Bear Witness: A Naomi Manymules Mystery Read online

  Bear Witness

  A Naomi Manymules Mystery

  J.&D. Burges

  Naaltsoos Press

  Copyright © 2021 J.&D. Burges

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Published by Naaltsoos Press

  e-book formatting by bookow.com

  Acknowledgments

  We wish to give high praise to graphic artist Paul Burges for his spot-on cover design. Thanks to Dr. Lynn Stevenson, Paul Burges, and Audrey Burges for their excellent suggestions and encouragement. Special praise goes to professional voice actor Renee Dodd for her performance of the audio book.

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Chapter One of Coyote Alibi

  Chapter Two of Coyote Alibi

  About the Author

  CHAPTER ONE

  Scampering toward a barroom brawl wasn’t in my plan for the evening. I’m a mother of two with a good reputation. I don’t hang out at bars. I really don’t, and I don’t like seeing fistfights, not even in movies. I’d classify this situation as a knitting circle that went terribly wrong.

  My Stitch and Bitch group—we usually call it S&B—was in the bar that Saturday night because of the band. Not even the band—one guy in the band who used to go out with S&B member Laura Dumfries in the wild days of her youth. To hear her tell it, he’d been the sexiest thing in sideburns back in the early 1970s, when she waited tables at a beach café near her hometown of Pasadena and watched him surf. That was fifteen years ago. She hadn’t seen him since then, but when a friend from high school called to let her know that the guy’s country band was playing in Sage Landing, she couldn’t resist the chance to check him out. The small-town rumor mill being what it is, though, she didn’t want to be seen at Wranglers by herself on a Saturday night, so she proposed a last-minute S&B field trip. Only five of us could be there, but the rest of the group would be expecting a full report at S&B on Monday.

  It was as simple as that, really. The band would start playing at 8:00, and we got there at about 7:30. We were lucky to get a table at all because the place was packed with strangers—not because of the band, but because of the movie crew that had been straggling into town over the past couple of days. It hadn’t taken the outsiders long to discover Wranglers, with its “rustic” atmosphere featuring unfinished plywood walls, jumbles of mismatched tables and chairs, and dim ceiling fixtures with a few bare lightbulbs.

  The band appeared on the cramped platform that Wranglers called “the stage” as our pitcher of beer arrived. Laura squinted past the crowded dance floor, saying, “He’s the drummer, I think.” She searched all the faces on the stage as the members of the band milled around before taking their places. Then she said, “Oh…oh my god.” We all looked over at the guy sitting behind the pearl-white drum kit, glowing in a greenish spotlight, and—well, let’s just say that the years had not been kind to him. We watched as he energetically clacked his sticks together overhead to launch the band into a Creedence cover. I couldn’t tell if Laura was disappointed or relieved.

  Sitting directly across from Laura, Dee Moreno was the first to recover. She quickly said, “Boy, this music takes you back, doesn’t it?” As president of the local community college, she was used to steering conversations into safe territory.

  We all nodded, settling back to listen. The band wasn’t bad, and the tunes reminded me of high school dances, but without sweaty palms and acne anxiety. I was about halfway through my first beer when my friend Wanda nudged me and said, “Naomi, a guy is staring at you. Don’t look!”

  “Where?” I asked, keeping my eyes obediently focused on the table in front of me.

  “Clear across the room. In the corner. He’s with two other people, a guy and a girl. But I’m pretty sure he’s been scoping you out. Wait—some skinny bottle-blonde is standing in the way.” Under her breath, she muttered, “That’s right, lady, just stand there trying to see through those big sunglasses.” Wanda hummed along with the band for a chorus or two before giving me the go-ahead. “Okay. Over there.”

  I glanced around the room like I was marveling at the size of the crowd. Sure enough, a man was sitting in the shadows who might have been gazing in my direction. He suddenly turned away. I took a quick gulp of my beer, which went straight into my windpipe. Real smooth, Naomi, I told myself as I coughed and sputtered. Way to draw attention to yourself.

  “He’s doing it again,” Wanda said, pounding my back. “He’s staring right at you.”

  I looked at him again, more directly this time, and again he turned away to talk to one of his friends. I risked a little longer appraisal of him. Unfortunately, the air was already thick with cigarette smoke, and none of the lightbulbs in his vicinity seemed to be working, so peering in his direction didn’t help me much.

  “I think… I don’t know, there’s something familiar about him,” I said.

  “Is there? He’s not ringing any bells for me.” Wanda glanced his way. “Is he Navajo?”

  I laughed. “You mean, does he seem familiar because I’m Navajo, too?”

  Wanda shook her head. “Nope. I’m trying to figure out if he’s from around here. I don’t think he is.”

  By now everyone at our table had taken at least one turn at staring across the room to see who Wanda was talking about. Each of us quietly agreed that he was not a local.

  “Hollywood maybe,” Dee said. “Actor? He’s pretty cute.”

  “Ruggedly handsome, more like,” said Laura. “Definitely hot enough to be an actor.”

