The Shape Shifter jlajc-18

by Tony Hillerman

  “I’m sorry I missed her. Please tell her I said, Ya eeh teh.”

  This very mature woman, he was thinking, must be Elandra, who had been a lot younger when he’d first met her.

  “Elandra, this man here is Sergeant Garcia, a deputy with the sheriff’s office down in Flagstaff.” The glad-to-meet-yous were exchanged, and Elandra, looking puzzled, held back the doorway carpet and invited them in. “I don’t have anything ready to offer you,” she said, “but I could make some coffee.” Leaphorn was shaking his head. “Oh, no,” he said. “I just came by to see your grandmother.” He paused, looking embarrassed. “And I was wondering if anything new had come up in that burglary you had.” Elandra’s eyes widened. “Lots of years gone by since then. Lot of things happened.”

  “Long ago as it was, I always felt sorry that I couldn’t stay on that case. I got called away by my boss because the federals wanted help on that fire at the Totter store.” Elandra’s expression made it clear that she remembered. She laughed.

  “I’ll tell her you told her ‘ ya eeh teh,’ but telling Grandma to ‘be cool’ isn’t going to do it. She’s still mad at you for running off without finding that pinyon sap.” Then she had another sudden memory. “In fact, long time ago when she was going off to help with Austin’s kids, she 80

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  said you had told her you would come back sometime to deal with that stolen sap problem, and she left something for me to give you if you did. Just a minute. I’ll see if I can find it.”

  It was closer to five minutes later when Elandra emerged from the bedroom. She was carrying a sheet of notebook paper folded together and clasped with two hairpins. She grinned at Leaphorn and handed it to him.

  On it was printed in pencil: TO THAT BOY POLICEMAN.

  “That wasn’t my idea,” Elandra said. “She was mad at you. What she wanted to write was worse than that.”

  “I guess I should read it?” Leaphorn said.

  Elandra nodded.

  Inside was the neatly penciled message: Young policeman.

  Get my sap back here before it spoils. If not, get back $10 for each bucketful, and $5 for each bucket. Rather have sap. Otherwise $30.

  Garcia had been watching all this, his expression amused.

  “What does it say?” he asked. “That is, if it’s not secret.”

  Leaphorn read it to him.

  Garcia nodded. “You know how much time and labor goes into collecting that damned pinyon sap,” he said.

  “Did you ever try to get sticky stuff off of you? I’d say that thirty dollars would be a very fair price.” Leaphorn put the note in his shirt pocket.

  Elandra looked slightly abashed. “Grandma is usually very polite. But she thought you were practicing THE SHAPE SHIFTER

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  racial discrimination against us Indians. Remember? Or maybe she just wanted somebody to blame.”

  “Well, I could see her point.”

  “You want to know if we got our pinyon sap back?”

  “Anything at all you can tell me about that.” Elandra laughed. “We didn’t recover any sap, but Grandma Peshlakai did get our buckets back. So I guess you should cut ten dollars off that bill.” Garcia’s eyebrows rose. “Got the buckets back? Well, now,” he said.

  Leaphorn drew in a breath. “She recovered the buckets?” he said. “Tell me how she managed to do that.”

  “Well, after that fire at Totter’s place, Grandma had been asking around everywhere. Right from the start she had the notion that Totter might have gotten that sap.” She laughed. “She thought he was going to start making his own baskets. Compete with us. Anyway, she noticed people were going over there after Mr. Totter moved with what was left of his stuff. And they were picking up things. Walking away with it. Just taking things away.” She paused.

  “Like stealing stuff ?” Garcia said.

  Elandra nodded. “So Grandma rode over there and looked around, and she came back with our buckets.” Leaphorn leaned forward. “Where were they?”

  “I don’t know exactly. She said they were laying out by the porch. Or maybe out by the back door. I don’t really remember.”

  “Empty buckets?” Leaphorn said.

  Elandra nodded. “And dented up some, too,” she said. “But they still hold water.”

  Leaphorn noticed that Garcia was grinning. That turned into a chuckle.

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  “I guess we could make a burglary-theft case against Totter now, Joe. If we knew where he moved to when he left here. You want to try?”

