The Tooth of Time

by Sue Henry

  “We don’t allow—” she began.

  “Sorry,” I told her. “Won’t happen again.”

  I considered stopping in at Weaving Southwest to tell Pat I wouldn’t be able to make it there for my lesson the next day, but something kept me from it—a feeling that I would be wise not to tell anyone else that I was leaving. Butch came to mind, but I decided I would call him later from somewhere down the road.

  Stopping long enough at Bravo to pick up a sandwich, I went home and ate it for a late lunch, after which, having had little real sleep the night before and knowing I would be getting up very early to head for Cimarron, Stretch and I both took a two-hour nap.

  As usual, I got out my maps and took a look at the route I planned to take the next day: to Cimarron, then north to Raton, and on into Colorado; I could make it to Colorado Springs in one day by driving late. But then my stubbornness kicked in again and I decided to spend the day in and around Cimarron and go on into Colorado on Tuesday. There was a lot of early western history in that area that interested me and I refused to miss it out of fear. Leaving was enough surrender to these jerks and con men. They could not have the rest of my life, which I intended to reclaim as soon as the lights of Taos had disappeared in my rearview mirror.

  I have to admit that I felt a bit guilty about leaving, but I knew it was caused by stubborn ego and curiosity as much as anything. Herrera liked me, but it would probably be a relief to have me gone and not have to sidetrack one of his officers to stand senior citizen guard. Reminding myself that unreasonable obduracy can be a bad habit and that sometimes the better part of valor is to run like hell, I made myself stop thinking about it.

  Going to bed early, I left a couple of lights on in the front part of the Winnebago and took Stretch with me into the bedroom. This time he went willingly to sleep in his basket by the bed and I was glad that he was feeling safe again. By ten o’clock we were both asleep and I didn’t wake until the alarm I had set went off at half past three.

  Knowing it would start to grow light about an hour later and the sun would rise around five o’clock, I dressed and went outside. Officer Tolliver helped me disconnect the hookups and stow the lines in their proper storage spaces under the Winnebago.

  “I’ve called for the car so we can follow you into the canyon, Ms. McNabb,” he told me. “It’ll be here in a couple of minutes.”

  It was. I thanked him, got the motor running, and pulled out of the RV park, taking a right. Turning two more corners, I was on Pueblo del Canyon East, headed into Taos Canyon on my way to Cimarron, with a police escort close behind.

  As the driver had explained, he and Tolliver would follow me for about ten miles, then pull over and watch to see that no one—especially a black pickup—was trailing along behind me. Beyond that we would continue on our own.

  It worked exactly that way. He flashed his lights as they pulled onto a side road when we had gone almost ten miles, I tapped my brakes to let him know I had seen, and they disappeared behind me as I rounded a corner on the winding road. Though I often glanced at the rearview mirror for the next few miles, the road remained empty behind me. By the time I arrived in Cimarron the sun was up and I was feeling hopeful and quite confident that I had left the threats behind me.

  But you just never know, do you?

  TWENTY-FOUR

  STRETCH AND I HAD A PLEASANT, IF WATCHFUL, DAY in and around Cimarron, which is a small, quietly historic town of around nine hundred souls in an area of about two square miles. The population, I learned, is almost 60 percent Hispanic, a significantly higher proportion than that of the rest of New Mexico. Looking out across the rolling hills that surround the town, I could imagine the prairie schooners of pioneer families and heavy freight wagons that came through in groups for protection from Indians during the great migration across the plains. So many passed along the Santa Fe Trail that their wagon tracks can still be seen.

  I parked on the main street, which runs parallel to the highway, in front of a restaurant where I had breakfast, leaving Stretch in the motor home for the first time since I got him back. But always cautious, I took a seat at a table next to the window where I could keep a watchful eye on the Winnebago and the highway beyond it. It would be a while until I left behind the uneasiness that remained in my mind, though it seemed I had succeeded in leaving our threat behind in Taos.

