Rock with Wings

by Anne Hillerman

  Bahe was on the phone when Chee got to the office, so he read the digital edition of the Navajo Times and then checked his e-mail. Something from “leaphornj.”

  He opened it. The Lieutenant’s reply to his request for help dispensed with pleasantries and got right to business:

  necklace 1930s. museum-quality heirloom Persian turquoise? Robert Etcitty

  Etcitty was a jeweler Chee had heard of, a man too young to have been born in the 1930s.

  Leaphorn had typed a line of inverted triangles to separate the next section:

  ∨∨∨∨∨

  poker chip = Stagecoach

  Chee pulled out the chip and looked at it to make sure. No, it didn’t have a stagecoach on it. The impression was of an eagle. The photograph he sent must have been blurry or something.

  Chee walked outside, gathering his ideas, considering what to send as a reply. The June heat radiated off the walls and terraces of the visitor center. He noticed it more outside the station than in the valley itself, probably because of the added warmth generated by the air-conditioning units and the pavement and concrete. He climbed the steps to the vista point and spent a moment taking in the procession of vehicles stirring up dust on the vista road and the view of the Mittens and Merrick Butte against the cloudless turquoise sky. Merrick Butte took its American name from a soldier turned silver miner who died at the spot. But unlike the grave Chee had inadvertently discovered, Merrick’s place of death had an impressive natural marker, a massive tower of red sandstone rising over the desert. Chee took the poker chip out of his pocket and studied it again.

  Back in the office, he first thanked the Lieutenant for the information.

  I must have not given you a good photo of the chip. The design is an eagle with three arrows in its talons. I just sent it to offer you an idea of the size of the necklace. Are you sure about the silversmith? I know a man by that name, and I believe he would be too young to have made it.

  He inquired about Leaphorn’s health and Louisa and clicked send. He felt a twinge of sadness. In all the years they had worked together, he had never questioned the Lieutenant’s mental fitness, but evidently the brain injury changed things. He hoped the change was temporary.

  Chee saw the neat pile of papers he expected, the forms he had to complete to mark the termination of his assignment at Monument Valley, on Bahe’s desk. But the captain didn’t give them to him immediately.

  “Remember that message you sent me for Burke, the one about the photos Samuel supposedly took of the girl?” Bahe wasn’t as jovial as usual.

  “Sure. What do you need?”

  “Burke found the pictures, still on that phone, along with quite a few more. Similar poses of other women, and maybe some minors, too. Since that teenager was the only one we had a name for, Burke tried to reach Isenberg to talk to him and his daughter. No luck.”

  “The only phone number I have is the sister’s cell phone. I’ll give him that. The family is at Goulding’s.”

  “They left yesterday. Burke thinks that’s suspicious. Burke doesn’t have any suspects in the murder at this point except Delahart, and maybe this girl’s father.”

  “Did he find the gun?”

  “No. It wasn’t in the room.” Bahe paused. “He asked if we could give him a hand. Burke wants us to review the security recordings from the hotel.”

  “Us? Why? It’s a federal case.”

  “I owe the guy a favor. So look at the tape and see if you spot Isenberg or anyone you recognize from being out on the movie set.”

  Chee thought about it. “You know, the camera only captured people leaving the elevator and walking down the hall. Other movie people might have rooms on that same floor.”

  “So check that out too.” Bahe tapped the flat end of his pencil on the tape. “Monica can set up the player. She’s good at that stuff.”

  Bahe pushed the pile of papers, the exit forms, toward Chee. “I know you’re ready to get home. It’s been exciting having you here, to say the least. Just leave these on my desk before you head on back to Shiprock.”

  Monica dealt with the technology smoothly, showing Chee the necessary buttons on the remote to run the TV monitor and the DVD player. Why was every one of these things just different enough to make life complicated?

  “Any questions? And no, I won’t bring you popcorn.” She walked to the door and then came back. “I forgot to tell you to check your voice mail. You know that upset girl who came in yesterday? She called while you were talking to Bahe. I put her through to leave a message. And your wife called. She sounds nice over the phone.”

