The Nora Abbott Mystery series Box Set

by Shannon Baker

  Heather looked over her shoulder and knocked on one of the doors. Without waiting for an answer she opened it and directed Nora inside.

  A ruin of a couch covered with a pale yellow sheet furnished the cramped room with cracked linoleum floors. One single bulb hung from the low ceiling, casting shadows from the round kitchen table and three chairs. Two folding lawn chairs, a stack of boxes and general clutter clustered in one side of the room. A small refrigerator and stove--several decades old--shoved into a corner of the room next to a long table that served as a kitchen counter. Everything looked shabby and second, maybe even third, hand.

  “How’s your head?” Heather asked.

  Nora wanted to pummel the girl. “How’s Abigail?”

  Heather plopped her bag on the table. She rummaged in it and brought out a bottle of pain relievers. She poured water from a pitcher into a plastic cup and brought it to Nora. “I only hit you to protect you”

  “You didn’t enjoy it a bit?”

  Heather scowled at her. “I didn’t hit you hard.”

  Nora’s neck felt like cement. “Take me to Flagstaff.”

  “I can’t. It’s for your own good.”

  Nora struggled not to choke on the pills sliding down her throat. “I’ve got to see her.”

  “See? I knew you love Abigail.” Heather’s eyes filled with tears.

  “She’s the most annoying and strongest woman I know. She’s made my life hell. Of course I love her.”

  “You don’t show it.”

  Nora couldn’t deny her guilt. The dim space closed in on her. “Who lives here?”

  “Benny.” Heather looked around and headed for a closed door. “I’ve got to pee.”

  The leather bag didn’t quite cover the car keys. As soon as the door clicked shut Nora snatched them and sped out of the house, sprinting for the Toyota.

  It would take a couple of hours to return to Flagstaff. She’d go straight to the hospital and make sure Abigail was okay. Of course Abigail was fine. Nora couldn’t allow herself to think her mother might be seriously injured.

  Nora rounded the corner of the building and raced for the trail. She needed to get a head start on the Heather. Crashing down the path, she rounded a switchback to the ruins that intersected the road. She spotted a sparkle of metal behind the pile of stone and stopped to listen. Someone else was out here on the mesa. Alex? Big Elk? Some other Native American who would love to see her disappear. She slowed her breathing, hoping to be invisible and tiptoed closer.

  A black Mercedes. Barrett. Maybe not her favorite person but at least he’d take her back to town. He was probably out here looking for Heather. Maybe Nora would rat Heather out and Barrett would lock her up. Might not be a bad way to keep the fool out of danger.

  Voices floated to her at the same time the top of another black vehicle came into view. Didn’t really matter who Barrett spoke with, at least he could take her back to Flagstaff. Nora started forward, opening her mouth to call out to him.

  Something slammed into her face and wrapped around her mouth. A hand. An arm pulled her against a hard body and dragged her back into the shadows of the crumbling rock wall.

  Alex found her and he would slit her throat. Nora bucked against the immovable captor, who seemed not much taller than herself.

  Heather stood in front with sweat running down the side of her face. Her eyes wide, she pointed toward the vehicle and shook her head in frantic insistence. “Big Elk,” she mouthed.

  Nora stopped struggling.

  The man’s hand clamped Nora’s head in a vice with her lips pressed into her teeth. Her head smashed into his chest, pressing painfully on the lump from Heather’s batting practice.

  “And Poppy,” Heather whispered. She nodded to the man holding Nora.

  The pressure lessened as if testing Nora and when she didn’t scream, the arm fell away. She spun around to see the clown, still covered in yellow mud and black face paint. He stared at her with no expression.

  Fight, run, scream. Or stay here and hide. Nora had to choose. Benny or Big Elk? Big Elk definitely wanted her dead. Benny seemed slightly less dangerous.

  Heather dropped down and crept to the edge of the ruins. Nora followed. They peered around the rubble. The sun sucked daylight from the mesa, taking it beyond the horizon, leaving Nora and Heather in deep shadow. Barrett and Big Elk stood between Barrett’s black Mercedes and Big Elk’s black Escalade, a convoy of death.

