Leaphorn's first inclination had been to write Christopher Peabody a polite "thanks but no thanks" and recommend he find his client a licensed private investigator instead of a former cop.
But…
There was the fact that Peabody, surely the senior partner, had signed the letter himself, and the business of having his circumspection rated impeccable, and—most important of all—the "sense of urgency" note, which made the woman's problem sound interesting. Leaphorn needed something interesting. He'd soon be finishing his first year of retirement from the Navajo Tribal Police. He'd long since run out of things to do. He was bored.
And so he'd called Mr. Peabody back and here he was, driver pushing the proper button, gate sliding silently open, rolling past lush landscaping toward a sprawling two-story house—its tan plaster and brick copings declaring it to be what Santa Feans call "Territorial Style" and its size declaring it a mansion.
The driver opened the door for Leaphorn. A young man wearing a faded blue shirt and jeans, his blond hair tied in a pigtail, stood smiling just inside the towering double doors.
"Mr. Leaphorn," he said. "Mrs. Vanders is expecting you." Millicent Vanders was waiting in a room that Leaphorn's experience with movies and television suggested was either a study or a sitting room. She was a frail little woman standing beside a frail little desk, supporting herself with the tips of her fingers on its polished surface. Her hair was almost white and the smile with which she greeted him was pale.
"Mr. Leaphorn," she said. "How good of you to come. How good of you to help me."
Leaphorn, with no idea yet whether he would help her or not, simply returned the smile and sat in the chair to which she motioned.
"Would you care for tea? Or coffee? Or some other refreshment? And should I call you Mr. Leaphorn, or do you prefer 'Lieutenant'?"
"Coffee, thank you, if it's no trouble." Leaphorn said. And it's mister. I've retired from the Navajo Tribal Police."
Millicent Vanders looked past him toward the door-. "Coffee then, and tea," she said. She sat herself behind the desk with a slow, careful motion that told Leaphorn his hostess had one or other of the hundred forms of arthritis. But she smiled again, a signal meant to be reassuring. Leaphorn detected pain in it. He'd become very good at that sort of detection while he was watching his wife die. Emma, holding his hand, telling him not to worry, pretending she wasn't in pain, promising that someday soon she'd be well again.
Mrs. Vanders was sorting through papers on her desk, arranging them in a folder, untroubled by the lack of conversation. Leaphorn had found this unusual among whites and admired it when he saw it. She extracted two eight-by-en photographs from an envelope, examined one, added it to the folder, then examined the other. A thump broke the silence—a careless pifion jay colliding with a windowpane fled in wobbling flight. Mrs. Vanders continued her contemplation of the photo, lost in some remembered sorrow undisturbed by the bird or by Leaphorn watching her. An interesting person, Leaphorn thought.
A plump young woman appeared at his elbow bearing a tray. She placed a napkin, saucer, cup, and spoon on the table beside him, filled the cup from a white china pot then repeated the process at the desk, pouring the tea from a silver container. Mrs. Vanders interrupted her contemplation of the photo, slid it into the folder, handed it to the woman.
"Ella," she said. "Would you give this, please, to Mr. Leaphorn?"
Ella handed it to Leaphorn and left as silently as she had come. He put the folder on his lap, sipped his coffee, the cup was translucent china, thin as paper. The coffee was hot, fresh, and excellent.
Mrs. Vanders was studying him. "Mr. Leaphorn," she said, "I asked you to come here because I hope you will agree to do something for me."
"I might agree," Leaphorn said. "What would it be?"
"Everything has to be completely confidential," Mrs. Vanders said. "You would communicate only to me Not to my lawyers. Not to anyone else."
Leaphorn considered this, sampled the coffee again, Put down the cup. "Then I might not be able to help you." Mrs. Vanders looked surprised. "Why not?"
"I've spent most of my life being a policeman," Leaphorn said. "If what you have in mind causes me to discover anything illegal, then—"
"If that happened, I would report it to the authorities," she said rather stiffly.
Leaphorn allowed the typical Navajo moments of silence to make certain that Mrs. Vanders had said all she wanted to say. She had, but his lack of response touched a nerve.
"Of course I would," she added. "Certainly."
"But if you didn't for some reason, you understand that I would have to do it. Would you agree to that?"
She stared at Leaphorn. Then she nodded. "I think we are creating a problem where none exists."
"Probably," Leaphorn said.
"I would like you to locate a young woman. Or, failing that, discover what happened to her."
She gestured toward the folder. Leaphorn opened it. The top picture was a studio portrait of a dark-haired, dark-eyed woman wearing a mortarboard. The face was narrow and intelligent, the expression somber. Not a girl who would have been called "cute," Leaphorn thought. Nor pretty either, for that matter. Handsome, perhaps. Full of character. Certainly it would be an easy face to remember. The next picture was of the same woman, wearing jeans and a jean jacket now, leaning on the door of a Pickup truck and looking back at the camera. She had the look of an athlete, Leaphorn thought, and was older in this one. Perhaps in her early thirties. On the back of each photograph the same name was written: Catherine Anne.
Leaphorn glanced at Mrs. Vanders.
"My niece," she said. "The only child of my late sister."
Leaphorn returned the photos to the folder and »ok out a sheaf of papers, clipped together. The top one ad biographical details.
Catherine Anne Pollard was the full name. The birth-ate made her thirty-three, the birthplace was Arlington, Virginia, the current address Flagstaff, Arizona.
"Catherine studied biology," Mrs. Vanders said. "She specialized in mammals and insects. She was working r the Indian Health Service, but actually I think it's ore for the Arizona Health Department. The environment division. They call her a ‘vector control specialist.' I imagine you would know about that?"
Leaphorn nodded.
Mrs. Vanders made a wry face. "She says they actually call her a 'fleacatcher.'
"I think she could have had a good career as a tennis player. On the tour, you know. She always loved orts. Soccer, striker on the college volleyball team, hen she was in junior high school she worried about being bigger than the other girls. I think excelling in orts was her compensation for that." Leaphorn nodded again.
"The first time she came to see me after she got this, I asked for her job title, and she said 'fleacatcher.'" Vanders's expression was sad. "Called herself that, I guess she doesn't mind."
"It's an important job," Leaphorn said.
"She wanted a career in biology. But 'fleacatcher'?" Mrs. Vanders shook her head. "I understand that she and some others were working on the source of those bubonic plague cases this spring. They have a little laboratory in Tuba City and check places where the victims might have picked up the disease. Trapping rodents." Mrs. Vanders hesitated, her face reflecting distaste. "That's the flea catching. They collect the fleas from them. And take samples of their blood. That sort of thing." She dismissed this with a wave of the hand.
"Then last week, early in the morning, she went to work and never came back."
She let that hang there, her eyes on Leaphorn.
"She left for work alone?"
"Alone. That's what they say. I'm not so sure."
Leaphorn would come back to that later. Now he needed basic facts. Speculation could wait.