by Betty Webb
“Good riddance to bad rubbish,” Nancy chirped cheerfully, holding out a jar of generic coffee creamer. “Hope the pig suffered. Cream, anyone?”
“Black for me, thank you,” Olivia looked more amused than shocked by Nancy’s callousness.
“No cream for me, either,” I said. “Nancy, you sound like you might have had a run-in with Deputy Stark.”
The merry widow flashed big, yellow teeth. “Show me a woman in Walapai County who hasn’t and I’ll show you an agoraphobic who never leaves her house. Stark’s one of the reasons I volunteer at Haven. I was never able to talk that poor wife of his into taking advantage of our safe house program, but what can you expect? It’s impossible to help someone who’s not aware she needs help. Might as well try to talk the sun out of setting in the west. All water under the bridge, now, eh? Too bad we don’t know who shot the miserable sonofabitch. I’d like to send him a thank-you note.” With a satisfied sigh she ladled three teaspoons of ersatz creamer into her coffee and stirred until it looked like floating cottage cheese.
“Him?” Olivia said, a twinkle in her dark eyes. “Why not a ‘her’?”
“That’s always possible,” I said. Sometimes, although not often enough, victims fought back. The fact that Stark had been shot to death in his cruiser made me briefly wonder if this was Connie Stark’s shopping day. If so, she’d have had access to the family sedan. She could have known his regular patrol route and decided to lie in wait.
The scenario was intriguing, but I put it aside and responded to something Nancy had just said. “You’re a volunteer at Haven?”
“Why, of course.” She took a sip of lumpy coffee. “You’re not from around here, Jones, so you won’t remember that awful case three years ago when one of the groundskeepers here beat his wife to death. Roger Tosches tried to make Ike write up some lying press release claiming it was an isolated incident, that the man was drunk and didn’t know what he was doing. Hell, everyone knew he beat the poor woman on a regular basis. I told Ike that if he wrote that release he could start looking for a new wife, so that was the end of that. Not that it mattered. The thinking in town at the time was that if women were stupid enough to put up with beatings, they deserved what they got. Truth was, women usually have no place to go, and few have access to firearms, like the lovely Winchester Safari Express I owned at the time my first husband hit me.”
Olivia pretended interest in the sofa’s fading floral print. After I caught my breath, I said, “Would you mind explaining that, Nancy?”
“You mean Miss Nosey Nose hasn’t already discovered that I shot my first husband?”
Olivia smiled serenely at a tapestry geranium.
“Yes, in the course of my investigation into your husband’s death I did check up on you, but I took it for granted the incident involving your first husband was a hunting accident.”
Nancy cackled, teeth flashing. “I went on the hunt for the bastard, all right, but I can assure you the shooting was no accident. Any man who messes with me deserves what he gets.”
If Nancy Donohue hadn’t had access to firearms, she could have bitten her first husband to death with those big, yellow teeth. Then I wondered—had Ike Donohue ever “messed” with her?
The conversation turned to idle chatter for a few minutes until Nancy, her blood lust not yet satiated, interjected, “I hear the cook at Sunset Trails confessed to Ike’s murder. Does that make sense to either of you?”
Before attending the Downwinders meeting, I would have responded in the negative, but now I listened as Olivia sprang to Gabe Boone’s defense.
“When I interviewed Mr. Boone, he couldn’t even come up with a consistent motive,” she said. “First he talked about your husband maybe kicking his dog, then he said something about not liking Ike’s looks in the first place. Then he talked about those bomb tests several years back. Granted, there are a lot of hard feelings in this area about them, but he was obviously casting around for anything that would stick. His whole story was such garbage that when the interview was finished, I demanded to see Sheriff Alcott. Alcott agreed with me, but said that when someone comes in confessing to a crime, he pretty much has to hold them while checking out the story. He said…”
Nancy broke in. “Wait a minute, Olivia. What could the bomb tests have to do with anything? Ike wasn’t involved with the loathsome things. When that crap started he was still toddling around in diapers.”
“But Gerald Heber…” I began, before Nancy interrupted me, too.