  When you consider, it is interesting how most of us spend our everyday lives without fear. There are hundreds of terrible things that could happen to us, or to those we care about, but we go along, innocently confident that everything will go well, or at least mostly according to plan, with the exception of minor irritating interruptions. But those are about all we are prepared for—not real disaster. So we are often ill-equipped to deal with it when it unexpectedly comes our way, as it had mine. And it takes a long time to resume the usual patterns of life without an apprehension lurking in the shadows of the mind that, in anticipation, keeps us alert to what might come, or come again.

  Stretch and I were both feeling that sort of slowly fading low-grade anxiety. Still, though I remained vigilant—I am not thick enough to ignore it entirely—I was determined to enjoy Cimarron and whatever I found interesting without fleeing desperately north into Colorado.

  After breakfast and visits to a couple of shops along the street, I took a side road south of town and drove till I found the St. James Hotel, with its haunted reputation. There I spent the night without a hint of spectral presence.

  The next morning I had a leisurely breakfast and took us out of Cimarron, headed for the Colorado border. Not far across it, on what I thought was a whim, instead of going on to Colorado Springs, I turned left in Walsenburg and drove west, winding up at the Great Sand Dunes National Monument, a place I had longed to see. Entering the monument at close to noon, I parked the Winnebago at the visitor center, went in to get some information, and found Kris Illenberger, a friendly, helpful young man with a great smile, who directed me to several brochures, a video, and a book on the dunes, all of which I bought and took with me as I drove on to the campground that lay farther along the road.

  As usual, before going out to sightsee, I took a look at the material I had gathered, so I would have some intelligent idea of what was around me on the walk I planned to take with Stretch. Remembering that I had picked up a book on Colorado at the Moby Dickens bookstore in Taos, I went to get it from the shelf where I keep my small collection of reading material, reminding myself that I had promised myself to send some of the books home to Alaska soon. As I carried it back to the dinette table, I remember half consciously thinking that the colorful dust jacket felt a little loose on the book, but I didn’t examine it until I was sitting down again. Opening the cover, I was at first puzzled to find that the volume was not printed, but handwritten—not what I expected at all.

  Closing the book and flipping the dust jacket off, I sat staring at the cover that was revealed. To my utter astonishment, there in front of me was the blue journal I had seen on Shirley’s desk in the duplex—the one that I had virtuously resisted reading.

  A book disguised as a book! She had used a classic means of hiding a thing in plain sight that had fooled me as well as those who had searched my motor home so thoroughly. No wonder they had been willing to accept the wrapped package I tossed at them from the Dumpster, for I had come closer than I knew in disguising one book for another. This journal was what they had really wanted, and there had to be a reason that they wanted it so badly. The only thing that made sense of their determination to recover it was that Shirley had written something incriminating in it—or at least they thought or were afraid she had.

  This time I was not hesitant in reading her journal and there in the last few entries, along with her hurt and anger at Tony Cole’s disappearance with the money she had loaned him, she poured out information, fears, suspicions, and names that shocked and startled me. Alan Medina’s name was among them. One other was familiar and unexpected. They took me on a new a
nd different track that I, and Herrera, had never considered.

  My first impulse was to call him immediately, for he needed to know the things I had learned. Retrieving my cell phone, I tried. What stopped me was that from where I was located, in a valley between mountain ranges, I could not get a signal.

  The eastern half of the United States is mostly covered in terms of cell phone service. Once you reach the mountains of the West, however, except for population centers and along main highways, service can be nonexistent, or spotty at best. In the hills that roll east of the Continental Divide, if you get a signal at all, the minute you go into a dip in the road the phone goes dead, and you are talking to the air.

  I had no doubt now that I had escaped from the tangle of threats of Taos and I was comfortable where I was—feeling free once again. Does a bird let out of a cage regret abandoning its confinement enough to go back? Perhaps, depending on the circumstances, but I think not for long, and neither did I, having realized a total relief in being free. Guilt in staying where I was, or going even farther away, was setting in, however. And it seemed that the only way to get the information I had learned from Shirley’s journal to Herrera quickly was to take it back where I had just come from.

