Louisa entered with a tray loaded with iced tea, honey, napkins, and some cookies.
Mrs. Pinto switched to English. “It will be nice to be inside with the coolness. It’s already hot, and too early. I’ve been blaming the heat for making us irritable. I’ll be glad when the rains come. They are later than usual this year.”
Louisa put the tray on the table. “I always liked teaching summer sessions because of the air-conditioning. The heat gets to everyone, makes us impatient.”
She handed the visitor a glass of tea.
“Thank you.” Mrs. Pinto took the glass, but she looked at Leaphorn when she said it.
Around three p.m. Leaphorn arrived at the museum. Unlike his earlier visit, this time the place was quiet. As they had arranged, he followed the signs to her office. The door stood open. Mrs. Pinto motioned him in when he rapped on the frame and then turned back to her computer. “I will be done here in a minute, and then I will show you the donations. Have a seat, Lieutenant.”
She had arranged her paperwork on her desk in several stacks in plastic trays, the pages lined up with the edges straight. A manila folder with “Joe Leaphorn” printed in block letters sat in the center. On the wall Leaphorn saw a painting by Ernest Franklin, a picture of a hogan in the snow with Church Rock in the background.
She shut down her computer and rose. “Thank you for coming.” She took the folder with his name on it with her as she headed to the hallway. He followed toward the back of the building, past a silent parade of closed doors. Although she was decades younger than he, she was shorter and many pounds heavier. She waddled down the hall, and he matched her pace easily, even without his cane.
Finally, Mrs. Pinto unlocked the last door on the left. “Here it is.” She flicked on the light and crossed her arms over her ample belly.
Leaphorn walked toward the long table in the center of the windowless room. Someone had arranged the items all by category. The jewelry caught his eye—rings, bracelets, old ketohs (or bow guards), necklaces, earrings, and brooches. Most of it looked to be Navajo or Navajo imitation, and many of the pieces included blue stones in various hues. Turquoise, he thought, the gift that tradition said came from the sky itself, and the talisman that helped ensure the fertility of a shepherd’s flock. The three small pots looked as though they had been made by Pueblo Indians. Next to them sat two simple, classic brown Navajo ceramics. The piñon-sap coating made their smooth surfaces shine. He saw a small folk art wagon, a little male and a female character on the driver’s bench, pulled by a draft horse. A nice assortment, he thought.
Two folding chairs waited at the end of the table. Mrs. Pinto placed the folder with his name in front of one of them on the table. “When you are done looking, I thought you might like to examine the paperwork that came in the donation.”
He stepped toward her. “Who opened the box?”
“First the medicine people, and then it came to Tiffany to unpack. She handled many valuable shipments and there was never a problem before.”
“Tell me what’s missing.”
Mrs. Pinto sat down and rubbed her hands over her face.
He waited.
“It’s a dress, a biil, that the collector says Asdzáá Tlogi made sometime around 1864.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t recognize—”
“Asdzáá Tlogi.” She said it louder this time. “Juanita. The wife of Chief Manuelito.”
Leaphorn sat down. “Hwéeldi. It came from there.”
“Yes, from that period in history where not much survived.”
No one who knew the Lieutenant would describe him as overly emotional, but Leaphorn felt his chest grow tighter. The warrior Manuelito, with Juanita at his side, was among those leaders who brought the People back to Dinetah, their homeland, after the Long Walk of 1864 and years of suffering at the Bosque Redondo prison camp. Along with others, he signed the treaty that officially gave the Navajo people the right, in the eyes of the US government, to live on a portion of the sacred land the Holy People had assigned them. Over the ensuing years, the size of the Navajo Nation had grown as tribal officials managed to gain titles to other land that had always been theirs. Without Manuelito and the others’ ability to make peace, the story might have ended differently. And Juanita stood by the leader’s side.
Mrs. Pinto interrupted his contemplation. “If the gift is what the collector states, then it needs to be here. I don’t mean just the museum. It needs to be in Navajo land.”
He opened the folder she’d offered. The yellow notebook paper, the kind that comes on legal pads, had cursive handwriting, all of it with a black pen. He glanced at the date—four weeks ago. The salutation read, “To Whom It May Concern.”
After owning and enjoying these items for many years, I have decided they deserve a larger viewership and a new home, so I am donating them to the Navajo Nation. My gift comes with no restrictions, but I urge the museum to treasure my treasures.
On the next page, on the same notebook paper, he saw a numbered list with handwritten descriptions of the items, 1 to 15. Some of the descriptions involved several sentences, others just a word or two. The small script drifted down the page at an ever-increasing slope. The list had a randomness to it, with a man’s ring listed between two wedding baskets.
The list continued onto a second page. Leaphorn skimmed to the final notation:
35. Traditional Navajo Biil, woven circa 1860, attributed to Asdzáá Tlogi, Canyon de Chelly area. May have been worn on the Long Walk.
Leaphorn studied the items on the table again. “I don’t see the baskets or the saddle blanket.”
“That’s right. We removed them because they might be contaminated by preservatives or infested with insects. We stored them elsewhere until we know what we are dealing with. Anything with feathers, leather, or other organic material gets that treatment. It’s common museum practice today. I’ll show them to you when we finish here if you wish.”
“What did Tiffany say when you asked her about the missing dress and the bracelet?”
“She swore she never saw the biil, and that no woven dress of any sort was included in this shipment. There were bracelets, and we didn’t know which was missing until we matched what we got with the descriptions on the donor’s inventory sheet. None of the items had numbers.”
“The silver bracelet, anything else about that I should know?”
“It was part of a set.” Mrs. Pinto tapped the list. “The earrings and necklace that went with it arrived.”
“I am wondering how implicitly you trust your assistant. Had there been any prior issues with valuable items?”
Leaphorn noticed the exhaustion on the woman’s face. “No. I know she was loyal to me. I have never had reason to question her.” Mrs. Pinto tapped the folder again. “Any more questions before you say yes and start helping me?”
“Why did you come to me instead of alerting the police? If the dress was stolen, this should be their job.”
Mrs. Pinto looked at him over the rim of her glasses. “I didn’t call the police because I don’t know for sure if a crime was committed. I don’t know if the dress came in the box. And if it did, I don’t know for sure that it was Juanita’s. I need more proof than a handwritten note to confirm that it was Juanita’s. We museum people like to have what we call provenance, a paper trail that explains how the person who owns an object acquired it, as well as when and from whom.”