Desert Redemption

by Betty Webb

  “Why, thank you, Lena, for that lovely image.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “So what the hell you think’s going on?”

  “I haven’t the…”

  The door to the squad room opened and Juliana came out, looking drained.

  Sylvie gave me a quick goodbye and headed back to her desk.

  “Take me home,” Juliana said. “Or to the nearest dive bar. My career’s shot, anyway.”

  No dive bars being close by, I dropped Juliana off at her place. Then I headed to Desert Investigations to pull up the old Cameron file.

  I was just about to enter my office when I spotted Sharona Gavalan ushering a well-dressed couple out of the Gavalan Gallery. The man had a large wrapped package under his arm. As soon as they climbed inside the silver Ferrari parked at the curb, Sharona motioned me over.

  “Hear anything from Megan?” I asked.

  “Nada.” Although as sleek as ever with her bobbed black hair and vampire-white face, the skin around her eyes was creased with worry. “I just want to talk.”

  I followed her inside her gallery, which was bereft of furniture, save for a knock-off Louis Quatorze desk. And the paintings, of course. An abstract oil took up most of one wall. The title card next to it didn’t reveal much—just Sunday: I-17 and a red SOLD stamp—but I immediately recognized the painting as one of Megan Unruh’s. It was mainly grays and blacks, interspersed with a few barely recognizable shapes, such as an automobile tire and a severed hand (a smear of alizarin crimson in that area), but mostly blurs and swatches of whatevers. The artist had managed to turn her dark outlook on life into art. Her work was grim, but it captured how I felt at the moment. Was my goddaughter safe?

  Sharona turned away from the painting. “You look as chipper as me, Lena. Learn anything yet about Megan’s whereabouts?”

  “I’ve talked to several people, including her mother. No one seems to have seen her for weeks, and they’re all a little blurry about the exact day. Or even the week.”

  “Artists. Half the time they don’t even know what century they’re living in. I read a report one time, supposedly scientific, which said that of all areas of the arts, painters tended to have the highest IQs. You sure couldn’t prove it by me.” She gestured around the gallery. “Every one of her paintings has sold. Given the subject matter, that’s a major miracle. You ever see so many amputations gathered together in one room, other than at a field hospital in a war zone? Maybe people are so damned depressed these days they want to be looking at something that looks more stricken than they feel. As for me, I prefer a little more escapism.”

  “Paintings of puppies and clowns?”

  “Serial killer John Wayne Gacy painted clowns.”

  Regardless of artists’ often questionable subject matter, I’ve always been drawn to art galleries. Like Sharona’s gallery, they are almost always pure white—none of this “eggshell” or “oyster” business—yet they never came across as sterile. Their paintings and sculptures throb with life and with ideas. Sometimes I could relate, sometimes I couldn’t, but I was never bored. In this particular case, I found a soul mate in Megan Unruh’s work. We both took a dim view of the world. She had ten big oils on display, all mainly blacks and grays, each sprinkled with assorted body parts. The most cheerful items in the exhibit were five watercolor studies, two of them of Gothic-looking graveyards, yet every one of them had a SOLD card next to it.

  “How much money are we talking about here?” I asked Sharona.

  Sharona closed her kohl-rimmed eyes for a few seconds, running figures. When she opened them, she said, “Enough that I’m not about to put that kind of check in the mail. If Megan stays disappeared, I don’t even want to think about the legal ramifications.”

  “Tell me what you know about her personal life.”

  She vented a bitter laugh. “It’s pretty much what you’d expect of someone who uses fatal car wrecks for subject matter. Can’t keep friends, and God knows she can’t keep lovers. Drifts from man to man, all of them punks. Over the years she’s dragged a few in here, and Christ almighty, what losers. She tried gals for a while, but that didn’t work out any better, so she went back to shitty guys.”

  Remembering the severed hand in one of Megan’s grislier paintings, I asked, “Were her relationships abusive?”

