Desert Redemption Read online

  Red Head’s smile grew broader. “No problem with that, ma’am. Check it out, see if it’s right for ya, ’cause Kanati sure ain’t right for everyone. Some folks leave after a few days, but the smart ones tough it out. From what I hear, ya gotta be serious about this spiritual growth thing, not just pussy-foot around. Tell ya what. You just relax for a couple of minutes while I get Gabrielle down here to give ya the grand tour.”

  After a quick call and a few muttered words, he returned his attention to me. “I’m Ernie.” He was more muscular than I originally thought, but I sensed no menace in him.

  I stuck my hand out. “Pleased to meet you, Ernie. I’m Lena.”

  His handshake was firm but jovial. “You from outta state? A lot of the folks here are.”

  “Local.”

  “Good. Good. And how about…?”

  He stopped when a beautiful woman in her late thirties walked through the gate. Although definitely Caucasian, with her chestnut-colored hair and dark eyes, the beaded headband wrapped around her sophisticated chignon lent her a slight resemblance to the Disney version of Pocahontas. But she wasn’t wearing the Disney Pocahontas fringed mini-dress, just khakis and a white golf shirt emblazoned with the Kanati logo.

  She stretched out a professionally manicured hand. “I am Gabrielle, Lena, and I hear you seek spiritual growth.” A warm contralto, possibly stage-trained. And a heavy French accent.

  I stretched out my own hand, purposely making it tremble. “I’ve been having some, uh, problems lately and I thought spirituality would…” I trailed off.

  Gabrielle gave me a look of compassion. “Kanati welcomes all distressed souls.” Pointing to the parking lot, she said, “Park there, and I shall give you a tour of our facility.”

  I pretended hesitancy. “Um, how much is it? I don’t have…”

  Her smile didn’t waver. “Do not concern yourself with monetary issues for now. Simply observe what we have to offer. Kanati is a community dedicated to peace and harmony, not financial gain. Our business is to bring light to this world, not take advantage of any pain our friends may be suffering.”

  She almost made me believe it. But from past cases, I knew that cults—if Kanati turned out to actually be a cult—tended to strip their followers of every penny they had.

  Unaware of my skepticism, Gabrielle escalated the sales pitch. “First, allow me to show you where we hold group meditations three times a day.”

  “That’s a lot of meditating.”

  A graceful nod. “If you decide to make Kanati part of your life, you will find that you enjoy it so much you will want to meditate five times, six times a day. But we do not encourage such puritanical rigor. One of our teachings is that it is of utmost importance to maintain balance in every area of our lives.” She gestured toward the hacky sack players. “Elevated mind. Elevated body. These are the keys to health and happiness, even when it includes such silliness. May I ask what your particular problems are? Alcohol? Drugs? Sexual abuse? Or simply the sense of aimlessness and hopelessness that afflicts so many un-Elevated souls these days?”

  Every time she used the word “Elevated” it came capitalized.

  “I suffered trauma in my youth.” No lie there. The specifics included starvation, beatings, and rape in foster homes, all by the time I was nine. Then there were my years as a Scottsdale police officer when I’d been shot, then... But it would be foolish to open up to this woman. Her very slickness hinted at a painless past.

  My vague generalization warmed her contralto further. “So many of us have suffered, yet I promise you that with adherence to the Kanati program, you will rise from the ashes of your past like the legendary Phoenix. You will become Elevated.”

  There was that word again.

  Like all successful salespeople, the woman had her routine down pat. Meekly obeying her instructions, I parked at the end of a row comprised mainly of Mercedes and BMWs, and a couple of newer model white passenger vans embellished with the Kanati logo. Such automotive luxury made me wonder how much seeking spirituality at Kanati might cost. But now wasn’t the time to ask.

  Once I returned to the gate, Gabrielle led me through the compound, all the while extolling Kanati’s virtues, which appeared to be many. Although it did look a bit on the wacky side, what with its Old West folderol, the place came across as better organized than some of the high-end retreat facilities I’d found in Sedona. The log cabins, although sparsely furnished with eight bunks per, were spotless, their beds neatly made and covered with Indian-print blankets. No one was in them, probably because they were out enjoying the fresh air. Same with the small teepees.

