Death on the Greasy Grass

by C. M. Wendelboe

  “Recognize who he was talking to?”

  “Dead spot in their system. Anyways, Itchy left the pennies in the tray and ran out the door.”

  “Check with the security guards?”

  “Think we fell off the turnip truck yesterday?” Stumper snapped. “Of course I checked with them. All they remember about the guy that Itchy met was that he was wearing a yellow hoodie and you couldn’t see his face. That’s it.”

  Manny leaned back in the seat, sweat rolling down his forehead, and he grabbed for his bandanna. He rubbed his eyes against a rising headache. “All right—where’d you find Itchy?”

  “Moccasin Top found him under one of the bridges he slept under now and again.”

  “Natural? Awfully cold last night after the sun went down.”

  “Not unless you consider a hole in the back of his head big enough to put a pencil in natural.”

  Just what I needed, another body to extend my sentence to Crow Agency. “Got an estimate of the time of death?”

  Stumper paused; the sound of paper shuffling made Manny’s headache throb even louder. “Sometime yesterday, we’re thinking. And we’re basing a lot of that on the security camera catching Itchy running out of the casino.”

  “Tell me someone heard the shot. Saw a car. Saw Itchy.”

  Stumper laughed nervously. “The bridge is two miles from the nearest ranch. Six miles from Lodge Grass. No one we talked with heard a thing.”

  “How did Itchy get to the bridge?”

  “What?”

  “The bridge?” Manny repeated. “Itchy didn’t drive. And Mr. Spock damned sure didn’t beam him over there.”

  “Give me a break—I’ve been busier than a one-legged man in an ass kicking contest tracking a fresh shipment of meth that came in yesterday.”

  “Well, look into it when you get a chance. What was he wearing?”

  “Itchy’s usual dress rags—blue jeans with more holes than OJ’s alibi, and holey tennis shoes that matched. And that filthy watch cap he always wore to give lice a covered home.”

  “Was what Itchy was wearing consistent with where you found him?”

  Stumper paused again. “Shit!” he said at last. “His stocking cap was caked with dried leaves. Under the bridge is all dirt—there’s no trees for miles.”

  Manny knew Stumper hadn’t been a lawman long enough to develop his street eyes, seeing things other people didn’t. “And I’ll bet there’s little blood at the scene?”

  Stumper cursed again. “Way too little for a head wound.”

  Manny dabbed at the sweat on his face and neck, letting Stumper work it out for himself. “I think Itchy was killed someplace else. Stuffed under the bridge.”

  “I think you’re right.” Manny smiled, thinking how alike Stumper was to Willie, with gobs of confidence, yet willing to learn when the opportunity arose. As Stumper hung up, Manny leaned back and closed his eyes. Willie’s image came through again, tubes stuck where they had no right to be, breaths coming in gurgling gasps, hanging on by a sinew. “Fight it, my friend,” Manny breathed.

  He reached in the backseat to the CDs that Willie had packed for their trip. Harlan White Bird’s homicide had started Manny on a journey he hadn’t wanted: working Crow Reservation for Harlan’s killer, along with Sam’s. And now Itchy’s murder. It would be a matter of hours, perhaps minutes, before the Billings SAC would call him and assign him Itchy’s homicide as well. Unless Hard Ass Harris demanded Manny return to the Rapid City Field Office. Which was slim. He considered calling Hard Ass, but thought better: He could do little in Pine Ridge right now. His best shot at finding Degas was to remain on Crow Agency.

  Manny needed relaxing music, and he rummaged through Willie’s CDs. What he found was Willie’s rock collection, and Manny loaded the first CD he grabbed: ZZ Top. He stuck it in the player hanging under the dash. Manny hadn’t developed a taste for rock, but it did remind him of their trip from Pine Ridge to the reenactment, and Manny dearly wished he could turn the clock back a week.

