“Did they say who they’re sending?”
“That woman,” Toddy said. “Janet Pete.”
“Oh, shit,” Leaphorn said.
Streib noticed the tone. “She’s trouble?”
“She’s the lady friend of my new assistant,” Leaphorn said. “At least I think he wants her to be. That’s what I hear.”
“That could be trouble,” Streib said.
“Yes, indeed.”
Back in the lockup section, they found Ahkeah dozing on his bunk under the window. He was slightly overweight and slightly gone-to-seed. Leaphorn guessed his age in the late forties. He sat up clumsily into the sunlight, facing them first with the apologetic confusion of one emerging from alcoholic sleep, and then with the defiant, tense look of a worried man. Seeing him now in the bright sunlight, Leaphorn reconsidered his judgment of Ahkeah’s age. Maybe early thirties, with fifteen years subtracted from his prime by whiskey.
“I don’t want to talk to you,” Ahkeah said.
“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Streib told him. “We just wondered how that silver, and jewelry, and all that other stuff got under your place. If you could help us with that maybe we could get you out of here.”
“I got a lawyer coming,” Ahkeah said. “Talk to the lawyer.”
“You don’t have to talk to us if you don’t want. It just saves everybody some time. Maybe it would fix it so you could go on home.”
“Or maybe not,” Ahkeah said. “I just tell you one thing, though.” He wiped his hand across his face and then stared directly into Streib’s eyes. “There’s no way I’d ever hurt Eric. He was a friend to me. There’s no goddam way I’d ever hurt him,” he said, and his voice was shaking as he said it. Then Eugene Ahkeah slumped back on his bunk, turned to the wall, and put his pillow over his head.
The twenty-seven twisting miles up and over Borrego Pass to Thoreau gave them time to talk about Ahkeah.
“He’d be pretty dumb to do it that way, or pretty drunk,” Streib said.
“You know,” Leaphorn said. “If I had just one single wish, what I think it would be, it would be to get rid of booze. No more beer. No more wine. No more bourbon, or Scotch, or any other damn thing that causes a man to hit his friend on the head with a hammer.”
“You think he did it?” Streib’s sideways glance showed surprise. “That anonymous telephone tip. I’ll bet that makes you uneasy.”
“It makes me uneasy some. But that little speech he made there at the end was sort of like a confession.”
Streib looked surprised again. “You mean, where he was telling us he’d never hurt Dorsey?”
Leaphorn sighed. “Sounded to me like a drunk trying to convince himself that it was all a bad dream.”
The acting assistant director of Saint Bonaventure Indian Mission was named Montoya, but she was clearly a Pueblo Indian and she looked to Leaphorn like a Zuni. She said she didn’t know for sure why all that silver hadn’t been reported missing from the craft shop inventory but she said she could make an educated guess.
“I’ll bet it was because Eric didn’t put it down in the first place.”
“Why not?” Streib asked.
“Because he was always buying stuff out of his own money. Buying stuff we couldn’t afford. Tools. Turquoise. Special fancy woods.” She shrugged. “Everything. Eric wasn’t very practical.”
“So he didn’t log it in when it was delivered. Is that what you mean?”
The conversation was getting more specific than the acting assistant director wanted. She looked slightly flustered. “You should be asking Father Haines. He’ll be back next Tuesday.”
“We’ll ask him,” Streib said. “We just wanted to hurry things along a little. How about the jewelry? The concha belt. The bracelet.”
“I saw something about the belt here on the desk,” she said, and fished a piece of salmon-colored notepaper out of the in-basket and read from it. “’Tom Tso wants to pick up the concha belt he was finishing in Eric’s class. How does he get it? And some other students want to get their projects. Let me know what to tell them.’ That’s from Mr. Denny. He helps Eric with driving the school buses.” She made an odd face, and Leaphorn guessed it was to keep from crying. “Helped Eric, I meant. No more Eric now.”
“Mrs. Montoya,” Streib said. “I want to ask you to get us a list of everything students had in that craft shop that’s missing now. We particularly want to know who was making one of the kachina dolls in there. The koshare. And then could you shed any light on a sort of funny-looking wood and cloth contraption we found on Dorsey’s shell? Looked like it might have been a hand puppet.” Streib demonstrated with his own hand. “It looked like a duck.”
But Mrs. Montoya was focused on the koshare doll. “Oh, that koshare,” she said. “That’s my son doing that one.” The thought startled her. “Why do you want to know about that?”
Streib glanced at Leaphorn. “See?” he said. Then, to Mrs. Montoya, “It’s a class project?”
“Mr. Dorsey always wanted them to make something they thought they could sell. Allen thought he could sell one of those. Why?”
“We thought it might be significant,” Leaphorn said. “But it probably isn’t if it’s a student project. Do you know about the hand-puppet duck?” He gave Streib a glance. Dilly hadn’t told him about this duck.
Mrs. Montoya seemed relieved. She laughed. “Mr. Dorsey was our school comedian,” she said. “When the kids put on programs they’d get him to be the master of ceremonies. He was a ventriloquist. He wasn’t very good at it, but the children thought he was great.”
“A funny man, then?” Streib said.
“He was our school clown,” she said, looking sad at the thought. “He could always make other people laugh, but I don’t think he laughed much himself.”
This aroused Streib’s interest. “Why not?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe Father Haines would know. Maybe he was lonely.” She made a wry face and changed the subject. “I’ll be glad to get that information for you,” and while she was writing a reminder on her notepad, she added, “Eric Dorsey was a good man.” She looked up, at Streib and then at Leaphorn, as if challenging them to deny it. “A kind man. And gentle. And talented, too.”
“The students liked him?” Leaphorn asked.
She nodded. “Everybody liked him. He wasn’t a Catholic, you know, but I think he was a saint. Everybody loved him.”
“Not quite everybody,” Streib said. “Do you have any idea who didn’t?”
“I really don’t,” she said. “And I’ve thought about it, and thought about it, but I just don’t.” She tapped the list Lieutenant Toddy had given them with a plump finger. “I thought you thought somebody killed him to steal this stuff.”
“Maybe that was it,” Leaphorn said. “But we used to think maybe he was killed over a woman.”
“Well,” Mrs. Montoya said. “It wouldn’t be that.”
“You sound sure of that,” Leaphorn said.
Mrs. Montoya looked flustered.
“Could you tell us something that might bear on who killed Eric Dorsey?” Streib asked. “If you can, it’s your duty to tell us.”
“I talk too much,” Mrs. Montoya said. “I gossip. I shouldn’t gossip about the dead.”
“My mother used to say the only thing gossip can’t hurt is live sheep or dead people,” Leaphorn said. “Maybe it would help us find who killed the man.”
“You sounded awful sure no woman was involved. Is there some reason for that?” Streib asked.
“Well,” Mrs. Montoya said. She moved a letter from the out-basket back into the in-basket, and then reversed the process. She looked around the tiny, cluttered office, searching for something to guide her. “Well,” she repeated, “I think maybe Mr. Dorsey was gay.”
Dilly Streib, who had been looking only moderately interested, now looked extremely interested.
“Homosexual?”
