Dilly suggested that he’d run out of whiskey money, had come here to borrow from Dorsey, had been turned down, and had killed Dorsey in the resulting rage. And if a drunk Ahkeah’s reason had been money, why hadn’t he sold the silver ingots he’d taken? It would have been easy enough to cash them in. Why stash them away in a box under his house? Any pawnshop in Gallup or Grants, or any of the places that sold supplies to jewelers, would buy them. Or, if he was worried about the sale being traced, Ahkeah probably knew a dozen Navajos or Zunis or Acomas or Lagunas – white people, too, for that matter – who were making silver stuff and who wouldn’t ask questions if the price was right.
Leaphorn still had motive on his mind as he worked his way methodically through the grade books he’d found in a workbench drawer. He was reading the man’s notes on class projects when he heard Father Haines. The priest was standing hesitantly at the door, a thin, gray man, slightly bent.
“Any luck?”
“None,” said Leaphorn, who had never believed in luck. He motioned Haines toward the chair beside him and carefully removed the cube-shaped form from the drawer. “You have any idea what this form is for?”
Father Haines inspected it, frowned, shook his head. “It looks like there might have been some writing pressed down in there. Maybe it was some sort of medal. A trophy for something.”
“It looks like the wrong shape,” Leaphorn said. “I think it must have been something sort of round – like a small billiard ball. A silver ball.”
“He always tried to get the kids to make useful things. Or things they could sell.” Haines laughed. “I think Bonaventure School is flooding the market with authentic Navajo sand-cast silver belt buckles and bracelets and so forth.”
“And it sounds like-” Leaphorn tapped Dorsey’s class notes. “ – these kids were making pretty good stuff.”
Haines laughed. “Actually, some of them were. Some of these kids are really talented. But Eric had this policy of trying to make these youngsters feel a little more artistic than they actually were. I don’t think he ever saw a student-made belt buckle he couldn’t find something good to say about.”
“There wasn’t much turquoise here,” Leaphorn said. “Was it all accounted for?”
“Probably. He didn’t ever have much. No budget for it. If one of the boys was doing something special, he’d usually just dig up some money and buy some stones in Gallup.” Haines paused. “You don’t think Eugene did it, do you?”
“I don’t know. You saw the box they found under his place. It looks like he was the one.”
They thought about it. Father Haines had been on the reservation long enough to have learned from the Dineh something that some whites never learn in a lifetime – that there’s nothing wrong with mutual silence. The clock above the door made one of those sounds that old electric clocks sometimes make. The high notes of a shout and a dog barking drifted faintly through the glass. All the smells of a high-school crafts shop were in the air around them – machine oil, wood shavings, resin, turpentine, wax, paint, sawdust. Healthy smells, Leaphorn thought, that covered up the smell of a good man’s blood.
“Last winter Eric and some of the rest of us had gone down to that big Giant Truck Stop beside Interstate 40. We were having dinner at the coffee shop there. Eric got a phone call. Some kid – one of Eugene’s nephews – was calling from here to tell him that Eugene was having car trouble. So Eric wraps his hamburger and his fries in a napkin and says he has to go. I remember I said, ‘Eugene can wait a little while. Sit down and finish your supper.’ And I said, ‘He’s probably half-drunk anyway – feeling no pain.’ And Eric said, ‘Yeah, that’s why I’ve got to hurry.’”
“So you don’t think Eugene killed him.”
“I don’t know,” Haines said. “With whiskey involved, you can’t tell. Mothers kill their children when they’re drunk. Or drink when they’re pregnant, which is about as bad as killing them.”
But, Leaphorn was thinking, even with whiskey there has to be some sort of reason. Something to ignite the lethal rage. He extracted the envelope from his pocket, shook the shaving onto his palm, and showed it to the priest. “Any idea what that’s from?”
“It looks like it came off a table leg or something like that. It looks like a shaving from a lathe.”
“What kind of wood?”
Haines inspected it. “Dark and tough,” he said. “I know what it’s not. It’s not any kind of pine, or fir, or cedar, or oak unless there’s some species that has a darker color. It’s not redwood. I’m pretty sure it’s not mahogany and I know it’s not maple.”
“Something exotic,” Leaphorn said. “Maybe teak or ebony or something like that.”
“I guess so,” Haines said. “I have an idea that ebony is real black and teak’s lighter. Maybe ebony. But I’m no expert.”
“How often is this room swept out? Cleaned?”
“Every evening,” Haines said. “Dorsey did it himself. He was a very neat man.” He made a gesture taking in all the room. “Normally if you walked in here when a class wasn’t in session you’d find it slick as a whistle. No sawdust anywhere. Working surfaces all clear. Everything in its place. Not like this.” He made a disapproving face at the cluttered room. “But after we found Eric’s body, and the police came, they asked us to lock the room and not touch anything until the investigation was finished.”
Leaphorn laid the shaving on the desk. “There was quite a bit of this dark stuff over by the lathe and some more of it over on the bench with the woodworking vise. So I guess it had to get there the morning he was killed.”
“Yes,” Haines said. “Eric always swept up. And he used one of those shop vacuums and a dust cloth. He said that was one of the things he wanted to teach the kids. You want to be a craftsman, or an artist, you have to be organized. You have to be neat.”
“Did he allow some of the students to take out the projects they were working on?”
Haines looked surprised. “I don’t think so,” he said. “Maybe if they were sanding something. Something they could do at home. But the silversmithing projects, we kept them locked up in the storeroom.”
Leaphorn touched the shaving with his finger. He said, “I searched through the storeroom, and every place in here I can think of. I can’t find anything that looks like this wood.”
“Oh,” said Father Haines. He considered. “Maybe one of the students was working on-” He left the sentence unfinished.
“Maybe,” Leaphorn said. “We’ll talk to the students and find out what everybody was doing in woodworking. But Dorsey kept a list of what the kids were making. Nothing looked like it would be using a fancy wood.”
“So you’re thinking that maybe-”
“I’m thinking I’ll take another look around Eugene Ahkeah’s place to see if I can find it there.”
And he was also thinking that he would do a little crossing of jurisdictional lines. Dilly Streib could arrange it for him. They’d make a trip to Tano Pueblo just as Jim Chee had suggested in that memo he’d left. Leaphorn had decided as soon as he’d read it that he wanted to find out what was in the wagon the clown was pulling. What was it that had caused the people of Tano to quit laughing and suddenly become serious? And he wanted to see if he could find something made of heavy, dark wood in the place where Francis Sayesva stayed when he came home to Tano. Came home to educate his people, or maybe to warn them about something. And to die.
Chapter 15
SAMMIE YAZZIE seemed to be in charge of radio station KNDN when Chee pulled up off of Farmington’s Main Street into the parking lot. He was about Chee’s age, with a neat mustache, a short haircut, and a harassed look, if he had enjoyed the excitement of broadcasting a confession earlier in the day it had worn off long ago.
“I don’t know what else I can tell you. Like I told the deputy, and the Farmington police, and the state cops, and the tribal policeman who got here this morning, the guy just walked in and went to the open mike there and did his thing.”
“I’ve got the police report,” Chee said, displaying the copy he picked up at the Farmington police station. “It gives the facts: medium-sized, middle-aged male, probably Navajo, dressed in jeans and jean jacket and billed cap with CAT symbol on crown, wearing dark-rimmed glasses, driving a dirty green pickup, possibly Ford 150 or
