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as Shewnack was, he would have hidden the loot from his latest robbery somewhere. And Delonie was digging around, looking for it. He said he hadn’t found anything.”
“Neither did we,” Rostic said. “We had the same idea.
He wasn’t the kind of man who would trust Mr. Totter, or anyone else, not to steal his money.”
Rostic finished his hamburger. Shook his head. “I guess we could credit him pretty positively with most of those suspicious cases. That would get him up close to the record for a serial killer.”
Leaphorn drained his cup. Put it down without comment.
“You have any more questions? About the fire or anything?” Rostic asked.
“Well, you didn’t answer my question about the prints on that cognac bottle. Did they match?”
“Of course not,” Rostic said. “Any more questions?”
“How about you? You satisfied?”
Rostic peered at him. Sighed. “Well, hell,” he said. “I don’t know what it is, exactly, but when a guy is as slick as Shewnack seemed to be . . . Well, you always feel sort of uneasy about it. Not quite as confident as you’d like to be.”
“That’s my problem, too,” Leaphorn said. “You have time for another cup?”
“I’m retired,” Rostic said. “I can either sit here and exchange war-against-crime stories with you or go on home and play Free Cell games on my computer. And by the way, you never told me what got you interested in this old case.”
Leaphorn waved at the waiter, ordered coffee refills.
“Then I’ll tell you about Grandma Peshlakai, the theft of 144
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two five-gallon lard cans full of pinyon sap from the work shed behind her hogan, how she came to recover the empty cans at Totter’s Trading Post, and how she discovered that Totter had died before he could be brought to justice and—”
“Wait at minute,” Rostic said. He stopped sugaring his coffee and was looking very interested. “Back up.
You’re telling me Totter stole the old woman’s pinyon sap? What the devil for? And he’s dead? I want to hear more of this.”
And so Leaphorn told him, and before the tale was finished so was a third cup of coffee and two more doughnuts. When it was finished, Rostic considered what he’d heard for a long silent moment.
“Couple of questions,” he said. “Tell me why Totter stole the pinyon sap. And tell me why you’re so interested in him now if he’s dead and gone.”
“If he stole the sap, and the only real evidence supporting that is empty buckets at the trading post, then it might have been something like this,” Leaphorn said, “and I warn you, it is based on guesswork.” With that, Leaphorn recounted the discussion he and Garcia had had speculating that Shewnack had planned to rob Totter, had tried it, had been killed by Totter, and Totter had decided that instead of dealing with a homicide trial he would use the sap to rush the fire along, convert both body and gallery to ashes, thereby disposing of homicide evidence and cashing in on his fire insurance without leaving behind the sort of evidence arson investigators look for.
“You mean the sap?” Rostic said, looking quizzical.
Leaphorn nodded. “Everybody burns pinyon. And that sap burns very, very hot.”
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“So how about the profit from the fire. You think Totter took the valuable stuff out first?”
“Now we come to this damned rug, the photograph of which sucked me into this business. Somebody seems to have taken that rug out. I’ll bet it was the most valuable item Totter had. I saw it in Totter’s gallery before the fire, and there it was on the wall of a mansion outside of Flagstaff after the fire. Unless somebody made a copy of it. Which seems to be very doubtful.”
Rostic was chewing on his lower lip, face full of thought, frowning at Leaphorn, then producing a rueful grin. “That would make the bureau look sort of foolish, wouldn’t it?
But maybe it’s right. It seems to make a certain amount of sense.” He shook his head. “But now I want you to tell me how you’d like it if you had to go to a judge and try to get him to sign an arrest warrant for Totter. Of course you don’t have to worry about that now, with him dead. But think about what you have. If you could get a judge to go even that far, how about trying to get him indicted? You think you could?”
Leaphorn laughed. “Not unless he was willing to confess.”
“Tell me about Totter being dead,” Rostic said. “How did that happen?”
“All I know is the
Rostic looked skeptical.
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“Who brought it in?”
“U.S. mail, with some money attached to pay the publication fee.”
