Montana Mavericks 04 - The Once and Future Wife

by Paige, Laurie

  During the night she had made up her mind to ignore the storm signals between her and Judd. She wasn’t nineteen anymore. She could control herself. After all, she’d had no trouble doing so in the presence of some very attractive men in California.

  After a few minutes of stilted conversation they gave up talking. Tracy watched the passing scenery. In less than an hour they arrived at the reservation. Judd drove along the main road to the tribal headquarters.

  At the council offices, they went inside and were directed to the conference room. A carved wooden box sat on the conference table. Sara Lewis, who, according to Judd, worked at the Native American Museum, stood on the other side of the table.

  Tracy smiled and nodded to the younger woman, who returned her greeting cautiously.

  A few elders of the tribe stood around to observe what would take place. At the end of the room was the tribal chairman, Frank Many Horses. The attorney, Jackson Hawk, also a tribal leader, was with him.

  “Jackson!” Tracy exclaimed in pleased surprise. He was the same age as she was. They had played together when they’d both been free of the demands of education—she from public school in Missoula, he from the BIA boarding school he’d been forced to attend. “I heard you had returned.”

  Jackson was as tall as Judd. His hair and eyes were black as obsidian. He wore braids tied with rawhide strips which to her looked perfectly natural with his suit and tie. His jutting nose and prominent cheekbones proclaimed his Cheyenne ancestry.

  He’d gone to college on a basketball scholarship and earned his law degree after that. His lithe body proved his athletic skill; his alert gaze indicated his mental acuity.

  The attorney came to her, his smile bright and warm. His welcome lifted her spirits, which needed all the help they could get, she admitted ruefully.

  “Tracy, daughter of the professor who goes around asking personal questions,” he teased. His smile disappeared. “Now you’re here to ask your own questions.”

  “Yes. Do you have the bones?”

  He nodded. “My uncle wishes to speak with you.”

  Jackson took her arm and led her to the old man, who stood at the back of the room by the council table. Judd fell into step behind them. Tracy noted the way his gaze darted from her to Jackson, as if he were assessing the situation between them.

  The tribal attorney introduced her to Uncle Frank as if she hadn’t known the old man all her life.

  She stood quietly, waiting for him to speak. When he did, she realized he was much older than he’d seemed the last time she had talked to him. A second heart attack had taken away some of the inner strength she had always associated with him.

  The thought made her sad, as if a way of life would go with the passing of the man.

  “How are you?” he asked.

  “Fine.”

  “Your father?”

  “He sends you greetings. He has to finish the book with the new oral histories this summer. He’ll bring you a copy, he said.”

  The thick brows, almost white now, pulled together. “Good,” he said. “That’s good.” He looked around as if tired.

  A young tribal policeman pulled a chair into position. “Here, Uncle,” he said, using the honorary title. “You must rest. Dr. Hunter said we were to make sure you do.”

  “Kane,” the elder snorted. “He’s an old woman.”

  Tracy saw the old man was pleased at the care.

  When he was seated, he motioned for the young man to bring a chair for her. When she faced him, their chairs placed so that their knees almost touched, he spoke again. “Kane needs to find a wife, as his cousin has had the good fortune to do.” He looked at his nephew in affection.

  “Jackson?” Tracy inquired.

  “Yes. Just last week.” The attorney smiled. For a second she glimpsed the quiet joy in his eyes. He gestured toward his uncle. “He’s turned into a matchmaker in his old age.”

  Her eyes were drawn to where Judd had taken up a position against the wall while he waited for the greetings to be over and for them to get down to real business. She couldn’t tell if he was impatient with the proceedings or merely resigned.

  “I wish you happiness,” she said softly.

  Jackson nodded his thanks.

  “You know the story of the bones?” Uncle Frank asked.

  She waited a few seconds before answering in order to give the question and her response the consideration they deserved. Her summers on the reservation had taught her it wasn’t polite to jump into speech without prior thought.

  “I’ve been told a little. Would you tell me again so that I may have the facts clear in my mind?”

  Uncle Frank recounted the story she had learned from the initial report to the FBI and from Judd. The sequence of events was the same. After the tribal elder fell silent, she thanked him. She waited, then asked to see the evidence.

  “It isn’t proper for the remains of ancestors to be despoiled by the white methods,” he said, giving her a frown that would have sent her scurrying if she’d still been a child.

  “The forensic investigation,” Jackson clarified.

  Tracy gazed at the floor while she reflected on this. “No test will be undertaken without tribal permission,” she promised.

  Nearby, she felt the movement as Judd stirred in surprise at this rescinding of authority. She touched her finger to her lips to bid him be silent, then faced the tribal chairman squarely.

  Uncle Frank studied her until she thought he was searching out every lie she’d ever spoken. He nodded.

  A wave of relief swept over her. She wasn’t going to have to be the pushy representative of the federal government.

  “Now come and let us talk heart-to-heart,” Uncle Frank said, standing and opening his arms. She went into them for a warm hug that had her fighting the sting of tears all of a sudden. “You and Jackson begged many a treat of fry bread and honey at my house when you were young. You’ll come soon and share a meal with us?”

