Scottsdale Squeeze: a romantic light-hearted murder mystery (Laura Black Mysteries Book 2)

by B A Trimmer

  “I’m not sure where he’s been staying the last few months. He sold his house, you know. I assumed maybe he was living with a lady friend. You know, my dad always did have a way with the ladies. Like father, like son.”

  “Do you know if he still has a cabin up by Payson? Do you think he could be living there?”

  “You mean granddad’s cabin? I haven’t been there since I was a kid. I assumed dad sold it years ago, but he never said.”

  “This is probably a dead end, but do you remember how to get up there? I’d like to take a look around.”

  “Umm, maybe. I kinda remember the area but there are a lot of roads going in a lot of directions up there.”

  “Can you come up with me? It shouldn’t take more than about four or five hours total to run up and check it out.”

  “OK, sure, I’m not playing tonight.” He then fixed his eyes on my boobs. “But if dad isn’t up there, you’ll owe me a favor. A wet sloppy favor, if you catch my drift.”

  “Umm, didn’t you have sex with two women all night last night?” I asked.

  “That’s why they call me the Love God, baby. I’m always ready.”

  Gross.

  “We’ll take my car.”

  TEN

  Payson is a peaceful mountain town about eighty miles northeast of Scottsdale. It sits at the base of the Mogollon Rim, a line of cliffs that extend across central Arizona for almost two-hundred miles. The cliffs of the Rim are three-thousand feet high and are the dividing line between the warm deserts of southern Arizona and the colder Colorado Plateau of northern Arizona.

  During the nineteen-twenties, the popular western writer Zane Grey owned a cabin outside of town. He would come up in the summers and write about Arizona and western life in general. After his death, his cabin became a popular museum, but it was later destroyed in a forest fire. The town of Payson then built an exact replica in a park west of town and again made it into a museum. According to Muffy, this was the starting point in looking for Howard’s cabin.

  Terry and I drove up the Beeline Highway, which connects Scottsdale to points north and goes directly through Payson. In about an hour and a half, we had made it to the town. We turned west at the sign that pointed to the Zane Gray cabin.

  We followed the road west for several miles. Terry had his face pressed to the window looking for anything that looked familiar. We turned south at Peach Orchard Road, but after following it to the end, we turned around and came back to the main road. We again followed this road west until it became the Doll Baby Road. We followed it west for another ten miles, but nothing seemed familiar to Terry.

  I had an inspiration and turned the car around. I drove back toward Payson for about five miles, until I got a cell phone signal. I called Muffy Sternwood on a private number she had given me a few months before. After ringing for five or six times, Muffy answered the phone.

  “Well, Laura Black, you are the last person I expected to call me today. What can I do for you, dear? Is this about the kidnapping?”

  “Yes, I’m still looking for Howard Spencer. We’re up in Payson and I’m looking for his father’s cabin. Do you remember anything that could help us find it?”

  “Well, I remember we drove past the park where they rebuilt the Zane Grey cabin. I told you that part last night. We drove west for a while then turned onto some road. I wasn’t driving so I wasn’t paying attention to road names. Now that you mention it, I seem to remember something about an old mine being nearby. Does that help?”

  “Off of Peach Orchard Road we passed a side road called Silver King Mine Road. Does that sound familiar?”

  “It could be, but it was a long time ago and I don’t remember the road names. I do remember the cabin was built on the side of a hill facing north. It had a beautiful view of a wide valley. We came up to the cabin from the road below and got a good view of the deck and the picture windows facing north. It was quite dramatic as I recall.”

  “Thanks Muffy,” I said. “You’ve been a huge help.”

  We drove back to Peach Orchard Road, and then drove south until we got to Silver King Mine Road. It didn’t look like more than a side street but as I drove down it, the road continued west into the mountains. After about two miles of slow twists and turns, the road started to crawl along the side of a mountain and there was a wide valley to the north. We had gone another mile when I saw a house come into view. It had been built a little way above the road and I could see a large deck and picture windows that looked over the valley.

