Desert Shadows (9781615952250) (16 page)

Chapter 15

Dusty opened his arms and started for me.

I grabbed the .38 from the coffee table. “Touch me and you're a dead man.” He had no way of knowing that I'd sooner shoot myself than him.

But he stopped anyway. “Please….Talk to me.”

I pointed the gun toward the corner chair. “Sit.”

Dusty sat. So did I. On the sofa. About eight feet away.

“You can put the gun down now, baby.”

“Stop calling me ‘baby.'” But I returned the gun to the coffee table. “Is that something you picked up from your cheap redhead?”

He smiled. “She wasn't all that cheap.”

“Good. I hope she took you for everything you've got.” Which wouldn't have been much. Dude ranch cowboys like Dusty seldom owned more than a horse and saddle.

“Just my pride. And my girl.”

“You better not mean me, cowboy. I'm nobody's
baby
and I'm nobody's
girl.
”

“You're so tough.” Still that heartbreaking smile.

“Tough enough for me not to put up with crap from you.”

“You won't have to, ba…Lena. I've learned my lesson.”

Isn't that what they all say? Still, there were so many things I needed to know, so I took a deep breath and sat back. “All right, Dusty. Start talking.”

***

He talked well into the night. He told me about the Vegas trip, the redhead—an advertising agency account executive from Manhattan—then the rehab center he checked himself into when he returned to Arizona.

“Working on a dude ranch may not pay much, but the group insurance is solid,” he finished up. “I stayed in rehab for six weeks, and after the first few days, it wasn't too bad. Considering.”

“Considering?”

He looked down at the floor. Shuffled his boots. Then looked back up, his eyes sadder than I'd ever seen them. “There's no point in boring you with the details, other than to say that I've been going on these benders since I was a teenager. But this is the first time I ever let one interfere with our relationship.”

“Are you telling me that all those times you neglected to call me for weeks didn't interfere with our relationship?” The moment the words left my mouth I regretted them. Dusty's disappearances had served my purposes, too. They kept us from getting too close.

He must have read my mind. “You never seemed to care all that much. Every time I came back you'd pretend nothing had happened.”

“Yeah. I guess I did.” Was this the time for me to say I would change? Want more? Give more?

Silence filled the room, filled only by a dripping tap in the kitchen and the sound of an idling car. Probably one of Main Street's fussbudget art dealers had returned to straighten a painting.

“Ain't neither of us perfect, ba…honey.”

I was wondering why “honey” didn't bother me when the redhead came through the door I'd forgotten to lock behind Dusty. Her gun was a lot bigger than mine.

Before I could compliment her on her gold-toned, .50 caliber Desert Eagle, I heard a sound like an artillery explosion and the drywall over my sofa exploded into white mist. Dusty and I dove for the floor, overturning the coffee table in the process. Unfortunately, my .38 went tumbling across the carpet, out of reach.

Dusty threw his body across mine, not that it would do any good. I'd counted five shots already, but I knew the Desert Eagle was good for seven. Each round packed enough fire power to cut through both of us and into my office below, if she ever managed to bring the gun under control.

Time to pray.

The redhead was screaming something, but the ringing in my head distorted her words. So I kept mumbling one of the only two prayers I knew, something about sheep. Then, as I reached the “He leadeth me” part, I decided I'd rather die fighting, not praying.

Shoving Dusty off me, I scrambled to my feet and charged across the room. Before the redhead could react, I grabbed her wrist, then wrapped my leg around her knees. We fell together in a tangle of arms, legs, and hair. As soon as I chomped my teeth down on her wrist, she released her hold on the heavy Desert Eagle and it fell to the floor with a clank that I, even in my sound-blasted condition, could still hear.

“Stupid bitch!” I yelled at the woman over the ringing in my ears. “Next time, get a gun you can handle!”

“He's mine! He's mine!” she screamed, snot and tears running down her face.

“Dusty, get the gun!” I yelled. I was too busy holding her down to do much of anything else.

