A String of Beads (Jane Whitefield, #8)(68)

They went inside, and Jane followed her through the small, neat living room into the kitchen. Ellen was as tall as Jane and a bit broader, with a face that had obviously been striking and beautiful when it was young, and had aged without softening. Her face had a way of making anyone in her presence try to read what she was feeling and fail. Her expression was calm, dignified, attentive, motherly at the same time—but not the doting sort of mother, the stern sort. Her piercing black eyes had a clarity and intensity that must have made some people want to look away, but made Jane want to look into them more deeply.

Ellen said, “Things aren’t going as well as you’d like.”

“No,” said Jane. “I still haven’t been able to do what you asked.”

“Tell me what you can.”

Jane said carefully, “Jimmy is living in a small town in another state. He has what he needs to live comfortably for a while.”

“Thank you, Jane. That’s what we’d hoped you would do.”

“But it isn’t what you asked. It’s only a way of delaying what’s going to happen, not preventing it. Jimmy is still in danger.”

“From whom?”

“That’s where the problem begins,” Jane said. “There are so many people involved in this that I’m not sure yet what really happened.”

“We know about the men who are waiting for Jimmy in jail.”

“Yes,” Jane said. “They could be some of Nick Bauermeister’s friends or relatives. But Jimmy and I were being hunted and chased in Cleveland by men who looked and acted like something else. One of them fired a gun into the side of our car. The man who lied about selling Jimmy the murder weapon has got at least a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of new toys—TV, car, and Jet Ski, at least.” Jane went on with her recitation. She had seen the girl the newspapers referred to as the murder victim’s fiancée having sex with an older man in the bed she must have shared with the victim. And the murdered man had been a burglar, had probably been stealing from his partners, and hidden the loot he’d kept from them in his basement. “These are all people who benefited from the death of Nick Bauermeister or had motives not to want him around.”

Ellen Dickerson nodded slowly. “Greed, jealousy, revenge. Sometimes people are a disappointing bunch.”

“Yes,” said Jane.

“We need to clear our minds.” Ellen stood and went to a kitchen cabinet, opened the door, and took down a big coffee can. “Come on out in the back.”

She took Jane out onto the wooden deck in back of the house, which overlooked a path into the woods. She opened the can and poured a pile of tobacco onto a small rustic table that had been covered with a piece of sheet metal. Jane recognized it as oyenkwa:onwe, “the real tobacco,” which was greenish and dried to almost a powder. It didn’t look much like the tobacco sold in stores.

Ellen whispered for about thirty seconds. Jane could tell that they were Seneca words, but did not listen to them because she was aware that they were not addressed to her. Ellen knew things that were the property of secret societies, so Jane kept her distance and didn’t try to hear any of it. Ellen lit the tobacco with a match, and the smoke began to rise straight up in the windless air. She said in Seneca loud enough for Jane to hear, “We burn oyenkwa:onwe to give thanks for keeping both of our children safe and out of the hands of enemies. We ask for clear minds to help us find a way through this trouble.”

It was simple and clear and it reminded Jane of things she had always loved. Senecas weren’t in the habit of praying to ask for gifts. They gave thanks. When they did make a request, it was almost always to be better—more worthy, more able, braver, wiser. She silently added the strength of her mind to the prayer, willing the fire to send the stream of tobacco smoke upward to the sky.

After a few minutes the tobacco burned out and Jane followed Ellen to the door. She felt almost reluctant to leave the quiet, private space, the platform surrounded by tall, thick-trunked trees with the patch of deep, starlit sky above. It occurred to Jane that there never seemed to be anywhere in Western New York where the sky was as full of stars as over the reservation. She saw Ellen watching her.

Ellen said, “It was nice of you to come and fill us in.”

“It may be a while before I can do it again.”

“We’ll understand.”

Jane said, “I think I’m going to have to get a lawyer involved now. Jimmy won’t ever be safe until the law is satisfied.”

Ellen said, “The clan mothers aren’t opposed to lawyers. Ely Parker learned to be a lawyer to help save the reservation. He and Mr. Martindale are two of the reasons that there is a reservation.”

Jane nodded. The Mr. Martindale Ellen was talking about was the attorney who had engineered the clan mothers’ twenty-five-year strategy of delaying tactics and lawsuits that had secured the reservation title in the 1850s. And the Tonawanda Seneca chief Ely S. Parker was also the Union general who wrote the terms of the Confederate surrender at Appomattox in 1865. A few generations were an eye-blink to the clan mothers. “This lawyer is a friend of mine.”

“We trust your judgment.”

“The lawyer is—”

“We trust your judgment.” Her voice was still soft, still patient.

“Thanks. I’d better be going,” Jane said.