The Bluejay Shaman (Alix Thorssen Mystery Series)

by Lise McClendon

  Thinking about the glory of clearing your husband's name and facing hundreds of people who think he murdered their friend were two different things. But here we sat and it was her idea. I lowered my eyebrows at her; she gave a strained smile. "All right, all right."

  We dashed into the puddles and paused to shake like dogs under the awning before pushing through the big wooden doors to the delicatessen.

  Zena assumed her role almost immediately. Melina had been right to bring her. Zena had known Shiloh through working at the bookstore, a near-campus literary magnet with cafe attached called Freddy's Feed and Read. Although they weren't the closest of friends, Zena could reasonably come to a memorial for Shiloh.

  "Sit in the back row," Zena whispered. No sooner were the words out than she saw someone she knew and went to make consoling noises. Melina and I kept our eyes down for the moment, as if in grief, settling ourselves into a row of folding chairs that leaned against the deli's tables stacked in one comer. We pulled off our wet coats and began to look around.

  The building that housed the Cosmic Lunch looked like it was built as a gas station in the fifties. The old cement floor had been painted numerous times-this latest, a wild display of silver stars and neon planets outlined in black. I ran the wet toe of my clog over the worn rings of Saturn.

  Two small windows faced the Clark Fork River, running high and muddy. The panes of glass were speckled with teary drops tonight. Across the river lay the university campus with the big cement M on the barren hillside above it. Zena slipped into her chair. She was flushed now; the room had become warm with the flow of people. She leaned over Melina and whispered, "Everyone is here." I pulled a small notebook and pencil from my coat pocket and passed it to her.

  Melina bumped my arm. "See that man across the aisle, one row up?" A small, older man with peppery hair in a crew cut sat slumped in his chair. "That's Marcus Tilden, chairman of the anthropology department."

  "What's he doing here?"

  Melina shrugged. I raised my eyebrows, trying to get another look at him. He turned his head away, talking to someone beside him.

  Zena passed the notebook.

  "Elaine Farrar," the first line read. "Roommate. First row, strawberry blond." I had a view of the back of her curly head. "Yogi Charles, third row, turban," said line two. I had already spotted the white Hindu turban. Charles appeared to be authentic, that is, a real yogi, if dress and complexion were any evidence.

  "Yogi Charles?" I whispered, squinting my eyes in disbelief.

  Zena smiled. "He's big on the local mystic scene. He came over here to go to school in the sixties, then he ran a meat market--"

  "Wait a minute. As in beef?" I asked.

  "A butcher. Can you believe it? Then he sort of came full circle. Now he has a group of followers who feed him, pay his bills, and listen to his teachings."

  "I heard him once." Melina rolled her eyes.

  A woman stood up in the front. A table draped with a white linen cloth had been strewn with fresh flowers around dozens of fat candles lit in the evening gloom. Lilacs, roses, iris, violets, and even dandelions were heaped in an orderless display that seemed to symbolize the jubilant but unorthodox life of Shiloh Merkin.

  A hush fell just as the woman began to speak a man quietly sat down in the seat next to me. I glanced at him. Crew cut, beer belly, cowboy boots. A relative perhaps?

  "We have come to remember Shiloh," the woman began. She was a statuesque woman with long gray hair pulled into an elastic band and flowing down her back. She wore a black business suit with a bright white shirt.

  "And remember her we should," the woman said, beginning a short speech about why it is important to keep the memory of someone so wonderful alive. I kept waiting for the anecdotal story, something to tell me what kind of person Shiloh was, but the woman droned on philosophically without any personal tales.

  Zena passed me the notebook. Mr. Beer Belly saw it all happen out of the corner of his beady brown eyes. I sat back so he couldn't see my face and held the notebook to one side of my lap.

  "Sylvie Kali," Zena wrote. "Holistic counselor. Same as Shiloh."

  I passed the notebook back to Zena, then whispered to Melina.

  "See anyone?" She shook her head. We listened to Ms. Kali some more, then a new speaker came forward. A short man, fortyish, receding brown hair with glasses and an inappropriate palm-tree-motif Hawaiian shirt. He opened a book and began reading a poem.

