Desert Redemption Read online

Jimmy was related to just about everyone on the Rez in one way or another. When we had first gotten together I’d tried to track his actual family tree, but soon gave up. It was too complicated, what with members of various tribes moving here and there, intermarrying and having multi-tribal children. Harold himself was the product of a Kiowa father who’d met his Pima mother at a local pow-wow thirty-eight years earlier. As for Chelsea, she claimed a Cherokee great-great grandmother, not that she looked it with her porcelain skin, streaked blond hair, and blue eyes. Harold bore her claim with patience.

  “Got a minute?” Harold said, as Doofus bounded back and forth from the corral to us, yipping excitedly. Doofus couldn’t understand why the horses didn’t like him as much as he liked them.

  “Maybe I should go on ahead,” I said to Jimmy, sensing some man-to-man time was in the offing. “Let you two talk, then you can catch up with me. It won’t kill Big Boy to travel faster than a walk for once.”

  Harold shook his head. “This concerns you, too, Lena, since you’re the licensed PI.”

  Apprehensive, I led Adila back into the corral. Sensing my mood, her ears flattened again. When I walked away she gave me a disgusted snort.

  At Jimmy’s suggestion, we ordered Doofus back into the truck, and went into the Airstream, where Harold nodded his approval at Jimmy’s carpentry—the coffee table constructed from saguaro cactus skeletons and studded with turquoise; the wooden cabinets covered with paintings of Pima gods, Earth Doctor, Elder Brother, and the entire traditional panoply. You’d think an artist lived here, not an IT expert.

  After we made ourselves comfortable on the sofa, Jimmy served up steaming mugs of Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee, his favorite.

  “So, okay, what’s the problem?” I asked Harold, after taking a sip. Super strong, unsweetened, just how I liked it.

  Harold pretended to study the Navajo rug draped across the back of the sofa. He sat so still that Snowball jumped into his lap, followed immediately by Ma Snowball. As he stroked the cats, I saw the skinned knuckles on his right hand. Maybe he was back to sculpting again. Or not.

  “C’mon, Harold, tell me. I’m not a mind-reader.”

  He looked up at me and sighed. “It’s Chelsea.”

  When Jimmy snorted he sounded so much like my horse that in other circumstances I would have laughed, but, aware of what might have happened between Harold and his ex-wife, I didn’t. Their relationship had been going from bad to awful of late. “Please don’t tell me she’s left you again and you want me to talk her into coming back.” Waving at his injured hand, I added, “And just to clear the air, you haven’t hurt her, have you?”

  His mouth dropped in shock. “Hurt Chelsea? You’ve got to be kidding!”

  “Pretend I don’t know you and answer the question.”

  Harold and Chelsea had married too soon after meeting, and they had divorced even sooner when she left him for a Texas boot-maker. Then she came back, but a few months later left again, thus establishing an oft-repeated pattern. Her erratic behavior was fueled by her drug dependency, and Harold had been trying to get her back into rehab ever since I’d known him. But that didn’t mean helping her had come without an emotional cost, and given the stress she had put him through lately....

  “Rest easy, Lena, I would never hurt that woman. It’s…it’s something else.”

  “Is she using?”

  He scratched Snowball behind his ears, and repeated the process with Ma Snowball. Purrs abounded. “A couple of months ago I caught her with a stash of OxyContin she’d been hiding. I flushed it and told her she had to get clean or move out, so she hunted around some and found this rehab place down by Ironwood Canyon, and checked herself in a month ago.”

  “Well, that’s good news, anyway.” Jimmy, ever the optimist, looked hopeful.

  I didn’t, sensing there was more to Harold’s story.

  “That place, it’s called the Kanati Spiritual Center. After three weeks went by and I hadn’t heard anything from her, no texts, no emails, no new Facebook posts, I started calling. All I ever got was voice mail. And before you ask, I tried Kanati’s 800-number, too, and after a few transfers, finally got to talk to some woman with a French accent who cited ‘patient confidentiality,’ and wouldn’t tell me zip. A couple of hours after that, I did get a phone call from Chelsea, but it was weird, so yesterday I drove down there to see what was going on. That’s when I really got worried. The place is operating out of that abandoned movie set used for Wagon Trails West. You ever see it?”

