Hillerman, Tony - [Leaphorn & Chee 17] (5 page)

McGinnis shrugged, took another sip.

“That’s it?”

“End of story,” McGinnis said.

“This Reno saw several diamonds in that box?”

McGinnis pondered. “I guess so. Actually, I think he saw several of those little cans. He said something about a bunch of those little snuff cans. He said he guessed the old man used them to keep the diamonds safe.”

“Where did this fancy box come from?”

“Reno said he asked the old man that. The Indian fellow couldn’t speak English but he made airplane gestures, and sort of simulated a plane crash and everything falling down. And then a big fire.”

Leaphorn considered this, with McGinnis watching.

“Mr. McGinnis,” Leaphorn said. “Were you living here in, let’s see, 1956 I think it was?”

McGinnis laughed. “I was waiting to see if you’re still as smart as you used to be,” he said. “You passed the test. It was summer, June, before the rains start. Up to then, it was the worst airline disaster in history. Couple of those big airlines collided.”

“And it happened just about there,” Leaphorn said, pointing out the window toward the rim of Marble Canyon—not visible from here but no more than twenty miles away.

McGinnis was grinning. “I got a bunch of clippings about that back with my stuff,” he said. “It was old news by the time I got out here, but people still talked about it. Two of the biggest airlines of the time ran together, tore the end off of one of them and the wing off the other one, and everything was all torn up and falling into the canyon. Bodies of a hundred and twenty-eight people showering down the cliffs. Most exciting thing that ever happened around here.”

“And all their luggage, too,” Leaphorn said.

“And you’re thinking that might have included a leather-covered peddler’s case with a lot of jewelry in it.”

“That’s exactly what I’m thinking,” Leaphorn said.

“Tell the truth, that same thought did occur to me, too,” McGinnis said. “And I didn’t think a jewelry drummer would be carrying zircons in such a fancy case.”

Almost everyone liked Bernadette Manuelito. Always had. Her teammates on the Shiprock High girls’ basketball team liked her. She was popular with her fellow botany students when she worked as an assistant in the university biology lab. Other recruits in the Navajo Police Department training program approved of her—and so did those she worked with during her short stint with the U.S. Border Patrol. Ask any of them why and they’d tell you Bernie was always cheerful, happy, laughing, brimming with good nature.

But not today.

Today, as she drove her old blue Toyota pickup west on U.S. 64 toward Shiprock en route to a dutiful call upon Hosteen Peshlakai, she was feeling anything but cheerful. Her mother had been difficult, full of those personal questions
that are tough to answer. Was she absolutely sure about Jim Chee? Hadn’t she heard that his Slow Talking Dinee clan produced unreliable husbands? Did Chee still intend to become a medicine man, a singer? Shouldn’t she see about finding another job before getting married? Why was it Chee was still just a sergeant? And so forth. Finally, where were they going to live? Didn’t Bernie respect the traditions of the Dineh? Chee would—at least he should—be joining their family; Bernie wouldn’t be joining his. He should be coming to live with Bernie. Had she found them a place? So it went—a very stressful visit that dragged on until she agreed to drive down and have a talk with Hosteen Peshlakai, who as her mother’s elder brother was Bernie’s clan father. It was a promise Bernie had been happy to make, and not just to break off the maternal interrogation. She admired Peshlakai, loved him, too. A wonderful man.

Wonderful late-summer morning, too, with a great white many-turreted castle of cumulus cloud building over the Carrizo Mountains and another potential rainstorm brewing over the Chuskas. Usually such dramatic beauty and the promise of blessed rain would have had Bernie happily humming one of her many memorized tunes. Today they merely reminded her of the drought-stricken look of the slopes where Towering House clan sheep herds grazed, and that the summer monsoon rains were too late to do much good, and that even these promising-looking clouds would probably drift in the wrong direction.

She could blame this unusually negative mood on all those probing maternal inquiries, but it was the “missed call” message on her cell phone when she returned to the
truck that made her start thinking hard, and painfully, about her mother’s questions.

