Death on Canyon Road, Chapter 2: Something ’s missing

… realizing now that the vanishing creature was a coyote, the trickster. What kind of message was he bringing her this morning? She wondered.

Kate Brown snapped her pink Razr shut as she lost Gloria’s cell-phone signal and considered her options, not that she had many. The power-yoga class would be history — pitiful. Gloria needed her, once again.

She shifted the Land Rover into gear, made a quick U-turn and started navigating the narrow streets of Santa Fe to the Black Shadow Gallery on Canyon Road. But it wasn’t going to be one of those easy days when the lights turned green whenever she hummed the thought to them. It was a steady struggle to zip around out-of-state cars on Paseo, and even when she managed to do that, the lights were not in her favor.

Waiting at yet another red light, Kate caught herself thinking not of Gloria’s emergency, whatever that might be, but to the unlikely circumstances that brought her to Northern New Mexico from Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

A dedicated art student with a passion for Native American artifacts, Kate had thought she would return to that exclusive enclave after her studies at Dartmouth and find herself a comfortable gallery to manage. There she could make a name for herself and continue to enjoy the privileged life that her family’s wealth had brought her.
She never imagined her trust fund would dry up, her father would land in prison or the junk bonds he sold so enthusiastically were as worthless as the love he professed for the family. So she disappeared way out West to save face, ending up in Santa Fe when her Volvo sputtered to death.

She found herself at a women’s land trust near Pecos and discovered a love for the simpler things in life. The cooperative was an easy place to live, and the other women didn’t demand much of her time. She watched the seasons work their magic on the land and helped her neighbors tend their farm animals and harvest the bounty of their dutifully tended crops.

She met Gloria, an aging cheerleader with no sense of self, at the cooperative, and the two developed an easy relationship. Gloria had found Maria’s body that sunny spring day. Maria had been hanging out wash on her ranch, not far from the land trust. Wildlife authorities later speculated she had startled the bear, an animal desperate for food after several seasons of drought. Maria had been Gloria’s protector — Gloria always needed someone — and when she found the mauled body, she ran to Kate, not to the police. She wasn’t sure Maria was dead, Gloria had said.

Kate could still see the white sheets flapping in the wind, the only sound in that secluded valley. Maria’s bloodied body lay near a heap of still-wet clothes from an overturned basket.

Kate made a quick dash to Maria when she noticed a movement to the side. The bear had come back to reclaim its cache.

The next few moments were a detached whirl, the bear charging at her, Gloria screaming. She braced herself for death — she felt at peace — but after a huge explosion near her side, she opened her eyes to see the dead black bear, blood seeping from a point-blank shot to the head.

She heard the sirens of police cars and felt the onslaught of uniformed officers, but no one claimed to be the shooter. The mysterious gunman had to have been close by, perhaps in the wooded thicket near the barn. To this day, she could still sense the bullet whooshing by her head, so close she was never sure if the shot had been meant for her or the beast.

After Maria’s death, Gloria sought refuge in a nearby monastery, only to emerge with an odd combination of New Age mysticism, Catholicism and a deep respect for Native American mythology. She believed the bear had been a symbol of her all-consuming passion, and Maria had died to bring her this message.

Kate, for her part, could no longer feel comfortable in the wilderness, so she moved to Santa Fe. She tried selling handmade goods from the cooperative, but was desperate for cash, and so she turned to real estate. It was perfect timing. The Southwest was “in” and it seemed everyone wanted his or her own piece of Santa Fe. She could take a rundown adobe, put a few creative touches on it and sell it as a charming traditional getaway, never mind that the toilets didn’t work and the rooms were cold and lacked closets.

She became successful, bought herself a condo, and returned to her first love, art.
While she still sold real estate on a limited basis — her clients could be so demanding — she was now focusing her energy on buying and selling Indian art.
Kate’s ability to connect art to wealthy clients had brought her back into Gloria’s sphere. Gloria had decided the bear spirit had told her to funnel her passion into running a gallery.

The ethereal Gloria and the down-to-earth Kate made a good business partnership.
A shadow running across Canyon Road brought her back to the present. She braked, narrowly avoiding what at first she thought was a dog. She saw its thick tail disappear between parked cars on the crowded street. A car behind her honked, and she drove forward, realizing now that the vanishing creature was a coyote, the trickster. What kind of message was he bringing her this morning? She wondered.
With her foot on the accelerator, she hurried to find a parking spot near the gallery.
Kate screeched to a stop and backed into the tight spot, the pesky driver behind staring at her angrily as she navigated closer to the curb. Kate jumped from the car and hurried the half block to the gallery. She found Gloria a crumpled mess on the portal floor, blood smeared on her pantsuit.

