The Shape Shifter Part 8

It proved to be another uneasy sleep, broken by troublesome dreams, by long thoughts about whether the dead man found in the car was Mel Bork, and if not him, who, and what then had happened to Bork? When Leaphorn finally came fully awake, it was because he thought he had heard a door opening. He sat up, totally alert, tensed, listening. Now came the sound of the door closing. It would have been the garage/kitchen door. Now the sound of footsteps. Light footsteps. Someone trying not to disturb him. Probably Louisa, he thought. Probably she had cut off her southern Ute research a little early. Some of the tension went away. But not much. He slid across over the bed toward the nightstand, pulled open the drawer, feeling for the little .32-caliber pistol he kept there, finding it, clutching it, remembering that once, when someone with children was visiting, Louisa had persuaded him to leave it unloaded.

The sound of another door opening. At Louisa's adjoining bedroom just down the hall. More steps. Sounds of bathroom water running. Sounds of the shower. Then a.s.sorted sounds that Leaphorn identified as connected with unpacking a suitcase, hanging things in the closet, putting things in drawers. Then the sneaky sound of slipper-clad feet. The sound of his doork.n.o.b turning, of the door to his bedroom opening just a little. Light from the hall streaming in.

He could see the outline of Louisa's head, peering in at him.

"Joe," Louisa's said, very softly, "you asleep?"

Leaphorn exhaled a huge breath.

"I was," he said.

"Sorry I woke you," Louisa said.

"Don't be," Leaphorn said. "I am delighted it's you."

She laughed. "Just who were you expecting?"

Leaphorn didn't know how to answer that. He said, "Did you find any good Southern Ute sources?"

"I did! A really great old lady. Full of stories about all their troubles with the Comanches when they were being pushed west into Utah. But go back to sleep. I'll give you a complete report at breakfast. And how about you? All quiet on the home front?"

"Relatively," Leaphorn said. "But if you just drove in, you must be tired. It can wait. Get some sleep."

Leaphorn's next awakening was much less stressful. He was lured out of his sleep by the sound of perking coffee and the aroma of bacon in the frying pan. Louisa was at the kitchen table, reading something in her notebook, sipping coffee. Leaphorn poured himself a cup and joined her. She told him about what her very, very elderly Ute source had told her of the clever tactics her tribesmen had used to confuse the Comanches, about horses stolen and enemies tricked. She was heading back to her office at Northern Arizona University after breakfast, but first she needed an account of what Leaphorn had been doing, and his copy of last month's utility bills so she could pay her share. While she served the bacon and eggs, Leaphorn dug out the paperwork and decided what, and how much, he wanted to tell her. He wouldn't tell her that he was afraid that Mel Bork was dead, not until that was confirmed. And even if it was, he didn't think he'd report his suspicions about Tommy Vang's fruitcake. That all seemed sort of silly to him, even though he'd been offered the stuff himself. He was pretty sure it would sound even sillier to the professor.

He started his account with the letter from Mel Bork. He skipped through all that happened next rapidly, skipping a lot of it, and being stopped several times by her questions about the rug. By the time he'd finished his recitation, he found himself forced back to his conclusion of the previous night-that he had wasted a lot of time and accomplished nothing useful.

But Louisa's interest, naturally, was in the culturally significant rug. The history of that weaving fit precisely into her professional preoccupation with tribal cultures. What did Leaphorn think had happened to it? That led up and down the list of questions that Leaphorn had been asking himself, and he couldn't answer a single one of them with anything better than guesses. Louisa's curiosity eventually, over the second cup of coffee, settled on Jason Delos. One of her graduate students at NAU had done some landscape work at his place, had become an acquaintance of Tommy Vang, and had regaled one of her graduate student sessions with Vang's stories of life among his fellow tribesmen in the mountains along the Vietnam/Cambodia/Laos borders.

"It all seemed totally authentic," she said, "and interesting. But what we were hearing, of course, was secondhand. So I sent Mr. Vang an invitation to come in and talk to our little seminar. But he didn't come."

"Did he say why?" Leaphorn asked. "I'd love to know how he got connected with Mr. Delos."

"He just said he couldn't do it," Louisa said. "Our landscaping grad student said he had the impression that Tommy's family had been some of the tribesmen who worked with the CIA in the latter phases of the Vietnam War, about the time we were poking into Cambodia. This student of mine was sort of edgy about it. He told me, more or less privately, that he thought Tommy's family had been sort of wiped out during all that back-and-forth fighting, that Delos had been with the CIA and had sort of rescued him as a boy and brought him back to the States."

"Well, now," Leaphorn said.

"Does that sound sensible? Based on what you know?"