  The notebook came back. "Fred Borger, owns Feed and Read."

  Her boss, complete with loud shirt. He finished the poem and sat down, a grim look on his face.

  The smell of patchouli reached me. Memories of dorm rooms, lit by candles like the ones at the front of the Cosmic Lunch, floated back. I tried to push them aside and concentrate on the motley group of mourners before me. The task suddenly seemed comic. Imagine learning anything about a killer here! A laugh, more astonished than happy, escaped from my throat; the woman in front of me turned around and scowled. I slouched under my hat, feeling my wet coat soak through onto my back.

  What the hell--- I have to get out of here. There's been a terrible mistake. I pulled my coat closer, not realizing that my savior was approaching. A flash of metal caught my eye. I looked up to find a sheriff's badge and the big square face of Beer Belly bent down toward mine. He smelled like onions.

  "May I speak to you outside a moment?" His gravelly voice rattled in the quiet, too coarse to be called a whisper. Three women in front of us turned around. I grabbed my jacket. I felt relieved, following him out the door onto the sidewalk. The clean night air was a release.

  The man stepped out onto the sidewalk where a streetlight surrounded him in a circle of yellow.

  "What is it?" I said, feeling the pleasure of talking aloud.

  "Deputy Schaefer, Lake County sheriff's office." The man was big. Strapping, with the belly covered with a jean jacket and a western shirt.

  "Was I speeding or something?" I tried to smile. I was told to always smile at policemen. That he had ordered me out of the service had only just dawned on me. I could be the poor woman's sister for all he knew.

  "No, ma'am. I'm investigating the murder of Miss Doris Merkin." He short haircut didn't cover the rolls of skin over his ears. His voice was slow to the point of retarded. He waited, licking his lips like he wasn't waiting. Not retarded, just cagey. I waited him out. At last he got the words out. "I saw you passing names of people at this here funeral."

  "Did you?"

  "Yes, ma'am."

  The door opened, swinging out. Melina and Zena stepped onto the sidewalk. They looked at me quizzically, coming to my side, staring at the deputy with contempt.

  "This deputy saw us passing notes," I told them.

  "Is there a law against that?" Zena asked.

  The deputy blinked slowly. "No, ma'am." He shuffled his feet and put his hands in the pockets of his polyester slacks.

  "Then what's the problem?" Melina said, startling me with her authority.

  The deputy looked at us. "Didn't I see you up at Polson?"

  Melina and I looked at each other. "Aren't you relatives of the man we got charged with this woman's murder?"

  "What if we are?" Melina demanded.

  "Well, I'd appreciate knowing what you were doing here tonight. It didn't appear you were here to pay your respects."

  Melina's shoulders sagged. I picked up the ball. "We were here paying our respects. We also don't believe Wade killed her." I stepped toward the deputy. "Why were you here if you believe Wade killed her?"

  The deputy shuffled his feet again on the grainy pavement.

  "We're still looking for evidence, ma'am. It is against the law to withhold evidence in a capital case."

  "What makes you think we have any evidence?"

  His eyes bulged in his haggard face. His cowboy hat, which had been tucked under his arm, emerged and he put it on. "Nothing, nothing. But if you do you'll call me, won't you?" He pulled a business card from hi
s jacket and scribbled on the back of the card, handing it to me. The card read, "FLATHEAD MOTORS, Quality Used Cars. For deals on wheels see Vern." On the back he had written his name -- Lowell Schaefer -- and a phone number.

  "Nice meeting you ladies," the deputy said, half-turning to go. He straightened the gray cowboy hat on his head.

  "Lowell," I called. He stopped and turned, a look of surprise at hearing his given name. "Lowell, if you get any evidence, will you call us?"

  The deputy smiled, or tried to. "Well, now, I can't promise that." He tilted his head so that the yellow streetlight angled across his features. "I would recommend however that you ladies let the professionals take care of criminal cases. Just don't worry yourselves."

  "Don't worry our little selves?" Melina blurted out. "When my husband is sitting-rotting!-in jail for a crime he didn't commit?"

