Desert Noir (9781615952236) (32 page)

He saw my look. “Last week I moved it to the alcove there…” Here he pointed to a niche near the window. “…but I wound up not liking it so this morning I moved it back.” 

It could even have been true.

“Sit down, sit down.” He motioned me to a chair, then bustled around getting us drinks, apparently trying to stave off the inevi-table by playing the proper host.

I didn't touch the Diet Coke he set in front of me. “Quit stalling, Cliffie. What did you and Clarice discuss?” 

He gave me a look so naked with rage that for a moment I was frightened. I dropped my hand to my side, then remembered that I'd left my gun back at the office. Who would have thought I'd need it for my interview with good ol' Cliffie? 

The rage vanished as quickly as if someone had wiped it out with a giant eraser. “It was a business meeting, if you have to know.” 

“About?”

The rage battled its way forward again but with steely self-control, Cliffie kept it hidden behind those plump, friendly cheeks. “She wanted to, um, talk to me about leasing my space.” Which must mean that Cliffie was thinking about moving out. Like most of the other galleries in this part of town, Damon and Pythias held a very tenant-friendly lease. The only reason to give that up would be because you'd found better quarters elsewhere. But there was no elsewhere. The city was locked down tight. The rents on Gallery Row up on Stetson Drive were higher because the Art Walk crowds were a little heavier there than down here. Cliffie would be crazy to move.

Unless he had to.

Suddenly his drawn face and bent back took on an alarming note. Frightened for him, I blurted out my concerns. “Are you sick?” 

He offered a bitter smile. “That's what people always think, isn't it, when one of us isn't having a very good day? AIDS, the big homosexual bugaboo. Thanks for your concern, dear, but I'm fit as a fiddle and testing negative. Except for my back, which I really did hurt while moving this damned desk, may King Louis rot in hell for the grief he has caused me.” 

I felt better but that didn't mean I was going to let up on him. “Glad to know you're fit as a fiddle, Cliffie. Now tell me why you want to move out of here.” 

He looked down at the desk, as if contemplating the culpability of Louis Quatorze's craftsmen. “I never said I wanted to move out of here.” 

At that point, a customer entered the gallery and Cliffie jumped up, spry as a teenager. Relief will do that for you. But Cliffie's reprieve was short-lived. The customer's expression (he obviously hadn't understood the significance of the gallery's name) segued from befuddlement to disgust in the space of seconds. Cliffie winked at me when the customer left, slamming the door behind him.

“What is our educational system coming to these days when people don't know who Damon and Pythias were?” he moaned theatrically.

“C'mon, Cliffie. Half of them don't even know who Socrates was. Now sit back down and tell me what was going on between you and Clarice. You said she wanted your space but you said you weren't moving.” 

He sat back down. “Nothing's going on—now. Ding dong, the witch is dead.” 

Now it was my turn to feel befuddled, but I played along anyway. “Which old witch?” 

“The wicked witch.”

Suddenly it all came together. Cliffie's worried expression over the past few weeks, Clarice's look of smug satisfaction. “Clarice was trying to get you thrown out of the building, wasn't she?” 

“Hole in one, kid.”

“But
why?”

Cliffie sighed. “She wanted to expand. I don't think you realize what not getting appointed to the board of that miserable museum did to her. It was a slap in the face, and she knew it. So she decided she'd show them all and operate the biggest cowboy art gallery in town. She'd already picked up the lease on that vacant spot next to me and the gallery west of hers, and now she needed my space to make a clean sweep of the block.” 

“But she couldn't do that, could she? You've got a lease!” 

His smile turned grim. “Oh, sure, I've got a lease. But there's a couple of lines of legalese in there that make my lease dependent on the good will of my neighbors. Just like the sainted Rodney King said, we're all supposed to just get along down here, 'cause fussin' and fightin's bad for Scottsdale's image.” 

“Still…you weren't giving anybody any problems. It seems like Clarice was the real rat in the nest. Surely the landlord would see that.” 

He snorted a bitter laugh. “Oh, really? You seem to forget what kind of gallery I'm operating here. It's a
gay
gallery, dear heart. And while Scottsdale doesn't exactly hold pogroms for its gay residents, when it comes to business, Scottsdale basically enforces a ‘don't ask, don't tell' policy. All it would take to get me booted out of here is for someone to start raising a stink, and that's what Clarice said she was going to do if I didn't back out of my lease and let her pick it up.” 

Then, surprisingly, he reached over and patted my hand. “I know you liked her, Lena, but you never really knew her. Sure, on the surface Clarice was all bright smiles and intelligent conversation, but inside she was as hard as that ugly granite fountain of hers. Whatever she wanted, she went after—no matter who it belonged to and no matter how much it would hurt them to lose it. The only times she ever thought about other people was in figuring out how she could use them. She cultivated an acquaintance with you—don't be shocked, my dear—because she thought knowing a private detective might someday come in handy. She'd noticed, you see, that you don't always charge for the work that you do. And…” 

He paused, probably not sure if I wanted to hear any more.

I didn't, but I told him to continue anyway.

“Well, she was pretty hot for that cowboy of yours.” 

I felt my own face drain of color as I remembered Clarice always telling me to bring Dusty to her gallery openings and her obvious disappointment when he didn't show.

Seeing my expression, Cliffie said, “My dear, Clarice was a supremely selfish woman, and everybody knew it. Except you. Why is that, do you think?”

