The Wailing Wind

With that, she paused. Remembering those plans, Leaphorn guessed, organizing her thoughts. She sighed, shook her head.

'He called me about the middle of the morning, I think it was. He said he couldn't make it into town for lunch. He said he was wrapping up some loose ends. He sounded very happy. Exuberant. He said he'd just talked to Denton, and that Denton had the payment money at his house and he was going out to get it.'

'Did he say where he was calling from?'

'He didn't say. But I remember he said he had to make a run out to Fort Wingate.'

'Did he say what he was going to do there?'

She shook her head.

'Did he mention having anyone with him?'

'No.'

'Can you remember anything else he told you in those calls?'

She frowned, thinking. 'Well, in the first one he said Denton had asked him a lot of questions. He wanted Marvin to tell him just about everything about where the gold deposit was located, and Marvin said no way. Not until they had sealed the deal. He said then Denton said he wanted to know just the general area. What direction it was from Fort Wingate. Things like that. Marvin said he told him it was north. And Denton said, 'North of Interstate Forty?' And Marvin said he told him it was. He said he told Denton when he came he'd give him all the details, even show him some photographs of the sluice for placer mining in the bottom of the canyon.'

'Photographs,' Leaphorn said. 'Had you seen them?'

She nodded. 'They weren't very good,' she said. 'Didn't show much. Just some old rotted logs half buried in the sand and a bunch of trees in the background. Marvin wasn't much of a photographer.'

'Did your husband ever tell you just where this lost mine was located?' Leaphorn asked.

'I guess he did in a general way,' she said. 'Once when I asked him about it, he asked me if I remembered when we went to the Crownpoint rug auction and had driven down that road that runs east from Highway Six Sixty-Six to Crownpoint, and I said I remembered. And he said it's off in that high country to the right when you're about halfway there.'

'Driving east on Navajo Route Nine?'

'Yeah, I think that's the road. If we had a map I could tell you for sure.'

For once, Leaphorn didn't have a map. But he didn't need one.

'Did Mr. McKay have those pictures with him when he went to see Denton?'

'I think so. He put a whole bunch of things in his briefcase before he left that morning. And—' She stopped, looked down, rubbed her hand across her face. 'And after I got the word about what happened, and the sheriff came to talk to me about it, I looked through his things and the pictures weren't there.'

'What did he tell you on the second call?'

'Well, he said he might be a little late.' She forced a smile for Leaphorn. 'Pretty ironic, isn't that? Then he said he was a little bit troubled by those questions Denton asked. Like Denton was trying to get the information he wanted without paying for it. He said just in case Denton was going to pull a fast one—something sneaky—he was arranging something himself. He said not to hold dinner for him. If he was late, we'd go out to eat.'

'Did he say what he was arranging?'

She shook her head. 'I think he called it 'some just-in-case, backup insurance.''

'No details?'

'No. He said he had to run.'

Leaphorn chose to let the silence linger. Navajos are conditioned to polite silences, but he had learned long ago that they put pressure on most belagaana. It had that effect on Peggy McKay.

'And he said he'd be seeing me in a few hours. And he loved me.'

Leaphorn nodded.

'I know everybody thinks Marvin was a crook, and I guess the way the laws are written, sometimes he was. But it was just his way of making a living, and he always did it in ways that wouldn't really hurt people.'

'Do you think that he was selling Mr. Denton what Denton wanted to buy?'

'You mean the location of that Golden Calf Mine—or whatever you call it?'

'Yes.'

'I never much believed in those treasure stories myself,' Peggy McKay said. 'But, yes. Marvin had done a lot of work on this Golden Calf thing. For more than a year. I think he was selling Mr. Denton everything you could possibly get to find that place. Whatever it was. I do.'

'Do you think he pulled a gun on Denton?'

'No. Denton made that up.'

'The police found the gun.'

'Marvin didn't have a gun. He never did have one. He didn't like them. He said anyone who did the kind of work he did was crazy to have a gun.'

'You told the officers that?'