Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 141, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 858 & 859, March/April 2013
The Return of Crazy Horse
by Clark Howard
By our count, this is Clark Howard’s 155th published story, an extraordinary number given the length and variety of his tales and the fact that they are almost all non-series stories that require the creation of new characters. An astonishing twenty of the stories have been either award winners or nominees, for awards as various as the MWA’s Edgar, the EQMM Readers Award, the PWA’s Shamus Award, the Western Writers’ Spur Award, and the SMFS’s Derringer.
When Nelson Clay returned after lunch to his assistant curator’s office at the Great Plains Native American Museum that early summer South Dakota day, he had no way of knowing that his life was about to change forever. In retrospect, he might have suspected something when he saw a brand-new bright yellow Corvette parked in one of the spaces marked: reserved for staff. But it was Friday and his mind was elsewhere; he had just finished a bison burger, his favorite, for lunch, and he was looking forward to the weekend and driving up to Rapid City with his lady friend, for a performance of the Black Hills Chamber Music Society. His companion for the occasion would be Rose Blackthorn, the hostess at Buffalo Run Restaurant, where he had lunch every day. He had been seeing Rose for nearly three years, and their romance was flourishing.
Nelson was an average-looking man, if such a creature existed: forty, tall, still slim, graying just a bit, not exactly handsome by certain standards, more accurately thought of as clean-cut. His best feature was a smile that was warm enough to seem sincere even when he was simply being courteous.
Passing the information desk on his way to his office, he was spoken to by the receptionist on duty. “Mr. Clay, Mr. White would like to see you in his office, sir.”
“All right. Thank you.” The receptionist was referring to Martin White, the curator of the museum. Having one-quarter Crow Indian blood, he had shortened his name from Martin White Cloud many years earlier, merely in the interest, so he said, of abbreviation rather than the elimination of immediate identification of his Crow ancestry. Even though he was curator of the largest, most prestigious Native American museum in the country, founded nearly a century before by the council of the Great Sioux Nation, it was still guided by a board of directors that was seventy percent Sioux or Northern Cheyenne, with only three of its ten members having Crow blood. “Ah, Nelson, come in, my boy,” Martin White greeted Nelson on this day. He had called Nelson “my boy” for nineteen years, since, at the age of twenty-one, Nelson had first come to work for him as assistant curator. Now that Nelson had reached forty, the term had begun to nettle him a bit.
Entering the curator’s office, Nelson saw that Martin White had a visitor: a tall, tan, perfectly postured woman who looked to be not yet thirty, with shiny black hair worn in a French twist at the back, dressed in a smart dove-colored St. John knit suit.
“Nelson, my boy, I want you to meet my niece, Naomi White. My dear, this is Nelson Clay, my assistant that I’ve been telling you about.”
Naomi White, who also apparently had shortened her name, stood and extended her hand, which Nelson shook as he said, “My pleasure, Miss White.” He smiled that smile that always looked sincere. “Is that your classy Corvette parked outside?”
“It is, indeed,” she said, smiling back. “A graduation gift from my very generous Uncle Martin.”
“Naomi was just recently awarded her doctorate degree at Stanford University.”
“Well, congratulations,” Nelson said. “That’s quite a high honor. Stanford, no less. May I ask what field you specialized in?”
The curator answered for her. “Why, Native American Studies, of course,” he said proudly. “Any other field,” he added with a chuckle, “and she would have received a Volkswagen.”
“Yes,” Naomi said, “I followed in the footsteps of my uncle, a man I admire more than anyone in the world. He’s been like a father to me, since I lost my own as a child.”
“Naomi’s mother is my sister,” Martin explained. “Her father was killed in an automobile accident when Naomi was only five. I’ve helped raise her ever since.”
“Helped is hardly the word,” Naomi corrected. “Uncle Martin supported me all the way through high school, four years in college for a bachelor’s degree, two more years for a master’s, and three years of study for my doctorate.”
“Most generous, I’d say,” Nelson commented, with a bow to the curator. “And a Corvette, as well.”
“Now, now,” Martin White protested modestly, “just doing my familial duty” He rose and came around his desk. “Come along, my boy, and let’s show Naomi around the museum. She’s been here before, of course, visiting from time to time, usually on a weekend when you weren’t around, my boy, which is why you two haven’t met before—”
Driving into Rapid City the next day, Rose Blackthorn at his side, Nelson scoffed at the comment Martin White had made.
“Not only had I not met her during the last nineteen years, I hadn’t even heard of her. Then out of the blue she shows up at the museum with a doctorate, no less, from Stanford, no less, with me standing there with a miserable little bachelor’s from Oklahoma State.”
“Don’t belittle yourself,” Rose scolded mildly. “You worked seven years to put yourself through college — and there wasn’t a new car waiting for you at the end either. You should be proud of yourself.”
Rose Blackthorn was, like Naomi White, a tall, naturally tan woman, mid thirties, one-half Sioux, with large, dark macadamia-colored eyes. She had been born illegitimately to a Sioux mother from the Pine Ridge reservation and a white serviceman from the nearby Ellsworth Air Force Base. Her father was discharged when she was two years old and never heard from again; her mother became an alcoholic and drank herself to death. Rose was raised by her Sioux grandmother on the reservation and still lived in the little clapboard house where she grew up, now five years after her grandmother’s death. She earned good money as a restaurant hostess and could have moved into town anytime she wanted to, but as she had once told Nelson Clay, she felt more at home on “the res,” as she called it. Nelson wasn’t sure he understood why.
“You’re around whites all the time,” he had reasoned, “all day long at the restaurant.”
“Yes,” she had replied quietly, “but I do not live with them.”
Nelson had once considered asking her to move in with him, but had abandoned the idea because he did not want to damage their relationship with the negative reply he felt certain he would have received.
As they drove toward Rapid City, Rose was quiet for a while before asking candidly, “What do you think White Cloud’s plans are for his niece?” She always referred to the curator by his tribal name.
“I think he may be grooming her as my replacement,” Nelson answered. He had been thinking that since meeting the curator’s niece, but this was the first time he had spoken of it.
“You’re not serious, are you? After you’ve put in nineteen years as assistant curator?”
“You forget one thing, my dear,” Nelson reminded her. “I have no Native American blood. Not a drop.”
“He knew that when you were hired. You were a summa grad in Native American studies with a four-point grade average. The museum board unanimously approved you. And the current board is very pleased with you. I don’t think White Cloud would dare pass you over — especially for a relative of his.”