  I considered the possibility of driving to some location where I could get a signal for the cell phone, or finding a land line at the visitor center, but I knew that the journal itself, in her own handwriting, was a piece of evidence that not only proved Shirley had not killed herself but pointed fingers at those most likely responsible for her death, and possibly Anthony Cole’s. Toss the thing in the mail? Possible. But by the time it reached Herrera the perpetrators could easily have scattered and left town. The more I considered the problem, the fewer options I knew I had.

  Tangled up in all that, I knew it was not my style to cut and run from trouble, and I was feeling more than a bit foolish at compromising my principles. I knew what my Daniel would have cautioned: Take care you don’t let pride convince you that you’re doing the right thing. Remember it goeth before a fall.

  Right!

  I had left Stretch’s leash on the opposite dinette seat and, as he sometimes does, he pulled it down and came with it in his mouth to stand and look up at me—a not so subtle reminder that I had promised him a walk and he needed one.

  “Okay, lovie,” I told him, getting up and reaching for the keys to the Winnebago. “We’ll go walkabout. I can think about all this as we explore.”

  We walked a long way from the campground and were out among the dunes when the wind and rain drove us home later. I struggled with resistance to returning to Taos, knew I didn’t want to continue to feel guilty, and finally made up my mind to do the right thing—with a few nudges in knowing what my Daniel would have thought and said about it.

  At nine the next morning I put the motor home back on the road and drove south, crossed the border into New Mexico just above Costilla, and was soon back in the lovely Hondo Valley, passing through Questa once again, headed in the opposite direction this time.

  With the discovery of the journal I was feeling more positive, though as we came closer to Taos a sense of possible danger rose in the back of my mind. We made Taos before noon, as planned, passing the Kachina Inn, where I remembered that I had intended to go to see the Indian dancing. Maybe this time I would.

  As I came to Weaving Southwest I also remembered that I had not called Pat to cancel my class the day before. Wanting to call Herrera anyway, I decided that it would be as good a place to stop as any, for I could accomplish both things there.

  One Winnebago motor home is pretty much like others, but mine has Alaska plates, which would be a dead giveaway to anyone looking. So rather than park out in front of the shop on Paseo del Pueblo Norte, I pulled into a lot at the end of the building, where the bright yellow rectangle would be less visible.

  Before going in to see Pat I called Herrera, who was astonished that I was back, but when I told him that I had found what was lost he said he would be right over.

  “You can tell me about it when I get there,” he agreed.

  Taking the journal with me in my bag and Stretch on his leash, I went around the corner from the parking lot and into Weaving Southwest, where I found Pat at her desk in the back. She was taking an order on the phone, so I used the time to admire the colorful shelves of yarn on the wall, then went to say hello to Mary Ann, who was unpacking a box of books onto a shelf toward the front of the shop.

  “Hey,” called Pat, coming to find me when she finished her phone call. “Missed you yesterday. Did I get the day wrong?”

  I apologized and assured her she had not, but didn’t go into detail about where I had been or why—simply said I had been unavoidably detained.

  “Want to reschedule?” she asked.

  “Let’s wait till I know what would be a good time,” I told her. “I’ll call you.”

  “I drove by the RV park last night to invite you to dinner,” she said, “but you weren’t there and they said you had checked out. Did you move somewhere else?”

  The question caught me off guard for a second or two.

  “I spent some time in the Hondo Valley,” I said finally—which was stretching the truth, as I was feeling a bit cornered. I hate prevarication, but sometimes it seems necessary and this was one of those times, though I wasn’t quite sure why. Probably at that point I would have been cautious with anyone who asked questions about where I was going or had been.

  She gave me a puzzled glance, clearly sensing my hesitation, then waved me to the rear where we could talk in private.

