Twenty-six
I’ll be talking to Caroline Arnet’s husband, producer Ted Lang, tomorrow night, on Larry King Live, 9:00 eastern, 8:00 central on CNN.
—Promo spot by Larry King for Larry King Live
“Miss Cafareili?” The man speaking into the phone seemed far away, his voice high and distorted. Alex tried to pinpoint the accent. British?
He didn’t wait for acknowledgment. “I have some information that may be of interest to you.”
She glanced at the rollbag on the bed, mostly stuffed with dirty laundry. She had a two-hour drive back to Tucson ahead of her, and her nose had reached that pinnacle of stuffiness, which would drive her over the edge in a minute. “I don’t know how you got my room number, but I’m not interested—”
“Miss Cafareili, you are not listening!” The accent was definitely phony. She started to hang up. The caller spoke quickly. “Don’t you care what happens to the jaguarundi? The jaguarundi you’ve been photographing?”
“Who is this?”
“Scott Peterson, but that’s not important. I’m a friend of Maybelle Deering’s. I’ve just been out to her place to look at an antique desk she was selling, and she couldn’t resist showing me her new find, a jaguarundi, just captured yesterday. I assume it’s the same one. They are rather rare, aren’t they?”
Darkness blotted Alex’s vision. It couldn’t be. She wouldn’t believe it. The jaguarundi would be so hard to catch ...
“The jaguarundi is there now. Perhaps you should come out and retrieve it. I believe what she is doing is illegal.”
What reason did this man have to lie? Alex saw the kittens at play in her mind’s eye and her heart constricted. If their mother were gone any length of time, they wouldn’t survive. “How do I know what you’re saying is true?”
“Don’t you think it’s worth a look?”
“Why are you calling if you’re a friend of Maybelle’s?”
“The ball’s in your court, as you Americans say. Goodbye.”
Click.
Panic vied with another voice, which told her this was some kind of joke.
But all she saw when she closed her eyes were the kittens stalking each other in the brush. Tangled in energetic play. At the thought of them left alone to starve, Alex felt a crushing weight beneath her breastbone.
She couldn’t ignore it.
Heart slamming against her ribcage, Alex punched out the number to Ted Lang’s room. The phone rang for at least a minute. She called the desk. “I’d like to leave a message for Ted Lang.”
“I’m sorry. Mr. Lang checked out early this morning.”
Relief at Ted’s defection mingled with the vague suspicion that there was something wrong with the man who’d just called her. Her confused mind floundered for an explanation. Could it be Uncle Wiggly?
At this point, she doubted Uncle Wiggly existed at all. He could be just another one of Ted’s lies.
But something bothered her about that phone call. Something that should have been plain but she couldn’t quite see ...
But what if he was telling the truth?
It was a short drive up the road to Maybelle’s. She only hoped she wasn’t too late to save the kittens.
On her way out of the hotel, Alex nearly bumped into a female reporter on the front steps. Someone—a member of the crew—waved at her frantically, motioning her away.
“Grieving husband Ted Lang claimed his wife’s body early this morning and is currently flying to Los Angeles in a chartered plane. Finally, Caroline Arnet is coming home. That’s all we have from here, Dan.”
Gone. But he’d be easy to find, cocky as he was. She’d have to tell Nick what she suspected, but right now there was no time. Shaking from adrenaline, Alex inched past the reporter and ran for the Jeep.
She spotted the roof of Maybelle’s house on the left, appearing above the desert shrubs and cactus at eye level. She turned in at the mailbox, parking in the gravel drive behind the VW. Maybelle’s old truck was gone.
She walked toward the house. It looked abandoned, the same color as the dust her shoes kicked up, baking under the lifeless eucalyptus trees. A dove flew past her, wings whickering. Alex hardly saw it.
Rage buzzed in her brain like a shorted-out sign. Her head ached, needles of light jabbing behind her eyes. If Maybelle had taken the jaguarundi, if she had abandoned those kittens to a slow and agonizing death ...
