The Bluejay Shaman (Alix Thorssen Mystery Series)

by Lise McClendon

  He may have smiled, as I did, at Chief Cliff in the distance. He would pass it going up to the lake, rounding the western side, his favorite part of the lake, the part without all the people. I turned off into the Big Draw before I reached Chief Cliff, an Indian-head promontory, searching for the strange and mysterious ladies of the Manitou Matrix.

  The nervous restlessness that plagued me in Missoula after the discovery of the body of the woman had been calmed a little by the hum of the tires. Yes, their rubber said, your life is going somewhere. There are answers to your questions. When I strained to hear the song, it played in a minor key, all sorrow and finality and dread.

  After the shakes had subsided and the policeman had made me calm myself to answer his questions, I wanted nothing more than to get out of there. I told Knox of speaking to her on the telephone two days ago. She had been a client. No, I'd never met her face-to-face.

  Knox seemed to believe me. He wrote it all down. The detective told me they might have more questions but he didn't say anything about leaving town. I paced the floor for a good fifteen minutes before grabbing my backpack and lighting out for the hills.

  The wind had been blowing through the Little Bitterroot River site of Tin-Tin's camp when I arrived, caressing the drying grass, making it crackle and dance. Her tepee was gone now I was surprised to see; I had questions. I moved on, asking at a gas station at Niarda where the women were camped, then turning back for a few miles to look for

  a sign nailed to a tree.

  The conclave had moved to an old ranch nestled against the high walls of rock that cradled the Big Draw. Spreading below it, vast prairies of gold and green pasture were dotted with cattle and horses in the distance. A barbed wire fence ran along the dirt road leading to a field crowded with vehicles. Behind the weathered board-and-batten ranch house, in a pasture, the tepees sat. They had been set up in two large circles, about eight or twelve to a ring. I looked for Tin-Tin's gaily painted tepee, but couldn't see it from the parking area.

  Rows of picnic tables filled the lawn in front of the house. Behind the outbuildings a rocky slope arched up in buff colored sandstone dotted with junipers and pines until it flattened out some 150 feet above the valley floor.

  I found Tin-Tin in the second circle of tepees, holding court in front of her painted tent. A cluster of ten or twelve women gathered around her as she demonstrated a beading technique on a scrap of leather. She speared a tiny bead with a needle, then stabbed the leather, showing the women how to keep the spacing tight to make a better

  design.

  Waiting, I watched the women, recognizing a few from the last time. I still wondered about them; I couldn't help myself. Would I travel across the continent to spend my vacation sleeping in a cramped tent without mosquito netting, eating on the ground? The women of Manitou Matrix appeared to be enjoying themselves. They smiled, nudged each other, giggled, looked intense, gazed reverently at Tin-Tin, leaning toward her low, clipped monotone.

  The sun was hot and there was no shade. On the way back to my car I saw Moody emerge from the ranch house with two women. I heard their voices before reaching the gate.

  One was yelling. "You know Orianna won't stand for it."

  Moody moved hesitantly down the walk in front of the women. He had changed to a different T-shirt but wore the same dirty Stetson and worn jeans. As they approached I realized the women were identical twins; both wore outrageously fake glossy black wigs with fat braids hanging past their shoulders. Both were built like bruisers. One wore leather leggings; the other, a tight green T-shirt that stretched across her lumpy torso, proclaiming "Grateful Dead, Dead on the Rocks, 1986."

  "I never passed any notes." Moody turned toward them. He acknowledged me quickly with his eyes, then shifted his attention back to the twins.

  "You pass them out every afternoon," the twin with leggings said. "We saw you yesterday."

  "The sage bundles? Those are for the sweathouse. I give them out so we have the right number for the sweat."

  "I don't care what you call them," the Dead fan said. "Orianna says you're undermining her authority. Saying things about her. Saying things about Shiloh."

  Moody stopped, his jaw slack. The twins moved around him, then called back, "Don't forget: seven o'clock in Orianna's office."

  We stared at their backs as they headed toward the tepee rings. Moody roused himself to walk toward me at the end of thewooden boardwalk. His eyes were clouded, his face stunned.

