The Laura Cardinal Novels

by J. Carson Black

  She rode past the tennis court. Jay Ramsey, whose mother owned Calliope and Alamo Farm, was busy hitting tennis balls. Tanned, white-shorted, his blond hair catching the light, he scrambled back and forth, whacking at the lime-green balls shooting out of a machine at one end. Faster and faster, the motorized wheelchair zooming and swooping. so many balls Jay had to catch them in his lap, many of them bouncing to the court floor. Suddenly, the machine stopped, and he turned his chair to watch her go by.

  He looked lost.

  Another goddamned nightmare. Laura awoke to the motel room in the dark, alone.

  She didn’t want to be alone, but she was.

  The image was strong, almost physical, the way she had reached her hand down and smoothed the mare’s rich, dark neck with one palm, the delicate tracery of veins underneath. She could smell the slightly wet coat, taste the bloom of dust in her mouth. And the image of Jay Ramsey, young and strong except for the wheelchair, had been vivid. Her mind had added the wheelchair in the disjointed way of dreams. When she first knew Jay, he could walk, run, and play tennis. This had been before he was paralyzed in a drug-related shooting.

  Not long ago, Jay had helped her with the Musicman case. Now he was dead. More fallout from the case—the gift that kept on giving. The place Laura remembered so vividly from her childhood would also soon recede into the past with nothing to physically hold it to the earth. Jay was gone, Calliope was gone, and Alamo Farm would soon be up for sale.

  Laura was aware of music—faint and country. She looked out the window and saw Wendy sitting outside the office across the way.

  Suddenly, she wanted company, wanted it badly. She pulled on her clothes and went out to say hello.

  “If Shana was going to sell him, I wished she’d’ve asked me first.” Wendy Baker ground another Marlboro into the coffee can sand.

  The subject at hand was Mighty Mouse.

  “You know what she got for him?” Wendy asked Laura.

  “I didn’t ask.” Laura had seen the check, but she had no idea what percentage of the twelve hundred dollars had been for the horse, and what had been for the trailer.

  “I doubt Mrs. Wingate would sell him if she bought him for Erin. My little sister is just starting the circuit. She’s good, but her horse isn’t the best, and he would be perfect for her.”

  Laura reached down to let Chelsea sniff her hand, then rubbed her luxurious neck, thinking about the thoroughbreds on Barbara Wingate’s farm. “That’s a nice thing she does, taking in those horses.”

  “She and her husband were both such good people. Really cared about the community—events, charity drives, you name, it she’s on it. She basically runs the rodeo.” Wendy lit another cigarette and blew a long stream of smoke into the air. “The kind of person you’d think would get a break from God—if there really is a God. But, shoot, it didn’t work out that way. First her husband, then Kathy.” Wendy saw Laura’s puzzled look and added, “Kathy was Josh’s older sister. She and her husband Mike died in a car wreck. Huge shock. They were both doctors at the Health Care Center—Mike delivered my niece. That’s how come Mrs. Wingate’s bringing up Erin.”

  “That must be tough,” Laura said.

  “Never once did she complain or ask for help—and Erin’s got her share of problems. Mrs. Wingate’s pioneer stock, that’s for sure. The backbone of this community, people like that. Like my mom and dad. My dad lost a hand in Viet Nam, but he came back and bought this motel, raised five kids and none of us got in trouble.” She flicked an ash. “When I was a kid, I wanted to be like her—Mrs. Wingate. She used to teach catechism at Mother of Sorrows, and she was so beautiful I thought she was one of the angels when I was little. Kind of like those sixties westerns that are always on the movie channel? Like Hayley Mills, only older? I even dyed my hair so I could look like that.” She touched her long dark hair. “That was never going to happen. Besides having dark hair and skin, I was a real string bean. Flat as a board.”

  She reached down and stroked Chelsea. “Are you any closer to finding out who did it?”

  “Not really.”

  “Josh Wingate was the one who found them, wasn’t he?”

