High Country Nocturne

by Jon Talton

  I needed to walk. So I went two long blocks to the light-rail station and rode the train down to the courthouse. Stepping off, I passed through a joyous flock of young girls in colorful quinceanera dresses, laughing and talking. I steered my briefcase through the extravagant flowing skirts. When I was fifteen, I couldn’t have imagined the adult me in this mess.

  In the atrium, I saw a young woman in a miniskirt arguing with the guard. Seeing me, he said, “Here he is.”

  She turned around. It was Zephyr Whitehouse.

  I suppressed a sigh and said, “Come up to my office.”

  She followed me to the elevator and we walked down the long hallway in silence.

  That changed once I closed the door.

  “I owe you an apology for this morning,” she said. “I didn’t realize you were a deputy sheriff. I had to rifle through Diane’s purse to find your business card. Then I called Chris and he told me you are a historian, too. I’m impressed.”

  Good old Chris.

  “No apology necessary.” I sat behind the desk. “No need to be impressed.”

  “My therapist has told me about sexual competition between mothers and daughters,” she said. “It’s always been there between me and Diane.”

  She called her mother by her first name, like Lindsey and Robin had done. Did anyone say “mom” anymore?

  I invited her to sit but she walked around inspecting, pausing to look out the restored 1929 windows. She had that combination of beauty, grace, money, and—if she didn’t read serious books—at least a feral intelligence that allowed her to effortlessly be the sun of any solar system she entered.

  She alighted on the 1950s photo of Camelback Mountain with nothing but citrus groves flowing out to the south.

  She pointed. “Our house is right here now. Amazing. You must despise my father. Even though I loved him, I hated growing up with his last name. I thought about taking Diane’s maiden name, Jacobi. You know last names only became common in Europe in the sixteenth century, as people left their home villages? Of course you do.”

  I would have nodded but her very nice back was still facing me.

  She turned. “We both have the same middle name, mother and daughter. Colleen. Do you like that?”

  “Colleen is a lovely name.”

  She smiled. “But I’m a Zephyr.”

  “Yes, you are,” I said. “What do you want, I’m-a-Zephyr?”

  She straightened her shoulders. “You’re very direct, Professor. No time for postmodern irony and cynicism? Or maybe that’s what you did and I missed it.”

  I put my hands flat on the desk. “This is not Stanford and these are not office hours. Please sit down and tell me…” I smoothed out my insides and finished with “…how I may help you.”

  She sat, the skirt rode up, and long tanned legs crossed. I kept my eyes on her face.

  “Your investigation of Chip. I’m assuming that’s why you came to see Diane this morning.”

  “Chip?”

  “Elliott Whitehouse, Jr., my half brother. Chip. He and James are sons of Daddy and the sainted first wife, Kathryn. The woman done wrong when Daddy left her for Diane, who was nothing more than a secretary in his office. It was a scandal. Very sexy. Kathryn and my half brothers hate me. James goes by the nickname Tanker, don’t ask me why.”

  Diane Whitehouse had told me that she met Elliott while she had been working at Diamond’s.

  I asked Zephyr to tell me about Chip.

  “Nothing you probably don’t suspect.” She played with a thick strand of tawny hair. “He did bribe county officials to get land rezoned for his warehouses. He’s mean and lazy, but he’s also careless. I have copies of the checks.”

  She reached in her purse and slid across sheets of folded paper.

  I scanned them. They showed checks written on E2 LLC and signed by Chip Whitehouse. Each was made out to a different individual. I recognized one name from the Planning and Zoning Board and another who was a county commissioner. Each check was in the amount of ninety-eight hundred dollars. The payment was below the threshold where the bank would be required to report it to the feds.

  I said, “Why are you doing this, Zephyr? He is your brother. What’s your angle?”

  Her face flushed. “Chip destroyed an eight-hundred-year-old Hohokam site to build those warehouses. Never disclosed it.”

  “You’re that passionate about historic preservation?”

  Her face assumed an adult seriousness. “As a matter of fact, yes. And about the environment. Chip did all this and flipped those ugly tilt-up warehouses for twelve million dollars before the bust. He didn’t even have tenants. I don’t need an angle, David. It’s the right thing to do. It’s what I was taught by my father.” The legs uncrossed and her perfect knees met demurely.

  “May I keep these copies?”

  “Please,” she said.

  County corruption didn’t figure into the wallet Diane had found in Elliott Whitehouse’s closet. I did come down here to write up the report for Melton, so I decided to turn the conversation to my needs.

  I said, “Why would I despise your father?”

  She nodded to the photo. “He’s one of the developers who took all this away. I’m a serious environmentalist and it’s hard for me to reconcile.”

  I thought about that issue, not for the first time.

  “Historians might call that ‘presentism’ and it gets in the way of understanding,” I said. “Men like your father were part of a moment in history.”

  “Meaning?”

  “The mass-produced subdivisions that started with Levittown back East were in vogue. Gasoline was cheap and driving was pleasant. Phoenix had a serious housing shortage after World War II and plenty of land.”

