There were no sidewalks in this subdivision; when these houses were built, it was presumed that everyone would drive everywhere, and that the kids would play only in their own or their friends' backyards, out of sight, sequestered, like little animals in their exercise wheels. Jennifer often thought of those builders whenever she saw a subdivision like this one. No one in Tulsa in the seventies and eighties had ever given thought to oil shortages, or pollution high enough on windless summer days to be dangerous. No one in Tulsa-then-could even conceive of a day when someone might want to-or need to-walk somewhere. Everyone had a car then; everyone. The absence of road salt extended the lives of cars so much that back in the fifties and even the sixties it had been a common practice to simply drive an unwanted old car into a field somewhere and abandon it, even if it still worked. Life had been generous to those living high on the profits of scarce oil; if you wanted to work back then, you had a job. Guaranteed. And with a job came the requisite car, the only way to get to that job.
Nor could those long-ago Tulsans imagine that anyone who lived in a subdivision like this one would be caught dead on mass transportation; the old street-car system was gone, the bus system totally inadequate for a city half the size of Tulsa, and it wouldn't come within a half mile of a neighborhood like this one. Jennifer had occasionally tailed people using the bus; every time it was a nightmare. Every few years there was some talk of a monorail, a BART-type train that would link the downtown with its industrial centers and outlying apartment complexes and malls. It came up whenever the mayor didn't have anything else to talk about. But now that the days of high employment and major oil and beef money were over, the Tulsa monorail was about as likely as a Tulsa space shuttle.
Access to the house was from the driveway, which had so slight a degree of slope that it barely qualified. Jennifer got into the scanty shade provided by the overhang on the tiny square of cement that called itself a "front porch," and rang the doorbell. In front of her was a fake wrought-iron storm-door, with double-pane glass on the other side of the metal. It looked protective, and the Ambersons probably thought it was. Jennifer could have jimmied it open in about thirty seconds.
She was hoping for Gail Amberson, but instead, she found herself confronted by the suspicious face of her husband Ralph when he opened the inner wooden door. It was not a good omen. He was still wearing his tie, although he had removed his suitcoat, and even in the supposedly relaxed atmosphere of his own house, he was as stiff as a catalog model. His brown hair was cut in the clonal Businessman's Style, his brown eyes were as expressionless as mud, and his nondescript face matched any one of a thousand other men.' His suitpants were gray, his shoes shiny black, his tie a solid blue-gray. It was held in place with a plain gold pin. Jennifer wished she could look that anonymous; camouflage like his might have saved her a time or two.
"Whatever you're selling, we don't want any," he said stiffly, completely ignoring the fact that she wasn't carrying anything other than a very slim briefcase. And ignoring the fact that she was not wearing either a door-to-door sales permit or a solicitor's badge. "And I give through United Way at the office."
He started to close the door in her face; she stopped him with a single sentence and by flashing the badge-holder containing her P.I. badge and license. It looked impressive enough; not quite coplike, but enough to intimidate a little.
"If you're Mr. Ralph Amberson," she said quickly and clearly, "my client is very interested in some property you have." She did not say "may" have, although she probably should have, ethically speaking. It had been her experience in the past that those who genuinely did not know what she was talking about showed it immediately, and those who had the relics showed that as well. Besides, she knew the Ambersons had the stuff; there was no point in not showing this card, and throwing Ralph off-balance by letting him know she knew it.
The word "client" caught his attention, and he opened the door again. There was a touch of cautious greed about him, and a hint of unease. Now there was only the storm-door between them, but that was still a psychological barrier she could have done without.
. "What property?" he asked. "What client is this? Who are you, anyway?" Good questions, all of them, and perfectly reasonable. She could not take offense at the words.
But the way he had said them made her tense her jaw and count to ten. His implication was that not only did he not believe her, but he felt the only reason someone like Jennifer talldeer should be in his neighborhood would be as a maid.