  “I’d love to.”

  There was some chatter now in the background. She glanced at Judd. He was more impassive than the most stereotyped Indian in any movie she’d ever seen.

  She and the tribal elder talked about her career since she’d left town years ago. She’d finished her master’s degree and done field work with the world’s foremost forensic anthropologist for three years, traveling all over the world.

  “This living with old bones doesn’t bother you?” Uncle Frank inquired over coffee. The box on the table wasn’t referred to during the conversation.

  “No. I find it fascinating to try and figure out ancient people’s lives—how they might have lived, what they did for food and medicines.” She paused. “How they died.”

  He nodded and sat silently for a long minute. “Jackson, open the box,” he said.

  Tracy felt a beat of excitement. Finding old bones was like a treasure hunt for her. She loved to study the past.

  Because it was safer?

  She ignored the inner question and went to the table. Jackson slid the box in front of her. He unlocked it, then carefully lifted the top off. The silence in the room was that of a held breath. She looked inside while the handsome attorney laid the top to one side.

  The first thing that caught her eye was a deep scratch in one of the bones, which were the skeletal remains of an arm and part of a hand. The scratch gleamed white against the brown-stained surface surrounding it.

  She glanced behind her, to where Judd still leaned against the wall. His mouth relaxed just a bit, not enough to call it a smile. Jackson’s tightened as the three exchanged glances that admitted what the two men had suspected from the first.

  “These aren’t old bones,” she said.

  The truck jolted over a road that grew increasingly rougher. Tracy grasped the door handle and the seat edge in an effort to keep from bouncing.

  When the road became a logging or hunting trail winding upward through some thick woods, Judd slowed down.

 
It didn’t take a forensic expert to know he was in a foul mood. He hadn’t spoken two words since they’d left the council house and started for the site where the bones had been found.

  The road ended abruptly near a bluff—a limestone-and-shale cliff ranging from ten to a hundred feet high, with the Beartooth Creek running at its base.

  The creek separated the Kincaid ranch from the reservation, ending in Lovers Lake on the ranch. It was near the lake that she had first seen Judd that summer long ago.

  She brushed the thought impatiently from her mind. She had a job to do. She leaned forward to change from her sandals to socks and hiking shoes.

  The land angled steeply upward from the small open meadow where they stopped. The trees and brush were thicker in the section on the other side of the clearing, she noted.

  The sacred woods. Uncle Frank had given her permission to explore the area.

  Judd parked beside a tribal police car and a marked sheriff’s-department truck. Tracy jumped out before Judd could come around to help her.

  Hooking her purse strap over her shoulder, she headed toward the bright yellow police tape attached to the trees. Judd caught her by the elbow.

  “This way,” he said. He let her go and started off at an angle to the road. He ducked under the tape and held it up for her, his face expressionless as he waited.

  She quickly followed, irritated at his cool assumption of authority. “I want to circle the site before homing in on the place the bones were found.”

  That’s the way forensic investigations were conducted—start at the outer perimeter and spiral in. Leave the site by retracing the same path. That way the investigator ran the least risk of ruining the evidence, if any was present and assuming it hadn’t already been trampled by others who’d been there before her. Judd knew this as well as she.

  “That’s what we’re doing,” he said tersely. He let her take the lead, but directed her by voice as they walked the site.

  She examined the lay of the land, the types of vegetation and the rock formations as they worked their way to the bluff, then up along its spine and finally down into the center of the woods. They met a tribal policeman and a deputy from Judd’s department there.

  Judd introduced her to the two men. She spoke briefly to them, her gaze going to the marked area in the dirt. Moving carefully, she circled the small yellow flags attached to stiff wires pushed into the ground. She finally stopped and stooped to inspect the bones uncovered in the dirt.

  “George Sweetwater took the bones he found from the site. Those were the ones you saw at the council house,” Judd explained, dropping to his haunches on the opposite side of the markers. “We found the tribal police going over the area when we got here. They had discovered the rest of the bones belonging to the hand—”

  “How do you know these belong to the bones in the box?”

  “It was an assumption,” he said curtly.

  She nodded and continued to study the site. She could tell it grated on Judd to be fighting over a motley bunch of bones like two opposing packs of dogs. He was also stifled in getting on with the investigation by the impasse with the tribal council.

  It wasn’t like him to let his temper show, though. At least, it wasn’t like the man she’d once known.

  During the years of their marriage, she’d rarely seen him let his emotions get the better of him, not even at their son’s funeral. Neither had she.

  In the face of his stoicism, she’d held her grief inside. Sometimes she’d wondered if they might not have made it if they’d cried in each other’s arms.

  Last night, after he’d left, she’d felt like crying, although she hadn’t. That episode in his arms had been an aberration on both their parts, she decided, one driven by passion, not emotion.

  She sighed, stood and studied the rising slope above them.

  Judd did, too. “Plenty of shrubs and plants around,” he said, following her thoughts. “Bones couldn’t wash down here all of a sudden because of erosion.”

  “They’ve been brought here, probably by animals. The question is where were they to begin with…and how long have these pieces been in the woods?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Has the site been photographed?” she asked.

