Hounding The Moon: A Tess Noncoire Adventure

by P. R. Frost

  “I’m glad. The truth is, several tribes have applied a lot of pressure to get the blanket into one of their museums. But it’s a family heirloom. It’s protected in a temperature-and-humidity-controlled environment, behind museum-quality Plexiglas, out of direct sunlight. I’ve got provenance going back to the first written records in this part of the country.”

  Not so long ago. Europeans didn’t bring reading and writing to this part of the world until the early 1800s.

  Could the old woman, the weaver, have been dead that long?

  I doubted it. The dog would have been looking for a new weaver before this. And probably found one. But if he hadn’t found a weaver, his activities would have passed into local legend more readily. Sort of like Sasquatch.

  Something hummed along my spine with that thought.

  The number of lies Donovan told me mounted up.

  So why did my blood sing every time he came near?

  Our food came, interrupting my train of thought. The tingling at the base of my spine calmed.

  “Who is this Van der Hoyden person anyway?” Donovan asked around a mouthful of Belgian waffle. “I have to admit I’m jealous. He spends more time with you than I do.”

  “He’s…” How did I describe him? “A colleague. Sort of a research assistant.” I ducked my head and tucked into my omelet with Hollandaise sauce, sausage, and pancakes.

  “I wish you wouldn’t spend so much time with him. I don’t trust him. Who is he and where did he come from?”

  Good questions. I’d asked them many times of Gollum and received only vague answers.

  Yet I trusted him more than I did Donovan.

  “He’s been a friend,” I replied lamely. He had stuck by me after Bob was killed while Donovan attended to the adult children of his client.

  “How about I ask around and see if I can find you a real research assistant, a grad student or something?”

  “I don’t know…”

  “We’ll talk about it later.”

  We ate in silence a moment.

  “Tell me about your husband?” Donovan looked at me hopefully.

  “I’m not sure…”

  “I’d like to scope out my competition. Were you married long?”

  “Not really. He died quite suddenly. A fire.”

  “You must have known him a long time, then. High school sweethearts?”

  “No. We met here at High Desert Con three years ago. He taught geology at the community college. He transferred to Cape Cod Community College after we married, was due to start spring semester. He didn’t live that long. Bob Brown introduced us.”

  Donovan stilled like his entire being listened for clues to something.

  “Does this ghost of a man have a name?” he asked after several long moments.

  “Dillwyn Bailey Cooper. Dill.”

  “D. B. Cooper?” he asked on a grin.

  “You know the legend?”

  “The first guy ever to have the audacity to hijack a plane, hold it for ransom, and get away with it. He’s a local folk hero.”

  I laughed. “My Dill was too young to be that D. B. Cooper. But maybe his father, who was also D. B. Cooper, as are his mother, brother, and sister—before she married. They did come into a lot of money without explanation and bought a furniture and appliance store.”

  “How mundane.You’d think with a name like that they’d open a pub or a hotel, or something more exotic.”

  “Mundane. That’s a good way of describing them.”

  For the first time in a long time, I laughed while talking and thinking about Dill and his family.

  “I have some business in town this morning, Tess. But I swear I’ll be done by lunchtime. We’ll spend the rest of the day together. Get to know each other better.” His eyes pleaded with me as he signaled the waitress for the check. “How about we take a picnic down to the river. I’ll show you where Kennewick man was found.” He mentioned a thousands-of-years-old skeleton found on the Columbia River banks, almost intact. Legal wars raged for more than ten years as to tribal rights to bury the bones with respect and scientists’ rights to study them.

  “Sounds like fun.” I smiled up at him.

  “What will you do this morning?” He toyed with the red rose that lay between us on the table. Almost a pledge, certainly a token that something strong kept bringing us back together.

  “Work.” I shrugged. “I can write anywhere, almost anytime.”

  Suddenly Donovan broke off a long portion of the rose’s stem and tucked the flower behind my ear. My left ear, isn’t that supposed to be the side that symbolizes a woman was married or betrothed—taken, anyway?

