“Is he the only one with a debit card?”
“I don’t have one on that account. Not Samuel. Not even the Zombie Queen herself.”
“What about Delahart?”
“Uh . . . I don’t know.”
“You ought to find out. You might have made a faulty assumption.”
She studied her shoes for a minute.
“Whenever I talked to Delahart about money, he told me not to worry about it. He laughed at those ATM charges and said his investors would take care of everything.” She looked at Chee. “Do you think one of them shot Samuel? Or did Rhonda do it? She had as much reason as I did, and a shorter fuse.”
“None of the above.”
Melissa raised an eyebrow.
“The feds are investigating it. They’ll look at Isenberg, the father of one of those girls I talked to, the ones Samuel manhandled and embarrassed. Isenberg is furious about that, but he didn’t do it. Samuel’s death was an accident.”
“I saw you put a piece of paper in Greg’s pocket. Was it a confession? A suicide note?”
Chee considered his answer. “Ask Robinson about it when he recovers.”
“You don’t have to be cagey. I’m the gambler here, remember? I’m good at reading people and at keeping secrets. I’ll tell you what happened.”
Chee waited.
“Robinson went to talk to Delahart, man to man, to tell him Samuel was blackmailing me and that he’d taken those nasty pictures and that he planned to fire him before the production got sued, and probably turn him over to the police. He planned to tell Delahart he’d quit if Samuel stayed on.
“But Samuel answered the door, laughed in his face. Robinson got angry and said he’d call the police. Samuel pulled his gun. They struggled. Bingo.” Melissa was crying now, but she kept talking. “He didn’t mean to kill him and then he panicked afterward. It was the last straw. Money troubles and the layoffs, that stupid stunt with the grave, the production behind schedule, all of that. Robinson would have died if Rhonda hadn’t had the key to his trailer and if you hadn’t been here. And it was all because of me. If I’d only let him fire Samuel when he wanted, none of this would have happened.”
“He asked me to make sure you got this.” Chee handed her a bag he’d seen in the trailer with her name on it.
She took out a box and a small envelope, opened the envelope, read the note inside, and handed it to Chee. “Missy, none of this is your fault,” Robinson had written. “Enjoy your life and think of this beautiful place as often as you wear these.”
Inside the box were the earrings with the robin’s-egg turquoise, the ones she had started wearing after the day she and Chee stumbled over the grave.
In the tent, Rhonda and Turner were engrossed in conversation with BJ and half a dozen others. He’d wait. He pushed the button of the fancy coffee machine. This time he selected something called Ethiopian Yirgacheffe. It was great, almost as good as the coffee he remembered drinking as a boy when he helped his aunt and uncle at sheep camp each summer.
When he took Turner’s two citations out of his pocket, he found the poker chip. The chip made him think of Leaphorn’s e-mail about the necklace and the silversmith. Maybe the excellent coffee had clicked his brain into gear. He had misread the Lieutenant’s message and underestimated his mentor.
Melissa had come in and joined the meeting wearing the turquoise. Good. He finished the last of his delicious coffee and walked over to deliver the citation.
It was warm in the SUV, but Chee didn’t mind. He powered down the windows to let in the desert air and searched in his wallet for the card that the trespassing camper, Gisela, had given him. Before he left the movie parking lot—and the end of cell phone coverage—he dialed her number.
She and Heinrich were in Kayenta, staying at a motel, planning to leave in the morning.
“I’ve got something important and interesting to show you,” Chee said. “Can you meet me at Goulding’s in an hour?”
“What is this about?”
“I’ll see you up on the terrace outside the trading post.”
“Are we in trouble again?”
“No, ma’am. It will be worth your time, I promise.”
Then he made another call, this time to Bernie, to give her an update. She didn’t answer. He couldn’t wait to see her again.
He called Bahe and then Captain Largo to give him an update and arrange to get back on the schedule at Shiprock. After that, he called Haskie at Goulding’s and explained the situation.
By the time he’d done all that and driven to Goulding’s, Haskie was waiting in the hotel lobby. They walked together to the terrace, where the elderly tourists were sitting on the bench beneath a ramada. Gisela wore a sleeveless shirt that showed off her sunburn. She gave him a faint smile.
Heinrich got right to the point. “Why did you ask us to come here? Are we to be arrested?”
“No, sir. Mr. Haskie here has something that I think belongs to your wife.”
“That can’t be,” he said. “We have never come to this hotel before.”
Haskie took the bag with the necklace out of his pocket. He removed it from the plastic and put it on the table in front of Gisela. “Sergeant Chee thought you’d like to see this.”
Gisela picked it up. “Oh, it’s beautiful, but why—” She studied it for a moment, and her expression softened. She began to sob. Heinrich looked puzzled, then put his arm around her. She reached into her purse for a handkerchief and wiped her eyes. “I thought I would never touch this again.”
“There’s one thing you have to do before you can have it,” said Chee. “You have to tell us about the necklace.”
“I will tell you what I know. But where should I start the story?”
“When I met you at your campsite, you told me that your grandfather had been out here. Begin with him.”
The woman had regained her composure. “As a young man, Karl, my Grospapa, wanted to be an actor. His family found his dream quite shocking. Karl’s father served as a doctor in a little town in Missouri. He had immigrated from Germany, created a life from hard work, saving every penny he could. The idea of his son onstage, wearing a costume or a fake mustache out in California? Unsettling, unprecedented. But this was America, a new world. He let Karl sow his wild oats.”
Heinrich interrupted. “Karl became a farmer?”
“No, dear. That means he had a chance to rebel a little.” She leaned forward on the bench. “My grandfather went all the way to Los Angeles on the train. He wanted a role in a movie, and eventually he met someone who knew someone who knew John Ford. One thing led to another, and Karl had an opportunity to work on Stagecoach. He only had a small part as a cowboy, but it meant the world to him.”