  “Yes. We have a full set of prints at the office.”

  “Well, let’s pack up the evidence and see what else we can find. By the way, do you have an office I can work out of? I promised Uncle Frank the bones would be kept in a secure place. I’m not sure the cottage would qualify.”

  “There’s a small conference room next to my office. You can use it if you like.” He smiled grimly. “The department will bill the FBI for rent and phone use.”

  “Rent?” she demanded in disbelief. “For an unused room?”

  “I didn’t say it was never used. All right, no rent,” he conceded when she started to argue. “But you pay for your long-distance calls.”

  “Agreed.” She smiled, feeling relieved. They had established a working relationship. That was good. If they could keep their dealings strictly on a business level, all would be well.

  And if they didn’t?

  She ignored the question. While Judd supervised the other two in gathering and sealing the evidence, she walked the area again, keeping to the same perimeter.

  Tomorrow, she decided, she would widen the search pattern until she found the rest of the skeleton or had to give up. Two weeks were all she’d planned for this case.

  “Are you about through? I’m ready to lock up.”

  Tracy looked up from the table where the evidence was laid out on white paper. She laid the magnifying glass down. “Yes. I’ve noted every chip and scrape on these. The gouges were caused by animal teeth, as I thought. Tomorrow I’ll start a systematic search of the area.”

  Judd frowned. She prepared herself for an argument.

  “I’ll assign someone to assist you.”

  “I’d rather you didn’t.”

  “You’re not going to wander around in the woods by yourself,” he informed her. “Someone was murdered there.”

  “We don’t know that,” she said calmly.

  He glared at her. She glared back.

  After a couple of seconds, his lips relaxed slightly at the corners. “You’re a stubborn cuss,” he muttered.

  She was reminded of times past. Their quarrels had never lasted for more than a few minutes. One or the other of them would start laughing at the stubborn look on the other’s face, then they’d end up making love, or scooping Thadd up and going out for ice cream.

  “I know.” She smiled at him, then stretched her stiff muscles and yawned. “I’m going home. What time will you come in tomorrow?”

  “Seven.” He bent over the table and studied the small collection of bones.

  She noticed the silver hairs threaded through the black locks—not many, but some.

  Gray hair? Judd?

  To her, he was the quintessential man, never aging, never changing, an archetype who served as the model for all the men she’d ever met. To observe signs that he was as vulnerable to aging as the rest of humanity disturbed her.

  Not for the first time she wondered if she’d expected too much from this strong, silent man.

  “What time will you arrive?” he asked, straightening and glancing at her in that sultry, devastating manner he was so unconscious of.

  “The same as you.”

  Ignoring the lifting of his eyebrows that questioned her early arrival—she tended to be a night owl—she cast an eye over the small conference room to see if there was anything she’d forgotten to do. Everything was in order.

  Picking up her purse and the hiking shoes she’d worn at the site on the reservation, she exited through Judd’s office.

  Judd locked the conference-room door, then followed her to the outer office. His secretary had gone home for the day.

  Tracy started down the broad hall while Judd locked the office door.

  “Do you want to go to
dinner?” he called after her.

  She stopped and glanced over her shoulder at him. “No, thanks. I thought I would visit Winona tonight. I called her earlier today. She’s expecting me.”

  He nodded.

  She rushed along the hall and out into the warm air. She drove to the cottage and changed clothes, replacing her slacks with a pair of white shorts dotted with blue-and-yellow butterflies, putting on the matching knit top and grabbing her Windbreaker for when the sun went down.

  In ten minutes, she was speeding along Route 17. A few miles from town she pulled off the road into what looked like a junkyard—and in reality was.

  The sign that proclaimed the place to be the Stop ‘n’ Swap was barely legible. It swung from a signpost at an angle, one side an inch higher than the other due to the uneven lengths of chain that held it in place.

  Below that sign was another that said wild honey was made and sold on the premises.

  The entire front yard was filled with discarded household and auto items. Birds flitted around a feeder. A dozen cats snoozed in the sun. Two goats stood on top of a rusted station wagon and eyed Tracy as she parked by the open gate. The watchdog, an old blue tick hound, didn’t raise an eyelid at her approach.

  An eagerness to see the old woman she loved nearly as much as her own family propelled Tracy from the car, past an old bathtub filled with dirt and planted with moss roses and up to the door of the trailer where Winona Cobb lived. Winona stood in the door.

  “Tracy!” she exclaimed warmly. She held the screen door open.

  Tracy leapt up the concrete blocks that formed the steps and a small porch. She was enveloped in a hug.

  Winona looked just the same—the same gray hair braided and wrapped around her head, a round, merry face with brown eyes sparkling with intelligence and wry wit, a short, rotund body that was sturdy and stout.

  She’d put on a long flowered skirt and a faded blue blouse for the occasion, but she’d forgotten her shoes. Around her neck and dangling from her ears she wore polished stone beads and crystals of various colors.

  To Tracy, she looked like an aging hippy. Most outsiders, upon meeting her, assumed she was one of the Northern Cheyenne. No one knew for sure where she’d come from, and Winona never told. Like the hills, she’d been part of the landscape forever.