  “Do all the members of Kanati live on the premises?” I asked Gabrielle. I was having a hard time accepting that the owners of those Beemers and Benzes I’d seen in the parking lot would submit to summer camp-type lodgings.

  “At the start of their spiritual journey, many maintain their outside homes,” she explained, “but as they grow to love us, almost all of them choose to live with us. Why remain in the cold and uncaring world when Kanati offers so much warmth?”

  Cults were good at separating initiates from their family and friends, so this was a bad sign. My suspicions grew.

  Behind the hacky sack players, a team of doubles batted a tennis ball around on a clay court, while off to the side, several people in modest bathing suits cavorted in the pool. Opposite them, ten slightly overweight individuals wearing khakis and white Kanati-logoed golf shirts performed calisthenics led by an instructor wearing a seriously beaded headband. Nearby, a group of morbidly obese folks enjoyed a game of croquet on a patch of artificial turf.

  As we toured, Gabrielle introduced me to several Kanatians, which is what they called themselves. Most wore beaded headbands and were friendly to a fault. Everyone wanted to shake my hand, to tell me how beautiful I was—no one mentioned the bullet scar on my forehead—and what an asset I could become for the Kanati community.

  Such behavior was called “love-bombing,” but this place was so loosey-goosey I still wasn’t convinced Kanati qualified for cult status. In my days as an investigator, I had seen a great many cults, including several of the polygamist kind, and none had appeared as free-wheeling as this goofy place. True cults were all about brainwashing and control, especially of women. Here, the opposite seemed to be true, with most of the group leaders being female. The Kanatians’ ages ranged mostly from twenty-somethings to fifties, but as we walked around, I did see one man so elderly he was bent almost double over the two canes he used to support himself. He looked so frail that when we passed him, which wasn’t difficult, given that he moved so slowly, I found myself surprised at the sharp awareness in his eyes.

  As the old man made his creaky way toward the big lodge, I asked Gabrielle, “What’s with those headbands? And the beads? Do they mean anything in particular?”

  The facilitator beamed. “Most certainly. A new bead is awarded each time a Kanatian reaches a new level of Elevation. They begin with no beads, then work their way toward ten.”

  “Kind of a status thing, then.”

  “We are all equal here at Kanati.” Gabrielle gestured toward the Hotel OK Corral. “That building houses not only a sauna and accredited masseuses, but also a fully furnished gym with the latest Nautilus equipment. If you prefer to exercise with a group, we have classes in aerobics, dance, skip-rope, and cycling.”

  “Skip-rope?”

  “A simple exercise, but effective. Both the arms and the feet are constantly in motion. Would you like to see the facility?”

  Having already spent much of the morning smelling sweaty martial arts practitioners, I gave it a pass. “Maybe later. Right now I’d like a closer look at that teepee. I’ve never seen anything like it before.” I had, though, at several highway souvenir stands, although their teepees weren’t as large.

  This particular teepee turned out to be built of re
inforced fiberglass painted a buckskin color and decorated with an inter-tribal jumble of American Indian pictographs. Inuit ravens flew over Pima mazes, Hopi kokopellis danced under Zuni zias. The buckskin-painted cement floor was made less sterile by a large assortment of pillows covered in even more faux-Indian patterns. After a quick count of the pillows, I realized the space housed up to eighty people at a time. This worried me.

  James Ray’s fire circle celebrants had suffered life-threatening health problems because their so-called kiva had inadequate circulation. But as I examined the architecture of the teepee, I saw a large opening in the ceiling where the lodge poles came together. Added to the teepee’s front and back doorways, the circulation would have been fine, especially since there was no fire pit. Instead, the teepee sported a raised circular dais in its center, where I imagined Kanati’s spiritual head honcho, whoever he or she was, led the meditation meet-ups.

  While Gabrielle showed me around, her hands caressed the pictographs on the teepee’s walls. “Are these drawings not lovely?”

  Tired of lies—I had told so many during the last half hour—I answered, “They’re certainly colorful.”