  “She’s nice in person, too. I’ll introduce you when I’m back here for the sing.” She would know he meant the healing ceremony with the hataalii.

  “Good. I’m looking forward to that.” Monica smiled at him. “If you have any trouble with the machine, give it a slap on the top with the palm of your hand.”

  Chee pushed play and saw the elevator door and an empty hallway. Then came Samuel, walking toward Delahart’s room. More empty shots, and then he watched a man in a hotel uniform roll the room-service cart down the hall. Erdman’s assessment had been correct. People struggling with suitcases, a couple of older women holding little dogs, dry kids in swimsuits getting into the elevator, wet kids in swimsuits getting out of the elevator. The hallway was busier than he’d expected. After some serious boredom, Chee realized he could listen to his phone messages and watch the procession of people at the same time.

  Courtney’s voicemail thanked him for yesterday. Then she changed the subject. “Hey, I’ve been on the movie’s fan page, and they had a story that said a policeman found a grave out where they’ve been filming, and now everyone is investigating. Do you know about that? Way bad!”

  Delahart’s back at work, Chee thought. Would he use Samuel’s murder as a promotional tool too? He was surprised that Courtney’s message didn’t mention human bones.

  He slowed the tape a few times and made note of a person or two whose body language seemed suspicious, and then fast-forwarded through a section with no people as he listened to Bernie’s message: “I miss you. Hope you’re OK and not working too hard. Call me.”

  He was ready to punch in her number when something on the TV monitor caught his eye. He put the phone down and hit rewind. Someone who looked like Greg Robinson left the elevator and walked down the hallway toward Delahart’s door. Chee hit rewind and watched again. As Delahart’s assistant producer, Robinson probably had a million things to talk to him about. Chee decided he shouldn’t have been surprised to see him on the tape.

  All in all, not much to go on. Of course, whoever shot Samuel could have entered and left by the open back door, but he hadn’t noticed any sand on the balcony’s floor or on the carpet. And there didn’t seem to be enough footprints in the sand for both coming and going. Chee focused on the images, waiting for Isenberg to appear and for Robinson to walk back to the elevator. He watched until he came to the footage of himself and Brenda heading for the room. No more Robinson. And no Isenberg.

  The emergency exit staircase was at the end of the hall, he remembered, out of view of the hallway camera. Robinson could have left that way. And perhaps Isenberg, if he had been there at all, had come and gone on the back stairs, too. Erdman had mentioned other surveillance cameras that showed all the exits. Chee called her and left a message, asking her to have someone bring that tape over as soon as possible and deliver it to Bahe.

  Bahe had left before Chee finished, so he wrote a note about Robinson and his request for the second tape, along with the paperwork to get a paycheck. Since he had to drive out to the movie set to serve the citation, he decided to do Burke a favor and ask Robinson face-to-face what he was doing at the hotel, clear up that loose end. It wasn’t his case, but he was curious.

  Without Gerald’s oversight, the movie production parking situation had disintegrated into total chaos. He’d mention this to Robinson, too. The operation needed the parking attendant, budg
et crisis or not.

  When Chee opened the door to the office trailer, the air-conditioned breeze bordered on too chilly. BJ looked up from her desk. “Hi. You’re back.”

  “Yes, looking for Robinson again.”

  “Good timing. His meeting broke up ten minutes ago.”

  Bad timing, Chee thought. He’d hoped to arrive before the meeting started.

  “Did you hear any more buzz about the murder?”

  “No. I didn’t hear any more news about that. But—” She hesitated. “What the heck, you’ll hear this anyway. A lot more people are having their hours cut. Everyone’s upset.”

  “Too bad.”

  “It’s sad for the people who thought they’d have work for the next month or so.”

  “And for the locals, too.” Chee heard something that sounded like a gunshot. “What was that?”

  “Must be the special effects guys. You hear all kinds of things out here in zombie land. Don’t let it spook you, Officer. Robinson ought to be in the tent still—a lot of people had questions for him. If he’s not there, check his trailer. You know where it is.”

