That provoked raised eyebrows but no answers.
“Therefore, I want you to know that if you manage to pry everything out of me, a former lawman but now retired to full standing as a
“A homicide? A murder? What in the world happened?”
“Let’s just drift off into a sort of vague fantasy,” Leaphorn said. “Remember this as a sort of tale-telling session. An exercise of flights of imagination. Now skip 274
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to the future. Imagine yourself under oath, being questioned. You are being asked what Joe Leaphorn told you about this Delos affair. I want you to be able to say that Leaphorn, old, in his dotage, and widely known in law enforcement as a tale teller, had just rambled along with a sort of fantastic account involving a shape-shifter version of skinwalkers, poisoned cherries, and things like that.
Very fantastic, not something to be taken seriously.” Chee didn’t look happy with this. “In other words, you’re not going to tell us if Delos was killed, and if so, who killed him, or any of that sort of stuff.”
“In other words,” Leaphorn said, settling back comfortably in his chair, “I am going to suggest you imagine that this Delos has gone off to one of those private hunting places on the Colorado-New Mexico border to shoot himself a trophy elk, and that he’s ordered Tommy Vang to run an errand first, and then come to the hunting cabin to pick him up, bringing along a report on what he has accomplished. You with me?”
“I guess,” Chee said, looking unhappy.
“All right, then. We’ll imagine that Leaphorn, newly retired and feeling sort of bored and disconnected, decided he wanted to make amends with an elderly woman he had offended when he was starting his police work.
And let’s imagine that led him to cross paths with a skinwalker—one of the shape-shifter variety, who about a quarter century earlier had stolen ten gallons of pinyon sap from a lady known as Grandma Peshlakai. This shape shifter had once called himself Perkins, then other un-known names, probably, and then Ray Shewnack. When their paths first crossed, he had quit using Shewnack and was calling himself Totter. You still following?” THE SHAPE SHIFTER
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“Go ahead,” Bernie said. “We’re listening.” So Leaphorn went ahead with this fantasy. The only major interruption came when Chee stopped him, con-tending that cherries couldn’t be used to poison people because the poison would make them taste too terrible to swallow. Leaphorn handled that by referring Jim to the textbook on criminal poisoning, in which the tasteless, odorless, water-soluble poison was described, and from that to the still- unsolved murder of Mel Bork, in which Bork fell victim to a poisoned cherry. From that point he skipped ahead, with neither Chee nor Bernie stopping him with questions.
About ten minutes, and another cup of coffee, later, he stopped. He took a final sip, clicked the cup down in the saucer.
“So there we were,” he said. “The sun was coming up, Mr. Delos had shot his giant elk and left it for the ranch crew to deal with. Tommy Vang had obtained travel money, and I had gotten several fifty-dollar bills to repay Grandma Peshlakai for her pinyon sap. Delonie had a broken arm and a bruised rib that needed attention, so we went home.” Leaphorn made a dismissive gesture.
“End of episode,” he said. “Now it’s time for you two to tell me more about your honeymoon.”
“Wait a minute,” Chee said. “What about this Delos character. You just left him there? Or what?”
“Shape shifters, remember,” Leaphorn said. “Delos was one of them. Remember how it goes. You see one of them doing something scary, and you shoot at him or something, and now it’s an owl, or a coyote, or nothing at all.” Chee considered that. “I think you’re sort of making fun of me. Me being the man who would like to be a 276
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shaman.” He produced a reluctant grin. “I guess that’s all right, though. It’s your polite way of telling us that you’re not going to tell us what happened to Mr. Delos.”
“Or whoever he was,” Leaphorn said. “But I will make you two a promise. You have a first anniversary of your wedding coming up next summer. If you invite Professor Bourbonette and me to that, we will come. If nothing bad has happened by then—I mean relative to Mr. Delos and all that—then I will finish telling you this fantastic tale.
Give you the last chapter.”
Chee considered that, still looking unhappy. Shook his head. “I guess we’ll have to settle for that, Bernie. Is that okay with you?”
“Not quite,” Bernie said. “I want you to tell us about going to see Grandma Peshlakai. I’ll bet she was surprised to see you. And happy, too. What did she say?”
“Well, surprised anyway,” Leaphorn said, and grinned.
“I told her we had found the man who stole her pinyon sap. And I told her we collected the money from him to repay her. Fifty dollars for each bucket, and I handed her the two fifty-dollar bills, and two other fifties for compounded interest, and I said something like, ‘Well, I finally got the job done.’
“And she said, ‘Well, young man, it sure took you a long time to do it.’”
About the Author
TONY HILLERMAN is a former president of the Mystery Writers of America and has received its Edgar and Grand Master Awards. His other honors include the
www.tonyhillermanbooks.com