Dusty scrambled forward, picked up the Desert Eagle with a look of loathing, and clicked on the safety. He then slid the thing under the sofa. Unlike most Arizonans, he didn't like guns.

But now he came into his own. The killing machine out of sight, he ripped the television set's extension cord from the wall, and, within seconds, had the redhead roped and tied like a recalcitrant calf.

I fished the Desert Eagle back out from under the sofa—the damn thing must have weighed twenty pounds—and took it to my bedroom, where I stashed it under a pile of dirty laundry. I returned to the living room in time to see Dusty picking up the phone.

“Put that down,” I said. It was late, so late that all the art galleries on Main Street had long since closed, and the tourists were tucked safely back into their overpriced hotel rooms. With luck, no one had heard anything.

Dusty didn't get it. “We have to call the police, Lena. Joanne's nuts, and she might pull something like this again.”

Joanne. So the Devil had a name. I didn't doubt that she might “pull something like this” again, but Dusty knew nothing about my own recent legal problems and court-ordered therapy. The last thing I needed was for my old buddies at the cop shop to show up at my apartment and put my name on yet another police report. Because of the glare of increased media coverage, the days when cops could cover each other's butts were long gone.

I placed my hand on Dusty's and guided the receiver back down. “No.”

“You women.” But he walked away from the phone.

A quick look at the wall above my sofa demonstrated why a woman should always choose the right gun for the job. The bullet tracks started about three feet above where our heads had been, climbed up sharply to the ceiling (I now could see dark sky) then trailed downward again at the corner. The redhead, who had probably seen too many Dirty Harry movies, had hardly been able to lift the Desert Eagle, let alone aim it.

I went back to the redhead and showed her my own .38, a comparatively delicate little thing that was easy to hold, aim, and even shoot to kill at close quarters.

“You have some interesting choices to make now, Joanne. Choice Number One, you can lie there for the rest of the night and listen to me tell you what a jackass you are. Or Choice Number Two, you can get the hell out of my apartment.”

She ignored me and addressed Dusty instead. “You said you loved me.”

I wanted to kick her. Then Dusty.

“Joanne?” I pressed the barrel of the .38 against her temple hard enough to hurt. But I didn't pull the hammer back.

She began to cry.

Dusty paced back and forth, muttering “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.”

How like a man. They went through life raising hell, lying to this woman and that, humping anything that would lie still long enough, then disappearing into the sunset when they got bored. But let a woman cry and they fell to pieces.

“Oh, shut up, Dusty, and let the woman think!” I snapped.

“Jesus. Jesus, Jesus.” But at least he stopped wearing out my carpet.

I let Joanne cry off the adrenalin for a few more minutes, then fetched some tissue out of the bathroom. I even wiped her nose for her.

“Now, if it were me, Joanne, I'd get the hell out of here,” I told her. “Then I'd drive down to Sky Harbor Airport and hop the next plane back to Manhattan where they don't have two-timing cowboys and big guns aren't so easy to buy.”

Her face sagged in resignation. “All right. Let me up and I'll leave.”

“Good. Then I won't have to shoot you.” I backed up but kept my .38 at the ready. “Dusty. You do the honors.”

“Lena, I think.…”

“That's a refreshing change. Go ahead and untie her, okay? Then usher her out the door. You can leave, too.”

“But, Lena.…”

I swung the .38 toward him. “I'm not feeling romantic right now.”

“Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.”

He did as he was told and shortly thereafter, I was left alone staring glumly at my ruined wall and cursing my therapist. I wanted my paranoia back. At least paranoids kept their doors locked, even while their no-good boyfriends were visiting.

Chapter 16

“Jimmy, you know anyone who works with drywall?”

He turned away from his beloved computer with a surprised expression. “That's an odd question coming from you.”

“I had a little trouble with my walls last night. Ceiling, too.”

“What sort of trouble?”

“They fell down.”