  The small-town jungle drums were going night and day. Laura had looked at the papers, and there had been no mention of who had discovered the bodies. “He was first at the scene. By the way, do you know a guy named Luke Jessup?”

  “Luke? That street preacher who pesters the tourists? To tell you the truth, we’ve had to run him off a few times—he scares people away. You know, when they’re trying to check in? Why?”

  “We want to talk to him.”

  Wendy looked at her with new interest. “Why? You think he did it?”

  “No. I just want to talk to him. You don’t know where I can find him?”

  She tipped the chair back so she was leaning against the wall. “Are you kidding? Nobody ever went looking for him before. Everyone’s always tried to get him to go away.”

  The sun was just up, mist clinging to the pines and rising off the surface of Cataract Lake. Earlier in the investigation, Laura had taken six rolls of the scene and the surrounding area. Now she took another two, paying particular attention to the wooden cross Jamie Cottle had left at the tent site.

  Cottle had placed the cross on the leveled area where the tent had been. Anyone could walk into the campground; crime scene tape wouldn’t keep them out. Laura wished she’d thought to post someone here day and night. Just another example of how she wasn’t firing on all cylinders.

  She’d ask the Williams PD if they could spare someone for a day or two, just in case Jamie came back.

  On her way here, she’d stopped by the Cottle house. Jamie’s white car was in the driveway just outside the garage. No lights on, no sign that anyone was awake. Laura had not slept the rest of the night, even though she and Wendy parted company around two. She’d spent a lot of that time wishing she could pick up the phone and call Tom.

  She’d taken Polaroids of Jamie Cottle’s car from all four angles. She would canvass the area around here again and ask if anyone had seen the car that night. Wondered if she should retrace her steps back to Las Vegas. She didn’t remember seeing a car like Jamie’s on the videotape at the Kingman Circle K, but her memory could be faulty. Maybe Jamie had followed Dan and Kellee to the wedding chapel.

  She also wondered how Jamie Cottle knew where Kellee had died. He could have seen the colored flags they had planted into the ground marking the tent’s four sides. Even so, he had planted the cross on the right-hand side, where Dan and Kellee had come to rest.

  Had he done it unconsciously?

  Laura stared out at the lake, thinking about Jamie Cottle and T.J. Cottle. What happened when your brother was killed and the man who was with him managed to avoid serious consequences? Would that push you deeper into fantasy? Laura could see Jamie putting all his needs and wants onto Kellee’s shoulders. She could see him fixating on her, the one good thing in his life, the one hopeful thing.

  What would happen when he found out she was married?

  In her briefcase on the picnic table was a copy of the T.J. Cottle file. It was thin, and there were gaps. No charges had been filed against Frank Garatano, not even for marijuana possession or providing a minor with alcohol.

  According to the file, a forest ranger named Brent Stabler had been patrolling the campground when he saw a man pulling his boat up onto shore. The man yelled to him, told him he needed help. He sounded panicked.

  “I think my friend drowned,” the man said. “I can’t find him anywhere. I’ve been out there a half hour looking and he never came up.”

  The forest ranger’s report said the man, whom he recognized as the Williams High School football coach, smelled of pot and beer.

  The next day, divers found T.J. Cottle’s body wrapped in the weeds. According to the autopsy, T.J. Cottle had drowned with both marijuana and alcohol in his system. The autopsy had also shown there had been no overt evidence of sexual activity
, a mercy to the parents.

  Garatano was fired two days later. Laura learned he had since left town with his wife and newborn son.

  Garatano, the source of Jamie Cottle’s anguish, had left town. Where would that leave Jamie? Where could he aim his anger? If other things went wrong in his life, how would he react?

  Jamie might think that Kellee’s marriage was the ultimate betrayal.

  Laura had mixed feelings about Cottle. There was something about him, something she couldn’t quite get at. It bothered her. There were parts of him that reminded her of an apparent empty space on a computer’s hard drive: unknowable. But who knew what was really lurking there?

