Niceville

Canton, apparently an outfit with money to burn.
    But, the man had pointed out, sensing a buyer, given the late recession, there were still an awful lot of cheap secondhand Lear and Gulf-stream models lying around.
    And, so ran Morgan Littlebasket’s thinking, the Cherokee Nation Trust was getting to be a pretty sizable financial entity, with a lot of travel required to attend to its variegated interests.
    Maybe it was time for the Cherokee Nation Trust to think about acquiring a secondhand Lear—strictly for business, of course.
    The idea, although far-fetched, was pleasing to entertain, so, in short, on this soft summer afternoon, Morgan Littlebasket was a contented old man truly at one with his universe.
    When he turned into the driveway he was surprised but not unhappy to see Twyla waiting for him, leaning on the trunk of her red BMW with her arms folded across her chest and her eyes hidden behind a very large pair of sunglasses.
    There was something in the set of her mouth that sent a bit of a tingle down his spine, but he was in far too dreamy a space to let it ruffle his feathers.
    He rolled to a stop next to her “Bimmer” as she liked to call it, rolled down the window and smiled at her, a well-fed well-dressed craggy-faced deeply tanned leathery old man with a full head of silvery hair that he liked to wear long. Catching a peripheral view of himself in the driver’s-side mirror, a habitual conceit, he thought he looked like a cross between Iron Eyes Cody and Old Lodge Skins, in other words a classic example of the Noble Red Man at his most iconic.
    “Twyla, honey, how nice. Can you stay for dinner?”
    Twyla had come forward to the car door, her look still cool and wary.
    Clearly something was on her mind.
    Well, that’s what fathers were for, wasn’t it?
    “Hi, Dad,” she said, not offering a kiss this time. “Can we go in and talk for a bit? I really need your advice.”
    Littlebasket unspooled his lanky frame from the car, placed a large veiny hand on her shoulder, felt her slip away from under it as she turned to walk ahead of him to the front door.
    Definitely something wrong
, he decided, watching her make her way up the flagstone pathway, trying not to notice that she was wearing a wrinkled blue smock that was much too short for a girl with such a lovely body and that under the smock, from what he could make out, she might have been wearing thong panties.
    He shoved that image out of his mind—an ancient weakness from long ago—gathered his gear from the backseat, and made his creaky way up to stand beside her as she keyed the lock.
    He had always made sure the girls had their own keys to the house, even after dear Lucy Bluebell had passed. It gave them all a sense of family, and it was all about clan and family, wasn’t it?
    Twyla went in first, going a few feet down the long wood-paneled hallway and stopping in the entrance to the great room—low rough-cut beams and a stone fireplace, leather sofas and chairs and wall-to-wall Native American memorabilia—before she turned to face him, taking off her sunglasses as she did.
    Morgan Littlebasket stopped in his tracks, his heart missing a beat and a cold black feeling rising up from his lower belly.
    The look she had was unmistakable, a look he had been afraid he would see there ever since his little … weakness … had led him astray.
    Her eyes were red and swollen from crying, but she was chilly and composed.
    The certainty hit him like a boot in the solar plexus, literally stopping his breath cold.
    She knew
.
    He came towards her, his mind working fast, rehearsing again, to himself, the several complicated lies he had ready in case this terrible moment should ever arise, but when he reached the door into the great room he saw they weren’t alone.
    There were two large men by the fireplace, both of them hard-facedweathered older men in shirts and jeans and cowboy boots, lean and competent-looking, range-hand types, one a long-haired blond guy with a shaggy white handlebar mustache, cold blue eyes, the other clean-shaven, white-haired, with an eagle beak, prominent cheekbones, and gunfighter eyes.
    Morgan Littlebasket glared at Twyla.
    “Who are these men? Why are they in my house?”
    “My name is Coker,” said Coker, “and this here is Charlie. Twyla’s a good friend of ours, and she asked us to come along and help her ask you a few simple questions.”
    The man’s tone was calm, casual, and packed with latent menace.