  "Who are they?"

  "Coupla wannabes," he said bitterly. Then a chuckle. "Can you believe it? Twins?" He shook his head as I raised my eyebrows in wonder. "Call themselves Silver Bear and Thunder Woman. Sometimes I call them Silver Ware and Wonder Woman just to watch them get mad."

  At least he had a sense of humor about it. The women were lost now in the milling groups in the tepee circles.

  "What's their problem?"

  His face darkened again; a cheek twitched. "All I been getting is a hard time." He started walking around the tepees, toward the cliffs that ringed the valley. I fell into step beside him. "They asked me to conduct sweats. There is a proper and respectful way to do it. They don't want to do it that way. They want to make money conducting sweats."

  He shook his head angrily.

  We walked a ways parallel to the sandstone rimrock, coming to a tiny creek and following along it. He continued, "Now they get mad about sage bundles. They think I'm passing notes about them. These women are loco." We stepped across the creek on a rock, walking down the opposite bank. "I'm doing this sweat tonight, then that's it."

  "Going home?"

  ''I'm calling my brother soon as I get the fire started." We came to a clearing where the creek bent sharply, deepening at the bend and creating a small pool two or three feet deep. An igloo-shape sweathouse sat on the far side, covered with quilts and bedspreads like Tilden's but newer and tidier. The dirt around it was compressed with footprints.

  I sat on the bank to look for fish in the little pool while Moody stirred the ashes of yesterday's blaze and carefully constructed the new fire. The cool grass of the prairie, gnawed low to the ground by cattle, soothed me. Being in the backwoods, away from Civilization, always did. Then, without warning, the woman in the Mercedes flashed

  before me again. She haunted me. Charlotte Vardis. I shivered, turning my thoughts to the reason I had come.

  "I came to ask Tin•Tin about the bluejay shaman," I blurted out. At once, from the cautiously pained look on Moody's face, I realized this was not the thing to say. Or the way to say it.

  "So ask her," he said, uncharacteristically blunt. But my statement was also blunt.

  I swung my feet away from the creek bank and faced the fire beginning: to smoke and flame under the logs. "Another woman was killed," I said shortly.

  Moody jerked his head up, questioning me with his dark eyes. "When?"

  "Yesterday." I told him how I had found her in the car in front of my house. "Have you ever heard of her--Charlotte Vardis?"

  Moody sat back in the dirt, poking his fire with a stick. "I don't think so. Who was she?"

  "Some rich lady. From Oklahoma, I guess. I talked to her on the phone a couple of days ago about a painting she wanted to buy. I thought she was in Jackson. Now she turns up dead on my doorstep."

  Moody frowned. "You didn't know her then?"

  I shook my head. I wished Paolo had been in the gallery when I called before taking off this morning. I wanted to find out what he knew about her. He would get my message and call. A murder was not something to announce to a machine.

  Moody set his rocks in the center of the fire to let them heat up as the logs burned down into coals. He led me back to his tepee where we ate a spare lunch of elk jerky and apples. He scowled through the meal, lowering his eyes if any of the women came by. After lunch he went to call his brother to fetch him home.

  Across the tepee ring, Tin-Tin washed her bowl in a pan of soapy water. As I approached she looked up and smiled a
t me, tired, I thought. "Melina's sister. Alix, is it?" She stood, wiping her hands then grasping mine. The fatigue in her eyes was confirmed as she sagged onto the log seat. How old did Wade say she was? Late seventies, I

  thought.

  "How are you, Tin-Tin?" I found a grassy spot to sit on, cross-legged. "Good, good," she murmured, wiping out her bowl with her apron. "And how is Buffalo Tears?"

  "Still in jail." She nodded, distracted. "I've come to ask you about something. It's important to Wade. " She set down her clean bowl on a towel in the grass and turned toward me, a spark of concern in her old eyes. "It has to do with something called a bluejay pictograph. Do you know a rock carving or painting called that?"

