Desert Wind (9 page)
Appalled, Dusty entered rehab and swore off the sauce.
I swore off Dusty.
Now my bad penny had turned up again, and I was faced with a decision. Should I continue sitting quietly behind him, hidden by the open door, or should I announce my presence and get the discomfort out of the way.
Remembering what one of my kinder foster fathers, a Baptist minister, once said, “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,” I remained quiet while Olmstead told Dusty to take the dudes along the river trail. When the conversation ended and the door shut, I began breathing again.
“Are you all right, Miss Jones? You look pale.”
Olmstead’s voice roused me from my shock. “I’m fine, thanks. It’s this higher elevation, I guess. Walapai Flats is about a thousand feet higher that Scottsdale.”
“One thousand, two hundred and eight feet, to be exact. It’s not like we’re Denver.”
“Another nice town.” Olmstead wasn’t the only person who could deflect.
“If you don’t mind the traffic.”
Small talk can be pleasant, especially after Olmstead’s previous formality, but it’s a waste of time during a murder investigation, so I picked up where we’d left off. “You’ve told me that your relationship with Ike Donohue was slight, but is it possible you or your guests might have heard something negative about him, something that might provide a motive for his murder?”
“Miss Jones, I have better things to do with my time than listen to idle gossip. Same with my guests.”
If there had been gossip about Donohue, I’d ferret it out whether he liked it or not. “I’m sure you’re a busy man, Mr. Olmstead, and I understand your not wanting to worry the guests, but if I’m going to help Ted, I need considerably more information than I have now. So please. Who disliked Donohue?”
“Enough to kill him?”
“Over time, even the smallest disagreement can fester.”
He looked at the family photograph again. “Jesus counseled us to forgive the sins of others.”
“Jesus isn’t involved in this case, though, so would you mind answering my question?”
Olmstead didn’t like that, but in accordance with his beliefs, he forgave me instead of slapping me upside the head. “Perhaps some of the people involved in V.U.M. get fairly emotional, but never to the point of shooting anyone. They’re responsible people. But since you’re determined to dwell on the negative, drive over to Sunset Canyon Lakes and talk to Mrs. Donohue. Like you, she never misses a chance to speak her mind. As for me, I hardly knew the man. Nor, as far as I know, did anyone else on this ranch, whether wrangler or guest.”
“What about your other children? The ones who still live at home.”
“They know nothing.”
“I need to hear that for myself.”
He pursed his lips. “I’m not letting you anywhere near them. Aren’t you aware of their condition?”
I turned around the look at the family photograph. “I take it, then, that your Down syndrome children are the only ones left at home.”
“Other than Theodore and Leilani, of course. As for the others, even if they did see something, which I doubt because they spend almost all their time in the family home out back, their language skills are so limited they won’t be able to convey that information to you in any meaningful way.”
“I’ve known numerous people with Down syndrome, and most have no trouble conversing. Some live independently and even hold down jobs.”
“The ones Jeanette and I adopted are not high-functioning, Miss Jones. Now ask me something else and leave my children alone.”
After that, the interview degenerated. Every question I asked was answered with a noncommittal. Olmstead knew no evil, heard no evil, saw no evil, and certainly wouldn’t speak any evil. Several frustrating minutes later, I thanked him for his time and left.
Pulling out of the parking lot, I thought back to the family photograph he’d continued looking at throughout our conversation.
Husband. Wife. Children. Everyone smiling. Everyone happy.
But pictures could lie.
As I neared the part of the highway that paralleled the Virgin River, I had to slow for a long line of horseback riders ambling along at dude speed. Dusty and the blue-eyed dog led the group, while another wrangler took up the rear. Not yet ready to face the unpleasantness that was certain to come, I kept my face averted.
April, 1966: Northwestern Arizona
The funeral for Abby’s mother was a short one, but as soon as they arrived home, Gabe insisted his wife go straight to bed. “Edna’s at peace now, girl. As for you, you need your rest.”
