“Of Mel’s? I think so. Sort of anyway. Sometimes they more or less work together on cases, I think.”
“I’d call him back, then. Tell him Mel is still away and doesn’t answer his cell phone. Tell him you talked to me.
Tell him I thought he should listen to that tape you played for me.”
22
TONY HILLERMAN
“Yes,” Mrs. Bork said.
“And please let me know if you learn anything. Or if I can do anything.” He recited his home phone number.
Thought a moment, shrugged. “And here’s my number, in case I’m not home.”
She read back the numbers to him.
“One more thing,” Leaphorn said. “Did he mention any names? I mean names of anyone he might be seeing.
Or which museum he was going to?”
“Oh, my,” she said. “Well, he might have said Tarkington. He’s at one of the Indian arts and craft places in Flagstaff. Gerald Tarkington, I think it is.”
“I think I know his place,” Leaphorn said. “Anyone else?”
“Probably the Heard Museum in Phoenix,” she said, hesitantly. “But that’s just a guess. He worked for them once, a long time ago. And, Mr. Leaphorn, please let me know.”
“I will,” Leaphorn said, with a vague feeling that it would be a promise that would find him bringing her bad news. It was a message he’d had to deliver far too often in his career.
4
Leaphorn, being elderly, knew the wisdom of learning all you can about the one you intend to interview before you ask the first question. Thus, before calling Tarkington’s gallery in Flagstaff, he dialed a number a few blocks away in Shiprock and talked to Ellen Klah at the Navajo Museum.
“Tarkington? Tarkington,” Mrs. Klah said. “Oh, yeah.
Well, now. What in the world would you be doing with that man?”
“I need to get some information from him,” Leaphorn said. “See if he knows anything about an old rug.”
“Something sneaky? Something criminal?”
“I don’t know,” Leaphorn said, sounding glum. “It’s just this rug has turned up. And it looks a lot like one that was supposed to be burned up in a fire at a gallery years ago.”
“I bet this involves insurance fraud,” Mrs. Klah said.
24
TONY HILLERMAN
“I hope not,” Leaphorn said. “It was the fire that burned that little gallery at Totter’s Trading Post. You remember that?”
“Of course I remember it,” Mrs. Klah said. “Wasn’t the rug that burned there an old, old tale-teller weaving? The one people called
“You’re way ahead of me, Ellen,” Leaphorn said.
“No crime alleged, or anything. I just want to talk to Tarkington about what might have happened to that rug if it didn’t actually burn.”
“I’ve been reading in the
Three of ’em. Very old. Supposed to be worth about two hundred thousand dollars if you add them all together. Is that what you’re into?”
“No, no,” Leaphorn said. “Nothing that exciting. I just want to ask you if Tarkington would be the guy to talk to about . . . well, let’s say if a famous old rug had been destroyed and you had pictures of it, and wanted to hire a weaver to make you a copy. What would you do? Who could do it? Things like that.”
“Well, Tarkington’s an old-timer. I’d say he’d be as good as anyone to ask. If ethics are involved, from what I’ve heard I doubt he’d be worried about them. But are we talking about that
25
full of things to remind you of all the death and misery that came out of that business. Was that the rug you’re talking about?”
“I think that must be the one. That sounds like it.”
“The rugs mentioned in that lawsuit all had names,” Ellen said, sounding slightly disgruntled.
“I don’t know its name. Don’t know if it even had one,” Leaphorn said. “I just remember a great big, complicated, old rug. I saw it framed behind glass and hanging in Totter’s gallery near Tohatchi years ago. And I remember there was a story that went with it. It was supposed to have been cursed by a hand trembler, or some other medicine person.”
