An Unearthly Undertaking

by Constance Barker

  Chapter Six

  Murder Discovered

  The moment the plane touched down in Albuquerque, Elle got her phone out. Her fingers hovered over it and the instant flight attendant announced that it was okay to use cell phones, Elle switched hers out of airplane mode. “I have to check in,” she said self consciously. She looked at Charli out of the corner of her eyes, aware of her friend’s disapproving look. “It's the company's rule for business travel. I need to let the home office know we’ve arrived.”

  “Why?” Charli asked. “You're a big kid now, able to leave home and everything. Won’t they assume you did unless they hear about a plane crash on a news app?”

  But Elle was already scanning messages. “I was afraid of this.”

  “What now?”

  “Given that they are paying for us to come out here, they want to get their money’s worth. They’ve doubled our workload,” she sighed.

  Charli glanced at her friend’s phone. “What does that mean that they doubled the workload? Do we have to find two artifacts now? Did they discover another one missing?”

  “Not exactly. I don’t know the details, but there was a shooting not that far from here. Apparently someone we insure was shot, rather seriously.”

  “Killed?”

  “It doesn’t seem they know yet. There is some mystery involved in the shooting. The company said I should begin collecting police and medical reports.” She looked up. “Don’t worry, it’s just busy work. The police do the investigating in cases like this.”

  “So I don’t get why they want us to check that out. Don’t they have full-time agents here in New Mexico who can do the legwork while we chase after criminal Shaman?”

  “Good question.” Elle scrolled through her messages then finally paused. “Ah.”

  “Ah?”

  “I see their reasoning. The shooting was on the Navajo reservation.”

  “That’s quite a coincidence.”

  “Maybe they are connected, but there’s no way to know. The agent for the area can’t get the information they want.”

  “And we can?”

  “Apparently the high command thinks so. At least they see it as another chance to make use of your Indian secret identity. The Tribal Police has authority and they aren’t keen on our regular agent out here. Apparently he disallowed some claims recently.”

  Charli ran her hand through her black hair without thinking, then caught herself. “My Indian heritage is hardly a secret.”

  “Okay, then, call it previously masked. The point being, that the brass figure that your DNA means you’ll know the secret handshake that gets you into the clubhouse where they speak freely and say things they won’t divulge to those with paler faces.”

  Trying to imagine the situation from the Navajo point of view made Charli’s head hurt. It all sounded more complicated than Elle was making it out to be. If the tribe felt that the insurance company hadn’t been fair with them, it probably didn’t matter if the person asking was from Mars. “I suppose we can ask. Nicely.”

  Elle made a face. “And we have some homework to do. The home office sent me links to news coverage of both the artifact theft and the shooting. We need to review them in our hotel room tonight so we know more about what’s going on when we go talk to the curator tomorrow. I think we might as well get that over with before heading out to the reservation.”

  “Well, as far as I’m concerned, the homework can wait until after we shower and eat something,” Charli said. “I expect to get a decent meal first, covered by the insurance company.”

  “I can go with that plan,” Elle agreed.

  As they got their bags and caught the shuttle to get their rental car, Charli realized an interesting fact. Back in Tennessee when she was in public places, she was aware that she tended to stand out. But here, more of the people had darker skin and black hair. Welcome to the Southwestern United States of diversity, she thought. Some were Hispanic and others Indian of one sort or another. Probably some of them were a mix of the two. Used to living where there were few Indians, Charli found it interesting—refreshing. For once, she fit in better than Elle.

  When she turned her thoughts to this shooting, a chill ran through her as she remembered her dream. Although she believed Elle’s assertion that she hadn’t been hired because of her dreaming, it seemed that the dreams had something to say about that. Strange forces appeared to be at work.

  It had seemed an odd coincidence to have Elle show up and ask her to investigate something related to Southwestern Indians just when she was making her own investigation. Odd enough that a Native American artifact was stolen and it was Elle’s company that insured it. And now, once they’d arrived on the scene, more or less, right after she’d dreamed about a woman being shot in the desert, there was this shooting. Too many fragments of the dream fit far too neatly into the way this assignment was unfolding for her taste.

  But at least, as Elle said, it would be the police investigating the shooting, not them. They were just going to get the paperwork, collect the facts. But it unnerved her that in her dream the rattle and the Shaman had been in the desert along with the wounded woman. And Charli had been there too.

  Of course, she knew no details about the shooting. For all she knew, outside of her dream it might be a man who’d been shot. And he could’ve been the FedEx guy delivering something to the reservation, not an Indian at all.

  But she doubted it. The dreams were too specific about those things. Her stomach tightened at the idea that they’d learn a woman in a white blouse had been lying on the desert floor with a bullet in her head.

  Charli had gone most of her life without giving any real consideration to the fact that she was of Indian blood. It hadn’t been an important factor in her life. But once she let Elle talk her into using her dreaming to investigate a case, finding out why she had those dreams and how they manage to cross over into what she saw as the real world.