  “You mean did she ever show up covered in bruises? Nah. She was more into emotional abuse, always going for guys who kept finding fault with her. You know the drill. ‘You’re too fat. I don’t like your hair. You look like hell in that dress. Your skin’s like an alligator’s. I don’t know what I ever saw in you.’ On and on with the ‘you’re not good enough for me’ routine until the woman breaks.”

  Yeah, I knew the drill, having been subjected to it several times. “You think maybe that’s what happened to Megan? She broke?”

  “Something’s going on, because she’s never been out of sight this long before. In fact, she…”

  The gallery door opened and a less-expensively dressed couple walked in. They took a horrified look around and left. “Looks like they’re more into escapism, too,” Sharona said, a wry smile lifting the corner of her maroon-lipsticked mouth.

  “Different strokes for different folks. Do you have any recent photographs of her, maybe on publicity brochures or photos from her last show? Her mother gave me an old one, but Megan was in high school when it was taken.” I showed Sharona the photo.

  She curled her lip. “I’m not surprised. I met Dorothea Unruh once. She came in here with Megan, and couldn’t bring herself to say anything nice about her own daughter’s work. I tried talking to her but gave up. Hell, she didn’t have anything nice to say about her daughter, either. Cold bitch, that one.”

  She opened a drawer of the Louis Quatorze desk and took out a brochure. When she handed it to me, I saw a much more recent photograph. Megan had dropped some of her baby fat—not all—but still wasn’t smiling. Deep stress lines mapped her brow and led downward from the corners of her mouth to her chin. Her hair was bright blue.

  “Quite the transformation,” I said

  “The month before that, it was pink. I think she liked to use color on herself because there’s so little of it in her paintings.”

  Or her apartment, I remembered. What had the landlady said it looked like? A funeral parlor, with all that black.

  Sharona’s face, already tight from a recent facelift, grew even tighter. “How much do you charge for your services, Lena? I’m willing to pay you, but please remember that I’m not as wealthy as my clients.”

  Despite the unhappiness of the day, I had to smile. Crafty Sharona had already managed to wring a couple of days’ work from me for free. “Don’t worry about it. Consider what I can come up with to be my contribution to the Scottsdale art scene.”

  As concerned as I felt about Megan, the first thing I said to Jimmy when I walked into Desert Investigations was, “Hear anything from Ali yet?”

  “She hasn’t called. Say, you want to try lunch at that new French place over on Miller?”

  “No can do. I only stopped in to pull the old Cameron file.”

  While investigating that old case, I’d had the occasion to talk to Ali’s and Kyle’s friends, and like any decent detective, I’d saved their phone numbers because, as every cop knows, if you want to spread news around, telephone, television, and tell-a-teenager. It was just past noon, and the chances were good that they’d either be scarfing up cafeteria food or on their way to the closest McDonald’s, so I started calling.

  My first three calls rolled over to voice mail, but I got lucky on the fourth. Dido Emmett, Ali’s best friend, had just finished lunch and was looking for better entertainment than the gossips at her lunchroom table. “Hey, you’re the detective, right?”

  “Right.”

  “OMG! So, it’s true then, that she really did it! Ra
n off!”

  Puzzled by her reaction, I said, “You being her best friend, I thought you’d be the first to know.”

  “We’re not besties anymore.”

  “What happened?”

  When she started whispering, I had to hold the phone closer to my ear.

  “Uh, could we put this off ’til I leave school? I’ve got an early day today, outta here at two-ten. But for God’s sake, don’t meet me anywhere near the school.”

  “Your house? I remember where you live.”

  A screech. “Are you crazy?” She lowered her voice again. “Two-thirty, the Starbucks in the Safeway at Hayden and Chaparral. You’re buying.”

  While we’d been talking I’d received another call, this one from Eli Pressler, a friend of Kyle’s. The message he left was: “I’m not telling you anything, so don’t waste your dime.”

  Don’t waste your dime? What century was this kid living in? Then I got it. The new video game Detective Dick, a homage to the old film noirs, was filled with lines like that. Unless I remembered wrong, Eli was a gamer. The fact that he had memorized some of Detective Dick’s dialogue made me feel hopeful. It meant he liked mysteries, and regardless of his snippy message, he liked detectives. I called him back and left my own message, one calculated to pique his curiosity.