  I paused to see if she was bored. Her eyes were engaged and bright. Or she was a good actress. Either way, I continued, “It was growing, and men like Elliott Whitehouse and John F. Long provided good housing for the former GIs who were starting families. Not only that, but Arizona was rife with land swindles. These men operated honestly.”

  “So they didn’t know what it would become, or the external economic and social costs of sprawl.”

  “That’s the objective way to approach it.” I said. “What’s happened in recent years is more unforgivable. Now we know the consequences. It became a Ponzi scheme.”

  “The American Dream.” Sarcasm tinted her voice. “And look at all that’s lost. I wish I could have seen it the way you must have when you were young. The Japanese flower gardens. Superstition Mountain without all the houses.”

  “It was a beautiful place.”

  She gave an exaggerated shiver. “I would never live in the Valley again. Once I graduate, I’m staying in the Bay Area. None of my friends are coming back, either. Why do you stay?”

  I didn’t answer.

  Her lips made a sad smile. “You’re a sucker for lost causes, David Mapstone.

  I asked Zephyr what her father was like.

  “He doted on me.” The smile widened, showing perfect teeth. “I was a daddy’s girl. Diane was jealous of me. But what was he like?” She stared at the high ceiling. “He was sixty when I was born, so I get the sense he had mellowed. He was very kind. I got a very different father than Chip and Tanker grew up with. He would get down on the floor and play with me. This big man playing like he was six again. He built me a very elaborate dollhouse. I still have it.”

  “Was he faithful to your mother?”

  She nodded to my ring finger. “Have you always been faithful to your wife, David? Don’t worry. I won’t put you on the spot. I know he and Diane fought about one woman she was sure he was having an affair with.”

  I wrote down the woman’s name.

  “What about men?” I asked.

  “Men?” She laughed and stroked her knees. “Are you kid
ding me? Daddy was a terrible homophobe. Racist. Anti-Semitic. He was a privileged white man of his generation. My half brothers aren’t much different and they don’t have any excuses. They support the ‘Papers Please’ law, think all our problems are because of illegal aliens, even though they employ them and pay them dirt. Hypocrites. You probably think I’m a hypocrite, too, growing up in the big house, copping to environmentalism from privilege.” She paused. Then, “What’s Daddy got to do with this?”

  A shadow appeared behind the pebbled glass and I tensed. Then Kate Vare burst in without knocking. I made introductions.

  “Is she leaving?” Vare said.

  “Yes,” Zephyr said, standing. She was a head taller than Vare. “It was very nice to meet you, Sergeant Vare. Thanks for all that you do, David. I’ll text you my number.”

  When the door closed, Vare put her hands on her hips and smiled with malice.

  “Your next girlfriend? She’s too young for you.”

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. But she’s Elliott Whitehouse’s daughter.”

  “Well, enjoy it before she kicks you to the curb.”

  “She’s not…!”

  Vare held out a hand. “It’s your business, David.” She imitated Zephyr, with an extra dollop of sweet sexuality, no mean accomplishment for Kate Vare. Her voice sounded like a completely different person. Back in her normal tone, she continued, “Walk right into the propeller. I won’t stop you.”

  Before I could say more, she changed the subject. “So the boys pick up a suicide in Midtown, an office in the old United Bank tower on Central. Subject named Matt Pennington. He hanged himself from a doorknob with two neckties.”

  My middle wound in a knot but I kept my face neutral. “Did he?”

  “They were willing to buy it. I called it bullshit. No note. His computer is missing. No cellphone. Who doesn’t have a cellphone attached to them at all times now? I thought about your girl, Miss ‘Suicided.’ Then I found the fake file cabinets. I pulled them open with a pry bar. It wasn’t easy. But there’s a very elaborate safe behind them. We’ve got techs working to open it right now. What do you want to bet we find some diamonds?”

  I said, “Who’s Matt Pennington?”

  “You tell me.” She sat and leaned forward on her elbows.

  “The name hasn’t come up.”

  “Liar.”

  I kept my eyes straight on her and repeated the sentence.

  “Well, you’re not making enough trouble, Mapstone. Pennington was a Navy SEAL assigned to the Mexican marines on drug interdiction. Five years ago they tried to nab Chapo Guzman, the head of the Sinaloa Cartel…”

  “I know who he is.”

  “Intel said that he was staying at a mansion on the Gulf of California. They went in from the ocean and immediately came under fire. Two Mexican marines were killed. Chapo got away. The bad guys had advanced information about the raid. The marines are the best agency in Mexico. I don’t know what went wrong, but Pennington was assigned to a desk job and then left the service.”

  “So he was blamed.”

  She nodded. “I called in a favor from an old boyfriend in the DEA. Don’t look at me that way, you jerk. Lots of men find me attractive. I wouldn’t sleep with you if we were the only two humans left on a dying planet. If I hadn’t had sex for a hundred years and you showed up at my doorstep naked with a rose in your teeth. If you had Old Glory draped over your face…”

  “I get it,” I said. “Your DEA buddy.”

  “He said Pennington was in the cartel’s pocket. Specifically Sinaloa. But they could never prove it.”

  “So why did he end up here?”

