Deadly Sanctuary (3 page)

I asked him the best way to approach the subject with his brother-in-law.

“With caution,” he warned. “Roy’s not a man to piss off. He’s got a hard head, a short temper, and,” Tugg emphasized with a scowl, “he carries a gun. Just remember that.” Ushering me toward the door, he’d apologized for placing me in such a delicate spot, but felt with my background I’d be able to dig up something without being discovered. Once again, the opportunity had come for me to declare my amateur status, and, as before, I thought better of it.

“Why don’t you just hire a private detective or something? That way there’d be no tie to the newspaper.”

He looked weary. “I’m barely collecting a salary now. Where would I get fifty bucks an hour to hire one?”

As I parked the car at the Castle Valley Realty office, I had more than a few misgivings about my decision to accept the position.

Mary Tuggs welcomed me with a beaming smile as I stepped inside her office. “I’m so very glad to meet you.”

At five foot eight, I towered over her tiny, round frame. “My goodness, aren’t you a sight! You remind me of a young Katharine Hepburn.”

That clinched it. I decided I liked Mary Tuggs a lot. Outside again, I wondered if she’d need a leg up as we approached her red Bronco. Somehow she scrambled into the driver’s seat without assistance. She showed me several unremarkable dwellings nearby, renting for astronomical prices, and then, noting my dismay, suggested a place located five miles north of town. “Morty thought you might like to at least look at it,” she said, swinging onto the main highway. “But I’m not sure you’ll want to be so far from town.”

She told me that the three-bedroom, two bath house was vacant because the elderly owner, Teresa Delgado, was in a Phoenix nursing home recovering from a fall. Afraid of vandalism, she wanted Mary to find a trustworthy renter to occupy it until she returned. “It’s been empty for a month now, so she’s lowered the rent to get someone in there,” she added.

“Sounds interesting,” I replied, watching the cactus -covered landscape fly past. There wasn’t another house in sight when we turned east and bounced along a rutted dirt road, leaving a plume of swirling dust in our wake.

“This is Lost Canyon Road,” Mary informed me. “You’ll be quite close to the Castle.”

“Castle?”

She laughed and rolled her eyes. “Silly me. Of course you wouldn’t know yet. That’s Castle Rock,” she said, pointing toward a mammoth, multi-colored rock formation. “It was named ‘Castillo del Viento’ by Spanish settlers. It means castle of the wind, isn’t that pretty?”

I agreed and we’d just dipped into a dry sandy riverbed she called a ‘wash’ and were rounding a turn on the opposite hill, when she suddenly wrenched the wheel to the right. A black Mercedes with heavily tinted windows roared by leaving us in a choking cloud of dust.

My heart racing madly, I wheezed and reached for my inhaler.

“I’m so sorry!” White-faced, she pressed one hand to her chest. “What a maniac. He didn’t even slow down.” She shoved the truck into gear, grumbling, “That had to be someone from Serenity House. Except for the Hinkle Ranch a couple miles south of Tess’s place, no one else lives out this way.”

I took a few deep breaths and let the bitter-tasting medication seep slowly into my lungs. “What’s Serenity House?”

She slanted me a sidelong glance. “Well…it’s a mental hospital.”

That captured my attention. “No kidding? What’s it doing out here in the middle of the desert?”

“The property was cheap. It’s on the site of an old Spanish monastery which was crumbling to ruins. Some developer restored it and tried to make a go of it as a health spa. When that failed, a psychiatrist named Isadore Price bought it about six years ago.” She pursed her lips into a thin line. “That was probably his Mercedes.”

“I hope he’s a better doctor than he is a driver.”

Mary frowned. “He’s kind of a peculiar old bird. Keeps to himself mostly. I’ve only seen him a few times in town at a couple of social gatherings.”

“Have there ever been any problems at this place?”

“To be honest, there was an incident right after they opened. One of the male patients escaped. He’d chopped up his family or something.”

I shivered involuntarily.

“This town’s never seen such excitement!” Her face became animated at the memory. “There was a huge manhunt, and everyone was pretty much on pins and needles until they found him. After that, a real high fence was built, and from what I’ve heard it’s very well guarded. Nothing else has ever happened.”

“How far is it from the Delgado place?”

