by Sue Hardesty
His worried voice reached her. "Far as I can figure, the fuel tank selector valve didn't work."
"And?" Loni gave him her full attention.
"Didn't switch to the second tank."
"So he ran out of gas?"
"Yep."
"That's what Rosie said," Loni mused as she walked up and leaned into the plane with Daniel. "But his second tank was full, remember? Do you know why the valve failed?" She looked to see what Daniel had in his hand.
"Here." Daniel showed her one end of the valve. Hardened epoxy clogged the opening.
"Oh my god!" Loni took the valve and stared at it. "This is murder."
"Be my guess."
Stunned, she inspected the engine where the open ends of the bent and battered gas lines dangled. "This must be what the thief was after. He was banging on the gas lines, trying to break the valve off."
"Pretty stupid, though, if you ask me." Daniel pointed to the epoxy. "Left a thumb print when he put it in."
Loni smiled broadly. "Or he was in a hurry." Suddenly she focused on a dark streak above the dangling lines. "Daniel, did you cut yourself on this engine?"
"No. See?" He showed her his knuckles.
Loni was staring at the blood when Daniel's voice finally got through to her.
"What's wrong with your dog?"
Dazed, Loni walked to the tail of the plane where Coco was frantically scratching at a small door. She rubbed the dog's head to quiet her. "What's in here?"
Daniel answered, "Storage. Sometimes luggage."
She pulled the door open. Inside was a dark blue gym bag. Coco twisted in circles, going ballistic.
"She smells drugs. From her reaction, my guess is cocaine."
"Wow. I've never seen a dog do that before."
"Anybody else fly this plane?"
"Not that I know of." He was watching Coco. "How long did it take you to teach her?"
"I didn't. She belonged to my partner."
"That the one that got killed?"
Loni dodged the question. "Can you find out where he went this trip?"
"I think so," he answered, walking into the office. "I'll call his home port." He dialed the phone number for the tower at Caliente Airport. "He made a flight plan to San Diego. Return time scheduled this morning."
Coco was whining and whipping around in circles. "Coco, sit," Loni ordered the dog. "Enough." She turned to her cousin again. "Well hell, Daniel, do me a favor and don't let anyone near this plane." She stared at the valve in her hand. "I need to take this." Placing it in an evidence bag, she rubbed the dark spot on the engine with a Q-Tip.
"Be a bad day when you report it," Daniel said anxiously. "This doesn't happen here." He stood, looking away from her.
Loni waited.
"James isn't going to like this."
"What's he got to do with it?"
"Nothing I can say for sure." Head down, Daniel refused to meet Loni’s eyes.
"What do you know?"
"Not really anything. Just something he said."
"Maybe he's upset because I'm back."
Daniel gave her a studied look. "You do know not everything's all about you, right?" He had always said that, and she knew he never meant it. "Anyway, it started before you came home. Something's bothering him." He walked away. "Watch your back." After a few more steps he turned back. "And take care of James. You hear me?" He turned away again.
"Cousin!" Loni called to his retreating back. "Don't mention the valve to anyone."
Daniel kept walking. Flipping a back wave, he drove away in his truck.
Opening the gym bag, she stared down at the bundles of money left in the plane. Last night's thief couldn't have been after it. The murderer must have been trying to get the valve and shot at her when she interrupted. Did the valve and money have anything to do with each other? She quickly shoved the money and valve with the copies of Rene's notebook and phone numbers into Uncle Herm's safe.
Loni dug the bullet from last night out of the wall, vacuumed, and picked up fibers, hair, and residue from the plane to send to the state lab. Paul was probably right, Loni decided, DNA be damned. The plane did pretty much fall out of the sky. Sealing off the plane as much as she could, she got ready to drive to her grandparents' ranch. As much as she wished she could crawl into bed, she couldn't miss seeing them a second day.
* * *
Loni stopped at an old barbed wire gate. Wired between tall weather beaten posts, badly bleached and rotted, a rust-streaked sign had faded letters "Wagner Ranch" that were barely readable. Getting out, she opened the gate and drove through, making sure to close the gate behind her. Driving on, she cursed the billions of times she opened and closed that damned gate, swearing that she would put in a cattle guard. Winding around a hill, she saw the ranch house tucked up inside a crescent shaped volcanic black hill that shaded it from the hot afternoon sun. No matter where she was, this was the only place she felt safe, but it didn't mean she wanted to live here anymore.
As she got to the main gate of the ranch, buildings revealed faded and broken boards with missing screens on the dirty windows. Nothing matched in the collection of buildings scattering the landscape. There was even a sandwich house Bahb said was built in the early 1900s. She remembered wishing it had been a hogan, but her granddad grew up mostly in the O'odham Nation.
