Hounding The Moon: A Tess Noncoire Adventure

by P. R. Frost

  Scrap thoroughly enjoyed following the officer about, diving into piles of clothes and blowing on the fingerprint powder. This room might never get clean again. I wanted to laugh at my imp’s antics but didn’t dare.

  “Ms. Noncoiré,” the manager said, “we will gladly move you to another suite, at no charge for tonight. We are terribly sorry for the inconvenience.”

  “Thank you, a regular room will be fine. I’d like to stay until the funeral.” I figured the price of a regular room for three nights ought to be about the same, or less than a suite for one night.

  “Of course. Of course. We hope this inconvenience in no way impinges upon your opinion of our hotel or the chain…” He babbled on.

  Scrap, I whispered with my mind. Find that dictation machine and the tape.

  About time you asked, babe. He puffed on a cigar that sent the police officer sniffing all over the suite for the source. This was a nonsmoking room.

  “What was so special about the tape recorder?” Wilkins asked after a long pause of considering his notes.

  “Nothing really. Just notes about some scenes I plan to write. Some native folklore I recorded.” And that bizarre channeling episode of Gollum’s.

  Could someone have stolen the tape for that?

  Fine, if someone else wanted to chase the dog and put him out of my misery, let him.

  “Yesterday was the second time you fought off that marauding dog,” Wilkins said, almost an accusation.

  “And the second time the dog had selected Cynthia Stalking Moon as his victim. But Bob Brown got in the way. He died protecting that little girl.” Maybe the police would give the girl some protection.

  “You saying there is something special about this girl?”

  I shrugged. “Ask her uncle, Leonard Stalking Moon.”

  “Now I happen to know Leonard Stalking Moon. And I knew and respected Bob Brown. A lot. So why don’t you tell me what’s going on.”

  “I don’t know,” I replied earnestly. “I wish I did. Then I could track down this monster and kill it before it harms someone else. Why don’t you ask Leonard and his ward Cynthia?”

  “Maybe I’ll do just that, except Leonard reported the girl missing last night. We’d put out an Amber Alert, but haven’t got any proof she was kidnapped. No proof of anything. She just vanished right after Bob was killed. Care to comment on that?”

  My heart beat rapidly and my spine burned its entire length. My throat closed.

  My fault, my heart screamed.

  I swallowed back my panic. Panic would not save Cynthia.

  I’d panicked the night Dill died. I might have saved him if I hadn’t panicked.

  My fault!

  “I only can say that I believe Cynthia is in grave danger.”

  And I had to help her. I couldn’t let another person I cared about die because I failed to act.

  “Where are we headed?” I asked Gollum as he turned his battered green minivan onto a state highway headed north.

  “You need to get away from that hotel.” He signaled a tricky merge and managed to squeeze between two SUVs that didn’t want to give an inch to any other vehicle.

  I grabbed the handrest and held on for dear life as he accelerated and passed the macho cars. Maybe I shouldn’t watch.

  “So, we are out of the hotel. Where are we going?”

  “A little resort town on a mineral lake about two hours from here.”

  My skin grew cold and my lunch turned to lead. “Half Moon Lake,” I growled. “About ten miles from Dry Falls.”

  “We are on the same wavelength.”

  “No, I’ve been there before.”

  “I drew a line connecting all of the reported dog attacks, including two in British Columbia that didn’t make the local news. Dry Falls and Half Moon Lake are almost exactly dead center.”

  “That’s in the very ancient streambed of the Columbia River. The dry coulee. Aeons ago, an ice dam backed up millions of cubic acres of water…”

  “Lake Missoula,” he interrupted me.

  “Yes. Periodically, the dam would break and flood the river all the way to the ocean, gouging the terrain. The last time it changed the course of the Columbia. The coulee was left with just a string of spring-fed lakes with heavy mineral content.” I recited what I could remember of the lessons Dill had taught me on our last fatal trip together.