  Leaphorn was embarrassed. In no mood to be joshed.

  “I think it would be a good idea to find out where he went,” he said. “Remember, one of his hired hands burned to death in that fire.”

  “Okay, okay,” Garcia said. “I didn’t mean that to sound like I was joking.”

  “Well, then—” Leaphorn began, but Elandra violated the “never interrupt” rule of her tribe.

  “You don’t know where he is?” she said. She shook her head. “You don’t know about Mr. Totter? You don’t know he’s dead?”

  “Dead?” Garcia said.

  “How do you know that?” Leaphorn asked.

  “It was in the newspaper,” she said. “After Grandma found the buckets, and knew for sure Mr. Totter had stolen our pinyon sap, she had a real angry spell. Really mad about it. So everywhere she went she would tell people about what he’d done and ask about him. And quite a while later somebody in a store where she was buying something told her Totter had died. He told her he’d seen it in the newspaper. That’s how we knew.”

  “What newspaper?” Leaphorn asked.

  “She was in Gallup, I think. I guess it was the Gallup paper.”

  “The Gallup Independent,” Garcia said.

  “Was it a news story about his being killed? Shot? Or in an accident?”

  “I don’t know,” Elandra said. “But I don’t think so. I THE SHAPE SHIFTER

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  think the man said it was one of those little pieces where they tell where you’re going to be buried, and who your relatives are, for sending flowers, all that.”

  “An obituary item, I guess,” Garcia said.

  “Well, since we know within a year or two when that was printed, I guess we can track that down,” Leaphorn said.

  As he said it, he was wishing that Sergeant Jim Chee and Officer Bernadette Manuelito were not off somewhere on their honeymoon. Otherwise, retired or not, he could talk Chee into going down to Gallup and digging through their microfiche files of back copies until he found it. Or maybe Chee could talk Bernie into doing it for him. She’d get it done quicker, and not come back with the wrong obituary.

  11

  Back in Flagstaff, back in his own car, with farewells said to Sergeant Garcia, an agreement reached that they had pretty well wasted a tiresome day and a lot of the sheriff’s department’s gasoline budget, Leaphorn again pulled into the Burger King parking lot. He sat. Organized his thoughts.

  Was he too tired to drive all the way back to Shiprock tonight? Probably. But the alternative was renting a cold and uncomfortable motel room, making futile and frustrating efforts to adjust the air conditioner, and generally feeling disgusted. Then he’d have to awaken in the morning, stiff from a night on a strange mattress, and do the long drive anyway. He went in, got a cup of coffee and a hamburger for dinner. Halfway through that meal, and halfway through the list of things he had to do before he went back and told Mrs. Bork that he had absolutely no good news for her about her missing husband, he got up 86

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  and went back out to his pickup. He extracted the cell phone from the glove box, returned with it to his waiting hamburger, and carefully punched in Jim Chee’s home number. Maybe Chee and Bernie would be back from their honeymoon. Maybe not.

  They were.

  “Hello,” Chee said, sounding sort of grumpy.

  “Chee. This is Joe Leaphorn. How busy are y
ou?”

  “Ah. Um. Lieutenant Leaphorn? Well, um. Well, we just got back and . . .”

  This statement trailed off unfinished, was followed by a moment of silence and then a sigh and the clearing of a throat.

  “What do you want me to do?” Chee asked.

  “Ah, um. Is there any chance you’d be going down to Gallup pretty soon?”

  “Like when?”

  “Well, maybe tomorrow?”

  Chee laughed. “You know, Lieutenant, this reminds me of old times.”

  “Too busy, I guess,” Leaphorn said, sadly.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “I know you and Bernie are newlyweds,” Leaphorn said. “So why don’t you take her along.”

  “I probably would,” Chee said. “But to do what?”

  “It takes a while to explain,” Leaphorn said, and explained it, Navajo style, starting at the beginning. And when he finished he waited for a reaction.

  “That’s it?” Chee asked, after waiting a polite moment to be sure he wasn’t interrupting.

  “Yes.”

