Hillerman, Tony - [Leaphorn & Chee 17] (6 page)

The thunderstorm that had been moving steadily toward Gallup from the southwest produced a dazzling flash of lightning just as Navajo County Deputy Sheriff Cowboy Dashee and Sergeant Jim Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police climbed out of Chee’s car in the parking lot. A sharp clap of thunder came two seconds later, the characteristic ozone scent generated by electrically charged air, and then a gust of dusty wind that made the jail door hard to open and blew Chee’s hat into the room ahead of him.

“Well, now,” said the woman behind the desk. “Look what the wind blew in. I was hoping we’d finally get some rain.”

Dashee said, “It’s coming. Today’s the day the Zunis are having their rodeo. They did their rain dance last night.”

Chee rescued his cap, said, “Hello, Mrs. Sosi.”

Mrs. Sosi was laughing. “I asked one of them about that last year when they got rained out again. Told him they should do the dance after the rodeo. He said the rain-outs kept the cowboys from getting hurt. Cut down the medical bills. Did you two come in to get out of the weather?”

“I want to talk to one of your tenants,” Dashee said. “Billy Tuve. He’s my cousin.”

“Tuve?” Sosi said, frowning. She checked the roster on the desk in front of her. “Mr. Tuve is a popular man today. But you’re too late. He bonded out about an hour ago.”

“He what?! Wasn’t that bond set at fifty thousand dollars? Was it lowered? Tuve couldn’t have come up with any property valuable enough to cover that. And I guarantee he didn’t have the five thousand he’d have needed to cover the bond company fee.”

Mrs. Sosi looked down at her records, then looked up with an expression that registered amazed disbelief. “And it was a cash bond,” she said.

“Cash? Fifty thousand in cash?”

“Same as cash. Registered, certified cashier’s check,” Mrs. Sosi said. “Bank of America.”

Dashee’s reaction to all this was shock.

“Who did it?” Chee asked.

“A woman. Just about middle-aged. Nice looking. I never saw her before.” She glanced at the record book. “Ms. Joanna Craig. That mean anything to you?”

“Not to me,” Dashee said.

“She wasn’t local? Where was she from?”

“Well, she used a New York City bank account. She
said she was representing Mr. Tuve, and I think maybe there was a lawyer with her.”

Dashee was looking baffled.

“Did Tuve know her?” Chee asked.

“He seemed as surprised as you do,” Mrs. Sosi said. “But he walked right out with her. Climbed into the car she was driving.”

“What kind of car?” Chee asked. “Going where?”

“She said she was staying at the El Rancho Hotel. The car? It looked like one of those Ford sedans Avis rents out at the airport.”

“I can’t believe this,” Dashee said. “I think we better go find him.”

Chee held up his hand. “This lawyer with her. Was he in the car, too?”

“Just her and Tuve. And this other fella, I don’t know he was a lawyer. He just came in earlier. Big blond guy and he said he came from Tuve’s family, but he sure wasn’t no Hopi. Just said he wanted to talk to Tuve about getting money put up for his bond. The deputy took him back there awhile, and pretty soon he came out and said thank you, and went on out. That’s the last I saw of him.”

“But he was with the woman?”

She shook her head and laughed. “We don’t get an awful lot of out-of-town traffic in here, so I just connected them. Both interested in getting Tuve out. But I don’t know,” Mrs. Sosi said. “Now I sort of doubt it. He was gone before she got here. I never saw them together.”

“Let’s go,” Dashee said. “Come on. Let’s go talk to Tuve. Find out what this is all about.”

The ride up Railroad Avenue to the El Rancho was a
splash through a rain mixed with occasional flurries of popcorn-size hail.

“What do you think, Jim?” Dashee said. “What sort of mess has the silly bastard got himself into? I can’t think of a thing he could do that would make him worth that much money to anyone.”

“You think maybe he actually did shoot that tourist shop operator?” But Chee answered his own question with a negative head shake. “No. That wouldn’t add up. Wouldn’t make somebody in New York come out here to buy him out for that much money.” He shook his head, thinking. “I was wondering who that man was. You have any ideas about that?”

“I don’t. Billy didn’t shoot anybody,” Dashee said. “Billy was a good kid. Not the brightest bulb in the house after he got his head hurt. But he never quit being nice. He used to ride in that rodeo for kids. Did calf roping. Then his horse fell on him when he was twelve or so. Rolled over his head. Skull fracture. Longtime coma. The whole thing. And when he finally got out of the hospital, he wasn’t quite right anymore. To tell the truth, he was sort of retarded even before that. But he was always a good boy.”