  “Why do you know so much about the local geology?” Gollum looked over at me and almost rear-ended a pickup with tires taller than me.

  “My husband and I went fossil hunting in the canyon that used to be the largest waterfall in the world—four times the size of Niagara—but is now just another cliff in the desert.”

  “Husband? I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you’re married.”

  His face lost animation, and he shut down his emotions.

  “Dillwyn died the last time we came this way.”

  “Sorry.”

  So was I.

  We rode in silence for another fifteen miles. Gollum slowed to the speed limit and obeyed all the traffic laws, thoroughly pissing off numerous drivers who all honked and passed us with angry gestures.

  “I figure the dog is ranging around the area. The cave of the old woman must be around Dry Falls or Half Moon Lake,” Gollum broke the silence.

  “Why is the dog ranging if his job is to rip out the weaving every day?”

  “The old woman must be dead and he needs to find a new weaver… that’s why he goes after adolescent girls of Native American blood.”

  “If the old woman has ceased to weave the blanket of life, what will happen to humanity?” My insides grew colder than they did when I remembered that I might have saved Dillwyn Bailey Cooper if I had acted in time.

  “We have to make sure the weaver and the blanket are restored.”

  What was this “we” business?

  Chapter 19

  “YOU SHOULD WEAR your hair up in the comb more often,” Gollum said an hour or so later.

  The road ran straight and boring for mile after mile, and we’d run out of conversation fairly quickly.

  “I like the comb, but it’s not always comfortable.”

  Self-consciously I patted the golden filigree that still held most of my curls in place. I wasn’t used to compliments. Especially from geeks.

  Donovan had complimented me often. From him, it seemed natural, a part of the relationship. From Gollum?

  I wasn’t sure what kind of relationship I had with him, if I had one at all.

  “You look more glamourous in it.” Gollum grinned as he sped up to pass a farm truck. “Maybe it’s the desert sun, but it gives you a golden aura.”

  Listen to him, dahling, Scrap commented from some distance. I hadn’t actually seen him since I sent him to retrieve the tape. The comb has magic in it.

  I wondered what kind of magic. Other than outdated ideals that women were more glamourous in days gone by when they wore their hair up and their skirts long.

  We drove through steepening hills covered in sage and rock and not much else. Then, as we drove around a bend, the town of Half Moon Lake appeared out of nowhere. All eight blocks of it.

  The town rested at the tip of the crescent mineral lake. Along the inside curve of the lake, next to the highway, I spotted RV parks, campgrounds, and aging resort hotels, including the barren ground where the seedy Life Springs Motel had burned three years ago. New homes and a golf course spread around the outside curve up onto a ridge. Atop that ridge, new construction of a wood and stone monstrosity marred the picturesque and craggy skyline.

  I studied that new construction rather than take a chance of espying the place where my husband had died.

  The log construction Mowath Lodge had grown up beside and around the original motel. Only a cement slab remained where it had burned to the ground. I didn’t care. I wanted out of this town and away from my memories.

  I’d lost two men I loved.

  “There’s a crowd gathering around that log building,�
�� Gollum said. He slowed the van and pulled into a parking space beside a restaurant. The last place Dill and I had eaten a meal together.

  He’d had the fish. I had the steak. The buttery taste of the baked potato that accompanied the meal lingered in my mouth.

  “Looks more like an angry mob than a crowd,” I replied, doing my best to hold the memories and the tears at bay.

  “Let’s ask while we have lunch,” Gollum said. He killed the engine and sat staring at the milling throng of men and women.

  The pattern of their movements became clear. Two factions. One side: men dressed in slacks and knit shirts and expensive athletic shoes. The other side: all had dark hair, coppery skin, worn denim, Western cut shirts and boots.

  The whites versus the Indians.

  I felt like I’d been dumped into a bad B Western movie. John Wayne or Roy Rogers should ride over the hill at any moment.

