The damage was exactly as he'd remembered. The car squatted on Tso's towing dolly, discolored with dust, the front wheel grotesquely misaligned, paint scraped from the fender, the little clips that once held Janet Pete's favorite chrome strip holding nothing. A small dent in the door. A large dent marring the robin's-egg blue of the rear fender. Looking crippled and dirty.
'Not so terrible,' Tso said. 'Nine fifty to eleven hundred dollars and it's good as it was. But she really ought to fix all those problems it had when you first drove it in.' Tso was wiping the grease from his hands in a gesture that reminded Chee of greedy anticipation. 'Crabby brakes, slack steering, all that.'
'I'm going to need some credit,' Chee said.
Tso thought about that, his face full of remembered debts, of friendships violated. Chee's thoughts of Tso, always warm, began turning cool. While they did, Janet Pete's motor pool sedan pulled up beside the building. The front door opened. Janet Pete emerged. She looked at the Buick, at two other cars awaiting Tso's ministrations, and gave Chee a dazzling smile.
'Where's my Buick?' she asked. 'How did it run? Did youa?S'
The question trailed off. Janet Pete looked again at the Buick.
'My God,' she said. 'Was anybody killed?'
'Well,' Chee said. He cleared his throat. 'You see, I was driving downa?S'
'Bad shocks,' Tso said. 'Slack steering. But Chee here took it out anyway. Sort of a safety check.' Tso shrugged, made a wry face. 'Could have been killed,' he said.
Which, if you thought about it right, was perhaps true, Chee thought. His displeasure with Tso was swept away by a wave of gratitude.
He made a depreciating gesture. 'I should have been more careful,' he said. `Tso warned me.'
Janet was staring at the Buick, reconciling what she saw with what she had left. 'They told me everything was fine,' she said.
'Odometer set back,' Tso said. 'Brake lining unevenly worn. U-joint loose. Steering loose. Needed lots of work.'
Janet Pete bit her lip. Thought. 'Can I use your telephone?'
Chee overheard only part of it. Getting past the salesman to the sales manager to the general manager. It seemed to Chee that the general manager mostly listened.
'Officer Chee doesn't seem to be too badly hurt, but I haven't heard from his lawyera?S mechanic's list of defects showsa?S that's a third-degree misdemeanor in New Mexico, odometer tampering is. Yes, well, a jury can decide that for us. I think the fine is five thousand dollars. You can pick it up at Tso's garage in Shiprock. He tells me he won't release it until you pay his costs. Towing, inspection, I guess. My lawyer told me to make sure that none of your mechanics worked on it until he decidesa?S'
On the way to get a cup of coffee in Janet Pete's motor pool sedan, Chee said, 'He'll have his mechanics fix everything.'
'Probably,' Janet said. 'Wouldn't be much of a lawsuit anyway. Not worth it.'
'Just letting him sweat a little?'
'You know, they wouldn't try that on you. You're a man. They pull that crap on women. They figure they can sell a woman on the baby blue paint and the chrome stripe. Sell us a lemon.'
'Um,' Chee said, which provoked a period of silence.
'What really happened?' Janet asked.
'Steering failed,' Chee said, feeling uneasy.
'Come on,' Janet said.
'Tried to make a turn,' Chee said. 'Missed it.'
'How fast? Come on. What was going on?'
So Jim Chee explained it, all about the missing trailer, and the missing backhoe, and Captain Largo, and that led to what he had found last night.
Janet had heard about it on the radio. Over coffee she was full of questions, not all of them about the crime.
'I heard you were a hatathali,' she said. `That you sing the Blessing Way.'
'I'm still learning,' Chee said. 'The only one I performed was in the family. A relative. But I know it now. If anybody wants one done.'
'How do you get time off? Isn't that a problem? Eight days, isn't it? Or do you sing the shorter version?'
'No problem yet. No customers.'
'Another thing I hear about you--you have a belagana girlfriend. A teacher over at Crownpoint.'
'She's gone away,' Chee said, and felt that odd sensation of hearing, from some external point, his voice saying the words. 'Gone away to be a graduate student in Wisconsin.'
'Oh,' Janet said.
'We write,' Chee said. 'I sent her a pregnant cat once.'
Janet looked surprised. 'Testing her patience?'
Chee tried to think how to explain it. A stupid thing to send to Mary Landon, stupid to mention it now.