“Didn’t change his personality?”

“Seemed like it made him even better. He did things for everybody. Kept firewood cut for his neighbors. Didn’t make trouble even when he was drinking. And I think he might have quit that drinking.”

“Remember what we got together to talk to him about?” Chee said. “About that expensive jewel. I think all this must have something to do with that damned diamond.”

“Probably,” Dashee said, and produced a dour
chuckle. “And Tuve told me that thing was a phony. He said he knew everybody thought he was dumb, but he wasn’t stupid enough to think that was a real diamond.”

The El Rancho Hotel had been built in the long-gone golden days of Hollywood movie studios. One of the big names in the industry had financed it to house the stars and production crews making the cowboy-and-Indian films that filled the theaters in the 1930s and ’40s. Despite some refurbishing, it showed its heritage. Its walls were still lined with autographed publicity photographs of the Hoot Gibson/Roy Rogers generations, and its atmosphere was rich with old and dusty glamour.

“Yes,” the desk clerk told Dashee. “A Ms. Joanna Craig. She has 201. We call that the Clark Gable Suite. You want me to ring her for you?”

“Please,” Dashee said.

“No, wait,” Chee said. “You know how Joanna loves surprises. What’s the suite number again? We’ll just go up and knock.”

Dashee was looking puzzled as they went up the stairs.

“What was that all about?”

“I’m just being cynical,” Chee said. “Thought we’d surprise her. Who is this woman, anyway?”

Suite 201 was on the second floor, on the corridor overlooking the hotel lobby. Through the door came the faint sound of conversation. Chee knocked. Waited. The door opened. A small blond woman in a trim dark blue suit stood looking at him, then past him at Dashee, expression stern.

“I thought you were room service,” she said. “Who are you?”

Chee was reaching for his identification. “And I presume you are Ms. Joanna Craig,” he said.

“You’re a policeman,” she said.

“I am Sergeant Jim Chee,” Chee said, and showed her his identification folder.

“And I’m a cousin of Mr. Tuve,” Cowboy said. He waved at the young man sitting slumped in an overstuffed chair by the window and said, “Good to see you, Billy. How you doing?”

The man returned the gesture, with a happy grin of recognition.

“I would ask you in,” Joanna Craig said, “but Mr. Tuve and I are engaged in a conversation. It’s business.”

“We have business, too,” Chee said. “Police business.”

“I don’t understand this,” she said, looking sterner than ever. “I am legally representing Mr. Tuve. And he is free on bond. Free as a bird until he is called in to testify, or this ridiculous charge is dropped.”

“I’m not here on police business,” Dashee said. “I’m doing family business. Billy Tuve’s mother and my mother are sisters. We’re kinfolks. Cousins. I need to talk to my cousin Billy.”

“Hey, Cowboy,” Tuve said. “You’re looking good. Did Mama send you?”

Ms. Craig considered this. Looked at Chee. “It could be that we have a shared interest? I want to clear Mr. Tuve of this homicide-robbery charge. You, too?”

“Yes, exactly,” Chee said.

Craig was looking past him now at the arriving room service cart. She stood aside, motioned it in, and extended the same gesture to Chee and Dashee.

“Would you care to join us? Have some coffee, or
tea, or whatever. We’ll just tell the man to bring it up.”

“No, thanks,” Chee said. “We’d just like to ask Mr. Tuve for some information.”

“Make yourselves at home,” she said. “Mr. Tuve and I will have our lunch, but go ahead with your questions.”

Chee and Dashee looked at each other. Dashee shrugged.

“The trouble is what we want to discuss with Mr. Tuve is police business. It’s confidential.”

Craig smiled. “Confidential. Of course. No one will hear it except the four of us. You two, Mr. Tuve, and”—she tapped herself on her shirtfront—“myself. His legal representative.”

Chee looked skeptical, glanced at Tuve. Tuve, he thought, had the look of an athlete—short like many Hopis, hard muscles, built like a wrestler.

“Mr. Tuve. Did you retain Ms. Craig as your attorney?”

Tuve looked puzzled. “I don’t think so. I don’t have any money.”

“My work is related to the interests of a tax-exempt public charity foundation,” Craig said, her face slightly flushed. “My interest is in protecting Mr. Tuve from unjust prosecution.” She turned toward Tuve. “Mr. Tuve, do you wish to talk to these gentlemen?”

Tuve shrugged. “Sure. Why not? Looking good, Cowboy. How’d you hear about this trouble? I’ll bet my mother sent you over here to get me.”