  “Do you see any sign of the dog?” I asked. While I made a production of stepping out of the van and stretching my back, retying my shoes, straightening my shirt, I took the time to study the faces on the tribal side of the brewing confrontation. No sign of Cynthia or the huge dog. Scrap said he was less a monster and closer to a kindred spirit, on a mission and not knowing quite how to accomplish it.

  But he’d killed Bob and some innocent children. He was a monster by any definition despite his supposed mission.

  I wanted to kill him, or at least take a big piece of his hide for the death and misery he had caused.

  “Cynthia’s not here,” Gollum replied. He looked as if he’d made an inventory of every face and noted it down for future reference. “Can you make out what they’re saying?”

  “Not really. Something about overstepping bounds and violating permits.” Food interested me less than the scent of fear and creeping violence in the air. I wished that Scrap would return from… wherever.

  My feet wandered toward the simmering crowd. Gollum followed me. He kept pushing up his glasses and looking around as if threatening monsters could jump out at us from any of the sun-drenched buildings or from behind a scraggly tree. Ancient cottonwoods mostly, drawing moisture from the spring-fed lake.

  I’d forgotten the salty, fishy smell of the place. One of the oils in the lake came from decaying and fossilizing fish left over from the flood twelve thousand years ago.

  That layer of oil remained fixed in the water. None of the layers in the lake mixed. No currents, no movement.

  A thick crust of mineral salts frosted the coarse black sand beach; a beach that extended a good fifty yards farther back from the water than I remembered.

  My fingers itched for a weapon.

  “You’re draining all of the wells with that fucking resort,” a man wearing a shirt with the golf course logo on the left breast shouted and raised his clenched fist.

  “You were only going to build a spa, not a full-blown casino,” a woman accused, adding her voice to the crescendo.

  The noise rose and fell like ocean waves that wanted to swamp me and drown my senses. At the same time a tingling awareness coursed through my veins.

  Where in hell had Scrap gotten to? I might need him if things turned ugly.

  Uglier.

  Gollum edged closer to me. I didn’t know if he wanted to protect me or hide behind me.

  “If we want to build a casino, who are you to stop us?” yelled a slender, well-groomed man on the Indian side of the fray. “You owe us water, land, and respect for what you have done to our people.”

  “Respect, my ass,” snorted a woman on the white side. “Lazy buggers who don’t know how to work for a living. Can’t even clean up your own yards.”

  “How are we going to feed and water our cattle if you damn Indians drain all our wells?” asked a wiry little man with leathery skin. Only his blue eyes and sunbleached hair beneath his Stetson separated him from the “damn Indians” in appearance.

  “The casino isn’t even up and running, and my water’s down by half,” the man from the golf course said. “I’m gonna lose a million bucks in greens fees if I can’t water my grass.”

  A younger Indian woman tugged on the arm of the man beside her. “Why did we agree to the casino? All we really needed was the spa. We could survive very nicely on the money we’d make from a spa.”

  That statement told me more than all of the shouting.

  Something strange had happened in this town. Something manipulative.

  “Tess,” Gollum said quietly, touching my arm.

  I made a conscious effort to relax my fists and take the tension out of my face and shoulders.

  “Look there.” He jerked his chin to the doorway of the log building beside us.

  A dark-haired man with the smooth coppery skin, flat face, and almond eyes so prevalent on the tribal side of the conflict stood watching every move. He remained stolidly aloof from the conflict.

  “I sense a connection between him and why these people gathered here.” I gestured to the octet of modern log lodges scattered around this collecting point. I didn’t remember these buildings from my last visit three years ago. Each lodge appeared to be a four-plex, two rooms up and two down, built from massive tree trunks at least two feet in diameter.

  I searched for a sign. The grand two-story edifice the watcher had come from announced to the world in big carved letters “Mowath Lodge. Office.” It overlapped onto the foundation of the burned out Life Springs Motel.

  “They rebuilt. Bigger and grander,” I said quietly. My knees and hands began to shake.