  The old woman paused, running her fingers down the pencil-thin gray braids that hung from the purple kerchief on her head. Her lips moved, as if in preparation to speak. Then at last she did: "Bluejay, I know. Pictograph, no." I waited for her to elaborate, hoping I wasn't treading on sensitive ground. This was serious business for Wade, for

  Charlotte Vardis, and for whoever killed Shiloh.

  "The bluejay shaman is what the whites call a medicine man. He is a holy man to the Salish," she said, pausing to look at me. "But I do not know of a rock drawing called bluejay."

  "Do you remember anyone else asking about a bluejay pictograph?"

  Tin-Tin rose, brushing off her apron. She searched the sky, watching three ducks fly overhead, quacking their travel song. Her dark eyes flickered. "I am so tired."

  I rose, knowing I shouldn't push her. But as she paused before entering her tepee I gave it one more shot. "Has anyone mentioned a bluejay drawing, a rock drawing or carving, to you before? Orianna? Anyone?"

  The sun baked down. I could feel my nose start to burn. She reached down for the flap. "Not Orianna," she said. "Little Cricket."

  16

  THE CANVAS FLAP fell behind her. It floated in the breeze of Tin-Tin's passing into the tepee. Little Cricket? Who in God's name?

  The tepee ring was quiet. A few women sat on rocks, working on needlework in their laps. They must have been sweltering in the afternoon heat, in their long skirts and leathers, but they seemed quite serene, talking low and plying their needles. I wiped my sweaty palms on Melina's shorts, feeling out of place suddenly. The terrible morning. Now the heat. Who was Little Cricket? Think, girl, think.

  The earth hardened under the summer sun. The grasses turned to straw. I wandered, trying to get my mind to remember where I had heard the name. At the ranch house I stopped, spun on my heel, and began to run toward the creek.

  The dry stalks cut my bare legs; I was glad I had put on tennis shoes. My breath came hot, hotter than this scorching day. I reached the creek, turning my ankle in a hole, catching myself, and running on. The clearing was empty. The fire had burned low, the coals gray now and barely smoking. The rocks Moody had placed there were

  gone. The sweathouse sat on its haunches by the willows, silent. I felt desperate suddenly: Where was he? He who was called Little Cricket. I put my hand on my damp forehead and moaned.

  He came through the brush by the creek with a beat-up aluminum saucepan in his hand. When he saw me he started, sloshing the water. His eyes rounded for an instant, then he composed himself, walked to the sweathouse.

  "Come back for a sweat?" Moody bent down, pulled back the flap, and poured the water over the rocks inside. They sizzled and hissed as the steam began to pour out the door. He lowered the flap and stood with his empty pan.

  "This day is hot enough."

  He looked solemn, troubled. His run-in with the twins had taken its toll. I couldn't help feeling he was naive to come to an all-women's conclave and expect to be revered for his special knowledge. Women could be as cruel as men. Whatever back-biting they might do against each other, they would take their frustrations out doubly on the only male present. Especially a male who held secrets they wished for themselves.

  Secrets. I dabbed my damp cheek on my bare shoulder. "Can I talk to you a minute? Let's go sit in the shade." He set his pan down by the fire, following me to the creek, a spot of shade near willow bushes. The grass was cool there.

  I splashed some water on my arms, rubbing up and down. Moody sat down, staring at the sandstone bluffs that radiated heat. "The woman who was killed?" I said. He glanced at me, then picked a blade of grass and examined it. "I told you her name was Charlotte Vardis."

  He nodded.

  "She was looking for something called a bluejay pictograph." I watched his reaction: a blink, a tightening, that was all. "You asked Tin-Tin about it for her, didn't you?"

  He looked at me, hurt at the accusation. "No! I never heard of her! I told you."

  "Then why did you ask Tin-Tin about a bluejay pictograph?"

  His jaw tensed. He looked away, toward the tepees that we could see the tops of in the distance. He murmured something.

  "What?"

  He fiddled with the grass. "For somebody else." I waited for him to tell me. My arms had dried; I was hot again.

  At last he spoke: "For Shiloh."

  I blinked. "Shiloh?" Moody didn't move. "When?"