  “I like that better than the comb. More natural. It suits you.” Then he kissed me lightly, scooped up the check, and left. At the cash register he blew me another kiss.

  About time he took off, Scrap complained. He popped into view in the middle of the table, inspecting coffee cups and juice glasses for residue. Nothing left for me.

  He pouted.

  “If you’d stick around more, maybe I’d get you something to eat. Guess you’ll have to make do with mold in the air conditioners.” I grabbed my purse and headed back to my room and my laptop.

  I’ve cleaned them all out! Scrap hopped to my shoulder.

  Witching into your Celestial Blade is hard work.

  I ignored him.

  Maybe Gollum has some beer in his room.

  “Where is Gollum by the way?” Now that Donovan had left, I wanted to discuss the blanket with my friend.

  College library. Been there most of the night.

  “Good place for him.”

  With both men out of my hair, I could get some serious writing done. And think about the questions I had for Donovan and Gollum when next they darkened my door.

  Something perverse made me keep the rose behind my ear when Gollum showed up a couple of hours later with a stack of printouts from tribal databases all over the country. The jerk didn’t even notice.

  But Donovan frowned when I jammed the comb into my hair as we left on our picnic.

  The time is coming when my babe will understand that Dog isn’t our enemy. Soon she’ll listen to me calmly and rationally and form a plan. Two days ago when the dog killed Bob wasn’t the time for her to get what Dog’s all about. Two days ago she was in danger of drowning in her grief like she did when Dill died.

  She still wears her emotions on her sleeve. Only with Mom does she hide her feelings. But then she’s always done that, even before she had secrets to keep. I wouldn’t tell Mom anything either. She reacts more volatilely than my babe does.

  But that time comes, too, when Mom will have to be told.

  Dad would never understand, and we’ll keep him in the dark.

  MoonFeather, on the other hand, is a ripe candidate to help us.

  That is if my dahling babe doesn’t do something stupid like fall in love with the stinky man that I can’t figure out.

  Chapter 22

  TEN O’CLOCK THE NEXT morning found me tearless, sitting in a middle pew of the Catholic Church in Kennewick, Washington, a few blocks west of the con hotel in Pascoe. The two cities blended into one, along with Richland, the third city in the area.

  I wore the little midnight blue dress that suited all occasions and I never traveled without. Bob did not approve of black or tears at a funeral any more than Dill did. Funerals were meant to be celebrations of a life.

  So I sat alone for almost half an hour before anyone else showed up. Alone with the memories of the man who had shaped more of my life than Dill had.

  Memories washed over me like a sneaker wave at the coast. Good memories. Bob in our Freshman Western Civ class at Providence U, totally at sea in the mass of historical information. I helped him study. He tutored me in math. We went to our first con together in Boston.

  He introduced me to science fiction. I introduced him to fantasy. We went to another con together. And another.

  We learned to filk together.<
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  We graduated together, then went our separate ways, only to meet up again at other cons throughout the country. He built a career at the nuclear reservation. I built mine in publishing.

  Always there was that deep and abiding friendship uncluttered with sexual tension. We might have been good lovers, but knew each other well enough that sex wasn’t important between us.

  I breathed deeply, aware of the emptiness in my life.

  But I was refreshed. I remembered Bob with joy and thankfulness for that wonderful friendship. I regretted his passing, but not our time together.

  Why couldn’t I remember Dillwyn Bailey Cooper with the same sense of gladness and thankfulness? Whenever I thought of Dill, I wanted to cry and scream and rant, and dive into the depths of the lake at the base of Dry Falls to escape the emptiness of my life without him.

  Friends from cons all over the Pacific Northwest nodded to me as they took their seats in the church. A few stopped to say “Hello,” and condole with me. Bob’s coworkers gave me curious looks. I heard their whispered questions. “Is she the famous one?”

