Desert Rage: A Lena Jones Mystery (10 page)

Chapter Eight

Friday morning I had a meeting with Dr. Bradley Teague, the dead man’s half-brother, who had checked into a Scottsdale resort hotel after his long flight from Kenya. He wasn’t what I expected.

Somewhat north of sixty, he sported a swollen jaw, a split lip, and a missing front tooth, injuries he’d received when trying to inoculate a Kenyan girl against polio. He also exhibited the behavior of a man who feared he would never sleep again, no matter how firmly he clutched at the crucifix dangling from his neck.

“The mother was willing but the local warlord wasn’t having any of it, and in that part of Kenya, the warlord is king,” he lisped. “Fortunately, I was able to inoculate most of the kids in the village, including the girl, before he hit me with the butt of his rifle. Where are their bodies?”

I was stymied for a moment, but Stephen Zellar, Ali’s attorney, answered without a blink. “Now that you’re here, the medical examiner is releasing them, and your brother, sister-in-law, and nephew will be transferred to your funeral home of choice today,” he said. “In the papers on file with his estate attorney, your brother was very specific about what he wanted, so everything should run relatively smoothly. The only thing you need to do now is choose a suitable reception hall for the after-funeral get-together.”

“Reception hall?”

“The Camerons, especially your sister-in-law, had many friends. He left instructions for them to gather at his house after the funeral, but after what happened there…” Zellar cleared his throat. “Any reception hall would do. What church did they attend?”

“None. That I know of, anyway. We weren’t close, so I, ah, I think we should skip the reception. Considering everything, the publicity and all, it doesn’t seem appropriate.”

Zellar raised his eyebrows.

Dr. Teague took the subtle hint to explain himself. “As I said, Arthur and I weren’t close. I was already in high school when my father married his mother, and shortly afterwards left for college. Then there was medical school, then the Army, then marriage, and well, you know how it goes. Life, and all that. When I set up my practice in Pasadena, that took an enormous amount of time and energy, and I was, well, to come right down to it, I had my own life. Sure, I visited Arthur and his family from time to time, sent Christmas and birthday presents to the kids, but…” He trailed off, and touched his crucifix, as if to make certain it was still there.

“I see,” Zellar said. “About the house, then. It remains rather, ah, disorganized, so do you want me to place a call to one of the companies that specialize in that sort of, er, cleanup?”

“Oh, God.” Dr. Teague let go of his crucifix for a moment and buried his ruined face in his hands. Then, as if he couldn’t bear his own touch, he jumped up and crossed the room to the sliding glass door that led to the suite’s balcony. He opened the door, took a deep breath, and immediately closed it again. But he remained there, his face pressed against the glass. “Yes. Get it cleaned up. Then sell it. At a loss, if necessary. The furniture, too, if there’s any left after…” He paused, then added, “But the portrait of Alexandra, I’ll take possession of that in the meantime, even if it needs repair. The painting was done by Max Trattner, and is quite valuable.” He paused again. “I’m the one who commissioned it, as a wedding present for Arthur.”

Every time he said “Alexandra,” the tone of his voice changed. I looked at Zellar to see if he’d noticed, too, but the attorney’s face remained expressionless.

It was the morning after my interview with Kyle’s foster mother, and we were sitting in Dr. Teague’s suite at the Scottsdale Valley Ho, a fashionable retro hotel located a few miles south of the Cameron house. Considering the subject matter of the past hour, the suite’s hipster fifties decor at first seemed wildly at odds with the conversation we were having. Then again, its very hipness might help ease Teague back into the twenty-first century and a country where children didn’t have to duck ignorant warlords in order to receive medical care.

For the last hour, Zellar had been explaining the intricacies of juvenile law. If Zellar couldn’t get Ali’s confession thrown out and the charges against her dropped, there was yet another fallback: a plea agreement.

“Failing that, we present our case to the Juvenile Court judge. If, at the end, he finds her guilty, her age will be taken into account during the sentencing phase, and the law is much more lenient when it comes to juveniles. She and Kyle Gibbs will be tried separately, and it should be relatively easy to shift the onus of guilt onto him, since he’s the actual killer.”

“Make that ‘alleged’ killer,” I corrected, ignoring the damning note I’d found in Kyle’s room. Maybe I would tell Zellar about it later, maybe not. “Innocent until proven guilty, and all that.”

