by Jon Talton
James Yarnell made his way toward me, shaking hands here and there, homing in like a handsome, benign torpedo. We’d never met, but I obviously looked out of place enough to be the deputy who called him. He owned one of the top art galleries in Scottsdale, and was the oldest of the four Yarnell brothers. It was Monday night, and he had to attend a charity event at the Hyatt Regency at Gainey Ranch, one of the new megabucks resorts off Doubletree Road.
Finally across the sea of wealthy humanity, he steered me outside, where we sat by a bonfire pit. Past the railing, Camelback Mountain brooded darkly in the perfect Arizona sunset, competing for our attention with the thousands of city lights starting to shimmer to the horizon. Yarnell wore a charcoal suit and open-collared shirt, quality but not ostentation. He looked fifteen years younger than I knew he was, and his smile was effortless, inviting you to join in the good life taking place all around. It was a game I could play, to a point.
“I’m glad to meet you, David Mapstone,” he said. “I’m sorry it couldn’t be under better circumstances. Are you related to Philip Mapstone?”
“He was my grandfather.”
“Well, it’s a small world.” He sighed and clapped me warmly on the arm. “Doc Mapstone was our dentist back when I was a kid. I assume he’s gone?”
“He died in 1974.”
“A good man,” James Yarnell said. “So how can I help Doc Mapstone’s grandson?”
“I assume your brother told you about the DNA test.”
“Yes, and he also told me about you. You must have made quite an impression.”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Oh, Max is a prick, he always has been.” James Yarnell laughed from deep inside his fine suit.
“Mr. Yarnell, is there any reason the test would have turned out the way it did? Your mother was also the mother of the twins?”
“We all fell from the same tree,” he said evenly. “My uncle Win, now he was the bounder in the family. Hayden Winthrop Yarnell Jr. was his given name, but everyone called him Win. His brother, my dad Morgan, he was the straight arrow.”
“I wasn’t trying to imply…”
“Don’t worry, Mapstone,” he said. “We’re both old Arizonans here. We can speak frankly. Nobody wanted this crime solved more than me, believe me. Is there any chance they could have made a mistake?”
I told him it seemed unlikely, based on the DNA report that I spent the afternoon reading.
“What do you remember about the kidnapping?” I asked.
He looked out over the city lights. “I was sixteen years old, the older brother. The protector. I always looked after Andy and Woodrow. They were the sweetest, gentlest kids in the world, and I don’t just think that’s the treacle of sentimental memory fogging up my head.
“Anyway, we all went out to Grandpa’s for Thanksgiving. I remember how cold it was, and you know how none of us desert rats is prepared for cold weather. Grandpa had this huge fireplace at his hacienda. The hearth was made from stone quarried on his ranch in southern Arizona, Rancho del Cielo. It was framed in copper from the Yarnell Mine near Globe. And it was so wonderfully warm that night.
“I remember after dinner, all the men adjourned to Grandpa’s study to smoke cigars, drink brandy and talk politics. For the first time I was invited along, and I really felt like I was a man. Max was already asleep, he was only five. Grandpa took Andy and Woodrow to bed, and sat up with them for a while. Then he came down, and joined the talk. He was convinced Japan was going to jump on us.” He paused and swallowed. “I never saw Andy and Woodrow again.”
“Who else was there that night?”
“My mom. My dad, Morgan, and Uncle Win.”
“Any domestic help?”
James Yarnell bit his lower lip and dropped his age another five years. “Grandma died in 1936, so Grandpa had a cook. What was her name…Maria, I think? And he had a gardener named Luis. Luis Paz. He was a great guy, like a second father.”
“What about Jack Talbott?”
James Yarnell shook his head. “He was trouble. I didn’t know much at that age, but I knew he was trouble. He was Grandpa’s driver and handyman. I don’t know how he got the job. Maybe Uncle Win hired him. I don’t know.”
“Was he there that night?”
James Yarnell looked up into the torchlight and then shook his head. “I don’t believe he was.”