  None of them asked if I was the one who had caused Bob’s death.

  Guilt and anger gnawed at me. I should have saved Bob. If I were faster with the Celestial Blade… If I’d thought beyond… If I’d thought at all rather than just reacted.

  Scrap plopped into my lap. His skin looked brighter blue against my dress. You look bluer than I do, dahling, he said, puffing on a thin black cherry cheroot.

  “Bad pun, Scrap,” I whispered to him. My anger vanished.

  My life wasn’t so empty after all. No matter which path I took, I’d always have Scrap with me.

  Where do we go from here? Scrap climbed onto the back of the pew in front of me and surveyed the growing crowd of mourners.

  “I’ll let you know when I know.”

  Further conversation was cut off by the entrance of Bob’s family, escorted by a priest. The service began and I lost myself in the beauty of the familiar ritual. The responses came naturally to me. Mom and Dad had raised me Catholic even if I’d stopped attending church after Dad moved in with Bill. I even managed to choke out some of the songs and chants.

  A filk group got up and played some of Bob’s favorite pieces and two of the hymns. They looked meaningfully at me. I shook my head. No way could I sing the piece Bob loved above all others. “Ave Maria.”

  I turned and left the church before the Eucharist. I felt everyone’s eyes on me. That did not matter. I’m not certain I’d have stayed even if they hadn’t expected me to sing.

  I didn’t believe in that God anymore. I didn’t really believe in anything. Music had been a large part of any kind of faith I might have had.

  I doubted I’d ever sing or believe again.

  Scrap remained oddly subdued.

  “I think we need to go back to Half Moon Lake,” Gollum said as he followed me out. “The dog is going to show up there sooner or later.”

  “This is my job, not yours,” I snapped. I wasn’t in the mood to be pleasant to anyone.

  “Consider me an objective observer who will report back to the proper authorities.” He remained beside me, matching me step for step.

  “No.” I planted myself in the middle of the sidewalk.

  “You aren’t coming with me unless you come clean. I am sick and tired of your half statements and cryptic answers. Who are you and why are you following me?”

  He clamped his jaw shut.

  “Fine. You’re fired.” I turned on my well-shod heel and marched back toward the hotel and my luggage.

  “Tess, you can’t fire me. You need me.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  He continued to offer me arguments in favor of us teaming up. I refused to hear a thing he said.

  Righteous indignation propelled me all the way to the car rental booth. All they had left was a huge SUV.

  White. I took it though I hate big vehicles. Then as I signed my name to one form after another my hand began to shake.

  I kept right on signing. I’d finish this on my own, with only Scrap for help. That’s the way I was supposed to work. One Sister, one imp. We’d find our demons and fight them back to their own dimension, then return to our normal everyday lives. Alone.

  People I cared about couldn’t desert me if I never let them into my life.

  Locals in Half Moon Lake tended to hang out at the bar down the street from the Mowath Lodge where I booked a room—hey, it was the only lodging in town, dirt cheap, and I could watch Donovan’s office from my front deck.

  I couldn’t watch Donovan’s suite from the bar. But it was dark anyway. This town rolled up its sidewalks at suppertime.

  That would change when the casino opened. People could lose money there three shifts a day. The local unemployment problem would evaporate with the locals taking care of those determined to dump money into slot machines and roulette wheels and card games.

  If the casino employed locals. In some places Indian casinos only hired other Indians; bringing them in from other tribes and locations rather than hire any “white” folk.

  With the tension I’d witnessed earlier in this town, I guessed the casino would hire outside.

  But if the casino used up all the local water, the locals would lose doubly, no irrigation for livestock and the few crops. And no golfers at the lushly green resort at the southwest end of town.

