Desert Rage: A Lena Jones Mystery (11 page)

He paused, sighed. “Talk about a beautiful woman. And such a good one, too.”

Yes, she’d been beautiful, but I’d seen Alexandra Cameron’s before and after pictures and it was the
after
that haunted me.

Before he became mired in his memories, I said, “By the way, Dr. Teague, a large sum of money, eighteen thousand dollars, to be exact, was found hidden in your brother’s house. Do you know anything about that?”

A vein throbbed in his forehead. A tell? “There’s nothing I can tell you about that.”

I tried again. “Is there anything you can tell me,
anything
, that could have led to Ali’s problems with your brother? Or his murder? ”

“How would I know? Other than a phone call now and again and the obligatory holiday cards and presents, like I’ve explained, we didn’t keep in close contact. Looking back, I wish it could have been different, but we were on separate life paths.”

“Not so much. Both doctors, both…” I paused, belatedly realizing how little I knew about Bradley Teague’s personal life. “Do you have children?”

He gave me a wintry smile. “Not that I know of.”

“Touché, Dr. Teague, but considering the situation, my question is relevant. Despite your different philosophies, your brother named you as his children’s guardian if something happened to him or Alexandra. Zellar mentioned in passing that you’re a widower. Any future marital prospects? Someone who might serve as a mother figure for Ali?”

The vein in his temple throbbed even harder. “No. My marriage wasn’t happy. When Jeanette contracted a particularly aggressive form of pancreatic cancer, we’d been contemplating a legal separation, but of course after her diagnosis…” He let the sentence trail off, cleared his throat and began again. “After my wife died, I confronted the fact that our problems were due mainly to my inability to, as Jeanette put it, maintain close human contact.” He sighed. “That appears to be a family trait.”

Like Asperger’s.

Unaware of the way my mind was working, he continued, “Catholicism aside, I didn’t go to Kenya and similar hellholes because I’m some walk-on-water saint. The unvarnished truth is that, other than a brief infatuation with my brother’s wife, I’ve never really cared much for people. Just their symptoms.”

Despite the day’s heat, I felt a chill. How would the troubled Ali fare under the guardianship of this man? And, come to think of it, how had she really fared under the guardianship of her own father? Had Alexandra been warm enough, empathic enough, to make up for her husband’s remoteness?

As if he’d read my mind, he said, “My niece will receive good care, Ms. Jones, I assure you of that. As for the rest of it, what you’d probably call the ‘emotional’ part…” He shrugged. “Well, I’ll try. You see, working with Doctors Without Borders has more to do with the expiation of guilt than anything else, and I certainly do not want to accumulate more. So Ali will want for nothing. Now please excuse me, but I need time to myself.”

Dismissal delivered, he clutched at his crucifix again, then left me with the capering dolphins and moved on down the street.

Alone.

Chapter Nine

Kyle

I need to see Ali.

Need to see her.

But they’re keeping Ali from me, telling me I’ll never see her again except maybe in court but probably not even then because we’re going to have different trials.

Why can’t I see her?

I need to see her, need to talk to her, need to tell her to stop saying the things everybody tells me she’s saying, crazy stuff like she planned it and stuff.

She’s got to stop saying that, needs to tell them it was all me, that I did it all, did it, did it, did it.

She’s got to shut up.

When I told the guard the other day that I wanted to tell Ali something, he just laughed and laughed, said he knew what I wanted to do, tell her what to say and what not to say. He said Ali and me should’ve got our stories straight right off the bat instead of making it up as we went along. He also said we were mean-stupid to kill her mom and dad and brother, mean to kill them in the first place, stupid to believe we could run away to Hollywood and get jobs in the movies, buy a big house with a big pool, and throw big expensive parties and stuff. He kept calling us mean-stupid, mean-stupid like all the other kids in this place.

Ali’s not mean, except to people she thinks might hurt me. And she is so not stupid. She’s smart, real smart. She knows all about things I never even heard of. She reads books on medicine and stuff, knows the names of all the bones in the human body, can recite them all by heart.

That’s smart!

Me, though? Compared to Ali, no way, and compared to maybe the guard and everyone else I’ve ever known, maybe I am stupid.

A real no-hoper.

But Ali keeps on reminding me that I get B’s and C’s on my report cards. Okay, so maybe there was that D in algebra, but I didn’t fail, did I? Ali said that what with all that moving around from place to place I had to do, I never failed any class, which she thinks is pretty good. Most of the kids in here got moved around all the time like me, but they don’t get B’s and C’s, just mainly D’s and E’s.

She told me to remember I even got an A in English once! We was supposed to write one of those dumb “What I Did On My Summer Vacation” essays, so I did and the teacher said it made her cry, that she’d been going to give me a B in the class but that after reading my essay she changed her mind and gave me an A.