  “Here in this holy place is where you will be doing the bulk of your work.”

  “Work, did you say?” My voice rose in alarm.

  In a true cult, “work” was used as a method of control by the leader. Possibly the most infamous use of cult “work” occurred in the indoctrination methods of Heaven’s Gate. In order to work toward a “higher level,” the cultists were ordered to put away all Earthly sensual behavior, including the enjoyment of food and sex. To keep his followers from enjoying food, cult leader Marshall Applewhite not only fed his fellow cultists a tasteless diet, but even dictated the number of times they had to chew their food before swallowing. To wean them away from sex, Applewhite instituted an even more extreme solution: castration. His followers’ lives became so joyless that thirty-nine of them—including the Castrato in Chief—committed suicide.

  Not knowing my background in cult investigations, Gabrielle’s smile held a hint of condescension. “Elevation of the spirit never comes without serious work, Lena. But we at Kanati prefer the term ‘education.’ Work has such a negative context, do you not think? Even Ernie is aware of the value of work.”

  “Ernie’s a member, too?” The gateman had come across as a down-to-earth guy.

  “Non, non, but we have been working on the dear man. He smokes, and we love him so much we wish him to live a long, long time.”

  This wish for Ernie’s long life made some of my unease diminish, if not vanish entirely. Despite Kanati’s pseudo-Indian trappings, it appeared to be just another high-priced health spa with a few woo-woo frills. But my discomfort level rose again when I neared the teepee’s rear exit and scanned the old movie set buildings. None bore a sign reading SAWBONES.

  “Where’s your medical facility?”

  A bright smile. “The Tucson Medical Center is less than a half hour away. But rest assured, several of us are trained in First Aid, although our skills have yet to be needed. Our meditation program eases the stressors that cause most physical emergencies.”

  As we exited and started across the wide plaza toward the big lodge, I took note of the fancy-dancy way Gabrielle had sloughed off my question. According to Harold, Chelsea was using this place for rehab, and bad physical things can happen to a person during rehab. Pop singer Amy Winehouse had died while attempting to detox on her own, as had many others. Besides, stress was seldom the cause of broken bones, cancer, or even AIDs, so, as far as I was concerned, her explanation earned Kanati another negative mark.

  Deciding that it was time to tell the truth, I said, “I have a friend here, name of Chelsea Cooper-Slow Horse, and she has an oxycodone addiction. How does meditation without medical care help a person withdraw from opioids?”

  Gabrielle halted at the steps to the lodge. She tilted her head, and the many-colored beads in her headband sparkled in the sun. “I do not remember that you gave me your last name, Lena.”

  “It’s Jones.”

  “Lena Jones?” Doubt clouded her face, and she whipped a wine-colored iPhone from her pocket. Tapped it several times. Ran her finger along the screen. Stopped. Tapped once more. Used her thumb and forefinger to enlarge the image.

  “You are Lena Jones of Desert Investigations, in Scottsdale,” she said, the contralto warmth gone from her voice. “It says here, a private detective.” She pronounced detective like it was a four letter word.

  “We call ourselves investigators, but oui, Madame Halberd.” I wanted her to know she wasn’t the only one familiar with Google.

  Her eyes were such a dark brown they were almost black. Like Jimmy’s eyes, only colder. “It’s Mademoiselle Halberd, actually. I have no husband. Are you investigating us?”

  “Just checking on the welfare of a friend. Is that a problem?”

  “I see. Then I wish for you to get out…”

  Before she could finish, a gust of wind came up and blew my hair away from my face. Then it died down, but not before she saw. She raised her manicured hand, and with a light finger, traced the scar on my forehead. Her eyes, as well as her voice, softened. “Someone has shot you.”

  “My mother.”

  A wince. “But your maman did not mean to, Lena Jones.”

  Surprised, I said, “No, she didn’t. How…?”

  Her voice became a whisper. “There was truth among your many lies. You did suffer trauma in the past and it has scarred you more deeply than your skin. Let Kanati help you, like it has helped me.” She turned her beautiful hands over so I could see the long vertical scars on her slender wrists. At some time in the past she had tried to kill herself, and unlike many would-be suicides, had known the proper way to cut. Yet she had survived.

