The Bluejay Shaman (Alix Thorssen Mystery Series)

by Lise McClendon

  At the desk I opened the drawers once more. The pencil drawer with its ancient history of simpler times: I nudged the buttons and pencils around, trying to make sense of it. The envelope with receipts-- that might mean something. I pulled them out, careful to keep their order intact.

  The slender stubs of restaurant checks lay in an untidy pile, varying in size from an inch across to four or five inches. Waitresses usually just handed these out and let you fill in whatever you wanted. Handy if you were into defrauding the IRS or your neighborhood bureaucracy. The dates began in January and moved through the months until June. I pulled my notebook from my pocket and scribbled down dates and places on the June ones.

  Tilden had said he was in Seattle for a conference at the time of Shiloh's murder. I turned over the receipts until I found the Seattle ones. A professional meeting, he said, so he would be writing them off on his taxes. And there they were, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, from June 19 to June 23. Then there was nothing. The last receipt was for dinner at a bagel house near the University of Washington on the 23rd.

  My notebook said he returned two nights after Shiloh's death. I consulted my chronology of dated notes. Shiloh died on Saturday night, the same day her boxes were to be moved into storage. Saturday was the 24th.

  Tilden had lied. He left Seattle on the 23rd, in the evening, or early the next morning. But this was only proof he left Seattle, not that he had come back to Missoula. Maybe he had driven straight back to the hills by the Little Bitterroot River and confronted her.

  Or perhaps he just quit keeping his receipts? I stifled a moan.

  This was nothing. I put the receipts back in the envelope and into the drawer, then rifled through the other drawers again. I had to concentrate not to slam the drawers in frustration.

  "Anything?" I asked my sister again. Same answer. Leaning back in the chair I wondered where I hadn't looked for the key. I had felt the bottoms of all the drawers, a likely hiding spot. Time didn't allow me to open every book. Would he tape the key into one? I stood and scanned them again.

  Tilden was clever. Which book then? I looked for "Key" in the titles to no avail. Then "Lock." Then "Drawer," then "Bluejay," then "Shaman." There weren't any books until "Shaman," and no keys were hidden in those.

  Melina pushed in the top drawer of the file cabinet, wincing as it screeched on its track and thudded shut. She turned to me as I stared at the books, willing them to tell me their secrets. "No luck with the key?"

  I shook my head, disgusted with this whole caper. I knew very little more than when we broke into this office, and nothing that would link Tilden to Shiloh or Charlotte Vardis. Nothing about the bluejay shaman, no stolen library books or monographs or microfiche. Nothing really at all except the fact that he left Seattle on the 23rd of June. Maybe.

  Melina seemed calm now, giving me a supportive half smile, half-frown and squeezing my arm in sympathy at my scowling expression. We were close. I knew it. But no progress was being made here and now.

  "Look at this." Mel knelt in front of the bookshelves and touched a row of identical books, all volumes of an old set, North American Indian, by Edward S. Curtis. "These are worth a fortune. I didn't know he had a set," she said, glancing up at me with her eyes rounded. "Old photographs from about the turn of the century. These should be in the library." She pulled out a volume and delicately turned the pages to a black-and-white photograph of a medicine man posing on the prairie, fierce and proud. She sat back on her heels as if she intended to stay awhile.

  "Mel, let's get out of here," I whispered impatiently. "We're not getting anywhere."

  "Just wait. The pictures are incredible. I've never seen them except reproductions in magazines." She looked up again. "Pick one. You might find something interesting."

  I sighed and sat down hard on the soft carpet. Glancing down the row of volumes at the flaking pressed-gold lettering on the bindings, I found volume 9, Salishan Tribes of the Coast, and slipped it out. It was heavy, like an encyclopedia, though rather thin. On the inside cover was printed "University of Montana Library."

  "Look at this." I showed Mel the imprint. She frowned and went back to her book. From the volume I expected little. The Bitterroot Salish were not coastal. I was beginning to think they were rather marginal culturally. But Wade had made his career studying them; so had Tilden.