  “His mother was sick. Get this, he worked in a call center. The turnover rate at most of those places is one hundred percent. But he drove a new BMW every year and he had this secret office in Midtown. No name on the door.”

  “Now a dead man inside.”

  She leaned back.

  “I showed you mine. You show me yours.”

  So I did, with only a few omissions.

  When I was finished, she liked me a little better.

  “That explains a lot,” she said.

  “Such as?”

  “Such as the call I got this afternoon from Horace Mann. He wanted to know the whereabouts of a man named Matt Pennington.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I said we’d check.”

  I asked her why she didn’t tell him that Pennington was dead.

  “Because I don’t trust feds. Everything you told me shows why I’m right.”

  After she left, I made some phone calls, used the badge, and took a drive.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  When I went in Lindsey’s room after seven the next morning, she was breathing on her own. The ventilator was still there, but the tube was out of her mouth. The gauze patches were off her eyes.

  If anything had come from last night’s scheduled meeting in Scottsdale between “Matt Pennington” and the man on the phone, nobody had told me.

  This was infinitely better than clearing a case. I sat and said, “Thank you, God.”

  Thumbing through Emily Dickinson, I found what seemed appropriate: Angels In the Early Morning.

  It was only eight lines. I read them with a slow, exhausted reverence.

  “…the flowers they bear along.”

  Those last words were in Lindsey’s voice.

  I raised my head and saw those blue eyes I loved, looking at me.

  “Dave, my chest hurts…a lot. What happened?”

  “I’m going to get the nurses.”

  She reached feebly and I took her hand.

  “Wait. Stay with me, Dave. What happened to your eye? Where am I?”

  “Mister Joe’s”

  “What happened?”

  “You were shot. Do you remember?”

  Her eyes closed and my first reaction was fear, but the heart monitor was steady and her chest and rising and falling.

  Her eyes fluttered open.

  “It hurts, Dave. I remember…fajitas. And you went with the deputies…” Her voice was raspy and she licked her lips.

  I was relieved. I had been so afraid her last memories would be of our terrible fight.

  She said, “Wait. Where’s Peralta?”

  “I haven’t found him yet.”

  She struggled to keep her eyes open.

  “You’ve got to find him. He’s in great danger. Pennington…”

  I prompted. “Matt Pennington?”

  She nodded. “While you were gone to see Meltdown, I did some searching. Don’t be mad.”

  “I’m not mad.”

  “He’s DEA. Pennington is.” She laughed and winced. “I sound like Yoda. Pennington is deep cover. Nobody but the top echelon of the agency knows.”

  I thought about Ed Cartwright.

  She struggled to get the words out. “Pennington is close to the cartels and handles diamond shipments. But it’s a cover. He’s active DEA. You’re crying, Dave.”

  I had been too transfixed by Lindsey awake and talking to feel the tears running down my cheeks.

  “My mouth is so dry.”

  “Let me get a nurse,” I said. “I love you more than anything. I promise once we get through this we’ll live a different life. We’ll read books.” I was babbling.

  She tried to smile. “Love you, too, Dave. I’m sorry I ruined your dark blue blazer. I know you liked it.”

  “Lindsey, don’t worry about…”

  Suddenly her words caught up with me. She had already fallen unconscious Saturday night by the time I thought of using the blazer to staunch the bleeding. She was out. I could barely feel a pulse.

  I must not have heard her right.

  She tightened her grip on my hand.


  “I saw you pull it off and roll me to the side…put it under me. I was floating. Sounds crazy, right? And I saw your parents…and Robin and my mother. Dave, I saw our daughter. It was so sweet and I knew things were going to be all right.” She talked faster and faster, then dropped to a whisper. “You think I’m…” She searched for the word. “…hallucinating. I’m not. It was real. But I had to come back to you.”

  “Thank you.”

  In the next seconds, nurses were hovering.

  “We need to control her pain,” one said.

  “Dave,” Lindsey stroked my hand. “Find Peralta.”

  “I don’t want to leave you.”

  For the first time, she was able to look around and take in all the tubes, cables, and machines. That sweet, sardonic smile returned. “Doesn’t look like I’m going anywhere. I’ll be here.…”

  Then the pain med was flowing into the IV and she went back to sleep.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Sharon was waiting when I stepped outside. I told her about Lindsey and she hugged me so tightly I could barely breathe.

  “David, this is the best gift. It’s worth more than all the rough in the world.”

  Her arms fell away and her face suddenly went slack. My black eye, which had been feeling much better, was the target of thousands of little arrows.

  “What did you say?”

  But I had heard her fine. A tight circle knew the diamond shipment was valuable, gem-quality rough. There were her husband, Horace Mann, and Strawberry Death. The Russians and Cartwright. Me. Sharon was not among them.

  Sharon began crying. “Oh, David. I messed up so bad.”

  “What the hell?”

  “This wasn’t supposed to happen.”

  I grabbed her arm hard enough to leave a bruise and steered her twenty feet down the hall, out of hearing of the uniformed officer by the ICU entrance.

  “What wasn’t supposed to happen? And how the hell do you know about rough? You said rough.”

  “Lindsey was never supposed to get hurt…”