  “Sort of lean and rangy,” added Wanda. “Thirty-five? Forty? What do you think, Sue?”

  “Great hair,” said Sue, who should know, since she does hair for a living.

  I snuck another peek, this time noticing his glossy black hair. “If he’s an actor, that would explain why he seems familiar.”

  After a while, it was clear that, whoever the guy was, he wasn’t interested enough to walk over to our table. I wasn’t going to walk over there, either, so we all turned our attention back to the music, such as it was. When it was time for another pitcher, Dee said that it was her turn to buy. It was about nine o’clock, I guess. She picked up the empty pitcher and made her way to the bar, where the lone bartender was swamped.

  While Dee stood patiently at the end of the bar by the back door to wait her turn, I watched a couple of guys oozing closer to her along the bar. One of them was a strikingly gorgeous fellow, maybe in his early twenties. The other was a chubby specimen who could easily have been sixty, at least from where I sat. I wondered which one would be first at trying to buy her a drink, but she hadn’t noticed
them at all. Instead, she was tapping her toe and enjoying the music, smiling at the people dancing wherever there wasn’t a table. In her flashy cowboy boots and curvy jeans, she would’ve passed for thirty. Twenty-nine, even. Still, she was, by my reckoning, about twenty years older than the hunk and about an equal number of years younger than the senior citizen.

  I saw the younger guy step up close to Dee and drape his arm around her shoulders, putting his face close to hers. He was wearing jeans, too, but his were black and stone-washed. His boots, shirt, and cowboy hat were also black. His shirt was open most of the way to his big belt buckle, all the better to show off three or four gold chains draped against his chest. The song “Rhinestone Cowboy” came to mind.

  That was when things kind of exploded. The guy pivoted suddenly so that he was almost in profile to me. Dee’s right arm shot out and her fist connected squarely in the middle of his face. A split second later her left connected with his belly. As he doubled over, losing his hat, her right came up again and clipped him on the chin. That drove his head up against the underside of the bar’s tile counter, whacking it pretty hard.

  Slowly the guy sat down on the floor, and it was clear to me that he wouldn’t be jumping right up again. He slumped over to his left and sort of rested against the bar.

  I was surprised—impressed, really—that Dee had put the guy down so effectively.

  It seemed like everybody else in the place was too busy drinking, dancing, and shout-talking to notice the goings-on in a dark corner, and that included the others at my table. I grabbed Wanda’s arm. Scowling, she looked sharply in my direction and then followed my gaze. We scrambled out of our chairs and headed over to help, but navigating the crowd slowed us down.

  Meanwhile, the chubby guy made the mistake of stepping aggressively toward Dee. He said something that I couldn’t hear and quickly learned the same lesson as his buddy, earning himself a straight-on right jab in the nose. Blood followed. He put his hands on his face, spun around, and hurried out the open front door to a big, shiny sedan parked illegally right outside. He didn’t even get the car door closed before burning rubber out of the parking lot.

  Dee stood over the man sitting on the floor, poised as if she thought he might spring to his feet and do again whatever he’d done to get himself whupped. He raised his hands in surrender. She turned on her heel, marched to the back door, and walked out. By the time Wanda and I got to the exit, she’d already reached her truck and was climbing behind the wheel.

  “Dee.” Wanda grabbed the door handle. “What happened?”

  “I lost my temper.”

  I said, “No, you didn’t. You defended yourself. I’m calling the cops.”

  Dee froze. She said, “Naomi, don’t. Please. I just overreacted. End-of-semester stress and all.”

  Wanda said, “But they—"

  “Guys, I’m fine.” Dee glanced toward the back exit of the bar. “I need you to do something for me. Please go back in there and smooth things over.”

  “Smooth what things over?” I asked. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  She gave a small shrug. “Just make sure that the jackass is ambulatory, okay? And tell Laura I’m sorry for derailing the field trip. I’ll buy the first round next time. But right now, I’m heading home.”

  Wanda and I stared at her. Then we both shrugged, too, and walked back into Wranglers.

  The place was just as we’d left it a few minutes before. No one was paying any attention to the stranger who was using the rungs of a bar stool to help himself stand up. I noticed that he’d already jammed the black hat back onto his head.

  “Did you learn your lesson, cowboy?” I asked, putting as much snark into my voice as I could, given that I had to lean over and holler close to his ear so he could hear me.

  “Yeah,” he said, “she was a pretty good teacher.” He started peering through the crowd as best he could in the dim light.

  Turning back to me, he asked, “Did you see where…?”

  “Your buddy left,” I said. “Drove off.”

  He shook his head and frowned.

  “Was he your ride?” Wanda asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Bummer,” I said. “Know anyone else here?”

  He checked again and said, “Not anyone I can see in this light.”

  “I hope you weren’t going to Flagstaff,” said Wanda. “That’d be a long walk.”

  “No, back to the hotel later.”

  “Which hotel?” I asked.

  “The one out by the marina. On the lake, you know.”