  As I suspected, the volume did not cover the Bitterroot Salish, aka Flathead, only the Chemakurn, Quilleute, and Willapa, with some on the Klallam tribes. The photos were impressive, evoking a proud past full of potlatch, slaves, and seafaring canoes: days that were far, far gone. They made me sad to look at them, the Indians in the simple

  poverty and grandeur of well-made survival and glorious ceremony.

  Putting it away, I noticed that volume 10, next to it, was a fat one. It appeared well-fingered; its binding was fraying on the top. The book slipped easily off the shelf despite its heft, and as I cracked it open the binding leather pulled away from the gummed ends of the pages. Looking down the tunnel the loose binding made, I could see the key taped to the lower end. "Mel," I whispered, as I felt it there, its cold, hard neck under the cellophane. "I found it."

  20

  AS I SAT in the Saab Sister with the flashlight and the copies we had pilfered from Tilden's office, the exhilaration of the escape was still on me. The thrill of discovery, coupled with the frantic tidying up and fleeing the building: It still tingled in my legs well into the night. I tried to calm myself with deep breaths of midnight air, well aware that this little caper, though important, was no more than a minor piece of a larger and more deadly puzzle.

  We had found the archival documents, the ones that were missing from the University Library, in the locked desk drawer-- microfilm rolled in a small box; monographs from old journals, copied off in duplicate (we had availed ourselves of one of these) and several slim volumes dealing with Salish spirituality, religious rituals, and shamans.

  I scanned the books quickly in his office, my head spinning suddenly with our precarious situation now that the goods were in my sweating hands. They mentioned different aspects of the bluejay shaman and his ritual dance. But the copied monograph, a scholarly paper, that I held in my hand in the car told the whole story. The fact that Tilden had chosen it for duplication seemed important. It had been published in 1932 by a man who taught at the University of Montana, a Seymour S. Smith.

  Elaine and Shiloh's cottage, its peach face gleaming in the yellow gold of the full moon ascending in the eastern sky, was dark. The entire street was dark, silent except for the occasional dog bark. The Saab was parked under a huge old elm tree whose leaves were being stripped to their skeleton by some disease or insect, leaving it transparent and ghostlike.

  I flipped off the flashlight and slipped it back in my pocket. I'd been reading this monographs since nine; it was now close to one and I had it memorized. Key words popped into my head in the blankness of the view out the windshield down the shadowy street: "quasquay," the shaman, who spent three days of purification in the sweathouse praying to his personal medicine or "sumesh," his guardian animal; no whiteman's clothes, no shoes, no non-Salish jewelry or adornments were allowed in the medicine lodge, a long hall formed by joining a row of tepees together; and the dance itself, regular hops to music of deer hooves strung onto leather thongs for rattles and a vocal chant. No drums or flutes allowed. The shaman, dressed in breechclout, face blackened with charcoal.

  The frenzy of night after night with no sleep, the tribespeople and the quasquays dancing on and on down the rows. Then sickness could be cured. The bad medicine caused by a hostile quasquay could be extricated, for a price. The fee must be good. The shaman could also avenge some wrong done to a tribal member. The payment must make

  the revenge worthwhile; if the ceremony didn't work, the quasquay might die himself.

  I could hear the chanting in my head, rhythmic footfalls of the shaman padding up and down the dirt paths between the seated tribesmen, moccasins hitti
ng the ground. My eyelids felt heavy.

  O'Brian's voice on the phone came back; yes, he would try to find out the dates of Tilden's travel to and from Seattle. Then Paolo's lilting laugh: Valkyrie the wandering pony had been causing havoc in the Elk Refuge. She would allow no one to catch her and the rangers were furious. I rubbed my eyes, struggling to stay alert.

  I turned on the flashlight again and scanned through the copied monograph once more for a mention of a drawing, a carving, a painting, a pictograph. Again, nothing. I thought of going home. I couldn't have gotten more than a couple of hours sleep last night. My head rested on the back of the seat. Fatigue screamed through my brain, a physical pain, a gunshot of exhaustion. Then a light came on in the upstairs bedroom.

