Princess whined at the door, and Slim rose to let her in. She walked over to Bernie. When Bernie ignored her, the dog sauntered to Slim and put her head in his lap. He rubbed her ears absentmindedly as he spoke.
“I had some things I’d collected, mostly from guys who worked on the ranch and needed a few bucks for gas money. I wondered if any of the pots were worth a nickel. Coulda used the cash. She came out, we had a beer or two, got to talkin’, hit it off. Besides whatever she did at Chaco, she told me she was gettin’ her appraisal business started, workin’ with a pardner. She landed a job to put the values on a big collection of Anasazi stuff headed off to Japland. Guess they call those old pots something else now, not Anasazi.”
Slim stopped. “You part Pueblo?”
“No,” Bernie said. “Navajo on all sides as far back as anyone remembers.”
“Since Ellie lived in the employee housing there in the Chaco park, we used to meet up in Cuba. She had a storage locker out that way for some furniture, a bunch of books, boxes of potshards for her research, stuff like that. She had room in there to make pots, and she set up a little desk and files to do her paperwork for the business.
“Anyways, we’d dance at the bar, get a bottle of Cold Duck or Blue Nun, maybe a joint, and go back to the locker for some private time. We’d see the trailers and RVs and boats stored there and pretend we was on our way someplace exotic. We’d get to laughin’ at those old silver Airstreams. Suppositories on wheels.”
He paused. “That was more than you needed to know, right?”
Bernie sipped the cold water and glanced at the clutter of bachelordom intermixed with some Indian baskets, rocks, books, yellowed receipts, a few small but nice Navajo rugs. She waited for more of the story to unfold.
“Anyways,” Slim said, “that Jap deal was the only time I saw her get riled up, seriously rubbed the wrong way.”
“Why?” Bernie asked. “It seems that she would have appreciated the work because she was new in the business.”
He chuckled. “I asked her that very thing. The guy wanted the values because he was sellin’ the whole kit and caboodle to some rich Tokyo joker. I told her, ‘Hell, Ellie, there’s thousands of old pots around here. What do you care?’ Lordy, I can still see her standin’ there. She let me have it.”
Slim pitched his voice a little higher. “ ‘America’s patrimony!’ ‘Leaving forever!’ ‘Irreplaceable.’ ‘Unconscionable!’ She would have bought those old pots herself just to keep ’em here if she’d had the moola.”
He leaned away from the table, balancing the chair on its two back legs, causing Princess to wander off. Signaling, it seemed to Bernie, the end of his diatribe.
“It sounds like she knew quite a bit about Chaco Canyon pottery,” Bernie said.
“It was her favorite thing in the whole wide world. She was especially partial to pottery that the Indians who lived right in the canyon made. She liked that better than what came in through trade or however else from other Indians or from the outliers on those big wide roads. You know about all that?”
“A little,” Bernie said. “It’s interesting to think of those roads, wide enough for a truck to drive on. I wonder why the old ones took the time and put in the effort to build them.”
“Ellie and I talked about all that. I always figured folks came to Chaco to party, visit their kinfolks, maybe try to hook up with a wife. Pray a little, trade a little, then head on back home.”
He stopped, grinned at her. “You’re a pretty girl. Married?”
“Yes,” she said. “You started telling me about Ellie not showing up for the appraisal last week.”
“Not much else to say about that.” Slim stopped talking. Readjusted his chair. Sipped his drink.
“That collection you mentioned, the one going to Japan. That might be the appraisal I need to ask her about,” Bernie said. “Some pots she evaluated are coming to a museum in Santa Fe.”
“Home again? That will make her happy. Ellie especially liked those tall pots. Cylinders, she called them, and they looked like that, too. She talked about them a lot, how rare they were. How pretty. She showed me a photo of one. It was kinda nice, I guess, but I just figured it was another skinny old pot.”
He pushed his chair back and stood up. “Hold on a minute, missy. I’ll be right back.”
Princess looked after him, then crept beneath the table and put her chin on Bernie’s knee. Bernie wasn’t used to dogs in the house, but she gave her a few pats.