"It sounds as sensible as anything else I know about Delos. Which is d.a.m.ned near nothing," Leaphorn said. "About all I know for almost certain is that he is a dedicated big-game hunter, likes to collect antiques; and if you'd like to have that old tale-teller rug, he says he's thinking about getting rid of it."

"I've heard he's fairly new to Flagstaff," Louisa said. Certainly not old family. And I gather he doesn't mix much socially."

Leaphorn nodded. "That fits," he said.

Louisa had been studying him during this conversation.

"Joe," she said, "you seem sort of down. Depressed. Tired. Is this business of being retired getting to you? From what you said, this rug affair sort of ties in with one of your old cases. So it doesn't sound like being retired has stopped you from acting like a detective."

Leaphorn laughed. He reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out the utility bills, and handed them to her.

"Perfect time for this. Here what it's costing you for this unorthodox, possibly even un-American arrangement we've been having. But I'll let you do the figuring of the percentages."

She took the slips, glanced at them.

"I was just going to remind you about that," she said, smiling at him. "I will turn them over to my accountant at the university to make sure you're not cheating. I will also remind you that I am behind on our room rental deal. Remember, I stayed up here about three times during the summer."

During all this Leaphorn had been studying her, remembering Emma.

"You know, Louisa, we could save this paperwork, this sort of thing, if you would just go ahead and marry me."

She smiled at him. "You have probably just established a Ripley's Believe It or Not Ripley's Believe It or Not record for the most unromantic proposal ever made." record for the most unromantic proposal ever made."

"It wasn't intended to be romantic," Leaphorn said. "It was intended to be just downright practical."

She looked down at her coffee cup, picked it up, held it, replaced it in the saucer, smiled at him ruefully.

"Do you remember what I said the first time you came up with this idea? Let's see. About nineteen-"

"Several years ago," Leaphorn said, interrupting her. "I remember exactly every word of it. You said. 'Joe, I tried being married once. I didn't care for it.'"

"Yep," she said, looking at him fondly. "That's exactly the way I put it."

"Have you since changed your mind? Found me more attractive?"

That brought a thoughtful silence. A sigh. Another picking up and putting down of the coffee cup. Then: "Joe, I'll bet you remember that adage-I'm sure you do because I think you are the very first person I heard using it. It's about how hard it is for old dogs to learn new tricks. Or something like that. Anyway, how do I say it? I guess I'll use something an old lady once told me in one of my oral history interviews. She said, 'Don't marry a really good friend 'cause they're a lot better than a husband.'"

Leaphorn let that hang there. He was noticing that his reaction to her reaction was a sort of relief.

She was watching him, looking sort of penitent. "Or maybe I got that wrong. Maybe she said it would spoil the friendship."

"However she worded it," Leaphorn said, "I d.a.m.n sure don't want that to happen to us."

"Nor me either," Louisa said, and got up and carried her plate, cup, saucer, and cutlery to the sink. "And just to make sure you don't think I might be willing to revert to full-time housekeeper, I will leave this in the sink for you to wash, while I collect my stuff and head south toward my great stack of midterm papers waiting to be graded." She started to add his plate to her load, but stopped. Instead, she smiled at him.

"Good friends are too hard to collect," she said.

15.

The good mood Louisa's att.i.tude had left with Joe Leaphorn lasted only about half an hour. While he was watching the professor drive away, with a mixture of sadness and relief, he heard his telephone ringing. It would be Grace Bork, he thought, calling to tell him that Mel Bork was, just as he suspected, the man found dead in the wreck. It would lead to a conversation he'd expected, something he dreaded. What could he tell her? Only that he had wasted his time. But the voice on the telephone was Sergeant Kelly Garcia's.

"Lieutenant Leaphorn," Garcia said. "I want you to tell me how you knew that body would be Mel Bork?"

"I was just guessing," Leaphorn said. "That's all I've been doing lately. So it was him? What was the cause of death?"

Garcia snorted. "Wasn't it obvious? You're not satisfied with tumbling your car down into a canyon, landing upside down in what's left of it, broken bones, multiple concussions and contusions, general bodily trauma? That's what we have. And you still want an autopsy."

"Don't you?"

That produced a moment of silence.

"Well, I guess I have to admit it would relieve my mind," Garcia said. "I'd like to know what caused him to be so d.a.m.ned careless on that curve."

"Have you asked about an autopsy?"

"Yeah, sort of suggested to Saunders that I'd like one. And he said, What for? And I said an old retired Navajo cop I used to know is sort of vaguely suspicious about it and asked me to check on the cause of death. And Saunders said the only problem about that is deciding which of his nineteen or so auto crash trauma injuries actually did the job. He offered to take me in there to look at the body and let me take my pick."

"Is the pathologist still Roger Saunders?" Leaphorn asked. "I've always heard tales of how testy he was. Did he say you'd have to get a court order, or what?"

