As they were finishing, he heard the chime of the doorbell, probably someone wanting to convert them politically or spiritually, he thought. Louisa, both gracious and curious, rose to check on it. He recognized the second woman’s voice, finished the last bite in his bowl, and headed into the living room.
If her very presence in his house wasn’t enough of a clue, he knew as soon as he saw Mrs. Pinto’s face as she stood there, shoulders slumped, that something was wrong.
“Lieutenant, I’m sorry to intrude on your morning, but I didn’t want to talk about this over the phone.”
Louisa said, “If this is business, perhaps I should—”
“No, no. Please stay here. You need to know what happened, too.” She swallowed. “Tiffany died last night.”
“Tiffany?” Louisa’s voice asked the question.
Mrs. Pinto pressed her hands together. “My assistant. She’s the woman who collapsed outside when the Lieutenant came to see me yesterday. The one who fell near the skate park.”
He was glad Mrs. Pinto stayed with English for Louisa’s benefit. He had no trouble understanding.
“Please sit down.” Louisa motioned toward the couch. “I’ll bring you some water. Or would you rather have coffee?”
Mrs. Pinto moved to the sofa and waved off the offerings. “Louisa, stay here and listen.”
Leaphorn sat across from Mrs. Pinto with Louisa next to him. Louisa said what he was thinking: “Did she die from the fall?”
“I’m not sure what happened. I’ll tell you all I know.” Mrs. Pinto exhaled. “I went to see Tiffany at her house last night.”
Leaphorn wanted Mrs. Pinto to tell the story at her own pace so she could better focus on the details, but Louisa rushed in with her questions.
“She was home? They didn’t admit her to the hospital after that fall?”
“She told the ambulance people she felt better . . . that the heat made her weak, and that she’d been sick. I heard the ambulance man advise her to rest, keep cool, drink plenty of water, and to get someone to drive her to the hospital if she had a bad headache, felt nauseous, confused, dizzy, a whole list of things. They wanted to take her to get checked out, but she refused to go. I stayed with her until the medics left, and I made her go home for the rest of the day.”
Mrs. Pinto paced three steps toward the kitchen, then came back and sat on the sofa across from them. “I should have persuaded her to go in the ambulance. She’d been getting sicker for about two weeks. She had grown so weak she asked me to reduce her hours to half-time until she felt better, and I did. That’s why the project I talked to you about is so far behind. Her older sister hit a rough spot and moved in, so I knew that if something happened, Collette could help. I could kick myself for not making her go to the hospital.”
“I know you did all you could.” Louisa leaned toward her friend.
“Tiffany called me about eleven last night. I could tell she’d been crying. She said she got sick because she had been disrespectful of the past.” Mrs. Pinto looked down at the table. “I asked her what that meant, disrespectful of the past, and she said she couldn’t talk about it, but that she was having trouble catching her breath. She said she was going to ask her father to arrange a healing ceremony. She thanked me for helping her yesterday and hung up.” Tears filled Mrs. Pinto’s eyes.
“I didn’t like any of it, so I dressed and drove over there. When I got to the house, I thought Tiffany was dead, but she was still breathing. She looked terrible, pale, really sick. Her little pills were there, lined up in a box close to her bed. I called the ambulance, and then her sister Collette showed up, but it was too late to help her.” Mrs. Pinto shook her head once. “Tiffany was my friend as well as my assistant. I let her down.”
Louisa reached for a box of tissues on the lamp table, took one, and passed them to Mrs. Pinto. The woman took one and wiped her eyes. Louisa said, “Were you with her when she died?”
“No, no. Not exactly. Collette told me to go out with a flashlight so the ambulance could find the place more easily. I was anxious and I thought the fresh air would calm me down and I could tell that Collette wanted time alone with her sister to say good-bye. She passed while I was outside.”
Louisa shook her head. “I’m going to bring us all some tea.”
The cat, which had been lurking in the doorway, paraded past them as though it had been anticipating a pause in the conversation to make an entrance. It followed Louisa into the kitchen.
Leaphorn waited for Mrs. Pinto’s emotions to settle, then spoke to her in Navajo. “What did Tiffany mean when she said she had been disrespectful of the past?”
“I asked her. She didn’t answer.” Mrs. Pinto clasped her hands. “If she had trouble with the job, she should have told me. When the museum receives anything that could be sacred, dangerous, connected with the dead, or contaminated, it goes to a separate place to be prayed over. The medicine men handle it because we don’t want to take any of those risks. That’s how we dealt with the box I told you about.”
“Did Tiffany say anything else that seemed unusual?”
Mrs. Pinto seemed to have been waiting for the question. “She told me she needed to talk to a hand trembler to get a diagnosis of what was really wrong with her, that the medicine her white doctor had given her that used to help wasn’t helping. She told me she knew her illness was linked to all the sadness that came in that box, even though the doctor said it was stress that had compounded her breathing problem.”
Leaphorn was a skeptic when it came to hand tremblers, those who sit with a troubled person and arrive at a diagnosis of what taboo they broke so the proper traditional healing ceremony can be requested. “Sadness? Why would she say that?”
“I didn’t ask her.” The teakettle whistled, and she waited until the sound stopped. “You probably think I’m superstitious for even mentioning this. I don’t believe in chindiis, in ghosts, in supernatural evil. I’m not on the Jesus road or the peyote trail either. But something is not right here. I counted on her to help us get that donation issue resolved.”
“What medical issues did Tiffany have?”
Mrs. Pinto pressed her lips together, then exhaled. “After I hired her, she told me that she had a rare genetic respiratory disease, but not to worry, she had talked to a specialist and it was under control. She was well when the box arrived last month, but after that she seemed to get sicker and sicker, leaving early or skipping work altogether. If I wasn’t so close to retiring, I would have found an intern or a volunteer to help, but I didn’t have time to train someone new. The department will be reorganized when I leave. If I can leave as planned now, with this complication.”
They listened to Louisa puttering in the kitchen for a moment.
“Joe, we didn’t get off on the right foot yesterday. I regret that. I sincerely hope you will agree to work with me.”
Leaphorn nodded. “I’d like to see the items and the list that came with them. I need to know what is missing besides the bracelet and why it has to be a secret.”
“And then you’ll sign the contract?” Mrs. Pinto gave him the hint of a smile. “Come to my office this afternoon. I’ll be there from two until six or even later.”