She took a deep breath; he radiated hostility, and she had the feeling that she wasn't going to get very far with him. He had her pegged for a minority, and she was already a woman. Two strikes against her on the empowerment scale. Someone as low-status as she was could safely be brushed off. Still, she had to try. "I'm Jennifer Talldeer, and I'm a private investigator representing the Lakotah Sioux," she said briskly, trying to put as much authority into her voice and the somewhat exaggerated relationship with her "clients" as she could. "My clients have traced a number of Lakotah artifacts to your possession, sir-or rather, to your wife's possession. These articles were illegally obtained by her great-grandfather from tribal hands. They would like them returned to tribal hands."
With someone friendly she might have added other things; that there would be no reprisals and no adverse publicity, that the Lakotah would consider anyone who returned these objects voluntarily a friend. Not with this man; he was The Enemy, and he had made himself into The Enemy from the moment she knocked on his door.
So she would act as if she had more authority than she really did, and give him only the barest of the facts. There. That was it. Now he would either admit he had the things and hand them over, or-
Well, that was about as likely as pigs flying. He looked more than ready to give her a fight. He must have had someone tell him that the artifacts his wife had inherited were worth a lot of money to a collector.
She saw Gail Amberson peeking over her husband's shoulder, and pitched her voice so that the woman would be sure to hear what she was saying, even through the double-pane glass of the stormdoor. She could not see Gail well enough to read her expression, but her husband's was a mixture of guilt and anger, just a flash of it. The same kind of expression she saw on the faces of people who had bought "hot" merchandise.
Then it changed, turning first calculating, then complacent. I've handled your type before, bimbo, she all but read. You 're just a woman and a stupid Indian. You can't prove I have the stuff; you can't prove anything. I hold all the cards here, and you don't even have a bluff hand.
But he kept tight control over his manner; his voice held a world of haughty disdain that she knew she was meant to hear. "I'm afraid you have the wrong information, miss," he said, clearly and precisely. "I haven't the slightest idea of what you're talking about."
He was using his height, race, and male authority to try to intimidate her, but sometimes an equal show of authority would make someone like Ralph back down. It was worth a try. "I'm talking about some Lakotah artifacts your wife, Mrs. Gail Amberson, just inherited from her grandfather, Thomas Robert Gentry," Jennifer persisted, taking slow, deep breaths of the stifling air, and fully aware that this man was not going to allow her inside his house where he stood in air-conditioned comfort. "Those artifacts were obtained illegally, and-"
"And even if I knew what you were talking about, you have no way of proving that," Ralph interrupted. Then he smirked-which she was also meant to see. She found herself pitying any woman who worked for him; sometimes intimidation was worse than harassment, for it left the victim feeling utterly worthless. His tone hardened. "Now I suggest that you take yourself back to whatever reservation you came from. You're trespassing on my property, and I'm fully within my rights to call the police if you don't leave."
And with that, he shut the door in her face, and only the air pressure between the inner door and the storm door prevented him from slamming it.
She counted rapidly to ten in Osage, then in Cherokee for good measure. "Fine, jerkface," she muttered to the closed door. "Then we'll see you in court. Hope you enjoy spending money on lawyers."
Then she turned on her heel and marched back down his driveway, carefully avoiding stepping on his precious grass so as to escape any "destruction of private property" charges. She was fully aware that he was watching her and probably would call the police if she didn't leave. Not that they'd come; she wasn't wearing her gun, he had no reason to say that she had threatened him in any way. She was totally within her rights so far, and in the eyes of the law she was no more than a minor nuisance. The Tulsa P.D. was too shorthanded to send anyone out on a nuisance call. But he might correctly remember her name, and it would be a royal pain to have her name on the police log for something like this the next time her license came up for renewal. Some people on the licensing board weren't happy with a Native P.I.; some others were incensed at a woman doing a "man's job." Her only defense was her spotless record. Well, mostly spotless, and she had never been caught. . . .