“I’m tired of hearing about that government stooge!” she snapped. “He was Ike’s boss once, showed him the tricks of the trade, and that was the end of their relationship.”
“But there’s a picture of Heber in your den, the man who looks like someone’s jolly old uncle. He’s shaking your husband’s hand, and they look pretty friendly to me.”
“Correction, there was a picture of him in there.” Nancy jerked her head toward the den. “The den was Ike’s, to do with as he pleased. We had an agreement; he didn’t bitch about my crappy housekeeping and I didn’t bitch about his den. I’m not saying he didn’t have a case of hero worship for the loathsome little slug, who believe me, was nowhere near as jolly as he looked, although that friendly appearance of his came in handy, considering what he did for a living. But Ike most definitely had nothing to do with those bomb tests. If he had, I’d have shot him when I met him.”
Then she dropped her own bomb. “You’re not as good a snoop as you think you are, Jones, or you’d have discovered that my own mother was born in Walapai Flats. She died of thyroid cancer when I was thirteen, and that makes me a Downwinder. The only reason I wasn’t at the meeting last night was because I spent the day making…making Ike’s funeral arrangements. The medical examiner’s releasing his…his body tomorrow.”
With that, something strange happened to her face. The musculature crumpled, leaving the flesh to fall in on itself. Her mouth went slack, and for a moment, I thought she’d suffered a stroke.
Then she began to wail.
***
“Well, that was awful,” I said to Olivia an hour later, as we stood on Nancy’s patio. The sky was clear. Sage and river water scented the air. Vivid pink oleanders and coral bougainvillea bloomed gaily against a stucco wall. I wondered how long they would last now that their gardener had lost her mind.
“You think you know people, then find out you never had a clue,” Olivia responded. Nancy’s collapse had shaken her even more than it had me. The reporter’s normally pale face was white and she kept rubbing at her forehead.
“Another migraine?” I asked.
“Normal headache. I’ll muddle through.”
“Want some Excedrin? I always carry it.”
“Excedrin won’t help this. You know, when I first met Nancy I thought she was a heartless bitch, thus the name of her book group. I also thought she despised her husband. Live and learn, eh? Earl once mentioned in passing that Nancy volunteered at Haven, but for some reason I never connected it to the woman actually having a heart.” She took a hefty swig from the bottle of Jack Daniels she’d lifted from Nancy’s bar, then held it toward me. “Want some?”
I declined. “You joined the Book Bitches to get closer to Ike Donohue, didn’t you?”
She quit rubbing her forehead long enough to nod. “I hadn’t come out of the closet as a journalist yet, and I had this idea that Nancy was so big-mouthed she might drop information about the Black Basin during the meetings. She never did. A week ago I came to the group early, and admitted everything. I expected her to throw me out of the house, but that didn’t happen. She just laughed like it was the biggest joke she’d ever heard. Then she told me to make the coffee.”
I watched a jet leave a contrail across the sky. It was headed south, toward Phoenix, maybe San Diego. Wherever it was going, I wished I was on it.
“Olivia, there’s no book club meeting today. Why are you here?”
“Just visiting. Regardless of the way she ta
lked, I grew to like the old bitch. Somehow I could see beyond her bullshit.” She nodded her head toward the house where Nancy Donohue lay in a drugged sleep, then rubbed her forehead. “Like you said—awful.”
When grief had finally penetrated Nancy’s brittle shell, she’d broken down so badly that Olivia called Katherine Dysart, who in turn, called one of the doctors who lived in the community. The two of us had comforted her as best we could until he arrived with his bag of tricks. Once he’d given her a shot, we helped get her into bed.
After stroking a particularly vivid oleander blossom, Olivia said, “I used to laugh at Nancy’s snarky remarks about her husband.” She gulped down more Jack Daniels. “But she really loved him, didn’t she?”
“Women do tend to love their husbands. Just like Connie Stark loved that psychopath she was married to.”
“Never having been married, I wouldn’t know.”
Remembering that Olivia’s fiancé had died on 9/11, I didn’t respond. Instead, I asked, “Did you know about Nancy’s mother?”
“Earl Two Horses told me that, too.”
