Kari set the Ashford report aside.Mendoza might be nothing—an academic wanting to insert himself into a high-profile case, a common enough phenomenon.But an art historian with personal relationships to all three victims and detailed knowledge of their work was worth an hour of her time, even if that hour was one she’d rather spend running down Ashford.
Before leaving the office, she checked her phone.A text from Nadine Begaye, sent an hour ago:Bail hearing postponed to Thursday.Judge’s calendar.Ben is fine.Patience.Patience.Easy for Begaye to say.She wasn’t the one sitting in a federal holding facility while people who’d framed her went about their business.
Kari pocketed the phone and pushed Ben out of her mind, the way she’d been pushing him out all week—not forgetting, but compartmentalizing, giving the art case the attention it demanded and trusting Daniels to handle the rest.It was the hardest discipline she’d ever practiced.
They met Mendoza at a coffee shop near the UNM campus.He was already there when they arrived—mid-fifties, compact, a neatly trimmed goatee going gray at the chin, dressed in a corduroy blazer over a black turtleneck that suggested he’d decided what academics looked like sometime in the nineties and committed to it.He stood when Kari approached and offered his hand with both of his, holding the handshake a beat too long.
“Thank you for meeting me, Detective.This has been devastating.Absolutely devastating.”He sat back down and wrapped his hands around his coffee cup.“Leonard was a genius.I don’t use that word lightly—I’ve spent my career studying Indigenous art, and Leonard Redhouse was the most important Navajo painter of his generation.And Linda—her transformation figures were redefining what Pueblo sculpture could be.The loss is incalculable.”
“And Honanie?”
“Raymond was extraordinary.His overlay technique achieved a spiritual dimension that very few contemporary jewelers even attempt.”Mendoza’s eyes were bright and his gestures were animated, the way people get when they’re talking about something they care about deeply.“I wrote a monograph on his work two years ago.Spent six months interviewing him, watching him work, documenting his process.It was one of the most rewarding experiences of my academic career.”
Kari let him talk.He was the type who would fill silence with expertise, and expertise sometimes contained details that the expert didn’t realize were important.She listened to Mendoza describe each artist’s contribution to their field, his voice reverent in the way of a scholar who had built his professional identity around the artists he studied.
But she also listened for something else.For the possessive language Sheffield had warned her about—the way some collectors and academics spoke about art as if they owned, not just the object, but the idea behind it.
It didn’t take long.
“I have what I believe is the most comprehensive archive of Leonard’s creative development,” Mendoza said, somewhere in his second uninterrupted minute on Redhouse’s early career.“Photographs, sketches, personal correspondence.Material that no other researcher has access to.Leonard trusted me with pieces of his artistic life that he never shared publicly.”
“How did you obtain those materials?”
“Leonard gave them to me.Over years of friendship and scholarly collaboration.He understood that my work was preserving his legacy—ensuring that future generations would understand not just what he created but why and how.”
“And Tafoya?Honanie?”
“Similar arrangements.Linda and I had an understanding—she provided me with studio access and private documentation in exchange for the scholarly attention that elevated her work in the academic discourse.Raymond was more guarded initially, but once he read my published work on Hopi silversmithing traditions, he opened up.”Mendoza smiled.“Artists need scholars the way scholars need artists.The relationship is symbiotic.”
Kari watched his hands as he talked.They moved constantly—emphasizing points, tracing shapes in the air, reaching for his coffee and setting it down without drinking.Nervous energy or natural expressiveness, she couldn’t tell yet.But one thing she’d noticed: Mendoza consistently positioned himself at the center of each artist’s story.Leonard had trustedhim.Linda had an understanding withhim.Raymond had opened up tohim.The artists existed, in Mendoza’s telling, partly as extensions of his own work.
“Do you collect their art personally?”she asked.
The hands stopped.Just for a moment—a hitch in the rhythm, like a record skipping—before resuming their movement.
“I don’t collect the art I study.It would be ethically problematic.A scholar who owns the work he’s writing about creates a conflict of interest—his criticism becomes compromised by his financial stake.”
"It's also an expensive market," Kari said."Redhouse paintings sell for six figures.Honanie pieces go for tens of thousands at auction.That's not a professor's budget."
“My value to these artists was precisely that I had no commercial interest.I could write about their work with complete objectivity.”
Kari shifted topics and spent another twenty minutes asking Mendoza about the Santa Fe art community, collector behavior, whether he’d noticed anything unusual in the months before the disappearances.He was helpful and detailed, offering observations about market dynamics and collector psychology that demonstrated real expertise.He described the Indigenous art world as a small ecosystem where everyone knew everyone, where rivalries were professional but rarely personal, where the real tensions were between artists who wanted their work to be culturally meaningful and collectors who wanted it to be commercially valuable.
It was useful context.It was also, Kari suspected, partly performance—a scholar establishing his authority, positioning himself as the essential interpreter of a world that outsiders couldn’t navigate alone.
She asked one final question.
“Professor, have you ever heard the name Gregory Ashford?”
Mendoza’s brow furrowed.“Ashford.Yes, actually.He’s come up in conversation with a few dealers I know.A new collector, quite aggressive.I’ve never met him, but the dealers describe him as unusual—more interested in the artists than the art, which is atypical for someone spending at that level.”He paused, his eyes narrowing for half a second before the scholarly composure returned.“Why do you ask?”
“His name has come up in the investigation.That’s all I can say.”
“If you want, I could ask around.My contacts in the collecting community are extensive.I could find out more about him discreetly.”
“That won’t be necessary.But thank you for your time.”
Outside, Attcity was quiet until they were in the car with the doors closed.
