Jack waited until she was out of hearing range and then grabbed Garrett lightly on the forearm. “What’s going here, Garrett? Can this possibly be true?”
Garrett waited until Leah sped through the wooden double doors. “If I hadn’t seen it myself, I’d be the first one to recommend a long rest in a padded room. You’ll have to see it for yourself to believe it.”
“I heard she’d been fired,” Jack said, “Leah lived and breathed that job. I wondered if maybe the shock had gotten to her.”
Garrett chuckled. “Oddly enough, she got over that pretty quick. I think the circumstances helped move her past it.”
“I never heard the story.”
“Leah got an invitation to some swanky event at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, which included a cocktail party at the Secretary of the Interior’s private home. Of course, she gets bored — and starts looking around.”
“Snooping, you mean.”
Garrett nodded. “Anyway, she opens the door to this bedroom and finds two pieces of rare pottery on a shelf. Now most people would have simply shut the door and their mouths — but not Leah. She’s telling anyone who will listen that government officials, no matter what their political ranking, had no right decorating their homes with items that should be protected at the museum.”
“Politically correct, as usual,” Jack said. “If not politically wise.”
“Exactly. So the Secretary of the Interior is forced to apologize and returns those pieces and several others back to the museum. About three months later, she’s cut loose in a ‘budget-tightening’ effort.”
Jack shook his head. “Even though she’s one of the best field archeologists in the country?”
“Her boss’s boss, the director of the BLM, fought like mad to keep her.”
“Teresa Simpson,” Jack said. “I met her once at a cocktail party in Albuquerque.”
“Apparently, the Secretary needed his pound of flesh,” Garrett said. “He issued an order to the Park Service: Leah is not allowed to conduct research, even on her own, within federal lands — which covers about ninety-nine percent of all Native American cliff dwellings. He dug up some dirt on her not following procedures or something and managed to make it stick.”
Garrett glanced toward the restaurant exit. “Since her dad died, she’s been obsessed with continuing his work, regardless of the cost.”
“Don’t I know it,” Jack felt his knees getting weak; he looked down at the tiles, unable to meet Garrett’s gaze, he still felt as if he bore the responsibility for her dad’s death.
“The dwelling we found lends more credence to his theories,” Garrett said. “Native Americans were using the caverns for more than shelter or the occasional marauding group of bandits. They were scared of something worse than that. We think.”
“And this is tied to rare granite crystals taken from the most inhospitable spot on the planet?” Jack asked. “Oh, and pictographs showing the same?”
Garrett tilted his head toward the front door of the restaurant. “She’s the real deal and has a nose like a bloodhound.”
“How come you let her order you around half the New Mexico desert nearly every weekend?”
To Jack’s surprise, Garrett’s eyes softened. “Her dad, my dad, it’s a long story.”
“I’m listening.”
“Well, Leah wasn’t the first kid her dad started dragging around the desert. My dad, when he was sober, was a helluva reservation blacksmith.” Garrett shook his head. “Problem was he ended up drinking most of the time. He got to roughing up my mother and me regular. It just so happened, I was sitting in my dad’s old truck one day in town, when I was about twelve, and he was drunk as a skunk, screaming and yelling to beat the band. I think I’d changed the radio station or something, I can’t even remember. Anyway, after about the third slap, I see the driver’s door open and there’s this huge man with flaming red hair, towering over my dad, holding him down on the pavement.”
“Duncan Andrews,” Jack said.
“Yep.”
“Never a good idea to piss that man off.”
Garrett chuckled. “Fortunately for Leah, she just got his Irish temper, not his looks or size.” He glanced at the floor. “That was the only time I ever saw my dad scared, when Duncan had him down on the pavement. He told my dad how far down a mine shaft he might find himself if Duncan ever saw him abusing anyone again. Then he took me out and bought me a chocolate milkshake. The first one I ever had. It wasn’t too much after that I started hanging out over at the Andrews house as much as I could. Leah was just three or four at the time. Duncan took me out into the desert on his archeological adventures. I hate to say it, but as a Navajo, most of my role models, like my dad, didn’t give me much pride in my own culture. Duncan made my ancestors sound like a race of kings, you know?”
“He knew how to bring them alive, that’s for sure,” Jack said.
“When I turned eighteen, I joined the Air Force and spent twenty years as an aircraft mechanic. I retired a couple of years ago, just about the time you two went your separate ways. I bought a little ranch outside of town. In my spare time I rebuilt an old Cessna 172 and got my pilot’s license.” He smiled wistfully. “Every time Leah calls, and I think about kicking back with a cold beer, I hear the old man’s voice in my head. The next thing you know, we’re loaded up in my Cessna and Leah’s shouting directions like General Patton.” Garrett looked toward the door again. “You know, I’ve got this feeling about that Leah. She’s gonna figure out those cliff dwellers. I feel it.”
Jack nodded. “I remember when Leah had the temporary lecturing gig at UNM and helped out some student. I was so busy getting the climbing business profitable I wasn’t paying much attention. Is that the football player I’ve been hearing about?”
“That’s him,” Garrett replied. “Juan Cortez never had anyone take an interest in him. He was always the fat kid in school with poor Mexican-American parents. The only thing he thought he had football. That was his entire identity. After he blew out the knee, the school didn’t have any use for him. Juan started hanging out in front of the student union, his leg in a cast, wondering what he was going to do next. One day Leah stopped and asked him what the hell he was doing, wasn’t he supposed to be in class?”
“Just like Leah,” Jack said, “always checking up on everyone.”
“He told her about being a football player and blowing out the knee and how all he ever wanted was to be an NFL player…sobbing in his soup. She said it sounded like he needed a swift kick in the ass, and she was just the person to do it.”
Jack chuckled. “Leah and her one hundred pounds are going to give the 300-pound football player a butt-whipping.”
Garrett grinned. “She told him to show up at her office that afternoon. Surprisingly, he did, complete with crutches. Leah reviewed his records. He was on a full football scholarship, but because he hadn’t maintained a minimum grade point average, it was being yanked.”
Jack shook his head. “Odd how they always seem to do that after an injury keeps them off the football field.”
Garrett nodded and then continued. “Leah gets a burr under her saddle and takes Juan on as a personal project. She raises holy hell with the school administration, says throwing away students when they’re no longer making the school money is wrong. So the university agreed to extend his scholarship.” Garrett laughed. “Juan instantly becomes the only former college All-American in the Native American Studies program.”
“Was he interested in Native American Studies?”
“No, but every time he missed a class, Leah would show up at his dorm yelling, ‘Where’s Juan Cortez? I’m looking for Juan Cortez!’”