For the first time in her life, Alex’s hand ached for the butt of a gun. She hated the feeling, but it overrode whatever protestations of civility remained in her soul. It was greedy, this hatred, and full of murderous glee.
She spotted a motorcycle over near the carport where Maybelle kept her injured animals. Hard to tell if it was another of Maybelle’s vehicles or if she had visitors.
Showing off her new acquisition maybe?
A chill shot through her. For the first time, Alex thought of the .38 Maybelle wore on her hip. If she was a serious collector—a collector of endangered species—she wouldn’t give up without a fight. The jaguarundi would be worth killing for.
If that was the way it was going to be.
On the way over, she’d debated alerting Game & Fish, but she wasn’t sure when they would show up. They had a lot of area to cover, and this wasn’t a substantiated call. She also wondered, if by some miracle they did show up, they’d confiscate the cat first and then decide what to do about the kittens. If the jaguarundi had been captured yesterday, it didn’t leave a lot of time.
Wrapping her fingers around the Mace in her fanny pack, Alex wished now she hadn’t been so cavalier about selling her service pistol when she’d left the Forest Service.
But then again, she was afraid she would use it. Nothing pissed her off so much as harming an innocent animal.
She glanced at the carport again. That was the way she and Nick had gone in before, so she decided to take the familiar route.
A sign had been taped to the kitchen door. It said, “UPS, Leave package on kitchen table. Thanx.”
She should have turned around and walked away just then. Gone to the hotel and called Cindy Gallego. Or Nick. Instead, Alex twisted the doorknob.
The door gave, inched open with a creak. Alex called out, her voice hoarse. “Maybelle?”
The word echoed through the house. The place felt empty.
Alex scanned the kitchen. Alpo cans in the sink. Dishes crusted with dried food left on the table.
A needlepoint plaque over the kitchen doorway: “God Bless Our Home.” A refrigerator magnet shaped like a pig wagged its finger at her: “Don’t be a Pig!”
“Maybelle?”
A snakebite kit next to the toaster.
I’m trespassing. I could be arrested for this. I should turn around and walk right out of here and call for help.
But the memory of the kittens pushed her forward. She was only a couple of miles from the canyon. If she could get the jaguarundi, it would be back with the kittens within two hours, tops.
She was the best chance for those kittens to live. Alex walked to the doorway of the kitchen. The drapes at the picture window of the parlor were pulled shut; the room was dark. Alex blinked at the gloom and padded forward, blundered into a piece of furniture. Walked a few more steps. Tripped over something—
He tripped me with his foot! she thought, shocked.
She reached out for balance and her arm smacked against something leathery, it toppled sideways, hit the floor. Alex went sprawling.
He tripped me!
The surprise, the shock that a perfect stranger would do that ...
Alex froze.
Tripped her, just like that. She shuddered as the memory washed over her. The man had been sitting on the couch, watching the ballgame. She had walked past him on her way to the bedroom, where she would study until Caroline got back.
He’d put out his foot and tripped her. Caught her off balance and dragged her down beside him. Put his arm around her, told her they could pretend they were
on a date at a real ballgame.
At first she’d been too frightened to struggle. He nuzzled her neck, told her she was pretty.
His face coming at hers, blotting out the sunlight.
The door opens. Caroline is haloed by the light outside, her hair streaming out from her head. An avenging angel.
Get out!
Alex took a deep breath, relief turning her limbs to water. He didn’t kiss her, didn’t get a chance to do much of anything; he didn’t get the chance. Caroline had saved her.
Alex became aware that she was lying on something soft. Animal hair. The zebra skin or the polar bear pelt?
She felt as if the wind had been knocked out of her. She sat for a few minutes in the dark, coming to grips with the last piece of the puzzle.
That was all that happened. She remembered everything now. Whatever Caroline’s motives, she had saved Alex from a trauma which would have destroyed her life as it had Caroline’s.
The guy’s name was Joe, not Peter.
Alex put her hand down to push herself to her feet. Her fingers brushed the object she had toppled. Her eyes had adjusted to the dark and she could see better now.
