“Well, it’s a very pretty piece of work.”
“All but that big cherry on the top. I chop up cherries and mix them in with the batter before I bake, but Mr.
Delos, when it is for someone special, then he buys these big, expensive cherries and he decorates the top with them when I take the pan out of the oven.” Leaphorn considered this a moment.
“This slice here, was this for someone special?”
“Yes! Yes!” Tommy Vang said with a huge smile. “That was specially for you. Mr. Delos came into the kitchen, and he told me a very famous policeman was coming to visit us. He had me take out the cake I had baked for Mr.
Bork, and cut another nice slice of it, and then he brought in his bottle of those big cherries he use in his Manhat-tans, and he decorate it for you.”
“And this is one of those,” Leaphorn asked, touching the cherry on the slice with a fingertip.
Tommy Vang nodded.
Leaphorn removed the cherry, noticed it had lost some of its plumpness, turned it in his fingers, pursed his THE SHAPE SHIFTER
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lips. “It looks delicious,” he said, and opened his mouth.
“Ah,” Vang said. “Mr. Leaphorn.” He held up his hand.
“No, I think maybe those special cherries are maybe not carefully preserved. I wonder if maybe they are not so good after they’ve been in the bottle too long. If they haven’t been kept sealed up, in cold storage.”
“Why would you think that? It’s a very good-looking cherry,” Leaphorn said, and held it out toward Vang. “Did you notice this little puncture hole here in the side? I wondered what would have caused that.” All the good nature was gone now from Tommy Vang’s face. And the tension was back. He leaned forward, staring at the cherry perched between Leaphorn’s thumb and forefinger.
“Right there,” Leaphorn said. “See the puncture mark?” The wind had become gusty now, blowing leaves across the lot, ruffling Vang’s hair. Leaphorn protected the cherry from the dust with his other hand.
“I see it,” Vang said. “Yes. A little hole.”
“Maybe you made it when you put it on the slice of cake. Did you use any sort of pin to do that?”
“No.” Vang said, sucked in a deep breath, and sighed.
“Maybe when they put it in the bottle, the cherry people.
Maybe that’s what did it?”
“I’ll bet they just pour them into the bottle. Wouldn’t you think? I can’t think of any reason they’d stick a needle into them.”
“I don’t know,” Vang said. He stood, arms folded against his chest, looking at Leaphorn with a sad expression.
Leaphorn replaced the cherry on the slice, deposited the slice into the Ziploc sack, zipped it shut, dropped it into the sack, and folded the sack shut again.
170
TONY HILLERMAN
“You said you came to see me about something, Tommy. So let’s sit in my truck awhile, get out of the wind, and let me know what you want to talk about. And I’d like to know more about why you drove all the way out here looking for me. I don’t think it was just to tell me about Mr. Bork being killed because I bet you’d know I probably already had heard about that from the news broadcasts.”
Leaphorn opened the passenger side door, held it.
Tommy Vang stared at him, expression doubtful.
“Please, Tommy. Get in. Something is bothering you.
Let’s talk about it. It shouldn’t take long, and then you can go home again.”
“Home,” Tommy said, shaking his head. He climbed in, and Leaphorn took his own seat behind the wheel.
“What’s worrying you, Tommy?”
Tommy was staring at the windshield. “No worry,” he said. “No worry.”
“But it seems to me that something is just sort of bothering you?”
Tommy laughed. “I have a puzzle,” he said. “You are a policeman. You caught me stealing something from your truck. All you do is just talk to me, very polite. You could have arrested me.”
“For stealing a piece of stale fruitcake?” Tommy ignored that. Just shrugged.
“Then I have a puzzle, too. I don’t know if you heard that the sheriff had an autopsy done to find out what caused Mr. Bork to let his car run down into that canyon.
They announced that Mr. Bork had been poisoned. Apparently the poison gets the blame for his car running off the road. He didn’t die in the accident. He was already THE SHAPE SHIFTER
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dead. Did you hear that? Did you think your cake might have made him sick?”
