Desert Noir (9781615952236) (19 page)

“You had quite a few good runs, as I remember,” I said.

He looked pleased. “I guess I did.”

Hero and fan stood there grinning at each other for a few more seconds, then Malik raised his hand and waggled it at me. “Well, I'd love to stay here recalling old glories, but I got to get shakin'. We're about three days behind schedule, and if we don't make up the time, it's my butt on the line. Flagstones. I ask you. Who in their right mind wants flagstone floors down here in the desert, what with all our grit and grime? What's the matter with good old Saltillo tile? When you use indigenous products you don't get in this kind of trouble. But no, Evan's just got to have flagstone driveways in front of his phony-ass Tudors!” 

His already dark face darkened even more and he swept a beefy arm around, taking in the remnants of the Sonoran Desert, the uprooted mesquite, the toppled saguaros. “This look like Elizabethan England to you?” 

Duly prompted, I shook my head. It didn't even look like Arizona anymore.

Malik was on a roll. “When folks have more money than taste the ecosystem gets raped. And flagstones? What's the point? Saltillo tile-layers are a dime a dozen around here, but lose just one flagstone guy and you're in a world of hurt. These construction types…” He paused for a moment, apparently remembering he was now a construction type himself, however high he'd clam-bered up the totem pole. “Well, a lot of them aren't the most dependable guys around. Hardest part of my job, keeping track of them.”

Just then the trailer door opened and a dark man bearing a strong resemblance to Serena Hyath-Allesandro looked out. He was almost as tall as Malik, although much less broad. His eyes were red, which I attributed to either allergies or grief.

“I don't want somebody in the next couple of days, Malik,” the man snarled. “I need another flagstone guy
tomorrow!”
 

Malik nodded. “I'll do what I can but I'm not promising anything.” Then he climbed into the battered Dakota and drove off.

“Shit,” Clarice's brother said, watching the truck kick up a long line of dust. “Shit, shit, shit, shit.” Then he looked down at me, irritation plain on his face. “Do yourself a favor. Don't ever go into business for yourself.” 

“Too late,” I said, climbing the stairs. “Lena Jones, Desert Investigations.” 

“Oh, yeah. I recognize you from that time you were on TV. You'd proved some guy on Death Row was innocent, and I don't think the prosecutor was any too pleased with you, a cop who actually went around proving people innocent, not guilty.” 

Uncomfortable, I acknowledged my fifteen minutes of fame. The whole incident had been overblown, but that was the media for you. “The prosecutor got over it, especially when we found the real perp.” 

He nodded. “It was the mother, wasn't it? Christ, what a world!” He started to say something else, then changed his mind. “Let's get out of this god-awful heat. I've been wanting to talk to you for some time. I'll do anything I can to help put that bastard back behind bars.” 

“Which bastard is that?”

He gave me an odd look. “Jay, of course. Who else do you think I mean? Here. Let's get inside out of this damned heat. Christ, I hate the desert!”

I bid Elizabethan England goodbye and followed him inside the construction trailer.

The trailer was exquisite. My surprise must have shown on my face, because Evan said, “Since my last divorce I just about live in this thing, so I figure I might as well make it as homey as possible.”

Last divorce? The Hyaths certainly had their problems with personal relationships.

Homey
wasn't quite the word for what Evan Hyath had done to the trailer, which now resembled the foyer of an expensive men's club. Although the floor was carpeted in the same industrial-strength tweed I'd seen in a dozen other mobile offices, a brightly colored Navajo rug did its best to disguise the blandness. An expensive-looking burgundy leather sofa and matching chair sat at right angles to each other against walnut-paneled walls.

The pre-digital cell phone charging on a polished rosewood end table provided the only incongruous note.

Evan caught me staring at it and threw me a rueful smile. “Goddamn thieves, they…”

Not wanting to hear the car phone thief story again, I interrupted, “Yeah, Malik told me.” 

In front of the sofa, another rosewood table served as a display area for several pieces of Western sculpture, including a copy of Remington's
Pony Express.
I only gave it a cursory glance because I'd seen knock-offs of it in every cheap souvenir store in Scottsdale—even Clarice's gallery.

