Dance of the Bones

“And Myers died because he tried to blackmail her?”


As I asked the question, I couldn’t help thinking about Calliope Horn--Grover. She may have had her suspicions, but she still clung to the hope that the Kenneth Myers she had known was a good guy. She still wore the pendant he had given her. That left me in a dilemma. Would I tell her about the blackmail scheme or wouldn’t I? Would I reveal that, more than just knowing about something, he had been an active accomplice? Right at that moment, I couldn’t say for sure one way or the other. Sometimes we’re better off living with our illusions wavering but relatively intact than we are knowing the whole truth.

“That’s the story,” Brandon continued. “Last night, when they booked Ava into the Pima County Jail, they ran her prints through AFIS. The name Ava Hanover popped up in relation to an arrest on a reckless driving charge near Sacramento, California, on the second of May 1983. The police report there indicates she was trying to drive straight through from Seattle to Arizona and fell asleep at the wheel.”

“That gave her both motive and opportunity to kill Kenneth Myers,” I said.

“And now we have a confession,” Brandon added.

Call waiting sounded. I saw on the screen it was Mel. That meant her plane was on the ground.

“Hey, Brandon,” I said. “I’ve gotta go, but good on you. Sounds like you nailed her.”

“We all did, Mr. Beaumont. Thanks for your help.”

“Beau,” I told him. “Call me Beau.”

“Okay,” Brandon said. “Next time, I will.”

Mel had traveled with one carry--on, so there was no need for her to wait around at the luggage carousel. On the drive back to Belltown Terrace, I repeated everything Brandon Walker had told me.

“Sounds like you and Todd Hatcher have been a pair of busy little bees while I’ve been gone,” she observed.

“Busy, yes,” I agreed, “and I’ll be the first to admit it’s been fun.”

“So on your first at--bat with TLC, you obviously hit it out of the park,” Mel observed. “You saved a young woman’s life and took down someone who’s clearly a criminal mastermind.”

“Todd Hatcher is the one who hit it out of the park. All I did was put him in touch with Brandon Walker.”

“I just gave you a compliment,” Mel said. “You’re supposed to say thank you.”

So I did.

There was a long silence in the car. Traffic was heavy. It was raining like crazy.

“So what do you think?” Mel asked at last.

“About what?”

“About TLC? Are you going to work with them again?”

I thought about it for a moment. “I just might,” I said. “I didn’t do much, but what I did felt damned good.”





CHAPTER 29




THEY SAY IT HAPPENED LONG ago that I’itoi, Elder Brother, came down from Baboquivari. He went to the villages of the Desert -People, sat with them around campfires, and told them stories. He told them about how he created the water and the earth. He told them where Wind Man and Rain Man came from. He told them about the Man in the Maze and how the Desert -People had emerged from the center of the earth.

The -people loved Elder Brother’s stories so much that after I’itoi returned to his mountain, that was all the -people wanted to do—-sit around and listen to the stories over and over. No one wanted to feed and water the cattle. No one wanted to plant the corn and melons. The men stopped going hunting and the women stopped cooking and minding the fires. Soon there was no food. Everyone was hungry, and the Desert -People started fighting among themselves.