Spider Woman's Daughter Page 5

  Bernie looked at the big sunflower on the computer screen and a little box that read “Password.”

  “I’ll try that,” Bigman said into the phone. He typed something else, waited. “Nope.”

  A pause. Bigman laughed. Then he sneezed.

  “Not quite. It’s one of those big old-fashioned towers,” he said. “I’ll have to put it on the seat next to me with the seat belt around it. I wouldn’t trust it in the trunk bed. It would probably plot a revolution from back there.”

  He hung up, still smiling. Bernie noticed another light, red and flashing on a flat box beside the phone. Leaphorn must be one of the last few people in the universe who still used an honest-to-goodness answering machine.

  “Did you see that message machine?”

  “Yeah,” Bigman said. “I noticed it when I sat down here. Little cassette tapes and everything. Leaphorn isn’t exactly a high-tech guy, is he? That and this monster of a computer could be in a museum somewhere.”

  Bernie said, “He never gave anybody his cell number because he didn’t want to answer it.” She realized she’d used the wrong verb. The lieutenant, as far as anyone knew, was still breathing.

  “I mean, he never gives it out.”

  Bigman said, “Have you heard how he’s doing?” Sneeze.

  “Hanging in there.” She changed the subject. “I’ll check the messages. Maybe there’s one from Louisa.”

  “Or one from someone threatening to shoot him. Isn’t that how it works on TV?”

  Bernie pushed a button labeled “Listen.” She heard Bigman sneeze again. The tape in the old machine was scratchy, used and erased many times. When the talking started, she recognized Louisa’s voice, noted the lack of a simple hello.

  “I’ve been thinking about what we discussed.” Bernie heard emotion in her voice. Anger? Sadness? “I would have liked the chance to change your mind, but I guess we’re past that now. I don’t know what else to tell you—” The message clicked off. No good-bye.

  She studied the machine. It didn’t have a screen to display the caller’s name and number.

  “Was that Louisa?” Bigman asked. “Did she and Leaphorn get along?”

  “Whenever I was around them, they seemed fine.”

  “A lover’s quarrel?” he asked. Sneeze.

  “I don’t know if they are lovers,” Bernie said. “But I know they are friends. Or maybe were friends. What’s with the sneezing? Are you sick or something?”

  “It’s the cat,” he said. “I’m allergic. If I left a message like that, it would mean I wasn’t happy.” He removed the tape that held the messages with his gloved hands. Put it in a little bag.

  “What are you doing here, Bernie? I heard you were supposed to take some time off.”

  “Largo asked me to talk to Louisa. I was hoping she’d be here.” “I thought she’d be here when I came, and that I’d have to tell her what happened,” he said. “I was glad she wasn’t home.”

  “Did you see Leaphorn’s cell phone around here?” Bernie asked. “I’m sure her cell number is in it. I really need to call her, give her the news.”

  Bigman sneezed, shook his head. “Not in his truck?”

  “No.”

  “Then he probably had it with him.” Bigman leaned toward the floor, his ample belly limiting his flexibility. Sneezed again.

  “I’ve got to climb down under there, disconnect the computer so I can take it in and the techies can figure out how to access the data.” He motioned to the two cardboard boxes. “Those are ancient police cases he worked before the computer system went in. Most of those guys are probably gone now. I boxed his PI stuff, too. You never know.”

  Bigman sat up straight. Another sneeze. Grinned up at Bernie, “Hey, you wanna help? I won’t tell Largo.”

  Bernie crawled under the desk. “It’s an amazing mess down here. Cords everywhere.” She heard him sneeze.

  “Unplug everything,” Bigman said. “I bet Leaphorn found somebody to set this up, and never looked down here again.”

  The dark tight space beneath the desk and the patterns of the cords made her think of Spider Woman, for some reason. Spider Woman, the Holy Person who taught the Navajo to weave and gave the Hero Twins the weapons they needed to begin their quest to find their father the Sun and to rid the world of monsters. She looked at the way the cords came together. “I bet a woman set this up. Whoever did it must have been Spider Woman’s daughter,” Bernie said.