  I bade farewell to Jimmy, and for the next two hours drove around Scottsdale, checking out every abandoned house I could find, which weren’t that many since we’d mostly recovered from the housing slump. I also drove by Eldorado Skate Park, a popular teen hangout, but had no luck there, either.

  By two-fifteen I was already sitting in a chair at the Safeway Starbucks, waiting on Dido. She was fashionably late, and when she finally drifted in, she looked like the cover of Seventeen, dressed in a pink-and-gray miniskirt, a gray cashmere sweater, pink tights, gray fleecy Uggs, and enough jangly costume jewelry to set up its own table at a craft fair. I hoped Dido’s brain would prove as sharp as her wardrobe.

  It didn’t.

  “Vanilla latte venti, double shot of espresso,” she announced, jerking her head toward the Orders line.

  I obeyed, but ground my teeth as I did.

  The little snot refused to speak further until she got her drink, and when she finally began gabbing, it was easy to understand why she had descended to former best friend status.

  “Ali’s, like, stupid, you know. Majorly stupid. That freaky egg mom of hers, for instance, always squawking on and on in those TV commercials about running for this or that, like, does anybody care? And that Kyle thing for a boyfriend? With Ali’s looks and her super-fantastic Snapchat following, she could, like, have anyone, even the captain of the football team or maybe even that sexy economics teacher, but no, she hangs onto dumb old Kyle, like he’s even in her league.”

  Only three minutes into our conversation and I was, like, so bored. “Did you know she and Kyle were planning to run off together?”

  “Like, yeah! The whole school knew!”

  “Did they say where they were going?”

  She waved her bejeweled arms around. “Like, who listens?”

  “You, I hope.”

  “Do I look like I have time to care about the Deadly Duo?”

  “Deadly Duo?”

  “That’s what they’re called because they, like, killed her whole family.”

  At this point, several nearby latte-sippers looked up in alarm. One of them, a waspish-looking woman sitting close to us, picked up her drink and moved to a table farther away.

  “Lower your voice, Dido,” I said. “As for that ‘killed her whole family’ thing, both Ali and Kyle were absolved when the Camerons’ real killers were brought to justice. It was in all the papers.”

  She gave me a smug smile. “Don’t believe everything you read.”

  Time for a little shock treatment. I made a big show of putting the to-go lid on my tall Americano, then stood up. “You’re useless to me.”

  Dido gaped. “What?!”

  “You know nothing.”

  She actually plucked at my sleeve as I started to pass by her. “No! Wait! I know everything!”

  Squinting my eyes, I snapped, “Prove it.”

  “Sit down! Sit down! I’ll tell you what I know!”

  I sat back down. “Get right to it or I’m leaving. Where did Ali and Kyle say they were going?”

  Trying desperately to regain her former demeanor, she snooted, “Somewhere out in the desert. They bought all this camping stuff, but first they were going to, like, stop by his bio mother’s place. Euwww. As if anyone in his right mind would want to have anything to do with that slag.”

  Her nose wrinkled, she grabbed her vanilla latte venti, double shot of espresso, and fled.

  The news could have been worse, but not by much. Kyle’s biological mother, from whose home Child Protection Services had forcibly removed him, was a crack addict who had twice tried to kill him.

  Fiona and Glen Etheridge, Kyle’s adoptive parents, were sitting on their front porch watching three of their current foster children pedal Big Wheels along the sidewalk. The kids look great; the Etheridges didn’t. Their house, a generic split level, had a big FOR SALE sign in the front yard.

  “You know why I’m here,” I said, climbing out of my Jeep. “And I’d like to start by looking through his room.”

  “I hope you can make more sense out of this mess than we can,” Glen muttered. The big man was hollowed-eyed with worry, his voice husky.

  Fiona Etheridge looked no better. Her dark hair was in disarray, and her sweater had been buttoned up wrong. “Want one of us to go up there with you?” she asked.