  I took a seat in a booth in a back corner where I could watch the local gathering and not have to worry about anyone approaching me unobserved. Before leaving Tri-Cities, I’d stopped at the mall and outfitted myself with faded jeans, boots, and cotton shirts, the better to blend in with the town folk. A little fussing and oily hair products straightened my curls and made my hair long enough to pull into pigtails. Darker makeup and pale lipstick completed my disguise. A careful observer might recognize me, but not strangers. Scrap gave me a gentle aura of familiar friendliness.

  A few people half waved and smiled as I entered, then ignored me. Hopefully, they would keep their conversations normal rather than clam up in the presence of a stranger.

  I needed to hear the local gossip about the casino, Donovan, and any dog sightings.

  The waitress let her eyes glaze into boredom as she took my order for hamburger, fries, and beer. No one else ordered the overpriced limp salads, so I didn’t either.

  The chilled beer came with a frosty mug. I drank from the bottle, like the locals. It was good and slid down my dry throat like balm on a wound.

  The beer was the most tasty part of the meal. I’d downed four of them—Scrap drank a fifth—before I heard anything new in the conversation that rose and fell around me.

  “Those fuckin’ Indians can’t drain the water table if we blow up the casino,” a man whispered in the booth next to mine.

  “I got some dynamite left over from building my irrigation dam,” another man said quietly. “Fat lot of good it did me. Ain’t no water left in the creek to dam.”

  “Don’t even have to bomb the casino. That hillside is riddled with caves. All we have to do is plant a little bit of explosive in one cave. It’ll undermine the foundations. Make it too unstable to build anything up there.”

  I shivered with that. One cave had already collapsed and started this entire chain of unfortunate events—the one with the old woman who wove the blanket of life. I had to do something.

  What could I do to stop them?

  Whisper campaign, Scrap said. Then he belched, having drunk his entire beer and eaten all of my greasy fries.

  “Nice to see you are back to normal,” I replied sotto voce.

  Nice bugs in the lake water.

  “I didn’t think anything could live in that heavy mineral mixture.”

  Microorganisms in the top layer that doesn’t mix with the heaviest minerals at the bottom—sort of like the cowboys and Indians in this town.

  “Meromictic,” I said. “That’s what Dill called it when the layers of lake water do not mix.” />
  Anyway, the microscopic shrimp are better than mold.

  And there is mold in the air conditioners. I could live here.

  “Don’t get used to it. We’re leaving as soon as I can find Cynthia and get her away from Dog.”

  Won’t happen unless you rescue the blanket and find a new weaver. Dog is on a mission. He’s one of the good guys.

  I snorted in derision. “Dog killed Bob and a bunch of other innocents. He’s not one of the good guys.”

  Sometimes innocents get in the way of an important mission. If they don’t step aside, they become casualties of war.

  I decided to ignore that rather than think too hard.

  But the idea sounded good for the book.

  Don’t forget that the demon children were as responsible as Dog for Bob’s death.

  “Let’s start that whisper campaign against the idea of blowing up the hillside under the casino.” Something to do rather than think too hard. I wanted to blame Dog.

  Hell, I wanted Donovan’s demon children to be innocent so that he would be innocent.

  “If you set dynamite in one of those caves, any one of those caves, the whole hill will slide into the lake. The town will close down without the lake,” I said as I slipped onto the seat next to the conspirators, beer in hand. Flirtatiously, I took a cowboy hat off one middle-aged and paunchy rancher and set it on my own head. The brim hid my eyes and shadowed my face.

  The men leaned closer to me. Lust and hope crossed their faces.

  “I know enough about geology to tell you, you’re better off sabotaging the building materials. Then you get an inspector out from Olympia to declare the construction shoddy and unsafe.”

  “Estevez has got all the inspectors in his pocket. Pays them better than the state does,” Paunchy grumbled.

  “The local inspectors, sure. But what if we demand the state bring in someone new? This is a big construction project. Local guys don’t have enough experience to know what’s being done right or where Estevez is sliding beneath building codes,” I countered.

  Three men raised their eyebrows. “Who do we know with enough clout to get that done?” Paunchy asked.