“Ms. Craig,” he said, in a voice just loud enough for her to hear. “I’d like to introduce myself and talk to you for a few minutes.”
Joanna Craig issued a sort of semi-shriek and spun around staring at Chandler, face white, eyes wide, looking terrified.
“Oh,” she said. “Oh. Who—” She took a deep breath. “You startled me.”
“I’m sorry,” Chandler said. “I beg your pardon. You look tired. And it’s so hot down here. You should sit down for a moment. Get a little rest. Could I offer you a drink of water?”
“But who are you? How did you know my—” She cut off that question, which told Chandler that she might already know the answer.
“I’m Jim Belshaw,” he said. “A sort of private investigator by trade. And I think we have something in common. I’d like to explain myself to you and see if we can work out some sort of partnership.”
“Oh,” Joanna said. She wiped her hand across her forehead. Studied him.
Chandler pulled back a limb of the bush and pointed to the shady shelf where he’d been sitting.
“No cushions. But it’s comfortable.” He extracted his water bottle from its pocket and handed it her. “It’s warm and I’m afraid I can’t offer you a glass.”
Joanna held up a hand, rejecting it, studying him. “What are you doing down here? And…and…who did you say you were?”
“I’m Jim Belshaw. I work for Corporate Investigations in Los Angeles.” He smiled at her, then chuckled. Awaited a response, and added, “But here in the Grand Canyon today, I’m on my own time. And I’ll bet you can guess what I’m doing here.”
“Well,” Joanna said. She sat on the shelf, closed her eyes, and sighed. “Why don’t you just tell me.”
“Actually, I was here waiting for a Hopi named Billy Tuve to show up. I watched the two of you coming down the Salt Trail, or whatever they call it. Now you’re here but I’m still waiting for Tuve. Is he coming along?”
“Why? What do you want?”
“Why? Because I am looking for a bunch of diamonds,” Chandler said. “I think you are, too.”
Joanna took a moment to respond to that. The only reason this big, athletic-looking man would know her name, would know about the diamonds connected with it, would be that he was working for Plymale. And if he was working for Plymale, there was a good chance he could accomplish the job the lawyer must have given him by killing her. He was big enough to do it barehanded. And her little pistol was tucked away in her backpack. She looked up at him, trying to read something in the face smiling down at her.
“What makes you think that I’m looking for diamonds?”
“Because they used to belong to your father,” Chandler said.
“Oh,” Joanna said. No doubt now he was working for Plymale, but then why were they having this conversation? She rubbed her hands down her legs, so tired the muscles were cramping. She looked up again, saw this big young man still staring down at her, awaiting an answer. Let him wait. She needed time to think about this.
“And also because if justice was done, they would be your diamonds now.”
He waited again.
“That’s correct, isn’t it?”
“I think it is,” Joanna said. “And I also think you’re working for the man who cheated my mother. Took everything away from her. How else could you know all this about me? About my business?”
“I don’t know it for sure. It’s what Old Man Plymale told me. What do you think? Should I trust him? He seemed to me to be a pretty slippery fellow. And I’m in a profession that has to learn how to spot the unreliable types.”
“I think he’s a thief. A crook. A totally unscrupulous man,” Joanna said. “So why are you working for him? And what is he paying you to do?”
Chandler chuckled. “I think you already know that. He wants me to make sure you don’t get the evidence you need to prove you are the direct descendant of Old Man Clarke, thereby recovering for you the estate your father would have inherited, and thereby depriving Mr. Plymale of his ill-gotten charity scam and, much, much worse, thereby subjecting him to a court-ordered audit of what he’s done with all that tax-exempt cash. That would probably land him in a federal prison.”
Again Chandler waited for a response. Got none.
“It would be a comfy white-collar prison, of course, but he wouldn’t like it,” he added.
Joanna got up, took a few steps, sat down again, and massaged her leg muscles.
“They say walking downhill, steep ones anyway, is harder on your leg muscles than going up,” she said. “Now I believe them.”
Chandler nodded. “It’s true,” he said.
“Why have you been telling me all this? The only reason I can think of is that you want me to cheat Plymale somehow. You want the diamonds.”
“Good thinking,” Chandler said. “I want to offer you a deal. A partnership. We both hunt the place where this fellow who gave Tuve his diamond lived down here. Little Billy gave me some information to help with the hunt. I have a notion he gave you some, too. Maybe it’s the same stuff. How long it took him to go back to his cave, or whatever it was, and come back with the stone. Information like that. But maybe I got some details he forgot to tell you, and you got some he didn’t tell me. So my idea is we work together. Improve our chances. Then when we find the cave—and that’s what Tuve called it—you find what you want. Your daddy’s arm bone with the DNA. Evidence that proves you’re his daughter. And we find the diamonds, which we split fifty-fifty.”