Slim returned with a photo. “I found this again last week. Jackson and I were goin’ through stuff, gettin’ ready for the appraisal when she didn’t show up. This is the kind of pot she loves.”
He handed Bernie a photo, probably taken twenty years ago. “Ellie’s the gal with the pot.”
A young woman, pale with light hair, held a cylindrical jar in front of her. Bernie noticed a triangle pattern that reminded her of the lieutenant’s sketch. A second woman stood next to Ellie. She looked vaguely familiar.
Slim sat back down. “I’m kinda glad to hear you haven’t had any luck finding Ellie. I thought she might be avoiding me.”
“Do you have time for a couple more questions?”
“Ask away,” Slim said. “I’ve got all day.”
“Did Ellie mention going out of town, taking a trip to visit friends, anything like that?”
“No, ma’am. She sounded eager to do the job and kinda glad to come see me again, too.”
“Did she ever talk about a man named Joe Leaphorn to you?”
“Not that I can remember, but I can’t remember as good as I used to.”
Bernie said, “You mention that you knew Jackson Benally. Have you ever had a problem with him?”
Slim hesitated. “Jack? He’s a good man. Kinda young for his age because Mama won’t let him sow any wild oats.” He raised his eyebrows. “I’ve been around the block a time or two, missy. I can see where this is leading. Don’t you be thinkin’ that Jackson shot that policeman. He doesn’t even like to kill rattlesnakes that get in the way of building a fence. Why did you ask me ’bout him?”
“Jackson’s car may have been involved. He disappeared right after the shooting, and he lied to the investigator about being in class. He said he was with a friend, but the guy he says was with him is missing still.”
“Friend? Who’s that?”
“A young man named Leonard Nez,” Bernie said.
“The Lizard?”
“You know him?” Jacobs, she realized, was a man of surprises.
“Lizard Nez? That guy is hot in rodeo. He hasn’t gone missing. Check to see who’s offering what prize money this month for bronc riding, and you’ll him find there.”
“Why wouldn’t Jackson tell us that?”
Slim chuckled. “I imagine it has somethin’ to do with his ferocious mama not likin’ rodeo one little bit. Not wanting her precious son in any way, shape, or form involved in cowboyin’. As I see it, Jackson’s not especially interested in gettin’ tossed in the dirt and stepped on. He goes with Lizard as sort of his manager. And to meet girls.”
Bernie thought about that. A possibility.
“Did you ever have trouble with Jackson?”
Slim chuckled. “You asked me that already. You know how kids are. Jack has a touch of what I call attitude. Some growin’ up ahead of him. But no. As long as he knows what I expect, he delivers.”
Bernie thought of Darleen. The description would fit her, too.
Slim rose, took her water glass and his. Refilled them both from the tap. Added a single ice cube from the freezer to each. Sat down again. Princess angled up and waddled toward the front porch, pushing the door open with her nose.
“What does Jackson do here?”
“I guess you could call him an apprentice or assistant or somethin’,” Slim said. “He’s good with numbers,
helps with the taxes and government red tape. He works hard outside if I need that. Besides helpin’ me, he goes out to a little dig once in a while.” He glanced to the right, out past the fence, toward the horizon. “It’s all on the up and up. My own land. Jackson works those jobs with Maxie on his own time, as long as no burials are involved. He tells me he likes learnin’ a little about archaeology, but I think he knows a handsome woman when one comes his way.”
“Maxie Davis? Is she the other woman in the picture?”
Slim said, “Yeah. Maxie calls herself Dr. Davis. You know her?”
Bernie nodded. “What kind of work is she doing out here?”
Slim said, “Well, that’s a story. One of those roads from Chaco Canyon we were jawin’ about earlier, turns out it went right through the ranch, or where the ranch would have been if I’d been around a thousand years ago. Maxie told me all that. She wanted to do some diggin’ here, research. Called me out of the blue. I told her go ahead. She found a little compound. Some kind of settlement.”
“That’s interesting.”