The caller was Jim Chee. The tone was strictly official—Sergeant Chee speaking with no hint of sentimental affection.

“Bernie, I won’t be getting to your place today.” Then came a terse explanation about having to help Cowboy Dashee help Dashee’s cousin, which required going down into the Hopi Salt Shrine area in the Grand Canyon, where he “might have to spend a day or two.”

At least, Bernie was thinking, he didn’t address me as Officer Manuelito. But there certainly was some wisdom in some of her mother’s questions. Would she, as her mother had wondered, be continuing her role as underling to a master by marrying her sergeant? Maybe mothers did know best. Bernie didn’t think so. Probably not. She wished that telephone call had included at least some hint of regret. Or of intimacy. And why didn’t he at least suggest she might want to come along?

Perhaps Chee didn’t remember her chattering away one day about how exciting it was when the science teacher took her sixth-grade class on a field trip into the Canyon. Taught them about its geology and biology, the different kind of frogs, etc., how the heat reflected off south-facing cliffs made different species of plants grow, etc., how thrilling it had been. Forgetting that conversation would be some sort of an excuse for him not inviting her to go along. But that would mean he didn’t pay attention when she talked. That was just as bad. Maybe worse.

At Shiprock, Bernie turned south onto old Highway 666, decided Peshlakai could wait. She would waste a minute, drive up the road along the San Juan and see if
Chee’s car was parked by his mobile home by the riverbank. It probably wouldn’t be on this working day, but if he wasn’t home it would give her a chance to take a private look at his place.

She parked where Chee’s car would have been, got out, leaned against the door, and studied the place. The trailer looked as dented, grimy, and decrepit as she remembered. But the windows were clean, she noticed, and she credited Jim with that since he was the only occupant. The axles, where the wheels would be replaced when time came to move, were covered with canvas to protect them from rain, rust, or whatever would damage such machinery. The little “pet flap” Chee had installed on the bottom of the entry door was still there even though the cat was long since gone.

The flap revived a memory of how Chee’s mind worked. The cat, pregnant and abandoned by a tourist, had been chased up one of the trees shading his trailer. Chee had rescued it. While refusing to adopt it as a pet (which would violate nature’s sacred relationship between human and feline), he had arranged a feeding and watering place near his door, giving her some chance to survive until she learned rural ways while respecting her right to be a free and independent cat—and not a slave to his human species. After Cat, as Chee named it, barely escaped another coyote attack, he cut the hole in his door, attached the flap, and kept it open with the feeding dish just inside until Cat established her habit of coming in to eat, drink, or elude coyotes. But the arrangement remained strictly formal.

About ten feet down aluminum-siding from the door, a metal patch had been taped to the wall, covering a hole.
A deranged woman, thinking Chee was a Skinwalker and had witched her, had blasted the hole (just over the cot where Chee slept) with her shotgun. Cat, ears attuned to stalking coyotes, heard the intruder coming and dived under the flap, awakening Chee and—as Chee told the story—saving his life.

Remembering Chee telling his version of Cat’s heroism caused Bernadette Manuelito to produce her first smile of the day. She walked around the trailer, trotted up the four steps to the plank patio he’d attached to the river side of it, sat in his deck chair, and considered the view.

The sound of the San Juan, flowing almost directly below, would be tamed to just a murmur by autumn. It had been a light-snow winter in the Southern Rockies. Thus the contribution being made by the Animas River upstream was minimal this season. The San Juan itself was still providing its final flow into the diversion channels of the Navajo Irrigation Project. The San Juan here—alas, all of this portion of the great Colorado Plateau—was thirstily awaiting the storms of winter. Or, even better, arrival of the rains of the summer’s already-tardy monsoon season.