  As a movie, Wagon Trails West had been fun; as a historical artifact, it was ridiculous, with olive-skinned Arabs and Italians pretending to be Indians, their costumes ranging all the way from Apache to Zuni. Some of them could barely stay on their horses.

  “Now it’s surrounded by a stockade fence and there’s some mean-looking dude sitting at a guard shack in front,” Harold continued. “He wouldn’t let me in, wouldn’t tell me anything, not even if Chelsea was still there. When I raised a fuss he called the office, and a few minutes later, the French woman I’d talked to on the eight hundred number came out and told me there was nothing to worry about, that everything was fine. But she wouldn’t let me in the place or send Chelsea out to talk to me, saying that as Chelsea’s ex-husband, I had no say in whatever type of treatment she may or may not be undergoing.”

  Knowing what the flighty Chelsea was like, I wasn’t worried yet. “You say she ‘hunted around’ for a detox place. Why didn’t she ask her father for a referral? Being a physician, he would know the best clinics.”

  “Because he’d picked the detox center she’d been in when I met her, and she’d hated it.”

  “Kanati. That’s a Cherokee word, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, their name for God. Earth Doctor, as we Pimas call him. Chelsea’s still convinced she has Cherokee blood a few generations back, and if that’s what makes her happy, I’m not going to burst her bubble. That’s why she chose this Kanati place, because of the name and the fact that they have a ‘Native American’…” his hands made quotes in the air, “…detox program. But nobody I saw there—the guy at the guard shack, the French gal I talked to, and a couple of people clearing brush away from the fence—looked Cherokee. They looked more like you.”

  Harold’s reference to my appearance—pale skin, blond hair, green eyes—meant he had doubts about the rehab center’s Native American bona fides.

  “Maybe whoever runs the place thought ‘Kanati’ just sounded pretty,” I offered.

  “Maybe. But the more I think about it, I’m afraid she may have gotten herself mixed up with some kind of cult.”

  At the word “cult,” I raised my hands. “Whoa, there, pardner. You don’t know that. Settle down and tell us more about Chelsea’s phone call, the one you described as weird.”

  Harold looked uncomfortable. “She told me that part of Kanati’s program was to help their guests ‘gain independence from codependents.’ Is that all I am to her now? A codependent?”

  To answer his question truthfully would be to insult him because Harold, regardless of what he believed, exhibited many traits of codependency. He not only acted as Chelsea’s amateur therapist, but he took care of her to the detriment of taking care of himself. Witness his frowsy hair, his old clothes which had degenerated way beyond “retro,” his inability to hold any kind of conversation without referring to her, and his constant fear of losing her. Which—Chelsea being Chelsea—he was bound to do.

  “Let’s just say you’re overly invested in her welfare,” I replied.

  “But I love her!”

  Said every codependent ever. Deciding to ease away from the touchy codependency issue, I said, “Some rehab programs think a temporary separation from a partner is a good idea, and from what I’ve seen with some of our clients, it can work. Then again, you know what Chelsea’s like better than anyone. This place she’s found might just
be an excuse to try something new and exciting. Remember the last time she left you? She rented an apartment over in Phoenix with Joy Tolinski, that friend of hers from ASU. They were planning on setting up some kind export business in Thailand. So who knows? Maybe she’s left this rehab place or cult or whatever it is and has already moved in with Joy. She could have asked the Kanati folks to provide cover for her.”

  “That’s the first thing I thought of, too, so I called Joy, but she told me she hadn’t seen Chelsea in almost a year, and that the whole Thai thing had been a bust from the get-go. She said Chelsea couldn’t stay focused long enough to be of any help.”

  “Did you get in touch with her father?”

  Dr. Orville Cooper, a Paradise Valley widower who had raised Chelsea with the aid of live-in nannies and maids, was not known for his geniality toward his daughter’s mostly temporary partners. Harold was the only one he had even been halfway civil to, and that was because Cooper was an art collector and a couple of Harold’s bronzes were part of his collection. He’d demanded a “friend” discount, and received it.

  “Her dad hasn’t heard from her, either. They don’t get along, you know.”