When I took it home and showed it to Mom Fi, she cried, too.

So did Ali. After she read it she put her arms around me and hugged and hugged, crying like a baby.

Not that Ali’s a crier. I only saw her cry that once, and it was for somebody else, me, not for herself.

Maybe Ali’s right, maybe I’m not as stupid as everyone says I am. Well, everyone except her and Mom Fi and Dad Glen. They don’t think I’m stupid at all. They think I’m smart, they say it all the time, they tell me I just missed a lot of school and most of the time there was nobody around who made me do my homework.

I miss them, even though they made me do my homework.

I especially miss Mom Fi. Almost as much as I miss Ali.

I hear Mom Fi was awful mad when she found out I took off to Hollywood with Ali, but I left a note, didn’t I? I asked her to please feed Chester, Wendy, Alice, Veronica, and Archie, that I’d call her collect as soon as me and Ali got to California, so not to worry, we were fine, and when we got our jobs in the movies I’d send money home so she and Dad Glen could fix up the house and buy toys for the twins.

I miss the twins, too.

Crazy screaming little monsters but so cute you can’t get mad at them. Besides, they’re really only babies, aren’t they? Babies don’t know nothing yet, don’t know about…

No, not going to think about all that stuff.

Have to see Ali.

Have to tell her to tell them I did it.

Did everything.

Thought about it. Planned it.

Did it!

Chapter Ten

Lena

After watching Dr. Teague disappear into a gallery that specialized in Navajo silverwork, I continued my way to Desert Investigations. The Valley Ho being so close to my office, I’d left my Jeep in its designated covered parking spot, but as I passed by the private parking lot next to our building, I saw Big Black Hummer hunkered down in Jimmy’s spot again. A glance along the street revealed Jimmy’s Toyota pickup, sitting in the soon-to-be-broiling sun.

Patience at end, I called the tow company.

Stepping out of the blazing Arizona sunshine, the office looked dark in comparison. I could smell coffee, but something seemed off about it.

“Top o’ the morning to you, kemo sabe,” Jimmy quipped, staring at his computer screen. He had to have been in the office for at least an hour, because his desk swam in a sea of paper.

“How could you tell it was me? You didn’t even turn around. It could have been a client.”

“Yardley’s lemon verbena soap. You’re the only person I know who uses it.”

I segued away from the intimate subject of my bath soap. “I called the tow truck on the Hummer.”

He made a face. “You sure that was necessary?”

“Positive. I’m surprised you didn’t.”

He shrugged. “I’ve learned to pick my battles.”

Irritated by his lack of irritation, I changed the subject. “Whatever happened to the theory of the paperless office?”

“Like most theories, it didn’t pan out.” When Jimmy spun around in his chair, his long black hair swept several papers off his desk. He ignored them. “So how’d things go with Ali’s uncle this morning?”

While pouring myself a cup of coffee, I summed up the conversation. “Dr. Teague is handling the situation as well as anyone could, I guess, and appeared open enough during our interview. He even displayed a not-too-secret love for his brother’s wife. Oh. And he’s religious.”

“But?”

I took a sip of the coffee. Some sort of frou-frou vanilla/hazelnut blend, not my type of thing, but what the heck. It was caffeinated. “What makes you think there’s a ‘but’?”

“Because I know you.”

“I wish you’d go back to Blue Mountain. This crap tastes like candy.”

“There’s an unopened bag of Blue Mountain beans in the cupboard, and the grinder’s clean. Have at it.”

“I hate the noise the grinder makes.”

“Poor you. Tell me why you’re not comfortable about the interview. It’s all over your face.”

“That’s disgust at the coffee.”

“If you don’t tell me, then I won’t tell you what I’ve found out about Dr. Cameron’s bank account.”

“All right, all right. Here’s what I think. For all Teague’s supposed openness, I could tell he was holding something back. He admitted he and his brother weren’t close, but put it down to Asperger’s behavior on his brother’s part. After sounding a bit disapproving over the egg donor situation, he started to add something, then changed his mind and just said that siblings don’t always see eye to eye. There’s more there, I can feel it. From the way he talked about his brother’s wife—he even commissioned a painting of her, pretending it was a wedding present—maybe there was tension between them over Alexandra. Still, he seemed forthright enough, accent on the word
seemed
, so maybe it was something other than unrequited love. I’ll have another go at him before he leaves town, which will probably be right after the funeral.”

“Back to Kenya? But Lena, now that he’s Ali’s designated guardian, I don’t see how that’s possible.”

“Not much guardianship involved if the girl remains in juvenile detention until she’s eighteen.”