  As they got off the shuttle and Elle picked up the keys to the rental car, Charli took a deep breath of the dry, warm air of New Mexico. She’d thought she might need to come here to find answers. Now that she was here, she was determined to follow through. Not knowing why she saw things in dreams made her feel out of control, and she needed to fix that before she could figure out the rest of her life. How could she consider her future, think about teaching, think seriously about her relationship with Roger if she didn’t know what sort of journey she was on?

  So she would toughen up, face things as they came, and learn. And, if they could retrieve the rattle while they were at it, that was fine too.

  Chapter Seven

  The Artifact

  Charli’s eyes fluttered open. Bright morning sun shining in through the thin curtains of the motel room window blinded her. The light came in from the wrong side. It took a moment to realize she was in a motel in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

  She groaned and rolled onto her side. Elle’s bed was empty and she heard the shower running in the bathroom.

  It took a few minutes, but she ran through the dream in her mind, committing it to memory, noting that it held echoes of a previous dream. In that dream she’d been searching for clues to the whereabouts of a missing man, helping Elle. And there were connections, but they were hazy. Before she could pin down what the similarities were, Elle came out the bathroom in her robe. “Breakfast time, sleepyhead,” she said.

  Charli shook her head, realizing that she’d dreamed the exact same dream as the night before, when she’d dreamed about the shooting the first time—the day before it happened. “This shooting...”

  Elle looked at her. “Did you dream about it?”

  “Yeah.”

  Elle sighed. “You know we could probably write that off to the fact that we watched all those news reports last night.” They'd watched the online reports and then the local news broadcasts as well. Nothing new had emerged. “I know total emersion like that can put things in my head.”

  “The troubl
e is, I dreamed it for the first time the night before we left for New Mexico.”

  “Damn. And you didn’t tell me?”

  “I don’t tell you most of my dreams, and until yesterday I had no idea, that our little road trip would have anything to do with that dream... or vice versa, I suppose. I didn’t think the dream had anything to do with our trip.”

  “But last night you dreamed the same dream? It wasn’t just stuff from the television clips?”

  “Exactly the same dream,” she said. “It was like my brain wanted to make sure I remembered the dream and not the stuff we watched.”

  “I wonder what that means?” Elle said.

  “I have no idea,” Charli said as she got out of bed.

  “I was talking to myself,” Elle said. “I know you seldom have any idea what your dreams mean.”

  “Okay, smart-ass, but I am getting the sense that the two separate things we're investigating are less independent than we’d like. Or than the insurance company would like.”

  Elle sighed. “Then we have loads of stuff to do, I guess,” she said.

  Charli nodded. “I want to see pictures of the rattle.”

  “See if it looks like the one in your dream?”

  “Right. If it does, then in dreamland, at least, the shooting is somehow directly connected to the theft of the rattle.” She also wondered what a coyote or dog, or whatever it was, could have to do with either event. She’d keep that part to herself for now. If it played a role in any way, she could always tell Elle later. Elle was pretty open-minded nowadays, but there was no point in overloading her.

  “Well it’s time to earn our pay,” Elle said. “So we have a long day ahead of us. After we chat with the curator, which I imagine won’t tell us much we don’t know already, we should head over and see the Indians over at the reservation.” Then she laughed. “I’ve always wondered if anyone ever said anything like that in real life. Now I know.”

  “Just you,” Charli assured her as she stretched. “Only you, Elle. Let’s get that breakfast.” As she woke, she found herself excited about the investigation. The connection to dreaming was starting to make itself known.

  WHILE ELLE REVIEWED security footage, the curator led Charli into a display room. In the middle of the room were several pedestals with glass boxes sitting on them. “This one used to hold the shaman's rattle,” he said. “An artifact from the Ramah Navajo.” He squinted. “I need to get back to work. If you need anything else, please come to my office.

  She looked at the box. There was nothing in it but some dust. Below the case, mounted on the pedestal, was a plaque with a picture of the rattle. “It’s lovely,” she said, talking to herself. “I wonder how old it was?”

  “Not so old as such things go.”

  She turned and saw a short woman looking at her, her lips pursed and her eyes intense. “Why do you say that?” Charli asked her.

  “Because of the beads themselves,” the woman said, pointing to the photo. “The beadwork on the handle was done with European beads.... Even in a photograph it’s clear that this string is mostly Italian glass beads. The tribes out here didn’t have those available to them until the European traders arrived. Back east the Indians got some in the 1500s, but it’s likely this was made long after that. In those days, the Spaniards did a lot more plundering than trading. More into export than import, you might say.”

  “Italian beads?”

  “Look at the three strands that wrap the handle. There are two strands of Navajo ghost beads but they are interwoven with a strand of glass beads—Italian.”

  Charli laughed. “Ghost beads? What are they?”

  The woman pointed through the glass case. “Those small, pale beads. They are juniper berries that were dried and then strung.”

  “They are pretty. Who would think they were berries?”

  “Before European beads arrived, all their beads were made of shell or coral or clay.... or berries. The juniper was important to the Navajo, in particular. It symbolizes their belief in the connection between humanity and nature.”

