Owl Dreams Page 12

CHAPTER TWELVE

  Sarah retrieved a calculator from her shoulder bag and did some quick computations. Seventy-two possibilities for the Tiger’s four-digit security gate code. Or was it 362,880. Or another number too large for the digital display? A calculator was useless to a social scientist.

  “Math is hard.” She remembered the quote from Co-ed Barbie, the greatest philosopher who never lived in the twentieth century, but the four simple numbers eluded her. This was the first time the gate had been closed since she moved into the Tiger’s guesthouse.

  Sarah relaxed and waited for the four digits to take shape in her mind.

  A date. Something everyone would know and no one would think of.

  Then it came to her, the year Oklahoma became a state. So simple she hadn’t bothered to write it down. Sometime after the Dakotas but before Arizona.

  A date that will live in infamy—no, that was Pearl Harbor, during the administration of another Roosevelt.

  Sarah started at 1904 and worked her way up. Three entries later, the gate opened. 1907, my how time flies.

  A black SUV with a Choctaw Nation license tag was parked at the Tiger house. Victoria’s antiquities dealer.

  If Sarah remembered correctly, the man with the unusual name had a letter from Andrew Jackson to one of Albert’s ancestors making a number of promises he hadn’t kept. Sarah had never come across a reference to any such letter in her studies, but it was certainly possible. Jackson made a lot of guarantees before he banished the civilized tribes to Indian Territory.

  Victoria promised to have her father authenticate the document before any money changed hands, but Sarah doubted she would follow through. A few thousand dollars was no problem for the Tigers. The

  Crazy Snake Casino floated on a virtual river of money, and the tribe was generous with management.

  Times had changed now that Oklahoma Indians had discovered the lucrative gaming industry. The tribes reacquired their stolen land a few acres at a time, bought it back with dollars won from white people in games of chance. Suddenly there were a lot of wealthy Native Americans in Oklahoma.

  In the past, everything of value was stolen from the tribes. Sarah hoped history wouldn’t repeat itself. She hoped this Native American antiquities dealer was the real thing.

  Hashilli sounded like an Indian name. Maybe she’d Google it. Most Oklahoma Indians didn’t use tribal given names, not even the artists and the storytellers.

  None of my business, Sarah decided, but she found herself looking out the guesthouse kitchen window, spying on Victoria Tiger instead of working on her research paper. Should she phone Professor Lindsay, tell him what his daughter was up to? Would he appreciate her intrusion into Victoria’s private affairs?

  Leave it alone. Unless something happens, just leave it alone.

  But then something did happen. A man with bronze skin and a conservative gray business suit emerged from the Tiger home carrying Victoria’s baby boy. A first-time mother didn’t grant this privilege to just anyone. She must really trust this antiquities dealer.

  Hashilli had the body type and facial features Sarah had come to associate with the civilized tribes, a mixture of every race that inhabited the new world painted on a Native American canvas. Neither remarkably tall nor remarkably short. Slightly barrel chested with narrow hips. A full head of black hair with a texture that would vary with seasonal humidity. Sarah catalogued his attributes as if she were preparing a description for the police.

  She told herself Victoria is a gown up. She makes her own decisions. I shouldn’t be suspicious. Those were three good reasons to walk away from the window and quit spying on her host. She took a step backward, but kept her eyes fixed on the antiquities dealer the way she’d watch a stage magician—to see if she could figure out his tricks.

  Hashilli left the front door open, but Victoria didn’t follow. He fastened baby Andrew into a child seat in the back of his SUV. Quick and efficient. No missteps. Undaunted by the belts and fasteners that puzzled most men.

  His eyes met Sarah’s as he returned to the SUV after shutting the front door to the Tiger’s home. He gave her a perfunctory wave. Nothing wrong here.

  So where’s Victoria? The social constraints holding Sarah back stretched to their elastic limit and popped like a rubber band. She bolted from the window, pulled her front door open and sprinted toward the black SUV.

  Hashilli paid her no attention. He seated himself behind the steering wheel of the large black vehicle. He started the engine. He backed the SUV toward the gate.

  So I can’t see his license plate, Sarah realized. A Choctaw tribal plate. She’d seen it earlier—was the number 1907? No, damn it, that was the gate code.

  She ran after the SUV, cursing Hashilli, cursing herself for her inaction. The vehicle pulled away, leaving Sarah in the dust. Hashilli gave her another wave, like a soldier waves to his girlfriend when he goes off war. Cry all you want, little girl. History won’t slow down for tears.

  Tears of desperation. Tears of failure. They were a waste of good salt water. They blurred the vision, and Sarah needed to see clearly. She hadn’t meant to chase the SUV so far. It was a long run back to the house to check on Victoria. Maybe everything was all right. Maybe she had made a fool of herself chasing after an innocent man.

  But she knew that wasn’t the case. The front door stood open, exactly as Hashilli left it. Sarah left it that way too as she charged inside. She’d apologize for the intrusion later, if apologies were necessary.

  “Victoria!” Sarah scanned her surroundings as she moved into the home’s interior.