“Gloria,” Kate said, kneeling down beside her and gathering her into her arms. She shook Gloria gently and could feel her faint breath on her shoulder. “What’s happened?”

Gloria mumbled slightly as if waking from a dream. “What? Where? Who?” she asked, looking around and seeming somewhat startled to see Kate. Then she relaxed, feeling safe after all. “Oh, you finally came. You’ve got to help me.”

Kate eased Gloria up from the floor as Gloria looked around the empty portal. The cowboy and Indian woman were gone. Not even the odious smell remained.
“They were here,” Gloria said, pointing to a spot near the wooden Indian statue. “That woman was dead, I’m sure of it.”

Kate walked over to the darkened corner, but there was nothing to see. Dust, to be sure, and bits of snow blown in from the night’s storm, but that was it. She turned to Gloria and saw she was clutching at her cut hand, the source of the blood.
“Let’s go inside,” Kate said, gently aiming Gloria into the gallery. “How did you cut yourself? And what made you faint?”

But Gloria shook herself free. “They were here, not less than a minute ago. There’s no way he could have picked her up and carried her away. That woman was dead. I heard your car right before … ” “Before you fainted?”

“I didn’t faint,” Gloria angrily replied. “I don’t know what happened. Maybe that cowboy hit me with something.”

Kate went up to her again, smoothing her hair. There was no lump, no scratch and aside from the blood from her hand, there were no injuries. She shook her head.
“Whoever they were, they’re gone now,” Kate said, moving her back into the gallery.
“We need to clean up before your customers arrive.”

Gloria spotted a few gallery-browers working their way up the street. She went into her gallery willingly, her thoughts slowly turning back to her work-a-day world. She needed to compose herself.

She only made it a few steps, bumping into Kate, who had simply stopped in the middle of the gallery. Gloria stubbed her Prada-clad toe right on Kate’s angry-looking black Pumas.

“Ow,” Gloria uttered, and then turned her gaze to where Kate was looking. There on the gallery wall was an empty spot. Her mostexpensive and most-cherished work of art, the Frank Howell, was gone. The deer-horn frame that had held the painting lay shattered on the floor. Here and there were fragments of horn, displaying jagged, dangerous edges.

And then she remembered the sharp object on the homeless woman’s body that had punctured her hand, what she had taken for a ceremonial wand.
“How, how could that be?”

Gloria said, looking for a counter to lean herself against. “It was there when I unlocked, and I didn’t leave the store for a moment … ” The door opened with a scrape, and the women turned to see a couple walk into the gallery. The morning’s first customers, a big man wearing a larger brown parka and a winter cap with funny earflaps, and his wife, a diminutive woman wrapped in a fur coat of some kind. Gloria tried to compose herself, tried to shake away the morning’s events to greet them.

It was the trickle of blood that Kate saw first, then the look on the man’s face as he slowly realized he’d been shot. It seemed to Kate he was forming the word “why” when the bullet struck him. Then the sound and motion came next, everything separated, slowly: the shatter of a window, the explosive bang of a weapon, that familiar whoosh by her ear. She heard the flapping sheets in the wind again, a distant memory. Saw a bear dropping to the ground.

She knew panic had filled the room, voices echoed through the gallery voices, but Kate remained frozen, watching a moment in her past become present. The man swirled, tried to catch himself as he fell, knocking kachinas from a display case. There was a muffled thud as the man’s lifeless body hit the floor.

“Man down,” Kate thought. “Man down.”

HELP WRITE THIS STORY

This mystery story had its genesis at the Tony Hillerman Writing Conference: Focus on Mystery held last month in Albuquerque.

The first chapter was written at a writer’s workshop lead by Taos author Sean Murphy.

Murphy suggested words, emotions or events, which were then incorporated into a writing exercise.

The first chapter appeared in the Nov. 12 edition of Sunday magazine. I invited readers to share ideas, thoughts or plot twists for the story. This chapter contains some of those suggestions. I look forward to hearing more ideas for the next chapter, which will be published next month. I have a vague outline in mind about where the plot will go, but nothing concrete, so the story can really end up anywhere.
Drop me an e-mail at bswan@sfnewmexican.com, or send ideas c/o The New Mexican, 1368 Cerrillos Road, Santa Fe, NM 87501. I’ll wait about two weeks before I start writing the next chapter. Thanks for playing.

To read the first chapter, along with consecutive chapters, check our Web site at: www.freenewmexican.com/mystery.