The Delos smile faded.
“I exaggerated. It was only Mr. Bork.”
“Another question then. Why did Mr. Bork get me into his conversation with you?”
Delos didn’t answer that. He shook his head. “I’ve led us off into a digression,” he said. “Let me start at the beginning. Mr. Bork called, asked for an appointment.
He said, or perhaps just implied, that he was working in an insurance fraud investigation involving my tale-teller rug. He asked if he could see it. I said yes. He came out.
I showed him the rug. He compared it to the photograph from the magazine. He said something like the photo and the rug looking identical.” Delos paused, awaiting reaction.
“What did you say to that?”
“I agree they looked very similar.”
A tap at the office portal interrupted the answer.
Tommy Vang stood there, a tray cart in front of him, smiling and waiting.
Delos waved him in. Vang deposited a tray on a serv-THE SHAPE SHIFTER
99
ing table beside Delos’s desk, slid it into reachable position between the two men, poured coffee into two saucered cups, removed the lids from a silver sugar bowl and a container of cream. Then, with a flourish and a broad smile, he whipped away a white cloth that had been covering a plate of cake slices and a bowl of nuts.
“He makes that cake himself,” Delos said. “Fruitcake.
It’s downright delicious.”
“It looks very good,” Leaphorn said, admiring the cherry on top. He reached for his coffee cup.
“But back to your question,” Delos said. “I told Bork that old rugs look a lot alike to me, so he showed me a white spot in the rug. Said it was a bird feather woven in. And a rough place. He said that was from some sort of bush that grows out at the Bosque Redondo camp where the Navajos were held captive. And he showed me the same spots on the photograph. I couldn’t argue with that. Then he asked me if I knew the rug was supposedly burned in a trading post fire. I said I’d heard about that, but figured it must have been another rug. And he said it looked to him like a hard rug to copy, and asked me where I had gotten it. He said the man who owned the trading post had collected insurance on it, and it looked like an insurance fraud case.”
Leaphorn nodded. “What did you tell him?”
“I told him I had bought it at the Indian market, or whatever they call it, in Santa Fe several years ago.
Anyway, I got it from an Indian under that sidewalk sales area on the plaza.”
“Not in a gallery? That sidewalk at the Palace of the Governors?”
100
TONY HILLERMAN
“Right,” Delos said.
“Who sold it to you?” Leaphorn asked, thinking he was wasting his breath. He was.
Delos frowned, looked thoughtful. “It was an Indian name,” he said. “Spanish-sounding, but I’m almost sure he was from one of the pueblos. Two of the women sitting just up from him against the wall were from San Felipe Pueblo, I remember that.”
“Did the salesman tell you where he got it?”
“Said it was an old Navajo rug. His mother had bought it years ago. Either at a tribal fair on the Navajo Reservation, or maybe at that rug auction the weavers have at the Crownpoint Elementary School gymnasium.
He said when she died, she left it to him.”
“No names then.”
Delos shook his head. “Afraid it’s not much help.”
“Oh, well,” Leaphorn said, and sipped his coffee. Excellent. He sipped again. “At least it tells me that this isn’t the rug destroyed in that fire.” But as he said it, he was thinking he hadn’t phrased that well. He should have said it proved that the tale-teller rug hadn’t been burned. But actually, it hadn’t really proved anything.
“Try that fruitcake,” Delos said. “Tommy’s a damn fine cook, and that cake is his pride and joy. Everything’s in it. Apricots, apple, cherries, six kinds of nuts, just the right spices, all measured out just right. World’s best fruitcake.”
“It sure looks good,” Leaphorn said. “Trouble is, I never did learn to like fruitcake.” He dipped into the nut dish. “I’ll eat more than my share of those walnuts and pecans instead.”
Delos shrugged. “Well, I’ll guarantee you that you’d THE SHAPE SHIFTER
101
like Tommy’s version of it. I’ll have him make you a little snack package to take with you. If you don’t like it, toss it out for the birds. Now, let’s go see what you think of this famous rug.”
The rug was displayed on the wall in a little sitting room adjoining the office, mounted on a hardwood frame.
Leaphorn stared at it, trying to remember the time before the fatal fire when he examined it in Totter’s little gallery. It looked the same. He found the brilliant red spots formed by the liquid taken from the spider’s egg sacs, the little white spots formed by the dove’s feathers, other feathers from birds of different colors, and places where