  "Couple months ago. Didn't do no good though, Tin-Tin didn't know nothing about it." Moody tossed the grass into the little creek.

  "You knew Shiloh?" Then I remembered he had told Orianna that the first day. Shiloh had asked him to do the sweats.

  "I went to a workshop about crystals, the powers, healing crystals. In the back of a bar in Missoula. In the spring. Orianna was giving it. That was when I met Shiloh." He sighed. "She was nice to me then."

  I looked at his smooth brown face in profile. "Did that change?"

  "After I told her I'd do the sweats she asked me about that bluejay thing. A painting on a rock, she said. So I asked Tin•Tin. But she never heard of it. And Shiloh never was very nice after that." He sighed, his heavy eyelids turning toward the sandstone cliffs again. Waves of heat distorted the blueness of the sky above them.

  "Moody, what did you think about Shiloh?" I asked.

  He laughed, a sudden, half-hearted sound. "I wanted to like her. She had some goodness in her heart. Or so I thought at first. I am looking for pathways. So was Shiloh. Ways to live. The right road. But it come to me that Shiloh was more interested in ol' number one. You know what I mean?"

  I nodded.

  "I saw her playing these different women off each other. Flattering one in front of the other. Telling one that Orianna thought she could be a leader. Then she would turn around and tell the other that the first one had the brains of a cow."

  "Did she have a particular friend in the group?"

  "A friend? Orianna, I guess. But not really. Maybe those twins, Silverware and Wonder Woman."

  "I mean a particular friend. A lover."

  He jerked his head toward me, searching my face with his dark eyes. "Shiloh?" I let him think. "I don't know. There's lots of that going on here. But I never think of it, you know. I'm just ... I just don't think of that."

  Think about it. Keep your eyes and ears open. As I left Moody with this admonition, I knew it was too late. Shiloh had been dead a week already. Her trail was getting cold. Whoever had loved her would have been at the memorial service. Many had cried for her. I turned over my image of Elaine again and heard her words: "You don't know how much I loved her."

  It seemed obvious that they were lovers. They lived together. And yet they seemed so dissimilar. Elaine, soft and weepy. Shiloh, tough and calculating, climbing her way to the top of the metaphysical heap. Shiloh might have used Elaine, but did she love her?

  The hills had turned even more gold since my morning drive onto the reservation. I drove the Saab toward the confluence of the two rivers, toward Missoula. The gaping hole that had held the radio made me sad. I wondered if I would ever know who had stolen my car.

  So many questions without answers. And now another murder. I hoped Mendez had run Charlotte Vardis through the computer. I would call him when I got back. I had to find out what the bluej
ay pictograph was. Calls to some of my museum and gallery buddies were in order.

  It was late afternoon. The leaves on the cottonwood trees fluttered in the white sunshine. I pulled onto Blaine Street feeling the exhaustion the heat had brought on. A hot wind blew into the car windows. I drove slowly down the block, a headache growing in the back of my skull.

  Two squad cars sat in front of the blue bungalow with the burnt grass. The Mercedes was gone. I didn't feel like talking to the cops now. My head hurt. I'd told them everything. After I parked, I pulled a hose from the bushes and stretched it to the middle of the lawn, set down the sprinkler end, and went to turn on the faucet by the porch. It squealed against my hand as the water rushed through, making an arc of silver spray in the dry air. It would take a flood to get this grass looking green again. I stood there for a moment, half in the bushes, with my hand on the cool faucet.

  "Alix!" The voice, a hoarse whisper, came from the porch. "Come up here."

  Melina gripped the porch railing. She frowned at me, tipping her head toward the steps. I trudged up, expecting her to tell me to forget about watering the lawn, that they couldn't afford the water now.

  "The police are here," she whispered, glancing toward the door. "They want to talk to you."

  I frowned. She didn't need to get so overwrought about this. She had bigger worries. Let her worry about Wade. "I already told them everything. I don't see-"

  The front door opened. Knox stepped out, moving rather quickly for a man his size. His raw face was serious, pinched. He cleared his throat. "Can we talk to you inside, please, Miss Thorssen?"