She would see him in court; as soon as she got back to the office, she would be calling one of the local tribal lawyers she worked with, and he would file a restraining order on Ralph, preventing him from selling anything until a licensed appraiser had a chance to look at it. And right now, she was going to ask him to word it in such a way that Ralph would be violating the law if his wife took something to a garage sale. The lawyer would also see to it that the appropriate legitimate buyers of artifacts were notified that Ralph Amberson was trying to dispose of the artifacts that were illegally obtained. Then he'd consult with the Lakotah elders, and so would she; after she told the Lakotah shaman what she had sensed, the upshot would probably be a lawsuit.
Of course, Ralph could dispose of the artifacts on the black market, but Jennifer wasn't terribly worried about that. Someone like Ralph, with all the appropriate yuppified attributes, had never done anything more illegal than cheating on his taxes or pilfering from the office. The odds were high that he wouldn't have the kinds of contacts he needed to get rid of the relics, and it would take him time to find them. By then, the number of buyers would have decreased to a handful, and although the relics had power, they probably were not of a rarity sufficient to interest the few buyers who would be willing to purchase something they could never display. Something from one of the famous chiefs, perhaps-or something of tremendous artistic value or a one-of-a-kind item-but not what was in Amberson's hands. Nothing she sensed led her to believe that the Lakotah items were of that nature. While Jennifer had heard rumors of another sort of buyer-the kind more interested in the power of artifacts rather than their rarity-she had never encountered one of those, and she figured it was unlikely that she would this time.
If we were talking about the Holy Grail, the Shroud of Turin, Sitting Bull's coup-stick, or Little-Eagle-Who-Gets-What-He-Wants' fetish-shield, maybe. But not this time. I think these things were made in secret, and charged with power to protect their people from what was to come, then confiscated before they were used.
Then she noticed something else. The objects were moving.
Damn him. He's jumping the gun and getting them out of the house!
She wanted to turn around and go right back, but she had better sense than that. A confrontation would only cost her. Her anger made her walk faster than she had before. She was halfway down the block, lost in her own plans, when she snapped to attention, alerted by the sound of someone running after her, someone wearing sneakers or other soft-soled shoes. Definitely chasing her; there was no doubt in Jennifer's mind.
She stopped and turned, ready to defend herself if she needed to-and Gail Amberson, wearing a high-fashion jogging suit, matched pink-and-white Spandex shorts, shirt and sweatbands, nearly collided with her.
"Excuse-" Jennifer gasped. Gail backed up a little, worry lines creasing her lovely, well-scrubbed face, and shoved a dusty cardboard box, brittle with age, at her.
"Here," the woman said, glancing back over her shoulder furtively. Her ash-blond hair, cut in a shag style, flared a little with the nervous movement. "This is what you want. Take it, please!"
Jennifer accepted the box reflexively, and the moment it touched her hands, she felt something very akin to an electrical shock. Whatever she was about to say was driven right out of her head. The sensation unnerved her enough that she lost the sense of what she had been thinking; lost even her previous anger.
"But-" she stammered awkwardly, "I don't-"
She glanced instinctively down at the package in her hands. The paper felt like dried leaves, and smelled of mildew. Now she saw that the box itself was wrapped in yellowed newspapers; the date on one page was May 15, 1902. It looked as if no one had touched this parcel for the past ninety years.
"Ralph is having an appraiser in to look over everything grandfather left me," Gail interrupted, babbling her explanation, her brown eyes narrowed against the sun glaring down in both of them. "But he doesn't have any idea of what is in all those boxes or even how many boxes there are-he's so neat; he hates dust and dirt and you couldn't get him to handle the stuff himself for any amount of money. I had to unpack the crate myself." She laughed nervously, and looked back over her shoulder again. "He's so afraid of germs-but some friend of his told him what Indian things are going for these days and that just started him up. He's sure what we've got is worth a lot of money, and the minute that appraiser tells him anything he'll be sure it's worth twice or three times what the appraiser says. His brother's a lawyer; suing him wouldn't do anything to get what you want; anybody who's ever sued him has gotten tied up in countersuits until they gave up."
