Where Arnold lived was a small bedroom. Every flat surface, including the narrow single bed, was covered with boards on which flat glass dishes were lined. The dishes had something in them that Leaphorn assumed must be lichens. 'Let me make you a place,' Arnold said, and cleared off chairs for each of them.
'Why you looking for Ellie?' he asked. 'She been looting ruins?' And he laughed.
'Does she do that?'
'She's an anthropologist,' Arnold said, his chuckle reduced again to a grin. 'You translate the word from academic into English and that's what it means: ruins looter, one who robs graves, preferably old ones. Well- educated person who steals artifact in dignified manner.' Arnold, overcome by the wit of this, laughed. 'Somebody else does it, they call `em vandals. That's the word for the competition. Somebody gets there first, gets off with the stuff before the archaeologists can grab it, they call 'em Thieves of Time.' His vision of such hypocrisy left him in high good humor, as did the thought of his missing kayak.
'Tell me about that,' Leaphorn said. 'How do you know she took it?'
'She left a full, signed confession,' Arnold said, fumbling in a box from which assorted scraps of papers overflowed. He extracted a small sheet of lined yellow notepaper and handed it to Leaphorn.
Here's your saddle, a year older but no worse for wear. (I sold that damned horse.) To keep you caring about me, I am now borrowing your kayak. If you don't get back before I do, ignore the last part of this note because I will put the kayak right back in the garage where I got it and you'll never know it was gone.
Don't let any lichens grow on you! Love, Ellie
Leaphorn handed it back to him. 'When did she leave it?'
'I just know when I found it. I'd been up there on Lime Ridge collecting specimens for a week or so and when I got back, the saddle was on the floor in the workroom up front with this note pinned on it. Looked in the garage, and the kayak was gone.'
'When?' Leaphorn repeated.
'Oh,' Arnold said. 'Let's see. Almost a month ago.'
Leaphorn told him the date Eleanor Friedman-Bernal had made her early-morning departure from Chaco Canyon. 'That sound right?'
'I think I got back on a Monday or Tuesday. Three or four days after that.'
'So the saddle might have been sitting there three or four days?'
'Could have been.' Arnold laughed again. 'Don't have a cleaning lady coming in. Guess you noticed that.'
'How did she get in?'
'Key's over there under the flower box,' Arnold said. 'She knew where. Been here before. Go all the way back to the University of Wisconsin.' Abruptly Arnold's amusement evaporated. His bony, sun-beaten face became somber. 'She's really missing? People worried about her? She didn't just walk off for a few days of humanity?'
'I think it's serious,' Leaphorn said. 'Almost a month. And she left too much behind. Where would she go in your kayak?'
Arnold shook his head. 'Just one place to go. Downstream. I use it to play around with. Like a toy. But she'd have been going down the river. Plenty of sites along the river until you get into the deep canyon where there's nothing to live on. And then there's hundreds of ruins up the side canyons.' There was no humor at all left in Arnold's face. He looked at least his age, which Leaphorn guessed at forty. He looked worn and worried.
'Ceramics. That's what Ellie would be looking for. Potsherds.' He paused, stared at Leaphorn. 'I guess you know we had a man killed here just the other day. Man named Houk. The son of a bitch was a notorious pot dealer. Somebody shot him. Any connection?'
'Who knows?' Leaphorn said. 'Maybe so. You have any more specific idea where she took your kayak?'
'Nothing more than I said. She borrowed it
before and went down into the canyons. Just poking around in the ruins looking at the potsherds. I'd guess she did it again.'
'Any idea how far down?'
'She'd ask me to pick her up the next evening at the landing upstream from the bridge at Mexican Hat. Only place to get off the river for miles. So it would have to be between Sand Island and Hat.'
Her car too could be found between Sand Island and Mexican Hat, Leaphorn was sure. She would have to have hauled the kayak within dragging distance of the river. But there was no reason now to look for the car.
'That narrows it down quite a bit,' Leaphorn said, thinking Ellie's trips were into the area Etcitty had described in his falsified documentation, the area Amos Whistler had pointed to in his talk with Chee. He would find a boat and go looking for Arnold's kayak. Maybe, when he found it, he would find Eleanor Friedman, and what Harrison Houk meant in that unfinished note. 'a?S shes still alive up.' But first he wanted a look at that barn.
Irene Musket came to the door at Harrison Houk's old house. She recognized him instantly and let him in. She was a handsome woman, as Leaphorn remembered, but today she looked years older, and tired. She told him about finding the note, about finding the body. She confirmed that she had found absolutely nothing missing from the house. She told him nothing he didn't already know. Then she walked with him up the long slope toward the barn.
'It happened right in here,' she said. 'Right in that horse stall there. The third one.'
Leaphorn looked back. From the barn you could see the driveway, and the old gate with its warning bell. Only the front porch was obscured. Houk might well have seen his killer coming for him.
Irene Musket stood at the barn door. Kept out, perhaps, by her fear of the chindi Harrison Houk had left behind him and the ghost sickness it would cause her. Or perhaps by the sorrow that looking at the spot where Houk had died would bring to her.
Leaphorn's career had made him immune to the chindi of the dead, immune through indifference to all but one