  A frisson of excitement left from earlier tingled up my spine. I hunched over the steering wheel as the light went off upstairs, then on downstairs. Finally the outside light came on. I sank down in my seat until I could barely see over the dashboard. Elaine backed her car out of the driveway and drove away. When she was a block away I started my engine, cursing the choke but getting it going while keeping my eye on Elaine's taillights. I pulled away from the curb with my lights off but turned them on as the Saab joined the traffic lane.

  Even with the moon the night was too dark under the canopy of elm trees, ghostly thin or not, to drive without lights. Elaine's vehicle was an ancient Valiant, turquoise, about a 1964 vintage. I made a silent blessing that her car was older than mine; it improved my chances for keeping up. I kept a block back as we turned onto Higgins into the pink mercury lights of downtown. The Valiant stopped at a red light at Main and Higgins. An ornate, buff-colored sandstone bank dominated the intersection with its fancy mosquelike turret.

  I stepped on the brake. The light on my block was still green. I glanced in my rearview mirror and to both sides; no one else was around, so I pretended it was red. The day's heat had dissipated from the of the wide street, leaving serene the refitted head shops and record stores that now served as coffee bars and herb emporiums. Elaine pulled away at her intersection; now my light shone red. I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel, watching her point south, toward the bridge that spanned the river, toward the Bitterroot Mountains.

  When she was two blocks away I ran the light. The street was still deserted. I said another blessing. It occurred to me I was getting downright religious. I smiled to myself and decided it was appropriate on this gig. We were all getting spiritual.

  By the time we wound through town, out Stephens Street and down to Brooks, past the new mall and old Fort Missoula, and met up with the Bitterroot River, by the time Lolo Peak gleamed in the moonlight, I was beginning to wish there was more traffic. A car passed us now and then going into town, its headlights a blur. But we cruised along, alone, as fast as our old jalopies would roll, fifty-five miles per hour, solitary on the blacktop, toward the mountains.

  Elaine increased her lead. There was no sense in being seen or suspected with the wide open road and a full measure of moonlight to guide me. Flares of red from her brake lights shone bright, then dimmed as she turned right on the Lolo Pass Road, Highway 12. I eased around the corner after her.

  The road narrowed. No more shoulders, just a white line. We passed the turnoff to Fort Fizzle on the right. Another unsuccessful army venture. Talk about a premonition of failure. The road wound through the gradually rising terrain, grassy by the highway but soon becoming tree-covered up the slopes. The gray ribbon was cut extra long here, necessitating many twists and turns.

  The blue light from the moon gave the landscape an eerie otherworldliness. Lola Peak was out the left window now, a beacon, an ancient silent grandfather with a toupee of white hair. I was admiring the mountain's massive beauty when Elaine turned her Valiant onto a dirt road near the crest of the hill like a black beetle, it bounced across the plateau of grass and sage, heading toward the forest. I slowed the Saab, watching her car bump and twist over the rutted road, sending up streamers of dust that glowed in the red of her taillights. Almost at the top I slowed more, just crawling along, waiting for her to enter the woods so I could turn off the highway.

  The Valiant stopped. It lurched violently, as if it had fallen in a huge pothole, then bounced on its ancient springs, rocking back and forth. Realizing it was stopping. I steered the Saab off the road and cut the lights and engine. With the moon shining in my back window now, I slumped awkwardly, trying to see what Elaine would do next.

  The interior dome light of the Valiant turned on for a moment, then went out. Then all the lights went out, and she must have turned off the car. The dome light blinked again as she opened her door and got out. I could see her lean back into the car, then push the door shut. Darkness. Then a tiny spot of light.

  Ten minutes passed as I watched her fade into the forest, the beam of the flashlight bobbing dimmer and dimmer across the grass and into the trees. It disappeared and I waited longer, letting her get away. There was no telling whether I would ever find her in the thick forest. But I had come this far; I had no intention of going back empty-handed.

  At last the Saab Sister made the turn onto the dirt road at the hill's crest. The headlights were off but at slow speed with moonlight the going was not difficult. The Valiant listed off the primitive road with its nose in a ditch. I circled around it and found a side road that led down the hill into a thicket of bushes.

