Desert Wind

by Betty Webb

  The booze had been flowing for a couple of hours, and lips were already loose, which was good for me, since I’d already taken the precaution of slipping my digital recorder into my carry-all. Stray bits of gossip trailed after me as I hurried into the lady’s room to wash the dirt off my hands. When I emerged, Katherine was the first person I recognized. She and a handsome man were standing near a pair of sliding glass doors that opened onto a patio lit by Japanese lanterns. Clad in a high-necked Victorian dress with an enormous bustle, she should have looked ridiculous instead of more elegant than ever.

  “Trent and I are delighted you could come,” she said, after introducing me to her husband. “We’ll do anything to help Ted.”

  Standing approximately six-feet-two, Trent was black-haired, blue-eyed, with film star features, a blinding smile, and well developed pecs that strained against his tight gunfighter’s shirt. His handshake was firm without being aggressive, and his deep voice sounded as modulated as a diction coach’s. The only off-note was the crudely inked tattoo that edged out of his high collar. Mostly hidden, the visible black lines resembled the top half of a spider’s web. The last time I’d seen a similar tattoo had been on a lifer at Arizona State Prison.

  “No costume?” Katherine said, interrupting my thoughts, as she handed me a nametag that already had my name printed on it. So much for anonymity.

  “I see enough Western garb trolling the malls in Scottsdale.”

  Trent smiled at my quip. Questionable tattoo aside, he really was dazzling, and it was easy to guess Katherine’s animus toward the voracious Mia Tosches. “Last week’s Mystery Night might have been more your style, Katherine tells me,” he said. “You could have come as Sherlock Holmes and figured out who killed our volunteer corpse. That was before Ike Donohue was killed, of course. If we’d known what was going to happen, we’d, uh, have picked a, uh, different theme. I mean…”

  I rescued him from his discomfort. “Of course. Anyone figure out whodunit? At Mystery Night, I mean.”

  “The successful detective came as quite a surprise,” Katherine said. “Mia Tosches, if you can believe it. She pegged the killer right away.”

  “Maybe she watches TV mysteries in her spare time.”

  Katherine gave me a pained smile. “Apparently so. After her big win, she told us she’s a big fan of Law & Order. And Monk and Murder She Wrote reruns. She reads, too. Even has a large collection of signed Agatha Christies. Made her husband buy them for Christmas.”

  My, my. Quite the intellectual. After a few more pleasantries, I lowered my voice and told them about the rabid coyote. “You might want to warn the residents to avoid any animal acting strangely. You know how people are. They’ll bring home anything cute.”

  “Animals are off limits at Sunset Canyon Lake,” Katherine said.

  “The animals don’t know that,” her husband admonished. “Squirrels are always coming over the walls, and rabbits, well, they’re everywhere, aren’t they? They and the gophers play hell with the golf course. I’ve heard the maintenance men complaining.”

  “Point taken,” Katherine said. “Trent, here’s what I suggest we do.” Giving me a quick nod, she ushered him away, leaving me alone to scan the room.

  Mia Tosches, the youngest person in the room by far, flaunted her youth in a red saloon girl outfit, or part of one, anyway. Her dress’ neckline plunged almost to her navel and its hemline gave up the ghost a mere inch below her crotch, allowing her to show almost as much skin as she had earlier in her microscopic bikini. Roger Tosches, a paunchy Wyatt Earp with an age-spotted face and thinning hair, didn’t appear to mind his wife’s efforts to bare all. In fact, the Beast to his wife’s Beauty appeared to revel in the lusty glances several “cowboys” threw toward her. After all, she was his, wasn’t she? At least in a contemporary, loosey-goosey kind of way.

  Attempting to look casual, I moved through the crowd until I found a close spot near them. Mia was discussing their last trip to Monaco, where they’d had a great time in the casino. Every now and then she threw in a dig about the huge amount of money he’d lost, and he kept changing the subject back to the upcoming mine opening.

