Spider Woman's Daughter (16 page)

Davis opened a drawer in her desk and handed Bernie the envelope of photocopied pages. “You’re welcome to this, but why do you need it?”

Bernie told Davis about her arrangement with Collingsworth.

“I heard that Marjorie found the report on her desk,” Davis said. “I thought we were good to go. As I told Leaphorn after Collingsworth hired him, I can fill in the blanks. Those pots are in my area of expertise. I’m sure you have other things to do.”

“Actually, I don’t,” Bernie said. “It means a lot to me to finish this.”

Chee said to Davis, “I think we’ve met before somewhere. You seem familiar.”

“I hear that a lot.” Davis smiled, one of those smiles that could make a husband forget he was married. “I guess I have one of those faces.”

Bernie said, “The lieutenant had questions about a few of the pots in the initial appraisal, the one done by a company called EFB. Have you ever heard of them?”

“Let me check our list,” Davis said. “I have a master file of appraisers we use. It will just take me a minute to see if they’re in there.”

Davis motioned them to the two chairs and went to her computer. Bernie noticed a sleek white jar decorated with thunderbolts, topped with a cloud-shaped lid with a ceramic lightning bolt as its handle. Contemporary, but patterned after old ceramics. It sat on the desk directly in front of Davis. “Are the pots in your office part of the AIRC’s collection?”

“Some of them,” Davis said.

Bernie stood to take a closer look at the white jar. “This tall one looks like those old cylinders they found at Pueblo Bonito.”

Davis said, “That’s right. The McManus collection has a few precious pieces like that. You’ll have to come and see them when they get here.”

Chee said, “I like that lightning design. It reminds me of the work they do at Zuni Pueblo.”

Bernie said, “And it looks useful, like a cookie jar.”

Davis glanced up from the computer screen. “It’s an urn.”

Bernie and Chee turned their eyes away, looked at each other.

“My boyfriend—fiancé, actually—was murdered. When they found him, all that was left were a few bones.”

“Murdered? What happened?” Chee asked.

“I never found out exactly. He disappeared in a canyon along the San Juan River. He was an archaeologist. He studied old mandibles, jawbones, and developed an important theory about genetic mutation among the Pueblo ancestors at Chaco. He was exploring it as a way to track migration patterns.” Davis sighed. “Randall’s theory would have directly tied the Chaco civilization to contemporary Pueblo people, Hopi and the Rio Grande folks. When he died, his brilliant ideas died with him.”

Davis looked back at the computer. “Sorry, I can’t find a reference to EFB. Many of the McManus family appraisals were done quite a while ago. That’s why Collingsworth hired Leaphorn.”

Chee asked, “Did they ever find the man who killed your fiancé?”

“Some odd story floated around about a psychopathic hermit who lived in a cave above the San Juan, near Sand Island,” Davis said. “No one made much of an effort to track him down. The policeman involved in the case knew more than he let on.”

She turned to Bernie. “Enough of that. Good luck with your assignment. Let me know how I can help. I’ll see you guys out. I’ve got to head off for some field work.”

Chee said, “I love these photographs. Beautiful clouds.”

“Thank you,” Davis said. “I took them. Photography is my hobby. I see lots of beautiful country when I’m out looking for ruins.”

They walked out together and watched her get into the big SUV.

Bernie unlocked the truck, slid behind the steering wheel, and rolled down the windows. Even though they had found a parking spot in the shade, the afternoon sun had done its job. The steering wheel felt like a burner left on simmer.

“I know I’ve seen that Davis woman before,” Chee said.

“I did notice how she smiled at you,” Bernie said.

“I bet she smiles at every guy like that. While you were thinking about her, I figured out how to track down EFB Appraisals.” He pulled out his phone. “I know somebody who might know something. He works for the New Mexico museum system here in Santa Fe.”

He put the phone on speaker and they were in luck. Chee’s contact, Rocko Delbert, a former Navajo Police officer, was happy to talk, updating Chee on his grandmother, mother, aunts, wife, and each of his four children. Then he chatted about his new assignment at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture. Chee asked Rocko about EFB.

“Funny you should mention that,” Rocko said. “I saw Ellie, the one who owns EFB, a few weeks ago. She’d been teaching at Arizona State, got laid off, and now she’s back here, doing what she used to do a long time ago. She came to the museum to search the archives for background information and documentation she needs for the appraisals. Last time she was here, she asked if I knew how to get in touch with Joe Leaphorn. You know, the legendary lieutenant?”