  “Yo, that looks like the place,” Terry said.

  I turned into the drive and went the fifty yards up to the cabin. Muffy was right, the place was more house than cabin. We parked next to a building that looked like a garage and walked up to the house.

  We knocked but there was no answer. We looked into the windows and walked around to the deck but we didn’t see anyone.

  It was a gorgeous day with a deep blue sky, big fluffy clouds, and a cool light breeze. Temperatures were somewhere in the upper sixty’s. Since Terry and I were both Scottsdale natives, we each had on a light jacket.

  The deck had a lovely view of the valley. Terry and I spent a minute smelling the pine trees and taking in the view.

  “Stay here,” I said. “I have some lock-picking tools in the car. It doesn’t look like anyone’s been here but let’s find out for sure.”

  I walk back to my car. My tools were in the trunk and it took me a minute of digging around until I found them. When I stood up and closed the trunk lid, I saw a man standing next to the garage. I also saw he was pointing a gun at me.

  Shit.

  “Who are you and what do you want?” he said, still pointing the gun at my chest.

  “My name’s Laura Black. I’m an investigator for the law firm representing Jacquelyn Wade. She was kidnapped two days ago and we’re trying to find out what happened to her.”

  “And why should I believe you? How do I know you weren’t sent by Carlos?”

  “Dad?”

  We both looked over and saw Terry had walked around the corner of the house. He had a puzzled look on his face from seeing his father pointing a gun at someone.

  “Terry,” the man said, “what are you doing here?”

  “We’re looking for Jackie-D. Dad, the gun is totally uncool.”

  The man, who I now took to be Howard Spencer, looked down at the gun and then slowly lowered it.

  “Look,” he said, “I’m sorry about the gun. But I’m in some trouble and I have people looking for me. I was on the deck when I saw your car coming up the road. I came out to the garage and waited for you to go away. When I heard you digging around in your car, all I could think was that you were getting out your guns, so I came out. But I still have the same question, how do I know you are who you say you are.”

  “Dad, she’s the one from Lenny Shapiro’s office who tracked down Jackie-D in Mexico. We’ve been working together for over a week.”

  At this, Howard relaxed and he slipped the gun in his waistband behind his back.

  “Alright, let’s go sit on the deck. I want to keep a watch on the road.”

  We all walked back to the deck. Howard took out a set of keys and unlocked the cabin. He got three beers from the fridge, came back out, and passed them around.

  There were several comfortable wooden chairs scattered across the deck. We sat in three having a good view of the road below and the valley beyond.

  We made small talk as the sun went down over the mountains. The clouds across the valley lit up and glowed with the bright reds, yellows, and oranges of a beautiful Arizona sunset.

  We sipped three more beers as the sky darkened and the stars came out. Across the valley, lights from a dozen cabins twinkled between the pine trees.

  No one had spoken in several minutes. I got the feeling Howard was gathering his courage to talk and explain what was going on. I didn’t interfere and finally he spoke.

  “I’d like you to understand what happened
,” Howard said. “In case something happens to me, the truth about the murder will still come out. I’ve been watching the news and Jackie is in enough trouble as it is. I don’t want to see a murder charge hanging over her head.”

  “Alright, what happened?” I said. I then looked over at Terry who was closely following the conversation. “Umm, maybe you’d like to discuss this in private?”

  “No, it’s OK,” Howard said. “Terry’s now man enough to learn life isn’t all about parties and getting the girls. He should know how I screwed up so maybe he’ll do things differently when it’s his turn to make an important choice. Even with the most optimistic outcome, it’s likely I’ll be charged with several crimes. It’s best he hears about it directly from me before he reads about it in the papers.”

  “OK,” I said. “Tell it however you think best.”