  “I know you’re bored by the whole thing, honey, but I’ve arranged for a very nice actual ribbon-cutting ceremony,” Tosches said. “You’ll be doing the honors instead of me. Photographers will be there, and your picture will run all over the state, maybe even nationally.”

  Mia made a face. “I’ve never trusted the press. One day you’re best buddies, next day they’re snooping under your bed.”

  “Not the Journal-Gazette. I’ve got them eating out of my hand.”

  “Better watch it, Rog. You’re liable to wake up some morning and find your hand bit off. You seem to forget that the hag from the Times will be there, too. God knows what she might dig up on you. Or already has.”

  “I can handle her.”

  “Like you handled the mess in town today? Thugs with baseball bats?”

  That Roger Tosches had sponsored the riot didn’t surprise me at all, but that his wife would discuss it so openly did. Cursing myself for not having it on already, I reached down into my carry-all and pressed the RECORD button on my digital recorder. I moved closer to the couple, but by then it was too late. Mia’s attention had been caught by a new arrival.

  “Speak of the devil,” Mia said, her well-manicured finger pointing at Olivia Eames. “She looks like an Old West vampire.”

  Not an unfair description. The reporter, who’d made straight for the drinks table, was a vision in black gunslinger attire, sporting two plastic six-guns slung from black holsters, black hat, black jeans, and a black Western shirt. Instead of black Reeboks like my own, her feet were shod in black pointy-toed boots with silver tips—the only non-black note on her costume. The get-up provided a shocking counterpoint to her papery white skin, which made her look as if she’d spent her entire life indoors with shades drawn against the sun.

  Hoping Tosches and his wife would resume their conversation about the mine opening, I hovered nearby for a few more minutes but the topic had played itself out. Tosches began complaining about the numerous plumbing problems the condos at the Lakes had recently experienced.

  “What’re they doing over there, flushing gophers down the toilets?” he grumped to his wife.

  “They probably catch them on the fairway. By the way, when are you going to do something about that? I’m sick and tired of having my game disrupted by those filthy rodents.”

  Her husband shot her an annoyed look. “I’m doing the best I can.”

  “Maybe your best isn’t good en…” Mia cut off her barb with a gasp. “What the hell is Nancy doing here? Shouldn’t she be home crying over Ike?”

  Following her eyes, I saw Nancy Donohue dressed in a rhinestone cowgirl outfit. She was whooping it up by the drinks table with the rest of the Book Bitches. Momentarily giving up on the Tosches, I moved toward them.

  The closeness of the crowded room had given me a headache, and even though someone had opened the sliding doors leading to the patio, I could still smell the sweat emanating from the dance floor. Smoking in public places was illegal in Arizona, but I smelled cigarette smoke. Die-hards on the patio were sneaking a few. And for God’s sake, was that a note of marijuana sweetening the more acrid stench of tobacco? I remembered, then, that although these folks looked old to me, many were young enough to be members of the Woodstock generation. If the sheriff ever raided Sunset Canyon Lakes, they would be dragged into the cop cars, trailing their bongs behind them.

  “Well, if it isn’t the big city detective!” Nancy Donohue bayed, interrupting my train of thought. “Catch my husband’s killer yet?”

  “Not yet.” I reminded myself that despite their resemblance, Nancy wasn’t the foster mother who’d so neglected my frail emotional state. Carrying that old ghost around could cloud my investigative judgment, so I pushed Mrs. Putney back into the bitter past where she belonged, and smiled.

  “Are you still
convinced Ted Olmstead didn’t do it?” she asked.

  “Absolutely.” Although that may have been an exaggeration.

  “Where’s your proof?”

  “You can’t prove a negative. How well did you know Ted?”

  “I’ve ridden with him many times. On a horse, not a bed,” she smirked and cast a glance in Mia Tosches’ direction.

  Knowing her well, the other women in the book group—all of them in saloon girl garb—didn’t bother to look shocked. Neither did I. “The last time we talked, you named Rog…”

  She put up her hand. “No names. We’re in public. Lawsuits, you know.”