As the realization hit Alex, her hand shot back of its own accord.
The thing was as big as a medium-sized dog and scaly. Alex’s eyes registered a wickedly long proboscis and the sly grin of a crocodile. A reptilian eye leered at her, catching whatever dim light there was in the room.
Finally, she realized what it was. A caiman, the endangered South American relative of the alligator. Someone had stuffed it, sat it up on a round wooden base, and glued a brass ashtray into its front feet. As a gruesomely jaunty touch, they’d put a pipe in its mouth.
Disgusted, Alex scuttled backward on her palms before standing up. The stuffed caiman must have been one of the senator’s trophies. Something to go with the snow leopard and the rhino tusk, no doubt.
A muffled thump came from somewhere in the bowels of the house.
Alex remembered why she was here, and how desperate Maybelle must be if she had the jaguarundi.
“Maybelle?” she called.
No answer.
“Someone told me you have the jaguarundi.”
No answer.
“Arizona Game & Fish is on its way.”
Nothing.
Gingerly, she pushed through the door. Nothing in here. She walked through that room to the next. No one was there either. Stepped up into a hallway and down a half-step into the reptile room.
It was the green room she remembered. Sunlight pierced here and there through the chinks in the green armor of vines, but not enough to dispel the gloom. She heard a dry skitter. A gila monster waggled its way through the dirt in a big terrarium at her elbow.
Maybelle wasn’t here either. She walked down the aisle between the terrariums and cages, lifting the cloths that covered them. It stood to reason that if Maybelle kept endangered cats, she probably had endangered reptiles as well. There were rattlesnakes—three of which Alex knew were endangered. But they were mundane compared to the others: rare snakes from everywhere in the world. Black mamba, taipan, king cobra.
All endangered, and all deadly.
She backed up, came against more cool glass on the other side. The denizens of these smaller terrariums were much less exotic. Scorpions, tarantulas, centipedes. A solpugid, commonly known as a wind scorpion, scuttled with amazing speed across a limb, its hairy, flesh-colored mandibles—half its body size—gleaming opaquely in the dim light. Even though Alex knew it was harmless, the rapidity with which it covered the ground gave her the creeps.
At the end of the room was the door to the cage where she’d seen the red-tailed hawk. And to the right of that door was an open doorway that hadn’t been visible the last time she’d been here.
Alex paused, debating where to go.
The plaque by the doorway said CAT EXHIBIT coupled with an arrow. It led into a tunnel.
She walked down the slope, her shoes echoing off the walls, her pulse thumping mightily in her ears. “Maybelle?” she called softly. Her voice bounced back to her.
Her anger had died, leaving only fear.
Ahead, a bar of white-gold light pooled in the tunnel. When Alex reached the light, she saw its source. An enormous window had been cut into the smooth tunnel walls, opening onto what looked like a canyon in the Cascabels.
Spread out like a lath across a salmon-colored rock lay a jaguar.
With a short intake of breath, Alex stepped back. The sun gleamed on the breathtaking black rosettes mottling its tawny coat. One paw hung out over the edge of the rock, and as Alex watched, an ear twitched.
The plaque on the wall beside the window proclaimed:
Panthera Onca, yaguar. A long blurb followed.
The bitter anger again welled up in her heart. Maybelle Deering had built herself her own little version of the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, for a membership of one.
The idea that the jaguarundi was here no longer seemed implausible. Alex hurried to the next window.
Felis yagouaroundi. The jaguarundi.
From her angle, she could see nothing. But that didn’t necessarily mean the jaguarundi wasn’t there.
The blurb said, among other things, that the cat moved along well-defined trails, which made it easy to trap.
Easy to trap.
Alex saw the door farther up the tunnel and thought it might lead into the jaguarundi enclosure. It was locked.
She had to get in there and see if she could find the creature. Maybe Maybelle had gone somewhere. Alex dared hope that she would be able to retrieve the jaguarundi and go to the canyon unhindered. She looked at the habitat again. The stream winked in the sun like a peridot. Boulders and freeform rock sculptures formed a tall cliff.