Abby argued for a while, insisting she stay up and get the roast started, but she eventually gave in and let him lead her to the bedroom, old Blue trailing behind. “I know I’m letting you down, Gabe,” she said. “Half the time I can’t garden, can’t clean house, can’t even cook. What good am I?”
As he tucked the bedspread around his hollow-eyed wife, Gabe said, “You don’t never let me down, Abby. Just having you with me is enough. You give the smile to the day.”
The depression had hit Abby last month, right after her sixth miscarriage ended in a hysterectomy. Now she spent more days in bed than out. To everyone’s surprise, Gabe had stepped up. In addition to his already considerable ranch chores, he’d learned to garden, mop, and wash dishes. Sometimes he even put on Abby’s strawberry-patterned apron and cooked. Hell, making a roast was easy. You rubbed the meat with garlic, sprinkled on the narrow leaves of that green plant Abby grew in what she called her herb garden, and shoved it all into the oven at three hundred-fifty degrees for, say, two hours, more if it was a bigger piece of meat. Wondering how much the roast weighed, Gabe tilted his head toward the kitchen.
“Oh, Gabe, so much death.”
The roast could wait. Turning back to Abby, Gabe took her hand. “Your mama’s at peace now, Abby. Remember how bad she was hurting.”
Abby squeezed his hand. “I remember.”
Who could forget? It had maddened Gabe, seeing Edna suffer. That tough ranch woman, popping out twelve kids as if it’d been nothing, once even limping through her housework with a leg fresh broke by an ornery horse. Cancer-reduced to a moaning ragbone wreck. Ten days ago, when the pain made her scream, Gabe had knocked down her doctor when he refused to give her more drugs, claiming he didn’t want her to “become an addict.”
“I’ll
addict
your ass!” Gabe had yelled, as his fist connected with the doctor’s nose.
It took two nurses and several orderlies to pull Gabe off him, but the upshot of the deal was that Edna got her morphine. Compared to that, having to spend a couple nights in jail was a bargain. A woman like Edna, she deserved defending. Why, hadn’t she given him his Abby?
With callused hands, he stroked his wife’s cheek. “You get some sleep, girl. I’ll take care of things around here.”
When he started to pull his hand away, she hung on.
“Not just Mama, Gabe. It’s everybody.” She started reciting what Gabe called her Death List, beginning with their own lost babies, moving on to two sisters, a brother—all dead in the past few years. When she started on her dying nieces and nephews, Gabe decided it was time to pull her mind out of the graveyard.
“Say, girl, maybe over the weekend I’ll drive us up to Silver Ridge to see that new Doris Day movie,
Do Not Disturb
? I can’t wait to see it, I surely can’t.” Truth be told, the thought of sitting through another Doris Day movie made him want to puke, but Abby loved the actress, had even bleached her sorrel-colored hair blond so she’d look like her.
Gabe’s plans for the weekend didn’t interest his wife. She started talking about the past, before her mama got so sick. “Remember last winter, when we saw that John Wayne movie?”
He smoothed her Doris Day hair, wishing she’d go back to natural. But whatever she wanted, he’d accept. His fine girl could do no wrong. “Which movie was that?
In Harm’s Way
or
The Sons of Katie Elder
?”
“
In Harm’s Way
. Remember what I said then, that in thirty years, you’ll look like him?”
Gabe chuckled. “Yeah, soon’s I grow four inches and my brown eyes turn blue.”
She kissed the stump where his left forefinger used to be. “Don’t know why you worship him so, Gabe. You’re the real war hero. Wayne’s just an actor.”
He pulled a play-frown. “Now don’t go saying anything bad about the Duke, girl, or I’ll write and tell him. You make that man mad and he’ll come out here and mess you up something awful.”
Abby gave him a smile, the first in a long while. “Oh, I do love you, Gabe, I do.”
Gabe said nothing. He didn’t have to.
Before I left the guest ranch, Olmstead called Sunset Canyon Lakes to grease the wheels for me.