  34

  “Bottom line is that you didn’t deliver.” It had been surprisingly easy to contact Big Elk to meet him here. Where the possibility of extortion existed, Big Elk would be first to the party.

  Big Elk faced Barrett with the insolence of a terrier unaware he’s about to be ripped to shreds in the jaws of a Rottweiler. “I’m waiting for the balance to go up in that bank account. When that happens, you’ll get your vote.”

  Barrett was going through the motions. He only had to keep Big Elk talking for a couple of minutes. “Too late.”

  “You might change your mind when I tell you I’ve figured out you killed Scott Abbott and his girlfriend.”

  Bluff and bluster. Barrett remained expressionless.

  Big Elk grinned. “You covered your tracks pretty well.”

  The back driver’s side door of Barrett’s Mercedes whispered open and two black cowboy boots stepped into the dust. The rest of the rough-looking dark man seemed to float out of the vehicle like an oil slick on the ocean. He moved like a shadow, silent, out of Big Elk’s periphery.

  Barrett kept his eyes riveted on Big Elk’s eye while the dark man slipped behind Big Elk. Barrett would enjoy seeing that smug look fade from Big Elk’s face.

  “Okay, you got me.” Big Elk laughed. “I don’t have proof. I don’t even know why. But I can get the cops sniffing around. You don’t want that, do you Mac?”

  Barrett didn’t move. Enjoy your last seconds, little man.

  As if the shadow man worked magic, Big Elk seemed unaware he existed. “Don’t play games with me, McCreary. Either that money hits my account or I expose Heather as an eco-terrorist. Sure, she’s a minor, but she’ll do time somewhere, I guarantee. Blowing up a ski lift is serious business.”

  Barrett’s self-control strained to the breaking point. He should have saved his money and killed Big Elk himself. On the other hand, it was almost comic how Big Elk didn’t even sense the black menace behind him.

  “That’s where you made your big mistake, Mr. Elk.” Barrett heard the sneer in his voice. “I could tolerate your low class ways. I would even pad your accounts. But you should know to never, ever threaten my family.”

  Barrett dipped his chin slightly like Caesar giving a thumbs down. The dark spirit behind Big Elk raised his hand and drew it in a fluid movement across Big Elk’s throat.

  Big Elk made a sound like a gag, then slid to the yellow dust.

  It looked so easy and clean, aside from the gallons of blood gushing into the dust. No struggle. No last words. One second alive, the next…dead. Expensive, but you got what you paid for.

  Barrett pulled a thick envelope from his pocket and handed it to the phantom. “Tempting as it is to keep the Escalade, get rid of it as completely as you do the body. You’ll get the rest when I read the next obit.” What a waste of a great vehicle. He stepped briskly to the Mercedes and climbed in.

  Scott Abbott: check. Big Elk: check. Abigail: check. Alex: soon to be a check. All that remained was getting the Congressional committee lined out, getting snowmaking up and running, and finding Heather and corralling her.

  Cole was a wild card. Nora needed to go.

  35

  They closed the door and all three took the first deep breath since the black man severed Big Elk’s jugular.

  Heather finally spoke. “Poppy and Big Elk were working together?”

  With his yellow body paint streaked with sweat, Benny nodded. “Charlie and I suspected it. Big Elk was secretly buying up the council to vote for uranium mining.”
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  “That was worth his life?” Nora asked.

  Benny shook his head. “Don’t think that’s what Barrett said.”

  What Barrett said was that Heather blew up the lift. Nora stared at Heather. “Did you really do it?”

  Heather froze. “Well, sort of. Yes. I helped.”

  “Why?”

  Heather looked lost. “I don’t know. I got all caught up in saving the mountain and doing the right thing and Charlie kept talking about all the cool stuff he’d done. And your mom said you’d been such an activist when you were young. It was a mistake.”

  Mistake didn’t begin to cover it but Nora couldn’t confront Heather today. Not with the smell of Big Elk’s blood swirling in her nostrils. “We’ll talk about this some other time. Right now, we have to figure out what to do about Barrett.”

