paused to read the poem under it.
He had conversations with the crows,
“This shouldn’t take long,” Toddy said, “searching this place.”
It didn’t. Leaphorn started at the desk, which he guessed Dorsey must have made himself. It was fitted carefully in the area between the entrance and the sliding door which opened into a space that held a shower, a toilet stool, and a wash basin. Four wooden desk-organizer boxes stood in an exact line on the desk top, labeled unfinished business, graded, ungraded and to be filed. The “graded” and “ungraded” boxes were empty but the other two held neat stacks of papers.
If anything relating to the cane was here at all (and suddenly that seemed unlikely), it should be in the “unfinished business” box. After all, when Eric Dorsey left this tiny room never to return, the business of the cane was in fact unfinished. But if there was nothing there, Leaphorn would sort through the gray metal three-drawer filing cabinet that occupied the space at the foot of the narrow bed. He would search everywhere. It was the only lead he had, the only chance.
He found what he wanted right on top of the stack in the “unfinished business” box, as if Dorsey might have dropped it there just before he left for his shop. Streib must have looked at it, but then it would have meant absolutely nothing.
It was a sheet of poor-quality typing paper. On one side a poster advertising a meeting had been printed. On the other someone had neatly penciled in sketches of the Lincoln Cane and had scribbled a scattering of explanatory notes on dimensions and tapering and a line of jottings on the margin.
“I think this is what we’re looking for,” he told Toddy, displaying the sheet. He sat on Dorsey’s neat bed to study it.
The drawings were the sort Leaphorn had himself once made in woodworking shop long ago when he was a student in a Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding school. Little lines marked margins, and numbers between arrows marked dimensions in inches. One sketch was of the cane itself. The other was of the head, with the details of the legend carefully drawn in: A. LINCOLN, PRES. U.S.A., 1863, and TANO. Across the page was written “Misc. File.” Notes, in tidy handwriting that Leaphorn presumed was Dorsey’s, ran down the right margin of the paper:
ebony – get dark as possible
tip – cast iron. neat fit. try farrier at Farmington. grind.
head – buff. avoid dust.
$450, $250 advance.
delivery on/before Nov. 14.
November fourteenth. The day Eric Dorsey died.
Leaphorn handed the paper to Toddy. “It looks like Dorsey got cheated out of his last two hundred,” he said.
There was nothing else related to the cane in either of the baskets. The contents of the file cabinet dealt mostly with classwork, warranties on power tools, operating instructions, and orders for supplies. Leaphorn checked through those, sorting out invoices from Albuquerque Specialty Woods. An invoice on a September 13 shipment listed “One ebony, 2 x 2 x 36.”
He showed it to Toddy. “Here’s when he bought the wood,” Leaphorn said.
Toddy grunted.
There were other Specialty Woods invoices in the file. Leaphorn checked through them, backward in time, in his advertised mode of just looking without knowing for what.
“Be damned,” he said. “Look at this.”
“Well, now,” Toddy said. “It looks like Mr. Dorsey was in the cane-making business.”
The form principally covered an order of walnut, mahogany, and clear white pine. But the last item read, “No. 1 ebony blank 2 x 2 x 36.”
Leaphorn looked at the date. The shipment had been made more than two years ago.
No more ebony purchases showed up in the other invoices. Leaphorn found the “Misc. File” folder in the back of the bottom drawer. In it was a thick packet of letters secured with a rubber band, copies of correspondence about an overdue VISA card payment, notes that seemed to deal with Christmas presents, and assorted sheets of paper bearing notes. One bore a neat pencil sketch of a Lincoln Cane.
Leaphorn extracted it. On this sheet the instructions had been typed. They gave dimensions, details of the finish of the silver head, of how the cast-iron tip should be ground. The dimensions of the letters to form the legend were specified in millimeters. And now the legend read, A. LINCOLN PRES. U.S.A. 1863 POJOAQUE.
Pojoaque. Leaphorn had been there long ago. A tiny place beside the highway north of Santa Fe. Leaphorn flipped through the bundle of envelopes. Thirty-seven letters, the first of them with the same return address in Fort Worth, Texas, the rest from the Veterans Administration hospital in Amarillo, and all with the name “George” above the address. They had come about a week apart at first and then less frequently. Leaphorn returned them to their hiding place in the bottom drawer.
He handed Toddy the Pojoaque Lincoln Cane sheet.
“I’d say he made two of them,” Toddy said. “And the second one he finished right on the deadline.”
“Yeah,” Leaphorn said. “That was the date, wasn’t it?”
“It was. So now we know Dorsey not only got killed. He got screwed.”
“Out of his final payment,” Leaphorn said. “That’s right. He just had twenty-something dollars in his billfold. But maybe he got paid in advance.”
Toddy shrugged. “No difference, now,” he said. “You finished here?”
“I think so,” Leaphorn said. “Has Streib released this stuff so his kinfolks can claim it? Is somebody coming after it?”
Toddy was looking at the family photograph. “I guess this one is him,” he said. “The oldest boy.” He moved from the photograph to the framed motto. “Did you read this?”
“No,” Leaphorn said.
“I think it’s out of the Bible. Maybe one of the psalms.” Toddy read it, in the voice one reserves for reciting poetry:
“I think it’s one of the Psalms of Solomon, or maybe it was David.”
“It’s a lot like some of the verses from our Blessing Way,” Leaphorn said. “You notice that?”
Toddy’s expression said he hadn’t. But now he did. “I see what you mean,” he said. “The House Made of Morning Mist, the House Made of Dawn.” He turned and looked at the motto. “May I always walk with beauty before me.”
“Is Dorsey’s family coming to get his stuff?” Leaphorn repeated.
“No,” Toddy said. “Nobody seems to want it. Let’s get out of here.”
Chapter 22
FATHER HAINES had his coat on and his hat in his hand when Leaphorn tapped at his office door.