  “Who? I never heard Grandma talk about that one,” Bigman said.

  Bernie said, “She’s the one my mother always joked about when she had to redo a section of a rug. Mama told me she helps with life’s unexpected complications, untangling messy situations. When I start to tell her about some hairy case, Mama says, ‘Oh, you’ll figure out how to weave it all together. You’re like Spider Woman’s daughter.’ ”

  Bigman sneezed. Again. Again. Again.

  “Blasted cat,” he said. “I need to get out of here.”

  Bernie stood up, rolled her shoulders back. “All done. What cat?”

  Bigman used his lips to indicate the stuffed chair. “It was over there when I came in.” The chair was empty. “They know when you don’t like them. That one came up, rubbed against me. I’m starting to itch. I’m gonna sit in the unit and finish the paperwork.”

  He looked at Bernie hopefully. “Someone ought to put it outside, since we don’t know when Louisa will be back. It could make a mess in here.”

  “I’ll do it,” she said. “Largo put me in charge of rounding up the kinfolks.”

  Dealing with the cat was easier said than done. She called, “Kitty, kitty,” to no avail and looked under the furniture, in the office closet. She walked through the house, searching beneath the beds, in the bathroom. The cat had vanished.

  Then, inspired by commercials she’d seen on TV, she went into the kitchen. She found a sack of kibble and some canned cat food in the pantry. Louisa or the lieutenant had stored a gray plastic cat-size cage on the pantry floor. Leaphorn’s—or was it Louisa’s?—blue electric can opener sat on the counter. Bernie opened the Friskies and, like four-legged magic, a small orange-and-white feline with big green eyes appeared at her feet. She picked up the cat’s dish and spooned in the soft food. While it ate, she brought out the cage. The cat finished, looked at her for more. Bernie reached for it, and it backed away. The cat moved close again when she walked to the counter where the Friskies sat.

  Bernie grabbed a kitchen towel. At the opportune moment, she tossed a towel over the cat and, while it was confused, snatched it up and wrapped it like a wiggly, yowling burrito.

  “Cat, I don’t like this any more than you do, but you can’t stay here alone.”

  Unlike useful cats who supported themselves by catching mice, bugs, and whatever else came on the premises uninvited, this one was obviously a house pet. Probably Louisa’s furry darling. Chee liked cats, for some reason. Bernie decided to take the cat home. He could care for it until they figured out what was going on with Louisa, or until they knew the lieutenant’s status. She gently pushed cat and towel into the cat carrier, closed the door, and deposited the noisy package in the backseat of her car. The shade helped keep it cool.

  She went back in and wrote another note to Louisa, explaining why Leaphorn’s computer and the cat were gone and asking Louisa to call her immediately. She left it next to the business card she’d put on the table.

  She picked up the dry cat food and sealed the open can in a plastic bag she found in the pantry. She noticed the mail she’d brought in from Leaphorn’s truck and thumbed through it. A payment to an insurance company and a white envelope, the kind that come with solicitation campaigns, addressed to Little Sisters of the Poor in Gallup, both stamped and ready for the post office. On the large brown envelope the lieutenant had written in small, precise script “Dr. John Collingswort
h, AIRC” and a Santa Fe address. She thought for a second, then reached for a table knife to open it. If it wasn’t important to the case, she’d tape it closed and send it on.

  From inside the larger envelope, she pulled out a set of letter-size white pages and a second smaller sealed envelope. She opened the smaller envelope and removed a single sheet of paper precisely folded in thirds. She unfolded it to read Leaphorn’s bill for services to the AIRC, dated yesterday. She looked at the white sheets. Photocopies of listings from auction catalogs and textbooks. Old Indian pots. Nothing exciting. This doctor must be an art collector, and AIRC was probably his clinic or something. She’d take it all to the post office and use their tape to reseal the brown envelope.

  Bernie took the cat food, locked the back door, waved to Bigman, who looked up from his paperwork in the front seat of his truck. With the cat’s protests as background noise, she headed toward the enchanted landscape of Two Grey Hills and her mother’s house in Toadlena.