  He adjusted the volume, the heavy drumbeat reminding him of polka music. And of powwow drums. He closed his eyes and thought of Itchy. Where had he stayed these last days when he couldn’t be found? With Cubby perhaps? Cubby didn’t seem the benevolent type to let a druggie stay under his roof. Besides, he’d kicked Itchy out of the house years ago.

  Manny thought that even Itchy didn’t sleep under bridges unless he had no other place. He had crashed at Harlan’s shop so many times, he could probably find it with his eyes swollen shut. But Stumper assured Manny that Harlan’s building was sealed, with step-up patrols making security checks periodically. Still, Itchy had known the building, knew no one else would be inside, knowing there was a bunk with his bedbugs on it, waiting.

  Manny turned the CD up and started for Lodge Grass, his heart only half into the investigation. Willie filled his thoughts, and he swore to Wakan Tanka and the God of the Jesus people that he’d get with Reuben when he got back to Pine Ridge and sweat and pray for Willie. If his friend hadn’t already traveled along the Spirit Road.

  CHAPTER 31

  Manny squinted against the bright sun as he ducked under the crime scene tape. He reached above the door for the key and opened Harlan’s shop. So much for a secure building.

  By habit, he paused just inside the door, listening. A radio in a far room played country music, and a sparrow that had made its home in the auction barn chirped as if feeding young. Somewhere in the back of the shop a fan circulated air. Manny dropped into a crouch. An odor hung in the air, the odor of something he’d noticed before that couldn’t place. He only knew the hairs on his neck stood at attention for a reason. He’d gotten his street degree picking up on things others didn’t.

  He duckwalked farther inside the building. He leaned back against one wall while his eyes adjusted to the darkness. He strained, but caught no further odor, no sound besides the chirping. Yet, he couldn’t ignore his instinct, couldn’t get it out of his mind that someone else was inside Harlan’s shop. His hand fell onto his empty holster. He had taken off the gun in the car, and could envision it lying on the seat. Just where he didn’t need it.

  His hand ran along the wall and he found a light switch, but he waited, ears catching something besides the fan coming from the office. A light played off the walls, flickering on and off, casting delirious shadows through the blinds over the windows.

  Manny rubbed his eyes, his vision slowly adjusting to the darkness as he struggled to remember the layout of the shop. He could go straight in and buttonhook to the right, giving him good coverage of Harlan’s office.

  Manny drew his legs under him and wiped the sweat from his palms. He breathed once and sprung, flattening when he got inside the room. Chenoa Iron Cloud screamed and papers flew into the air. She stumbled backward and ran into a file cabinet. She dropped her flashlight just as Manny tripped the light switch. Chenoa looked wide-eyed at him, caught in some act that Manny knew she’d try sweet talking her way out of.

  “Agent Tanno?” Chenoa turned around, her hands behind her. She dropped some papers on the floor. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m conducting investigations into several homicides. I’d ask the same of you, since you have a memorial service to conduct.”

  “It’s done.” Chenoa smiled, and Manny got the feeling it was as phony as those tourism smiles. “Jamie and Wilson are handling things while I . . .”

  “Mourn for Sam in Harlan’s shop?”

  “I don’t have time for this.” Chenoa brushed past Manny. He grabbed her arm and spun her around.

  “Get the hell out of my way or I’ll . . .”

  “What? Call the BIA or tribal police? Tell them you got caught breaking into a crime scene? How about I make that call for you.” Manny took out his cell and flipped it open. She reached out and wrapped her hand around his. Manny’s eyes fo
und hers, as thousands had been drawn in before by posters and tourism brochures. And her cologne, the same he’d recognized on entering Harlan’s shop, the same at Sam’s memorial service, wafted past his nose. “Don’t embarrass me by doing that. I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

  Manny closed his cell and stepped back. He didn’t trust himself this close, and he brushed a Cheetos bag and candy wrappers off Harlan’s desk before sitting on the edge. “Start by telling me how you got in.”