“Small world.”
She looked up at the jet, which symbolized something different to her than it did me. She rubbed her head again. “Too small, sometimes.”
Chapter Twenty-four
Despite her headache, Olivia promised the doctor she’d stay and watch over Nancy, so I left. But once I boarded a trolley to take me to the leasing office, I used my down time to consider what Nancy’s emotional meltdown might have revealed about Mrs. Putney.
For almost three decades I’d resented Mrs. Putney for turning me back over to the foster care system, a move which eventuated in a disastrous placement with the monster who terrorized and raped me. To my nine-year-old mind, and even my adult one, Mrs. Putney had been cold to the point of frigidity, and although she took good care of my physical needs, she seldom said a kind word. She was quick to find fault, slow to praise. The only affection she ever showed had been toward Mr. Jinx, her blind, decrepit cat. Myself, I stayed away from Mr. Jinx. Foster children learn not to get attached to anyone, especially pets, because our “homes” were temporary; soon we’d be given a new placement, leaving everyone—human and animal—behind. This emotional caution paid off the morning I found Mr. Jinx dead in his basket. Liking animals, I felt a twinge of sorrow, but nothing like Mrs. Putney, who when kneeling over the cat’s stiff body, began to wail. Her shrieks had sounded like Nancy Donohue’s.
That night, while sneaking down to the kitchen for a cookie, I’d heard Mrs. Putney sobbing on the telephone. I didn’t understand what she was saying then, but thanks to Nancy Donohue, I did now.
“I can’t do it any more,” she wept to the person on the other end of the line. “You have to come get her, find her a new place. If she stays any longer, I’ll get attached, and I just can’t take it. I just can’t take it. Everything I love dies.”
We seldom understand why people do the things they do, we just guess. We’re usually wrong, because you can never really know another person. In the end, each of us is a mystery to others—even to ourselves.
In some ways, Mrs. Putney had been a lot like me.
Sitting on that trolley, winding through the whisper-quiet streets of Sunset Canyon Lakes, I wondered where Mrs. Putney was now and if her wounds, whatever they were, ever healed. As soon as this case was over, I’d give her a call. She deserved to know that I was all right. What she didn’t deserve was to hear what had happened to me during my next placement.
After several stops, the trolley let me off in front of the leasing office where I found Katherine Dysart locking up, a couple of prospective timeshare buyers waiting for her at the curb. She promised to call me when she was free. As she ushered the couple to her BMW, I reflected on her fraught appearance. Though she was normally the essence of understated elegance, today the hem of her ecru silk dress hung unevenly and her blonde Gucci pumps were scuffed. Small things, but they made me wonder.
I stood in front of the leasing office for a moment, trying to figure out what to do next. My mind was made up when the gate to the community pool opened and Mia Tosches strolled out wearing what amounted to little more than three bandages. She had on dark sunglasses. To hide her tears?
“Sorry for your loss,” I said, trying to sound like I meant it. After all, I’d been wrong about Nancy. And about so many other people in my life.
Mia took off her shades and threw me a clear-eyed, dazzling smile. “Join me for a drink? Now that the cops are through grilling me, you can have your turn.”
Hard to pass up an offer like that.
Because of my profession and the city where I lived, I’ve been in many luxurious homes, but the Tosches’ pied-à-terre stood out among them. The ostentatious thing appeared to be carved out of one humongous block of Carrara marble, making the floor and walls shimmer with an uncomfortable blue-white light. The furnishings did little to soften the glare. The twelve-foot-long matching leather sofas and Mercedes-sized chairs were white, the area rugs were white, the coffee table and end tables were white, the lamps were white, the flowers were white, even the enormous minimalist painting on one wall was white-on-white. It felt like I’d been teleported to the polar ice cap.
“Let’s have some privacy here, please,” Mia ordered, sending a cadre of white-dressed servants skittering away like albino cockroaches.
Once they were gone, she sauntered over to a wet bar the size of most people’s living rooms. “I’m drinking gin today, what about you?”
“Fruit juice or a soft drink will do fine, thanks.”
“Ah, because you’re working.”
