Denny's Law

by Elizabeth Gunn

  ‘When we finished we paid our share to the goat roasters and went back to our boats. The next morning we were quietly nursing our hangovers when some Mexican harbor patrolmen knocked on the side of the boat. They were looking for anybody who might be able to identify the body they’d found on the beach. We didn’t want to go with them but Jack was in their boat; they’d come to him first. We didn’t want him going alone with the policia so we got in their launch.

  ‘It was Poppy’s body on the beach. She had bruises all over her body, the pretty coral outfit was ripped and stained and her face was all bloody but she wasn’t bleeding any more – anyone could see she was dead. The police were looking for Bill. He wasn’t on their boat or at any of the usual hangouts. Most of the party people were staying out of sight, trying not to get involved. The harbor patrol opened up Pretty Baby’s big storage compartments and found almost a ton of pot, a couple of tight-wrapped bundles of cocaine powder and a suitcase of money. That gave them carte blanche to seize the boat and you could tell by their attitudes that they didn’t care if they never found Bill McGinty.

  ‘We kept saying, in our crippled Spanish, “You have to find him. His wife is dead.” They nodded wisely and said, “We’re looking for him. We have made enquiries.” As we grew more insistent they got less polite. Jack was determined that they must perform an autopsy on Poppy.

  ‘“She had blood running down her cheek,” he said. “You should find out where that came from and determine what happened to her.”

  ‘“We have no authorization for that,” they said. One of Poppy’s party friends, a woman she’s been particularly close to, looked around and found Poppy’s address book, then remembered she had a sister in a suburb of Minneapolis – Edina, actually. The Harbor Patrol called her. She sent money for an immediate cremation and the shipment of the cremains to her. The authorities found an undertaker to comply with her wishes and away went what was left of Poppy to her childhood home.

  ‘Even before Poppy was gone, the Pretty Baby had been impounded and towed out of there. Bill never showed up. By the following week there was nobody left around who would even talk to us about the case. It was kind of like, what case? So, it felt as wrong as anything I ever did in my life, but I helped Fred get the boat ready to sail. Jack’s boat seemed to be always ready – he was a neat sailor. Our two boats pulled out of Cabo San Lucas harbor together on a warm, clear morning, turned the headland into the teeth of a stiff breeze and started to fight our way up that long peninsula, tacking into prevailing winds. Oh, well, I told you before about that trip. Twelve days later we pulled into San Diego Harbor – very salty indeed. I wanted to yell where are the water cannons, where’s the marching band? Don’t you people know how to greet heroes? I mean, for the first time in my life I felt like a bona-fide sailor. Adventurer, even. But instead of a cordial greeting all we got was, “Pull around the corner there; two more boats are coming in behind you.”

  ‘We were home, though. I don’t think I knew till that morning how American I was. We got a room and took, God, showers with streams of hot water. I went to the grocery store and Fred found me there a few minutes later with tears in my eyes. He said, “What’s wrong?”

  ‘“Oh, God, Fred,” I said. “Look at the lettuce.” Ten different varieties, surrounded by more fruit and vegetables than I could name. I understand the Baja’s all built up now – they probably have stores filled with Brie and arugula and better champagne than we have here. But that day, after that journey up that dead brown coast and one wormy head of cabbage for sale in the store in Turtle Bay, I stood in the supermarket and cried with joy. I know prosperity isn’t everything. But combine it with a good distribution system and a government that isn’t overtly hostile and it bends toward happiness, doesn’t it? We’re very lucky to live in this safe, comfortable country – I never forget that now. We should quit bitching about taxes and try to make it work a little better for everybody.

  ‘There, now, I’ve spoken my Shameless Liberal spiel. Call the thought police and turn me in.’

  ‘Mabel,’ Sarah said, ‘did you keep any pictures from those times? You think you might have one of Bill McGinty?’

  ‘You know, I brought home boxes of slides from that trip. I’m sure Bill was in some of them. But when the technology changed Fred got rid of the projector and I threw all the slides away. Since digital cameras and Facebook nobody wants to take the time to set up a screen just to look at your old slides. Now,’ Mabel Conway said, ‘are you going to tell me what it is you want to ask Bill McGinty about?’