Well, maybe they were coming now. Last night’s TV weather forecast had suggested that the great bubble of high pressure over the high desert was finally breaking up. Bernie found herself relaxing, her normal optimism restoring itself, discounting her mother’s concerns about whether Jim Chee would be incurably a sergeant, remembering his smile, his tendency to break the white-man rules in favor of Navajo kindness, remembering his arm around her, his kiss. Ah, well, Bernie thought, she would continue her drive down to Coyote Canyon and up
the canyon to Hosteen Peshlakai’s hogan. She was pretty sure that Peshlakai would tell her what she was hoping to hear—his wise Navajo version of “love conquers all.”

And the clouds were building up in the west. That was always a reason for optimism.

Joanna Craig was determined not to let her impatience show. This was far too important. This was the only really important thing in her life. Ever. She couldn’t risk alienating this tough-looking little Indian sitting there by the window, examining the back of his hand to keep from looking at her. She had to suppress her impatience. And the anger she had been suppressing for much of her life. She had always managed that before. She would manage it now.

And somehow the irony of all of it seemed to make where this was leading foredoomed and inevitable. Even this room. The way it was decorated for another generation. As if designed to take her back to the day when her father was killed, to make her remember that. Not that she didn’t always remember it, what she had read about
it in that thick bundle of newspaper clippings she had found in the closet after her mother’s death. The sad stories, the dramatic news photos of the wreckage of the two planes made it seem that she had actually seen it. Now the scenes her imagination had created had a reality of their own. Her father in his first-class seat, eager to be reunited with her mother, loving her, thinking of the honeymoon they would take, looking down into the vast colorscape of the canyon’s cliffs, and then seeing that other airliner emerging from a cloud, imagining him knowing a terrible death was just a second away. Then Joanna had always fled from that thought to the way life might have been. Should have been.

Billy Tuve was still studying the back of his hand, ignoring what she had just said to him about the wealth those diamonds could bring to him. Wealth seemed to be something that didn’t interest him. He wanted to talk about his mother being worried, about how good it was that this cousin of his, this deputy sheriff, was trying to help him.

“Mr. Tuve,” Joanna said. “I guess I didn’t really explain why I came out here to put up the money to get you out of jail. I just made it sound like I was doing it because I knew you didn’t kill that man for his diamond. Just because I wanted to see you treated justly. I can see why you wouldn’t believe that, and I don’t think you did.”

Billy Tuve looked up, produced a faint smile.

“No,” he said. “I have known quite a few white people. There’s always something they’re after.”

“So you know I have my own reason. I want to tell you what that is and ask you if you can help me.”

Tuve stared at her, nodded.

Now he was interested. At least curious.

“That diamond you got from that man in the Canyon, that diamond they accuse you of stealing from the storekeeper, that diamond used to belong to my father. His name was John Clarke. Mama called him Johnnie, and he was on one of those airplanes that ran together over the canyon all those years ago. Before either one of us was born. That was John’s business. Diamonds. He was bringing a case full of them back to New York, and one of them was for my mother. They were getting married as soon as he got home. That diamond was going to be her present.”

Tuve considered that. “Oh?”

“But he got killed,” Joanna said. “She didn’t get it.”

Tuve just looked at her, thinking about that. Nodded, with that expression that said he understood.

“Well,” Joanna said. “They’d got together when they got engaged. She was already pregnant.”

Tuve shrugged.

“They had a big wedding planned. Dress fitted. Invitations sent out. Lots of—” She stopped, trying to imagine a Hopi wedding, knowing she didn’t have a clue about that.

“Anyway, after my father died, his family wouldn’t have anything to do with her. Wouldn’t have anything to do with me, either.” She stopped. Why would Tuve care about any of this? But he seemed to. Seemed eager to hear more. His face was slightly lopsided, as if his right cheekbone had been smashed or something. It made his expression a little hard to read, but now he looked sympathetic. He shook his head again.

“Not even your grandparents,” Tuve said. “That’s too bad.”

“They lived a long ways off,” she said, and suddenly she realized she really, really wanted to tell this homely little man everything. He was obviously mentally retarded. But he’d been hurt, too. He could understand that.