  Heather sank to the couch, tears falling without care. “He’s a monster.”

  Nora nodded. “And Abigail just agreed to marry him.” The words tasted sour.

  Heather’s head shot up. “Poppy and Abigail are getting married?”

  “Over my dead body,” Nora said, knowing that phrase might be too true.

  “I gotta clean up,” Benny said and disappeared into the other room, clicking the door closed.

  Heather curled up on the couch and in seconds she fell asleep. A psychologist would probably say sleep was her coping mechanism. At least Heather could find a moment’s relief.

  Nora wanted to pace but the small, windowless room wouldn’t allow much movement.

  Benny emerged in ten minutes looking like a normal person. The yellow mud and makeup gone, his hair damp and combed, he wore jeans and plaid western shirt. Though dressed in normal clothes and larger all around, he reminded Nora of the little kachina man. Maybe it was dark eyes that didn’t seem to miss much.

  Nora’s insides twisted so tight she could barely breathe. “I need to know how my mother is.”

  Benny nodded. It seemed to take him forever to answer. Did he rehearse everything he said before it came out of his mouth? “It’s best if you stay here tonight.”

  She couldn’t twiddle her thumbs out here when Abigail was in the hospital. “At least call and find out how she is.”

  If he spoke any slower she’d need someone to translate. “Can’t call. No cell service and we don’t have land lines here.”

  Frantic now, Nora wanted to punch something. “How can you live like this?”

  He watched her with annoyingly calm. “I have everything I need.”

  Sure. If you’re an aborigine in the outback. “You live in isolation with no phone, no television. You use kerosene for light and haul water. Maybe you’re surviving but what kind of quality of life is this?”

  Pause, pause, irritating pause. “Tomorrow I will greet the sun and the Creator with prayers and thanks. My family and neighbors will be happy to see me. I have enough corn to last until harvest. I have the work of farming to keep me busy. The simple life avoids waste and misuse. There is no over-production. I live in harmony and balance.”

  This philosophy wasn’t new to her. She’d grown up in Boulder, Colorado, after all. Communal, back-to-nature living and all the new age spiritual stuff drifted off the foothills with the pine pollen. But she noticed when even dedicated hippies reached middle-age most had real jobs, mortgages and health insurance like everyone else.

  Benny’s words beat in cadence to a rhythm in his head. “We live like this to develop a strong spiritual life so we can care for the land and protect it. Our spirit people looked after the people and taught us many things. They gave us language and our ceremonies and many sacred and secret things. But with this knowledge came great responsibility. When we live as instructed, we are happy and the world stays in balance.”

  Benny inhaled deliberately and let it out slowly. “Taking water from our sacred aquifer and spraying it on the sacred moun-ain is disrupting the balance. You shouldn’t do that.”

  Sacred Everything. “There have been scientific studies that show making snow will not harm the mountain.” Even as she spoke, it sounded flat and unconvincing.

  Benny shook his head as if sad at her ignorance. “Western science compartmentalizes. We know everything is connected. To say taking water from the ground and spraying it on the surface won’t change anything is denying the relationship. It’s like saying your thumbs are not connected to your toes.”

  “You know the court ruled that Native American religious rights are not harmed by making snow as long as there are other places on the mountain where you can perform your ceremonies.”

  If she’d been trying to goad him to temper, she’d failed. He considered what she said. “Everything depends on the proper balance being maintained. The water underground acts like a magnet attracting rain from the clouds. The rain also acts as a magnet raising the water table under the roots of our crops. Drawing water from the aquifer throws everything off. Our elders tell us if this happens everything but Hopi will disintegrate. They warn us that time is short.”

  Suddenly exhausted, Nora sank to the couch. What she wouldn’t give for a bath and to change from the sooty, dirty, sweat-soaked clothes.

  Heather didn’t stir. “It would be great if the Indians could live the way you did two hundred years ago and have all your sacred places and follow the buffalo and smoke peyote and all that. But this is the real world and you can’t halt progress. Indians need to stop living in the past and acclimate to the modern world.”