Maybelle had patterned her cat exhibit after the one at the Desert Museum. At the Desert Museum, people could observe the animals from above if they didn’t find them in their burrows or near the viewing window. Maybe, if she was lucky, there would be a walkway up to the top of these manmade canyons. If so, it was possible she could find a way into the enclosure from the top.
She wasn’t a repeller, but she’d climbed a few rocks in her day.
Her decision made, Alex started down the tunnel in the opposite direction she had come. She guessed the tunnel would lead outside at some point.
She reached the next viewing window.
Felis Pardalis. Ocelot.
Curious, Alex glanced in, wondering if she could see the spotted cat.
One black, open eye stared out of the wrinkled, mummy-like face of Maybelle Deering. She was propped up against a boulder, naked, a small blossom of blood in the hollow of her throat. The grizzly bear skin was bunched up at her feet so that it appeared that Maybelle was riding the animal piggyback; the enormous, snarling head rose from between her legs.
A crude sign was propped on top of the grizzly’s head, resting on her chest. It said “Ride ‘em, cowgirl.”
Twenty-seven
It was announced today that producer Ted Lang, husband of the late star Caroline Arnet, will appear in the movie of her life based on his book, FALLEN ANGEL: THE CAROLINE ARNET STORY.
—Associated Press
“I believe the cognoscenti call it conceptual art,” a voice said right behind her.
Alex spun around. Ted stood three feet away, brown blood smears drying on his Izod shirt. His smile was self-deprecating. “I suppose the grizzly is a bit over the top, but I was in a hurry.”
“You left for LA. It was on the news.”
“Don’t believe everything you see.” He leaned against the tunnel wall, his face in shadow. “What do you think? Not my best work, but I liked the symbolism of Maybelle riding to hell on a grizzly. After all those years of mistreating poor Bob.”
“You’re crazy.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Misunderstood perhaps, but hardly crazy. And by the way, who appointed you art critic? Jesse Helms? If you can’t appreciate the power in
this work, the irony ... never mind. ‘We have some unfinished business,’ said the spider to the fly.” He stepped toward her, his eyes feverish in his smooth, tanned face. “You really threw a spanner in the works, and I’m here to tell you I don’t appreciate it. Do you have any idea of the pressure I’m under? I’m building Caroline from the ground up, making her into the greatest martyr since Marilyn—that’s work, Alex. Hard work. And you’ve been no help at all.”
Alex tried to calm herself, but her legs were shaking like jackhammers. The vision of Maybelle’s snarling rictus, so much like the grizzly’s, was branded into her mind. It left very little room for functions like comprehension.
His words drifted through her mind like a dream. “I don’t understand you. I’m the hottest producer in Hollywood right now. I have a deal in the works with Dreamworks SKG—if you don’t know, that’s Steven Spielberg, for Christ’s sake. I courted you proper. I protected you from Booker Purlie. I—”
Something she could grasp. “You killed Booker.”
He spread his hands as if to say. See? This is the thanks I get. “Okay, yes, strictly speaking, I’ll go along with that. But let’s not get off the subject, shall we? All I wanted, Alex, was a little feminine companionship after everything I’ve been through. Some comfort. Was that too much to ask? You hurt my feelings, did you know that?” He punched his bloody breast. “You broke my heart.”
“You don’t have a heart.”
“Now that’s where you’re wrong. I’m a man. I have needs. You blithely lead me on and expect I’ll just take my ball and go home? You’re fucking with the wrong guy, Alex. I don’t like to be denied. I’ve always, always, gotten what I wanted, and I really wanted you.”
She noticed the past tense.
He shook his head sadly. “We’re talking serious money here. A house in Puerto Vallarta, a ski lodge in Aspen—” He sighed. “Your fault, Alex, if you don’t mind my saying so. I don’t know what it is about women that makes them so deceitful. First Caroline’s indiscretions, and then you had to compound my unhappiness by turning up your nose at all I had to offer.”
The Desert Waits Page 27