I thought back to Dr. Teague’s confessed lack of close human relationships. Even if Ali was eventually found guilty of all charges, she was still only fourteen, and Arizona judges tended to be lenient toward minors. White, non-gang-affiliated female minors, anyway. If, despite all Zellar’s legal and medical arguments about a teenager’s “unformed cerebral cortex,” Ali wound up serving time, she would need a stable and loving person to come home to when her sentence was up. It was hard to see her uncle fulfilling that role.

Harder still, Ali’s biological mother—the Honorable Juliana May Thorsson, if the polls were correct, would be busy in the U.S. Senate.

Poor, messed-up kid.

“Even if the kid does time, guardianship is more of a job than you’d think,” I pointed out, after taking another sip of the god-awful brew. “But then it would be mainly legal stuff, not actual day-to-day supervision. I don’t want to think of what might happen when she’s finally released, so let’s not go there. Tell me about Dr. Cameron’s secret bank account. You finally hacked your way in?”

He waved some papers. “Child’s play, since we had the account number on the deposit slip. Turns out this was the doctor’s private account. His wife’s name isn’t on it.”

“Sounds to me like he was keeping a mistress.” I remembered the portrait of Mrs. Cameron over the mantel of the murder house. How could a man married to a woman that beautiful stray?

Unaware of my thinking, Jimmy said, “For all we know, the doc was keeping a half dozen mistresses, but not with this account. Turns out it’s a savings account he set up three years ago. No withdrawals. Ever. Now here’s what’s interesting. He made a total of four eighteen-thousand-dollar deposits this year, not counting, of course, the money you found in his house. Before that, he made only one deposit early last year, and four the year before that.”

“Sounds like business, whatever it was, was getting better.”

“Maybe.”

“Just maybe? Don’t keep me in suspense.”

A slight smile. “Those deposits were made at irregular intervals. This year, he made two in January, one each in March, May, and July. Last year, only one, in January. The year before that, one each in April, May, June, and July. All made in cash, like the bundle you found in that pillow.”

“It was a bolster.”

“Whatever.” Jimmy leaned even closer, and for a moment I thought he would touch my face, but at the last second his body bent down and to the right, as he picked up the fallen papers from the floor. Straightening, he added, “As you know, cash deposits are untraceable.”

“Unless you can find the original account the money was withdrawn from. Good luck with that.”

He put the papers back on his desk. “Or we could get a copy of the victim’s tax returns. The IRS demands specifics, even if the money comes from gambling or hooking. Drug dealers, the small-time ones, anyway, sometimes declare their income as gambling winnings.”

It was hard to envision Dr. Cameron a drug dealer, but these days, anything was possible. What argued against a drug connection, though, was that each deposit was for the same amount: eighteen thousand dollars even. Drug-running tends to be an up and down business, not to mention more profitable. And there are seldom year-long breaks, the cartels not being in the business of giving their employees sabbaticals.

“However Cameron got the money, it looks like he was saving up for something big,” I pointed out. “Otherwise, why not just blow it on a vacation with the wife and kids? Answer: he didn’t want his wife to know about this extra income. Or its origins, or its purpose.”

“That’s my thinking, too.”

Then I remembered the ruined Corvette and Thunderbird in the family’s garage. “Another car, maybe?” I asked. “His computer searches showed he was looking at some pretty ritzy newer models. Maybe he figured once he brought it home, the deed was done and his wife would have to lump it.”

Jimmy raised his eyebrows, which made the curved tribal tattoo on his temple almost disappear into his ebony hair. “Have to be one heck of a car, Lena. There was already a hundred and eighty thousand dollars in that account, and your dead man was about to add another eighteen thousand to it.”

“So what kind of car costs more than two hundred thousand dollars?”

When Jimmy grinned, his teeth were a startling white against his bronze skin. “Let’s start with an Aston Martin V12 Vanquish, or a Lamborghini Gallardo, or…”

I lifted my hands in surrender. “Stop. Please. Since when do you know so much about high-end cars?”

The smile grew broader. “Every man has his dreams.”

The idea of Jimmy, a dedicated Toyota truck man, lusting after a Lamborghini made me smile, too. “Be sure to give me a ride in your new Lamborghini as soon as you buy it. Seriously though, is there any way you can backtrack that cash? I took close-ups of some of the bills in case you were able to trace the serial numbers.”

“I’m working on it. The timing of the deposits, too. If I can connect the deposit dates to a recurring series of events, we might—just might, mind you—zero in on who he was doing that under-the-table business with. And whatever services the good doctor was providing for them.”

“Has to be something illegal, Jimmy. Another thing. I want you to see if anyone has posted something negative about any of the victims, especially Dr. Cameron. And check to see if there were any malpractice lawsuits against him. I didn’t see anything like that in the case file.”

