Desert Wind

by Betty Webb

  A mishmash of tire tracks criss-crossed the ground. Somewhere among them would be the tread of the killer’s tires, now covered by dozens of others: SUVs, sheriff’s office vehicles, and looky-loos who were always attracted to scenes of violent death. No matter. I’d already learned what I needed to know. It wouldn’t have taken a strong man to heave Donohue off Sunset Point. The spot where he’d gone over was less than three yards from the metal safety barrier, and the ground sloped sharply toward the drop-off. A woman could easily have rolled his body in, no problem.

  Satisfied, I climbed back into my rental and headed to Walapai Flats.

  The drive was uneventful until I neared the cutoff to Sunset Trails Guest Ranch, where I spotted the same line of horseback riders I’d seen earlier in the morning. Morning trail ride completed, they were headed back to the ranch. This time, Dusty and the blue-eyed dog brought up the rear, watching out for stragglers.

  We don’t always love the right people. By “right people,” I mean the people who are good for us, who even as they encourage us to grow, watch our backs as we stumble and fall through life. Loving the unlovable can be a saintly thing—Mother Teresa thought so, anyway—but for most of us mortals, loving the dysfunctional can be dangerous.

  Dusty’s love affair with alcohol had almost killed me. True, I’d almost been killed before: as a child, as a cop, as a private investigator. Three strikes and you’re out, right? Not in my case, but I was no fool and knew my lucky streak wouldn’t last forever. Walking away from a man I still loved had been painful, but at least I remained alive to tell the tale. The nights, though…

  Those long, lonely nights without Dusty lying next to me, nights without the feel of his hands, his lips…Even now, watching his easy sway in the saddle, I wanted to open the car door and run after him, screaming his name. I imagined my hands on his back, pulling him closer to me, smelling his sweat…

  Jesus, Lena, what the hell are you thinking?

  As Dusty rode by, I turned my head away, but he was so busy riding herd on the dudes that he didn’t once glance into my car.

  ***

  Despite my concern about being late, I arrived at Ma’s Kitchen five minutes early. A wall of sound enveloped me as I opened the door. Customers chatting and laughing, cutlery clinking, meat sizzling on a grill somewhere. The restaurant’s decor furthered its homey name via wooden chairs, scarred wooden tables, and little pink doilies decorating every available surface. I stood in the reception area for a moment, worrying that we might not find a seat, but then I spotted Jimmy waiting for me in a back booth. A waitress was flirting with him: another moth attracted to his flame.

  He waved. “Hey, Lena! Meet my new friend Tara.”

  Tara, a waifish brunette with eyes that took up half her face, scowled when she saw me. She probably thought Jimmy and I were on a “date” date.

  “Nice to meet you, Tara,” I said, as I slid into the booth across from him. “What’s today’s special?”

  “Liver and onions,” Tara said, trying hard to smile at me. “Or spaghetti marinara.”

  Interviews with possible suspects were tough enough without adding onion breath into the mix, so I chose the spaghetti, hoping it wouldn’t be too garlicky. Jimmy followed suit. Once Tara disappeared with our orders, he informed me that Anderson Behar, Ted’s attorney, had not only officially brought Desert Investigations on board, but that he had already begun to share information. The nice thing about busy restaurants, especially when you’re sitting in a back booth, is that your own conversation disappears into the rest of the noise.

  “I drove over to your dad’s ranch this morning,” I said, studying Jimmy’s face for his reaction.

  “Really?” He pretended to be fascinated by the pink doily on our table. “Learn anything interesting?”

  “Very much so.”

  He caressed the doily, rubbing the fabric between his thumb and forefinger. “My mother used to make things like this. My adoptive mother, that is. Crocheting can be time consuming, but she said it relaxed her. Ranch living…”

  “I saw Dusty.”

  His fingers froze.

  “On the way over here, I figured everything out. Your disappearing act. The scene at the motel. When Dusty left rehab, you got him the job at your father’s ranch, didn’t you? That’s why you didn’t want me involved in this case, because you knew I’d come up here and see him. You were forgiving enough to get him a job, but you didn’t want me to start up with him again, did you?”

