bathroom water running. Sounds of the shower. Then assorted sounds that Leaphorn identified as connected with unpacking a suitcase, hanging things in the closet, putting things in drawers. Then the sneaky sound of slipper-clad feet. The sound of his doorknob turning, of the door to his bedroom opening just a little. Light from the hall streaming in.
He could see the outline of Louisa’s head, peering in at him.
“Joe,” Louisa’s said, very softly, “you asleep?” Leaphorn exhaled a huge breath.
“I was,” he said.
“Sorry I woke you,” Louisa said.
“Don’t be,” Leaphorn said. “I am delighted it’s you.” She laughed. “Just who were you expecting?” Leaphorn didn’t know how to answer that. He said,
“Did you find any good Southern Ute sources?”
“I did! A really great old lady. Full of stories about all their troubles with the Comanches when they were being pushed west into Utah. But go back to sleep. I’ll give you a complete report at breakfast. And how about you? All quiet on the home front?”
“Relatively,” Leaphorn said. “But if you just drove in, you must be tired. It can wait. Get some sleep.” Leaphorn’s next awakening was much less stress-ful. He was lured out of his sleep by the sound of perking coffee and the aroma of bacon in the frying pan. Louisa was at the kitchen table, reading something in her notebook, sipping coffee. Leaphorn poured himself a cup and joined her. She told him about what her very, very elderly THE SHAPE SHIFTER
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Ute source had told her of the clever tactics her tribesmen had used to confuse the Comanches, about horses stolen and enemies tricked. She was heading back to her office at Northern Arizona University after breakfast, but first she needed an account of what Leaphorn had been doing, and his copy of last month’s utility bills so she could pay her share. While she served the bacon and eggs, Leaphorn dug out the paperwork and decided what, and how much, he wanted to tell her. He wouldn’t tell her that he was afraid that Mel Bork was dead, not until that was confirmed. And even if it was, he didn’t think he’d report his suspicions about Tommy Vang’s fruitcake. That all seemed sort of silly to him, even though he’d been offered the stuff himself. He was pretty sure it would sound even sillier to the professor.
He started his account with the letter from Mel Bork.
He skipped through all that happened next rapidly, skipping a lot of it, and being stopped several times by her questions about the rug. By the time he’d finished his recitation, he found himself forced back to his conclusion of the previous night—that he had wasted a lot of time and accomplished nothing useful.
But Louisa’s interest, naturally, was in the culturally significant rug. The history of that weaving fit pre-cisely into her professional preoccupation with tribal cultures. What did Leaphorn think had happened to it? That led up and down the list of questions that Leaphorn had been asking himself, and he couldn’t answer a single one of them with anything better than guesses. Louisa’s curiosity eventually, over the second cup of coffee, settled on Jason Delos. One of her graduate students at NAU had done some landscape work at 120
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his place, had become an acquaintance of Tommy Vang, and had regaled one of her graduate student sessions with Vang’s stories of life among his fellow tribesmen in the mountains along the Vietnam/Cambodia/Laos borders.
“It all seemed totally authentic,” she said, “and interesting. But what we were hearing, of course, was second-hand. So I sent Mr. Vang an invitation to come in and talk to our little seminar. But he didn’t come.”
“Did he say why?” Leaphorn asked. “I’d love to know how he got connected with Mr. Delos.”
“He just said he couldn’t do it,” Louisa said. “Our landscaping grad student said he had the impression that Tommy’s family had been some of the tribesmen who worked with the CIA in the latter phases of the Vietnam War, about the time we were poking into Cambodia. This student of mine was sort of edgy about it. He told me, more or less privately, that he thought Tommy’s family had been sort of wiped out during all that back-and-forth fighting, that Delos had been with the CIA and had sort of rescued him as a boy and brought him back to the States.”
“Well, now,” Leaphorn said.
“Does that sound sensible? Based on what you know?”
“It sounds as sensible as anything else I know about Delos. Which is damned near nothing,” Leaphorn said.
“About all I know for almost certain is that he is a dedicated big-game hunter, likes to collect antiques; and if you’d like to have that old tale-teller rug, he says he’s thinking about getting rid of it.”
“I’ve heard he’s fairly new to Flagstaff,” Louisa said.
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“Certainly not old family. And I gather he doesn’t mix much socially.”
Leaphorn nodded. “That fits,” he said.
Louisa had been studying him during this conversation.
“Joe,” she said, “you seem sort of down. Depressed.
Tired. Is this business of being retired getting to you?
From what you said, this rug affair sort of ties in with one of your old cases. So it doesn’t sound like being retired has stopped you from acting like a detective.” Leaphorn laughed. He reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out the utility bills, and handed them to her.
“Perfect time for this. Here what it’s costing you for this unorthodox, possibly even un-American arrangement we’ve been having. But I’ll let you do the figuring of the percentages.”
