It was the wrong thing to say. She was crying as she drove away.
Chee stood there, watching her motor pool sedan speed toward the U.S. 666 junction and the route to Window Rock. He didn't want to think about this. It was confusing. And it hurt. Instead he thought of a question he should have asked Pedwell. Had Randall Elliot also filed an application to dig in that now-despoiled site where Etcitty and Nails had died?
He walked back into the station, remembering those jawbones so carefully set aside amid the chaos.
Chapter Sixteen
Ť ^ ť
TO LEAPHORN, the saddle had seemed a promising possibility. She had borrowed it from a biologist named Arnold, who lived in Bluff. Other trails led to Bluff. The site of the polychrome pots seemed to be somewhere west of the town, in roadless country where a horse would be necessary. She would go to Arnold's place. If he could loan her a saddle, he could probably loan her a horse. From Arnold he would learn where Eleanor Friedman-Bernal had headed. The first step was finding Arnold, which shouldn't be difficult.
It wasn't. The Recapture Lodge had been Bluff's center of hospitality for as long as Leaphorn could remember. The man at the reception desk loaned Leaphorn his telephone to call Chee. Chee confirmed what Leaphorn had feared. Whether or not Dr. Friedman was killing pot hunters, her pistol was. The man at the desk also knew Arnold.
'Bo Arnold,' he said. 'Scientists around here are mostly anthropologists or geologists, but Dr. Arnold is a lichen man. Botanist. Go up to where the highway bends left, and take the right toward Montezuma Creek. It's the little redbrick house with lilac bushes on both sides of the gate. Except I think Bo let the lilacs die. He drives a Jeep. If he's home, you'll see it there.'
The lilacs were indeed almost dead, and a dusty early-model Jeep was parked in the weeds beside the little house. Leaphorn parked beside it and stepped out of his pickup into a gust of chilly, dusty wind. The front door opened just as he walked up the porch steps. A lanky man in jeans and faded red shirt emerged. 'Yessir,' he said. 'Good morning.' He was grinning broadly, an array of white teeth in a face of weathered brown leather.
'Good morning,' Leaphorn said. 'I'm looking for Dr. Arnold.'
'Yessir,' the man said. 'That's me.' He stuck out a hand, which Leaphorn shook. He showed Arnold his identification.
'I'm looking for Dr. Eleanor Friedman-Bernal,' Leaphorn said.
'Me too,' Arnold said enthusiastically. 'That biddy got off with my kayak and didn't bring it back.'
'Oh,' Leaphorn said. 'When?'
'When I was gone,' Arnold said, still grinning. 'Caught me away from home, and off she goes with it.'
'I want to hear all about that,' Leaphorn said.
Arnold held the door wide, welcomed Leaphorn in with a sweep of his hand. Inside the front door was a room crowded with tables, each table crowded with rocks of all sizes and shapes--their only common denominator being lichens. They were covered with these odd plants in every shade from white through black. Arnold led Leaphorn past them, down a narrow hall.
'No place to sit in there,' he said. 'That's where I work. Here's where I live.'
Where Arnold lived was a small bedroom. Every flat surface, including the narrow single bed, was covered with boards on which flat glass dishes were lined. The dishes had something in them that Leaphorn assumed must be lichens. 'Let me make you a place,' Arnold said, and cleared off chairs for each of them.
'Why you looking for Ellie?' he asked. 'She been looting ruins?' And he laughed.
'Does she do that?'
'She's an anthropologist,' Arnold said, his chuckle reduced again to a grin. 'You translate the word from academic into English and that's what it means: ruins looter, one who robs graves, preferably old ones. Well-educated person who steals artifact in dignified manner.' Arnold, overcome by the wit of this, laughed. 'Somebody else does it, they call `em vandals. That's the word for the competition. Somebody gets there first, gets off with the stuff before the archaeologists can grab it, they call 'em Thieves of Time.' His vision of such hypocrisy left him in high good humor, as did the thought of his missing kayak.
'Tell me about that,' Leaphorn said. 'How do you know she took it?'
'She left a full, signed confession,' Arnold said, fumbling in a box from which assorted scraps of papers overflowed. He extracted a small sheet of lined yellow notepaper and handed it to Leaphorn.
Here's your saddle, a year older but no worse for wear. (I sold that damned horse.) To keep you caring about me, I am now borrowing your kayak. If you don't get back before I do, ignore the last part of this note because I will put the kayak right back in the garage where I got it and you'll never know it was gone.
Don't let any lichens grow on you! Love, Ellie
Leaphorn handed it back to him. 'When did she leave it?'
'I just know when I found it. I'd been up there on Lime Ridge collecting specimens for a week or so and when I got back, the saddle was on the floor in the workroom up front with this note pinned on it. Looked in the garage, and the kayak was gone.'
'When?' Leaphorn repeated.
'Oh,' Arnold said. 'Let's see. Almost a month ago.'
Leaphorn told him the date Eleanor Friedman-Bernal had made her early-morning departure from Chaco Canyon. 'That sound right?'
'I think I got back on a Monday or Tuesday. Three or four days after that.'
'So the saddle might have been sitting there three or four days?'
'Could have been.' Arnold laughed again. 'Don't have a cleaning lady coming in. Guess you noticed that.'
'How did she get in?'
'Key's over there under the flower box,' Arnold said. 'She knew where. Been here before. Go all the way back to the University of Wisconsin.' Abruptly Arnold's amusement evaporated. His bony, sun-beaten face became somber. 'She's really missing? People worried about her? She didn't just walk off for a few days of humanity?'
'I think it's serious,' Leaphorn said. 'Almost a month. And she left too much behind. Where would she go in your kayak?'
Arnold shook his head. 'Just one place to go. Downstream. I use it to play around with. Like a toy. But she'd have been going down the river. Plenty of sites along the river until you get into the deep canyon where there's nothing to live on. And then there's hundreds of ruins up the side canyons.' There was no humor at all left in Arnold's face. He looked at least his age, which Leaphorn guessed at forty. He looked worn and worried.
'Ceramics. That's what Ellie would be looking for. Potsherds.' He paused, stared at Leaphorn. 'I guess you know we had a man killed here just the other day. Man named Houk. The son of a bitch was a notorious pot dealer. Somebody shot him. Any connection?'
'Who knows?' Leaphorn said. 'Maybe so. You have any more specific idea where she took your kayak?'
'Nothing more than I said. She borrowed it
before and went down into the canyons. Just poking around in the ruins looking at the potsherds. I'd guess she did it again.'
'Any idea how far down?'
'She'd ask me to pick her up the next evening at the landing upstream from the bridge at Mexican Hat. Only place to get off the river for miles. So it would have to be between Sand Island and Hat.'
Her car too could be found between Sand Island and Mexican Hat, Leaphorn was sure. She would have to have hauled the kayak within dragging distance of the river. But there was no reason now to look for the car.
'That narrows it down quite a bit,' Leaphorn said, thinking Ellie's trips were into the area Etcitty had described in his falsified documentation, the area Amos Whistler had pointed to in his talk with Chee. He would find a boat and go looking for Arnold's kayak. Maybe, when he found it, he would find Eleanor Friedman, and what Harrison Houk meant in that unfinished note. '⌠shes still alive up.' But first he wanted a look at that barn.