The Shape Shifter (10 page)

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
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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 you?”

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

and that probably had been back in the 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.”

Tommy Vang was waiting again when Leaphorn emerged from the restroom. The man escorted Leaphorn down a hallway and through the same large and lavish living room he remembered from the
Luxury Living
photograph. No framed rug was hanging by the fireplace now.

The massive elk antlers trophy was still mounted on one side of the glass door, along with several deer antlers. A pronghorn antelope head stared at him from the oppos-ing wall, with a huge bear head, teeth bared, beside it. A big-game hunter, perhaps, or perhaps they had come with the house when Delos bought it. Leaphorn took a second look at the bear.

“That’s the only bear I ever shot.”

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The man who spoke was emerging from a hallway, walking toward them. A tall man, handsome, well over six feet, tanned, trim, white-haired, wearing gray slacks and a red shirt, looking like a healthy, active seventy-year-old.

He was smiling and holding out his hand.

“Come on in the office,” he said, taking Leaphorn’s hand. “I’m Jason Delos, and I’m glad to meet you. I’m looking forward to hearing what you have to tell me about this old rug of mine.”

“Judging from all those trophy heads, I’d guess you are quite a hunter,” Leaphorn said. “Really good at it.” Delos produced a deprecatory smile.

“That, and collecting cultural antiques, are about my only hobbies,” he said. “I’m told practice makes perfect.”

“I’d say you picked a good place to live then. Good hunting for big game all through this Four Corners country,” Leaphorn said. “When I was a youngster there was even a season on bighorn sheep in the San Juan Mountains.”

“I never had a chance at one of those,” Delos said.

“They’re pretty much all gone now. But old people say they used to hunt them in the foothills and even in the high end of the Rio Grande Gorge, about where the river comes out of Colorado into New Mexico, where it cut that deep canyon through the old lava flow.”

“I’ve heard that, too,” Leaphorn said. “An old fellow who runs the J. D. Ranch up there told me he used to see them on the cliffs when he was a boy.”