  “You want me to prowl through back issues of the THE SHAPE SHIFTER

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  Gallup Independent looking for that Totter obituary, find it, get them to make a copy of it for you, and then find someone old enough to remember when they received it and how, and who brought it in, and—”

  “Or mailed it in. Or called it in,” Leaphorn said. “But I’ll bet Miss Manuelito would be good at all that.”

  “Probably better than me, because she’s organized and patient. Yes. But Lieutenant, she’s not Miss Manuelito now, she’s Mrs. Bernadette Chee.”

  “Sorry,” Leaphorn said.

  “And it was probably published years ago after that fire at Totter’s Trading Post. There’d be a story about finding the burned man who was a star figure on the FBI bad boy list, I guess. I could look for that story, and then skip ahead a few months to make sure I didn’t miss it, and then keep looking for a couple of years. Right?”

  “Well, I think they have it on microfiche. You know.

  You just push the button and it gives you the next page, and skip the full-page ads, and the sports pages.”

  “How soon do you need it?” Chee asked. “And can you explain why again? It sounded sort of vague.”

  “I guess it is sort of vague. I just have a general feeling that something is very peculiar about this whole business.” He paused, thinking. “Tell you what, Jim, I want to think about this some more. Maybe I’m just wasting everybody’s time. Just put it on hold until I call you back.”

  “You mean the fire was peculiar?”

  Leaphorn sighed. “That and everything else.”

  “Well,” Chee said, “ I guess . . . Wait a second, here’s Bernie.”

  And the next voice Leaphorn heard was that of Mrs.

  Bernadette Chee, sounding happy, exuberant, asking 88

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  about his health, about Professor Louisa Bourbonette, about what he was doing, had he actually retired and, finally, wondering what he and Chee were talking about.

  Leaphorn told her.

  “Tomorrow?” Bernie asked. “Sure. We’d be happy to take care of that. Have you explained to Jim what you need?”

  “Well, yes,” Leaphorn said. Then thought a second.

  “Just sort of explained,” he added, and went through it all again.

  “Okay, Lieutenant,” Bernie said. “How soon do you need it and what’s your cell phone number?” Leaphorn gave it to her. “But hold off until I understand what in the world I’m doing,” he said. “And welcome home, Bernie.”

  “It’s Mrs. Chee, now,” she said.

  12

  Joe Leaphorn awakened unusually late the next morning. Just as he had expected, his back was stiff, his head was stuffy from a night of breathing air-conditioned motel air, and his mood was glum. Exactly what he had anticipated. The foreboding that had caused him to decide to drive back to Shiprock last night instead of enduring the motel was justified. But talking with Chee and Bernie, two youngsters, had made him face the fact that he was old and too weary to be a safe nighttime driver when the drunks were on the highways. So now he was still in Flagstaff, and the long drive still confronted him.

  But the sleeplessness provoked by the lumpy motel mattress had caused him to do a lot of thinking, each toss and turn changing the subject of his speculation. First, he had covered what he would say to Mrs. Bork. Since he was, alas, still here in Flagstaff, he should call her right now, not leave her biting her nails with worry. Telling her 90

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  he hadn’t learned anything useful wouldn’t help much, but courtesy demanded it. Next, he decided he had to quit stalling and set up a meeting with this Jason Delos fellow, who seemed to have that damned rug, or at least a copy of it, and find out where he had obtained it. With that out of the way, he would just start doing some old-fashioned police work, going to Bork’s office, hunting down his friends and associates, collecting some clues as to what might have happened to him, and trying to learn who had made that ominous-sounding telephone call.

  He took advantage of the motel’s much-advertised free breakfast for two slices of French toast, a bowl of raisin bran, and two cups of coffee. Then he called Mrs.

  Bork. Her joy at first hearing his voice quickly faded. The forlorn sound of her sorrow was exactly what he needed to propel him into the next call.

  The number with which Tarkington had finally provided him produced a young-sounding and accented male voice: “Delos residence. Whom shall I say is calling?”

  “This is Joe Leaphorn,” Leaphorn said. “I need to talk to Mr. Delos about a very old Navajo tale-teller’s rug.