  “Same as you.” She rolled Harlan’s chair around and sat down, crossing her legs, the same dress she’d worn at Sam’s memorial service riding over her knees. Manny looked away, and she smiled at his predicament. “We always knew Harlan kept his key above the door. Whenever I needed Sam to sign papers, I’d send Cubby over. If Harlan wasn’t around, Cubby would grab the key and go inside. More often than not, Sam would be passed out in the spare room.”

  Manny gestured around the room, and to the papers that Chenoa had dropped when Manny surprised her. “But there’s no papers for Sam to sign now, is there?”

  Chenoa started to speak, but looked away.

  “Maybe you were looking for something else. A journal perhaps? Maybe land deeds that were stuffed inside?”

  “All right. I was looking for the journal. I’m convinced it was Itchy who called me offering to sell it.”

  “And you couldn’t take a chance that he actually had the journal?”

  She smiled, but her eyes darted around the room as if forming an escape plan. “Wilson told me you had talked with someone who had read the journal.”

  Manny nodded. “And you were interested in the journal.”

  She smoothed her dress. “What makes you say that?”

  “Harlan kept a list of bidders, people who came into his auction barn prior to the sale. He might have been a slob, but he knew how to keep his business profitable. You came by two days before the sale by the looks of his sign-in book.”

  “So I came by. A lot of people came by.”

  “When I looked at Harlan’s list, I saw the only thing you were interested in looking at was the journal.”

  “Nonsense. I was interested in the entire Beauchamp Collection. It’s an amazing piece of history of the Star Dancer clan. Who better to have it? I’m certain if I pushed it, the courts would award it to me under NAGRA.”

  Under the Native American Graves Repatriation Act, relics and artifacts throughout the country were being returned to the rightful heirs. “But Pretty Paw gave the collection to the Beauchamps. You had no standing to get it returned through the courts. I’m sure Harlan told you the same thing when you confronted him about giving you the journal.”

  Chenoa stood, and the chair rolled back and banged into the wall. “He smiled when he told me to go ahead and take my case to court. I could have slapped the smug bastard. But I held my cool. I made a respectful offer.”

  “I understand Harlan intended donating his auctioneer fee to the tribe for the sale of the Beauchamp Collection. He have a change of heart?”

  Chenoa shook her head. “That was before he knew the collection contained the Star Dancer journal.”

  Manny flipped his notebook open. “I see you offered to buy just the journal before the auction. Harlan recorded it. Guess it wasn’t enough for him.”

  She turned and faced Manny, her arms crossed, no façade of the proper lady remaining. “Harlan laughed at me,” she blurted out. “Said it would bring five times what I offered at auction.”

  “That make you mad enough to want him dead?”

  Chenoa turned away.

  “If he were dead, you might be able to retrieve it. Like now.”

  She turned back, her face contorted, clenching her fists, and spit flew from her mouth. “I told you, I wanted the entire collection.”

  Manny stood and pocketed his notebook. “But the offer was just for the journal. I wonder why that is the only thing that interested you. Was it because the journal revealed things you didn’t want made public?”

  Chenoa walked to the Montana Tourism calendar on Harlan’s wall and seemed to be talking to herself as she kept her back to Manny. “I didn’t know what was in the journal. Harlan never let me—or anyone else interested in it—read what Star Dancer had recorded.”

  “But you had an idea there was information in that journal that shattered the notion of Star Dancer purity? It showed there was a White man in the Star Dancer lineage?”

  She turned around, hands on her hips, hair falling over her chest, and Manny averted his eyes. “If it ever got out that the Star Dancers weren’t as pure, weren’t as holy as people thought, they would shun you, would they not? And calls would be made to the state, and your lucrative tourism contract would be canceled. Am I right so far?”

  “I’ve had enough of this.” She brushed past Manny and headed for the door. “Call the tribal police if you wish.” And she headed out of the auction barn.

  Manny sat back on the edge of the desk looking after her. He had seen a side of Chenoa few people saw, and her professional world—that of the face of Montana and the face of Crow purity—was in danger of toppling down around her. If she had read the journal. Manny believed her when she said Harlan let no one read it prior to the sale, but someone had told her what Levi had written. Harlan, when he put the bite on her for money?