  Chelsea and her father, both mule-headed people, were always at odds, if not over her choice of lovers, then her choice of drugs. But it would take a psychiatrist’s couch to solve those problems, not a PI. “This French woman you talked to at Kanati. Do you remember her name?”

  Instead of answering, Harold dug in his pocket and pulled out a business card. Printed on expensive cream-colored stock, it stated in burnished gold letters, KANATI SPIRITUAL CENTER. Underneath was an illustration of a blissed-out cartoon Indian in the lotus position. Next to the Indian was the name Gabrielle Halberd, Facilitator.

  “You realize this says nothing about rehab,” I pointed out.

  “Ms. Halberd told me they don’t use that word.”

  I reached down and scratched Ma Snowball’s ears; she hadn’t cared for the card search and had deserted Harold’s lap for mine. “A rehab center that doesn’t use the word rehab. That’s odd, don’t you think?”

  “She gave me some blather about Kanati’s spiritual experience ‘elevating the soul,’ making traditional rehab unnecessary.” Harold closed his eyes, and in a sing-song voice, mimicked the Halberd woman’s French accent. “Reehab is zee false trail, trod only by zee unbelievair.”

  Jimmy grunted. “An old Cherokee saying, not.”

  “Did this woman mention any kind of medical staff?” I asked.

  “Nope.”

  Alarm bells were ringing now. It was possible Harold wasn’t overreacting. “Arizona law doesn’t allow rehab centers to operate without certified medical staff on the premises.”

  Harold’s expression was rueful. “Not being uneducated on the subject of addiction and rehab, I brought that up, but Ms. Frenchie said theirs was a ‘spiritual program,’ not a medical one.”

  When Jimmy frowns, the tattoo on his temple appears to contract into two thin lines instead of three. “You thinking what I’m thinking, Lena?”

  “Probably.” In calling Kanati a cult, Harold might not be as far off base as I’d first suspected.

  For decades, Arizona had been home to numerous ersatz-American Indian groups which promised—for a hefty price—spiritual, physical, and financial growth. Few were connected to recognized Native American beliefs, and even fewer offered medical advice other than the ritual burning of sage bundles. For the most part these groups were harmless, and in some instances even beneficial in that they offered a way out of the uptightness which had sometimes caused the participant’s problems to begin with.

  Some groups, though, were dangerous, such as James Arthur Ray’s former Spiritual Warrior program. In 2009, three participants in the program died of heat stroke and eighteen more were hospitalized after an ill-advised sweat lodge ritual supposedly based on the sweat lodges used by some Native American tribes. No Native Americans were involved in Ray’s ceremony, even as advisors, and that had turned out to be a fatal mistake. The tribal medicine men contacted afterwards by the press were highly critical of Ray’s amateurish copy-catting of their traditions, and especially alarmed by Ray’s comment to his soon-to-die followers, “You will get to a point where you surrender and it’s okay to die.” The state of Arizona hadn’t thought it was “okay to die.” In 2011, after a four-month trial, a jury found Ray guilty of negligent homicide. The judge sentenced him to two years in Arizona State Prison, and ordered him to pay upwards of fifty-seven thousand dollars in restitution, thirty-six thousand in fines, plus various financial awards to the decedents’ families.

  As I pondered the vagaries of Arizona’s ever-expanding Native American spiritual industry, Jimmy stood up, a determined look on his face. “You folks excuse me for a minute. I’m going to find out who’s the brains behind Kanati. I smell a rat, and its name just might be James Arthur Ray.” With that he vanished into the Airstream’s add-on, another single-wide trailer that served as a dedicated computer room.

  Harold grunted in agreement. As for myself, I doubted Ray’s connection to the Kanati group. Since the Spiritual Warrior deaths, he had lost the bulk of his multimillion-dollar fortune and now lived on book sales and speakers’ fees. Having learned his lesson, he had never held another sweat lodge ceremony.

  I pointed to Harold’s empty cup. “How about some more coffee while we’re waiting?”

  “If I have any more of this stuff, my hands’ll be shaking so much I won’t be able to work on my newest piece. I promised to deliver a fourth bronze to the Heard Museum by noon tomorrow.” He managed an uneasy laugh. “And I’ve still got about two square feet to go on one of my canvasses. All pointillism, and you know how slow that goes.”