  “You seem to know a lot about this stuff. Are you an anthropologist?”

  The woman smiled and handed her a card. “Better than that... I’m a beader.” Charli glanced at it. “Cheryl, Master Beader,” it said.

  “So you make replicas of Indian beading?”

  “Never,” she said emphatically. “I study the native American work because I find it wonderful and because sometimes I get asked to repair Indian jewelry. That requires knowing what materials to use as well as the correct stitch.” She twisted her face into a concentrated look, imagining doing the work. “Repairs should never damage the original intentions of the artisan. But replicas... the tribes frown on that sort of thing, and I respect that.”

  “Okay. Is it possible that this was an older piece that someone repaired badly at some point, adding the Italian beads?”

  The woman smiled. “If it was repaired, it wasn’t done badly. It wasn’t done correctly if the intention was to restore an older piece, but who knows?”

  “Why else would someone do that?”

  She shrugged. “When you deal with the Indians... sometimes things are done to sow a little confusion. Or as a joke.”

  “How would that be funny? If it was altered....”

  She smiled. “I hear that Coyote has a strange sense of humor.”

  “Coyote? The trickster?” Charli had read about him. And hearing the name said made a piece of the puzzle click into place. The animal in the dream. He had to be a familiar of the Shaman who’d been dancing. He appeared in a broad range of Indian legends and was talked about by many tribes.

  The woman rolled her eyes up. “Okay, it's possible he was Raven at the time, when he did this, but he’s usually Coyote.”

  “All we need is this to be the work of some supernatural being, Cheryl.”

  “So you are going to try to find the rattle?”

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  “Good luck with that.” She looked around. “If you want to eliminate the supernatural, I don’t see a lot of other options, personally.”

  “Do you have any ideas? The curator doesn’t seem to have a clue.”

  She snorted. “He’s just a guy who doesn’t even begin to understand the Indian ways. He’d rather be running a modern art exhibit.” She tipped her head. “But you are Indian, aren’t you?”

  She nodded. “Mescalero Apache.”

  “Then, if I were you I’d ask around. Talk to the elders and see if you can locate someone who had an urgent need of it.” She held up a finger. “Coyote is a lot more than a trickster. Don’t underrate him or think he is trivial. If he came for it, he did it because it was needed.”

  Charli grinned at the idea of a spirit who would, well... spirit away an artifact to someone who needed it. It was a charming idea if not practical. “Any suggestions about where I’d start looking for someone who had need of it?”

  The woman shrugged. “You are the investigator. Me, I’d watch the television news. Look for a critical situation on a reservation; someplace where a life is at stake.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, the rattle was made for healing, after all. So...”

  She laughed. “That makes sense. I’ll check into it.”

  “It would have to be the life of someone important for the tribe in some way. The way I understand it, Coyote isn’t too concerned with regular life and death.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “And good luck with it,” the little woman said and then she grinned. “You’ll need it.” Then she turned and walked away.

  As both an Indian (however far removed from her tribe) and a cultural anthropologist, Charli found it curious and uncomfortable, not to mention embarrassing, that she had been educated on Indian lore by a white woman. She seemed to know a bit, and she was right about needing luck to find the rattle. She’d need luck and some help.

  But her next concern was how she mi
ght be accepted by the Navajo. She had no idea what to expect, but then that was becoming par for the course.

  Chapter Eight

  The Story of a Cowboy

  The squarely built man behind the desk in the administration office of the Ramah Navajo, wore jeans and a flannel shirt; he had sparkling gray hair and a serene smile. As Elle and Charli came into his office, he stood up and Charli saw an awkwardness in his movements. As he came around the desk, moving with a pronounced limp. “Welcome to the home of Tl’ ohchini Dine’e.”

  “I’m sorry,” Elle said. “What did you say? The home of what?”

  The man smiled and clucked his tongue. “That’s us. It’s the Navajo phrase for our tribe. In English it translates to the ‘People of the Place of Wild Onions’.”

  “A descriptive name,” she said. “But, I thought you were Navajo.”

  “We are that too,” he laughed. “We are a pretty flexible lot. The Spaniards came up with Navajo and we just added it to the list. We like names, which is why we give people names that relate to the things, spirits, creatures that they seem to reflect. My name is Raymond Talks with Wolves.” He saw Elle’s grin. “No lie. My mother said that when I cried as a baby, the wolves answered. So that’s what is on my birth certificate.”

  “And I’m Elle Kramer,” Elle said holding out her hand. “And my name is what it is probably because my mother was too lazy to spell out Ellen. I represent the insurance company that insured the woman who was shot.”

  “Charli Gordon,” Charli said.

  Raymond looked at her. “So you must be the insurance company’s token Indian?” Raymond laughed. He smiled at Charli. “Sorry to profile or make assumptions, but when the company made a point of saying they were sending an Indian, I expected someone who was about one-sixtieth Indian. You actually look like one of us.”

  “Marginally,” she said, not wanting to overstate things. “My father was full-blooded Apache and my mother is half Apache.”