The waiter brought her lunch, a big white bowl filled with broth and vegetables. The smell made her mouth water. But instead of gravy like her mother made for goat stew, this African version came with curry sauce and a side of coconut rice. She poked at it suspiciously, then took a bite. Tender slow-cooked meat. Soft carrots, onions, and bite-size chunks of potato. She put down the notebook and focused on nothing but eating for the next few minutes. Maybe the savory meal would give her insights.
Next time the waiter came by, she asked for more water, instead of splurging on a refill on her Coke. Then went back to the notebook and looked at the numbers and letters again.
She remembered the lieutenant mentioning that a broken appointment had saved him a trip to Santa Fe. The brown envelope for Dr. Collingsworth now in her car was meant for a Santa Fe address—AIRC must be shorthand for his client.
Most of the pages between the mileage log and the end of the book were blank. On the next-to-last page, she noticed a slight difference in the quality and color of the paper. Leaphorn had carefully inserted two sheets from an earlier notebook. One page had six sets of initials and numbers, beginning with “AL RR42 B50A 87401.” On the next, what looked like initials were followed by more letters and numbers, with symbols, %, #, *, scattered among them. “AZ JLLB %1934.” Puzzling. Then it dawned on her. Passwords. The initials before them—AZ on the first, for example—probably indicated the sites. AZ for Amazon?
She took another bite of stew. Thought some more about the lieutenant’s codes, then let her brain rest as she finished lunch.
She’d promised to contact Louisa after seeing Leaphorn. But her call went immediately to voice mail, as though Louisa’s cell phone had been turned off. She left a brief message.
Then she reopened the notebook to the first page with the older paper. The grouping of five numbers could be a zip code. If it was, the 87 series meant New Mexico. “RR” could be “Rural Route,” and “B50A” a box number. That left “AL.” Did Leaphorn have a contact named Al? Albert? Alfonso? Or were they initials? Or was what she took for an L his version of the number 1? A business in Farmington called A1? Or did the L stand for another member of the Leaphorn family? Arnie Leaphorn? Agnes?
She called the Shiprock station and asked for Chee. Sandra, the office manager, told her Chee was out.
“Could you do a favor for me? Largo asked me to track down the lieutenant’s relatives, and I’m having some trouble. Can you do some reverse directory searches?”
“Sure,” Sandra said. “Is your computer down again?”
“No.” Bernie sipped her water, wishing it were Coke. “I’m in Santa Fe without it.” Bernie read off what she assumed was AL’s address, and as much as she could decipher from the other five sets of numbers and letters.
“You want to hold on, or shall I call you back?”
“Call me back.”
While she waited, Bernie turned to an earlier set of numbers, and by the time Sandra called, she’d figured out that “5–20 125/85 195” must mean that on May 20 the lieutenant’s blood pressure was in the normal range, although his weight was approaching 200 pounds. It didn’t help solve the crime or find the relatives, but at least her thought process tracked with the lieutenant’s.
Her phone vibrated, and she answered. “No luck on most of what you gave me,” Sandra said. “But the AL traces to a Farmington residence that belongs to an Austin Lee.” She gave Bernie the phone number.
Bernie called, disappointed that Lee didn’t answer. She left a voice mail explaining that she was a friend of Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn’s and needed to talk to Austin Lee or to someone in his family as soon as she could. She left her home number, too, and the number at the Shiprock substation. “Mr. Lee isn’t in any trouble,” Bernie added. If and when Lee called back, she would explore his connection to the lieutenant. Progress? She hoped so.
The waiter brought the check. She asked where she could find the closest post office.
“The closest, that would be on Pacheco Street, but that one’s closed because of a big roof leak. Well, not the leak exactly. Water shorted out the electricity in there.”
“So you’ve already had rain?”
“Last week. Not much, but the post office roof started to fail last year.”
“Where’s the closest one that’s open?”