Garcia chuckled. "You know about Roger then, don't you? He told me he is backed up with work on actual homicide cases. But when I whined a little, he said that if we can arouse his curiosity, he'll do it."

"Tell him we think Bork might have been poisoned by a slice of fruitcake. That should get him interested."

Garcia laughed. "I don't think so. I think he'd refer me to a psychiatrist. I'm dead certain he'd ask me why we think that. Why do we?"

Leaphorn described the urging he'd received to eat the special cake made by Mr. Delos's cook and helpmate, a man named Tommy Vang, and how Bork had been given a slice of same as a snack just before he drove away from the Delos place, and how the timing made it just about right for Bork to be feeling its effects and losing control of his car about where he did. Leaphorn added a few details to his explanation and awaited a response.

It was a skeptical-sounding snort.

"You're not happy with that?"

"Well, it explains what you mean when you said you were guessing," Garcia said. "About a dozen guesses to reach that conclusion. You guess that Bork ate the cake, and when he ate it, it took however long for whatever poison to work, that Mr. Delos has a motive, and so forth."

"I plead guilty to that."

"Well, I'll go anyway. You have anything else we could tell Saunders to get him interested?"

"That's it," Leaphorn said.

"That's it then. Come on," Garcia said, his tone somewhere between scornful and incredulous. "But you still want me to push for the autopsy?"

"Well, there's also the fact that Bork, a longtime law officer, is a very experienced driver in our mountainous country. He is extremely unlikely to have that sort of accident. Don't you agree? And we can also argue that Delos probably thought Bork was poking into some sort of insurance fraud involving that tale-teller rug. Maybe that would satisfy the need for a motive. And then maybe you could get him to listen to that threatening telephone tape."

More silence from Garcia. Then a sigh.

"Well, it might appeal to Dr. Saunders. He always seems to get a kick out of discovering different kinds of homicide weapons anyway. Breaks the monotony. Maybe that notion of a fruitcake as the murder weapon would appeal to him."

"And Sergeant, would you please let me know what he finds out? Delos gave me a slice of that fruitcake, too. I have it in a sack in my truck cooler box."

Garcia laughed. "Playing it safe, are you? Well, keep it there a while, and remind me of your cell phone number."

Leaphorn provided the number. "And one more thing," he said. "Do you remember the names of the FBI people who were there at Totter's Trading Post? Working on it after the fire."

"Well, let me think about that a minute," Garcia said. "That was a long time ago."

"Yeah," Leaphorn said, and waited.

"Well, let's see." He chuckled. "One of them was Special Agent John O'Malley. I'll bet you remember him."

"Unfortunately," Leaphorn said. "I had some trouble with him down through the years."

"Me, too," Garcia said. "And I remember Ted Rostic was there, too. Out of the Gallup office then, I think. Nice guy, he was. And then Sharkey. Remember him? Don't recall his first name."

"Jay, I think it was. Or Jason. Another hard man to work with. Anyone else?"

"Probably. They sort of swarmed in when it turned out the burned man was Shewnack. But I don't remember who."

"All retired by now, I guess."

"Probably. I heard O'Malley had died back in Washington. Don't know about Sharkey. I know Rostic is retired. I heard he lives in Gallup."

"Good," Leaphorn said.

"For what?" Garcia said. "What are you after?"

"I can't seem to let this thing go," Leaphorn said. "I mean that Totter fire. The whole thing. If I can get hold of Rostic, I'll see what he remembers about it."

The information operator found no number for Ted Rostic in the Gallup directory.

"But, there's a Ted in Crownpoint. Could that be him?"

"I'll bet it is."

"Want me to ring him for you? For seventy-five cents?"

"I'm on Social Security," Leaphorn said. "I'll dial it myself." He did, and Rostic answered on the fourth ring.

"Leaphorn. Leaphorn," Rostic said. "That sounds familiar. Sounds like a young fellow I knew once with the Navajo Tribal Police."

"Yeah," Leaphorn said. "We met on that Ashie Pinto business. When one of our officers got burned up in his car."

"Uh-huh," Rostic said. "That was a sad piece of business."

"I'm interested in another fire now. The one years ago at Totter's Trading Post with an FBI Most-Wanted felon burned up in it. Do you remember that one?"

"Oh, boy," Rostic said. "I sure do. Ray Shewnack was the victim's name. I think that was my first real excitement as a police officer. Real big deal. Finding one of our top targets. A real genuine villain, that Shewnack was."

"Any reason you can't talk about it now?"

"I'm retired," Rostic said. "But it's hard for me to believe anyone would still be interested. What are you doing? You wouldn't be writing one of those serial killer celebrity books, would you?"

"No. Just trying to satisfy one of those old nagging questions."