  Resisting the urge to touch my three decades-old scar, I said, “I’m over it.”

  The smile she gave me then was tender. “Ah, another lie. But the truth lies in les cauchemars, your nightmares.”

  I pretended to study the cedar lodge we were nearing. It was as perfectly cared-for as everything else in the Kanati compound. Blue asters bloomed in its flowerboxes, seemingly out of place among the growths of prickly pear cacti that hid the lodge’s cement foundation. A wide porch wrapped around three sides of the building, much of its length occupied by rocking chairs. No one was currently sitting in them.

  When I had recovered my equilibrium, I said firmly, “I want to see Chelsea Cooper-Slow Horse.”

  Instead of fending me off with the standard refusal of not being able to discuss whether someone was a resident or not, she nodded and said, “Certainement, since you are not one of the proscribed names on her guest list. I only ask that you not upset her in any way. Ms. Slow Horse remains fragile, but with our treatment she has become well enough to assist in serving lunch today. Are you hungry? Our chef is most excellent, and we promise not to poison you.”

  What was it with this woman? She was a slick-talking salesperson for just another woo-woo group, yet her empathy came across as sincere.

  Maybe that’s why she was so good at her job.

  Chapter Three

  The great room of the three-story lodge reminded me of a millionaire’s hunting getaway I had once visited in northern Arizona while on a case. Except for a lack of taxidermied animals, Kanati’s massive living area/dining hall could have been designed by the same architect. Groupings of Indian-printed easy chairs arced around the huge rock fireplaces that stood at each end of the room. The glowing embers in the hearths added to the visual warmth, giving the room a cozy, homey feel despite its size. A sea of white linen-covered tables stretched across the middle of the room, each decorated by large bouquets of flowers. Large wicker baskets filled with more flowers hung from the rafters above. But what caught my attention was the professional-looking cafeteria station where the Kanatians had lined up.


  “Is it not lovely?” Gabrielle asked.

  “It’s stunning.”

  So was the room’s aroma, a combination of cedar, flowers, wood smoke, and fresh bread. These heady scents were joined by something just as wonderful wafting from the food line. No wonder the rocking chairs on the lodge’s porch had been deserted, as were the chairs surrounding the double fireplaces. Whatever Kanati’s religious belief—I had yet to learn the details—it certainly didn’t include the self-denying asceticism of Heaven’s Gate.

  My stomach growled. Loudly.

  A sly grin teased at the corner of Gabrielle’s mouth. “Ah, a woman of healthy appetites, I see. Excellent, because to achieve optimum Elevation, the enjoyment of good food is of the essence.”

  “One of Kanati’s teachings, I presume.” Hint, hint.

  She winked. “Mais oui. Shall we?”

  Chelsea spotted me the minute we entered the serving line, where she was working the salad section. To my relief, Harold’s ex-wife looked healthier than I’d ever seen her. She wore no makeup, yet her lips and cheeks were pink, her eyes clear. Always an attractive woman, she now verged on beautiful. She wasn’t as happy to see me as I was to see her.

  “Harold hired you to check up on me!” she snarled.

  “I’m doing it gratis,” I said sweetly. “What’s that you’re ladling out?”

  A frown. “Cucumber Canapés with Lemon Dill Sauce.”

  “Then I’ll have two scoops, please.”

  “But…”

  “Chelsea, mon amie,” Gabrielle interjected, “why do not you find someone to take your station so we will not be holding up the line? Then you may join us at the small table in the corner we reserve for our very special guests.”

  While Chelsea grumbled an assent and called over to a group of Kanatians working in the corner, I got busy choosing other selections. By the time I made it to the table Gabrielle had pointed out, I’d added a Grilled Portabella Mushroom on Herbed Polenta, and for dessert, Baked Brie and Blackberries in Puff Pastry crowned with raspberry sauce. Kanati’s chef hadn’t been hired away from some school’s lunchroom, unless the school was Le Cordon Bleu.