  It was hard to keep from laughing at this sudden display of discretion, but I managed. “Nancy, when we spoke earlier today, you said it wasn’t unusual for your husband to stay out late, sometimes even all night. Had your husband’s behavior changed in any other way in the last few days before he was killed?”

  At first I thought she wasn’t going to answer, but after taking a hefty swig of whatever she was drinking, she answered, “Funny you should ask. Starting a couple of months ago, it was like living with a different person. I put it down to the fact that he’d stopped smoking, which always makes people edgy, and I even asked Elizabeth here about it. When her husband stopped, she almost had to have him carted off to the giggle factory, but Ike wasn’t acting anything like Jim.”

  “Jim was a mess,” Elizabeth piped up. Her purple saloon girl dress perfectly matched her hair. “He kept pacing back and forth, yelling all the time at every little thing, really unpleasant. I finally told him that if he was going to continue acting like that, I’d rather he went back to smoking. He…”

  Mrs. Donohue shot her a look. “We’re talking about my husband, not that lout you live with.” Then, to me, “As I was saying before we were so rudely interrupted, Ike’s behavior changed. He wasn’t acting as nuts as Jim did, only distracted, like he had something on his mind.”

  “Any idea what it might have been?”

  She shrugged her rhinestoned shoulders. “Haven’t the foggiest. But here’s something for you. The other day I opened his cell phone bill and saw a slew of long-distance charges, some to phone numbers in Durham, North Carolina, where we used to live. When I asked him about it, he told me it was none of my business, something he’d never said to me before. We had one hell of an argument over it, too, but he still wouldn’t explain, walked right out the door leaving me standing there with my mouth open. Well! You can imagine that I wasn’t about to let something like that hang, so I called one of the numbers, and guess what?”

  “I’m all ears.” So was my digital recorder.

  “His ex-wife Claudia answered the phone!”

  Behind her, one of the Book Bitches tittered.

  Mrs. Donohue ignored her. “Now why would he call that woman? I mean, it wasn’t like he was thinking about going back to her, because she’d long since remarried some oaf who used to work for the same company he’d worked for, which I happen to think is pretty suspicious in itself, for the obvious reason.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  “Do I have to paint you a picture? Ike’s children always hated me because they thought I’d taken him away from their mother, but seeing as how Claudia remarried right away—and to somebody she must have already known, no less—there must have been some hanky-panky going on, and not only on Ike’s side. So why the hell would he call that cheating whore?”

  Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. “Did you ask her?”

  “Oh, I asked her plenty, that’s for sure, and she told me it was none of my business and hung up before I could give her a piece of my mind. When I went after Ike again, he told me the same thing!” She took another swig of her drink, then continued. “Look, Jones, if that really is your name, Ike knew better than to keep secrets from me because he knew I’d find out everything anyway and God help him then. Him staying out all night, that didn’t surprise me because all men are sluts, aren’t they? But those strange phone calls, yeah, that was new. The fact that he didn’t want to discuss any of it with me, well, you asked about behavior changes, that was big time new. Oh, and some of those other calls? They were to his kids, but I can’t imagine why. At my suggestion, he’d written those losers out of his life years ago.”

  Not only had she broken up her husband’s first marriage, she’d alienated him from his children, too. But I was a detective, not a priest, so I didn’t tell her to recite a thousand Hail Marys and change her heartless ways. “Did you track down the other calls?”

  “Of course I did, what do you take me for? Some were to people he knew when he was married to Claudia, like that troll Gerald Heber. I wound up talking to the granddaughter because old Heber’d been dead for years.”

  “Did she say why he’d called?”

  “Once he found out Heber was dead, he didn’t say why. But one funny thing. Before he hung up, he asked her if she smoked. When she said she did, he told her to stop immediately. Coming from him, that’s quite the advice, eh? I had better luck with the Arizona area codes—more people were still alive!” She cackled like a mad thing.

  I pushed the memories of Mrs. Putney back down. “Did anyone tell you why he was calling?”

  “Most wouldn’t talk to me, just hung up, people are so rude these days. But one woman, our former cleaning lady, of all people, said he’d called to apologize for docking her pay $139.49 when she broke a serving platter. She said he told her he was sending out a check to make amends.”

