Hillerman, Tony - [Leaphorn & Chee 04] by jpg] People Of Darkness (v1) [html Read Free Book Online Page A

Charley was tied up in some sort of conspiracy. And then there's another theory that Gordo did it himself."
    "Why?"
    "The way the story goes, the older brother was the apple of everybody's eye—including his mother's. Gordo is supposed to have known that the old lady was leaving the ranch to Robert. So he blows up the oil well."
    "How'd he handle it?"
    Vines shrugged. "I don't know," he said. "I heard it was a nitroglycerin explosion, some sort of charge they lower down into the shaft of oil wells to shake things up, but it went off too early. I guess you could set that stuff off by shooting into it with a rifle. It was all before my time."
    "How does the Sena-did-it theory explain Dillon Charley's vision?"
    "That's easy," Vines said. "Dillon finds out somehow that Sena was planning something funny. So he arranges to have his peyote vision at the church service, and he tells his crew to stay away from the well. Sena blows the place up, but he finds out that Dillon must have known something. So he tries to drive him away with the harassment."
    "Could be," Chee said.
    "I think Gordo would like to know if Dillon Charley told me anything," Vines said. "Did his questions lead that way?"
    "More or less," Chee said. "Did Dillon Charley tell you anything?"
    Vines smiled. "Did Gordo tell you to ask me that?"
    "You brought it up," Chee said. "I'll change the question. What do you think happened out at that oil well?"
    "I understand nitro is touchy stuff. In those days those accidents happened. I think they had another case like that in the state a few years earlier."
    "Do you think it was an accident? Do you think Dillon Charley was just nervous about having the nitro at the well?"
    Vines swiveled his chair to give himself a view out the window. Chee could see only his profile.
    "I think Gordo Sena murdered his brother," Vines said.

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Chapter Eight
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    C olton wolf was running a little behind schedule. He had prepared
oeufs en gelee
for his breakfast. He meticulously followed the recipe in
Gourmet
and that took time. The aspic required twelve minutes at a rolling boil, and preparing the puree of peas for the garnish took longer still, and then another hour was required to allow the eggs to cool properly in their molds of aspic. It was mid-morning when he folded away the breakfast linen and cleared the silver and china from the Formica top of his trailer's eating surface. He had planned to work two hours on the model Baldwin steam engine he was building. Now he cut that to eighty minutes, working most of the time with his jeweler's glass in his eye and getting much of the fitting done on the piston assembly. The alarm dinged at 11:35 a.m. Colton pulled the covers over his lathe and drill and put his metal working tools carefully back in their proper places in his toolbox and the toolbox back in his lock cabinet. The cabinet also held his collection of steam engines, all of which actually operated—blowing whistles, driving belts, and turning wheels—and all of which had been made by Colton himself. The engines sat among the tools of his trade—two rifles, the chambers and trigger assembly sections of three pistols, an assortment of barrels to be screwed into these assemblies, an array of silencers, three small boxes trailing insulated wires, which were bomb detonators, a candy box which held plastic explosive (Colton kept eight sticks of dynamite and his dynamite caps safely cool in the refrigerator), and a row of cans of shaving cream and spray deodorant. Except for the rifles and their telescopic sights, he had manufactured much of this paraphernalia himself—partly because if it wasn't purchased it couldn't be traced and partly because some of it couldn't be bought. The shaving cream and deodorant cans were Colton's way of getting his tools through the x-ray stations at airport loading gates. One could fit the parts of one of Colton's pistols plus its silencer into two cans, screw the tops back on, and show an airport