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“Lieutenant Leaphorn,” he said. “You look just like the pictures I’ve seen of you. You drove all the way from Window Rock this morning?”
“I did,” Leaphorn said, as Tarkington ushered him into the gallery.
“Then freshen up if you wish,” Tarkington said, pointing toward the restroom, “and then let’s have some lunch and talk.”
When Leaphorn emerged refreshed, he found lunch was being served in an alcove just off the gallery. A girl, who Leaphorn identified as probably a Hopi, was pouring ice water into glasses on a neatly set table. Tarkington was already seated with a copy of
“Unless you want something special, we could get lunch here,” he said. “Just sandwiches and fruit. Would that satisfy you?”
“Sure,” Leaphorn said, and seated himself, weighing what this development might mean. Obviously it meant Tarkington must consider this talk important. Why else would he be taking the trouble to put Leaphorn in the role of guest, with the psychological disadvantage that went with that. But it did save time. Not that Leaphorn didn’t have plenty of that.
The girl passed Leaphorn an attractive plate of neatly trimmed sandwiches in a variety of types. He took one offering ham, cheese, and lettuce. She asked if he’d like coffee. He would. She poured it for him from a silver urn.
Tarkington watched all this in silence. Now he served himself a sandwich and toasted Leaphorn with his water glass.
“Down to business now?” he said, making it a question. “Or just make chat while we eat?” 30
TONY HILLERMAN
“Well, I am here trying to find an old friend, but I am also hungry.”
“You are looking for Melvin Bork, right? The private investigator?”
Leaphorn nodded. He sipped his coffee. Excellent. He looked at his sandwich, took a small bite. Also fine.
“Why look here?”
“Because his wife thought he would be coming here to ask you about a rug. Is that correct?”
“Oh, yes. He was here.” Tarkington was smiling, looking amused. “Three days ago. He had a copy of one of those expensive upscale real estate magazines with a picture of it. This magazine.” He tapped the picture, smiling at Leaphorn.
Leaphorn nodded.
“He asked if I had seen a rug that looked like that, and I said yes, I had. One much like that got burned up in a fire way back. A real shame. It was a famous tale-teller rug. Famous among the bunch who love the really old weavings, and especially among the odd ones who dote on the artifacts that have scary stories attached. And this one does. Dandy stories. Full of death, starvation, all that.” He smiled at Leaphorn again, picked up his glass, rattled the ice in it.
“And it was also a wonderful example of the weavers’
art. A real beauty. Bork asked me to take a close look at the magazine photo and tell him what I could about it.” Tarkington paused to take a sip of his water. And, Leaphorn presumed, to decide just how much he wanted to say about this.
“I told him the picture resembled a very old, very valuable antique. Rug people called such weavings tale THE SHAPE SHIFTER
31
tellers because they usually represent someone, or something, memorable. And the tale in this one was of all the dying, humiliation, and misery you Navajos went through when the army put you in that concentration camp over on the Pecos back about a hundred and fifty years ago.” Tarkington extracted a reading-sized magnifying glass from his jacket pocket and held it close to the photograph, studying places here and there. “Yes, it does look something like that old rug Totter had at his trading post years ago.”
“Something like?” Leaphorn asked. “Can you be a little more specific than that?”
Tarkington put down the glass, studied Leaphorn.
“That brings up an interesting question, doesn’t it? That one was burned—let’s see—back in the very late 1960s or early 1970s I think. So the question I want to ask you is, when was this photograph taken?”
“I don’t know,” Leaphorn said.
Tarkington considered that, shrugged.
“Well, Bork asked me if I thought it could be a photograph of a copy of the rug Totter had, and I said I guessed anything is possible, but it didn’t make much sense. Even if you had real good detailed photos of the original to work from, the weavers would still be dealing with trying to match yarns, and vegetable dyes, and using different people with different weaving techniques. And with this particular rug, they would even be trying to work in the same kind of bird feathers, petals from cactus blossoms, stems and such. For example . . .” Tarkington paused, tapped a place on the photo with a finger. “For example, this deep color of red right here—presuming this is a good color reproduction—is pretty rare. The old weavers 32
TONY HILLERMAN
got it from the egg sac of one of the big desert spiders.” He smiled at Leaphorn. “Sounds weird, I guess, but that’s what the experts say. And it gives you an idea how tough it would be to make a copy.”
Tarkington sipped his water again, eyes on Leaphorn, waiting for a reaction.