  He closed his eyes and tried to imagine their argument when Harlan refused to sell her the journal outright. Had he wanted a piece of the Star Dancer Ranch in exchange for the journal, and for keeping quiet about what it contained? Manny made a mental note to check into Chenoa’s bank records and, in particular, any payments to Harlan White Bird before his death.

  Manny stood and stretched before turning to the spare room that Sam and Itchy had often crashed in. The plastic chest of drawers lay on its side minus one drawer, overturned since the last time he and Willie and Stumper had been there. A pile of dirty clothes in one corner had been kicked apart, one sock dangling nose-high from a nail sticking out of the wall. Ceiling tiles had been ripped down, and one section of wallboard had been cut open.

  He sat on the edge of one bunk, unsure if it was Itchy’s or Sam’s. Someone had been in Harlan’s shop looking for something. But it hadn’t been Chenoa, at least not today. Her clothing had been as clean as when he talked with her at Sam’s memorial service, not a spot of dust or ceiling tile or wallboard on her.

  So someone else had ransacked the room, and Carson Degas floated immediately to the top of the dung heap. He had been seen coming out of Harlan’s shop the day before the man was killed, and Degas would know where Harlan kept the key. Had he been looking for the journal? The safe in the corner of the office had been opened, a place where Harlan probably kept the one thing valuable to him: the writings of Levi Star Dancer. Nothing else from the collection was missing.

  Manny used the edge of the bunk to stand, and a crackling sound accompanied him. His knees? He felt over the cot and his hand replicated the sound, coming from under the green wool army blanket. He stood and turned the cot over. Stuffed between the canvas cot and the blanket a business-size-envelope lay crumpled. He opened it and held it to the naked lightbulb swaying from the breeze coming in through the broken window.

  He pulled the lined notebook paper out. Scratching from a shaking hand had scrawled across the paper, the envelope addressed to Cubby. The writer demanded a thousand dollars, explaining how damaging the information in the journal could be to the Star Dancers. The note had been signed “Your Estranged Brother.”

  Manny tapped the envelope against his leg. So Itchy had blackmailed Cubby, or so it seemed. Did Itchy have another copy that actually had gotten delivered to Cubby? Or was this a practice note so Itchy could get it right when he delivered the actual blackmail letter to Cubby? Or had Itchy hid this note where someone could find it in case anything happened to him?

  Manny stepped around di
rty clothes and the overturned plastic dresser, pacing as best he could, tossing the possibilities back and forth in his mind. Mental ping-pong. Itchy had been content to have nothing to do with Cubby, relying on Harlan for his drug money. But with Harlan dead, Itchy had to do something, and this might be the boldest thing he’d done in his short life. Manny needed to reinterview Cubby.

  He slid the letter back into the envelope and slipped it inside his shirt, his hand poised beside the chain dangling from the weak light. He studied Harlan’s office one last time, noting what had been rummaged through, before pulling the chain and plunging the room into darkness. He shuffled into the shop, skirting rows of tables, their relics slowly becoming more than shapes as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. He felt the wall and made his way toward the lighted EXIT sign above the door.

  A noise bounced off the far wall, a scraping noise, unnatural for a building. Unless someone was in there with him. He paused, his ears straining to locate the source of the noise, willing his breathing to slow, willing himself to think, to evaluate. He wished his gun, only a short ways from the door in his car, were in his hand as shuffling neared.

  An artifact fell from a table that Manny couldn’t make out. Something rolled along the floor. Closer.

  Manny kept his back away from the wall, careful to avoid contact, careful to avoid making any noise, working his way toward the EXIT sign, when his back ran into a picture hanging on the wall. It crashed, glass breaking. Manny instinctively dropped to his knees a moment before a shot splintered a support beam beside his head, sending splinters into his cheek.

  He sucked in air, the veins in his neck and head pounding. Footsteps neared, sounding as if they echoed off every wall in the large shop, and Manny crawled on all fours away from the sound.