“I don’t understand this,” she said, looking sterner than ever. “I am legally representing Mr. Tuve. And he is free on bond. Free as a bird until he is called in to testify, or this ridiculous charge is dropped.”
“I’m not here on police business,” Dashee said. “I’m doing family business. Billy Tuve’s mother and my mother are sisters. We’re kinfolks. Cousins. I need to talk to my cousin Billy.”
“Hey, Cowboy,” Tuve said. “You’re looking good. Did Mama send you?”
Ms. Craig considered this. Looked at Chee. “It could be that we have a shared interest? I want to clear Mr. Tuve of this homicide-robbery charge. You, too?”
“Yes, exactly,” Chee said.
Craig was looking past him now at the arriving room service cart. She stood aside, motioned it in, and extended the same gesture to Chee and Dashee.
“Would you care to join us? Have some coffee, or tea, or whatever. We’ll just tell the man to bring it up.”
“No, thanks,” Chee said. “We’d just like to ask Mr. Tuve for some information.”
“Make yourselves at home,” she said. “Mr. Tuve and I will have our lunch, but go ahead with your questions.”
Chee and Dashee looked at each other. Dashee shrugged.
“The trouble is what we want to discuss with Mr. Tuve is police business. It’s confidential.”
Craig smiled. “Confidential. Of course. No one will hear it except the four of us. You two, Mr. Tuve, and”—she tapped herself on her shirtfront—“myself. His legal representative.”
Chee looked skeptical, glanced at Tuve. Tuve, he thought, had the look of an athlete—short like many Hopis, hard muscles, built like a wrestler.
“Mr. Tuve. Did you retain Ms. Craig as your attorney?”
Tuve looked puzzled. “I don’t think so. I don’t have any money.”
“My work is related to the interests of a tax-exempt public charity foundation,” Craig said, her face slightly flushed. “My interest is in protecting Mr. Tuve from unjust prosecution.” She turned toward Tuve. “Mr. Tuve, do you wish to talk to these gentlemen?”
Tuve shrugged. “Sure. Why not? Looking good, Cowboy. How’d you hear about this trouble? I’ll bet my mother sent you over here to get me.”
Chee sighed, defeated. “Okay,” he said. “Ms. Craig, this is Deputy Dashee, with the Navajo County Sheriff’s Department.” Craig, he guessed, would not know Navajo County was across the border in Arizona, devoid of any jurisdiction here. “I presume you know that the only material evidence the state has to connect Mr. Tuve with the robbery-homicide at Zuni is a diamond he attempted to pawn. We are hoping to find concrete evidence that Mr. Tuve got that diamond exactly as he claims. To check it out, we want to get some more details from him about the circumstances.”
Craig considered this. Nodded. “Have a seat,” she said. “Or join us at the table.” She moved her purse off a chair and put it on a closet shelf. The purse was a large and fashionable leather affair and it seemed to Chee remarkably heavy, even for its size.
The Clark Gable Suite offered numerous comfortable choices for seating—a richly covered sofa, three overstuffed chairs, an ottoman, and four standard dining room chairs around the table. The windows offered a view to the east and north of the mainline railroad tracks, now carrying a seemingly endless line of freight cars toward California, the traffic flowing by on Interstate Highway 40, and beyond all that the spectacular red cliffs that had attracted Hollywood here to produce its horse operas so common through the middle years of the century. Through a double doorway Chee could see into the suite’s handsome bedroom.
He selected an overstuffed chair and seated himself. Dashee, wearing a “what the hell” expression, chose the sofa.
“We’re going to ask Mr. Tuve some questions, then,” Chee said. “And it appears we have a mutual interest in the answers. But first we’d like to know why the organization you represent has a fifty-thousand-dollar interest in this.”
Joanna Craig pondered this a moment, studying Chee. “What organization is that?” she asked.
“The one you just mentioned that sent you here to protect Mr. Tuve. The one that gave you the check to pay for bonding Mr. Tuve out of jail.”
“Its identity is confidential.”
“The check you provided to pay for the bond was written on a Bank of America account. It had your name on it.”
Joanna Craig sighed, shrugged, nodded.
“Why did your employers send you here?” Chee asked. “Why do they have a fifty-thousand-dollar interest in Mr. Tuve?”
“You’ll have to ask them.” She smiled at him.
“I will,” Chee said. “Give me the name and address.”
She considered that awhile, shook her head.
“I would, but they’d just tell you it’s none of your business. Just waste your time.”
For a while the room was silent. Through the windows came the diminishing sound of thunder, already dim and distant, the jumbled noise of truck traffic on Interstate 40, and the nearer sound of cars on Railroad Avenue. Inside the room only Cowboy Dashee chuckling, and the click of his spoon as Tuve stirred sugar into his cup of coffee.
“Well, then,” Chee said. “I guess we might as well just get down to business. Mr. Tuve, would you please tell us how you got that diamond.”