The sun slipped behind the mountains and the city became a vast sea of undulating blue and white and yellow diamonds.
“So what will you do?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “If the DNA test was correct, then I guess we have a totally different homicide case. But your brothers are still missing.”
Reflected in the primal orange light of the torch and the sunset, his fine features seemed to sag.
“I guess I was hoping for some answers,” he said. He groped for the word. “Some justice. But it’s not going to happen, I guess. This kidnapping began the most terrible years for my family. Dad and Uncle Win were both dead before the war was out. Bad hearts, the doctor said. Grandpa died in 1942, and his hacienda burned, this lovely stone house down by South Mountain. I was overseas in the Army by then. People started talking about a Yarnell curse.”
“You seem to have come out all right,” I said.
“Well, I’m not Max,” he said. “I’ve been lucky to be able to do what I want, which is collect and preserve Indian art. But I can’t say there are no regrets. I wasn’t there for Andy and Woodrow. And even though I was blessed with a wonderful daughter and three grandsons, I can never see little boys without thinking of Andy and Woodrow.”
He stopped and I could see the slightest mist across his eyes. Or maybe it was across mine.
I stood, thanked him and offered my hand. He shook it with both of his and thanked me for coming. Even in his sadness he had more warmth than I could ever imagine from his brother.
“One more thing,” I said, pulling a snapshot from my coat pocket. “Have you ever seen this before?”
He tilted the photograph into the light from one of the torches. “That’s my grandfather’s pocket watch.” He tried to hand back the photo.
“Are you sure? Check again.”
“It’s his. I’d know it anywhere. Where did you get this?”
When I told him, he walked a couple of steps away, staring out at the lingering Sonoran Desert twilight. I heard him say, “My God.” Then he walked back and recomposed his fine features.
“Come by the gallery sometime.”
“I’d like to,” I said. “I grew up two blocks from the Heard Museum, so I come by my love of Indian art honestly.”
“You would have loved Grandpa’s collection,” he said. “He realized the value of this art long before it became popular. In the 1920s and 1930s, he would take trips out to the reservations to buy art.”
I had written a paper in grad school on Hayden Yarnell but this was new to me.
“Oh, yes,” James Yarnell said. “It was an amazing collection. It would have been on the order of the Heard.”
“What happened to it?”
He stopped and look at me. “Why, it disappeared during the war. When Grandpa’s hacienda burned, the family was afraid it was all lost. But when they went through the ruins, there wasn’t even a trace. It was gone. It’s never been found.”
“My God,” I said. “Why?”
He rubbed his jaw as if an old ache had come back. He said, “The Yarnell curse.”
Chapter Twenty
I came back to the courthouse from Scottsdale and pulled out a legal pad. I could hear Lindsey’s voice telling me to use the Mac, but I needed the comfort of pen on paper. Lindsey. I was sending prayers and good thoughts to her, yet I had this feeling that some terrible breach had come upon us like a shipwreck on the unsuspecting. Don’t worry, Dave. I was a worrier, and now I felt like something akin to a bad cold was coming over me, my heartbeat too noticeable, my brain full of dread. I shifted in the creaky old desk chair and s
tarted making notes on the case, what I knew, what I didn’t know. The latter list was a hell of a lot longer. By the time I left, it was nearly midnight. I was tired and getting nowhere on a fifty-eight-year-old double-murder. The BMW’s fuel gauge was nearly on empty, a little needle stuck in the festive dash display.
At the light on Roosevelt, a VW Jetta full of Asian teenagers pulled up beside me. They flashed me clean-cut smiles and then one showed me a little machine gun, just like it was prized artwork he had bought at First Friday. I thought very clearly: am I supposed to show you mine? I smiled back stupidly. Then they drove away going the speed limit, signaled, turned right and disappeared down a side street. I didn’t feel scared or brave or outraged, or even like calling PPD on the cell phone. It was time to get some sleep. All day I had been hoping I would find Lindsey waiting for me.
But Peralta was sitting in my driveway.