  When his eyes met mine, I saw a depth of anger I didn’t know my peaceful partner was capable of. “He almost got you killed, Lena.”

  I wanted to argue that the woman who shot up my apartment wasn’t Dusty’s fault, but my commitment to the truth wouldn’t let me. It had been Dusty’s fault. If he hadn’t disappeared to Vegas on a week-long bender, he wouldn’t have wound up married to the crazy bitch, and she wouldn’t have followed him back to Scottsdale toting a loaded gun. I was alive only because she was a lousy shot.

  “You could have told me Dusty was here, you know.” Giving up the blame game, I added, “Oh, Jimmy, did you really think I would allow him back into my life?”

  “Stranger things have happened.”

  I started to protest, then stopped. Jimmy was right. Warren Quinn had happened, a Hollywood film director every bit as wrong for me as Dusty had been. But Warren was now in my past, too. For better or for worse, I was alone and would always be alone. Better lonely than dead.

  Noticing my hesitation, Jimmy began to relax. “Can we talk about the case, instead?”

  Safer territory, to be sure. “Sounds good to me. I recorded a couple of interesting conversations today. You want to transcribe them or should I?”

  “I’ll let you do the honors.”

  Although I typed thirty words a minute and Jimmy something like eighty, I agreed as a peace offering. “Fine. What did Ted’s attorney have to say.”

  Over the restaurant’s din, I learned that Anderson Behar had already received a copy of the preliminary autopsy report on Donohue, which estimated the time of death between nine and midnight last Thursday night. Ballistics tests revealed the murder weapon to be a .38. A handgun, then. He’d been shot from approximately five feet away, and the angle of the wound—a straight-on projectory—further proved suicide unlikely.

  “Jimmy, did you ever find out what kind of firearm killed Kimama?”

  “The slug they dug out of her was a thirty-ought-six. Ballistics never matched it to anything, but they suspect it was fired from a low-velocity carbine. Anything larger would have gone right through her and the car she was sitting in. And kept on going after that.”

  Two different murder weapons: a carbine and a pistol. It didn’t necessarily mean two different killers. “What else?”

  “Ted’s fingerprints were on Donohue’s belt and watch. Considering that, I’m surprised the prosecuting attorney hasn’t already filed charges.”

  “Not really, Jimmy. Remember, when Donohue started to fall, Ted tried to catch him.” As they say, no good deed goes unpunished.

  “But Behar also said that Mia Tosches told a sheriff’s deputy that Ted threatened to kill the guy.”

  “Does that sound like your brother to you?”

  He shrugged. “Ted always had a temper, but whether he would threaten to kill someone, I don’t see it. He’s been working at the guest ranch too long. Dad impressed on all us kids that the ranch would lose business if we went around saying what we were thinking. Especially about the guests.”

  Learning to control your mouth was a prerequisite for working with the public, especially the wealthy or semi-wealthy public. If you insulted guests, they would never return, and neither would their friends. My own experience had taught me that workplace guardedness tended to bleed into other areas of life as well, so I found it inconceivable that Ted would run around town shouting threats at people, especially cash cows from Sunset Canyon Lakes.

  “Let’s see if I have this right,�
� I said, thinking aloud. “So far, the only thing the sheriff has to go on is based on his altercation with Donohue, a fingerprint match, and some threat he may or may not have uttered at the Walapai Gas-N-Go. Pretty weak, if you ask me. A good attorney should make mincemeat out of it. How sharp did Behar seem to you?”

  Jimmy waggled his hand, a gesture that usually means so-so. “The guy’s not even a criminal defense attorney. Dad hired him because he used him in a real estate transaction a few years ago over in Silver Ridge. The guy’s licensed in three states.”

  Which Behar would almost have to be in this area, where cases frequently slopped across the state lines of Arizona, Nevada, and Utah. But a real estate attorney? “Are he and your dad friends from way back?”

  “Since dinosaurs walked the earth.”

  Friendship is all well and good, but when faced with a criminal case, it accounted for little. Ted needed an experienced criminal attorney, not a buddy.