  The deputy took a step backward, away from us, as he could see the conversation was going nowhere he wanted to go. "We'll do our very best, ma'am. I promise you that."

  "It better be good enough!" Mel hollered. "The life of a good man is at stake!" She took two quick steps toward him, her fist raised in anger, but almost as if cheering the deputy on, putting the fear of God in him. He turned, stumbled, and walked quickly into the wet night.

  We were still laughing as we climbed the porch steps on Blaine Street. At least Zena and I were; Melina fumed, too incensed to see the humor in her attack on Lowell, the lowly deputy. She put on hot water for tea as Zena and I took off our wet things. Zena wrapped herself in a wool throw. Melina's house, once the picture of Scandinavian order, was strewn with papers, books, dead flowers in vases, old popcorn on the floor.

  "We didn't get to see too many people, did we?" I said, flopping onto the Indian bedspread that covered the couch. "I mean, the potential ones."

  "I did," Zena said. "Who do you want to know about?"

  "Well, how about Shiloh? What was she like?"

  Melina came in with a blue earthenware teapot and cups on a tray. I cleared a space on the coffee table. Zena took a cup into her lap, warming her hands. "Shiloh was different. You were curious about her,

  you know, just from looking at her," she said.

  "What did she look like?"

  "Shoulder-length curly hair, always ratty and unkempt. She dressed real plain, nothing to remember but her face held you. Not that she was pretty. Striking maybe. A big face with a long thin nose. Her eyes were small and kind of speckled."

  "Was she a big woman?"

  "Average, I guess. Solid." Zena sipped the tea. Melina had settled onto the couch beside me, calming herself with the steaming beverage.

  "What about her personality? What was she like?"

  "Very intense. She was usually caught up in this or that movement." Zena frowned.

  "Did she try to get you to join a movement?"

  "Oh, sure. She'd bring in posters to put in the window every so often. And she'd make a point of asking me to come. She always made you feel like she was asking you personally, like she really wanted you to come." She shook her head. "But I also got the feeling she just wanted lots of people to come to her thing, whatever it happened to be this month, to, like, rationalize her zeal. To lay to rest any doubts she might have herself about this latest guru."

  "Like if enough people came to her meeting it was the real thing?" I asked. "The guru with all the answers?"

  Zena nodded, pensive. Shiloh hadn't found the answer to life's dilemma, to its meaning, to the questions of the spirit and the soul, I guessed. Dying, she still searched for it. I shivered, thinking of her cold body in the woods alone. For her sake, I hope she found whatever it was that would comfort her.

  "I know it's hard right after her memorial service but I need to ask you, Zena," I said. "Did you like Shiloh?"

  Zena's dark eyes grew wide in her pale face. "What do you mean? You don't think I--?" Her hand flew to her throat.

  "No, no," I stammered. "I'm sorry. I just wanted a personal reaction to her. Someone who knew her."

  Her tenseness eased a little as her eyes darted to my face and away. She seemed to only half-believe that I wasn't accusing her. Finally she sighed. "She was friendly. She always talked to me at the store." Her voice was reserved, cautious. She fiddled with fringe on the throw. "But underneath she seemed cold, calculating. I don't think she really liked me, she was just nice to me because there was something to be gained in being nice to me." She paused, thinking. "And anxious."

  "Anxious?"

  Zena knitted her eyebrows together and closed her eyes. "She was tense, high-strung. Always moving around, almost jumpy. It made me nervous to be around her for very long."

  "What about Manitou Matrix, this women's group?"

  She shifted in the chair, letting the wool throw fall from her thin shoulders. "I don't know much about them. They had a meeting last summer up on the reservation. I think they're from back East somewhere."

  "Is there someone you know that might know more about them? Someone you could ask?"

  Zena set her empty cup on the table, nudging aside the popcorn bowl "I could ask Sylvie. She's the one who was giving the talk tonight. With the gray hair."

  "The counselor?"

  "Right."

  "Would you do that for me, Zena?" She nodded, shrugging her shoulders. "What is a holistic counselor anyway?"