  “Before I go into what happened with the murder, you have to understand my family has been buying land, selling land, and doing development projects in Scottsdale for over sixty years. The land my grandfather raised cattle on in the nineteen-fifties is now where some of the most prestigious golf resorts in the state are located. In the seventies and the eighties, my father and my grandfather developed dozens of tracts of virgin ranchland. It was the work they did that’s made Scottsdale the vacation destination it is today. After business school, I gradually took over the family business. I then proceeded to run it into the ground.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Well, it took a long time to ruin what they had built. In fact, I started out with a hot streak. For the first ten or fifteen years, everything I touched turned to gold. I got financing whenever I needed it and I almost always sold at a large profit.”

  “Sounds like things were going great. What happened?” I asked.

  “About ten years ago, I had a chance to get involved a really big project, the Scottsdale Saguaro Sky Resort. The lead in the project was Roger Wade. His family had held the land since the nineteen-forties. Roger needed financing to develop the resort and at the time, I happened to have a pile of money I needed to put to work. We decided the best way to handle the project would be to put together a separate development company. We decided to call it simply the Spencer-Wade Land Development. Honestly, I don’t think Roger ever fully trusted me but we worked together well enough. After we finished the Saguaro Sky, we decided to keep the partnership going and every year we cranked out a good profit.”

  “I’ve been to the Saguaro Sky,” I said. “It’s a beautiful resort. I especially like the huge tropical pools there.”

  “Roger eventually bought back my share of the Saguaro Sky. I know I asked too much for my side of the resort but Roger gladly paid it. He said he felt the resort would be his family’s legacy.”

  “So, what happed then?”

  “About three years ago, we picked up an investment group from Mexico. Roger initially didn’t want to have anything to do with them. His instincts were pretty good as it turns out. But I finally convinced him that we needed the additional financing. We were about to take on the biggest project we had ever even tried to do and we were seriously short of the backing we needed to see it through. Mexico seemed like an answer to our prayers. Unfortunately, as we started to get into the heavy construction phase of the project there was a sudden drop in property values across Arizona. People who had promised to provide financing backed out almost overnight. We pulled in every favor we could, but the whole project eventually collapsed. We were eventually forced to sell out to Tony DiCenzo for pennies on the dollar. The bastard is probably still laughing at us.”

  Terry got up and stretched while Howard continued talking.

  “We lost everything we had put into the project, of course, plus we lost a number of properties we had put up for collateral. That was bad enough but it turns out the investment group from Mexico was only a front for a major drug syndicate. Investing with us was a way for them to launder some of their drug money back into the US. The guy we’d been working with is their local representative. His name is Carlos, but we later found out his men call him El Carnicero, which they say translates into The Butcher. I don’t know how he earned the nickname and I honestly don’t want to find out. Unfortunately, the syndicate wanted their money back, all of it, plus interest. Over the last two years, I’ve sold everything I could sell and given it to Carlos. The only thing I have left is this place and I couldn’t sell it, even if I wanted too. It’s officially owned by a foundation that legally doesn’t exist anymore. There’s a non-revocable trust paying the taxes and utilities. My family will have it forever or at least until someone challenges ownership of the property in court.”

  “What about Roger?” I asked. “How did he handle the problem?”

  “I know Roger’s been doing the same thing as me,” Howard said. “He certainly had a lot more to sell, so I knew he was going to come out of it OK. Unfortunately, Roger had taken several of the most valuable properties from Spencer-Wade Development and had transferred them into Jackie’s name. He did this both for tax purposes and to keep them safe from creditors in case something unforeseen happened. And, if we’re being honest, he also did it to keep them away from me. He even did this with the Scottsdale Saguaro Sky. Like I said, he’d always considered it to be his family’s crown jewel and I know he was hoping to find a way to keep it. But, it eventually became clear he was going to have to sell most of it to pay off Carlos and the Mexican syndicate.