"But-" Jennifer said again, still mentally dazzled by the throb of Power coming from the box in her hands. "Won't he know you gave me something?"
Gail shook her head violently. "No, no, I promise! Right now, though, he doesn't have any idea this box exists. And it's what you want, I know it is," Gail continued, on a rising note of strain. "Whatever is in there has been giving me nightmares since the crate arrived."
Her eyes widened with something very like fear as she glanced down at the box and away again. "You have to take it-just take it and go-"
Jennifer cradled the box protectively against her chest, and the fear left Gail's eyes. "Thanks-" Jennifer managed, "Don't thank me." Gail Amberson shuddered, and now her eyes looked more haunted than frightened. Jennifer wondered what kind of dreams the box had given her. "I may never be able to watch another Western for the rest of my life."
And with that, she wiped her hands convulsively on the legs of her running shorts, as if to rid them of something unpleasant, and jogged off down the street.
Jennifer stared after her, watching until Gail turned a corner and vanished into the heart of the subdivision. She must have used running as an excuse to leave the house. One part of Jennifer's mind admired the woman for her quick thinking, while the rest of her vibrated on the very edge of trance just from being in contact with what was inside that innocuous cardboard container. And Gail Amberson had been absolutely correct-this was what she had come after, and there was nothing more back in that expensive paean to suburban living that she was even remotely interested in. Nothing. There was not even a whisper of Power in the Amberson house now, and Ralph could have whatever pots and beadwork, "tomahawks" and rifles that were left, with her blessing.
And What Was In The Box was now purring with content that it was back in something approximating appropriate hands. There was no doubt in her mind that It knew who and what she was, just as she knew what at least one of the relics in The Box was. And a good thing it was happy with her, too. The Lakotah and the Osage were near-enough "relatives"-and Jennifer had more than enough of the proper training-that the artifacts in there were evidently content to "rest" until they were back in tribal custody. Jennifer wasn't surprised that Gail Amberson had been having nightmares. Anyone with any degree of sensitivity would have, especially with That working at him.
A derisive caw made her look up. There was a raven watching her from atop a streetlight, an old one by the dusty feathers, the wear on his beak, and the way he was tilted a little to one side, as if one of his legs was weaker than the other. When the bird saw that she had seen him, he cawed again, but did not seem inclined to move. Not that she figured he would, all things considered.
Well if I stand around out here, there's always a chance that dear hubby Amberson is going to spot me with a box in my hands and want to know where I got it. And while a rap of "robbery" would be easy enough to beat, since she hadn't gone anywhere inside the Amberson house, she didn't think it was polite to get Gail Amberson in trouble with her spouse after she had gone out of her way to smuggle The Box out to Jennifer Talldeer.
She ignored the heat and sprinted to the Brat. She hadn't bothered to lock the doors, not here, and not since she really hadn't thought she'd be away from the truck for that long. She carefully and reverently placed The Box on the floorboards, started the engine, and drove away as quickly as the speed limit allowed, and didn't even take the time to reach over to turn on the air conditioning until she was six blocks away.
And although The Box was content now, that did not mean it was any less powerful. It still throbbed, pulsating through Jennifer as if she were seated in a drum circle, and it certainly was not comfortable cargo to have aboard.
It's like sitting next to an unexploded bomb, she thought, as The Box decided to make its contents known to her in a flash of insight as clear and distinct as a Polaroid. The vision of the Lakotah shamans creating their instruments of Power, colorful and as vivid as the real world, interposed itself between her eyes and the road for an instant, and it was a good thing that she was half prepared for something like that to happen, or she might have run into a ditch.
It's FedEx for you, my friend, she told The Box. I am not having you in my presence for one minute longer than I can help. You just might take a notion to recall the days when the Osage and your people were something less than brothers. . . .
Fortunately, there was a Federal Express pickup booth not that far from the Ambersons' subdivision.