As he related this, Leaphorn was aware of how mundane and unimportant it must sound to a layman. In fact, it sounded trivial to him. He watched Ms. Marcy's face.
'Some of it,' Ms. Marcy said. 'It would be fascinating if she can prove it.'
'From what we can find out, Dr. Friedman-Bernal identified a decorative technique in the finishing of a kind of pottery called St. John Polychrome -- a kind made in the last stages of the Anasazi civilization. She found that technique was peculiar to one single specific Anasazi potter.'
'Yes. That's what she said.'
Leaphorn leaned forward. If his persuasion didn't work, he'd wasted two days on airplanes and a night in a New York hotel.
'I gather that this woman, this Anasazi potter, had some special talent which the doctor spotted. Dr. Friedman-Bernal was able to trace her work backward and forward in time through scores of pots, arranging them chronologically as this talent developed. The potter worked at Chaco Canyon, and her work turned up at several of the villages there. But recently -- probably earlier this year -- Friedman-Bernal began finding pots that seemed to come from somewhere else. And they were later pots -- with the woman's style matured. Your spring auction catalog carried a photograph of one of these pots. We found the catalog in Dr. Friedman-Bernal's room, with the photograph circled.'
Ms. Marcy was leaning forward now. 'But those pots, they were so stylized,' she said. 'So much alike. Howa?S ?' She didn't complete the question.
'I'm not sure,' Leaphorn said. 'I think she does it the way graphologists identify handwriting. Something like that.'
'It makes sense,' Ms. Marcy said.
'From what we know, from what Friedman-Bernal told other anthropologists , she seems to have believed that she could find the place to which this potter moved when the Chaco civilization collapsed,' Leaphorn said.
'About right,' Ms. Marcy said. 'She said she thought this pot was the key. She said she had come across several shards, and one complete pot, which she was sure came from a late phase in this potter's work--an extension and refinement and maturing of her techniques. The pot she'd seen in our catalog seemed to be exactly identical to this work. So she wanted to study it. She wanted to know where she could go to see it, and she wanted to see our documentation.'
'Did you tell her?'
'I told her our policy.'
'So you didn't tell her who had bought it? Or how to contact the buyer?'
Ms. Marcy sighed, allowed her expression to show a flash of impatience.
'I told her the same thing I am telling you. One of the reasons people have been dealing with Nelson's for more than two hundred years is because of our reputation. They know they can depend, absolutely and without a qualm of doubt, on Nelson's keeping transactions in confidence.'
Leaphorn leaned forward.
'Dr. Friedman-Bernal flew back to Albuquerque after she talked to you. Then she drove back to Chaco Canyon, where she lives and works. The following Friday she got up very early, put her sleeping bag into her car, and drove away. She'd told her friends she'd be gone for a day or two. We suspect that somehow she found out where this pot had come from and went to see if she could find something to prove it. Probably to see if there were other such pots, or potsherds, at the place.'
He leaned back, folded his hands across his chest, wondering if this would work. If it didn't, he was near a dead end. There was Chee, of course. He'd asked Chee to find the Reverend Slick Nakai -- to learn from Nakai everything the man knew about where those damned pots were coming from. Chee seemed interested. Chee would do his best. But how smart was Chee? He should have waited, done it himself, not risked having it all screwed up.
'She vanished,' Leaphorn said. 'No trace of the woman, or car, or anything. Not a word to anyone. As if Eleanor Friedman-Bernal had never existed.'
Ms. Marcy picked up the photograph and studied it. 'Maybe she just went away,' she said, looking up at Leaphorn. 'You know. Too much work. Too much stress. Suddenly you just want to say to hell with it. Maybe that was it.' She said it as a woman who knows the feeling.
'Possibly,' Leaphorn said. 'However, the evening before she left she spent a lot of time fixing a dinner. Marinated the meat entree, all that. The professor she had worked with was coming in from Albuquerque. She fixed this fancy dinner and put it in the refrigerator. And at dawn the next morning she put her sleeping bag and things like that in her car and drove away.'
Ms. Marcy considered. She took the picture of Eleanor Friedman as a bride from the desk and looked at it again.
'Let me see what I can do,' she said. She picked up the telephone. 'Will you wait outside just a moment?'
The reception room had no view of the rain. Just walls displaying abstract prints, and a receptionist in whom Leaphorn's damp Navajo Tribal Police uniform had aroused curiosity. He sat against the wall, glancing through an Architectural Digest, aware of the woman staring at him, wishing he had worn civilian clothes. But maybe it wasn't the uniform. Maybe it was the damp Navajo inside it.
Ms. Marcy came out in a little less than ten minutes. She handed Leaphorn a card. It bore a name, Richard DuMont, and an address on East Seventy-eighth Street.
'He said he would see you tomorrow morning,' she said. 'At eleven.'
Leaphorn stood. 'I appreciate this,' he said.
'Sure,' she said. 'I hope you'll let me know. If you find her I mean.'
Leaphorn spent the rest of the afternoon prowling through the Museum of Modern Art. He sat, finally, where he could see the patio of sculpture, the rain-stained wall behind it, and the rainy sky above. Like all dry-country people, Leaphorn enjoyed rain -- that rare, longed-for, refreshing blessing that made the desert bloom and life possible. He sat with his head full of thoughts and watched the water run down the bricks, drip from the leaves, form its cold