We walked into the kitchen in silence and I handed out beer. Sam Adams, love it or leave it. I told him about James Yarnell in Scottsdale.
“Stay on the case,” he said, sipping reluctantly from my loathsome yuppie brew.
“And do what?” I was getting cranky from lack of sleep.
“What’s the next step in a case like this?” Peralta the academy instructor.
I threw my hands in the air and walked out. “I’m too fucking tired to employ the Socratic method on the chief fucking deputy.”
He appeared in the bathroom doorway as I was preparing to brush my teeth.
“Did you hear from your little friend today?”
“Lindsey. No.”
I didn’t answer beyond that.
“Sharon and I are having problems.”
I just started brushing, nice circular strokes that would make Grandfather happy.
“Do you know what it’s like to be in the spotlight all the time.” he said. “No, you don’t. It’s not like I can just go check into a hotel, without this showing up in New Times next week.” That was the alternative paper that had waged war with the sheriff for years.
He went on, “They’ve already got me as the next sheriff. Shit, I haven’t even decided to run. Anyway, my personal life is none of their business.”
I would leave the First Amendment arguments to Lorie Pope. I just kept brushing. Circular strokes. Rinse. Spit. Floss.
“I guess I should get a place of my own, quietly,” he went on. “I just…Hell, it seems like such an irrevocable step. I can’t figure out what she wants. How the hell can any man figure that out nowdays?”
I was a silent poster boy for dental diligence.
“Goddamn it, Mapstone. This isn’t easy for me. You know what I mean?”
I looked at him. His face seemed heavier and more careworn than I could remember. I looked back in the mirror for some vain reassurance.
“No, I don’t know what you mean,” I said. “It’s fine for you and Sharon to fuss over my personal life for fifteen years, and I don’t get to be let in to yours?” I wanted to say: You demand to know other people’s weaknesses but never show yours. But I was just dragging. I said, “Stay here when you want, for as long as you need.”
I cleaned up and turned out the light. “You know where the guest bedroom is. There’s an extra door key in the black pot on the kitchen counter. I’ll buy some Coors and try to keep the noise down from my reading.”
“Fuck you,” he called after me as I went in my bedroom. Then, very quietly: “Thanks.”
***
So began the strange life we fell into that season. Peralta and I acted like two bachelors sharing an old house. Most of the time, we barely saw each other. He was in no mood to cook grand dinners. One night we got takeout from Hong Kong Gourmet and rented two Dirty Harry movies—Peralta was contentedly critical of the actors’ combat shooting stances. We didn’t talk about love and women. He was neat and nearly invisible as a roommate, but a steady beachhead of Peralta’s clothes and county reports built up in the guest room.
I was grateful for the company. As the days went by without word from Lindsey, I grew tired of leaving clever, unanswered messages in her voice mail. The conviction grew on me that I might never see her again, at least as a lover. Or maybe I knew that at an instant when the phone rang at midnight, when she told me of her mother’s suicide. I put the copy of Dante back in the bookshelf. I kept the rose she left me in a little vase on the bedside table as the leaves turned black.
I grieved to myself, without the poleaxed pain that lived in my middle for the first year after Patty said she was leaving. That first time Lindsey made joyous love with me, I saw her as such a miraculous appearance in my life that I vowed not to jump into the vortex of hope and fear that breeds possessiveness. I just let her and us unfold, and I would never regret that. Maybe I always knew it was temporary, and if she didn’t run away first, well, maybe I would. So I grieved to myself and tried to create a world of small forward motion.
For the next few days, the Phoenix Police went away. I was the sole investigator on the Yarnell case, a sign that they saw me as both incompetent and harmless—not a bad place to be in a large bureaucracy. The only stipulation: I check in with Hawkins once a week. The skeletons case quickly departed from the minute-long attention span of the Phoenix media. Christmas was coming and a new Nordstrom was open in Scottsdale.
I did what I could.