  "Oh, they counsel people with problems-emotional, family, relationship problems. Just like a psychologist, I guess, but they aren't maybe as well trained. Sylvie is, but I'm not sure Shiloh really had any formal training."

  Melina cleared her throat. "She was an anthropology student."

  We jerked our heads toward her; she had been so quiet we had almost forgotten she was there.

  "She was?" I asked. Melina nodded, staring at her tea. She was slumped on the sofa, her glasses spotted by the rain. Was that the connection between Shiloh and Wade? I turned back to Zena. "So how does a holistic counselor differ from a psychologist then?"

  Zena looked a little sheepish and leaned forward. "To tell you the truth I think they're quacks. But don't say I said so at the bookstore!"

  She laughed nervously. "People down there are into dreams and astrology and numerology and parapsychology and crystals, all sorts of stuff. Whatever the latest trend is, you know? Of course we sell all sorts of books and have all kinds of customers. But still there's that image."

  The phone rang; Melina went to answer it. She called me to the kitchen, handing me the receiver. She looked mortally tired.

  "Go to bed, Mel," I said, my hand over the mouthpiece. She nodded and rejoined Zena in the living room. "This is Alix," I said into the phone.

  "Hi." It was Paolo. His sensual voice sent a surge of pleasure through me that I tried to ignore.

  "Hi, yourself. What's up?"

  "Not too much. The gallery's still standing. No fires or earthquakes." He was making fun of the long list of instructions I had left him with: insurance agent's name and number, police, fire, plumber, electrician. I guess I was a little nervous leaving him on his own. Hearing his confident Spanish drawl made me feel silly about all that.

  "Good. Sell anything today?" This was our standard greeting, worn into familiarity over the years. It was more a way of connecting than caring about what sold.

  "Um, let's see. The print of the girl in the Cadillac. That's all."

  "I'm sorry to see that one leave. It was one of my favorites."

  "As soon as you left I called up this fellow I know who wanted it. I told him it was safe to come in now and buy it." He laughed. "So here's why I called. This woman came in today, a tourist. She wants you to look into a painting she wants to buy."

  "What is it?"

  "Ah, let me look at my note. Jackson Pollock."

  "Pollock?" I assumed all Pollocks were in museums and big collections. He was too big for even the wealthy tourists.

  "She said this guy in Florida wants to sell it. From 1952. Isn't that the drippy stuff?"

  "Uh-huh.
Listen, Paolo, do you think you could handle this for me? I've got my hands full up here." I paused. "Did you hear about Wade?"

  "It was in the paper. I was pretty sure that was your sister's Wade." He paused. "Listen, I'll do the research. But you got to call her. She wants you. She was really specific about that." He paused, then let out a little chuckle. "She says she heard you are the best. You never let an old biddy make a fool of herself."

  "She didn't say that." I heard the door open and close in the other room; Melina came to the door of the kitchen, leaning against the frame wearily. I smiled at him trying to cheer her up. "What's this woman's name then?"

  "Charlotte Vardis. She gave me a phone number too." He rattled off a Jackson number. "I'll do some digging and call you back tomorrow."

  "Look above my desk there. And call Wanda Gilley at the Museum of Modern Art. Her number's in my Rolodex." Melina looked pale suddenly and stood up straight, her mouth trembling. "I've got to call the FBI anyway so I'll handle that. I've got to go, Paolo."

  "One more thing."

  "What?"

  "It's Valkyrie," he said. Valkyrie was my pet horse, a high- spirited mare I pastured out in Wilson. I called her my pet horse because I rarely rode her except bareback a few times each summer. Tack -- saddles, bridles-- was too expensive.

  "What about her?"

  "She's missing. J.J. called this morning."

  "She broke out?" Sometimes I felt like a jailer, keeping my wild horse in barbed wire.

  "Seems to be. J.J. called the sheriff so he's keeping an eye out for her."

  "Okay, let me know when they find her." I sighed.

  "Okay, kiddo. Mañana."

  "Adios."

  Melina's eyes were round as she stared at me.

  "What is it? Mel? Are you sick?" I took a step toward her, expecting her to faint or throw up. "What is it?"