  She went to Mama’s at least twice a week, usually driving from Shiprock south on NM 491. The trip began on a wide paved highway, the main route for trucks hauling cargo up to Cortez or south to Gallup. Then she turned onto a decent dirt road, and finally onto the Navajo Nation route that led to the house where her mother now lived.

  Today, since she was starting from Window Rock, she took the quieter scenic route, which hugged the New Mexico–Arizona border, climbed over Narbona Pass, and then dropped into the open landscape of the reservation. Normally she loved the panorama of scenery, the play of shadows along Black Creek Valley a bit west of the sprawling town and the vast, empty country that stretched east—shades of brown, gold, and red meeting the dome of blue sky. The cool ascent into the Chuska Mountains brought the vanilla fragrance of the ponderosas through her open windows and, on a clear day, climaxed with a view of Dinetah from the top of the pass.

  Today, though, instead of the beauty around her, she noticed how her old Tercel struggled with the climb to the summit. Her brain replayed the lieutenant’s shooting, her conversation with Mrs. Benally, the last turbulent confrontation with her sister Darleen.

  Bernie hadn’t felt sleepy when she left Window Rock, but now she could hardly keep her eyes open. She pulled over near the top of the pass, where the road widened. The wind had stirred up so much dust and haze that she could barely see Tsoodzil, known as Mount Taylor in English, rising into the clouds. It was the home of Black God, Turquoise Boy, and Turquoise Girl, a sacred marker of her homeland.

  The sun shone in through the windshield, sweet as honey. Bernie pushed her seat as close to horizontal as it would go. Enjoyed a deep breath of the fresh mountain air. Closed her eyes—just for a minute, she told herself. Beyond here the route snaked down out of the mountains to connect with 491 at Sheep Springs. She’d head north another twenty minutes or so to her mother’s house. Almost there.

  She gave in to sleep before even unbuckling her seat belt.

  The vibration of the phone in the vest pocket of her uniform shirt woke her. She looked at the caller ID. Darleen.

  “You were supposed to be here hours ago. I texted you, and you didn’t even answer. What happened? Where are you?”

  “Sister. Hi. I got delayed. Long story. I’ll be there in about half an hour. ”

  “You always do this to me. It smells.” Darleen hung up.

  Bernie climbed out of the car with that tight feeling in her belly she noticed more and more now when she talked to Darleen. She walked to the edge of the overlook, shaking the cobwebs from her brain. She saw ravens circling, heard the deep purr of a truck in the distance. Then she remembered Louisa’s cat.

  She looked in the backseat. The cat carrier, door open, was empty except for the towel. She peered under the seat. No cat. The front windows were wide open, easy enough for a cat to climb out. She searched around the car, checked underneath. No cat resting in the shade. And lots of places for a cat to hide. Too many for her to search. Her gaze swept the highway, east and west. At least no dead cat on the road.

  Good luck to you, Louisa’s cat, she thought. Watch out for the owls and coyote. I’m sorry I didn’t take better care of you. She’d failed the cat, just as she’d failed Leaphorn.

  She started the car and headed on to her mother’s house, wondering if the day could get any worse.

  Bernie smelled greasy smoke as soon as she opened the front door. Mama sat on the couch, wrapped in her favorite blanket despite the heat. A nature show blared on TV.

  “It’s me, Mama.” She spoke in Navajo.

  Mama looked up and smiled. “Sit down here with me, sweet daughter. You look tired.”

  “I will in a moment,” Bernie said. “Is Sister here?”

  “Not right now,” Mama said. “That one said she’ll be back soon.”

  Mama never called her Bernie, only the more formal Bernadette. But she rarely used anyone’s English name, preferring the traditional way of identifying people in terms of their relation to you or by the name that had developed from the person’s personality, a life event, or a character trait. Chee’s Navajo name, for instance, translated in English to “Long Thinker.”

  Bernie rushed to the kitchen. She clicked off the burner beneath the frying pan, grabbed a towel to wrap around the handle, and took the skillet out the back door, set it on the ground. She started the vent fan and opened the window. Where was Sister? Keeping Mama safe was her job. If Mama had left the skillet on, if Mama had been cooking her own lunch, that raised one issue. If Darleen had walked off with the stove on, that was something else again.

