was?'
'I don't pay much attention to cars,' said Mrs.Mendoza, sounding out of patience.
'I just thought you might have remembered what color it was.'
'Why don't you ask his lady about that car? I think she has it. Anyway, she came up here and drove it off.'
'Well, thank you,' Leaphorn said. 'I will.' And he put down the phone and sat a moment feeling stupid. Of course. There would be no reason for the police to impound that vehicle. Judging from what he knew about McKay, the car was probably owned by Peggy. And judging from what he knew about public officials in general, there was no reason to believe anyone would have taken on the authority of having it towed into storage.
Peggy McKay answered the telephone on the first ring. Yes, she remembered Leaphorn, and yes, she had gotten a friend to drive her out to Denton's place to recover her car. What kind of car was it? A pale-blue Ford Escort. Yes, she still had it.
Leaphorn thought of the remarkable messiness of Mrs. McKay's house. 'Do you know if the car has been through a car wash since your husband's death?'
Hesitation now, while Peggy McKay considered that.
'Not really,' she said. 'I hosed it off myself last spring after a muddy spell.'
'I'd like to come over and take a look at it, if that's all right with you,' Leaphorn said.
'Sure. Why not? I'll be home all day.'
Just out of the driveway, he saw Louisa's car rolling up the street and stopped. So did she, and rolled down her window.
I'm going into Gallup to talk to Mrs. McKay again,' he shouted. 'Then maybe if he's home, I'll go see Denton.'
'Why?'
'I want to tell him he's a liar and I don't want anything to do with him,' Leaphorn said.
'Good for you,' said Louisa. 'And when you get back I've got some information for you.'
'Like what?' Leaphorn said. But she had closed the window and was parking her car under her favorite tree across the street.
Peggy McKay hadn't bothered to park her Ford Escort in the shade. It sat in her drive, with its windows rolled down and its grimy pale-blue finish bearing evidence that it hadn't been through a car wash since its hosing last spring. Mrs. McKay appeared in her doorway as Leaphorn got out of his pickup.
'Feel free,' she said, pointing to the car and laughing, 'but don't get it dirty.'
'Thanks,' Leaphorn said.
'Have you had any luck? I mean, finding Mrs. Denton?'
'Not yet,' Leaphorn said. He opened the passenger's-side door of the Escort. The interior reminded him of Mrs. McKay's living room.
'I'm not sure whether I told you,' she said, coming down from the porch into her driveway. 'I think Denton got off way too easy for shooting Marvin. I think it was a plain premeditated murder.'
She was staring at Leaphorn, awaiting a response.
'The whole thing left a lot of unanswered questions,' he said. And, when that didn't seem adequate, added: 'Some pieces left out of the puzzle.'
'What are you looking for in my car?'
'I guess you could say I'm just hoping to find one of the missing pieces.'
'To find Linda Denton?'
'Yes,' Leaphorn said.
'Not in that car, you won't,' Mrs. McKay said. She walked back into her house and shut the door.
Leaphorn made another quick inspection of the front-seat area, looked into the back-seat space, opened the trunk of his own car and extracted the cardboard box he kept there to stash his grocery purchases and prevent them from rattling around. He put the box on the driveway and began extracting odds and ends from Mrs. McKay's floorboards—starting with a Baby Ruth wrapper, a crumpled tissue, a paper cup, a wrapper from a McDonald's hamburger, and a cigarette butt. Leaphorn inspected each item, at least with a glance, before adding it to his pile. By the time he had completed his search of both sides of the front seat and moved to the back, his box was almost half filled with wildly assorted trash, evidence that Mrs. McKay was a regular customer of various fast-food establishments and a person who saved Wal-Mart advertising sections, discount coupons, empty cigarette packages, and even the high heel from a black slipper.
The only thing he found under the floor mats was a torn section from an Arizona road map, and it seemed to have no relevance.
Some of the stuff he set aside on a handkerchief he'd spread on the front seat—but very little. That included the quarter and dime he'd extracted from behind the passenger's-side seat, an assortment of long blonde hairs he'd carefully picked from under the passenger's-side headrest, a set of pliers he'd extracted from the glovebox, and a Chase Hardware sack and the sales slip he'd found crumpled inside it.
Leaphorn took time now to inspect the pliers and the slip. The slip had been issued the day before McKay was killed and covered the pliers (an expensive $24.95 set), a crowbar, and a roll of plumber's tape. He had found neither the tape nor the crowbar in the car. Leaphorn found himself imagining Linda Denton being hit on the head with one and bound with the other, and he made a mental note to ask Mrs. McKay about the purchases.
With the larger trash items out of the way, he removed the rear seat. Under it he found more trash, but nothing more interesting than an advertising flier for last year's Navajo Tribal Fair. Then he borrowed the flashlight from the