  In the tent, Chee saw rows of chairs that had been set up for the meeting and clusters of people standing and talking, but no Robinson. His goal was to deliver the citation, ask the man what he was doing in the hotel, finish the paperwork, and get back to Shiprock and Bernie.

  But Melissa had noticed him and walked his way. She looked disheartened.

  “Hi there,” he said.

  “Did you hear about the cutbacks?”

  “BJ told me.”

  “It’s my fault.”

  Chee remembered that she was the bookkeeper. “BJ said the word came down from Delahart himself. How could it be your fault?”

  “I never should have let Samuel—” He heard the anger in her voice. “Can you give me some advice on something? I mean, could we talk privately somewhere?”

  Chee wanted to say no, but what difference would a few minutes make? “We could sit in my unit. It’s parked over there.”

  He opened the passenger door for her and climbed in behind the steering wheel, lowering the windows to catch the breeze and create an illusion of coolness.

  “You know, this is the first time I’ve ever been in a police car.”

  “That’s probably a good thing.”

  She sat, staring out the windshield for a while. “I made a big mistake in the bookkeeping. It’s complicated, but in a nutshell I gave the company credit for a big sponsorship that hasn’t come in yet. Robinson trusted me and authorized the expenditures without asking enough questions. Delahart is the producer, so the buck stops with him, but I don’t think he even looked at any of the reports. We weren’t in the red yet, but it was just a matter of time.

  “When I realized what I’d done, I went to Robinson with my resignation letter. He talked me into staying. He said that he and Delahart weren’t working together very well, and if I left, Delahart would blame Robinson’s management style and fire him. I didn’t want him to lose his job over me. He asked me for a commitment to stick with it, and I gave him my word.

  “He said that because I’d created the situation, I should figure out how to fix it. We knew the sponsorship money was coming, it was just a matter of treading water, doing more with less, until then.”

  “What does this have to do with Samuel?”

  “I’m getting there.” She looked out the window at the sunlight reflecting off the other vehicles. “We trimmed expenses—Delahart was always harping on that anyway, so it didn’t look suspicious. But Robinson felt bad about what would have been the next step, cutting some people’s hours or letting them go. I had another idea. I’m good at blackjack, and I said with some luck, I could make up the deficit.”

  Chee felt his jaw tighten. Gambling to pay debts was one of the top ten terrible ideas of all time.

  Melissa didn’t notice his reaction. “Because I’m on the management team, I get to claim one of the empty seats on Delahart’s corporate plane. He goes to Vegas every weekend to meet with investors. Sometimes he’d invite Rhonda, our zombie queen, and tell Robinson to go along. I finagled an invitation, went to a casino with my own paycheck, and came back with about double. I showed Robinson how I put the winnings into the line items that were short. I did it three times, traveling with Delahart, Samuel, and some other folks who wanted to get away. I played at a different casino each time, and had more good luck. With a few more successful trips, I could have fixed the deficit without anyone knowing it had even been there.”

  Melissa stopped talking. Chee thought about Delahart’s investors, about the cocaine, and Samuel’s spying. He doubted if the money problems were all due to Melissa’s error. “If you had almost fixed the budget problem, and Delahart didn’t know about it anyway, why did he decide to cut people’s hours now?”

  “He’s a jerk. He wants more money for himself and his Las Vegas investors.”

  “I still don’t see how this ties to Samuel’s murder.”

  Melissa swallowed. “Samuel always went to Vegas because he was Delahart’s man. He decided I had a gambling problem, and he threatened to tell Delahart I was embezzling to cover my gambling debts if I didn’t pay to keep him quiet.”

  “Were you using company money to gamble?”

  “No. Only my own. Robinson and I kept a second set of books, so when the sponsorship came in, I’d get back the money of my own that I’d loaned the company.”

  A second set of books was another very bad idea, Chee thought. “So you let Samuel blackmail you?”

