to the man. Why he didn’t come back to Canyon de Chelly that evening. Where he went. What happened to him. And of course the important thing was what happened to him. We know that now, if the identification of the skeleton is correct. The rest of it doesn’t seem to matter.” McDermott spent a few moments deciding how to respond.
“The family would like to establish who was up there with him,” he said.
Now this was getting a bit more interesting. “They’ve learned someone was up there when he fell? How did they learn that?”
“A mere physical fact. We’ve talked to rock climbers who know that mountain. They say you couldn’t do it alone, not to the point where they found the skeleton. They say Harold Breedlove didn’t have the skills, the experience, to have done it.” Leaphorn waited but McDermott had nothing to add.
“The implication, then, is that someone went up with him. When he fell, they abandoned him and didn’t report it. Is that what you’re suggesting?”
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“And why would they do that?” McDermott asked.
Leaphorn found himself grinning. Lawyers! The man didn’t want to say it himself. Let the witness say it.
“Well, let’s see then. They might do it if, for example, they had pushed him over. Given him a fatal shove. Watched him fall. Then they might forget to report it.”
“Well, yes.”
“And you’re suggesting the family has some lead to who this forgetful person might be.”
“No, I’m not suggesting anything.”
“The only lead, then, is the list of those who might be motivated. If I can rely on my memory, the only one I knew of was the widow. The lady who would inherit. I presume she did inherit, didn’t she? But perhaps there’s a lot I didn’t know. We didn’t have a criminal case to work on, you know. We didn’t—and still don’t—have a felony to interest the Navajo Police or the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Just a missing person then. Now we have what is presumed to be an accidental death. There was never any proof that he hadn’t simply—” Leaphorn paused, looked for a better way to phrase it, found none, and concluded, “Simply run away from wife and home.”
“Greed is often the motivation in murder,” McDermott said.
Murder, Leaphorn thought. It was the first time that word had been used.
“That’s true. But if I am remembering what I was told at the time, there wasn’t much to inherit except the ranch, and it was losing money. Unless there was some sort of nuptial agreement, she would have owned half of it anyway. Colorado law. The wife’s community property. And if I remember what I learned then, Breedlove had already mortgaged it. Was there a motive beyond greed?”
McDermott let the question hang. “If you’ll work with this, I’ll discuss it with you in person.”
“I always wondered if there was a nuptial agreement. But now I’ve heard that she owns the ranch.”
“No nuptial agreement,” McDermott said, reluctantly. “What do you think? If you don’t like the hourly arrangement, we could make it a weekly rate. Multiply the twenty-five dollars by forty hours and make it a thousand a week.” A thousand a week, Leaphorn thought. A lot of money for a retired cop. And what would McDermott be charging his client?
“I tell you what I’ll do,” Leaphorn said. “I’ll give it some thought. But I’ll have to have some more specific information.”
“Sleep on it, then,” McDermott said. “I’m coming to Window Rock tomorrow anyway. Why don’t we meet for lunch?” Joe Leaphorn couldn’t think of any reason not to do that. He wasn’t doing anything else tomorrow. Or for the rest of the week, for that matter.
They set the date for one P.M.
at the Navajo Inn. That allowed time for the lunch-hour crowd to thin and for McDermott to make the two- hundred-mile drive from Albuquerque. It also gave Leaphorn the morning hours to collect information on the telephone, talking to friends in the ranching business, a Denver banker, a cattle broker, learning all he could about the Lazy B ranch and the past history of the Breedloves.
That done, he drove down to the Inn and waited in the office lobby. A white Lexus pulled into the parking area and two men emerged: one tall and slender with graying blond hair, the other six inches shorter, dark-haired, sun- browned, with the heavy-shouldered, slim-waisted build of one who lifts weights and plays handball. Ten minutes early, but it was probably McDermott and who? An assistant, perhaps.
Leaphorn met them at the entrance, went through the introductions, and ushered them in to the quiet corner table he’d arranged to hold.
“Shaw,” Leaphorn said. “George Shaw? Is that correct?”
“Right,” the dark man said. “Hal Breedlove was my cousin. My best friend, too, for that matter. I was the executor of the estate when Elisa had him declared legally dead.”
“A sad situation,” Leaphorn said.
“Yes,” Shaw said. “And strange.”
“Why do you say that?” Leaphorn could think of a dozen ways Breedlove’s death was strange. But which one would Mr. Shaw pick?
“Well,” Shaw said. “Why wasn’t the fall reported, for one thing?” 29 of 102
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