"What next? You tell him no deal?"
"I told him to go to hell. Get out of my house and take his garbage with him. And he accused me of being a welcher. Said he'd given me his location of the Golden Calf and he wasn't leaving without me signing his contract and him walking off with the fifty grand. Well, we exchanged a word or two, and he pulled that pistol out of his jacket pocket and was going to shoot me. So I said to hell with it. I'd sign the paper, he should just take the money and get out. I reached in my desk drawer like I was getting my pen, and got my pistol out and shot him. I don't usually keep a gun in here, but with all that cash in the house, it seemed like a pretty good idea."
Another long pause with Denton either remembering the moment or, Leaphorn thought, perhaps deciding what else to tell and what to leave out. Denton shook his head.
"I yelled for Mrs. Mendoza to come, but she'd heard the shot and was already on her way. I checked to see if McKay was dead. She called nine one one and reported it. The ambulance came, and the sheriff's deputies. And that was pretty well it."
Denton stood, looking down at Leaphorn. "Well, what do you think? You going to give me some help?"
"We need to fill in some blanks before I decide. I want you to answer some questions."
"Like what?"
"Like where was your wife while all this was happening? She said she was coming home after lunch."
"I don't know where she was. I thought she might have stopped off to do some shopping, but usually she told me if she was doing that."
"Did she take anything with her? A big handbag, anything that would hold stuff if she was going to be gone for, ah, say, overnight?"
Denton drew in a long breath. "That was the last time I saw Linda," he said, "and I've been over it many a time. It was a sort of chilly, breezy day, and she had on a tweed-looking skirt, and a jacket, and was carrying her little purse and one of those little radio tape players. I gave it to her for her birthday. What do they call them? They have headphones so you can listen to music or whatever while you're walking."
"Just carrying a regular purse?"
"That's all."
"She was driving herself?"
"Yeah. She had a little Honda. Same one she was driving when we got married. When they had me in jail waiting the court hearing, I called Mrs. Mendoza or George Billie every day to see if they'd heard from Linda, and George said her Honda had turned up in the parking lot at the mall. He got someone to drive it back to the house."
"Nothing in it?"
Denton shrugged. "Just the regular stuff. Road maps in the side pocket, sunglasses, package of tissues, usual stuff." He made a wry face. "I asked George about that little radio tape player. Thought he might have got off with it, to tell the truth. A very pricey little gadget. I saw it advertised in one of those airline shopping-mall magazines. Think it was Cutting Edge, or Sharper Edge. Something like. Very high tech. Played disks as well as tape. Linda was into disks. Loved music."
"George didn't steal it?"
"He said he didn't. Got pissed off when I asked him. Said Linda wouldn't have taken it along with her if she didn't intend to listen to it. Good point, I guess. In the car she had the car radio, but it didn't play her disks."
"It hasn't turned up anywhere?"
"I had the pawn shops checked," Denton said. "Nothing."
"You said McKay called you. Said he'd be late. You're not listed in the telephone book, and I've been told you never give anybody your telephone number."
"He'd gotten it from Linda."
That produced a long silence.
"When? That day?"
"No. No." Denton said. "When they first got acquainted down at the café. I guess you've heard how friendly she was with everybody when she was working down there." He produced a humorless laugh. "Including me. Anyway, she heard him talking about prospecting and the hunt for old gold digs, and she told him about me being interested in that. And he said he'd like to compare notes with me, and she said why didn't he call me about it."
"Is that your only number?"
"It used to be. But after I was in jail and found out she hadn't come home and started running those advertisements asking her to call, I put in the other line." Denton pointed. "It's that phone on the little desk over there."
"Was anyone with McKay when he got here?"
"Just him."
"No one came in the car with him?"
Denton stared at Leaphorn.
"I didn't see him drive up. He pushed the button at the gate, and I pushed the button in here to open it. Then Mrs. Mendoza let him in when he rang the bell."
Denton turned and yelled down the halclass="underline" "Gloria, can you bring us another round of coffee?" He faced Leaphorn again, frowning. "What are you getting at? You think he had a partner?"
"You sure he didn't?"
"Well, no. Not sure. No way to be certain. But why would he? Are you thinking Linda might have worked with him?"
"McKay had been out at Fort Wingate that afternoon. He had a woman in the car with him."
Denton looked startled. "Who? Where'd you hear that?"
"The clerk in the records office just got a glimpse of her. When she suggested McKay bring her in, he said it was his wife, and she was sleeping."
"You think it was Linda?"
"I have no idea who it was," Leaphorn said. "I'm just asking questions. Working a jigsaw puzzle with some missing pieces. Linda originally met McKay at the café? That right? He talked to her about gold-mine legends. She told him about your interests and gave him your number. So Linda sort of got the two of you together. Didn't you have any suspicions about that?"
"Never. Absolutely damned never."
"Those days after the shooting, when you were wondering what happened to her, it would have been natural to think about that when you were—"
"No sir," said Denton. "It wouldn't have been natural. Not for me, it wouldn't have been. I knew her. She loved me. Anything she would have done, it would have been because she thought it would help me."
"And that time in prison. Not a call. Not a postcard. Nothing. It's hard to believe—"
"Mr. Leaphorn," Denton said, his voice strained. He walked to the wall of windows and stood looking out. "You ever loved anybody?" he asked. "People talk about people, and you got to be sort of legendary, and so you got talked about a lot. They said you really loved your wife."
"I did."
"Well, maybe you can understand this, then. If I can figure out how to tell you."
It proved to be a long story. Denton described himself as an old bachelor, the only child of a preacher who moved too often to give a boy a chance to make friends even if he'd been good at making them. Being bashful, being homely, he'd never really had a girlfriend—at least not the kind you'd want to have much to do with. By the time he had gotten lucky in the lease-buying business, he'd written himself off as a lifelong bachelor. He said when he saw Linda waiting tables at the café where he often lunched, he was solidly set in his loner ways. But she was beautiful and kind and friendly, and she never seemed to notice he was homely, and they gradually got acquainted. It turned out she'd lived in Wyoming before her family moved to New Mexico, and one snowy day when nobody was eating lunch there, she told him about once getting snowbound at their place near Cody, and he told her about spending two days trying to keep from freezing in his stuck pickup truck out on a drilling lease.
"I don't know how the hell it ever happened," Denton said, "but we got to be really friends. She'd ask me questions and get me talking about trying to get a wildcat well drilled, and the bad guesses I'd made, and the thrill of seeing a big well come in up in the Texas Panhandle when I was flat broke. All that sort of stuff. She was going to school part-time then at the University of New Mexico branch here, and having trouble with a geology course. I helped her with that, and before long it dawned on me. Crazy as it was, I was in love with her."