“Tell me more about this Ellie,” Chee said.

“Eleanor Friedman-Bernal. She’s the one who started EFB. Got divorced years ago. Dropped Mr. Bernal, but kept the company name the same. Now she goes by Ellie Friedman.”

“Do you know why she wanted to contact Leaphorn?”

“Well, you understand it was none of my business,” Rocko said. “But she told me a long story about how she used to work at Chaco Canyon as a ceramics researcher. Got in some trouble, she got hurt. Leaphorn helped her. Something like that. Maybe she needed a private eye.”

“Do you know how to reach her?”

“I’ve got the address for her new office. She said she wanted to hire me this week for a couple of hours to assemble some bookcases, but she hasn’t called me yet.”

“That’s here in Santa Fe?” Chee asked.

“Right.” Rocko gave him directions.

Bernie started the truck and drove while Chee navigated and watched for street signs.

“Do you think Davis keeps the ashes of her boyfriend in that pot?”

He shrugged. “White people have strange views about death.”

“It gives me the shivers thinking about it,” she said.

“So stop thinking about it. Hey, that looks like the street we want,” he said. “Get ready to take a left.”

The small L-shaped, one-story commercial complex sat tucked in behind a building that had once been a warehouse and was now a gym of some sort. They cruised the nearly empty parking lot and among the storefronts found a sign: “Indian Art Appraisals.” An aged brown Subaru was parked near the front door.

Chee sat in the truck. Bernie knocked. No answer. She tried the door. Locked. The shades were drawn.

Bernie noticed a woman emerging from the office next door. The lettering on her shirt read “Tailoring by Janelle.”

“Hello,” Bernie said. “Do you happen to know when Ms. Friedman will be back?”

“No. Sorry.”

“If you see her, would you ask her to call me?” Bernie wrote her cell phone number on the back of her Navajo Police business card.

Janelle looked at the card and back at Bernie. “I’m the property manager here. I wouldn’t have thought you were the police. I was thinking of calling the police, actually. I’m afraid Ellie is in trouble.”

The woman looked toward the truck at Chee.

“That’s my husband,” Bernie said. “He’s a policeman, too. We drove up together. Why do you think she’s in trouble?”

“He’s more what I think of when I think of cop.” The woman grinned, then turned serious again. “I don’t know her very well. She just moved in here a few weeks ago, but she asked me to do some alternations for her. I came by to pick up the clothes, but she didn’t answer the door. Her car was here, the Subaru, so I figured she was on the phone or had just changed her mind. Or just blown me off. She’s kind of prickly, ya know?”

Bernie nodded.

“But when I came to work the next day, Friday, her car was still here in the same spot. I knocked on her office door again. Nothing. Maybe some client, or a boyfriend or somebody, came by for her, and they left her car here. But it’s odd. And it hasn’t moved since either.”

“That does sound suspicious,” Bernie said.

“I’m creeped out about it, that’s a fact. I’d hate to think that she’d died in there or something,” Janelle said.

“Me too. We ought to check her office. Do you have a key?”

Janelle hesitated, pushed a strand of stray hair out of her eyes. “Technically, I’m not allowed to go in there or let anybody else in there.”

“But this is different,” Bernie said. “A matter of life and death. And I’m a police officer.”

“I’ve watched a lot of cop shows on TV. I know how it is. If somebody is in danger or something, you guys barge on in. Right?”

“That’s how it is on TV.”

While Janelle went to her shop for the key, Bernie motioned to Chee. He joined her on the sidewalk outside Ellie’s office.

“What’s up?”

“Rocko’s woman might be MIA,” Bernie said.

Janelle came back with an envelope with the key inside. She looked at Chee. “I understand you’re a policeman.”

“That’s right. An officer with the Navajo Nation.”

“Where’s that?”

“West of here. It’s as big as New England.”

“Oh,” Janelle said. “I think I have heard of it. I think I saw something on
National Geographic
about that once.”

Janelle put the key in the lock, tried the handle, and the door opened. She took a step inside.

The EFB office smelled of dust and unused spaces. Bernie grabbed her arm. “Wait here, ma’am. This could be a crime scene.”