“Just a copy,” Evan said, stating the obvious. “Of course, it'd be crazy to keep a real Remington in here—but copy or not, all the lines are there. The man knew horses, didn't he?” 

“And human anatomy.” Then I remembered the horrible pieces in Western Heart Gallery and for a moment, I actually missed them. There were worse sins in the world than bad art. Murder, for instance.

The corner of Evan's mouth turned up in a sad smile. “I loved my sister, Miss Jones, but she called in sick the day God passed out good taste. I tried to get her to take an art appreciation class down at the Phoenix Art Museum, but you know Clarice. You couldn't tell her anything.” 

That was true. Once I'd realized she was in an abusive marriage, I'd told her to get counseling. She'd laughed in my face.

Evan settled himself onto the sofa and gestured me towards the chair. “Now, what can I do for you?” Then he immediately stood up again. “Sorry. Where are my manners? You want Coke? 7-Up? Tea? Fucking overpriced designer water? Or how about an Anchor Steam? That's what I'm going to have.” 

I asked for tea, then settled back into the deep chair, enjoying the feel of cool leather on my backside. Evan's clumsy but genuine courtesy reminded me of Serena's, making me smile. As troubled as the woman had proven to be, I'd found myself admiring her attempt to bring some tenderness into a violent world. And now her brother appeared to be following in Serena's footsteps. His appointment of the very black Malik Toshumbe as construction foreman hinted that he didn't share Clarice's racism. Families are funny.

Evan interrupted my thoughts by returning with a tall glass of ice tea and a frosty bottle of Anchor Steam. Collapsing onto the sofa, he took a long swig of beer, then said, “Okay. Now that neither of us is going to dry up and blow away, tell me what I can do for you.” 

At closer quarters, Evan bore a startling resemblance to his father. His face shared his father's lean angles, and his hair was beginning to gray in the same distinguished manner. His blue eyes, however, held considerably more warmth than had the elder Hyath's.

I chugged some tea, then set it down on the table next to the faux Remington. “Look, Mr. Hyath…” 

“Evan, Evan. I'm not into formality.”

“Look, Evan, you might as well accept the fact that the police consider Jay Kobe, bastard though he may be, not a particularly viable suspect right now. I'm sure Captain Kryzinski has already given you the bad news on that.” 

Evan clenched his jaw. “Yeah, Captain Kryzinski gave me some shit about Jay's having an alibi, but for God's sake, Lena, you're not buying into that crap, are you? I mean, the police have to follow certain procedures, we all know that, but you're a private investigator. You must have other methods.” 

“Like what? Cattle prods and baseball bats?”

He set the bottle of Anchor Steam down so abruptly that beer sloshed out of the opening. “This is some fucking country, isn't it? When men like Jay Kobe can run around beating and killing women while the rest of us have to play nice.”

Which made me wonder again about his own divorce. Or, as he had mentioned, divorce plural. “Look, Evan, I'm continuing to check out Jay's alibi, but I want to make sure we've got every other angle covered. As you know, I was Clarice's friend so I've got my own motivation here. So let's lay off Jay for a minute. Instead, why don't you tell me where you were the night she was killed.” 

For a moment I thought he might pick up the faux Remington and throw it at me, but the anger on his face faded quickly. He gave a heavy sigh which seemed to make his shoulders collapse inward. “You're just doing your job, I know. But…” Another weary sigh. “All right. I was having dinner with Malik that night, down at the Pacific Seafood Company, I think. We were having some labor troubles and I wanted to get away from the site while we discussed them.” 

I wrote the information down in the notebook I'd pulled out of my carryall. “Malik will verify that?” 

Evan shrugged. “Probably. I don't know if he wrote it down or anything, but I probably paid for the meal by credit card, and there'll be a date and time on the receipt, I think. You want me to dig it out?” 

I shook my head. Maybe later, if it turned out to be necessary, but I doubted it would. Evan sounded like he was telling the truth. After taking Malik's cell phone number from him, I said, “Now tell me anything you can about your sister. I already know that Jay wasn't the only person she had trouble with.” 