She drove the last quarter of a mile through pasture land, a homestead that had belonged to her great grandfather on her father's side. Old salt cedars and eucalyptus trees grew larger as she neared the circular drive in front of the main house. The reddish tan adobe house had been built Spanish ranchero style with a walled court around the front and kitchen side of the house. On the other side, a screened-in porch filled with bunk beds ran its length. She had slept many nights out there in the heat of the summer. More salt cedars sheltered the porch in a fluffy line of dark green needles, providing dense shade against the relentless sun. A small oasis in the desert, big salt cedars surrounded the house.
Two small boys playing dump truck with cardboard nail boxes in the silky soft dirt below a salt cedar tree jumped up to pet Coco. Her long tongue gave each one a lick before she ran to the screen door. Pima, Loni decided. Their teeth were lightly layered with brown from the high fluoride content in the lower Gila River Valley.
A cool blast of air from the water cooler vent in the ceiling hit Loni as she opened the screeching screen door and walked into the cool, dark interior of the living room, the largest room in the house. A huge fireplace filled one wall, and a collection of Indian rugs between two doors leading to bedrooms were on another. The picture window beside the entrance opened onto a desert scene that stretched into the horizon, and on the fourth wall a double wide archway led into the dining room.
Bahb sat in his recliner under the cooler vent reading 'The Cattleman' magazine. The thin brass lamp with swirling, brightly colored stained glass feathers wrapped around the shade highlighted his face. "When did you learn to read, Bahb," Loni teased him.
"Learn teaching you." Bahb looked up, his mouth quirking toward a smile.
"Where's Shiichoo?"
"Kitchen." He went back to his magazine.
When she pushed open the swinging door into the kitchen, the heat nearly knocked her over. "Holy s —" Loni gulped the rest of the word at her grandmother's disapproving scowl. "Shut down the stove before we die in here."
A huge black cooking wood stove sat out from a plastered wall worn through in spots to the adobe bricks. Wooden countertops, grayed from years of cleaning, ran under the open dirty-gray cabinets the same color as the walls behind them. Shiichoo stood, Apache ramrod straight, in front of the corner sink, silhouetted in the double windows behind her. Hanging from the ceiling was a huge wagon wheel light fixture with dim lights that flickered like candles. The peeling, faded red and white checked linoleum covering the floor showed black patches where it had lost its pattern in the path from the sink to the stove and to the back door.
Sweat poured
down her grandma's face, crowned by the snow-white braid that circled her head, and darkened the pale blue of her blouse. Gaunt and rope thin, her face reflected a thousand lives. She fanned herself with the hem of her faded, rainbow-striped apron. Loni had made it for her during home economics her sophomore year.
"Funny," Shiichoo retorted. "Bring in some wood."
"I thought we agreed you would cook outside."
"Maybe I agreed in your imagination. Just as hot out there as it is in here."
"Then don't cook."
"Don't smart mouth me." Shiichoo glared at her. "I can still whip you."
Loni laughed. She stared down at her grandma before picking her up and carrying her into the living room, depositing her in her easy chair next to Bahb. "That heat will make you sicker. Dinezaa! Dinezaa! It's too hot!" She looked at her granddad. "Can't you keep her out of the kitchen?"
"I'll watch first. See how you do it." Bahb ducked his head to hide his smile.
"So what if it's hot?" Her grandma struggled to get out of the chair. "Get used to it, child."
Loni gently held her down. "I won't have to after your electric stove gets here."
"What electric stove?"
"The one that's coming Thursday with a new refrigerator and dishwasher. I wanted them sooner, but I keep forgetting that this town doesn't have daily deliveries." Loni kept babbling, "The electrician's coming next Tuesday. He had to go to Four Corners this week to get his mother."
"Humph," Shiichoo said. "Don't know why anyone would want that mother-in-law there while she's having a baby. She has to take care of her too."
Loni laughed. Shiichoo knew everything that happened to her neighbors.
Bahb stared into space. "Don't remember any mother-in-law. I think you drink from the Hassyampa."
"What does that mean?" Loni asked.
"Come from O'odham maybe. Mean 'Drink it water and tell lie always.'"
Shiichoo ignored Bahb and kept staring at her as Willie walked in and sat on the couch across from Bahb. As tall as Loni, he appeared much smaller as he sank into the broken springs. She was surprised the couch hadn't fallen apart. From the patches of cloth on the once yellow couch, it wouldn't be long now. But then, she said that twenty years ago.
Facing Shiichoo again, Loni sputtered, "Well, we've had electricity for... What? A hundred years now? You don't have to live like the Jessups."
"I never!" Shiichoo sputtered back. "I don't have dirt floors."
Solemnly Bahb said, "I miss eggshells behind stove."
"I never!" Shiichoo glared at him.
"One thing," Willie said. "Shiichoo don't hide behind house when anyone come. I saw Mz Jessup do that."
"Isn't she the one that found a couple of rustlers branding her cows?" Loni vaguely remembered hearing something about it.