“About two miles or so. And, of course, that’s the whole idea of having it so secluded.” She glanced at me again. “If it bothers you, I can turn around right now.”

“No. I’d still like to see it.”

“Okay,” she said, steering onto another dirt road named Pajaro del Suspiro. Explaining it was Spanish for ‘Weeping Bird,’ she braked the truck in front of a brick-red ranch-style wooden house surrounded by golden palo verde trees and saguaro cactus.

I got out and took a sniff of the warm, pristine air. Yep. Just what the doctor ordered. I followed Mary up the stone walkway and when she pointed to the giant rock formation, I stopped in amazement. It did resemble a castle and the effect was breathtaking.

While she fiddled with the door key, I listened to the lonesome keening of the wind and wondered if I could stand to live in such isolation. My misgivings faded as she led me through the spacious interior, decorated in bright Southwestern colors and heavy, Spanish-style furniture. It was a gigantic improvement over the cramped apartment I’d just left in Philadelphia, and far cheaper. I expressed surprise that she’d had difficulty keeping it rented.

“The trouble is,” Mary said, showing me through the sunny kitchen, “most renters want a signed lease, and Tess won’t have it because she wants the freedom to return on short notice. That’s the minus, but,” she added with a cheery smile, “here’s a plus. The last tenants left in such a hurry, I never got a chance to refund their deposit. So, if you decide to take it, the first month would be free.”

“I like the free part, but, what does the ‘left in a hurry’ part mean?”

Mary opened the front door. “They called me out of the blue late one night, and announced they were leaving right then and there.”

“Why?”

There was no mistaking her tone of skepticism. “Tess certainly never mentioned it, but…they swore this place was haunted.”

Fascinated by Mary’s intriguing remark, I chose to put aside my misgivings and move in. The proliferation of insects that trooped in and out of the Delgado house the first few days bothered me more than the supposed phantom. I’d always considered myself fairly brave for a woman, having no particular fear of snakes, mice, or bats. But, when it came to insects, spiders especially, I turned into a shivering coward. There seemed to be an abundance of the eight legged creatures about, plus scorpions, centipedes, and humongous roaches. At my request, Mary sent the exterminator.

On his second visit in three days, overall clad, grizzle-faced, Lloyd “Skeeter” Jenkins of the Bugs-BeGone Exterminating Company, told me all I needed to know, and more, about the insects and rodents indigenous to the great state of Arizona.

“Now I kin git rid o’ them pesky mice fer ya, an’the powder I’ll lay down’ll keep them centipedes and scorpions on their toes, so to speak. Spiders is something else again. Them suckers kin walk right over the stuff with them long legs o’ theirs.”

He left me with the sage advice to “never put yer shoes on in the mornin’ till you’ve whopped ’em good. There’s no tellin’ what kinda critter mighta moved in an’ set up housekeepin’ durin’ the night.”

I wondered if I’d ever get used to the bugs, the dust, and the scalding sun. The calendar said it was still April but I could have sworn spring had been canceled and we’d gone right into summer as it was already in the 90’s. My asthma had improved, but I was miserably hot.

“Don’t you worry, sugar,” Ginger had soothed hearing my complaint, “as soon as your blood thins, y’all will git used to it.” I wasn’t sure I wanted my blood to thin.

My first week on the job was an exercise in frustration and adaptation. The
Sun
, a sixteen page tabloid, was published only twice weekly, Wednesdays and Saturdays. I sorely missed the daily deadlines, the lively newsroom chatter, and stimulation of the big city. I knew I couldn’t go back to damp, cool Pennsylvania and face a life of being incapacitated, yet I didn’t want to stay either.

My other co-worker—young, blond, brash and not overly bright Jim Sykes—didn’t sympathize with my position. He grabbed all the interesting assignments while I got the leftovers. If I had to cover one more banquet, Ladies Club function, or write one more article about who was visiting whom from out of town, I felt I’d go nuts.

After banging my knee on the narrow desk for the third time that morning, I grumbled, “I hate this damn thing.”

Bradley Talverson swiveled around at my remark, and taunted me with a crooked grin. “Welcome to the club. We all started at the rookie desk. Now it’s your turn.”