  “Check Behar out, just to be safe. The last thing Ted wants now is a real estate attorney who’s in over his head, so try to talk your dad into hiring someone who knows what he’s doing. Oh, and check out V.U.M., Victims of…

  “Victims of Uranium Mining,” he finished for me. “They’ve been giving the Black Basin Mine advocates a lot of grief.”

  “Rightly so, from what I hear about what happened with that other uranium mine Roger Tosches used to run.” I recounted everything I’d learned during my visit to Sunset Canyon Lakes.

  When I finished, Jimmy gave me an admiring look. “Consider me impressed. The Nancy Donohue woman would never have let me in her house, let alone talked to me. I’ll start working up backgrounders on her, Katherine Dysart, and Olivia what’s-her-face…How do you spell that reporter’s last name?”

  “E-A-M-E-S. She works on a New York newspaper, but I’m not sure which one. The Village Voice, probably. She’s vacationing—she says—at a timeshare over there, but I can’t help but wonder why. Doesn’t look the type, if you know what I mean. Tattoos. Black nail polish. Less than eighty years old. I want to know more about Ike Donohue, too. Before he moved here, he did PR for some tobacco company in North Carolina, and at the time of death, was doing the same for the Black Basin Mine. His choice of employers sorta piques my interest.”

  Jimmy made a face. “First the guy fronts for tobacco, claims it doesn’t have anything to do with lung cancer, emphysema, strokes, or heart attacks, then he fronts for a man whose other uranium mine killed dozens of people. How could he do that?”

  “No conscience, no problem. Which leads me to something else. Check into the first Mrs. Donohue. The current Mrs. Donohue said her predecessor is alive and kicking, but I’d like to make sure.”

  “You don’t trust anyone, do you?”

  “In this business, trusting people can get you killed. Another heads up. Nancy Donohue is a hunter.” As well as being a cold-hearted bitch. “See whatever firearms are registered under her name. Make sure you do a down-and-dirty on Roger Tosches, who as it turns out not only owns uranium mines, but Sunset Canyon Lakes as well. Look into Mia Tosches, too. I’m curious as to why she was so quick to point the finger at Ted. See if there are any skeletons doing the funky chicken in her closet. If there are, I want their names and addresses.”

  “Are we talking a May-December marriage?” he asked.

  “In spades.”

  He winked. “Girl’s gotta make a living, Lena.”

  “Don’t we all.”

  Our lunches arrived, and for a while we ate silently. I decided that Ma was Italian, because the marinara sauce was spiked with enough fresh basil to start a basil ranch. Ma hadn’t gone easy on the garlic, either. So much for my concerns about the liver and onions special.

  When Tara collected our empty plates, Jimmy ordered apple pie à la mode. I went for the pie, too, but virtuously skipped the ice cream. While Tara fetched our dessert, I brought up another sore subject. “Why aren’t you staying at Sunset Trails? Why the Desert View Motel? I saw the place when I passed through town and it looked pretty seedy.”

  “Where I stay is my own business.” He fingered the pink doily again.

  I wasn’t going to let him off the hook that easily. “This case is starting to look hinky, and if I’m going to help Ted, I need to know everything, even stuff you’d rather I didn’t.”

  “My problems with Dad have nothing to do with this case.”

  “Let me be the judge of that.”

  Ma’s apple pie arrived, letting Jimmy off the interrogatory hook for a while, but as soon as the pie disappeared down our respective gullets, I brought up the subject again. “Does the problem have anything to do with your moving down to the Pima reservation and taking back your birth name?”

  “Kind of.” His answer was grudging, but at least it was an answer.

  “Explain kind of.”

  “Dad wanted me to help run the ranch with Ted. But I wanted to find out who I was, and I couldn’t do that while leading someone else’s life.”

  “What do you mean, ‘someone else’s’?”

  Brown eyes regarded me steadily. “In case you haven’t noticed, Lena, I’m not white.”

  I thought back to the family portrait in Olmstead’s office and the Technicolor children. “Your brothers and sisters weren’t white, either, so what does color have to do with anything?”