Dr. Teague threw me a questioning look, but Zellar, merely pursed his lips. “Mr. Gibbs isn’t our concern.”

True enough, legally speaking. The sooner we finished here, the sooner I’d be able to talk to Dr. Teague alone. That moment arrived twenty minutes later, when Zellar called Dr. Teague away from his view of the hotel’s parking lot to sign some papers. After offering his condolences once again, he stuffed everything back into his massive briefcase and left.

Dr. Teague appeared surprised when I remained behind. “Is there something else, Ms. Jones? If so, make it quick. I have to get out of this room, take a walk, do anything but sit around here thinking.”

I smiled. “Come to think of it, I could do with a walk myself, and I’d be more than happy to keep you company.” Playing on his apparent familiarity with art, added, “The Main Street galleries are open, and it’s not all that hot yet. At least, not as much as yesterday.”

At first I thought he would turn down my offer, but he didn’t. “Anything’s better than staying cooped up in here.” He started toward the door. “Not that you’re just ‘anything,’ Ms. Jones. Sorry if it sounded that way.”

“No offense taken.”

“Not all that hot” is a relative term in Arizona. The temperature had already nudged past ninety, but in a climate this dry it was bearable, and Teague, used to the heat of Africa, had no problem with it. At first he strode briskly along as if disinclined to talk, but by the time we reached the Arts District he loosened up enough to discuss what was left of his family. Namely, Ali.

“I will help my niece, regardless of what she may have done,” he said.

“Regardless?” I didn’t like the sound of that.

He slowed, examined a fingernail. It looked fine to me. “Zellar says he can get her confession thrown out. What do you think, Ms. Jones?”

What I thought didn’t matter; it was what the judge thought that counted. “Zellar will make a strong argument that the arresting officers in Quartzsite strong-armed Ali, and since she’s only fourteen, it might work. But better cross your fingers. As Zellar told you, she repeated the same story, on videotape, when she was returned to Maricopa County.”

“Zellar says there was no attorney in the room at the time.”

“Which will work in her favor.”

It was early enough that Main Street was still fairly deserted, so we were able to talk freely. Not that anyone would have paid attention even if we’d been discussing an imminent alien invasion. The few tourists who were already out and about were more interested in window shopping than they were in us.

This section of Scottsdale was perfect for a leisurely walk.

More than fifty art galleries were located within a twenty-block radius, and their windows showcased everything from impressionism to photo realism, to post modernism, to downright kitsch. Interspersed among the galleries were jewelry stores, most of them offering Native American work, Navajo turquoise and silver being the big thing at the moment. For a while, Dr. Teague seemed content to amble along like the other tourists, the flashy window displays working to take the edge off his earlier edginess. Eventually he stopped in front of one of Scottsdale’s less prestigious galleries. The painting in the window featured a large oil of three dolphins frisking with a mermaid. They glowed in the roseate light angling through a pyramid hovering above the waves.

“Thomas Kinkaid goes to sea,” he said.

“All it needs is a unicorn.”

Still staring at the painting, he asked, “Do you think she was telling the truth?”

I knew he wasn’t talking about the fakey mermaid. “Teenage girls have done crazier things. But the part about hiring a hit man with her allowance money, I’m doubtful about that. Kyle seems the more likely suspect.” Not that the thought made me any happier. The grudging pity I felt for the boy kept nagging at me.

Ali’s legal situation having been fully covered over the last hour, it was time to ask the question we’d been dancing around since leaving the hotel. “Dr. Teague, you said a couple of times you and your half-brother weren’t close, but did you know the, ah, details about Ali’s birth?”

He grabbed at his crucifix, then let go as his shoulders tensed and his hands began to twitch. It took him a few moments to answer. “Of course. We, ah…that IVF business, then the…Well, siblings don’t always see eye to eye, do they? Do you have a sister?”

“Not that I know of.”

The dolphins lost his interest. When he turned around to face me, I could see a vein throbbing on his temple. “What an odd answer.”

I gave him the thirty-second version of my childhood.

Fresh from the horrors of Kenya, he wasn’t all that shocked. “I’m sorry about the foster homes, but adopting a child with your background would have been risky.”