“Yeah,” young Sykes joined in. “Now that Johnny boy’s split, you’re low man on the totem pole.”

I glanced swiftly from one to the other. Neither man seemed particularly disturbed by his disappearance, and I reminded myself again that even they could not know of my secret assignment. I phrased my question carefully, trying to sound indifferent. “Oh, yeah. What was he like? John Dexter, I mean?”

Bradley’s eyes narrowed. “All hat and no cattle.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Come again?”

“He was a pain in the ass. Interested only in trash journalism.”

“But he was real popular with the ladies. Married or single, right Tally?” Jim’s eyes gleamed wickedly.

I knew there was some significance to the remark by the deadly expression on Bradley’s face before he turned his back to us. His constant mood swings puzzled me. Sometimes he was cordial and friendly. At other times, withdrawn, angry almost, as if he were struggling with some inner demon. More than once, I’d caught him looking at me with an unreadable expression in his dark eyes.

Anxious to pursue the subject of John Dexter, I had just formulated my next question when Ginger stuck her head in the doorway. “Come on, sugar, let’s shake it. Time for lunch.”

Damn! If only she had waited five minutes. Bradley and Jim resumed their work; my chance for more questions gone for now.

As we walked the three blocks to the Iron Skillet, I silently thanked God for Ginger King who’d unabashedly inserted herself into the vacant slot in my life marked: friend. Short and round with light brown hair and sparkling ginger-colored eyes, she bubbled over with good humor. She was also a hopeless gossip. Endearing, but hopeless.

Three days earlier, during our first lunch together, she’d shrieked with laughter when I recounted my story of meeting Bradley, whose close friends called him Tally, she informed me. I learned about her family, her life in Texas, and her heartfelt desire to settle down and have children.

“How old are you, sugar?”

“Twenty-eight.”

“Well, y’all still have some time. I’m gonna be thirty-three next month, and eligible men in this town are scarcer than hen’s teeth.”

Mingled between anecdotes about the good citizens of Castle Valley, she skillfully extracted large chunks of my background.

“I got married right after college, but it barely lasted two years.”

“Oh, that’s a shame.” For a few seconds her expression was sympathetic, then it turned impish. “So, what happened? He beat ya? Chase other women? Was he gay?”

I laughed. “I think you’ve been watching too many talk shows. Sorry to disappoint you, but it was nothing so dramatic. I’d been working at my dad’s newspaper since I could read and could do every job there practically in my sleep.

“I was restless, ready to move on and my husband was studying to be a pharmacist. His plans included us staying in Spring Hill, complete with picket fence and a dozen kids. Mine didn’t. Neither of us could change, so we parted friends. He got the dog, and I took my maiden name back.”

Throughout the remainder of the meal, she’d pressed me for further details, and it was amusing to hear some of the things I’d told her, repeated by other staff members the following day. Some details were embellished almost beyond recognition.

With that in mind now, as we entered the restaurant and slid into the red vinyl booth, I vowed to talk less of myself and concentrate on extracting information from her.

“Oh, lookee here,” she cried, eyeing the menu with regret. “Chicken and dumplin’s. And me on a stupid diet again.”

“Go ahead and have it if you want it.”

She drew back in mock horror. “Easy for you to say, being skinny as a rail. Food don’t go to my stomach, darlin’. Everything goes right here,” she complained, patting her hips.

We were both giggling when a chestnut-haired woman interrupted, asking for our order. “Oh, Lucy,” Ginger gushed, a sly expression stealing over her features, “this here’s Kendall O’Dell. Kendall, this here’s Lucinda Johns. She and her Aunt Polly own this place.”

When I told her how much I’d enjoyed the previous lunch, she smiled and thanked me. As she took our orders, I couldn’t help but notice her enormous boobs. It made me feel positively flat.

“Kendall’s our new gal on the beat over yonder at the paper. Ain’t that nice?” The syrupy tone of Ginger’s voice surprised me.

Curious, I glanced at her, then back to Lucinda in time to see her smile shrink. “I see. Congratulations.” She cast a speculative glance at me before turning away.

A mischievous light gleamed in Ginger’s eyes. “Okay,” I demanded, “what was that little scene all about? You might as well have told her I have AIDS by the way she acted.”