  His grief seemed genuine, though.

  But he also seemed like the kind of kid who would hold on to what he wanted like a pit bull.

  17

  When she got back to her room the phone was ringing. Laura put down the sack she’d gotten from the bakery—a butter croissant and a styrofoam cup of “gourmet coffee”—and grabbed the phone, making note of the time: eight fifteen.

  “Is this Detective Cardinal?”

  A woman’s voice, high, scared, breathless. Laura recognized it immediately: Louise Yates. Babbling.

  “Chuck doesn’t believe me, he says she’s probably just with her boyfriend, but it’s been two days and she always calls in—”

  “Take a deep breath, take your time. I’m right here.”

  Louise paused. Laura thought she heard a little whimper.

  “Shana’s gone. She’s been gone for two days, her bed hasn’t been slept in, and she was supposed to pick up the boys today. I know that!” She said this last to Chuck. “Chuck says she’s done this before, and that’s true, and she can be undependable…” She was babbling again, her voice kiting higher and higher, disconnected from her body. “But she wouldn’t do that to the boys, she’s a good mother … I just know something’s wrong.”

  “Did you call the police?”

  “Chuck thought it would be better if I called you. That way, if she turned up, we wouldn’t have caused all that trouble—you know, getting them to write up a report? I thought because you’ve been so nice, the things you’ve done, and …” She suddenly wound down.

  “You need to call them and make a report.”

  “But—”

  “It’s important you do that. The Williams Police Department has access to all the databases, and they know their town.” She paused. “But I’d like to come out, if I may.”

  Her voice almost drowned in relief: “You will?”

  “But you’ve got to report it, okay? Tell them everything you can think of, where she might have gone, who her friends are. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  When Laura arrived at the Yates’s house, Louise burst out the screen door and hurried down the steps. “Thank God!”

  Laura glanced at the carport. “Is your husband here?”

  “No, he went down to talk to the police. I’m so glad you’re here.” She bit her lip. “First Dan, and now … maybe, do you think it’s connected?”

  “I doubt that. Let’s go in and sit down, okay?”

  Laura noticed that the woman kept glancing at the street every time a car came up this way, her expression hopeful. “Can we stay out here? At the picnic table?”

  “Sure.”

  They sat down at the table next to a rusted swing set that must have been used by Dan and Kellee when they were kids. The jungle gym beside it was yellow, red, plastic, and new. Bought for Shana’s children by doting grandparents?

  “When did you last see Shana?”

  Worried, hooded eyes. “Last—No, the night before last. She had dinner with us and then said she was going out for a while.” She had picked up the hem of the faded vinyl tablecloth and folded it back on the planks of the table, was rolling it as tightly as she could, letting the roll loosen and drop off, and then starting over again.

  “She didn’t say where she was going?”

  “She never does. Sometimes it seems like she’s just a boarder. No, I shouldn’t say that. She’s just careless—you know, weren’t you like that when you were her age?”

  When I was her age I was spending my days in a Tucson courtroom. She had faced her parents’ killer day after day for three weeks. Her only ally had been the big man who had sat with her, TPD homicide detective Francis X. Entwistle.

  Louise Yates said, “I just thought she needed to get away. She has lots of friends, and I’m sure she needed to talk to her … her peers. She’s just been wild. She and Danny were so close. He always looked after her, and now she’s all alone. She’s so angry, but you know that’s just hurt.”

  “Did she leave with anything?”

  “I didn’t notice. I haven’t been noticing much. She just slammed out of here, saying she had to get—she said, ‘get the hell out of this stupid house,’ those are her exact words. She didn’t eat anything, I didn’t either …” A car went by and her eyes followed it. “She got into fights with her dad. Neither of us had the energy. I know we’re supposed to take care of her, she’s our daughter, but it was like …” She swallowed. Close to tears again, but she managed to hold them down. “It was like, for me anyway, it was like a balloon and all the air went out. No air at all. I just couldn’t cope. Couldn’t help her at all. And Chuck’s no use. Sometimes I think he’s afraid of her.” She’d rolled the tablecloth up tightly about a third of the way, let it roll back down, kinking.