  The first step was for Roger to sign over the bulk of the Saguaro Sky over to Carlos. Unfortunately, the resort was still in Jackie’s name. So Roger had Jackie sign the paperwork to transfer the Saguaro Sky back to Spencer-Wade Development. This was a few days before she moved out. Roger was always having her sign documents and she always went along with it. She knew that she was only a legal placeholder for our company. But when Roger went to file Jackie’s paperwork with the county, he couldn’t find it. That document, along with the deeds and ownership paperwork to a dozen other properties in her name, had disappeared. Roger kept them all in his home office safe in a file he called his Jackie file. He assumed Jackie had gone in and taken the file without really knowing what was in it.

  “Wow,” I said. “What did Roger do?”

  “Well, it would have been relatively simple to have Jackie sign some new transfer documents but after she moved out, she started having a real estate lawyer review any documents Roger gave her before she signed anything. I think she became concerned Roger would try and take advantage of her. Jackie never knew what she was sitting on, of course, but I can imagine the stink her lawyer would make if Roger presented her with papers to sign away roughly three hundred million dollars’ worth of property. Since then, he’s sold several other properties his family had worked for years to acquire. Unfortunately, without the Saguaro Sky, it still didn’t come close to covering what he owed.”

  “I can see why Roger was so stressed.” I said.

  “Roger needed to get the original transfer document back. Actually, he needed to get the entire file back from Jackie. In addition to outright ownership of the Saguaro Sky, there were documents in the file showing her as partial owner of five other resorts and several undeveloped properties scattered around Scottsdale. I know Roger casually mentioned it a few times to Jackie, trying not to raise her suspicions, but she kept referring him back to her lawyer. Finally, I got the idea if we could somehow find out where she kept the document, we could go in and take it.”

  “What was your plan?”

  “I knew Jackie had started hanging out in nightclubs and she had turned herself into some sort of sex cougar. I asked Terry if he’d start dating her and find out where she kept her documents. Since Terry and Jackie had never met before, I didn’t think he would mind dating the wife of my business partner. Terry discovered Jackie kept her documents in a fireproof file box in her bedroom. He said he’d looked for it but wasn’t able to find it.”

  “Sorry dad,” Terry said. “I searched her bedroo
m the best I could but I didn’t see anything that looked like what you are talking about.”

  “I understand,” Howard said. “It was a longshot. You tried and it didn’t pan out. I’m sorry I got you involved in this. I never thought it would go beyond getting the file from Jackie’s house.”

  I saw Terry nodded his head. He seemed to accept this wasn’t his fault.

  “Two weeks ago,” Howard continued. “Carlos called us in for a meeting. Roger and I went and told him where we were in getting the document from Jackie. He flew into one of his rages and said he knew how to get Jackie out of her house, and then we could go in and take the file. He drove down the street to a payphone, called her up, and threatened her. Later that night, the three of us drove over to Jackie’s house and turned the place upside down to find the documents. We found a small file box in her bedroom but it didn’t have anything inside except for the deed to her house and a few tax documents. Carlos called up a couple of his men and we all spent the rest of the night tearing up Jackie’s house looking for the damn thing. We even started ripping into the walls to see if she had hidden the file there. But even though we turned the house inside out, we didn’t find a thing.

  Finally, we went back to Jackie’s bedroom to look one more time. We had flipped over the mattress and gutted it when Carlos flew into yet another rage. He screamed at us how we weren’t even trying to find the document. He then took a gun we had found in the nightstand and shot Roger three times in the chest. He told me if I didn’t find the document soon, he’d kill me too.”

  “What happened then?” I asked.

  “Our next step was to kidnap Jackie and make her give us the document. It wasn’t my idea and I didn’t want to be involved but Carlos was now in control. Unfortunately, after Carlos had threatened her, Jackie had bolted out of Scottsdale and we didn’t have a clue where she went. They’d already put a tracking device on Jackie’s Jaguar but they lost her when she started driving in the deserts where there’s no cell service. While we waited for Jackie’s signal to reappear, Carlos had his men out searching for her but that got us nowhere.