“Downtown.” The waiter gave her complicated directions, sprinkled with things like, “Where that business supply store that closed used to be,” “I’m not sure of the name of that road,” and “I forget if that street is one-way.”
He ended with, “Good luck finding anyplace to park there. Downtown’s a zoo this time of year because of all the tourists. I avoid that post office at all costs.”
Bernie thought about taking the envelope back to Shiprock and mailing it there, but it would be after five when she arrived. Then she came up with a better plan.
“Do you know where the AIRC is?”
He shook his head. “Let me ask somebody.”
He returned a few minutes later with her change and the information. “It’s sort of near the big folk art museum.” He gave her directions, simple directions this time. Delivering the envelope to the AIRC would be easy, and she could find out what the lieutenant was working on for them. It probably had nothing to do with Jackson Benally, Leonard Nez, or the shooting. But since she was officially on leave, why not see a bit of Santa Fe?
She picked up the notebook again and opened it to the lieutenant’s June calendar. She saw penciled notations on many day-of-the-month squares: “final contract” on one day and “pu rx”—probably pick up a prescription—on another. She found a few squares where Leaphorn had written what seemed to be appointments. “11:30 Largo,” “2—truck aligned,” “9 AIRC,” and “12:30 EFB.” Several squares said “PM WRL.” WRL looked familiar, and she remembered the books she’d seen on his desk. Window Rock Library. PM must mean afternoon. AIRC and Largo she knew. What was EFB?
Leaphorn had drawn a neat X through each June day until yesterday, the day he was shot.
Bernie found a place for her Toyota in the AIRC’s gravel lot, in the shade near a patio wall. She’d heard that lack of pavement was a status symbol in Santa Fe, that some of the richest neighborhoods in the older sections of town bragged about their dirt roads. But she hadn’t expected dirt parking here.
A collection of beautiful old adobe buildings connected by flagstone walkways sat beneath large trees. Bernie admired the way little walls gave the flowers their own separate home, calling attention to their beauty and the mountain views beyond. She knew enough to realize that such gorgeous gardens didn’t happen by accident. The mix of native plants, hardy perennials, and blooming annuals reflected a long history of steady effort.
A worker glanced up from his raking at the sound of her steps on the flagstones. She noticed him looking at the Navajo Police Department patch on her shirt. “Yá’át’ééh,” he said.
She returned the greeting, surprised to run into another Navajo even though they were the country’s most populous tribe. He introduced himself, Mark Yazzie, and gave his clan affiliations. Bernie did the same. They weren’t related.
“You come all the way here to arrest me?” He pointed at the envelope she carried. “Looks like you got my records there.”
“So, you’ve done something?”
He laughed. “Who hasn’t? But not that I talk about.”
“I need to leave this envelope for a Dr. John Collingsworth. Could you tell me where I can find him?”
Yazzie said, “Go straight on. You’ll see his office down there. It’s the biggest one here, since he’s the big boss.”
The terra-cotta floors glowed as if someone had spent hours polishing them by hand. Who knows, Bernie thought, maybe someone had. A huge desk dominated both the outer office and the pale woman who sat behind it. A fan whirled between two of the massiv
e carved wooden ceiling beams. A white pot at least three feet tall, decorated with birds and flowers, occupied the space beside the desk. Paintings filled the walls.
The woman stopped typing on her computer keyboard. “Good afternoon. May I help you?”
“I need to drop this off for John Collingsworth.” Bernie handed the envelope to the woman, who set it on the desktop. “This office is beautiful. What a lot of great artwork.”
The woman smiled. “I love it. It makes me happy to come to work. Have you been on campus before?”
“No. Never.”
The woman pulled out a desk drawer and handed Bernie a brochure. “We host scholars from all over the world who come to study in our archives and use the pieces in our collection in their research. We have Hopi Katsinas—they used to call them kachinas—baskets, beautiful ancient pots, and some great contemporary ones, too. Some splendid Navajo rugs, examples of modern weaving as well as some fine older work.”