  The curator of the Navajo Tribal Gallery at Window Rock suggested he might have information to determine if a copy might have been made of it. Whether it might be available.”

  This produced a long moment of silence. Then: “From where are you calling, sir?”

  “I am here in Flagstaff,” Leaphorn said. “I was hoping to make an appointment to meet with Mr. Delos. That rug has accumulated some very colorful history down through the years. I thought he might be interested.” THE SHAPE SHIFTER

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  Another pause. “Please hold, sir. I will see if he is available.”

  Leaphorn held. He thought about the staleness of the motel coffee, about whether his car was overdue for an oil change. He glanced at his watch, considered the list-ings waiting for his attention back in Shiprock, wondered how long it would be before Louisa returned from her research project and helped him keep his house clean and reduce its loneliness, glanced at his watch again, changed the telephone from left ear to right.

  “Mr. Leaphorn,” the voice said, “Mr. Delos say he can see you. He ask you to be here at eleven.”

  “Eleven A.M.” Leaphorn said, with another glance at his watch. “Tell me how to get there from the downtown Flagstaff interstate exit.”

  The young man gave him the directions, very pre-cisely. As Leaphorn had suspected, from the view he’d noticed through the window in the Luxury Living photo, the route led him into the foothills rising beyond Flagstaff’s northern limits. Expensive landscape, rising far above Flagstaff’s seventy-two hundred feet above sea level, and offering views extending approximately forever.

  “I’ll be there,” Leaphorn said.

  The residence of Jason Delos was a little less monu-mental than Leaphorn had expected. It was a structure of stone and timber built on two levels, rising above an under-the-house triple garage and conforming with the wooded slope of its setting. The asphalt of this mountain road had reverted to gravel three miles back, but here, through the bars on a fancy cast-iron gate, the driveway that curved toward the garage had been paved. Built as a summer home, Leaphorn deduced, probably in the high 92

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  end of the half-million-dollar range when it was built—

  and that probably had been back in t
he 1960s. Now the price would be much more than that.

  Leaphorn parked beside an entry post equipped with a sign which read:

  PLEASE PUSH BUTTON

  IDENTIFY YOURSELF

  He checked his watch. Six minutes early. He wasted a few of those enjoying this close view of the San Francisco Peaks. If Jason Delos collected Indian antiquities, he probably knew their role in mythology. Not terribly crucial for his Dineh people as he remembered the winter hogan stories from his boyhood. He had heard them mentioned mostly because of Great Bear spirit and his misadventures. But they were sacred indeed for the Hopis. They recognized Humphreys Peak (at 12,600

  feet, the tallest of the San Francisco chain) as the gate-way to the other world, the route their spirits used to visit during ceremonials when Hopi priests called them.

  For the Zunis, as Leaphorn understood what he’d been told by Zuni friends, it was one of the roads taken by spirits of Hopi dead to reach the wonderful dance grounds where the good among them would celebrate their eternal rewards. He interrupted that thought to glance at his watch again. It was time. He reached out and punched the button.

  The response was immediate.

  “Mr. Leaphorn,” it said. “Come in, sir. And please park at the paved place to the south of the entrance porch.”

  “Right,” Leaphorn said, uneasily aware as he said it THE SHAPE SHIFTER

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  that whoever owned the voice had been looking out at him, probably wondering why he was waiting. It was the same voice he had heard on the Delos telephone.

  The gate swung open. Leaphorn drove through it, admiring the house. A handsome place with its landscaping left to nature. No flat country lawn grass. Just the vegetation that flourished in the high-dry mountain country. As he pulled into the parking area, a man stepped from a side door and stood, waiting for him. A small man, straight and slender, in his early forties, with short black hair and a very smooth, flawless complexion. Possibly a Hopi or Zuni, Leaphorn thought. But at second glance, Leaphorn switched that to probably Vietnamese or Lao-tian. As he turned off the ignition, the man was opening the door for him.

  “I am Tommy Vang,” he said, smiling. “Mr. Delos say thank you for being so prompt. He say to give you some time to visit the restroom if you wish to do so, and then bring you to the office.”