“If you’re Mr. Ralph Amberson,” she said quickly and clearly, “my client is very interested in some property you have.” She did not say “may” have, although she probably should have, ethically speaking. It had been her experience in the past that those who genuinely did not know what she was talking about showed it immediately, and those who had the relics showed that as well. Besides, she knew the Ambersons had the stuff; there was no point in not showing this card, and throwing Ralph off-balance by letting him know she knew it.

The word “client” caught his attention, and he opened the door again. There was a touch of cautious greed about him, and a hint of unease. Now there was only the storm-door between them, but that was still a psychological barrier she could have done without.

“What property?” he asked. “What client is this? Who are you, anyway?” Good questions, all of them, and perfectly reasonable. She could not take offense at the words.

But the way he had said them made her tense her jaw and count to ten. His implication was that not only did he not believe her, but he felt the only reason someone like Jennifer Talldeer should be in his neighborhood would be as a maid.

She took a deep breath; he radiated hostility, and she had the feeling that she wasn’t going to get very far with him. He had her pegged for a minority, and she was already a woman. Two strikes against her on the empowerment scale. Someone as low-status as she was could safely be brushed off. Still, she had to try. “I’m Jennifer Talldeer, and I’m a private investigator representing the Lakotah Sioux,” she said briskly, trying to put as much authority into her voice and the somewhat exaggerated relationship with her “clients” as she could. “My clients have traced a number of Lakotah artifacts to your possession, sir—or rather, to your wife’s possession. These articles were illegally obtained by her great-grandfather from tribal hands. They would like them returned to tribal hands.”

With someone friendly she might have added other things; that there would be no reprisals and no adverse publicity, that the Lakotah would consider anyone who returned these objects voluntarily a friend. Not with this man; he was The Enemy, and he had made himself into The Enemy from the moment she knocked on his door.

So she would act as if she had more authority than she really did, and give him only the barest of the facts. There. That was it. Now he would either admit he had the things and hand them over, or—

Well, that was about as likely as pigs flying. He looked more than ready to give her a fight. He must have had someone tell him that the artifacts his wife had inherited were worth a lot of money to a collector.