She shrugged. “I have to have a reason for staying on Calligan’s back if the cops ask,” she pointed out. “My own personal curiosity doesn’t count, and since I’m Indian it could be taken as harassment, and that’s illegal. I’ve got plenty of evidence that no protest group threatened Calligan—now I have to prove that there weren’t threats from sources he wouldn’t report. It’s still work, David, and it’s work I can do while I’m checking up on other things.” She stared up at the ceiling for a moment. “You know,” she said, half to herself, “I’d kind of like to find something to nail Calligan to the wall. If half of what I’ve heard about him is true, he’s long overdue to be nailed. I suspect him of being behind Bob Anger’s broadcast this morning.”

David looked blank. “Who?”

She blinked, and focused on him again. “You mean you haven’t—oh, that’s right, you haven’t lived here for a while. Local talk-show host, makes Rush Limbaugh look like a Franciscan monk. The only reason he hasn’t been sued is because the people he insults are either too poor to sue, or he doesn’t name names when they have the money for lawyers.” She reached into her drawer for the padded envelope that had come by messenger from the office of the Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation, pulled the cassette out of the envelope, and stuck it in her cassette deck. “This was the broadcast this morning.”

She watched David’s face as he listened, his expressions running the entire gamut from incredulous, to disgusted, to angry … trying to guess the moment when he would go ballistic.

She was a little off. Before he could explode, she snapped the recorder off.

“There’s more where that came from,” she offered. “About another forty-five minutes’ worth. Where are you going?” she added, as he launched himself for the door.

“I’m going to do something about that—”

“Wilma Mankiller’s office is already handling it,” she said, cutting him off. The news that the Principal Chief of the Cherokees was already involved stopped him with his hand on the door. “They sent me a copy of the tape, since I passed the word that I’m on the case to her office. I told them when Sleighbow hired me, just on the off chance that anyone in Cherokee Nation had anything useful to tell me that I hadn’t already heard on my own.”

“Oh yeah?” he said, still poised to go out. “And just what are they doing about it? That bigoted jerkoff, I mean.”

“Ignoring it,” she replied blandly. “And him.”

“What?” He stared.