  Bounding back up the hill, I was awake now, adrenaline pumping, scrambling for what was left of my good name. The stars shone dimly, outdone again by the moon. The still, fragrant air reminded me of home: pine needles underfoot, sagebrush releasing its heady perfume as I pushed by it. But how would I find her? I clenched my teeth, running back to her Valiant, ready to track her on my hands and knees if necessary.

  With my hand on the car handle, I listened for a sign. An owl hooted, lonely and distant. My chest heaved with the run. Pushing the button on the handle, I was relieved when it opened, swinging out fast with the awkward angle of the car.

  The Valiant's interior was spotless, at least in the front seat. The backseat was apparently where Elaine, a visiting nurse, kept her medical supplies in boxes stacked two feet high. Bandages, bedpans, catheter tubing, all sorted and categorized. The bumpy drive had jostled them some, a few lay on the floor. A box of surgical gloves was spilled.

  I slipped behind the wheel, running my hand over the dashboard and under the front seats. Elaine kept her car very clean, like a little old lady who only drove it on Sundays. The glove box opened easily, the door dropping down with a thud. A stack of papers, insurance cards, the warranty booklet, copies of repairs done to the car. And I thought only Porsche owners kept their repair records. I shoved them all back in the glove box.

  Did she have a map? Not among the medical supplies. Searching there would take too much time. I sat back with my hands on the steering wheel. Now where would I keep a map--if I didn't take it with me? The seat was bare, the dash was bare, the floor was bare.... As I lowered the driver's-side visor a piece of notebook paper fluttered to my lap. It had been torn in half and folded several times, the folds now flattened by the visor. I smoothed it on my thigh, straining at the penciled scribbles.

  The notation read "93 to 12, third dirt road on the right." The map itself was a series of lines that approximated the highways we had traveled: 93 out of Missoula, 12, the Lolo Pass Road; then two stubs of roads and one long road off to the right.

  I squinted out the windshield. My reflection hung there, ghostlike. My lucky hat, crushed and familial; pulled down around my lanky hair. My bangs were getting too long, poking against my eyelashes. I brushed them to one side. Did we turn on the third road? I remembered the turnoff at Fort Fizzle, then this one. Did I miss the second?

  The bottom half of the map had been torn away; Elaine must have taken it with her. I sighed. How could I find her in the dark? I folded the paper and returned it to the visor before getting out of the car.

  A breeze blew up from the valley, a warm one th
at reminded me of summer, of heat. The night sky was a velvet screen, close enough to make a person feel insignificant. Was there a reason for living on earth? A despondency clung to me--as heavy as the helplessness of the dead--as I climbed slowly to the crest of the plateau. If a rattlesnake bit me here tonight, well, that would be it. The thought calmed me: It was out of my control. I felt bolder as I lengthened my stride and reached for my flashlight in my pocket. Some things are just out there, either waiting for you or not. So the events you could control you damn well better jump on. Grab them by the teeth and make them behave. That was how I felt about Tilden and his sleazy tricks. What I wouldn't give to catch him at one tonight. At the hill's top my rage at Tilden diminished. Fear--for my future, for Melina and Wade's--filled me. Fear, rage--the alternating currents of this night. The other side of the hill dropped off sharply to a flat wetland marsh, then into gentle forest until several miles away the trees stopped in front of a high ridge of rock not unlike Chief Cliff.

  The bottom of the valley--the marsh--was shrouded in shadow. It was no bigger than a coulee, formed by the far hill and the one I stood upon. The moon hadn't risen enough to reach its depths. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness I saw the dim road that came from the highway,winding down the slope toward the marsh. I flipped off my flashlight and crouched behind a sagebrush: Two cars were parked at the bottom of the hill.

  21

  THE VALLEY WIND blew softly through the grass, kicking up dust and mouse droppings. In the moonlight the little tracks stood out in the sandy dirt behind the bush. A coyote let out a woeful howl in the mountains: The moon hung like a ripe melon in the sky.