“It was an important turning point in her life,” Jenny went on. “The important turning point. And she’s never doubted her journey since. Until now.”
Skye sat back, looking a little stunned. “I didn’t know.” But only a moment later, a defiant fire came into her eyes. “But I do know about your aunt Rose and her husband, Mal. Annie’s told me they’re very happy together, and that they don’t feel guilty at all that he left the priesthood to marry her. She said they both figure God had a different vocation in mind for them. So why not for her?”
Jenny said, “I can’t answer that. Only Annie can. I think Stephen’s point is that it’s a consideration maybe best done alone.”
“And I’m an interference?”
“A distraction,” Jenny said.
Skye said, “I think I’d better go,” and she stood up.
“There’s dessert,” Jenny offered.
Skye looked at them both, and although Stephen didn’t care for her presence, he wasn’t blind to the struggle he could see on her face. “I’ve never been in love like this before. I don’t know what I’m going to do, but if I decide I can’t let Annie go, I’ll do everything I can to keep her. And, Stephen, if that makes me a monster in your eyes, we’ll both just have to live with that.”
Jenny saw her to the door, and Stephen heard them exchange words, but too quietly for him to make them out. When Skye had gone, Jenny came back to the table and sat down. “In the end, Stephen, it’s Annie’s life. And you and me and Dad, we have no more right to interfere with her decision than Skye does. I think her question to you was valid, and one you ought to think about.”
“What question?”
“How would you feel if someone tried to take Marlee away?”
But Stephen already knew the answer to that. Someone had tried it, someone in a green, mud-spattered pickup. And, afterward, all Stephen had wanted to do was shoot the bastard dead.
CHAPTER 25
For dinner, Stella Daychild heated up a couple of cans of Campbell’s tomato soup, made some grilled cheese sandwiches with Velveeta, and opened a bag of Old Dutch potato chips. For dessert, she offered Oreo cookies and vanilla ice cream, but Cork passed on that and settled for a cup of strong black coffee.
Marlee ate with them but seemed tired through the whole meal and said very little. When it was over, she laid herself down on the sofa, turned on the television, and was soon sound asleep.
“The painkillers,” Stella explained. “She’ll be dead to the world for hours.”
Stella wore a tight black sweater and tight indigo jeans. The whole evening, Cork had had trouble keeping his eyes off her, which made him uncomfortable on two counts. First of all, he didn’t think of himself as a guy who ogled women; and second, there was Rainy. He didn’t know what was going on with him, exactly, though loneliness was a part of it. Hormones, too, probably. And could it be, he wondered, that he was looking for a little salve to ease the sting of what felt to him like abandonment by Rainy?
Stella wasn’t oblivious to his interest. Carrying the dinner plates to the kitchen, she smiled back when she caught him eyeing her.
Cork did his best to keep things professional, and once Marlee was asleep, he turned the conversation to the issues at hand.
“How has Ray Jay been since all that hullabaloo about the Cecil LaPointe case?” he asked.
Stella shrugged. “The truth is I don’t see much of him. We didn’t grow up close. He keeps to himself. If he didn’t have Dexter, he . . .” She hesitated, decided not to complete that thought. “I guess the answer is that, as far as I could see, he was fine.”
“No threats that you know of?”
“If I knew about them, I would have told you by now.” She was about to sip from her coffee mug when she seemed to understand the thrust of his questioning. “You think someone killed Dexter because of what Ray Jay did twenty years ago?”
“Everything happens for a reason. When it’s an extraordinary sort of happening, you’re willing to look at extraordinary reasons. The LaPointe case may be an old one, but two years ago it got a new twist. So it’s something to think about.”
“Who’d even care?”
“Cecil LaPointe, for one.”
“But he says he did it. He killed that girl. And he says he’s okay with being in prison for it.”
“What a man says isn’t always the truth. In my experience, it’s what he does that counts.”
“You think he killed Dexter? Because of what Ray Jay did twenty years ago?”
“It’s the only connection that I can see at the moment.”
“But Cecil LaPointe is still in prison.”
“So obviously it wasn’t him. If he’s behind it, he had some help.”
“Who?”
“There’s something I haven’t told you, something I learned today from Carson Manydeeds. He’s pretty sure he saw the guy who left Dexter’s head in Ray Jay’s apartment. He didn’t get a clear look at him but did see that he was driving a pickup.”
Her eyes shot fire. “A green pickup?”
“Carson couldn’t say. What I do know about LaPointe is that he’s got no family here. His mother was from White Earth and his father was a Cree from somewhere in Canada. Quebec, I think. He had dual citizenship, as I recall.”
“Indians have trucks, and we’re less than a day’s drive from White Earth,” Stella pointed out.
“Okay, it’s possible this guy is some relation. But I remember that during the entire trial, LaPointe never had any family in the courtroom. The man you saw at the casino bar, the one you think followed you to the rez, did he look like a Shinnob?”
She shook her head. “But a lot of Shinnobs I know don’t look Indian at all.” She thought a moment. “Can you talk to Cecil LaPointe?”
“I tried two years ago, when all hell was breaking loose over Ray Jay’s confession. He wouldn’t see me. Wouldn’t see anyone.”
“But if he is responsible, why? Why would he say he’s guilty and then try to get back at Ray Jay?”
“Do you think Ray Jay lied when he told his version of what happened that night?” Cork asked.
“Well, no. But Ray Jay never said he saw who killed the girl, only that he suspected it was Harmon.”
“Do you think your older brother was capable of murder?”
Stella frowned, and a small dimple appeared between her brows as she considered the question. “I remember when Harmon was drinking he sometimes went into uncontrollable rages. And from what Ray Jay said, it sounds like there was plenty of drinking going on. And other things.”
“Did you know Cecil LaPointe?”
“No. But I have a feeling I know White Eagle.”
She got up, went down the hallway, and came back with a book in her hand, which she laid on the table near Cork. The title was The Wisdom of White Eagle. Cork knew the book well. It had been written nearly a decade earlier by Cecil LaPointe, who claimed that he channeled a spirit named White Eagle. The book was an examination of the spiritual path as elucidated by that spirit. It had created a kind of sensation when it came out-a book about the freedom of the soul written by a man incarcerated, for all intents and purposes, for the rest of his life, and based on wisdom handed down from another plane of existence. White Eagle Societies had sprung up all over the country, cutting across cultural boundaries. They’d been especially popular among prison populations. The man Cork had known as Otter LaPointe had become a guru of sorts.
“Have you read this?” Stella asked.
“Yes.”
“Do you think the man who wrote this is a murderer?”
“If you believe LaPointe, he didn’t write it. He simply transcribed it.”
Stella rolled her eyes. “You sound like a lawyer.”
“Life changes us,” Cork said. “LaPointe’s probably not the same man he was twenty years ago, but that doesn’t mean he’s not still capable of murder.”
“And I thought I was cynical,” she said.