Read Hillerman, Tony - [Leaphorn & Chee 12] for Free Online Page A

again, seeing if Chee understood this. Chee did, but to hell with Finch.
    “You could cut the wire, of course,” Finch explained, “but then the herd gets out on the road and somebody notices it right away and they do a head count and know some are missing.”
    Chee said, “Really?”
    “Yeah,” Finch said. “Anyway, I’ve been after this son of a bitch for years now. Every time I take off from home to come out this way, he’s the one I’m thinking of.”
    Chee didn’t comment.
    “Zorro,” Finch said. “That’s what I call him. And this time I think I’ll finally get him.”
    “How?”
    Silence, unusual for Finch, followed. Then he said, “Well, now, that’s sort of complicated.”
    “You think it might be Demott?”
    “Why you say that?”
    “Well, you wanted to come up here. And you’ve collected all that information about him.”
    “If you’re a brand inspector you learn to pick up on all the gossip you can hear if you want to get your job done. And there was some talk that Demott paid off a mortgage by selling a bunch of calves nobody knew he owned.”
    “So what’s the gossip about the widow Breedlove?” Chee asked. “Who was the lover who helped her kill her husband? What do the neighbors say about that?”
    Finch was wearing a broad smile. “People I know up in Mancos have her down as the brokenhearted, wronged, abandoned bride. The majority of them, that is. They figured Hal ran off with some bimbo.”
    “How about the minority?”
    “They think she had herself a local boyfriend. Somebody to keep her happy when Hal was off in New York, or climbing his mountains or playing his games.”
    “They have a name for him?”
    “Not that I ever heard,” Finch said.
    “Which bunch you think is right?”
    “About her? I never thought about it,” Finch said. “None of my business, that part of it wasn’t. Talk like that just means that folks around here didn’t like Hal.”
    “What’d he do?”
    “Well, for starters he got born in the East,” Finch said. “That’s two strikes on you right there. And he was raised there. Citified. Preppy type. Papa’s boy. Ivy Leaguer. He didn’t get any bones broke falling off horses, lose a finger in a hay baler. Didn’t pay his dues, you know. You don’t have to actually do anything to have folks down on you.”
    “How about the widow? You hear anything specific about her?”
    “Don’t hear nothing about her, except some fellas guessing. And she’s a real pretty woman, so that was probably just them wishing,” Finch said. He was grinning at Chee. “You know how it works. If you’re behaving yourself it’s not interesting.”
    The front door of the Breedlove house opened and Chee could see someone standing behind the screen looking out at them. He picked up his evidence satchel and stepped out of the vehicle.
    “I’ll wait here for you,” Finch said, “and maybe scout around a little if I get too stiff from sitting.”
    Mrs. Elisa Breedlove was indeed a real pretty woman. She seemed excited and nervous, which was what Chee had expected. Her handshake grip was hard, and so was the hand. She led him into a huge living room, dark and cluttered with heavy, old-fashioned furniture. She motioned him into a chair, explaining that she’d had to run into Mancos “to get some stuff.”
    “I got back just before you drove up and Ramona told me you’d called and were coming.”
    “I hope I’m not—” Chee began, but she cut him off.
    “No. No,” she said. “I appreciate this. Ramona said you’d found Hal. Or think so. But she didn’t know anything else.”
    “Well,” Chee said, and paused. “What we found was merely bones. We thought they might be Mr. Breedlove.”
    He sat on the edge of the sofa, watching her.
    “Bones,” she said. “Just a skeleton? Was that the skeleton they found about Halloween up on Ship Rock?”
    “Yes, ma’am. We wanted to ask you to look at the clothing and equipment he was wearing and see if—tell