Bernie noticed a pot with a spiderlike design on the shelf next to the window. She took a step toward it.
“That’s a Hopi piece,” the secretary said.
“I’ve never seen that variation on a spider,” Bernie said. “What does the other side look like?”
The secretary said, “I couldn’t tell you. The gal who had my job before got fired for breaking a pot. You would have thought she’d killed somebody, for all the uproar the AD made over it. I never touch any of the art.”
Bernie heard footsteps behind her clicking on the hard floor and noticed the receptionist straightening up in her chair. A woman, a short, slender blonde in a dove gray suit and light blue silk blouse that matched her eyes, walked toward the desk and put down a pile of envelopes and a small box. She wore Zuni earrings with a hummingbird design and a sand-cast silver bracelet that looked as though it had been made by a Navajo jeweler. A good one at that, Bernie thought. The blonde epitomized Bernie’s idea of the Santa Fe version of dressing for success.
“Mail’s here,” the woman said. She glanced at the envelope Bernie had brought and moved it onto the pile. Then she smiled at Bernie. “Is there some problem, Officer? I’m Dr. Maxie Davis, associate director here. AD and mail deliverer.”
Bernie introduced herself. “I just stopped in to drop something off for John Collingsworth. There’s no problem I know of.”
“That’s a relief. We’re already up to our eyeballs in complications, with this huge collection coming in.”
The secretary said, “Officer Manuelito was asking about the other side of the pot with the spider design. I didn’t want to touch it, but—”
Davis interrupted. “Good. Never touch those pots. I never touch them without gloves.” She walked over to it. “The design on the back is a mirror image. Two spiders with their legs meeting to create a web of perfect black lines. A masterpiece.”
“Interesting,” Bernie said.
Davis said, “Navajo Nation Police Department? You’re a long way from home. Have you been to the AIRC before?”
“First time.”
“You should stop in at our museum. We’re famous for our Pueblo pottery collection, which has some very rare ancient pieces.”
“If I come up to Santa Fe again, I’ll take a look.”
The big door to the interior office opened and a tall man, soft in the middle, stepped out. His gray hair had thinned, showing the pink of his scalp. He wore gold-framed glasses, a navy suit, and an eagle bolo of silver and turquoise in place of a necktie.
The receptionist said, “Dr. Collingsworth, this is Officer Manuelito. She’s here with a special delivery for you. Dr. Davis and I were just encouraging her to tour the museum before she heads off.”
The receptionist handed him the envelope Bernie brought. Collingsworth glanced at the precise, handwritten address, felt the weight. “Did Mr. Leaphorn ask you to drop it off?”
“No.” Bernie thought for a moment. “The lieutenant is in the hospital. I found this in his truck, and as long as I was coming to see him, I decided to bring it.”
“Hospital? I hope it’s nothing serious.”
Bernie considered how much to say. “He was shot.”
“Shot?” Collingsworth’s eyes widened. “How terrible.”
Davis said, “I saw something on TV last night about a retired Navajo cop who was ambushed in a parking lot. Was that him?”
“Yes.”
“Any suspects?” Davis asked.
“It’s under investigation,” Bernie said. “I can’t talk about what happened to Lieutenant Leaphorn.”
“Leaphorn. Unusual name. But I shouldn’t talk. When they see my first name, people assume I’m a guy.” She looked at Bernie. “Probably the same with you. It keeps people off guard, doesn’t it?”
Collingsworth stared at the envelope. “Was this all Leaphorn had for me?” He pointed a manicured nail to the right bottom corner, where Leaphorn had noted “2 of 2,” with tight little circles around the 2s.
“That’s all I found,” Bernie said. “I opened it, and the one you’ll find inside, because his shooting is under investigation.”
Collingsworth opened the envelope and carefully pulled out the smaller business-size envelope and the photocopies. He opened the smaller envelope, extracted the single sheet of paper. He read it quickly.
