'Any names mentioned?'
'Oh, yes,' Miss Pauling said. 'The man called Gaines Gaines and once Gaines said something like Palanzer.' He said something like: 'I don't see why you're doing this, Palanzer. You would have made almost that much.' That was after the man—Palanzer, I guess—said he wanted the five hundred thousand.'
'What did the man say to that?'
'He just laughed. Or it sounded like a laugh. His voice sounded muffled all through the conversation—like he was talking with something in his mouth.'
'Or with something over his mouth.' Chee paused. 'He specified nine p.m.?'
Miss Pauling nodded. 'He said, 'Exactly nine p.m.''
Chee pulled off the asphalt, made a backing turn, and headed back toward the motel. He smelled of smoke.
'Well,' Miss Pauling said. 'Now we know who has it, and when they're going to make the switch.'
'But not where,' Chee said. Why the muffled voice, he was asking himself. Because the caller would have been good old Ironfingers, and because Ironfingers would want Gaines to believe the caller was Palanzer. Joseph Musket, despite his years of living among whites, would not have lost his breathy Navajo pronunciation.
'How do we find out where?'
'That's going to take some thinking,' Chee said.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Thinking didn't seem to help. Chee went to sleep that night thinking. He got up the next morning and went over to his office, still deep in thought. His only conclusion was that he must be thinking the wrong way. There was nothing much in his In basket except a note that Johnson of the dea was trying to reach him and a carbon of the report on the Burnt Water necklace turning up. It simply repeated what Dashee had told him, with the details filled in.
Subject named Edna Nezzie, twenty-three, unmarried, of the Graywoman Nezzie camp, north of Teec Nos Pos, had pawned the necklace at Mexican Water. It had been recognized from the description left with the post manager by Tribal Police. Subsequently, subject Nezzie had told investigating officer Eddie Begay that she had been given the necklace by a male subject she had met two nights earlier at a squaw dance next to Mexican Water. She identified the subject as a Navajo male about thirty, who had identified himself as Joseph Musket. The two had gone to a white Ford pickup Musket was driving. There they had engaged in sexual intercourse. Musket then had given the subject the necklace and they had returned to the dance. She had seen no more of him.
Chee frowned at the paper, trying to identify why something was wrong about it. Still staring at the report, he fumbled for the telephone, and dailed the operator, and asked for the number of the trading post at Teec Nos Pos. It rang five times before he got an answer.
Chee identified himself. 'Just need some information. What clan is Graywoman Nezzie?'
'Nezzie,' the voice said. 'She's born to Standing Rock and born for Bitter Water.'
'You're sure?'
'I'm one of the old lady's sons-in-law,' the voice said. 'Married into 'em. The father is Water Runs Together and Many Poles.'
'Thanks,' Chee said, and hung up. He remembered Mrs. Musket identifying herself. Born to Standing Rock Dinee, she had said, and born for the Mud Clan. So the man who had identified himself as Joseph Musket at the Mexican Water squaw dance could not possibly have been Joseph Musket. For a Navajo male to dance with a Navajo female of the same maternal clan violated the most stringent of taboos. And the intra-clan intercourse that followed was the most heinous form of incest—sure to cause sickness, sure to cause insanity, likely to bring death. If it was Musket, it could only mean that he had lied to the girl about his clan. Otherwise she would never have danced with him, gone to the truck with him, even talked to him except in the most formal fashion. And no Navajo male would engage in such a ghastly deception.
Unless, Chee thought, he was a witch.
Chee left a note to tell Largo where to find him and headed for Cameron. En route he remembered what Mrs. Musket had told him about the homecoming of Ironfingers, his urgent need for the traditional Navajo purification ceremonial, his stated intentions to rejoin the People as a herder of sheep. Such behavior was incongruous with deliberate incest—an act which any traditional Navajo knew endangered the health of the entire clan. Chee narrowed it down to two choices. Either someone had imitated Iron-fingers at the squaw dance, or Ironfingers was a madman. Or in other words, a witch.
In Cameron he bought a sack of cement at the lumberyard, and a tub at the hardware store, and a flexible plastic funnel at the drugstore. Then he made the long, lonely drive back to the Hopi Reservation, still thinking. At the windmill he left the sack of cement beside the well shaft, put the funnel beside it, and covered both with the tub, just in case the rain clouds building up again in the west produced some moisture.
He drove back down Wepo Wash to Burnt Water Trading Post and parked in the shade of the cottonwood beside West's battered and rusty jeep. By then he had-come up with only a single idea. He could stake out the cache of suitcases and nail Musket when he came to dig them up. It wasn't a very good idea. Chee didn't think he could count on Musket coming for the suitcases. More likely, Ironfingers would collect his money and tell the buyers where to pick up the goods. Chee was not interested in the buyers. He was officially, formally, and by explicit orders not interested. But Ironfingers was his business. He had been told to solve the burglary at Burnt Water. He had been told to unravel the business of witchcraft on Black Mesa. Ironfingers was the answer to the first. Ironfingers might have some answers to the second.
Chee sat. He watched the thunderheads boiling up in the west. He went through it all again. The conclusion was the same. Musket would have to come to whatever meeting place he established to get his money. He would not be likely to go dig up the suitcases. The crash scene must seem dangerous to him. Musket couldn't tell Gaines where to meet him until the last moment—to do so could give the buyers a chance to set up a trap. Chee could think of no possible way he could intercept the information. He had thought of digging up the suitcases himself, rehiding them somewhere, and leaving a note to force Musket to come to him. But more likely it would be the buyers who would find the note and come to him. That was the sort of trouble Chee didn't intend to invite. In fact, it was the sort of trouble that had been at the back of his mind ever since Johnson had warned him that the drug dealers would be looking for him. Johnson's prediction hadn't proved true—but still might. The people for whom
