Anyway, old friend, take care of yourself. See you soon, I hope. Will exchange progress reports with you.” Leaphorn clicked off the phone and sat looking at it, considering Louisa’s tone when she said “Anyway, old friend.” And thinking maybe she was right about cell phones. It was handy to have one with you. He slipped it into his jacket pocket. Unless he was kidding himself, Louisa’s tone had sounded very affectionate, sort of sen-timental, which was good. What was bad was that she wouldn’t be at the house when he got home. It would be empty, silent, cold. He sighed. No reason to hurry home.
Maybe he would find someone at this collection of tribal weavers and the buyers of their work who could tell him something additional about the tale-teller rug. Or maybe he’d meet some old timers to talk to. Maybe, for exam-THE SHAPE SHIFTER
151
ple, the auctioneer who always handled this might know something useful.
Leaphorn entered the auditorium and saw that conversation would have to wait. On the stage the auctioneer was a lanky, raw-boned middle-ager wearing the same oversized reservation hat with the same silver-decorated hatband Leaphorn remembered seeing him with at earlier auctions. He was instructing two teenagers who were helping him sort out weavings on the table beside his podium. Leaphorn stood just inside the rear entrance door of the auditorium and inspected the crowd.
As was customary, both sides were lined with chairs, mostly occupied by women—about half were the weavers who had come to watch the rugs, saddle blankets, scarves, and wall hangings, on which they had spent untold hours creating, have their value measured in belagaana dollars. And, as was usual, the other half of the audience was composed of potential customers holding the white paddles marked with the big black numbers that would be recorded with their bids. Leaphorn gave that group only a cursory scanning, and focused on the tables by the entrance. There potential bidders were inspecting scores of weavings that would be moved to the stage for auction-ing a little later. And there would be the old-time dealers of such items in the tourist shops of Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Scottsdale, Flagstaff, and all such places where tourists stopped in to find themselves a relic of Native Ameri-cana. Among those old timers, Leaphorn hoped to locate someone he knew, and someone who might know something about what he had come to think of as “that damned rug.”
He spotted two such men. One, a tall, slender man 152
TONY HILLERMAN
wearing a black turtleneck sweater and a neatly trimmed goatee, was heavily engaged in discussing a very large and ornate New Lands rug with an elderly woman. Probably not helpful because Leaphorn had once testified on the other side of a legal action involving sale of Navajo artifacts in his Santa Fe shop. The other man was exactly the person Leaphorn had hoped to see—the operator of Desert Country Arts and Crafts in Albuquerque’s Old Town district. He was short, substantially over the recommended weight for his height, and was bent over a Two Grey Hills carpet, examining it with a magnifying glass.
Burlander was his name, Leaphorn remembered. Octa-vius Burlander.
Leaphorn stopped beside him, waiting. Burlander glanced at him. His eyebrows raised.
“Mr. Burlander,” Leaphorn said, “if you have a little time, I have a question for you?”
Burlander straightened to his full five feet five inches, smiled at Leaphorn, stuck his magnifying glass in his jacket pocket. “Officer,” he said. “The answer is, I am not guilty. Not this time anyway. And, yes, this rug is a genuine Two Grey Hills weaving, unimpaired by any chemical dyes or other indecencies.”
Leaphorn nodded. “And my question is whether you could tell me anything about an old, old rug supposedly woven about a hundred and fifty years ago. It was apparently a tale-teller rug, full of sorrowful memories of the Navajo Long Walk, and was supposed to have been destroyed in a trading post fire a long time—”
“At Totter’s place,” Burlander said, grinning at Leaphorn. “But us people in the business always figured the bastard looted his place himself before he burned it down, THE SHAPE SHIFTER
153
and that famous Woven Sorrow rug was the first thing he stole.”
“You have time to tell me about it?”
“Sure,” Burlander said. “If you’ll tell me what you’re doing here. Which one of us in this crowd—” Burlander used both of his short, burly arms in an all-encompassing gesture—“is being investigated by the legendary lieutenant of the Navajo Tribal Police.”
“Nobody,” Leaphorn said. “I’m a civilian now.”
“Heard you’d retired,” Burlander said. “Didn’t believe it. But what about that rug? I never did believe Totter let it burn.”
“Did you know him?”
Burlander grinned. “Just by reputation. He was a relative newcomer out here. Supposed to have come in from California. Bought that old half-abandoned trading post, put in the art gallery. Had a reputation for faking stuff. You know they say bad news travels fast and far. But I hadn’t heard anything about him since the fire.”
“Obituary notice in the Gallup Independent reported he died in Oklahoma City, a few years after that fire. It said he was a veteran, was buried in the VA cemetery.”
“I never heard about that. Guess I shouldn’t have been talking ill about the dead. But what do you want to know about that old rug?”
“First of all,” Leaphorn said, “do you think it survived that fire? If it did, do you think it could be copied? Do you think what I heard about it being sold at the Santa Fe Indian market after the fire could be true? And anything else you know.”
Burlander was laughing. “Be damned,” he said. “I haven’t heard that old rug mentioned for years until this 154
TONY HILLERMAN
very morning. Then old George Jessup over there—” Burlander nodded toward the Santa Fe dealer whom Leaphorn had noticed checking New Lands rugs “—well, he asked me if I’d heard it was going to be for sale. Going to be auctioned—e-Bayed, maybe, or maybe Sotheby’s, or some other auction company like that. He asked me if I’d heard about it. I hadn’t. He said all he knew was what a fellow he knows in Phoenix had told him about it. Wanted to know what I thought it would be worth. And if I would bid on it.”
“Would you? And how much would it be worth?”
“No,” Burlander said. “Well, I don’t think so. But if there could be any sort of documentation of all those tales that are told about it, it would bring big money from some collectors.” Burlander made a wry face. “There’s some real freaks out there.”
“A man in Flagstaff owns it now,” Leaphorn said.
“That, or a copy of it. He told me he was thinking about getting rid of it. Which brings me to my other question.
He said he had bought it a long time ago at that market under the porch of the Palace of Governors in Santa Fe.
Where the Pueblo Indians hold their market. What do you think of that story?”
“Well,” Burlander said, frowning, “it sounds sort of wild to me. You don’t see the really old, really expensive things being dealt with there.”
“That occurred to me,” Leaphorn said.
“But, hell, anything’s possible in this business. That would seem to mean that Totter had sneaked it out of his gallery before he burned the place. Got somebody to sell it for him. Who did this Flagstaff owner buy it from? And who is he?”
THE SHAPE SHIFTER
155
“His name’s Jason Delos,” Leaphorn said. “Elderly fellow. Wealthy. Does a lot of big-game hunting. Came from the West Coast, so I hear, and bought a big house up in the San Francisco Peaks just outside Flagstaff.”