The Story Teller Read Online Free PDF Page A

and no delays for highway construction, she would have to hurry.
    Swinging her briefcase off the desk, she started across the office, aware for the first time of voices behind the closed door. She had instructed Laola White Plume, her new secretary, to cancel appointments for today and tomorrow, yet one of her clients must have come in. The uneasy feeling Vicky had been trying to ignore rose inside her like the bitter aftertaste of a bad meal. She was leaving the office in the hands of an eighteen-year-old girl, still giddy from having walked across a stage and picked up a high-school diploma. Still giddy from having landed her first job. And not just some job swabbing out motel rooms or clerking in a discount store, but the beginning of a career.
    An ambitious girl, her new secretary, with plans to attend night school at Central Wyoming College in the fall. Vicky had seen something of herself in the girl, she supposed, which was why she had hired her. But the on-the-job training had been wearing. Laola had a lot to learn about dealing with the public, which was obvious from the rising tone of anger in the voices in the outer office.
    For an instant Vicky thought about fleeing out the back door and down the stairs to the parking lot. She could call Laola from the airport and explain her abrupt departure. But the voices were louder, more insistent, and Vicky flung open the door.
    “You don’t understand!” a young woman in her early twenties shouted at Laola, who had planted herself a few feet from the doorway, as if to block the visitor’s entry.
    Laola swung around. “I told her you ain’t seein’ any clients today.”
    Vicky winced. Grammar was part of the on-the-jobtraining. She would mention it again when she returned, not in front of the other young woman in blue jeans and yellow blouse, who was making a wide track around the secretary.
    “You’re Vicky Holden?” There was a quickness and desperation in her voice, as if she expected Laola to interrupt.
    Vicky didn’t recognize the woman, but she was Arapaho: the sharp angles of the cheekbones, the small hump in the nose, the long black hair parted in the middle and swept behind her ears.
    “And you are . . . ?” Vicky said, pushing aside the thought of an airplane waiting on the tarmac.
    “Annemarie Jemson.” The woman waved one hand, a dismissal of unnecessary preliminaries, of the usual dance of politeness. “Todd Harris’s fiancée.”
    Vicky remembered. One of the Jemson girls. They had been little kids thirteen years ago when she’d left the reservation, and she hadn’t seen them since.
    “I tol’ her to come on Friday after you get back from Denver,” Laola said. “You got an opening at two o’clock.”
    “I’m on my way to catch an airplane,” Vicky said.
    “I know,” the girl interrupted. “I saw Dennis Eagle Cloud this morning. He told me you were going to Denver, so I drove over here hoping to catch you before you left.”
    It occurred to Vicky that something might have happened on the reservation, and this young woman had been sent to fetch her. “Is there an emergency?” she asked.
    “Emergency!” The young woman seemed to grab at the idea, as if an unexpected lifeline had floated toward her. “Yes, that’s it! Todd’s got some kind of emergency.”
    “Can’t you come back on Friday?” This from Laola. “Vicky’s got to catch her plane.”
    Annemarie ignored the secretary. “I’ve got to talk to you.”
    “Walk out to the car with me,” Vicky said.
    Their footsteps made a rhythmic slapping noise in the outside corridor that ran along the second floor of the small office building. “What makes you think Todd has some kind of emergency?” Vicky asked.
    They hurried down the stairs in tandem. “He’s not around,” Annemarie said. “I’ve been calling his apartment for three days.”
    “Three days?” Vicky turned and stared at her. Heat rose from the sidewalk and bounced off the brick building. “You’re