126282.fb2
"Then be glad you've got a job to pay for college, Wayne," she told him, making neat little stacks of receipts. "You'll make a better engineer than a heating and A/C specialist. How's Dad's ostrich-fence project coming?"
Robert laughed, although she wasn't sure why. She sorted out a couple more gas tabs. Then he explained. "Twice as many of the eggs hatched out as the guy thought would. He had to get a guy in from Tulsa to build more shelters, and Dad's gonna have to weld twice as many fence lines."
Jennifer shook her head, and laid a McDonald's receipt on the rest of the business meals. At least no one can claim I'm trying to deduct booze and steak. Running aflat per-hour rate may be a pain when it comes to accounting, but it's what got me a lot of clients pretty quickly. Glad Mom thought of it. This ostrich thing was surely one of the wilder get-rich schemes she'd ever run across. "He hasn't talked Dad into-"
"Investing? Not a chance. Pop thinks the whole ostrich boom is gonna bust in a couple of years. Every chick this guy raises is going out to a new breeder. Once you run out of people who want to be breeders-how many feathers, hides, and five-pound eggs can you sell? Those things die at the drop of a hat, and they eat like a mule. Or maybe a goat; they'll eat anything that'll fit down their throats, whether or not it's really edible. By the time you get one big enough to be worth something, you've lost six more."
Jennifer was relieved; it looked like everyone had seen the fallacy in this ostrich thing, at least in her family. She'd been half afraid her father would get talked into investing. She'd seen this breeder on the news, and he was very persuasive. He was making a lot of money-quite enough to pay her father for his work up front, all at once.
She had been concerned because it looked good on paper-now. Like the guy in Claremore who'd tried to sell concrete dome houses-the idea looked good in theory, and they were certainly tornadoproof, but the reaction of most people in Oklahoma had been "Maggie, that's weird," and the poor guy had lost his shirt. She should have known better than to worry; the Talldeer were sensible people, and not easy to talk into something.
Well, most of us are, anyway. Present company excepted. She dropped a bill for dry cleaning down on the stack of "miscellaneous," and noted on it "removal of client's blood from silk blouse." Not that it had been anything serious, like a murder. Marianne's husband had beaten her up, that was all, and she had gotten the blood all over her blouse taking the woman to the emergency room. But it should shock the hell out of any auditors. She loved writing little notes like that. If the IRS ever decided to double-check her, they'd certainly have an interesting time.
Well, it was a good thing her father hadn't gotten wrapped up in the ostrich scheme. Besides, according to everything she'd heard, the damn things were not only stupid, they were vicious. "Like six-foot turkeys with an attitude," one of her clients had said. There were already enough things with "attitudes" in their lives; the Talldeer family didn't need to cope with giant birds too.
"Mom has a hot prospect for that white elephant-the earth-sheltered place in Mannford," Robert continued. "An artist; told her to show him everything weird, so long as it had land, a view, and privacy."
"Sounds good, but is an artist likely to go for that?" she asked dubiously. "You think he's ready for a one-lane gravel road with a twenty percent grade?"
"He picked Mom up to go look at it in a Bronco with a lot of mud on it," Robert said. "I'd say so. He was wearing snake-boots, too. I think he knows what he's going to go see."
That sounded promising; maybe all artists weren't crazy. She'd seen the place; it had an impressive view and with the addition of a windmill for electricity it could be completely self-sufficient. Maybe that wouldn't be such a bad thing for an artist.
Morgage. Twenty percent, office space. She'd thought about the place too; wonderful view, and for someone with her interests, it would make the perfect place to detox from the modern world. With ten acres, she could have had a dozen real sweatlodges out in the woods and no one would ever know.
But it was no place for someone who had to make a living in the city. At least an hour away in good weather, and during the January and February ice storms, you wouldn't be able to get out without a Land Rover and chains.
"Listen," Robert said, "Mom left a note in case you called and she wasn't home. Can you pick up some of those good glass crow-beads and the porcupine quills at Lyon's downtown? Dad's adding to his dance gear again."
"Who's going to mess with the quilling?" she asked, aghast. Porcupine-quill embroidery was not quite a lost art, but it was one even their ancestors had gladly abandoned in favor of using glass beads. "Not Mom-"
"Nope. He is. Says he'll just have to put on a dress and do it himself." That was the perennial joke; when her father wanted something particularly difficult done for his costume, and her mother swore she didn't have the time or inclination, her father then said he'd have to "put on a dress to do women's work."
"He isn't really going to do it this time, is he?" she asked, giggling. "Remember the time he got as far as Mom's closet?"
"Naw. Auntie Red Bird is holding a quill-embroidery class and she said she'd do his costume stuff as the demonstration. So he's saved again." Robert snickered. "One of these days Mom is going to call his bluff, and I'm gonna be there with a camcorder."