“They fell down?”
He stared at me, which was unusual because Pima Indians are some of the most polite people you'll ever meet.

“Yes. Now I need someone to put them back up. Do you know anyone or not? I'd prefer not to let Gus know about this, ah, situation.” I could imagine my landlord's face if he saw the walls. And the ceiling. He might even be irritated enough to break my lease.

“Drywall.” Jimmy looked like he wanted to ask another question. Instead he gave me the name of someone from the Rez. “Remember that Owen does a little carpentry here and there, too.”

“Owen's too busy these days so I'll go with the other guy.”

“That's it, then?”

“Sure is.” Unless the redhead came back with a new gun.

As soon as I'd placed a call to Jimmy's buddy I started to make some notes on the case, but Jimmy interrupted me.

“Before you get too deep into that, I've got some news. That librarian, Myra Gordon?”

I put my pen down. “What about her?”

“When I first ran her through the system, I came up with nothing, but then I discovered that Gordon uses her maiden name. Her married name was Mbisi. Does that ring a bell?”

I thought for a moment, waiting for it to come to me. When it did, I exhaled in shock. “You don't mean
George
Mbisi?”

“The same. She's his widow.”

“Oh, hell.” Feeling sick, I put my head in my hands.

Two years back, while I was still with the Scottsdale PD, George Mbisi, an executive for one of the local airlines, had been carjacked by three skinheads. They drove him out into the desert and, after torturing him with lit cigarettes until it got old, beat him to death with a tire iron. They then burned his body and buried it in a shallow grave. To celebrate, they dropped by a local bar where their boasts had been overheard by the bartender, who just happened to be the daughter of a Phoenix police sergeant. She called daddy, and within hours, Mbisi's murderers were behind bars, where they remained to this day, awaiting execution. As details of the case came back to me, I remembered the furor that had erupted when the search of the skinheads' apartments revealed a bevy of hate literature. Much of it bore the imprint of Patriot's Blood.

“Oh, man, Jimmy. What a motive.” I remembered Myra Gordon's face, her carefully guarded conversation.

“That doesn't mean she did it.”

No. But even without taking the hike, a librarian would know where to find water hemlock. Figuring out a way of getting the hemlock onto the right salad would be easy, too, especially with those place cards. Was that the real reason Gordon/Mbisi had attended the SOBOP Expo? And was the fact that she had been seated near Gloriana at the banquet table no coincidence?

I picked up the phone and called Emil Ramos, who told me he'd have his wife call me right away. Fortunately, she did.

“Mrs. Ramos, did anyone at the conference make a special request about seating?”

“Certainly,” she said. “Married couples wanted to be seated together, friends did, too. There was a space on the registration application for those requests.”

“How about at Gloriana's table?”

“David Zhang wanted to sit with my husband—they're friends—and that nice librarian wanted to sit near Gloriana.”

“Did she give a reason?”

Mrs. Ramos was silent for a moment, then said, “You understand that there were more than one hundred people there, Ms. Jones. But if I remember correctly, she wrote down on the form that she wanted to talk to Gloriana about the Patriot's Blood line.”

I closed my eyes.

“Ms. Jones? Is there anything else?”

I opened them again to find Jimmy watching me intently. “How far in advance did she register. Do you know?”

“Registration closed thirty days before the conference. The resort needed to know which banquet hall to use, the big one or the small one.”

One month. More than enough time to read up on water hemlock, and to take the necessary drive to harvest the deadly stuff. She couldn't have known that Gloriana would make procuring it so easy, not that it made any difference in the end.

“Thank you, Mrs. Ramos,” I said softly. After I wrangled Myra Gordon's Wyatt's Landing telephone number from her, we said our goodbyes and I hung up.

Every now and then private detectives question their commitment to truth, and this was one of those times. If Myra Gordon/Mbisi had murdered Gloriana, I didn't want to know. Yet I had to know because a friend's life was at stake.

“Bad news, huh?” Jimmy asked.

