Leaphorn stopped. "McKay was an ex-con with a record of trying to run con games. That didn't seem to leave much to investigate."
"Yeah," Chee said. "That's the way I remember it. But how does this bring us to Linda Denton? The story was she wasn't home when it happened."
"Denton said she'd gone to have lunch with some friends and wasn't there when it happened and never did come back. He said he was worried. Couldn't imagine what had happened to her." Leaphorn made a wry face. "It seemed pretty easy to guess if you remember the circumstances. Turned out Linda had introduced McKay to her husband. Denton said she'd met McKay before she married him. Met him at that bar-grill where she used to wait tables."
Their waiter came and refilled their cups. Leaphorn picked his up, looked at it, returned it to the saucer. "And she never did come back. Ever. Not a word. Not a trace."
It sounded sad, the way he said it, and Chee asked: "Didn't that seem natural? Young gal working in a bar meets a rich guy about thirty years older, bags him, then decides he's too boring for her taste so she locks onto a slick-talking young con man to get the old bird's money. It turns into a homicide with her maybe facing some sort of conspiracy charge. So she runs."
"That's the way I read it at first," Leaphorn said. "Lorenzo wanted to find her. See what she had to say. I started on it. Went out to see her folks at Thoreau. Couple named Verbiscar. They were frantic. Said she would never leave Denton. Loved him. Something had to have happened to her."
Chee nodded. It seemed to him about the sort of response you'd expect from the woman's parents. And he noticed Leaphorn had sensed his attitude.
"They sat me down and told me her story," Leaphorn said. "Great kid. Went to the St. Bonaventure School there. Real bookish girl and very much into music. Not much for boyfriends. Good grades. Scholarship offers from University of Arizona, couple of other places. But her dad had a heart problem. So Linda Verbiscar turned the scholarship down and enrolled at the u.n.m. branch at Gallup. She got herself that restaurant waitress job. She and another girl from Thoreau rented themselves a little place out on Railroad Avenue. Brought home a boyfriend once for them to look over but decided he was sort of stupid. Then she brought Wiley Denton out to meet them."
Leaphorn paused, the polite Navajo gesture to give the listener a chance to comment.
Chee tried to think of something sensible to say, and came up with: "Linda doesn't sound like the kind of woman I had in mind."
Leaphorn nodded.
"They said it scared 'em to death when she showed up with Wiley Denton. She was twenty then and he was early fifties. Older than her dad, in fact. Big, homely, rich old guy." Leaphorn chuckled. "Verbiscar said they knew he hadn't been born rich because he had the kind of broken nose that can't be overlooked and is easy to fix if you can pay the surgeon. All they really knew about him was he had been in the Green Berets in the Vietnam War, made a ton of money off oil and gas leases out around the Jicarilla Reservation and built himself that huge house on the slope outside Gallup. That, and everybody said he was an eccentric sort of loner."
Leaphorn stopped again, drank coffee. Looked over the cup at Chee. "Did you ever meet him?"
"Denton? No. I just saw him on television a time or two. At the sentencing, I guess. I just remember thinking if they had charged him with being ugly he was guilty."
"Well, Mrs. Verbiscar said they got invited to a meal at his house and the big impression he made on her was that he was bashful. She said she noticed he had a grand piano in the living room and asked him if he played and he said no, he'd bought that for Linda to play if he could get her to marry him. She said he seemed real shy. Sort of clumsy. Nothing much to say."
Chee laughed. "What some people would call 'deficient in social graces.'"
"I guess," Leaphorn said. "He seemed that way to me when I interviewed him with Lorenzo Perez. But to get on with this, both of Linda's parents said they liked him. Way too old for their daughter, but she seemed to love him dearly. And a little after she turned twenty-one she said she wanted to marry him. And she did. Catholic wedding. Flower girls, ushers, the whole business."
"Now the bad part starts," Chee said. "Am I right?"
Leaphorn shook his head. "Unless a lot of people were lying to me that didn't start until the day Denton killed the swindler. But I was thinking like you are. When she went missing, I went to talk to people who knew her."
Leaphorn's first call had been on the woman Linda Verbiscar had lived with in Gallup. Linda and Denton were a match made in heaven, she'd said. Linda didn't date much. Uneasy with men. Sex would wait until she met the right man, and married him, and then it would be forever. But something about Denton, homely as he was, attracted her right away. And awkward and bashful as he was, you saw it was mutual.
"According to her roommate, Miss Verbiscar seemed to like the awkward and bashful types," Leaphorn said, and chuckled. "And broken noses. The only other man she seemed real friendly with was a Navajo. Couldn't remember his name, but she remembered the crooked nose. She said Linda never went out with him, but he'd come in the place middle of afternoons when it was quiet. He'd get a doughnut or something and Linda would sit down and talk to him. Nothing going there, but with Denton it got to be real, genuine, romantic love."
Leaphorn paused with that, looked thoughtful. "Or, so her roommate said."
"Okay," said Chee. "Maybe I've been too cynical."
And then Leaphorn had gone to Denton's massive riverside house and talked to his housekeeper and his foreman. It was the same story, with a variation—the variation being that now Denton was falling deeply in love. Obsessively in love, the housekeeper had said, because Mr. Denton was an extremely focused man who tended to be obsessive. His overpowering obsession had been to find that legendary mine. Which was what the housekeeper and the foreman said got him into the trouble with McKay. But the bottom line was, there was no way they would believe the official police theory. Linda would never, never leave Wiley Denton. Something had happened to her. Something bad. The police should stop screwing around and find her.
While Leaphorn talked, Chee finished his hamburger, and his coffee, and another cup. The waiter left his ticket and disappeared. The gusty wind rattled sand against the window where they sat. And finally Leaphorn sighed.
"I talk too damn much. Blame it on being retired, sitting around the house with nobody to listen to me. But I wanted you to see why I think there was more to that killing than we knew."
"I can see that," Chee said. "Any chance they thought Denton might have figured Linda had sold him out? Bumped her off in the famous jealous rage?"
"I asked 'em both. They said she'd left to go downtown to have lunch with some lady friends that morning. Usual huggy-kissy good-bye at the car with Wiley. Then about middle of the afternoon Denton had asked if she had called. He was wondering why she was late. Held up dinner for her. Then McKay showed up. The help told Perez they'd heard McKay and Denton talking in the den, and then the talking got loud, and then they heard the shot."
Leaphorn paused, looking for comment.