“Officer Manuelito, are you sure you don’t have anything else for me from Mr. Leaphorn?”
“What you see is all I have.”
“Can you give me his number at the hospital? I need to talk to him about this right away.”
“No, sir. He’s in a coma and on a breathing machine.”
Collingsworth crushed the sheet of paper into a ball and hurled it toward the wastebasket. Bernie watched it bounce off the rim onto the floor. “When I hired him—and he came highly recommended—I explained exactly what the job entailed. A simple little job. We joked about how he’d find it tedious. I never expected this. I never expected him to act less than honorably.”
“I don’t know what the issue is here.” Bernie spoke slowly, weighing each word. “But I can say that in all the years I’ve known the lieutenant, he has always been a man of honor. Always. Always. What was in that missing package?”
Davis looked as if she was going to say something just as the office phone rang. The secretary picked it up, then signaled Davis that the call was for her. “Nice to meet you, Bernie,” she said as she walked away.
Bernie said, “Dr. Collingsworth, let’s step into your office. I need to talk to you in private.”
“Why?”
“I need to find out what the lieutenant was doing for you, how he betrayed your trust. We can do this here if you prefer.” Bernie was used to conversations with folks who had broken the law. Drunks. Wife beaters. Embarrassed tourists she pulled over for ignoring the reservation speed limit. She trusted her ability to defuse difficult situations, but she didn’t like this angry white man.
Collingsworth hesitated. “Of course.” He motioned her to walk ahead of him. “You know the man better than I. Perhaps I’m wrong about him, and you can correct my misimpression.” The tone of his voice said he doubted it.
Collingsworth settled his bulk behind the large desk, an old piece that looked hand-carved. Bernie sat in a padded leather chair. She pulled a notebook and a pen from her backpack.
“What kind of work was the lieutenant doing for the AIRC?”
Collingsworth said, “Our institute has been approached by the Grove McManus Foundation. I don’t suppose you’ve heard of it, but it’s one of the largest private foundations in the world.”
Bernie forced herself to ignore his arrogance. Collingsworth continued.
“The foundation, headquartered in Japan, wishes to give us their entire holdings of pottery from the American Southwest, wonderful modern examples from every Rio Grande Pueblo, including some that are ext
inct, and Hopi and Zuni. The gift also includes ancient pieces from Chaco Canyon and its outliers. Not only are the pots themselves significant, but the gift also includes a substantial financial endowment to assist in research and cataloging. This will make the items and information about them accessible to scholars and qualified researchers around the world. The AIRC will become an international repository for select examples of priceless pottery, some created long before European contact, including art that has never been accessible or exhibited before. And on top of that—”
Bernie’s police training trumped her ingrained Navajo politeness. She interrupted. “Talk to me about the lieutenant.”
Collingsworth folded his hands in front of him. “With a major donation of this kind, every institution will do some vetting. That’s where Mr. Leaphorn came in. The McManus Foundation assembled its holdings from numerous private collectors over the decades. We need an accurate appraisal value for insurance purposes and tax reasons. Making sure the figures the foundation provided meshed with current values was one of Leaphorn’s tasks.”
She knew Leaphorn did insurance work; double-checking appraisals for accuracy probably came easy to him. “I understand.”
He continued. “The AIRC’s statement of governance requires that a Native American expert do the vetting whenever any additions are proposed to the collection,” he said. “A board member who had previously worked with Mr. Leaphorn recommended him as our insurance consultant. When I interviewed Mr. Leaphorn, I was impressed with his knowledge and his interest in cultural issues. I thought we had found one consultant qualified for both jobs. It pleased me that Leaphorn agreed to take the assignment.”
He removed his glasses, studied the lenses, put them back on. “I apologize for my outburst back there. I appreciate your bringing the envelope. I didn’t mean to shoot the messenger, so to speak.”
“What’s missing?”
“The report I hired him to write, and a summary of findings. The deadline was yesterday. But this is my problem, not yours. ”
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