“Yes,” Tuve was saying. “My grandmother taught me a lot of things. My grandfather taught me how to ride, how to hunt rabbits. When I was in the hospital, they both came. And they always brought me things.”

And so Joanna kept talking. Talking about how, when she had reached puberty, her mother told her the whole story, of her love affair with John Clarke, about their wedding plans, about going to the Clarke family’s huge house after John’s death and knowing right away that she wasn’t welcome. About how coldly they had treated her—especially John’s father. How she had left with nobody saying good-bye.

“Nobody even told her good-bye?” Tuve asked. That seemed to touch a memory.

Joanna had ordered lunch from room service. She talked on and on while they waited for it, about becoming a nurse, the death of the elderly engineering professor she had married, and about how after she had buried him, she’d come to the Grand Canyon to see if she could find the grave of her own father.

“I went to the cemetery they established at Northern Arizona University, but that was for all those killed in one of the airplanes—a great granite headstone with all the names on it was there, but my father was on the other plane and his name wasn’t there. So I came to the Grand Canyon, to the National Park Service Center. They have the names of those on his plane there at the Shrine of the Ages monument, where they buried body parts they
couldn’t identify. An old man there told me that the plane my father was on had flown right into the wall of the cliff and sort of splattered, and then burned, but some of the bodies were thrown out, all torn up. I told him that my father told my mother he was bringing home a whole container full of diamonds for his company in New York, and the best one of them would be for her ring, and that he had the case all those diamonds were in handcuffed to his arm so nobody could steal it.”

With that, Joanna paused, wiped away a tear with the back of her hand. It was the ideal place for weeping to impress Tuve, but she hadn’t consciously planned it. The tears had been spontaneous. Since her childhood she had loved this man whom she was doomed never to see. And cried for him. Or perhaps it was for what his death had cost her.

“Sorry,” she said. “Anyway, the man told me that a lot of the bodies were all torn up, or burned up, and just put in mass graves. And he said people used to talk about one of the Grand Canyon people seeing an arm caught in a brush pile below one of the rapids that had a case of some sort handcuffed to it, but before it could be retrieved, it washed away.” She paused again, studying Tuve. His expression was blank.

“Do you see what I’m getting at?”

Tuve was silent a moment. Then: “No.”

“The man who you got the diamond from must have found that arm, and that case locked to it.”

“Yeah,” Tuve said, smiling. “You want me to help you find that man so you can find the diamonds. The ones that would make you rich.”

“I want to find the man so I can find the arm,” Joanna
said. “I want to give it back to my father. Bury it where he is buried at the Shrine of the Ages. But if we find the arm, we will also find the diamonds, and that will prove you told the truth to the police and you didn’t steal it.”

That provoked another thoughtful silence. “Yes,” he said. “But about what you told me about burying that arm bone. Do you think that would make a difference?”

“I have dreams about it,” Joanna said. “I don’t see my father in them. I have never seen him. But I hear him. And he is crying for that arm. So it will quit hurting. So the pain will go away. So he can sleep in peace.”

Tuve considered. “You dream that a lot?”

“All the time,” Joanna said.

“Yes,” Tuve said. “Sometimes I am afraid to go to sleep. The dreams scare me.”

“I know. I woke up once just cold and shaking. In the dream I had been sleeping under a bridge, and I couldn’t find my purse, and I didn’t know anyplace to go where I could wash, or get warm.” She looked up at Tuve.

He seemed fascinated.

“And the rats were all around me,” she said.

“Sometimes it’s terrible,” Tuve said. “Once I dreamed I was under the horse and I couldn’t get out, and my head, well, it was almost flat, like a plate. And my eyeballs were out and there was no place I could put them.”

Joanna shuddered at that. “That’s worse than any I can remember. I think you understand why I think you and I should help each other.”

Someone was tapping on the door. Room service, Joanna thought. She glanced at Tuve. “Should I let them in?”

“It’s all right,” Tuve said. “I understand.”