Chee sighed, defeated. “Okay,” he said. “Ms. Craig, this is Deputy Dashee, with the Navajo County Sheriff’s Department.” Craig, he guessed, would not know Navajo County was across the border in Arizona, devoid of any jurisdiction here. “I presume you know that the only material
evidence the state has to connect Mr. Tuve with the robbery-homicide at Zuni is a diamond he attempted to pawn. We are hoping to find concrete evidence that Mr. Tuve got that diamond exactly as he claims. To check it out, we want to get some more details from him about the circumstances.”

Craig considered this. Nodded. “Have a seat,” she said. “Or join us at the table.” She moved her purse off a chair and put it on a closet shelf. The purse was a large and fashionable leather affair and it seemed to Chee remarkably heavy, even for its size.

The Clark Gable Suite offered numerous comfortable choices for seating—a richly covered sofa, three overstuffed chairs, an ottoman, and four standard dining room chairs around the table. The windows offered a view to the east and north of the mainline railroad tracks, now carrying a seemingly endless line of freight cars toward California, the traffic flowing by on Interstate Highway 40, and beyond all that the spectacular red cliffs that had attracted Hollywood here to produce its horse operas so common through the middle years of the century. Through a double doorway Chee could see into the suite’s handsome bedroom.

He selected an overstuffed chair and seated himself. Dashee, wearing a “what the hell” expression, chose the sofa.

“We’re going to ask Mr. Tuve some questions, then,” Chee said. “And it appears we have a mutual interest in the answers. But first we’d like to know why the organization you represent has a fifty-thousand-dollar interest in this.”

Joanna Craig pondered this a moment, studying Chee. “What organization is that?” she asked.

“The one you just mentioned that sent you here to protect Mr. Tuve. The one that gave you the check to pay for bonding Mr. Tuve out of jail.”

“Its identity is confidential.”

“The check you provided to pay for the bond was written on a Bank of America account. It had your name on it.”

Joanna Craig sighed, shrugged, nodded.

“Why did your employers send you here?” Chee asked. “Why do they have a fifty-thousand-dollar interest in Mr. Tuve?”

“You’ll have to ask them.” She smiled at him.

“I will,” Chee said. “Give me the name and address.”

She considered that awhile, shook her head.

“I would, but they’d just tell you it’s none of your business. Just waste your time.”

For a while the room was silent. Through the windows came the diminishing sound of thunder, already dim and distant, the jumbled noise of truck traffic on Interstate 40, and the nearer sound of cars on Railroad Avenue. Inside the room only Cowboy Dashee chuckling, and the click of his spoon as Tuve stirred sugar into his cup of coffee.

“Well, then,” Chee said. “I guess we might as well just get down to business. Mr. Tuve, would you please tell us how you got that diamond.”

“Like I already told the sheriff and that FBI man, an old man gave it to me,” Tuve said. “Didn’t look like a Hopi. Old. Had a lot of long white hair. Looked Indian, though, but maybe not. Maybe a Havasupai. They live down there in the bottom of the canyon, across the river, but they ought not be around our Salt Shrine. That’s just for Bear Clan people.”

Billy Tuve took a sip of his coffee, glowering over the rim of the cup at the thought of that.

“Let’s skip back, then,” Chee said. “Start from what you were doing down in the canyon, where you said it happened, and take it from there.”

“Some of it I can’t talk about. It’s kiva business. Secret.”

“Then when you come to the secret part, just tell it to Dashee. In Hopi. That will keep it confidential.”

“We’re both in the Bear Clan but we didn’t get initiated into the same kiva,” Tuve said. “There’s some of it I couldn’t tell him, either.”

“Well, just do what your conscience lets you do, then.”

Joanna Craig frowned.

Tuve nodded and began his account, Hopi fashion, from the beginning.

Chee slumped back into his chair, relaxing, getting comfortable, preparing for a long, long session. He’d listen carefully when Tuve got through the religious preamble and began to discuss receipt of the diamond. Until then he’d consider whether Craig was actually a lawyer. Anyone could have posted Tuve’s bond. He’d ponder what she was doing here. If the opportunity arose, he’d try to find out what caused her purse to seem so heavy, even for its size. A tape recorder? A pistol? Meanwhile, he’d enjoy himself. He concentrated on thinking about Bernadette Manuelito. Happy, happy thoughts. About fixing up his place on the San Juan with her. They’d have to move in a double bed. Couldn’t use those little narrow foldout bunks after you’re a married couple. Have to get some curtains on the windows. Things like that.