'So I'm left wondering why Denton lied to me about it. Which brings us to some other things.' He described what Mrs. McKay had told him about the call from her husband, about Denton questioning McKay about the whereabouts of the mine and McKay giving him only a rough description. That led Leaphorn to the peculiar question of the two maps.
'If we believe Mrs. McKay, her husband told Denton he was selling him a map of a mine site on Mesa de los Lobos. But Denton told me McKay tried to sell him a location in the southeastern end of the Zuni Mountains. I can't think of a reason she would have to lie about it. How about Denton? Any thoughts about why he'd want to mislead me about that?' Leaphorn asked. 'Any ideas about that? Or any of this?'
Chee broke the extended silence.
'If we make this McKay homicide a premeditated murder, it looks to me like it makes connecting it with Doherty a lot more plausible. Or does it?'
'It might,' said Bernie, 'if we could find the motive for either one of them.'
'Who owns the land?' Louisa asked. She rose and walked to the coffeepot.
'Have you run into anything at all,' Chee asked, 'that connects Doherty and McKay in the past? Anything that would have got him looking into the McKay stuff down at the sheriffs office beyond this Golden Calf business?'
'Not that I know of,' Leaphorn said. 'To tell the truth I haven't been thinking much about the Doherty homicide until now. Until wondering if it might help explain this funny business with Denton and the damned maps.'
Louisa was back with Leaphorn's coffeepot. She poured them each a cup. 'Have any of you checked into who owns the land all this map business is about?'
'I guess it could be owned by about anybody,' Leaphorn said. 'It's part of Checkerboard. Partly land reserved for the Navajo tribe that could be leased out. And some of it was granted to the railroad and then sold off into various ownerships. Part of it is Bureau of Land Management property, and that's probably leased for ranching. Maybe a little of it might be U.S. Forest Service, but I doubt that.'
'You know,' said Bernie, 'I think Professor Bourbonette is asking a good question.'
'Yes,' said Leaphorn. 'It might tell us something.'
'I'll find out,' Louisa said.
Leaphorn chuckled. 'Louisa used to be a real estate operator. For a little while when she was in school,' he said.
Louisa's expression suggested she did not like the tone of that. 'When I was a student, and a graduate student, a teaching assistant, and an assistant professor,' she said. 'Doing what you do to make a halfway decent living in the academic world. I was in charge of checking titles, looking into credit, and some price estimating. So, yes, I know how to find out who owns property.'
'Great,' Chee said. 'It wouldn't hurt to know that.'
'Another question I want to bring up. See if you have any suggestions,' said Leaphorn, who was eager to change the subject.
'Mrs. McKay said her husband told her he had what he called'some just-in-case backup insurance,' in case Denton was intending to cheat him. Anyone have any ideas about that?'
They discussed that while they drank their coffee. But no one came up with anything that seemed plausible to Leaphorn.
'And finally, how about this one. How did whoever killed Doherty get home again? I doubt if old Hostiin Peshlakai could have walked all the way from the Arizona border back to his hogan. And I doubt if Wiley Denton was much of a walker. If you agree with that, who was the accomplice and how did it work?' He gazed at Chee. 'If Agent Osborne is about to make Peshlakai the official suspect, how did he solve that puzzle?'
Chee laughed. 'I've been wondering about that myself. If the Feds have an answer, they haven't told me.'
'Hostiin Peshlakai had a cellphone,' Bernie said.
'What!' said Chee. 'How do you know?'
'It was in a boot box on a shelf with some of his ceremonial things,' Bernie said.
Chee looked abashed, shook his head. 'I noticed that box,' he said. 'His pollen containers, his medicine bundle, other things. But I guess I didn't really look at it.'
'Well,' said Leaphorn, 'that might solve the riddle for Peshlakai. Maybe he walked a mile or two from the truck and then called a friend to come and pick him up.' He thought about that idea. 'Or something like that.'
'But I wonder how many of Peshlakai's friends have telephones,' Bernie said.
'If you turn it around, Denton uses his cell phone to call George Billie, that man who works for him,' Chee said.
'Or,' said Leaphorn, and laughed, 'maybe Denton uses it to call Peshlakai to set everything up. How about that for linking your two homicides?'
'That would work fine,' said Bernie. 'Then all you'd need to go with that is a motive that fits both a superrich white oil-lease magnate and a dirt-poor Navajo shaman.'
Chapter Twenty
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Technically, it was not Sergeant Chee's day off, but he had logged it as off-duty time because he didn't want someone in authority demanding that he explain what he'd done with it. He had intended to use it to eliminate any doubts he might have of Hostiin Peshlakai's innocence. His instincts as a traditional Navajo told him Peshlakai was not guilty of shooting Thomas Doherty or anyone else. However, his instincts as a policeman were at war with that. He wanted to resolve this problem, and he had thought of a way to do it. His reasoning went like this.
If Peshlakai was—as Chee was almost certain—a well-schooled and believing Navajo medicine person, then