“Something like that.”
“You see me as a murder suspect, right?”
I shrugged, but I watched her movements carefully as she mixed my drink. I made up my mind to do little more than sniff at the reddish-orange concoction I wound up with. Mango and hemlock?
“Interesting you should describe yourself as a murder suspect,” I said, after she’d settled herself uncomfortably close to me on the sofa, a long, tanned leg brushing against mine.
“Why not? Judging from the way the cops acted, they think I offed poor old Roger for his money or at the very least, paid someone to do it.”
“Did you?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know.” Said with a twinkle.
“As a matter of fact, I would. You must realize I’ve been hired by Hank Olmstead to, ah, clarify things.”
“Well, I didn’t. Murder Roger, that is. I also didn’t murder Kimama Olmstead or Ike Donohue, either. So there, you’ve got your official denials. As to Kimama, I might be able to help you there. But first, would you like to see my collection of sex toys?” Cat-like, she stretched out her long legs.
“No thanks, Mia. My life’s complicated enough already.”
“You’re such a fuddy-duddy.”
At that I had to laugh. No one had ever called me a fuddy-duddy before. “About Kimama. What do you know?”
“Roger wanted her dead, of course.”
Having expected more, I was disappointed. “Of course.”
“But he wouldn’t do anything as foolish as kill her himself.”
“From what I’ve heard, he wasn’t a foolish man.”
“However, he had acquaintances who, for the right sum of money, would be happy to accommodate him. This is only conjecture, you understand. I haven’t aided or abetted anything. After the cops left, I sat around for a while, thinking. Putting two and two together, as they say. You know how much I love a mystery.”
“Understood. No aiding and abetting.”
“Sure you don’t want to see my sex toys? They’re quite exotic, much nicer that those run-of-the-mill things you get at those cheap erotic boutiques.”
“Thanks for your kind offer, Mia, but I’m quite sure.”
“A pity. We’d have been good together.”
Her smile disappeared, and for the first time, I saw something that looked like sorrow on her perfe
ct face. Not for her husband, certainly. She looked out the picture window at the end of the cold, cavernous room, across the emerald expanse of the golf course toward the tall orange and red mesas fronting a desert that stretched into what looked like eternity. We both knew the desert was on life support, thanks to men like her dead husband.
There was no more flirtation when she spoke again. “Back to our little murder mystery—or make that mysteries. Kimama managed to get the mine opening temporarily halted, and Roger was worried that she might be able to stretch the ban into years.” Her eyes tracked away from the desert to the white-on-white painting. Hardened. “Roger picked that out. Detestable, isn’t it?” When I didn’t answer, she continued. “As I’ve said, before I went down to the pool this morning, I was thinking. Mostly about someone I saw at this house once, someone who had no business to be here. Just before Kimama was killed, I was on my way into Roger’s office to discuss a trip we were taking to Monaco when I heard him and another man talking. Something he said made me stop outside the door and listen.”
I waited. No point in rushing her.
She took a large drink of gin, cleared her throat. Her voice was hoarse when she continued. “Roger said to the other man, ‘That bitch is messing everything up,’ and I knew he wasn’t talking about me, because I’d never done anything to ‘mess everything up.’ Whatever he wanted from me, he got.” Anger flickered across her face, then disappeared as quickly as it had come. “He said, ‘You have to help me out, Ronnie.’ I couldn’t hear much after that because they lowered their voices, so I came back into the living room. A few minutes later, Roger ushered Deputy Ronald Stark out the door. Stark was holding a thick envelope. And Roger looked very, very happy.”
Deputy Smiley Face had probably taken extra pleasure in the hit because his target was a woman. “Why didn’t you tell anyone this earlier?” I asked.
Mia gave me a disbelieving look. “A wife owes her husband some loyalty.” Then the anger returned to her face. “But now that Roger’s dead, I don’t owe him anything. As soon as you leave, I’m going to call Sheriff Alcott and tell him about that conversation and that fat envelope. I—I really liked Kimama.” Without waiting for my answer, she walked back over to the wet bar and poured herself more gin. She downed half of it, then poured some more.