“They’ve got all sorts of high-tech stuff now to find ruins underground,” Slim said. “But Dr. Davis—hell, I used to just call her Maxie, but now she’s Dr. Davis. She didn’t need any of that fancy stuff. She remembered seeing some of the pieces of pots out here and just followed her intuition. Bingo.”
“So I guess from the photo you knew her in the old days, too?”
“Maxie’s not the kinda gal a cowboy forgets, even though I was partial to Ellie. When Maxie came out to talk about the dig, she remembered me taking that photo of her and Ellie together, asked if I still had it. I told her no; I’d forgotten all about it. Then she asked if I had any of the photos she took when she worked with Ellie. I told her no, again.”
Slim shook his head. “Ellie holds on to all that old stuff. That Ellie’s a free spirit, but she kept an eye on her business records. She told me if she came across somethin’ similar for a new appraisal, she could cross-check. Save herself a bunch of time.”
“Did Davis say why she wanted a photo of the two of them?”
“I asked her. She said those were hard times for her and she didn’t want a record of them. Next time she came out, she asked about the photo again. I told her I’d given it to Ellie just to shut her up.”
Bernie sipped her water. Thought it over. “How did Davis help with the appraisals?
“Maxie took the pictures. Left Ellie to do the real work. I remember that on my job they came twice, first to look at the stuff. Ellie would take notes and Maxie snapped the pictures. Then they’d come back with the report. Ellie would sit out on the porch and we’d talk about the values, or just shoot the breeze, while Maxie would get new photos. Always seemed like some of hers would be fuzzy or something.”
Bernie said, “Sounds like a good team.”
Slim said, “That’s what I thought, too. But when Maxie was out just lately to work on her dig, she started askin’ me questions about Ellie’s records. Did I know where she kept ’em, things like that. I figured if Ellie hadn’t kept her up to speed, it wasn’t my place to do it. Told her to ask Ellie.”
Princess stayed fast asleep on the porch, not even raising her head for a last bark, as Bernie left. When she got back to her car, she called Chee about the Davis/Ellie connection and the mysterious Leonard Nez, rodeo star in the making. She reminded him to run a background check on Ellie, and to add Davis to the assignment.
“And Collingsworth, too?” Chee asked.
“Why not?” Then she found a spot of shade and ate her sandwich before she drove out to Mama’s house.
16
Chee checked in at the Shiprock station, learned nothing new, and was headed out the door for the Window Rock meeting with Mrs. Benally and Largo when his intercom buzzed. A call from Largo on line one.
“What the bejesus were you doing out at Chaco Canyon?” Captain Largo did not sound happy.
Chee bristled. Largo had no right to pry into his personal life.
“We went to Santa Fe to see Leaphorn. Bernie hadn’t been to Chaco since high school, so we stopped there on the way back.”
“And got wrapped up in a potential homicide?”
“Homicide?”
“Park personnel found a body off the trail. The trail where you sent them,” Largo said.
“We met a woman who had seen something odd. It didn’t seem like anything much. We reported it to a ranger.”
“Yeah. That’s always how this stuff starts out.” Largo sighed. “Cordova wants to talk to you. Out there. He’s on his way now.”
“I already told the ranger, a guy named Stephen, everything the woman told us. What about Mrs. Benally and the meeting?”
Largo said, “You know how this all works with the feds. I’ll ask Wheeler to talk to Mrs. Benally.”
“It’s a long drive out there,” Chee said.
“Use the time to think about the Leaphorn case.” Largo paused, and Chee heard the change in his tone of voice. “How is he doing?”
Chee thought about what to say. “He’s on a bunch of machines and a lot of drugs to keep him quiet. The surgeon removed part of his skull for the swelling. Even with all that, I think he might have recognized us.”
“Did he tell you who did it? Who shot him?”
“He can’t talk yet,” Chee said. “We asked him if he knew the shooter, and Bernie could tell he wanted to write a message. But he wasn’t strong enough.”
“Damn,” Largo said.
As Chee headed out to Chaco, he reviewed what he knew about the Leaphorn shooting. The obvious suspect, Jackson Benally, didn’t fit the profile of a killer. Leonard Nez didn’t have a record of violence or any connection to the lieutenant as far as Chee could find. Garrison Tsosie? A whisper of a motive and a solid alibi.