"Do that, and I get the popcorn concession," she replied. "So what does he want for this piece of Osage haute monde?"
Robert read the list and she made careful notes on the back of a plea for money from a televangelist. She always saved her junk mail to use for notepaper, especially the stuff from televangelists. She figured that it ought to serve some use before she recycled it.
"Okay, young buck, is there anything more I need to know?" The last of the receipts went into the "it might be deductible but I'm not going to take it" pile-the one she intended to present to the IRS with all the rest if that audit ever came. The way she had it figured, they'd probably end up owing her money.
For the entertainment value alone.
"Not a thing. Don't talk to strange men, sis."
"I'm talking to the strangest one I know right now," she countered. "I'll pick the stuff up some time tomorrow, okay?"
"That'll be great. Watch your back."
"I will," she said, and only after she'd hung up did she wonder why Robert, the least disturbed about her job of any of the family, had chosen to say that.
_CHAPTER THREE
it wasn't exactly an appointment, but Jennifer wanted to catch both of the Ambersons home. According to her research, Ralph Amberson usually arrived home at about 4:30; his wife Gail, who had a part-time job with an advertising firm, got home just before her children did. If she didn't catch them before dinner, she might not be able to get them to answer the door. The neighbors said that Ralph was something of a martinet, and insisted that the phone be unplugged and the doorbell ignored at dinnertime. And after dinner-well, the neighbors said that only business would pry Ralph out of his home office.
It was Gail who most interested Jennifer, for Gail's maiden name had been Gentry.
That was not an unusual name, but it was of particular interest to Jennifer. It had been an Abraham Gentry who had served as one of the government agents on the Lakotah reservation from 1892 to 1904. During that time period, any number of interesting things happened between the Lakotahs in question and the agents who were supposed to be protecting their interests, no few of them reprehensible by anyone's standards, but the one that concerned Jennifer was the disappearance-after "confiscation"-of several sacred Lakotah religious items. The policy at the time was to "civilize"-which meant Christianize-every Native American on the continent. Native ceremonies were often outlawed altogether, on the flimsiest of excuses; children were taken from their parents' custody and sent away to boarding schools where they were forbidden to speak their own languages or to worship in their own ways. Freedom of speech and religion were not an option for anyone who accepted the "beneficent guidance" of the United States government.
So much for "land of the free."
Jennifer grimaced, partially at her own bitterness, partially at those long-dead officials. Exactly what these particular objects had been, she did not know. The inventory was sketchy at best, and did not describe much that a shaman-in-training would recognize as a specific relic.
The objects disappeared about the time that Abraham Gentry took his generous government pension (and whatever else he'd managed to scam out of his post) and retired to Oklahoma. None of the other leads Jennifer had followed had produced any information. But Abraham's private papers, available at the Osage County museum, indicated that he was the one who had taken them into "custody," and there was no indication that he had ever given them over to anyone else, either privately or publicly. Abraham had a penchant for taking souvenirs; that was obvious from the inventory of his personal possessions made for his will. Some of those souvenirs of his posts on various reservations were in the museum, but most were not.
Now came genealogical research. Abraham had one child, a boy, Thomas Robert. That boy had inherited all of Abraham's possessions, gave some to the museum, sold the family farm, and moved to Tulsa one step ahead of the Dust Bowl. Thomas Robert had married and had a single male child, who had married and had a single female child. That girl was Gail Gentry, now Gail Amberson, and according to Jennifer's research, she had recently inherited a number of things from her recently deceased grandfather.
Among those things, Jennifer had deduced, were the Lakotah relics. "Memorabilia from Abraham Gentry's estate," was how the will had read.
If they were in the Amberson residence-and Jennifer would know the moment she came anywhere near the house if they were in the Amberson's possession-she hoped she would be able to persuade the couple to let her have them. Granted, they had a certain value as artifacts, but their value to the Lakotah went far beyond that. These would probably not even rate very highly as artworks; at that point in their history, the Lakotah were not spending a great deal of energy on making things of power "pretty"; instead, they were purposeful and often unornamented, the better to focus their intent.
Unless someone knew their history, they would not be valued according to their true worth. With luck and the will of Wah-K'on-Tah, no one would know that history. She would send the relics to the Lakotah elders if she could get her hands on them. If she couldn't-
Well, she had the paper trail leading to this house, this family. That was enough to get a restraining order, and to start a lawsuit. Legally, the situation was the same as if Gail Gentry had inherited a stolen painting. Before the Ambersons could sell any of relics, they would have to admit they had them-and at that point, there would be lawyers ready to take them to court over their right to possession. It would be a long and drawn-out court battle, and even if the Ambersons won it, they would lose far more than they could ever realize in the sale of the relics simply defending their "right" to have them at all. Only a major museum could afford to fight a legal battle like that. Most of the people, Jennifer had turned in, capitulated when it became obvious that a court case would involve far more than they wanted to commit. Often when the first suit was filed, they capitulated-especially if the Lakotah could offer them some token payment in return for the relics. Usually they did not offer the payment first, even though that would seem to be the easiest route. Experience had shown that offering payment generally led to a bidding war, and legitimized the claim of the possessor. It was better to file the suit first, to establish exactly what the situation was.