“Katherine Dysart is the leasing agent,” he explained. “She and her husband do business with us, and they’ve offered to help. At the very least, Katherine can steer you in the right direction. But be careful. Other than Mrs. Donohue, the residents tend to be very private people.”
No surprise there, since that was why they’d bought into a gated community in the first place.
For most newcomers to Arizona, the idea of living in the desert sounds like a dream come true and the reality isn’t far off. But for others, once the grandeur of the scenery begins to pall, they discover the desert is a vast expanse of rock and cactus, heat and dust. These disgruntled souls then attempt to transmogrify the landscape into something more reminiscent of rural Minnesota. In the case of land developers with unlimited pocketbooks, they often succeed, just as they had with Sunset Canyon Lakes.
A few miles north of the guest ranch, I spotted a flash of green on the horizon. As I drove toward it, the green gnawed away all those subtle beiges and browns I so loved until the only color left was a spreading landscape of gaudy green. Lording over this unnatural sight was a sign that boasted, SUNSET CANYON LAKES—THE OASIS IN THE DESERT.
Ah, the miracles of irrigation.
My eyes were so dazzled by all that greenness I almost failed to notice a smaller sign directing visitors to park their vehicles in the large lot to the west of the main gate. SUNSET CANYON LAKES IS A CAR-LIMITED COMMUNITY. VISITORS MUST PARK THEIR CARS AND WAIT FOR SERVICE, it demanded. Filled with foreboding, I drove up to the gatehouse and asked the security guard for better instructions, then learned why Hank Olmstead had insisted on calling ahead. Getting into a nuclear power plant would have been easier than getting into Sunset Canyon Lakes.
After showing the guard my ID and answering a series of questions designed to weed out Islamic terrorists and Mexican illegals, I was told that once I parked my car in the visitor’s lot, someone would come by to pick me up. Oh, and did I carry a firearm? Very nice, Miss Jones, but leave it locked in your car. Only uniformed police officers carry in Sunset Canyon Lakes. I grudgingly complied, and five minutes later, I was being chauffeured via golf cart onto the resort’s hallowed grounds.
“You’ll need a map to find your way around, and you can pick one up at the leasing office, which is where we’re headed,” said my handsome young escort, whose nametag identified him as DEREK. He swung his left arm around in an arc, taking in the scene before us. “The resort is so big newcomers are always getting lost. If that happens to you, simply hop on one of the trolleys. It’ll eventually wind up wherever you need to go. One comes along every five minutes so that even people who live here year round rarely need to use their cars.”
Derek hadn’t exaggerated the resort’s size. Straight ahead lay the five-hundred-acre Sunset Canyon Lake, upon which windsurfers and kayaks bobbed on the water. To our right flowed the neatly trimmed fairway of an eighteen-hole golf course. Separating these nondesert attractions was a broad stretch of green parkland shaded by lofty eucalyptus and Aleppo pine, theoretically planted to keep the desert sun from zapping the residents with skin cancer.
Amazed and aghast at the waste of Arizona’s meager water resources, I asked Derek, “Where does all that water come from?”
“The Virgin River,” he answered. “The lake is actually a reservoir.”
As we zipped along toward the leasing office, the sun emerged from its cloud cover. I shaded my eyes as we passed several swimming pools, tennis courts, a clubhouse, two restaurants, and a spa. Located in a small complex off the main thoroughfare, boutiques offered tennis rackets, golf clubs, sports attire, evening wear, exotic cheeses and fine wines. The resort’s architecture differed dramatically from that of Walapai Flats. Instead of the town’s self-conscious Old West knockoffs, the buildings here formed a mélange of concrete and glass with a smattering of wood thrown in to soften the edges. I could see why the place would appeal to city dwellers; they’d feel like they’d never left home.
Sunset Canyon Lakes was broken into separate neighborhoods, my guide informed me. The Lakes, arcing around the western end of the big lake, were individually owned condos. The Fairways, on the southeastern side of the resort, were timeshares. All were glass-fronted, offering spectacular views of either lake or golf course.