  He looked down at his pie plate, as if hoping another slice would magically appear. “Considering your own background, I thought you of all people would understand.”

  How often in life we miss the obvious. While I’d been scrambling around for the past few years trying to find my birth parents, Jimmy had been doing the same thing. The fact that he, unlike in my own situation, knew his birth parents’ names and where they’d lived didn’t make his job easier. Names are just words, phonics written on air. It’s the meaning behind a name that matters, the centuries of genetic loading the word represents. For good or ill, when you’re cut off from your birth name, you’re cut off from your past. Like most adoptive parents, the Olmsteads had given their children new first and last names, saying in effect, “Now you are one of us.” This was true and commendable. But the new name only told part of the story.

  Take mine, for example: Lena Jones.

  A couple of years ago, in a brief thunderclap of memory, I had remembered that my mother called me “Tina,” but after being shot, my wounded four-year-old mouth slurred the “T,” and I was temporarily given the name Lena Doe. When I was fostered out, an unimaginative social worker turned “Doe” into “Jones,” and Lena Jones was born. Neither first nor last name had anything to do with my biological life; my real identity had been shot away along with a piece of my brain.

  Did Jimmy feel like that?

  I bore a scar on my forehead where the bullet had entered. By odd coincidence, Jimmy bore a tribal tattoo in the same place. Maybe it wasn’t coincidence. Maybe, as he once told me, we had always been connected in spirit.

  “I’m sorry, Almost Brother,” I said. “I didn’t think.”

  His face softened. “Sometimes you forget to, Lena. You’ve always been…” He paused, then started again. “Anyway, my birth parents died so early that I don’t remember them, but that doesn’t mean I can’t feel their pull. As soon as I graduated from ASU, I moved over to the reservation to learn how to be Pima again, and that’s when the problems with Dad started. We’d gotten along fine before.”

  I didn’t have to ask if moving onto the reservation had worked, because I already knew the answer. Jimmy was the most peaceful soul I had ever met. Olmstead, however, was like the sharp edge of a knife. “Your dad felt betrayed, didn’t he?”

  Jimmy nodded. “None of the other kids, not even Ted, did anything like me.”

  “But Ted married another Paiute. Attended pow-wows. Remained Indian.”

  “He didn’t leave the family. Or the church.”

  There it was: faith. Like many people in this part of the state, the Olmsteads were conservative Chri
stians. In accordance with their fundamentalist beliefs, they led lives that glorified home, family, and healthy living. They didn’t drink, smoke, or use anything that contained caffeine. Whenever possible, they even raised their own food. Ted was still a member of his father’s denomination, but Jimmy, having embraced the ancient polytheistic faith of his tribe, was not.

  Oh, religion—the great divider.

  “Couldn’t your mother have done something to mediate the situation? From what you’ve told me she had a soothing effect on your father. And was more broad-minded.”

  He started fingering the doily again, his face suddenly sad. “She was dead by the time I left for college. She’d been sick for a while—cancer, like so many around here—but just as we thought she was getting better, she had a heart attack. Afterwards, Dad became even more stubborn. That’s partially the reason I chose ASU; it was as far away as I could get from here without leaving the state. It was also right next door to the Pima Reservation, and I started going over there and, well, I found my people. You know the rest.”

  What must it have been like for him, finding his extended family after so many years? Would it be like that for me if I ever found mine? “Jimmy, do you think…?”

  Before I could finish, Tara returned with the check in a pink plastic tray. Slapping down some bills, I told her to keep the change, then added, “Tell Ma her food’s delicious.”

  “Tell him yourself.” She pointed toward the lunch counter, where a big hairy man wearing bib overalls and a chef’s toque stood chatting with a customer.

  When he looked over at me, I blew him a kiss.

  Ma blew one back.

  After that, Jimmy returned to the Desert View Motel and his trusty laptop, while I drove to the Walapai Gas-N-Go, scene of the infamous altercation between Ike Donohue and Ted Olmstead. Time to talk to an actual witness.