  “We need to live our way. It is what we are made to do.”

  Nora kneaded her forehead. “And destroy or kill anyone who gets in your way.”

  “That is not the Hopi way.” He didn’t move, simply watched her with his unreadable dark eyes.

  Nora couldn’t argue with his logic. If he wanted to live in poverty and believed it saved the world, she had no right to tell him any differently. Heather’s soft snoring filled the room. “Sleep will do her good,” Nora said.

  Benny pulled a folded blanket from the back of the couch and laid it over Heather. He walked to the door with his steady pace. “You can stay in my cousin’s house tonight. She works in Winslow as a night clerk at the Holiday Inn.”

  Nora didn’t follow him. “I want to see my mother.”

  “It’s across the plaza.”

  “Can’t you take me back to Flagstaff?”

  He held the door open for her. “Do you really want to go back tonight?”

  “Of course I do.”

  His deadpan expression didn’t change. “Someone, maybe Barrett, killed your husband and tried to kill you. The cops think maybe you’re a murderer and suspect you’re trying to swindle the insurance companies so going to them won’t help you.”

  Someone wanted her dead. Even if that someone was Big Elk and he couldn’t get her any more, his faithful might not want to call it quits. If Barrett killed Scott, maybe he’d kill Nora, too. She couldn’t go home. Couldn’t check on her mother. Like Fay Ray in King Kong’s grip she felt trapped. “How do you know so much about this?”

  Benny waited by the door, letting cool night air into the cluttered room. “Cole told me.”

  “What does he have to do with me?”

  One of Benny’s eyebrows lifted slightly, what for him was probably a hissy fit of some kind. “He cares about you.”

  Not sure what that meant and too tired to figure it out, Nora gave in. She’d go to Flagstaff at first light.

  She plodded across the plaza. The pitch-black night closed about her and she stayed on Benny’s heels. Even if she didn’t believe in spirits and ghosts, which she reminded herself she definitely did not, she could imagine the place teemed with malevolent forces that knew she intended to desecrate their home.

  Benny walked her out a small arched entry to a dark door. He pushed it open and pulled the little chain to the light hanging from the ceiling. The place looked similar to his.

  “I hope you don’t mind staying alone. My house doesn’t have another bed.” He slipped
behind an old door, the kind that easily broke if someone fell against it or, as this one looked, accidentally kicked it. He emerged with a blanket.

  She took the blanket. “This is fine, thanks.” Not sure if he kidnapped or saved her but, as Abigail taught her, it never hurt to be polite.

  At the thought of her mother, Nora’s throat tightened and tears pricked her eyes. Burns were painful. And what about disfigurement? Was her face ravaged by flames?

  “Are you going to be okay?” Benny asked.

  She swallowed. “Yeah. I’ll be fine.”

  He nodded and left.

  The quiet of the village, along with all the creepiness of the night and the native-ness of the whole place pushed against her. She hugged the blanket and sank to the couch. The light would stay on.

  36

  Sometime later, the chill forced her to move her stiff muscles and wrap the blanket around her. And later still, she must have dozed.

  Panic blasted through her sleep and vibrated in the blackness. She gasped and sat up. Darkness covered the room so deeply she barely made out shapes of furniture. The bare bulb she consciously left burning no longer glowed.

  There it was again. A terrible crashing on the roof must be what woke her. It sounded like a boulder dropped overhead with shower of smaller rocks and pebbles following.

  Nora huddled into the blanket, imagining Alex outside. Of course he knew she hid on the rez and came to terrorize her. It was only a matter of time before he burst through the front door with a knife. Or maybe only his bare hands to shut off her wind pipe. How stupid to think she was safe here. Maybe Barrett lurked outside. Probably not. His style called for a silent assassin or a quick shove. He had no interest in toying with his victims.

  The noise stopped. Nora waited. And waited. Apparently, Alex only wanted to scare her because no one stormed through the front door.

  How she could have dozed despite the anxiety over her mother, the threat of death, the very real attack by Alex with his rocks and boulders, surprised Nora. But she jerked awake to more of the rocks crashing on the roof and windows.