Better Off Dead

Like the women assembled under the portico, the elderly lady wore the traditional velvet blouse with Concho-style silver buttons and a long skirt that swept across her squaw boots. Her pewter-gray hair was pulled back into the traditional figure eight bun worn by women from the reservation.

Seeing Native America’s arts being lost forever bothered Lindsey. Some of her best artists, like Ben Tallchief, came from the reservation. She supposed they were the future of pueblo art—unique, individual pieces, not tribal art passed down from generation to generation.

Most of the people on the reservation had little to do except hawk trinkets to tourists. From what she could tell, their situation bordered on hopeless, and it was a downer. Depression was her enemy, she warned herself. Not her foremost enemy, but an enemy nevertheless.

The hardest part of being in the Witness Protection Program wasn’t knowing someone would do anything to kill you, the way she’d originally thought. It was not seeing your family, your friends.

The love of your life.

It was not knowing if you ever would see any of them again. Even after the trial, it might not be safe to return home.

“Count your blessings,” she said under her breath.

Until they found work, most people in WITSEC had no money and were forced to rely on the monthly stipend doled out by the Federal Marshals who ran the program. Because she’d been a successful executive with considerable savings, her field contact had arranged to have her funds transferred to the Bank of Santa Fe.

With that money, she’d opened the Dreamcatcher Gallery, which specialized in Southwestern jewelry in contemporary settings. She’d been able to buy the small condo where she and Zach lived. She had a pet, someone to talk to, someone to care about.

Still, the past tore at something deep inside her. You never appreciate what you have until you lose it. Those words had seemed trite. Now she knew how true they were. She forced herself to live in the moment, to appreciate what she had—not what she’d lost.

“Good boy, Zach.”

The golden retriever looked up at her, his soulful eyes full of love. His honey-blond tail whipped from side to side. Canine solace, she thought, the best medicine on earth. She had a home, a gallery, a pet—and a friend. After months of isolation and loneliness, she’d made a friend. Not that she’d expended any effort.

She’d been afraid to get to know someone. What would she say about her past? You never realize how much you talk about your past until you don’t have a previous life to talk about.

With Romero, her past hadn’t mattered. He owned the Crazy Horse Gallery next door to hers in Sena Plaza. He’d blown into her life like a whirling dervish. Romero listened and jabbered nonstop, but he’d never asked questions about her past.

She’d had almost a year—and coaching from Derek—to get used to her new name and come up with a cover story. She’d used the story once on Romero and again when she’d joined the Chamber of Commerce. But because she kept to herself, rarely socializing with anyone except Romero, she hadn’t had to paint herself into a corner with lies.

“You’re late,” Romero called out from his gallery as she unlocked the heavy plank door to the Dreamcatcher Gallery.

“Hey! It’s one minute after ten. Lighten up.”

Every morning when she arrived, she experienced a small thrill at having found this unique spot in a two-story building that had been divided into shops and galleries. Dating back to the seventeenth century, Sena Plaza was a rectangular adobe structure with a lovely interior courtyard. Built in the Spanish Colonial era, it featured the original hand-hewn beams and trusses, black Andalusian iron, and plank floors burnished smooth over centuries by countless soles.

She stepped inside what—in only one of many incarnations—had been a shoe store before she’d leased it. Before that, it had been part of Romero’s larger gallery, and between them was an adjoining door. They kept it open during the day. When business was slow, they talked and helped each other with displays.

She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed having someone intelligent to talk to. Romero was well-read, cosmopolitan, and never failed to make her smile. In many ways, he reminded her of her long-dead father. Hollow emptiness welled up inside her, the way it often did when she recalled her parents’ deaths. Since she’d met Romero, it had lessened. She didn’t want to regress, so she tamped down the thoughts.

Lindsey unhooked Zach’s leash and put it in the second drawer of her sleek chrome and glass desk, and opened the connecting door. Zach trotted along behind her.

“Is coffee ready?” she asked, although she knew Romero made it a point to arrive an hour before he opened and brew a pot of Kona coffee. The fragrant scent hovered in the summer air that was still cool thanks to the building’s thick adobe walls.

“Sure. Pour yourself a cup.”

She walked over to the Southwestern style hutch in the alcove where Romero kept the coffee. She’d decorated her gallery in contemporary fashion, aiming for a stark contrast with the ancient building. Romero, on the other hand, had used antiques from the Spanish colonial period, when Sena Plaza had been constructed by the Conquistadors.

“It’s going to be a warm day,” he commented, and she nodded.

Romero had a full head of white hair that made his complexion seem darker than it was. He was a tall man in his late fifties and slightly stooped, the way some older men are. He proudly traced his ancestors back to one of the original Spanish land grant families. She doubted anyone knew local history as well as Romero did. Certainly, no one could talk about it so colorfully.

She poured herself a mug of coffee and added a splash of milk before taking a sip. “You make great coffee.”

“I’m a good cook, too. I’m making blue corn enchiladas tonight. Join me for dinner?”

“I’d love to. What can I bring?”

“Nothing. Just close up the gallery for me. I’ll need to leave around six. Enchiladas taste better if they set for an hour or so before you eat them.”

“No problem. I’ll lock up.” In the summer, they closed at eight to take advantage of the tourists who lingered in the historic area.

“You know, I was thinking.”

Something in the timbre of Romero’s voice brought up her guard, and she tried for a joke. “Thinking? That’s a first.”

A beat of silence.

She plunged on, her instincts telling her to change the subject. “I heard a good one. What do you call a woman who knows where her husband is at night?” She paused. “A widow.”

Romero didn’t crack a smile. “You’re very beautiful, but the way you dress…your hair.”

“I like the way I dress,” she fibbed. Drab clothes helped her blend in. “My hair. What can I say? God screwed up.”

A total lie. She had glossy black hair and violet-blue eyes. They couldn’t change her eye color as easily as they could her hair. WITSEC insisted she strip it with bleach and dye it barnyard brown. They made her cut it to chin length, and she now wore it ruler straight.

Romero studied her. She was lying and he knew it. She could almost hear him asking: Why?

He’d never gotten this personal, never asked about her past. His comment had taken her by surprise. She needed him in her life more than he would ever know, but if he breached the invisible barrier she’d put up to protect herself, she would have to back off.

The bell on the door to her shop tinkled, saving her and announcing the arrival of the first customer of the day. “Gotta go.”

She quickly walked back into her gallery. A lookie-lou, she thought. The petite brunette was dressed in matching powder-blue Bermudas and twin set. She could have been in an L. L. Bean catalog.

Lindsey’s experience told her the type of woman who would be interested in her jewelry dressed more adventurously. They experimented with clothes, hair.

The kind of woman she had once been.

Another lifetime, she thought, even though it had been only a little over a year. Now she didn’t experiment. The last thing she wanted was to call attention to herself.

“That bracelet is by my premier artist, Ben Tallchief,” she told the woman who was looking at a hammered silver cuff set with deep lavender sugilite stones. “Madonna, Julia Roberts, and lots of other famous women collect his work.”

She didn’t add how lucky she’d been to lure him away from the gallery where he’d been featured when it changed hands.

The woman studied the unusual piece for a moment. “Too trendy for me.”

“You might try Zazobra Gallery on Canyon Road. They have a nice selection of jewelry.” She didn’t add that it was conservative, unimaginative and overpriced.

“Thanks. Great dog,” the woman said as she headed to the door.