  “Is there anything missing from her room?”

  “I don’t know. I just looked in and saw the bed wasn’t slept in. She doesn’t like me poking and prying in her room. She has a suitcase set,” she volunteered. “I got it for her when she was in high school choir and they had to go on a trip—” Her eyes widened. “You think she left on purpose?”

  “She could have.”

  “She wouldn’t …” Louise stopped, covered her mouth with her fingertips.

  “She wouldn’t what?”

  “Leave her sons.”

  “Maybe she just needed to get away for a few days.”

  Louise caught her eye, her gaze hopeful. “You think so?”

  “It might be her way of coping. She’s been through an incredible trauma. You all have. Is there someplace in town she’d go? A friend’s place maybe?”

  Louise frowned, the lines etched like fork marks between her eyebrows. “She’s got some girlfriends. And then there’s her boyfriend.”

  Stressing the word “boyfriend.” A distasteful look on her face.

  “Bobby Burdette?”

  She fluttered her hand. “I don’t think it’s serious.” She cleared her throat. “You’d have to meet him, to know why. For one thing, he’s too old for her. Thirty-eight if he’s a day.”

  “What does he do?”

  “I think he drives a truck. A bread truck?” She asked herself, then answered. “Holsum or Goodness Bakery, one of those. I remember she told me that. Used to drive cross-country, a truck driver. I think it’s just a phase,” she added hastily. “She’s planning on going to college; she’s planning to enroll at Coconino Community College next January.”

  “May I look at her room?”

  Laura wondered how Louise had known Shana’s bed had not been slept in. The room looked as if it had been hit by a hurricane; more of a high school girl’s room than that of an adult woman with two children.

  At first sight, there was nothing to indicate the presence of those children, except for the edge of a baby board book sticking out beneath a couple of framed photographs and a fuchsia Victoria’s Secret bra. The subjects of the photographs were not visible; they had toppled underneath the weight of the landfill of styling brushes, makeup, perfume bottles, and bra.

  Louise had told her the boys lived with their father and his family, which essentially meant they were being raised by their grandparents.

  She wondered at the dynamics. The younger child couldn’t be more than a year old. Who had made the decision where the children would be rai
sed and how did that sit with the family on the other side of the equation? There was a lot more she needed to know about Shana Yates—her relationship with her brother not the least of it.

  As Laura walked through the room, she pondered the situation. Despite the fact Shana was over twenty-one, she was not far from being a kid herself. Laura wasn’t surprised that the grandparents were raising her children, especially in the aftermath of divorce. Still—and maybe it was old-fashioned and sexist—she would have thought that the daughter’s parents would be the ones to raise the child.

  Tucking her hands under her arms to avoid touching anything, she made a slow circuit of the room, just looking. Lots of junk, but a picture emerged. Shana was sloppy, immune to dust mites, liked pink, and was a closet environmentalist.

  The calendar on the wall was from the World Wildlife Federation. Two posters on the wall: one of Eminem, and one of a wolf. A look at Shana’s bookshelves (many of the books piled one on top of the other instead of standing on end) yielded a book by Aldo Leopold and The Monkey Wrench Gang, by Edward Abbey, stacked on top of a dozen or so copies of Cosmopolitan and People magazines.

  There were a few other books, mostly youth-oriented self-help, from He’s Just Not That Into You to Christian and Young. A book on feng shui—judging from the state of this room, Laura doubted Shana had ever even cracked the spine—and a book on horse training: Lyons on Horses. A dusty case of Avon products with her name on the label—was she an Avon Lady?

  Country music and hip hop stacked haphazardly in a plastic bin. The country music CDs were from a few years ago, the hip hop, which was on top, the most recent. As if Shana had suddenly turned off country and switched to rap music.

  All over the map.

  A portable file box next to the bookshelf, a WWF decal on the side.