurance money presented itself?

  Too risky. Too many people involved. The words looped through Vicky’s mind. Who had he turned to? A couple of scary white guys who knew how to play the game? Okay, one might be Hispanic. Raphael Luna. She struggled to follow the line of thought to its logical conclusions: something had gone wrong. Trevor could have sold the artifacts right away and held out on his accomplices. The other men had found out. Or the deal Trevor thought he had with a buyer could have fallen through, but the two men still wanted their share. Either way they had gone to Trevor’s ranch and shot him.

  The highway opened up ahead, and Vicky gripped the wheel and stared at the asphalt rolling toward her. Supposition, conclusions based on fantasy. Nothing admissible, nothing that could be proven or upheld in a courtroom. She had to stick with the facts. Trevor Pratt was dead and two men had been at his ranch. She had seen them driving away. But the facts led to other possibilities. The men could still be in the area. If so, the artifacts could also be here.

  18

  SCREAMS ROLLED through the museum like cannonballs. High, piercing, and uncontrolled. Father John hurried past the bishop toward the sounds. Officers in the gray uniforms of the Wind River police materialized in the corridor between the back office and the exhibition hall. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw other officers milling about the display cases in the hall. Elena stood outside the door to the office, ringing her hands in a white apron. Inside, Gianelli and two plainclothes officers surrounded the girl sprawled on the chair next to Eldon’s desk, half-sitting, half-lying. Intermittent sobs punctuated another sharp burst of screams. For an instant, he wondered if the girl really was Sandra Dorris, the competent, pretty assistant Eldon had hired last spring. She seemed like someone else, black hair hanging in strips about her face, as if she had been pulling on it, a crazed look in the tilt of her head and the way her eyes bounced over the ceiling.

  The fed and the officers stepped aside as Father John sat on his haunches beside her. “Sandra, listen to me,” he said, keeping his voice low and calm. He waited a moment, hoping she would drop her head and try to focus. “Sandra!” he said again. He took both her hands into his. Her fingers and palms were limp and cold, like those of a corpse, and he started massaging them to restore some warmth. “It’s Father John,” he said. “You don’t have to be afraid.”

  “An ambulance is on the way, and we’ve notified her mother.” Gianelli’s voice floated past Father John’s shoulder. “Whatever happened here has traumatized her.”

  “Look at me, Sandra,” Father John said, his voice still low. It took a moment for the girl to lower her head. She scrunched her brow in an obvious attempt to focus. The screams gave way to quiet exhalations of grief. “Are you hurt?” He could see the effort in the way she shook her head.

  “Somebody get her a glass of water.” He kept his eyes on the girl. There was a scrambling noise behind him, followed by the scuff of footsteps in the hallway. “Tell me what happened.” he said. “Take your time.” The traumatized needed time, he was thinking. Words that fit the reality were hard to find. He had dealt with traumatized people before: the dazed woman sitting on the side of a road last winter, hugging her knees, watching ambulance attendants remove the lifeless body of her husband from a wrecked pickup; the man seated in his office, sobbing and reliving the sight of his son’s body in the creek bed, half of his head blown away; the teenagers frozen to the cushions of a worn sofa, eyes glazed, as he told them their father had been killed out on the highway. Too many sad, inexplicable events that had broken into ordinary days.

  “He’s gone!” The girl let out a long wail. “They’re gonna kill him.”

  “Eldon? What did you see?”

  “You have to find him while he’s still alive.”

  “Were you here when they took him?”

  She shook her head so violently, it was like a shudder. After a moment, she pulled herself up straight and squared her shoulders. “I came back after classes to see if there was anything Eldon wanted me to do. He’s been working hard on the internet to find the artifacts.”

  “Let’s start at the beginning,” Gianelli said. Father John realized the fed had slid over a chair and was seated beside him. “You said you returned to the mission. You were here earlier?”

  An officer appeared and held out a glass of water. The girl yanked her hands free, took the glass, and lifted it to her lips. A little tremor seemed to run through her. Finally she said, “Came in at nine like I always do.”

  “Anything unusual happen?” Gianelli said. “Anyone drop in?”

  Father John moved onto the chair someone had pushed toward him. The interview had passed to the fed, he realized, which was just as well. The girl gripped the glass with both hands, a lifeline someone had thrown her.

  “It’s been real quiet,” she said. “Ever since the artifacts got stolen, there haven’t been a lot of visitors. I guess people were waiting to see all the Arapaho stuff from the Wild West. Now all we got from the Wild West is Sioux and Pawnee stuff. I guess people on the rez don’t care as much.”

  “No visitors this morning?” Gianelli said. “No one stopped in?”

  “A white couple wandered around for a while. Said they came over from Nebraska. I think they were in a hurry to get to the casino. Lots of visitors go to the casino.” She dropped her eyes and seemed to ponder that fact a moment. The casino out on the highway drew people from neighboring states, and Father John knew Eldon had hoped, with the exhibit of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, to make the museum a destination stop of its own. The Arapaho artifacts would have been the big draw.

  “A couple of teachers brought in a third-grade class.” She gestured with her head in the direction of the elementary school beyond the mission.

  Gianelli jotted something in the small pad in his hand. “Nobody suspicious? No one who made you uncomfortable?”

  The girl shook her head again and bit at her lower lip. “Just me and Eldon,” she said. “I brought some sandwiches and soda. About noon, he locked the front door and we went out back and ate lunch on the bench.”

  “Did he seem worried or distracted?”

  “He’s been real worried about the artifacts. Yeah, I’d say he’s been distracted. We had this great exhibition planne
d…” She seemed to swallow another sob. “All that work for nothing. He’s sure the artifacts are gonna show up for sale on the internet. It’s like he was obsessed.”

  “When did you leave?”

  “I had a one o’clock class, so I must’ve left about twenty minutes to one.”

  “And you got back when?”

  “Three thirty, I guess.” Sandra flattened her palms against her face. “It was terrible.” She sounded as if she were underwater. Throwing her hands free, she rose a little way out of the chair before dropping back down. “You gotta find him!”

  “Tell me what you saw when you got here.” Gianelli was gentle with the girl, Father John thought, but persistent.

  “Front door was locked,” she said. “I thought Eldon must’ve left early. I never dreamed…” She started to cry softly; her shoulders shook. Moisture pooled at the corners of her eyes. “I used my key to get in, and I knew right away that something was wrong. I could feel it. I called for Eldon, but he didn’t answer. I looked in the exhibition hall. Everything looked okay, but I knew. Then I saw that the outside door in the back hall was opened, and we never keep it opened. I saw Eldon lock it after we ate lunch. I saw drops of blood down the hall to the door. They hurt him! He was bleeding!”

  The girl managed to get to her feet and grab the rim of the chair to steady herself. “You’ve got to find him!” she wailed, her voice edged with hysteria.

  Father John stood up, set a hand on the girl’s shoulder and guided her back into the chair. “They’re going to do everything possible to find Eldon,” he said. “Let’s not lose hope.”

  There was the dull thud of the front door slamming shut, followed by voices and shuffling noises in the corridor. A large, blond woman in a white shirt and blue slacks rounded the corner into the office. Behind her was a ropey, thin man who might have been a bronco rider, except for the wire-framed glasses perched on his nose. He wore a similar uniform and carried a flat, black bag that resembled an overstuffed briefcase. “This the patient?” the man said.