I spent hours looking over old missing-persons reports from the 1930s and early 1940s. I hooked up with an FBI cold-case expert in Washington. I went through reams of old police logs. Anything to figure out whether twins other than the Yarnell brothers could have ended up walled into the basement passage beneath the Sunset Route Hotel.
James Yarnell gave me permission to examine the Yarnell family papers that were boxed up in the archives of the Arizona Historical Foundation and the Arizona Collection at the Burton Barr Central Library. So every morning I stopped off at my office, made myself not look for an e-mail or voice message from Lindsey, and then drove to the library for at least two solid hours’ work. It was like grad school all over again.
The papers told me that the Yarnell family enterprises were complicated even back in the 1940s. The Yarnell Land and Cattle Co. included ranches around the state, citrus, cotton, mining, even development of a “new subdivision outside Phoenix,” which was about half a mile from where my neighborhood sat in the inner-city today. Hayden Yarnell had been about seventy-five years old in 1941, but he had still managed his empire with precise notes and direct orders: when to move a herd to the High Country, how much to price some land near Bisbee, why he thought the company’s offices in the Luhr’s Tower were too expensive. His scrawl across yellowing memos and creaky ledgers was loopy with age and carried the flats and edges of an old fountain pen.
Yarneco was very much a family business back then. Morgan Yarnell, Hayden’s son and James and Max’s father, was a regular cast member in the corporate records. In the 1930s, it looked like he took over the cattle business. Then in 1939, Morgan was named vice president, putting him directly below the old man. Loan documents for farm land around the Valley and railroad shipping contracts were routinely signed by Morgan after 1939. Occasionally in a board document I saw the name Emma Yarnell Tully, Hayden’s daughter, but she seemed to have little to do with the company.
Those same documents might name Hayden Winthrop Yarnell, Jr., Morgan’s brother. His nephew, James Yarnell, called him the “bounder of the family.” But he was a cipher in the corporate records, and appeared little more in the family photos. I looked at a man with a long, weak face, hardly the face of a bounder. He was two years older than Morgan, and as far as I could tell he never married, had no children, and lived off the family fortune.
One afternoon, I came across a slender, vanity-press volume to commemorate Hayden Yarnell’s seventy-fifth birthday. He’d come a long way from the gunfight at Gila City. My finger slid across grainy black-and-white images of the patriarch with the snowy, full head of hair. The fierceness was still in his eyes, undimmed by
the stiff white collar and heavy wool suit and decades of comfortable wealth. He looked so out of place, standing in the foyer of his mansion, fingering his watch chain. I wanted to see him as my mind’s eye did—the cowboy, the miner, the quintessence of pioneer Arizona.
The watch chain. My eye lingered.
Here was a family photo, with a caption identifying Morgan Yarnell and his sons, Andrew, Woodrow, Max, and James. It put me back in my chair for a moment, to see the actual faces. The twins were dressed in Western shirts, boots, toy guns, staring menacingly at the camera. Innocent little faces with that long Yarnell nose. Disappeared for half a century, little boys lost.
I’m not particularly good with numbers; that’s one reason I never made it big in the history business, which today emphasizes statistics and social science. But it didn’t seem that Yarneco was doing well in the 1930s. No surprise there, considering the Great Depression was dragging on and the towns and rural areas of the West suffered longer and deeper downturns than many places. Still, a string of tense letters from bankers indicated that even businesses that should have been doing all right were suffering. I had written my Ph.D. dissertation on the Depression in the West, and I knew the dude ranches and fledgling resorts actually helped prop up the Phoenix economy during that time. That was not the case of the resort owned by Yarneco. It was sold in 1939 under threat of foreclosure.
I saw more of Gretchen Goodheart. Every couple of days, she dropped by my office, delivered a new insight, if not a new blueprint, to the underground passages where the twins were walled up. Gradually on the cork bulletin board that sat on an easel in my office we built a little collage of facts. One day she asked if I would go horseback riding with her, and we spent a Saturday out in the desert. She had a quality of depth that was appealing and rare. It was the holidays and I was needy. But I wanted to believe I would have appreciated her in any season.