  Harold Slow Horse was one of Arizona’s leading artists, and the Heard Museum in downtown Phoenix was doing a retrospective on his work. In fame, he was right up there with Fritz Scholder and R.C. Gorman. His bronze pieces were fairly literal. Kiowa men hunting buffalo, Pimas praying to Earth Doctor, Apache women weaving burden baskets—that sort of thing. But his painting style, hyper-realism interspersed with his own brand of dot-intensive pointillism, was unique. One of his paintings, Crazy Horse Laughing, hung in the conference room at Desert Investigations. Another, Geronimo’s Last Sunrise, hung in Chelsea’s father’s living room between a Warhol and a Lichtenstein.

  While we waited for Jimmy to do his IT magic, Harold and I discussed the weather, which was warm and sunny. The cats purred along in accompaniment. We were just getting to the commentary on last year’s monsoon season—it had been wicked—when Jimmy returned.

  Handing out two sets of printouts, he explained, “As you can see, the Kanati Spiritual Center, established in Arizona two years ago, is run by a company titled Arneault, Pichard, and Theron, which was founded in 1962 by Maurice Arneault. They’re headquartered in Quaydon, a suburb of Paris. The one in France, not Texas.”

  “France?!” Harold and I chorused as one.

  “Oui, mes amies. As I said, Kanati—that’s their satellite group—has been operating here for the past two years, led by Adam Arneault, Maurice’s son, who was born in Oklahoma. Apparently his father was doing some business there at the time.”

  “What the hell is a group of woo-woo Parisians doing in Arizona?” I asked.

  Jimmy grinned, his white teeth flashing from his dark face. “Spreading peace, health, and prosperity through spiritual enlightenment. At least that’s what their brochure says. But there’s one thing you need to know, Harold. Since Kanati opened, there haven’t been any complaints, and believe me, I checked. But there were a lot of accolades from people who swore that Kanati had changed their lives for the better.”

  Harold didn’t look relieved. “But they’re doing business as a rehab.”

  “They merely say they’re a center devoted to spiritual enlightenment.”

  Unsettled by the surpr
ising international connection, I said, “No promises, but I’ll take a drive down there tomorrow and see what’s going on. Jimmy’s been hinting that I could use some spiritual enlightenment myself.”

  I’d meant that as a joke, but it was close to being true.

  Jimmy, the most patient of men, was aware of how much trouble I was having getting used to our new relationship. Not that I didn’t love him, I did, but when you’ve led a life like mine, allowing yourself to grow close to someone wasn’t easy.

  We’d been business partners at Desert Investigations for more than a decade. Over the years we’d grown so close that I began calling him my “Almost Brother.” Despite our different bloodlines—he was one hundred percent Pima Indian and I was one hundred percent European mongrel—our backgrounds were oddly similar in one important respect. His parents had died soon after his birth, and he had been adopted by a white family in Utah, and had grown up yearning to be reunited with his Pima kin.

  I was an orphan, too, or at least the social workers had believed I was. I’d been found comatose on a Phoenix street at the age four with a bullet in my head. No one came forward to claim me. The social workers had attempted to find a good placement for me, but it hadn’t worked out, and so I’d spent the rest of my childhood being tossed from one place to another. One of those places had been horrific.

  So let’s just say I had trust issues, where Jimmy had none. He accepted the world as it was, whereas I was always trying to change it.

  “Want me to drive down to that Kanati place with you?” Jimmy asked. “That’s some pretty territory.”

  “Nah, I’ll go it alone.”

  After all, wasn’t that what I’d always done?

  Chapter Two

  The next morning, after my four-times-weekly workout at Scottsdale Karate, I pulled into my parking space at Desert Investigations in Old Town Scottsdale almost an hour after Jimmy.

  We had started our company as equal partners, with Internet-savvy Jimmy manning the online investigations and me following up with the footwork. Most of our clients were from the Scottsdale area, especially the Indian-arts-and-artifacts neighborhood our office was in, but the footwork sometimes took me out of state while Jimmy manned the fort.