“Agreed.”

“Even adopting a newborn, if you don’t know the parents’ background and genetic makeup, that can be risky, too. All sorts of problems are inheritable, say, from paranoid schizophrenia to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. That’s…”

“Lou Gehrig’s disease, yes, I know. Is that why your brother opted for IVF rather than adoption?”

He wiped his brow, where a line of sweat had formed and threatened to run into his eyes. “Arthur discussed it with me before he and Alexandra had the procedure done, not that anything I said swayed his decision.”

“Did you try?”

“Once Arthur makes, made, I mean,
made
up his mind to do something, he became obsessed with it. It’s what made him an excellent physician, but a difficult person to talk to. Asperger’s people are like that.”

I looked at him in surprise. “Asperger’s?”

“Sorry. You’re probably not familiar with it.”

Actually, I knew a little about the syndrome. It was at the high end of the autism spectrum, frequently characterized by obsessive behavior. People suffering from it—although
suffering
probably wasn’t the right word to use—can function quite well, frequently at the genius level. But because their brains do work differently than the average person’s, they can have trouble with social interactions, coming across as aloof or remote. And they don’t like to be touched.

“I’ve heard of Asperger’s,” was all I said.

“Good, then I don’t have to explain it. Well, Arthur had it in spades. For instance, I learned never to bring up the subject of cars, because if I did, he’d talk for hours obsessing about the things. He was always emailing me pictures of some classic car or other, as if I cared, out there in the bush where so many kids were dying. He should have stopped…” Another grab at his crucifix. “Anyway, you couldn’t turn him off once he got started, and it drove Alexandra crazy. She finally had to tell him if he mentioned any car of any kind in her presence, she’d leave him, although I don’t think she really meant it.

“Alexandra wasn’t only beautiful, she was a good and decent woman. She had a job when they met, but she quit it when they got married to make a home for him. Not that Arthur ever appreciated it. That thing about children, for instance. When Arthur realized she couldn’t get pregnant, he started obsessing about IVF like he obsessed about cars. Being a good Christian, Alexandra didn’t want to undergo the treatments at first, but the son of a bitch kept on and on at her until the poor woman finally gave in.” He heaved a big sigh. “Oh, well, what difference does it make now? What’s done is done, and now Alexandra is with the angels.”

When he said the name
Alexandra
, his voice sounded tender. It made me suspect that he harbored something other than Christian love for his brother’s wife. “But now there’s Ali,” I said.
And there used to be Alec
. I touched him on the arm, only to have him flinch away. Also interesting, since Asperger’s was believed to have a genetic component.

Dr. Teague shook himself, as if to rid himself of my touch. “Oh. Ali. Right. If you must know, as a practicing Catholic I refuse to have anything to do with artificial means to end pregnancy, prevent pregnancy, or even encourage pregnancy through drugs or any other procedure which attempts to circumvent natural law, so when Arthur brought it up, of course I argued against it.”

“Really? I know plenty of Catholics who don’t agree with you on the IVF business, priests among them.”

“Apostates!” When he turned to me, his eyes glittered with religious fervor, and for a moment I feared I would be on the receiving end of a sermon about the evils of free thought. It didn’t happen, though. He grunted, stroked his crucifix, and turned back to the dolphins.

Only by reminding myself that this man had risked his life to inoculate Kenyan children was I able to temper my next remark. “Apostates? That’s rather a harsh judgment, don’t you think?’

He looked at me again. “God is sometimes harsh, but we must submit to his will.”

I studied his crucifix. It was larger than the usual cross, almost aggressively so. Had a touch of Asperger’s caused him to obsess about God instead of collectible cars? “Using your own logic, then, wouldn’t it follow that the Kenyan children you inoculated against polio should be left to contract the disease?”

“Don’t play word games with me, Ms. Jones. The situations are nothing alike. Anyway, you have your beliefs—perhaps—and I have mine. Suffice it to say my brother and I clashed over the IVF issue, much as we clashed on others. Arthur was always a hardhead, so he paid no attention to me, just maintained that the Camerons had never displayed any genetic problems, none that we knew about, anyway. And since extensive DNA and psychological testing is required of any prospective egg donor, he believed the procedure was the next best thing to having children with Alexandra.”