  The kitchen looked as if a dust devil had blown through. An egg carton, sitting open like a cardboard prayer book, had six eggs left. A half-empty bottle of Pepsi and discarded Styrofoam carry-out food containers added to the clutter. Something sticky had spilled and run to the floor. Dirty plates, cups, and silverware sat untended.

  When Mama had first moved into the house, when Bernie was in high school and Darleen a baby, she allowed nothing out of place. She organized her home as precisely as a rug in progress, as neat as their grandmother’s old hogan. But because of her arthritis, her heart problems, and the other debilitations of aging—they’d even worried about Alzheimer’s disease—Mama couldn’t do the work herself, so Darleen had promised to pitch in and help. For a while, the plan worked. But lately, Bernie thought, chaos had begun to replace order. Every week she found more to clean and straighten, more mess Sister seemed to expect her to handle.

  Bernie and Darleen had agreed that Darleen could leave Mama alone for bits and pieces when she was feeling well. Bernie explained that one fall might mean a broken hip, a trip to the hospital, pneumonia. She had heard too many stories of mothers and grandmothers gone down that road.

  Bernie went back to the living room, navigating around piles of clothes and Mama’s walker, on which hung Darleen’s purple baseball cap. Mama looked up at her and patted the couch. Bernie sat, picked up the remote control from the dusty coffee table, and muted the sound.

  Mama spoke in Navajo. “You are here now to stay awhile.”

  “I’m glad to see you, Mama. What’s new?” She held her mother’s gnarled hand, noticing the coolness of her bony fingers despite the warm day.

  Mama talked about a conversation she’d had with her sister, who lived near Crownpoint, recalling every detail. As she told the story, Mama ran her fingertips over the blanket on her lap, a fine rug she had made years before. Mama had been one of the best weavers anywhere. Her mind had relished the geometry of the loom and the interplay of color translated into warp and weft. She had created symphonies of design in gray, white, black, and brown, using wool sheared and spun from sheep they raised and tended at the old place.

  Bernie loved the rug Mama had made to warm her and Chee’s bed. It was a gift for their wedding, and the last her mother had completed. Because of the aching and stiffness in her hands, it had taken her more t
han a year, but Mama kept at it without complaint. Chee teased that Bernie had her mother’s tenacity when it came to working on a police case. “You’re just like her,” he said. “You work on a case, bit by bit, line by line, and you keep going until you figure out what’s what. Spider Woman’s daughter, weaving together the threads of the crime.”

  When she’d finished her story about Bernie’s aunt, Mama said, “Tell me what you’ve been doing, my daughter.”

  “Oh, busy at work.” Bernie mentioned a call she’d handled, a lost three-year-old she eventually discovered asleep in the back of an uncle’s firewood trailer, how relieved his family was to have him back safely.

  “Good,” Mama said. “But something makes your heart heavy.”

  Bernie squeezed her hand. She wasn’t ready to talk about it.

  Mama squeezed back, then gave Bernie news of her niece, a sweet girl Mama actually considered another daughter. She was expecting a baby later that summer. Mama never directly brought up the idea of Bernie becoming a mother, but Bernie felt the unasked question lurking in the corners of their conversations.

  When Mama said she had to use the bathroom, Bernie took her arm and eased her from the couch. She was as light as old bones baked in the sun. Mama shuffled along in her socks, using Bernie to keep her balance. Bernie had asked Darleen to make sure Mama put on her shoes to reduce the risk of falling. Where was Darleen?

  Bernie helped Mama with her pants and left her to her privacy. Down the hall, the door to Darleen’s room stood open. Bernie noticed empty beer cans in a corner.

  It looked as though a crew of burglars had rummaged everywhere, except for Darleen’s desk, on which she’d neatly stacked papers, drawings that reminded Bernie of the art you’d see in comic books. She looked at the one on top, a nice sketch of a young man and young woman. Funny that her sister was so messy, but her artwork so meticulous.

  Bernie heard the crunch of a car’s tires on their gravel road. She walked back to the living room just as Darleen came in.