“You got it, partner.” I picked up the phone again and dialed Gordon's number. All I got was her message machine, telling me to leave my number. I did.

To calm myself, I went back to my case notes and jotted down this new information. Once I'd returned to normal, or what passed for normal for me, I remembered there were other people who might have wanted Gloriana dead. So I poured myself some coffee (standard black brew, no pretentious Seattle crap) and wandered across the street to the Damon and Pythias Art Gallery where my friend Cliffie Barbianzi knew about all things art and all things gay. I found him hunched over his Louis Quatorze desk, sipping at what smelled like a double shot of hazelnut cappuccino from a Royal Doulton cup. As I approached, he rose politely. His immaculate linen suit, the same pale gray as his hair, hadn't yet wrinkled.

“To what do I owe this pleasure?”

I waved my coffee mug at him. “Thought I'd join you for a cuppa.”

“Really? Just a nice morning visit between friends?” He smiled. “Who's dead?”

“Can't put anything over on you, can I, Cliffie? This time around, it's Gloriana Alden-Taylor, the publisher. Jimmy's cousin has been charged with the murder.”

Cliffie took another sip of his brew, then frowned in distaste. I doubted it was the coffee. “Can't say I'm sorry she's dead. You should see some of the irresponsible bilge that press of hers has published. I swear, it's enough to make you make you think twice about the First Amendment.”

“No laws are perfect,” I murmured. I gave him a brief rundown on the case, then asked the question that had brought me here. “Do you know anything about a film-maker named Sappho?”

“Everyone knows Sappho. But what does that delightful woman have to do with the unpleasant Gloriana Alden-Taylor?”

“Sappho is Gloriana's daughter.”

Cliffie's cultured veneer slipped as his mouth dropped open. “You shittin' me?”

“I shit you not. Now, what can you tell me about her?”

Cliffie stared into his fancy coffee cup for a moment, then looked back up at me, the façade back in place. “Well, my dear, I can tell you that Sappho has been out of town for the last month, so she certainly couldn't have done anything to Gloriana even if she'd wanted to. And she most definitely doesn't have a reputation for violence.”

I took the character reference with a grain of salt. Cliffie trusted everyone, even me. “You say she's been out of town for the last month. Where?”

“She's shooting a film in Superior. A gay Western.”

I raised my eyebrows. “I didn't know there was such a thing.”

He took another sip of his coffee. “You think gays were invented this century? We've always been around. In fact, I'm betting that a lot of those ‘old marm' schoolteachers were gay. Same for those ‘buddy' cowpokes. As for myself, I've always had grave suspicions about Pancho and Cisco. Not to mention Red Ryder and Little Beaver.”

I tried to look shocked but failed.

***

Superior was an old mining town approximately sixty miles east of Scottsdale. It had seen better days. Now the silver mine and most of the huge open pit copper mine were closed, and the miners' homes had weathered far beyond picturesque. Only a few residents had remained to work the pit, a huge maw which gaped at the edge of town. Their grown children had long ago left to find jobs in Phoenix and Tucson.

Lately, though, Superior had begun to enjoy new life. The Arizona Film Commission had touted the town's rough-hewn attractions to Hollywood, and Hollywood had responded with one film crew after another. As I followed Highway 60 through Superior, I spotted veritable forests of lighting equipment and dozens of heavily made-up men and women sitting around in directors' chairs, fanning themselves under patio umbrellas. I stopped by one such gathering and asked a rumpled-looking man sipping designer water if he knew where Sappho was shooting. He directed me back the way I'd come. It was only as I drove away that I realized I'd been talking to Nick Nolte.

Sappho had set up her encampment on the outskirts of town in rugged terrain that in many finished films had doubled as Old California, New Mexico, or Montana. Rough hills encircled a flat basin of sand and sage, while above, a few buzzards flapped their wings in annoyance at the ruckus below.