She hoped, as she steered her battered little Subaru Brat through the winding streets and past the manicured lawns of yet another middle-class suburb, that this would be one of the "easy ones." A couple of cases had ended nastily; in one instance of "dog in the manger," the person who had the relics had destroyed them rather than give them up. She still felt rotten about that one, even though it had been out of her hands by then.
Still, from a shamanic point of view, sometimes it was better for those items to be destroyed rather than be in profane hands. Artifacts of any kind of power could generate some pretty bad medicine just by being in the hands of the "enemy"; the Little Old Ones had known that, making the protection of their shrines for the Sacred Hawk, the Wah-hopeh, of paramount importance during warfare. Certainly many of the ancestors of other nations would have agreed with that assessment; that was what the Seminoles had said when they told her the artifacts had been lost to them permanently.
She parked the Brat a block away from the Ambersons' address, and the moment she stepped out of the truck's air-conditioned cab and into the hot evening air, she felt as if she had been hit with a double blow-one to the body, and one to the spirit. The hot, muggy air slugged her even though the sun was halfway to the horizon. And the blow to her spirit was just as formidable. She knew, with no room for doubt, that not only were the objects in question in the Ambersons' possession, but that she had to obtain them, by whatever means it took. For this particular set of relics, she might consider almost anything to get hold of them.
From a block away, even though their power had not been renewed for nearly a century, it struck her hard enough to stagger her. Whatever it was that Abraham Gentry had taken as his private memorabilia of the Lakotah was strong enough for her to feel its influence with a strength she had not expected. She closed her eyes against the sense of terrible pressure, as if there was a tremendous thunderstorm just over the horizon. She couldn't remember a time when she had ever felt something from this far away, except when the objects in question were in the custody of practicing shamans.
She steadied herself against the pressure, and walked as briskly as the heat allowed toward the Amberson residence. In a moment or two, the sense of pressure eased, as if something out there recognized her and her intent, and had acted accordingly. Perhaps something like that had happened; shamanistic regalia tended to develop a spirit of its own.
She walked along the curb, watching for traffic, although there was very little of it in this sheltered cul-de-sac. Ralph's (relatively) low-priced BMW was in the driveway; through the still-open garage door, Jennifer caught sight of the rear of Gail's minivan.
Good. That means they 're both home. This was not the first time she had been here, but she appraised it with the eye of the daughter of a successful real-estate agent, with a view to assessing the mental state of those within it. The house was just like every other house in this neighborhood; which rather annoyed her, truth be told. A house should have character; these had none. Clearly built in the late seventies or early eighties, it was a split-level, with the requisite stone-and-cedar exterior, recessed front door, attached garage, six-foot cedar privacy fence. The backyard was probably short-shorn grass with a tiny bordering of garden and a few hanging plants on the patio; the manicured front lawn, with two evergreens and two maple trees, was just like the neighbor's. Every house here had an energy-wasting cathedral ceiling in the living room to give it an air of spaciousness- yet the attic would be all but useless and the three bedrooms barely big enough for a bed and a little furniture. Jennifer appraised it with a knowing eye. At the time it had been built, during the oil boom, it probably had sold for between $120,000 and $150,000. Now-if the Ambersons could find a buyer with ,so many companies laying off middle-management or moving their personnel elsewhere-it might sell for as little as half that. There was no sign on the front lawn, but that did not mean they had not tried to sell in the near past. The depreciation of their dreamhome would have come as a dreadful surprise.
If they have any brains, they'II get the place reassessed and have the property taxes refigured on that basis, she thought to herself. It was advice her mother had given many a potential client trying desperately to unload a house that he could no longer afford. At least lowering the property taxes a little gave a feeling of illusory relief.
The neighborhood itself was too new to have any of the character of her own neighborhood. The houses were clearly built by the same company, to one of three plans. They were crowded quite closely together by the standards of the older neighborhoods, with barely five feet to the property line. The backyards would be half the size of hers, and the trees-except in the few cases where the homeowners had planted fast-growing cottonwoods or other softwoods-had not attained enough growth to really shade the houses. The sun beat down without mercy here, and with fully half the front yard of each house taken up by its driveway, the heat was terrific. If she hadn't been so used to it by now, she'd have felt as limp as a wilted leaf of lettuce.