  Before I could answer, one of the Big Wheel kids, a little redhead, aimed her bike at the street, making Glen rush to the rescue.

  “On second thought,” Fiona said, “you’d better go it alone. These three are a handful. Your friend loved them, though. Even played with them for a while.”

  “Friend?”

  “You know, Detective Sylvie Perrin. She stopped by earlier to ask a few questions about Kyle. Such a sweet person! Oh. Almost forgot to tell you. When you get to Kyle’s room, watch out for the parrot. It asks for a kiss, then bites your lip.”

  Sylvie? Sweet?

  I let myself in the house, which they hadn’t bothered to lock. The Etheridges had already started packing for their move to Oregon, and the living room was filled with sealed boxes. The walls, which over the years had featured photographs of every one of the children they had fostered, were bare. Feeling more than a little sadness about Arizona’s loss to the foster care community once they moved, I headed up the stairs to Kyle’s room.

  Except for the menagerie, it was a typical teen boy’s room. Posters of rock bands and an ASU Sun Devil pennant were taped to the wall above his bed. In the bookcases, heavy tomes about zoology sat next to manga comics. Kyle had left all his rescued pets behind with detailed notes telling his adoptive parents how to take care of them. His collection included a tank full of tropical fish, a salamander, three gerbils, six kittens and their mother, two puppies—one with only three legs—and the infamous parrot. Ignoring its plea for kisses, I prowled through the room, pawing through drawer after drawer. I got lucky when I spotted an old pair of jeans on the floor of his closet.

  In the back pocket I found a receipt from Big 5 Sporting Goods. The day before he and Ali disappeared, Kyle had purchased a tent, two sleeping bags, a camp stove, a rod and reel with an assortment of lures, and enough ready-to-eat meals to last at least two weeks. He’d paid for the haul via Visa.

  Two weeks.

  I said goodbye to the parrot, who was still begging for kisses, and headed back downstairs.

  “When were you supposed to move?” I asked the Etheridges.

  While holding the redheaded toddler in her lap, Fiona answered, “Monday. The social worker is coming to pick
up the kids…” she gulped, “…tomorrow.”

  “You’ve put that off, right? Until you find Kyle?”

  Twin nods.

  “May I ask why you’ve decided to move?”

  It was Glen’s turn to answer. “Job offer. About twice the amount I’ve been making.”

  “I thought you owned a print shop.”

  “Put it up for sale last month.”

  Kyle, being bright as well as in love, had correctly calculated that by disappearing, the Etheridges would at least reschedule their move. Maybe he even believed if he and Ali managed to stay gone long enough, the Oregon job offer would be rescinded, and everyone would live happily ever after.

  Now the two were out there in the dangerous Arizona wilderness.

  Chapter Seven

  Kyle’s aunt lived in a single-wide trailer in a downscale Apache Junction neighborhood. I didn’t bother to call ahead, knowing that with her poor health she wouldn’t be out hiking the majestic Superstition Mountains, which were visible from her driveway. Whispering Pines Mobile Home Park wasn’t much, just a collection of aged trailers that attested to their inhabitants’ dire financial straits. Having run into past trouble with the young meth crowd, the park was now listed as Seniors Only, but as I drove up, I saw several children playing on a rusting swing set. Grandchildren, probably, their conscripted caregivers stepping in when their parents’ stepped out.

  The BEWARE OF PIT BULL sign was still taped to Edith Daggett’s rusty screen door, and my knock evoked a hideous roar. Like his owner, Pit Bull—an elderly golden retriever mix—was still alive.

  “Well, if it ain’t the famous private detective,” Edith said, opening the door. “What crime you tryin’ to pin on Kyle this time?”

  “I need some information.”

  “So did the cops. I didn’t tell them a damned thing, same as I’m not doin’ for you.”

  A convicted felon herself, Edith was well-acquainted with crime. She had served five years in Perryville, the women’s prison on the far west side of Phoenix, but the rumor mill whispered she’d committed many more felonies than the one she’d done time for. She was not to be trusted, but I had no choice. I needed to find those kids before someone with a motive other than love found them.