“There’s a bathroom in the back. Better check that, too,” Janelle said. “Looks like my tenant was the world’s biggest slob. Or the place has been ransacked.”

Other than a desk, a rolling chair, and a second upholstered chair, the room had no furniture. Every drawer in the desk stood open, most of them empty or nearly so, except for the top one, which held a collection of pens, pencils, Post-its, and the like. Papers, books, and file folders lay helter-skelter on the floor. Some boxes—all of them open—sat upside down or lay on their sides on the carpet.

In the bathroom Bernie found more empty drawers standing open, a roll of paper towels, and extra toilet paper. No Ellie.

“Hey, here are the bookshelves Rocko talked about.” Chee nudged a pile of boards with the toe of his boot.

Bernie paused at an arrangement of framed photos on the walls, large color prints of masonry doorways, the famous Sun Dagger solstice marker, and towering stone ruins. They seemed out of place amid the chaos.

Chee looked over her shoulder. “Chaco Canyon. You can see those T-shaped doorway openings at Pueblo Bonito. Nice picture.”

Bernie looked more closely at the desktop, noticing a thin layer of grit, a box of tissues, a blue coffee cup, an empty phone charger, and an old-fashioned, pad-style desktop calendar turned to June. Some of the numbered squares had times, names, phone numbers, addresses inside. Ellie had written “Pueblo Alto!” in one. Another read “SJ,” with a phone number. Bernie made a note of the names, numbers, and days in case any appointments offered a clue to the missing woman’s whereabouts. She noticed something interesting.

“Come look at this.” She pointed to one of the squares: the lieutenant’s home phone number written in blue pen. “I wonder why she wanted to meet with him.”

“Another mystery,” Chee said. He leaned over to examine the bottom desk drawer, pulled out some typed pages, and extended them to her. “Do these look familiar?”

Bernie recognized them. They were the missing section from the lieutenant’s report on the McManus collection.

Janelle hadn’t heard any unusual noise from the office, she said; hadn’t seen anything strange except Ellie’s unmoved car. She relocked the door and gave them Ellie’s home address from the rental agreement in her files.

“She told me she lives by herself,” Janelle said. “I’d feel terrible if she’d had a stroke or something and was just lying there.”

The address was about two miles away. Bernie drove. “So why all the confusion in that office?”

“I think someone was looking for something,” Chee said. “Maybe Ellie herself, maybe someone else. Hard to say. More than just your standard moving-in mess.”

Chee checked Leaphorn’s notebook calendar against the notes on Ellie’s. The appointment dates matched.

“So Ellie stood him up. I think we’ve found the ghost from the past,” he said. “I figured out who this Ellie is. The color photos reminded me. She’s the woman who used to work at Chaco Canyon. Remember the missing researcher who was nearly killed by a coworker? The one whose life the lieutenant saved? That was Ellie. Eleanor Friedman-Bernal. What a mouthful of a name.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely. I remember because I was the one who tipped off the guy who almost murdered her.”

“You wouldn’t have done that,” Bernie said.

“I did. Luckily, I realized how dumb I’d been in time to help the lieutenant get her to the hospital. She was unconscious when I got there, and I never saw her again. Ellie had been involved in some questionable digging in Pueblo Indian sites, ruins along the San Juan River. Quite a place to rescue somebody. I had to rent a helicopter.”

“Odd that now she’s missing again. History repeats itself.”

“Except instead of being a victim, this time she might be our suspect,” Chee said.

Ellie Friedman lived in a working-class neighborhood with a hodgepodge of apartment complexes and stand-alone houses that combined pseudo adobe exteriors and the impractical flat roofs that were Santa Fe’s trademark. Chain-link fences, painted rocks, and miniature windmills in the front yards added to the ambience.

Ellie’s address led to an unlandscaped new apartment building at the end of a block, one of the few two-story structures in the area. Bernie parked and climbed the stairs to the unit, Chee following. She rang the doorbell, heard it chiming inside. The shades were drawn. Bernie leaned down to peek through the metal mail slot in the front door, noticing a pile of full-color shopping flyers and advertising promotions on the floor.

“You could contact Cordova, let him call the local cops, have them open the door in case this is a crime scene,” Bernie said.

“I guess I could.” Chee tested the doorknob, and it moved in his hand. Unlocked.