  Wanda, who works for the Park Service and spends many of her days out on that very lake, said, “Yes, I know. Closer than Flagstaff, but still too far to walk—it’s about ten miles out. We’ll find someone to take you.”

  He let go of the barstool he’d been hanging on to and said, “Hell no.” Then he remembered the lesson in manners that he’d just been taught and added, “Um, no thank you. I’ll go check the parking lot and see if I recognize any cars. I need some fresh air anyway.” He turned toward the front door.

  As he started to swagger away, I said, “If you can’t find anybody, come on back.”

  Wanda added, “Yeah, we can get you that ride.” She gazed after him, admiring his rear view as he disappeared through the door. She waggled her eyebrows like Groucho Marx.

  “I don’t want to interrupt whatever cradle-robbing fantasy you’ve got going there,” I said, “but I’m heading home, too. I’ll call Dee when I get there.”

  Wanda’s expression changed immediately. “Don’t do that. She said she’s fine. Trust her.”

  I drew back and looked at her in disbelief. “Of course she said that. But—”

  “There’s no but, Naomi. Take her at her word. She’ll call when she’s ready.” Wanda signaled the bartender for a pitcher of beer to take back to the table.

  I hated to admit it, but I knew she was right.

  “Fine,” I said. The band finished a pretty terrible rendition of Proud Mary. As the raucous cheering died down, I said, “Wanda, did you know Dee could do that? Clean a guy’s clock without breaking a sweat?”

  “Not a clue. Our girl Dee contains multitudes.” She nodded her thanks as the harried bartender handed her a pitcher that was just a little too full.

  I said, “Let’s hope the board of trustees doesn’t hear about it.”

  Wanda grasped the slippery pitcher with both hands. “Who knows, maybe those boxing skills are at the top of her résumé. Maybe the trustees were looking to hire a college president who can hold her own when a couple of drunk idiots get in her face.” Holding the pitcher steady, she stepped carefully away from the bar and added, “I mean, it’s not like she killed somebody, right?”

  CHAPTER TWO

  As I walked the quarter-mile to work on Monday morning, I had strangers on my mind. Hordes of people were arriving in earnest. An area as isolated as Sage Landing doesn’t often host a cast and crew big enough for a full-length feature film like A Desert Place, but it wasn’t unusual to have film crews around—the stark scenery in the area offers memorable settings for commercials and television episodes. Magic hour—that brief time just after sunset or just before sunrise—really is magic among the rusty-red sandstone cliffs that jut above the huge lake and the white froth of the river. At other times of day, the bluffs cast dramatic shadows through the dry high-desert air. Sage Landing itself doesn’t cover more than about a square mile or so, but it’s bland enough to show up in exterior shots as a “typical small town” that could be located just about anywhere. All in all, it was easy to see what the attraction was.

  “A desert place.” That phrase kept nagging at me. I couldn’t quite put my finger on where it came from, but it certainly suited this place where Arizona meets Utah, where the Navajo Nation meets the larger nation, and where the mighty Colorado River meets the first of a humiliating string of barriers. Some years, the dams and the canals combine to reduce the big river to a salty trickle before
it reaches the sea.

  By the time I got to the office, I’d moved on to wondering what kind of movie A Desert Place would be. With a name like that, it could be anything—biblical epic, futuristic alien saga, silly rom-com, battle blockbuster, anything. My job gives me plenty of questions to ponder, and I was still pondering that random one as I unlocked the office door to the sound of a phone ringing. I didn’t hurry to answer it, but it kept on ringing. I gave in and picked up the receiver, breaking my unwritten rule about staying away from the phone till I’d had my coffee.

  “Carson Law,” I said. I had lately been experimenting with snappy new business greetings, but this plain-vanilla version was all I could manage under the circumstances.

  “Naomi, I can’t get hold of Carson, and this is important.” The caller sounded like Dee Moreno: community college president, knitter, and surprisingly agile boxing champ. Also one of my boss’s occasional girlfriends. But my boss’s girlfriends usually didn’t dial his business line, and nobody who knew him would think they could catch him at work so early in the morning, especially on a Monday.

  Dee’s voice continued, “Mike Rodriguez is on his way over here to arrest me, I think.” She hung up.

  “Arrest?” I asked the silent phone receiver in my hand. It had nothing to say, so I put it back in its place.

  Grant Carson is the only “Carson” in Carson Law. He’s also its only lawyer. And he’s my boss. We’re just a simple little practice in the middle of nowhere, and we don’t usually do criminal law.

  Back when we did have a few criminal cases that brought in some fat checks, I sent away for printed business cards that called our firm simply, “Grant Carson,” with a second line that reads, “Attorney at Law.” Under that, I had them put my name, “Naomi Manymules,” in a slightly smaller font. I hadn’t shown them to Carson, because I wasn’t sure what his reaction would be. My paralegal bona fides are pretty thin, but I’m probably the only thing that keeps the law firm going, and sometimes he says so. Not in so many words, maybe, but it’s easy to read between the lines.