  “Make amends,” a phrase used by people involved in Twelve Step programs. One of the steps, I’d never been clear on which one, involved making amends to the people you’d hurt in your drinking or drugging days.

  “Did Ike drink?” I asked.

  “No more than anyone else. Less than most, actually. Being in public relations, he needed to keep his wits about him.”

  “Did he use drugs?”

  A scowl vicious enough to scare Dracula. “You fool. This conversation is over.” She turned her sequined back to me.

  As I walked away, my head was buzzing. What was the meaning behind those phone calls? If Nancy Donohue was to be believed, her husband hadn’t been an addict of any kind, unless you counted his addiction to nicotine. But maybe the merry widow didn’t know as much about her husband’s problems as she thought she did. Some alcoholics managed to hide their drinking for years before getting caught. The fact that Ike had been going out at night, sometimes not returning until morning, was odd in and of itself. Nancy obviously suspected an affair, but he could have been visiting a Walapai Flats crack house. At his age such a possibility was unlikely, but neither age nor social status proved barriers to addiction. Just ask those pot smokers out on the patio.

  Then I remembered that Las Vegas, Sin City itself, was less than three hours away. The condition of Nancy Donohue’s living room, the scuffed and threadbare furniture, could have been put down to Vegas-lost money, not poor housekeeping. Perhaps Donohue had developed a gambling problem, and spent those late nights at the casinos. But if so, wouldn’t Nancy have noticed a sudden shortage of funds?

  Neither Jimmy nor myself had yet seen a copy of Donohue’s autopsy. If he had been currently addicted to any sort of drug, it would eventually show up on the tox screen, but that report wouldn’t come in for weeks. Even if he’d recently kicked his habit, the damage—such as old track marks—might still be present. A history of alcohol abuse, of course, could be determined by a fatty liver. I made a mental note to obtain a copy of the autopsy from Anderson Behar, Ted’s attorney, first thing in the morning. Thinking of that attorney, I experienced a flash of irritation. If anything had been out of line on that autopsy, Behar should have already disclosed it to Desert Investigations. Then again, he was a real estate attorney who had never tried a murder case in his life. What had Hank Olmstead been thinking, hiring him? But I couldn’t let myself off the hook about the autopsy, either, when all I’d been concerned with was the murder weap
on. Why hadn’t I thought about…

  “Get any good quotes on that recorder in your tote bag?”

  Olivia Eames’ voice startled me out of my funk. Of course a reporter would notice what I’d been doing.

  I gave her a rueful smile. “I’m not sure.”

  She smiled back. “Take anything Nancy says with a grain of salt. She’s not nearly as heartless as she’d like people to believe.”

  “And Satan runs a rescue mission for homeless vets.”

  Olivia laughed, revealing two small sores on the inside of her bottom lip. Given her gauntness and pale complexion, I transferred my suspicions about senior druggies to her. Crystal meth? Or merely a visit from herpes simplex, the virus that causes cold sores?

  Unaware of the way my mind tracked, she asked, “How’s the investigation going? From what I’ve been able to ascertain, Ted Olmstead’s still being held.”

  “Unfortunately, that’s true, but I’m following up on some promising leads.” My second lie of the day. “Did you know Ted?”

  “Never met the man. If he’s innocent, the truth will come out. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon enough.”

  “That sounds awfully trusting coming from a journalist.”

  She shrugged her bony shoulders. “The American justice system isn’t entirely corrupt.”

  “Just partially?”

  That raspy laugh again. “You’ve got me there. Seriously, though, the guy has a good lawyer, doesn’t he?”

  “Ted? He should be so lucky. His father hired a real estate attorney.”

  Her black-rimmed eyes widened. “For a homicide case?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  She didn’t say anything else for a moment, only smiled faintly at the group of cowboys and saloon girls forming themselves into a line to dance to the twang and thump of “Cotton-Eyed Joe.” After one chaps-wearing man stomped on his partner’s boot-clad foot and she stormed off the dance floor, Olivia finally spoke again.