"Yi," Bahb answered. "Jessups never brand cows. Like us. She knew ever' one. She held rifle on them and said 'Take that runnin' iron and change that to my bran'.' When done, she took cows home."
Willie laughed. "She tell them they did good job."
Snorting, Shiichoo finally said. "Glass top?"
Loni relaxed. "Yes, ma'am." She waited a few beats. "And I ordered refrigeration, too. Oh. And a new hot water heater."
All three of them stared at her.
"That all?" Shiichoo finally asked.
"No. I ordered windows too."
"That all?"
"For now." Loni kept her head ducked.
"Who's paying for all this?"
"I am."
"You rob a bank?"
"Nope. Service station at Salome," Loni shot back. "That's what Sissy Newmire did, right? Got a nice farm out of it, too."
"It was a service station in Phoenix, and she married the farm," Shiichoo snapped back at her.
"Well," Loni retorted. "Never did like her husband, anyway." She fled the room through the kitchen door. Then she poked her head back in. "I had some money saved." And she fled once again.
Through the flapping door she heard, "Tell me you did not buy a set of encyclopedias!"
She stuck her head back in one last time. "Don't forget we're painting the kitchen tomorrow. Don't light that stove."
"I'll think about it."
Loni drove away with a big smile on her face. She finished cooking her grandma's meal and left it on the table before she disappeared out the back door with a handful of tamales from the refrigerator. She let Shiichoo have the last word.
FROM: Loni Wagner
TO: [email protected]
DATE: July 2
SUBJECT: Still not looking
I'm just home from visiting my grandparents. You asked me what kind of names Bahb and Shiichoo are. Bahb is Papago for grandfather on my mother's side. Well. He's also got some Navajo from his dad's side and mixes both cultures in strange ways. I would call him Bahb anyway because his Papago part speaks both Spanish and the O'odham language. He knows the Athabaskan language because Navajos and Apaches both spoke it, but I could never learn Athabaskan beyond a few words he taught me.
Everybody calls him Bob. That's fine with him because the Navajo part of him doesn't like anyone knowing his real name. According to Bahb, the less someone says your real name, the less they can harm you. He could be right, but it makes for a short list of friends.
Shiichoo is grandmother in Apache. Shiichoo doesn't remember much of her Apache life. She was taken to the Indian boarding school when she was only five, but she had a few fond memories of her own Shiichoo, so she wanted me to call her that. Some sort of spiritual connection to her past.
It was good seeing them today, even though I pissed off Shiichoo. I told her about ordering the electric stove yesterday. And the refrigeration, hot water tank, and dishwasher. And the windows.
Wait until she hears about the rest, especially the bug man to spray the scorpions. Every time I see one I start shaking inside. God, do they hurt! It wouldn't be so bad if they didn't crawl everywhere, up bed legs, across the ceiling, into shoes. At least they can't crawl up the glass quart jars my bed sits in. As long as the bedding stays tucked... off the floor... I'm scaring myself again so I'll say goodnight.
Oh, before I forget. I talked with a really nice woman today at work. She's my day dispatcher. She's Mexican with Irish somewhere. Incredible green eyes and amazing dark red hair. She's sort of pretty in a sizzling, over dressed way — but not cheap. I'm betting that she dresses that way to get what she wants from the redneck assholes around here. And I'm sure it works. Oh, and I didn't mention the "come fuck me" shoes. Don't start pushing me. Still not looking and certainly not for a straight woman.
Love to you et al.
Loni
Loni checked around her bed for scorpions as she tucked her bedding in a little further and slid in between the cool sheets. Six whole hours before she had to go back to work. She hoped the motorcycle didn't come back tonight.
CHAPTER 3
July 3, 12:30 a.m.
RUMDUM BRAIN DEAD, Loni dragged herself into the station to turn in the evidence she'd stored in Uncle Herm's big office safe. As always, she had tossed and turned all afternoon in the warm sticky air, dreaming about Maria's death. The best part of Loni, the part that lived in the world, had been ripped out of her when she held Maria that last time. She watched it run down the gutter with Maria's blood as freezing cold settled in her chest that night and never left.
Cringing at the clomp of her leather soled boots echoing in her ears as she walked around the counter, Loni reminded herself for the hundredth time to replace the leather with rubber. She dropped a box on the counter in front of the rotund booking clerk who worked the shift before Bobby and stared at him. He ignored her. She had seen him before as she waited to start her shift. His name tag read "Harris."
Annoyed, she opened the door behind him marked "Property." She dropped in a chair facing rows of shelves holding folder sized boxes just inside the door and waited for him. Coco followed her in. "Down, Coco," Loni ordered as she leaned her head
back against the wall and closed her eyes against the glare of the bank of hanging lights.
Five minutes later, Harris stuck his head in the door. "Need this inventoried?"
"Yep."
"Now?"