The Shape Shifter (30 page)

About ten minutes, and another cup of coffee, later, he stopped. He took a final sip, clicked the cup down in the saucer.

“So there we were,” he said. “The sun was coming up, Mr. Delos had shot his giant elk and left it for the ranch crew to deal with. Tommy Vang had obtained travel money, and I had gotten several fifty-dollar bills to repay Grandma Peshlakai for her pinyon sap. Delonie had a broken arm and a bruised rib that needed attention, so we went home.” Leaphorn made a dismissive gesture.

“End of episode,” he said. “Now it’s time for you two to tell me more about your honeymoon.”

“Wait a minute,” Chee said. “What about this Delos character. You just left him there? Or what?”

“Shape shifters, remember,” Leaphorn said. “Delos was one of them. Remember how it goes. You see one of them doing something scary, and you shoot at him or something, and now it’s an owl, or a coyote, or nothing at all.” Chee considered that. “I think you’re sort of making fun of me. Me being the man who would like to be a
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TONY HILLERMAN

shaman.” He produced a reluctant grin. “I guess that’s all right, though. It’s your polite way of telling us that you’re not going to tell us what happened to Mr. Delos.”

“Or whoever he was,” Leaphorn said. “But I will make you two a promise. You have a first anniversary of your wedding coming up next summer. If you invite Professor Bourbonette and me to that, we will come. If nothing bad has happened by then—I mean relative to Mr. Delos and all that—then I will finish telling you this fantastic tale.

Give you the last chapter.”

Chee considered that, still looking unhappy. Shook his head. “I guess we’ll have to settle for that, Bernie. Is that okay with you?”

“Not quite,” Bernie said. “I want you to tell us about going to see Grandma Peshlakai. I’ll bet she was surprised to see you. And happy, too. What did she say?”

“Well, surprised anyway,” Leaphorn said, and grinned.

“I told her we had found the man who stole her pinyon sap. And I told her we collected the money from him to repay her. Fifty dollars for each bucket, and I handed her the two fifty-dollar bills, and two other fifties for compounded interest, and I said something like, ‘Well, I finally got the job done.’

“And she said, ‘Well, young man, it sure took you a long time to do it.’”

About the Author

TONY HILLERMAN is a former president of the Mystery Writers of America and has received its Edgar and Grand Master Awards. His other honors include the
Los Angeles Times’
Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement, the Center for the American Indian’s Ambassador Award, the Silver Spur Award for the best novel set in the West, and the Navajo Tribe’s Special Friend Award. He lives with his wife in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

www.tonyhillermanbooks.com

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The Fly on the Wall

The Blessing Way

The Boy Who Made Dragonfly
(for children)
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Nonfiction

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(photos by Barney Hillerman)
The Great Taos Bank Robbery

Rio Grande

New Mexico

The Spell of New Mexico

Talking Mysteries
(with Ernie Bulow)
Words, Weather and Wolfmen
(with Ernie Bulow)
Indian Country
(photos by Bela Kalman)
Kilroy Was There
(photos by Frank Kessler)
A New Omnibus of Crime
(with Rosemary Herbert)

Credits

Jacket design and illustration by Peter Thorpe

Copyright

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

THE SHAPE SHIFTER. Copyright © 2006 by Tony Hillerman. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen.

No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader October 2006 ISBN 0-06-121250-4

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hillerman, Tony.

The shape shifter / Tony Hillerman.—1st ed.

p. cm.

1. Leaphorn, Joe, Lt. (Fictitious character)—Fiction.

2. Chee, Jim (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 3. Indian reservation police—Fiction. 4. Police—New Mexico—

Fiction. 5. Navajo Indians—Fiction. 6. New Mexico—

Fiction. I. Title.

PS3558.I45S45 2006

813'.54—dc22 2005052602

ISBN-10: 0-06-056345-1

ISBN-13: 978-0-06-056345-5

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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