  If Scrap were here, would he be able to help me sort out my own emotions from those of the crowd? Would wading into the fray with fists and feet flying make me feel better?

  “What?” Gollum asked.

  “I’ve got to get out of here. Now.”

  He stared at my cold face. “You are looking a little pale. Let’s get some lunch.”

  He took my arm and led me across the street to a café. It looked run down and weather-beaten, like so much of the original town. Only in the last ten years had tourism and the mineral qualities of the lake drawn outsiders to exploit the sleepy town’s only resource.

  New Age herbal stores now nestled cheek by jowl with antiques and oddities, shamanistic counselors, and massage practitioners. The café stood out like a withered old lady among aggressive professional women. The age of the building seemed embedded in the cracked linoleum.

  We took a table by the window. Gollum sat facing the Mowath Lodge. I kept my back to it.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” he asked. His eyes centered on mine but flicked to the view out the window periodically.

  “The foundation of the two-story office,” I said flatly.

  He nodded.

  “That was the original motel. An old and run-down place. A firetrap.” I gulped back my tears. “It burned three years ago. Dill and I were staying there. He didn’t make it out.”

  “Oh.” His eyes flicked back to the scene playing out across the street. They strayed there more often as we worked our way through huge hamburgers with homemade rolls, thick-cut fries, and milkshakes made with real ice cream.

  With food like this in my system I could fight dragons.

  But not my own personal demons.

  I felt a weight against my belt purse. Quicker than thought I slapped the thing and prepared to knock a thief flat.

  My hand encountered air.

  Watch it, Blondie. You almost knocked me back three dimensions, Scrap snarled.

  He looked exceedingly gray and I had to peer hard to actually see his outline. He was barely into this dimension.

  “Are you okay?”

  “What?” Gollum asked, instantly alert.

  “Scrap,” I mouthed.

  Hungry, my imp said in a whisper of a breath.

  I searched frantically for something he could and would eat. All the food here was fresh, the inside of the building scrubbed clean, the outside so dry and dusty no molecule of mold would dare try to take hold.
Desperate, I signaled the waitress and ordered a beer and OJ.

  “Did he get the tape?” Gollum asked sotto voce.

  “Screw that. Something more interesting just showed up.” I threw a twenty on the table and dashed out the door. “You stay there until the beer and OJ are gone,” I threw over my shoulder to Gollum.

  Donovan in his cream-colored BMW (his own or a rental?) had just stopped in front of the Mowath Lodge.

  He angled his long legs out of the car and flashed his brilliant smile at the angry mob.

  An immediate hush came over the noisy crowd. The smell of incipient violence melted out of the air.

  What kind of magic did Donovan have?

  That smile?

  Very like Dill’s smile.

  Some kind of connection flickered across my mind.

  Then I lost it. So I plowed forward.

  A look of intense relief settled on the face of the Indian in the doorway. I sensed then that he had been guarding the door. For some reason I did not know he feared outsiders entering the room behind him.

  This was just too much of a coincidence.

  There are no coincidences in imp lore, Scrap reminded me around a mouthful of liquid. His voice sounded weak, but better than when he’d first showed up.

  Donovan climbed the three steps to the wide deck of the office and spoke to the guard in quiet tones before I could catch up to him. Then he passed inside without a backward glance at the suddenly dispersed crowd.

  “What just happened here?” Gollum asked, out of breath as he caught up to me. Scrap hovered behind him. He looked the same washed-out orange as his juice.

  “I don’t know. But I think I need to find out. Something about the man doesn’t ring true,” I replied.

  Goddess! Why had I been so dumb as to let him into my bed?

  “I could have told you that Thursday night back in Pascoe,” Gollum said, straight-faced.

  I glared at him. Friend he might have become. But he had no right to pass judgment on the man I found very attractive. As well as mysterious and irritating.

  “Donovan!” I dashed through the door before he or his guard had a chance to close it in my face.