The mulish look on his face told me Evan had already made up his mind Jay had killed Clarice, but my years in homicide had taught me how to deal with the most recalcitrant of witnesses. I took a deep breath, leaned across the coffee table, grasped his hand in mine, and looked deep into his eyes. “Evan, I know how much you loved your sister. Please help me help her now that she can no longer help herself.” 

To my horror, the mulish look faded and tears welled up in his eyes. I snatched my hand back and watched helplessly as he buried his face in his hands and tried to muffle his sobs. Since I am not one of those women who is all that comfortable with “sensitive” men, there was little I could do other than to fish a few tissues out of my carryall and thrust them into his wet hands. “Blow.” 

Evan blew his nose until I thought it would fall off, then groped around blindly for more tissues. I was all out, so he began mopping his dripping nose with his sleeve. Disgusted as much with myself as with him, I jumped up, ran down the narrow hall to the bathroom, grabbed a roll of toilet paper, and trailed it back to the couch.

“There.” Hating myself, I handed him a wad of toilet paper. Feeling like I should do more but not knowing exactly what, I moved over to the sofa and put my arm around him. I felt like I was holding a child, and maybe I was. No one in the Hyath family, Clarice included, had so far impressed me with their emotional maturity.

After a few minutes, Evan looked up, red-eyed and red-faced. “I'm so sorry,” he managed, his voice jagged as cut glass. “But you don't…you don't know what it's been like. I had to make all the funeral arrangements. I've never done that before, and I just didn't know what to do. The funeral… It was a mess. Hardly anyone showed up.” 

So I had noticed. “Didn't Serena help you make the arrangements?” 

He shook his head and gave his eyes a final swipe with the toilet paper. “Serena has always had problems, as I'm sure you noticed, and Clarice's death made her even worse. I actually thought I was going to have to check her into some rehab center somewhere before it was all over. That husband of hers is worse than useless. Calls himself an investor, but if you ask me, it's just a cover for something else, god knows what.” 

This was interesting. I made a mental note to have Jimmy run a check on Serena's husband. “What about your parents? Didn't they help?”

Anger flooded back into his face, chasing away the remaining ravages of grief. “Them! Can you see my mother doing anything for anyone? Or my father?” 

I shook my head. I couldn't see either of the senior Hyaths bothering to see that any of their children were buried properly. But this, at least, explained one thing; why Clarice's funeral had seemed so slipshod. Judging from her brother's condition, Clarice was probably lucky she'd actually made it underground.

Evan looked down at the Navajo rug, as if ashamed to meet my eyes. “Hell, I'm no paragon of mental health, myself. Three wives already and I'm not even forty yet.” He sighed. “It's different when I'm here at work, I can forget about… well, you know. I can concentrate on getting these homes in for people and not think about…” 

I nodded. “I understand.”

His eyes welled up again. “Clarice was so sweet.” 

Clarice had never seemed particularly sweet to me, but then again, I wasn't her brother. I made a sympathetic noise and let him continue.

“When we were kids, Clarice and Serena and I kind of took care of each other. We had to. We didn't have anybody else, just the hired help, and they never stayed long because of Mom. Dad was usually gone, but when he was home it was even worse. And Mom…Well, you've met the Gin Queen.” 

I nodded again.

“Maybe the three of us leaned on each other too much. I mean, look at us. Not one of us can seem to find a healthy relationship. Clarice wound up with Jay, Serena got that crook from Madrid, and me? Christ. I got Liz, Amber, and Tiffany. Money-grubbing bimbos, every last one of them.” 

In deference to his grief, I refrained from pointing out that he'd chosen the money-grubbing bimbos himself. Why not teachers? Social workers? Ex-nuns?

Evan's next words stole my thoughts. “But I've only got myself to blame, right? Nobody pointed a gun at my head and told me to marry them. The warning signs were all there. I just chose to ignore them, like Clarice chose not to pay any attention to Jay's temper when they were dating. Or Serena not listening to anybody about her drug problem.” 

I took another long drink of tea. Was it my imagination, or had the trailer become hotter? Maybe I was simply responding to the emotional temperature of the room. I'd never been comfortable with naked expressions of emotion, a shortcoming that had made my life in the Violent Crimes Unit tougher than necessary. All that suffering. All that grief.