Hillerman, Tony - [Leaphorn & Chee 17] by Skeleton Man (v4)

Author:Skeleton Man (v4) [html] [Man, Skeleton]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-03-20T03:30:32+00:00

13

Joanna Craig had followed Tuve on his homeward trip. His uncle had put him into a very dusty and much-dented pickup. Pickup trucks in Indian country are as common as taxicabs in Manhattan, but this one helped Joanna’s cause by carrying in its bed a huge box, big enough to house a king-sized refrigerator, with a gaudy red Kitchen Aide label.

A couple of times she’d needed the help. Tuve’s uncle had ducked into a service station at Ganado, and she would have lost him had she not seen the big box sticking up as she rolled past on the highway. She would have lost him again just past the Polacca settlement when he made a turn she hadn’t anticipated, and then been lured into following another pickup, same shade of blue, same degree of dustiness. But she had again spotted the Kitchen Aide advertisement, did an illegal U-turn across the highway, and followed the box up a narrow road that struggled up the slopes of First Mesa to serve the little stone villages of Walpi, Hano, and Sichomovi and whatever lay beyond them.

And now there it was, box and truck, parked down a short stretch of weedy track that led to a flat stone house and its supporting storage shed, sheep pen, outhouse, and the rusty remains of an earlier pickup. She saw no sign of Tuve, his uncle, or anyone else, and drove past. She found a cluster of junipers where she could park mostly out of sight and watch the house. She would wait, and worry, and reconsider her strategy for doing what she absolutely had to do, must do, was destined to do. Usually she thought of it as getting justice. When she was angry, she admitted her goal was revenge, but now that she was here, she knew it was fate. Fate had moved her along. This was the only way she could destroy Dan Plymale. And that was her dream and her destiny.

No need for the car’s air conditioner in the cool, dry air of the Hopi Mesa. She rolled down the window, got her binoculars out of the glove box, and focused on the Tuve home place. The truck was empty. Nothing stirred but a faint plume of smoke that came from the horno oven behind the house. She had already considered and rejected the idea of simply knocking on the door, introducing herself, and explaining to Tuve’s mother and uncle why she had put up bail for Billy Tuve and why she desperately needed his help. She was certain she could sway Billy—had seen the sympathy showing in his face in her hotel room. But mother and uncle were older, would be skeptical, would be more religious, would be impossible to persuade that the Salt Trail rules could be bent. She’d have to wait for an opportunity to get Billy alone. At least wait until after his uncle had left. Without someone there to interrupt her, Joanna was sure she could use that combination of his own self-interest and his sympathy for her own plight to persuade him.

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