  “I knew I shouldn’t have paid him. He started tightening the screws. Every time I got on the plane, the price of his silence escalated. That was why I had to return those beautiful earrings. I needed all the money I could find to keep Samuel quiet.”

  Chee remembered something. “Robinson said he planned to fire Samuel before the incident with the girls, and that you talked him out of it. Is that right?”

  “Another mistake. Samuel knew he was about to get canned because of the same sort of bad behavior you saw—getting too rough with trespassers, especially girls. He came to me and said that if Robinson fired him, he would go to his boss, Delahart, and say Robinson canned him because he knew I was embezzling, and Robinson was covering it up. Somehow Samuel knew about the second set of books. So even though I hated Samuel, I went to Robinson and begged him to give the jerk another chance.”

  Chee let the silence sit between them until he figured out how to phrase what he wanted to say. Parts of her story didn’t make sense. “So Samuel was blackmailing and intimidating you and spying for Delahart on the rest of the company. Maybe he was blackmailing other people, too. It sounds like you weren’t the only person out here who would have been happy to see him dead.”

  “I could give you a list of names as long as my arm. But they’re actors and technicians and extras and gofers. Not killers—unless it’s make-believe.”

  “What about Robinson or you?”

  “Sure, I wished him dead, hit by a truck, a heart attack, something that would remove him and the trouble he made. But I figured what goes around comes around, you know? A karma sort of thing. I hoped the havoc and pain Samuel caused would catch up with him in the end. I guess it did. I can’t say I’m sorry.”

  Chee had been around people enough to figure she was telling the truth, at least mostly.

  “What about Robinson? He asked me how Samuel treated the girls, and when I told him, he said he was going to fire him. Did he?”

  “You’ll have to ask him about that. He didn’t mention it to me. I guess he didn’t want to hear me whining to save that weasel’s job again.”

  She looked tired, he thought. Older than when he’d first met her on the sandy rise in the moonlight. She sighed and sat up a little straighter. “I’m thinking about how I’m going to explain this all to Delahart. I made a commitment to Robinson to finish the job, and I will if he doesn’t fire me.”

  “Anyone can make a mist
ake. It sounds like you’ve taken some pretty creative steps to fix things. Maybe Delahart will hire someone to come in and help you straighten things out.”

  “Yeah.” She made a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. “Without Samuel on the payroll, he’ll have some extra money for contract labor. But he’ll probably use it for nose candy.”

  Chee opened the car door. “I’m going to talk to Robinson. You want to come?”

  She shook her head. “Do you mind if I sit here a minute? I’m still figuring out what to do about this mess.”

  Chee had the keys, his weapon, and his handcuffs with him. It was against regulations, but he didn’t see a problem. “That’s fine. Just be sure to lock the doors when you leave.”

  It was, Chee knew, none of his business how the movie company handled its finances. Not his concern that Delahart stayed at an expensive hotel and ordered room service while a local guy who probably had a bunch of relatives he was helping out lost his job as a parking attendant because of budget cutbacks. His job, he reminded himself, was to serve the citation for the grave and to ask Robinson a few questions about his visit to the floor of the hotel where Delahart’s room was, and how he left without using the elevator.

  As he walked toward the trailer, he replayed his conversation with Robinson about Samuel. Robinson hadn’t exactly said he was going to fire the man—he said he planned to “get rid of him.” Chee had interpreted that as the same thing. But maybe not.

  He knocked on Robinson’s trailer door and noticed a young woman coming toward the place. Not exactly pretty, but handsome in an athletic-looking way. She looked familiar. Maybe he’d seen her in the food tent.

  She stopped at the base of the steps. “Is Greg still here?”

  “Robinson? I hope so. I’m waiting for him to answer the door.”

  “He was upset after the meeting, dealing with so many angry people. They’re clueless. They don’t realize Delahart makes the money decisions. That dude is a coked-up rat bastard, but Robinson takes the blame.” She looked at Chee again. “He might be on the phone or something. We were going to fly out to Durango for a break from the heat. He was supposed to meet me at the car so we could head to the airstrip. Probably got a call.”