I parked the Jeep behind an empty horse trailer and got out. The film crew was small compared to some of the others I'd seen in town, probably only around thirty people total. Some wandered back and forth across the dirt road muttering imprecations about the glaring light and the drifting sand. A few yards away, three bored-looking women dressed in Stetsons and chaps sat astride well-groomed horses.

“Can you tell me where I could find Sappho?” I asked a large person of indeterminate sex.

“Over by the catering truck.” The sweet, high voice of a woman. She gestured toward an even taller woman who, in the midst of taking a Coke from the caterer, had her back to me. Then the woman turned around and I gasped. She looked like Gloriana must have looked thirty years earlier. Talk about strong genes.

Sappho's exact age was hard to determine because she was one of those long, lean women who seasoned rather than aged. Her beautiful face, deeply browned by the sun, made her blue eyes seem startling in contrast.

But they were the saddest eyes I had ever seen.

Not certain of the welcome I'd receive, I showed her my I.D. and explained the reason for my visit.

“I imagine a lot of people wanted to kill my mother,” she said in a deep, almost masculine voice. “I used to fantasize doing it myself when I was a child. But I got over it.”

“She was up here filming when it happened, with at least thirty witnesses,” said a petite brunette standing nearby. The heavy pancake makeup on her face revealed her to be one of the film's actresses.

Sappho turned to her and smiled. Her voice was gentle when she said, “Thanks, Lainie, but I can take care of this myself.” She turned back to me. “A couple of detectives have already been up here asking questions, and they seem satisfied with my answers. I don't know what else I can tell you, but I can assure you that I'm even more anxious to find my mother's murderer than you are. And by the way, I never for one moment believed that Owen killed her. He's not the type.”

“What type is that?”

“Poisoning is cowardly, and Owen is no coward. He confronts his enemies.” She motioned toward a picnic table which had been set up in the shade of an ancient mesquite. “Grab yourself a Coke or something from the catering truck and let's sit and talk.”

A half-hour later, I'd learned little more about the murder itself, but gained insight into the Alden-Taylor family dynamics. I'd also learned that, surprisingly, Sappho's preference for film work had angered Gloriana more than her sexual preference.

“So many people misunderstood my mother on race, and especially on lifestyle.” Sappho started on her third Coke. “She once told me she didn't care who I slept with as long as I got pregnant somewhere along the way and perpetuated the glorious Alden-Taylor genes. When she finally figured out that the idea of sleeping with a man disgusted me, she suggested I find a sperm donor and a friendly turkey baster. But I couldn't see myself as a mother, especially once I got started in the film business. I've never believed that nonsense about women being able to have it all, family and a high-powered career. Someone always winds up suffering in those situations, and the sufferer is usually the kid. I should know.”

Sappho's tone was bitter, making me wonder again about Gloriana's mothering skills. For all her obsessions, none of them had seemed to be children, not even her own.

“She disinherited you?”

“Not entirely. I still get something. When I told her that I refused to carry on the press if something happened to her, she pretty much gave up on me and turned to Zach.”

“How long ago was that?”

“Three years, five? I've been too busy to keep count.”

“How do you feel about Zach inheriting the bulk of the estate?”

Sappho shrugged. “Good for him and Megan. They can use it. I talked to her yesterday, when she called about the funeral arrangements. God, I'm glad Zach found that woman. He needs all the love he can get. Did you know that his parents were killed when he was only nine?”

I nodded my head and she continued. “Zach's mother's parents were both dead, so Mother decided to raise him herself. If there's anything I feel guilty about, it's him. At the time of the accident, I was old enough to take care of him, and probably should have, but I was about to premiere my first film at Sundance. So.…”

Her voice faded and the sadness returned to her eyes.

“He seems to have turned out well,” I said.

“You think so? Interesting. I should have done more to help him, but I was busy leading my own life. After the accident that killed my brother and his wife, Mother.…Well, let's just say other people didn't exist for her for a long, long time. Mother doesn't…
didn't
do grief very well. She retreated emotionally, just like she did when my father died.