No problem answering that one. When you've lived like I have, under the rocks with the rest of the bugs, you don't want to look at anyone too carefully.

But I didn't tell him that. Instead, I said, “So now she's dead and you're off the hook.” 

Cliffie beamed. “Ding dong.”

The espresso bar was filled with tourists and by the time George Haozous joined me at a table towards the back, I'd heard accents from Germany, Japan, France, and Brooklyn. Due to the heat of the day—a hundred and eighteen degrees—I'd ordered an iced café mocha. With two scoops of ice cream.

“Jesus, this heat,” Haozous complained as he slipped into the booth across from me. “I can't wait to get back to San Carlos.”

“I thought you didn't mind the heat.”

“Yeah, usually I don't, but damn, this is ridiculous.” 

His mahogany face was beaded with sweat and dark circles had formed under the armpits of his snowy cotton shirt. I gave him time to order a root beer float, then shoved a photocopy of Clarice's Dayrunner under his nose. “If you and Clarice were on such bad terms, why were you seeing her every Tuesday night?” 

He looked at the book and made a disgusted sound. “I can't believe she did that, pencilled me in. Jesus.” Then he looked up at me. “C'mon, Miss Jones. You weren't born yesterday. Why do you think?” 

I thought about his bronze skin, his buff body, his sexy moves in my apartment. “You were having an affair with her, weren't you?” 

His laugh was ugly. “Affair. Yeah, I guess you could call it that. I figured as long as I was shagging her she'd keep my paintings in the gallery. It worked for a while, too. Then sometime near the end of June she got sick of me or maybe she found somebody else. Whatever the reason, she booted me and my paintings right out of her suck-ass gallery, slam bam thank you ma'am.” 

He attacked his root beer float greedily while I sat there stunned. When I could finally speak, I said, “You mean you prostituted yourself just to keep your paintings in there?” 

“Damn right I did and you don't need to sound so righteous. I'm not the only artist who ever used his ass…” He grinned. “… or
her
ass to further a career.”

I felt as naïve as a Sunday school teacher in a bordello. “Does your wife know?” 

“Get real. Natuende would cut it off by the root if she ever found out.” 

A vision of the sweet-faced woman in the trailer rose up before me. Some judge of people I was turning out to be.

When he saw the expression on my face, he threw back his head and roared. The tourists looked around to see who was making that jolly noise. Their eyes bugged when they saw it was an Apache.

Gee whiz, Martha, these redskins laugh just like us! Now ain't that something?

After Haozous headed out the door, I sat there staring at the remains of my café mocha shake. Emily Ruzan, Evan, Cliffie, Haozous—everything they'd told me hinted at a terrible truth.

But I had to be sure.

Abandoning my café mocha, I went back out to the Jeep and headed towards the mountain. No, I had no appointment, but if the Hyaths refused to see me, I'd simply stand at the front door of that mausoleum and shout out what I suspected for all their high-toned neighbors to hear. And somehow, I didn't think that would be necessary.

Randall was waxing the Rolls again as I drove up.

“They won't…”

“Tell them I know why Clarice dropped the civil action and if they don't talk to me, I'll tell the whole fucking world.” 

His face lit up like a kid's on Christmas Eve. “You got some dirt on them, huh?” “Believe me, Randall, you don't want to know.”

“I might surprise you.” But he told me to wait there while he announced my presence.

My threat worked. Within minutes, I was seated in the dead-animal living room with both of the Hyaths, trying my best to keep from clawing their eyes out. Eleanor wasn't entirely sober but neither was she entirely drunk. She wore a chartreuse-and-navy silk warm-up suit that had never been seen near a workout room. Its front was spotted with the usual food and wine stains. Her greasy hair hung in strings to her shoulders and a sour odor wafted from her body. The woman repulsed me but I knew that in her condition, she'd be easy to bait.

Stephen Hyath was his usual withdrawn self, but I figured that wouldn't last long. I remembered that the only photograph of Clarice that remained in the house was in his den. In his own sick way, he'd cared more for her than her mother ever had.

“Clarice was coming back to you, wasn't she?” I said to him.

He tried to restrain the pride from leaping to his face, but failed. “I was the only man in her life who was good to her.” 

Eleanor looked at him as if she wanted to kill him, and who knew, maybe she did. “Sluts. The both of you.” 

“Moi?” I put a hand to my heart in pretended hurt.

“No, you scarred-face bitch. Him! Him and her! Dogs in heat, that's all they were!” She belched a wet, noisy belch that hinted at all sorts of ugly liquid combinations.

Stephen, though, was as cool as ever. “You don't know what true love is,” he said to his wife. “You never knew.” 

“
Love!
” She made it sound like a dirty word.

It was really none of my business, but I couldn't keep from asking the still-handsome man, “Why did you marry Eleanor?” 

“I needed the money.” His face was granite.

Eleanor's own face was immobile, too, and I realized she wasn't hearing anything she hadn't heard a hundred times before. Then I remembered our luncheon, and the brief pain that had flashed across her face when she'd talked about her marriage. Hyath probably hadn't even bothered keeping his lack of love a secret. The first time he'd revealed his contempt for his bride, it had probably hurt her. The second time, the bride had begun keeping score and proceeded to act accordingly—which meant in her case, to hate her husband's children. That they were also her own children meant nothing because her hatred had already infected every cell of her being, making her unable to love.