Heinrich took up the story. “Meeting John Wayne and John Ford, that was the most exciting time in his life. He loved to speak of it, and he retold the story many, many times.”
“Did your grandfather make a lot of movies?” Haskie said. “Maybe he ran into some of my relatives out here. They got to be Indians.”
Gisela looked puzzled, then laughed. “No, he only worked on Stagecoach. He missed his family, so Karl returned to Missouri, became a doctor like his father. He married, had two sons. The younger was my father, Charles. He served in the army as a doctor. When I was a teenager, he was stationed in Germany. That’s where I had the good fortune of meeting Heinrich.”
“Get on with the story,” Heinrich said. “These men have important things to do.”
Gisela patted his hand. “My father often told me about the trip he made with Karl out here when he was a boy. How he loved the blue of the sky and the red of the earth. They camped, just the two of them, and Papa liked this place as much as Grospapa. Maybe even more. He showed me the pictures of the two of them standing at Ford Point.”
“Tell about the necklace,” Heinrich said.
“Well, when Grospapa Karl was in the movie, he met an Indian named Robert, and they got to be friends. He loaned Robert some money—not that he had much—and Robert gave him a necklace as collateral. Grospapa kept it, and when he and Grosmama married, he gave it to her. The necklace passed on to my father, and he gave it to my mother for their tenth wedding anniversary. She loved it, and she always said she wanted to see where it came from.
“Meanwhile, I graduated from high school and college, went back to Germany, and married Heinrich. After Papa retired, he and Mother came to Germany to visit us, and we talked about Grospapa Karl’s movie stories and Monument Valley. We’d pull out our copy of Stagecoach and watch it together, waiting for the barroom scene where Karl was an extra.”
Heinrich said, “You’re giving out too many details. Get to the point.”
“It’s fine,” Chee said. “It’s an interesting story.” Haskie nodded in agreement.
“Then, last year, Mother said it was time to see this place for herself. She was sick, but she tried to squeeze in every last minute of life. Papa hadn’t been out here since that camping trip. I hoped to return to the States to accompany them, but Heinrich was involved in a big project at work, so we couldn’t make it. Mother told me she planned to wear Grosmama’s necklace for the whole trip. So they rented a car—”
“Not just a car. A big Lincoln,” Heinrich said. “Charles told me he loved driving it.”
Gisela smiled. “They’d been frugal their whole lives. Never went on vacation. I can just see them in that Lincoln. And we always camped, but this time Papa splurged on a hotel. Anyway, by the time they reached Monument Valley, Mom was really weak. They drove out, took pictures, and called me, so happy and excited. Papa told me they could see the monuments from the hotel room. Mother died a few weeks later.”
Heinrich said, “If Gisela’s mother left the necklace here, why didn’t the hotel return it to her or her husband?”
Haskie explained. “For some reason, they registered with a fake name. They left the line for vehicle information blank except for ‘California’ and ‘Lincoln.’ We couldn’t follow up.”
Gisela said, “He wouldn’t have recalled the plate number. But why a fake name?”
“A lot of hotels won’t let you rent a room without a credit card,” Chee said. “How did they get around that?”
Haskie shrugged. The couple looked at each other, and then the woman laughed. “They had a card they somehow managed to acquire in the name of their dog. They got it years ago, kept it for emergencies, but they never had emergencies. Dad always paid cash. He told me that way he never spent more money than he had.”
“The address on the card was a post office box.”
“That’s right. The post office was on the way to his office.”
“The maid found a stain on the carpet,” Haskie said. “I’ve been wondering—”
Gisela interrupted. “I know. Papa told me how embarrassed my mother was to have made such a mess.”
“What happened?” Chee asked.
Heinrich sighed. “We don’t know all the details. A hemorrhage. If Charles hadn’t been a doctor, his dear wife would have passed to death there in his arms. He managed to stop the bleeding. He told us she insisted that he clean up the room as much as he could and that he leave a tip for the maid before they left for the hospital in Kayenta.”
“A few weeks after her funeral,” Gisela said, “I asked about the necklace. Papa thought it must be in one of their suitcases, but he never found it. He was depressed, sad, adrift after she died. A missing necklace was the least of his concerns. When we lost him a month ago, we intermixed his ashes with my mother’s.” She smiled at Haskie. “I’m sorry my parents caused you so much trouble.”
“I’m glad I can give this to you.”
Gisela took the necklace out of the bag and put it around her neck. Heinrich helped fasten the clasp. Then she pulled out the paper.
Haskie said, “That’s their registration card. You can take that, too.”
She studied the card her father had filled out for the room. “You wondered about the names they used to register. Here they are: Mr. and Mrs. Postkutsche.” Gisela chuckled. “That was their dog’s name. It means ‘stagecoach’ in German.”
Chee reached in his pocket and put the white chip with the eagle design on the table. “And you might want this. Or did you mean to leave it with the ashes?”
“You know about the ashes?”
Chee nodded. “Did you know what you did was illegal?”
“I told her we should bring them home with us,” Heinrich said, “not leave them here in the wilderness, but this woman has a mind of her own.”
Gisela sighed. “When I picked up the urn with their ashes from the mortuary, I thought I would send a bit of my parents off with the wind in a place that meant so much to them. As Heinrich looked for a campsite, we noticed that old grave. Since it was already there, it seemed like a gift, and so—” Her voice started to shake. She stopped talking and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
“Leaving the ashes and the bone fragments there showed great disrespect to our land and our culture,” said Chee. “The same goes for scattering ashes to the wind over Navajo land. But it’s done now.”
“I apologize.” Gisela picked up the chip. “I left this on the road by the grave. A talisman for my parents’ lucky travels in the great beyond. Was this how you found us?”
“Sort of. I have a very smart friend who helped me. Robert, the jeweler you mentioned, was Robert Etcitty. His work is well known. You can see his picture as a young man in the museum, along with some actor cowboys. Maybe one of them is Karl.”
“So now, do you arrest us for the ashes?” said Heinrich. “Do we pay a fine? Go to jail?”