  “What’s going on?” she asked. “Does this have something to do with Shirley’s death? I’ve been hearing rumors—thanks to Connie, of course—that the guy they found in Doris’s dye vat was the one Shirley was seeing.”

  I should have remembered that this was a town, not a city, and that the rumor mill would grind fine and its chaff be widely and quickly spread on the wind of gossip.

  Much of what had taken place in the last week seemed somehow to come back to connect with weaving one way or another—or at least with the people involved in weaving. I considered that for a minute. There was Weaving Southwest, where many weavers came and went; Connie, who seemed to consider it a perfect place to spread her rumors; a weaver’s dye vat, where one body that was probably Anthony Cole had been found; Shirley, the other dead person, who was a weaver and had been involved with Cole; Alan Medina, who was not a weaver so far as I knew, but was connected to Shirley through that abstract in his gallery; and what else was there?

  Glancing around the shop, where everything was connected to weaving, as I thought about the relationships between these things and people, my attention was caught by the rug Butch had selected at the opening of the show the Friday before. Suddenly I remembered the two woven pieces I had seen in the Medina Gallery that had reminded me of this one that had been woven by Ford Whitaker—another connection—not only because of his weaving but because he had admitted seeing Anthony Cole with Shirley, at the Taos Inn and elsewhere.

  Ford Whitaker? Charmingly handsome, casually natural, seemingly trustworthy—Ford Whitaker? I caught my breath at the idea, remembering that when I was in the Dumpster a second man had called out from the pickup to the one who was holding Stretch: “Come on. Do the trade and let’s get out of here.” Could it possibly have been . . .

  “What is it?” Pat asked. “You don’t look so good.”

  Before I could answer, or decide if I wanted to, the door opened and Herrera came hurrying in.

  Seeing me with Pat at the back of the shop, he came to us in long strides.

  “Ms. McNabb,” he said.

  “Maxie,” I reminded him. “Just Maxie, please.”

  He grinned. “Okay—Maxie. Hi there, Stretch.”

  The dog trotted to the end of the leash I was holding and looked up expectantly, wagging his tail with pleasure at reuniting with who he knew was a friend.

  Herrera knelt to give him a quick bi
t of hands-on affection.

  I was breathing again, having decided that, considering the connections with weaving, it would be good to have Pat on our side. She was familiar with all the local weavers personally and could be a good source of information that neither Herrera nor I could know or find out.

  It was a decision neither of us would regret.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  RATHER THAN TALK IN PAT’S OFFICE WHERE WE would be interrupted, the three of us went to the Winnebago in the parking lot next door. There I gave Herrera Shirley’s journal and while he read through the significant parts of it I began to tell Pat what had been going on in the last few days.

  “Well,” she said, when I had sketched out the major happenings along with some of our assumptions and suspicions. “I can help get answers to some of the things you want to know. Let me think about all this. But you’ve got another problem to solve first. It’s pretty obvious you shouldn’t go back to that RV park. It would be like hanging out a sign that you’re back in Taos. You might as well let these people continue to think you’re not here, so for the time being why don’t you come and park next to my place? We can rig an electric line and there’s outside water to hook up to already.”

  “That’s a very good idea,” Herrera, who had finished examining most of the journal, agreed. “I was just considering how to make you invisible—not easy with a motor home this big.”

  “It’s only thirty feet long,” I told him. “There are lots that are much bigger.”

  “Then I’m glad you aren’t driving one of those.” He smiled, then turned serious. “This journal of Shirley’s has got to be what Medina and his cohorts were looking for. It identifies him and Cole, of course, and mentions two more in passing who might be connected.”

  “Who?” asked Pat. “It’s a small town, so it could be someone I know.”

  “I think I’d better check one of them out before we take it any further,” he said, giving me a look that meant I should keep the name to myself as well. What you can do is tell me what you know of Ford Whitaker.”