The tall Indian woman waiting at the Shell station was my age, early to mid thirties. She had long black hair and a round, soft face. Her thin, athletic body, in tank top and jeans, was taut and narrow. She leaned against the hood of her blue Caprice, arms crossed, long legs out in front of her. Dolly stood next to her. I parked, got out, and took the hand Lena held out to me. We went through the usual first meeting stuff: how are you, glad to meet you, happy you could give us some time …

“Can’t stay long,” the dark-eyed woman said, glancing around at the empty pumps and a log hauler stopped at the light on M72. “I gotta get on the road.”

“Where you headed?” Dolly smiled. She was at her most affable self.

Lena looked away and bit at her lip. “Just out of town for a while.”

Dolly nodded.

“I wouldn’t have stopped to meet you … I mean, if I didn’t want what happened to Mary to come out …”

“What do you mean ‘what happened to Mary to come out’? You know something about her murder?”

Lena worked one hand over the other nervously and looked away from us. “I don’t know anything. It’s just that Mary was a friend. I mean, we were in beauty school together and I liked her. She really wanted to make something of herself. We even talked about maybe working in the same salon after graduation.”

“You reported her missing.”

Lena nodded. “She didn’t have a phone, so I couldn’t call her. People at the school didn’t know what happened to her but she was paid up to the end of the semester. Mary didn’t have money to throw away. I knew she’d be there if she could.”

I asked, “Do you know where she lived? The school have an address?”

“Didn’t ask. School’s closed now. Don’t know how you’d find out. But it could have been that Sandy Lake they mentioned in the paper.” She shrugged, then pulled her tank top down over a bare belly with a gold circlet pierced into her belly button.

“But she never said?” Dolly asked.

Lena shook her head, a slow, uncertain shake. “We only saw each other at school. I did ask her why she’d moved off the reservation. Long time ago she lived in Peshawbestown. Maybe just when she was little. She said it wasn’t her idea—moving. But that’s all.”

“What about boyfriends?” Dolly asked, glancing, like Lena, around the station as if expecting to find someone watching us.

Lena took a minute. “One guy. That’s all I heard about. I remember we were at Burger King for lunch one day and she whispered that she was seeing a married man.” Lena rolled her eyes and folded her arms, leaning back against the car again. “I gave it to her. I told her how stupid that was, that she would never be happy, and so on and so on. She only said she loved him.”

Dolly winced. I expected her to tell Lena the married man had been her own husband, but she said nothing.

I watched Lena lick her lips. Her eyes moved back and forth, looking hard at every car turning in for gas. I watched a tic at the corner of one of her eyes. She was beyond the kind of nervousness that comes from talking to the police. This fear had nothing to do with me and Dolly.

“You OK?” I asked, keeping my voice low, and kind.

She made a face.

“No, I mean it. You’re not in trouble or anything?”

She hesitated a minute. “I don’t like murder, and Mary was a friend …”

“Who called to tell you we were there yesterday, looking for you?” I asked.

Lena made an impatient noise. “A neighbor. My family lives down the road.”

“Nobody else? Nobody threatened you if you got mixed up in this?” Dolly said.

“Why would anybody threaten me?” Her face tightened. A tiny scar near her mouth bunched up and curled with the lip.

“We’ve had run-ins with members of your tribe. You know anything about that?”

She shrugged and bowed her head. “It’s just … the bones. You know. We’ve got our ways. Our leaders don’t like when white people get in the …”

“We’re trying to find out who killed Mary. That’s not butting in.”

“Yeah. Yeah.” She looked straight at me. “But the tribe can take care of their own business. They don’t like when others get in the middle of things they don’t understand.”

“You mean like murder?” Dolly asked, surprised.

Lena shook her head. “No. No. But like when it is our business, we have our own laws.”

“I don’t get it,” I said, and didn’t.

Lena shrugged. “If you were Odawa you would.”

“I think I’m being threatened over this. Somebody keeps calling my house. You know who would do that? Anybody from the tribe?”

She shook her head. “Nobody would threaten. But we protect our own.”

“You mean Mary? Or somebody else? Would the tribe protect a murderer?”

She shook her head again, very slowly. “We don’t protect people who murder.”

Dolly moved from foot to foot, as if ready to leave. I thought of one more thing.

“Mary ever talk about brothers? Anybody named Alfred?”

Lena scowled at me fast. Too fast. She pushed herself away from the car and reached in the pocket of her jeans, pulling out car keys. She dropped them, then bent fast to pick them up. “She had a sister. She talked about her. Christine, her name was.”

She straightened slowly, avoiding my eyes. “But nobody named Alfred. Hey look, I gotta go. I gotta be someplace before six o’clock.”

She opened her car door. “We never got too close. I just know I liked her. I hope somebody finds out what happened. Honest to God, what I want most is to have Mary sleep peacefully. That’s all I can do for her. I wish …”

Obviously there was something she wanted from us and we weren’t giving it to her. I couldn’t figure out why Lena had agreed to meet us in the first place. We surely hadn’t gotten all the truth out of her. She was afraid of somebody, or maybe it was fear of doing something forbidden.

Dolly and I thanked her for helping. She nodded and slammed the car door shut. In seconds she was pulling out of the station. Beside me, Dolly raised her arm and yelled. “Hey Lena. How about a phone number where we can reach you? Hey … Lena …”

The blue car turned at the corner and was gone.

Dolly pulled the little notebook from her breast pocket, wrote down the license number of the Caprice, closed the notebook, put it back in her pocket, and buttoned the pocket shut.