  Everything in place, as it always was in the Tiger home.

  “If you can hear me, please answer!” Hysteria cracked her voice. The pervading silence was proof that something dreadful had happened. Victoria’s adoption of Indian ways had not yet extended to eliminating the background noise of television and radio.

  Sarah almost tripped over Victoria as she hurried through the formal living room. Sprawled in the middle of the floor on a Navajo rug fine enough to be a museum piece.

  Like an aesthetic death scene, like the cover illustration on a Robert B. Parker novel? The disjointed thought didn’t slow Sarah down. She rolled Victoria onto her back, checked for a pulse in her neck, listened for breath sounds. They were loud and raspy but regular.

  “Has pulse. Is breathing,” she said aloud because that is what she had learned to do in the Red Cross CPR course she had taken earlier that year. She used the Tigers’ landline to call 911. The operator told her that an ambulance had already been dispatched.

  Impossible. Sarah was the first one on the scene. Unless Hashilli . . . the 911 operator didn’t want to hear Sarah’s theories. She walked around Victoria. Searching for clues, like Nancy Drew.

  A note lay beside Victoria. It read: “I’m feeling faint. Left Andrew with a dear friend in case something happens.”

  The hand was shaky but feminine. Why would Victoria write a note instead of calling a doctor? Why would a dear friend take the baby and not stay with the mother? Maybe Sarah had been watching too many Law and Order reruns.

  A vacuum cleaner sat in a corner by the fireplace—not unusual. Victoria Tiger was a clean-freak, but a thin patina of yellow dust coated the glass-topped coffee table beside the unconscious woman. Like pollen dropped by a floral display.

  Not in the Tigers’ house. Not with Victoria’s asthma. The sound of sirens brought one thought: If this Hashilli was a dear friend, then I’m Hillary Clinton.

  “How could this happen?” Albert charged into the emergency waiting area where Sarah had been sitting for the last three hours. He stood well within the borders of her comfort zone and glared at her. The families and friends of other patients turned their attention Albert’s way, but no one interfered.

  Sarah locked eyes with Albert and told him exactly what had happened. When that didn’t satisfy him, she told him two more times.

  After each account, Albert told her, “That do
esn’t make sense!” He raised his voice a few decibels with each repetition.

  “Victoria wouldn’t do that,” Albert said. “She wouldn’t.” He’d seen the note. It looked like his wife’s handwriting, “But she’d never hand Andrew to a stranger.”

  Sarah didn’t disagree. She recited the facts she knew one more time. Hashilli was an antiquities dealer, selling something Victoria wanted to buy. “A letter from President Jackson to one of your ancestors. She wanted to surprise you.”

  “Well, I’m surprised!” Albert shook his head. Victoria’s respiratory distress was under control. The EMT’s quick response made all the difference, but that was one of the things that made no sense.

  “Who called the ambulance, Sarah? If you know something, tell me now.”

  Sarah sat up a little straighter in the waiting room chair. She crossed her legs, sending Albert back a step. Pleading innocence irritated her. She was just about to say something she’d probably regret when Albert’s cell phone rang. He showed her his caller ID. Victoria.

  The Kidnapper.

  Albert’s skill at verbal confrontation was notorious at the casino. On the one and only time Sarah had ever been there, he’d vanquished a disgruntled employee in seconds. But now, Albert was strangely quiet. He sputtered one-word answers into the phone, then turned it off. The creases around his eyes deepened and then vanished as if chased away by a Botox injection.

  “I understand what happened now.” The angry energy seeped out of Albert’s voice like water through a sluggish drain. His words were slow and sticky.

  “I shouldn’t have spoken to you so sharply. There’s no problem.”

  “Was that Hashilli?” Sarah asked.

  “Funny name,” Albert said. “Changing moon. One of the few Choctaw tribal words I know.”

  “Changing moon.” That phrase nagged at Sarah’s memory. Something she heard only a short while ago.

  “I could be wrong. Long time since I studied native languages.” If Albert had been puffed up before, now he was deflated.

  “I don’t think you are wrong.”

  Sarah recalled her last encounter with Robert Collins. He’d shown her the newspaper article about Jimmy Mankiller, the casino manager who’d been skimming, the man whose wife died mysteriously, the man whose child disappeared. Robert saw the driver of a black SUV subdue the hapless casino manager with yellow knockout powder.

  She thought of the yellow dust on Victoria Tiger’s coffee table. She thought of the man Robert had accused murdering Jimmy Mankiller.

  The famous Dr. Moon.

  “Never met an Indian with a name like Hashilli.” Albert wasn’t interested in talking about his missing son any longer, and Sarah knew why.

  The kidnapper had taken charge. Hashilli would tell Albert Tiger what to do, and Albert wouldn’t argue. Not if he wanted to see Andrew again—alive.

  “He’s a different kind of Indian,” Sarah said. She had to talk to Robert Collins about this doctor/antiquities dealer who abducted Andrew Tiger. Native Americans had a long history of respecting the delusions of the insane. Maybe they were onto something.