Louisa? That was a different story. No reports of her Jeep showing up anywhere. Largo told him the feds had checked with the personnel office at Northern Arizona University and with her colleagues there. No record of any conferences she’d planned to attend that month. Not much in her file other than academic records. She listed Leaphorn as her emergency contact.
After that, the list was as broad as the lieutenant’s long career, the legwork intense, and the trail getting cold. Ellie, who rudely left Leaphorn to have lunch by himself? Some ex-con with a grudge? A random cop hater who stole the Benally car, put it back, and disappeared?
Chee pulled his police unit into the left lane, glanced at the drivers, all cruising along at the speed limit with both hands on the wheel. No doubt with their cell phones on their laps, waiting for him to pass to go back to texting while sipping their coffee, eating a sweet roll, and applying makeup or shaving. Traffic was light, the sky cloudless and blue as a pale white man’s eyes.
As he drove, Chee thought about Louisa’s account of the lieutenant and a ghost from the past. He thought about Eleanor Friedman-Bernal and what Bernie had learned about her lowball appraisals. From what Davis said, Ellie was a shifty character. Chee remembered meeting the man who nearly killed her, Randall Elliot. He had seemed civil, smart, concerned that Ellie was missing.
Chee wondered, again, what motivated a man to commit a serious crime to cover up a lesser crime. To his Navajo Police way of thinking, illegal excavation for academic prestige wasn’t much of an offense compared to battery with deadly intentions. Something else about Elliot and the case snagged at the edge of his memory. If only he could ask the lieutenant.
Chee flashed back to the visit to the hospital and thought about Bernie. He found himself continually amazed and delighted by her savvy. Bernie had great instincts, good intuition, a wonderful way of dealing with people. She would find out all about Ellie at the Double X Ranch with no problem. Then Bernie could contact her, put Leaphorn’s AIRC job to rest. She might come up with something that would raise Ellie to legitimate suspect le
vel or, more likely, eliminate her from the suspect pool.
Chee passed the little settlement of Nageezi and turned off toward Chaco. He cruised past the few dry homesteads, a handful of bored cows standing in the sun. He thought about the lieutenant, remembering the American Automobile Association map of the Navajo Nation that hung on his wall. The lieutenant marked each type of crime with a different colored pushpin, and used the map to discover patterns. He wondered what sort of tracking Leaphorn would do to solve his own case.
Bouncing along the empty road, Chee remembered how green the lieutenant had looked on the helicopter flight back to civilization after they had rescued Ellie. That was one of the first and only times he’d sensed that his occasional boss and frequent critic had some human weakness. During that turbulent trip, Leaphorn had honored him by asking him to do a Blessing Way ceremony. He never knew what fierce evil the lieutenant had encountered in that ruin-filled canyon, and never asked.
After the death of his uncle and teacher Hosteen Nakai, Chee had discontinued his studies to become a hataalii. Now, he couldn’t do a traditional healing ceremony for the lieutenant, complete with sacred songs and sand paintings. But he could arrange it, make some calls today, get to work on that project. The lieutenant’s interest in the ritual had surprised him, but the man had always kept Chee off guard.
When the road forked, Chee turned onto the main branch toward the visitor center, the route he and Bernie had driven yesterday. His police unit, a heavy-duty SUV, handled the washboard, sand traps, and potholes about as well, or as poorly, as his truck had. When it rained, this road became treacherously slick. Campers, SUVs, minivans full of hapless tourists had slipped off and gotten stuck out here. That was when the visitors realized cell phones aren’t as smart as the commercials claim.
He thought about the dead woman up ahead. What would the people Karen heard have been arguing about? What if this wasn’t murder, but a hiking accident? Chee mulled it over as he pulled out to pass a white Honda with Texas plates. What if Long Sleeves had talked about suicide, and Dorky Hat invited her out here to cheer her up? The cheering-up doesn’t work. Dorky Hat gets annoyed that Long Sleeves won’t listen to reason. They argue, and Long Sleeves pulls the trigger, shoots herself.
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