“He wasn’t in private practice, and it’s those physicians who usually get hit with big malpractice suits. Like, ‘You misdiagnosed my mother with an ulcer and it turned out to be stomach cancer, but by the time they found out what was really wrong, it had metastasized.’”

“Granted, but some sketchy people wind up in ERs, people getting shot because they were doing something they shouldn’t be doing, gangbangers, et cetera.”

He looked dubious. “Not a lot of that going down in Scottsdale.”

“Except Cameron worked at Good Sam in downtown Phoenix. Lots of gunshot victims there. On weekends, it’s a regular assembly line. Maybe somewhere along the way he let the wrong person die and now the dead banger’s buddies…”

Jimmy interrupted. “Aren’t you forgetting the confessions? Ali’s and Kyle’s? Plus there’s that note you showed me, the one where Ali not only wished her family dead but suggested that Kyle kill them. And by the way, have you given the note to her attorney yet?”

“I will.” Maybe. Possession of the note would place Zellar in a dicey legal position, something I wanted to avoid. “For now, forget the note and think about the confessions.
Conflicting
confessions, I’d like to point out. Here’s the thing. On my way back from the meeting with the brother, it occurred to me we’re taking too much for granted when it comes to Ali. Her story about paying a hit man with her allowance money is bullshit, so what other lies could she be telling? And what about Kyle’s version of events? We need to compare Ali’s story with his, but I haven’t yet figured out a way to get to him. Sending him questions via his aunt might have worked, but he doesn’t want to see her. Kyle’s foster parents can’t help, either, because so far, the judge is denying them permission to visit.”

Jimmy frowned. “You’re kidding me? They’re his guardians.”

“Foster parents. Which means that technically, the kid’s still a ward of the court, not them, so what the judge rules goes. I called Kyle’s attorney first thing this morning and he told me he’s appealing, but right now, the kid remains in a state of legal limbo. Still, there is one bit of good news. Kyle’s guardian ad litem says she’ll go with the attorney to talk to the judge, but it might take a couple of days. The judge has a full docket.”

Jimmy frowned. “Kyle’s attorney actually talked to you? Gave you information? Geez, Lena, he could get disbarred for that. And you could lose your license.”

“I’m not going to lose my license.” I recapped the conversation, ending with, “And at this point in Racine’s career, he’s more interested in the truth than in ethics.”

“And here I thought truth and ethics were one and the same. Silly me. But back to the kids. Kyle…” Something outside drew his attention. “Well, will you look at that!”

A truck from City Towing was passing by, with Big Black Hummer loaded onto its flatbed.

“You can move your pickup out of the sun now,” I gloated.

He gave me a disapproving look. “Please don’t tell me you called the city.” Left to his own devices, Jimmy would rather park in the hot sun than turn in a parking space thief. He had always been too tenderhearted for his own good.

“Whoever keeps parking in our spots didn’t pay any attention to my notes, so yeah, I called. Someone had to. But what were you about to say when we were so pleasantly interrupted?”

He turned away from the window. “I was going to remind you that Kyle wouldn’t be the first teenager to kill for his girlfriend.”

“You think I don’t know that? But something…” I shook my head. “Something’s off about this case. Way off. I just can’t figure out what.”

“Well, let me know when you do.” He grabbed his keys and went outside to move his truck.

***

The hours passed slowly while I informed various clients on the status of their cases. Gerald Jenks, the human resources director at Charge-O-Matic, who’d been suspicious about the behavior of a stockroom employee, was shocked to learn that the man had done time for grand theft in Kansas, been arrested for shoplifting from a Phoenix Costco, and missed his last appointment with his parole officer.

“Didn’t you run a background check?” I asked him.

Jenks’ long silence was my answer.

I sighed. “Here’s the good news, Mr. Jenks. Since he handles money, even if it’s only the petty cash, you can let him go for cause and not worry about getting sued. But in the future, you might want to run these sorts of checks before you hire someone, not after. Or at least check their references.”

“But he looked so honest,” Jenks mourned.

“Good crooks usually do.”

Human nature never ceases to amaze me. Despite a recent deluge of newspaper articles about upright church deacons caught watching kiddie porn and sweet-faced grandmothers on trial for running meth labs in their basements, most people still judged the human playbook by its cover. The fact that a simple Internet search could reveal the guilty truth behind innocent masks never occurred to them. Whatever the reason, their naïveté kept business booming at Desert Investigations.

I heard the same sort of story again, one client after another ruefully admitting to trusting the wrong person, lonely men trusting the wrong women, lonely women trusting the wrong men. After a couple of hours of this, I was ready to tear my hair out in frustration.