  ‘Oh … yes, since you’ve been so forthcoming with us, I guess you feel we owe you that, don’t you?’ Sarah sorted through her thoughts for a few seconds and said, ‘Your friend Jack Ames is right – it’s really got nothing to do with you. We’re investigating the death of a person named Calvin Springer, just as the paper said. Did the McGintys ever mention him?’

  Mabel shook her head. ‘I don’t believe so.’

  ‘Have you ever heard that name elsewhere?’

  ‘Not till now, that I remember.’

  ‘McGinty’s name is on one of the bank accounts with which Calvin Springer was, we believe, transmitting drug money from the US to a cartel in Mexico. In view of what you’ve told us about those last days in La Paz, that doesn’t sound too far-fetched, does it?’

  ‘No. I don’t know anything about it but I wouldn’t doubt it. Fred and I just happened to be on the fringes of a crowd of Americans cutting loose in Mexican ports. Nothing new at the time and it’s still going on today. There were always rumors – this one or that one was doing drugs or dealing drugs. It wasn’t what I wanted to do; I didn’t really want to hear about it so I didn’t pay much attention. I haven’t thought about those days for a long time. When I do, I remember the natural beauty of the place, the thrill of the life we found under the water. I kind of rubbed out the sybaritic stuff but it was there all right. Do you know for sure this William McGinty is the same one we knew?’

  ‘No. We want to find our William McGinty and I’ll let you know if we do. Now, we’ve taken up a lot of your time and I appreciate your patience. If you can give me a phone number for Jack Ames we’ll get out of your hair.’

  ‘Oh dear, he’s going to be cross with me about this. He keeps saying this can’t be the Bill McGinty we knew. He says the reckless way that Bill was living he’s surely been dead for years. But you can call him and ask what he remembers. I told him: talking never killed anybody. Why can’t I ever find a pen when I need one?’ She rummaged in a drawer, ignoring the two pens Sarah and Ollie held out to her. ‘I owe Jack more than I can ever repay – he spent countless hours here while Fred was … You know my husband died of Alzheimer’s?’

  ‘Did he?’ Sarah said. She didn’t want to talk about the bio she’d dredged up on the way out here. ‘How very hard for you.’

  ‘Hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life, seeing him through to the end of it. You lose the husband you had but you’re left with this … body to take care of. Hospice is wonderful but I don’t know how I’d have managed that last year if Jack hadn’t stood by us. As long as Fred was able to walk, Jack took him for a walk every day. But it was after Fred couldn’t walk any more that Jack was a real hero – he read to him and played some stupid child’s card game by the hour.’

  Ollie said, ‘Sounds like Jack Ames is a very kind man.’

  ‘Yes, he is. He has this … quiet way of knowing what you need and being there with it. Dogs and children trust him right away. Fred needed constant monitoring the last couple of years – he couldn’t be trusted out of sight. He’d just … wander off. Most people would soon tire of taking care of a patient so untrustworthy but Jack had infinite patience with it. It kind of suited him to be in charge of somebody whose judgment had gone – Jack’s always liked being in charge. Fred did too when he was his old self – they were both used to being the boss at work. That’s why they clashed sometimes, like over the lifelines. But usually they just saw eye
to eye about everything. Jack seemed to actually enjoy caring for Fred after he had to be watched every minute, like a child. Or so he made it seem, maybe so I wouldn’t feel too indebted. Anyway, he kept up his good deeds right to the end, gave me free hours, stayed with Fred while I went for groceries or had a coffee with friends.

  ‘I think Fred’s death was just as hard for Jack as it was for me. You know, final caretakers … for months you don’t have a minute to yourself and then boom, they’re gone and for a while it feels like there’s more free time than you’re ever going to fill up. Here it is!’ She stood up in triumph, waving a pen and a pad of paper.

  ‘Here’s Jack’s number. And his address; it’s only two blocks from here. He’s in and out of here most days but he’s gone off with his fishing buddies down to Arivaca Lake today. Fred used to be part of that group – he loved it. Jack has this disgraceful-looking fishing car he somehow keeps running. He’s got a perfectly good Toyota but he and his buds are happiest rattling around in that old wreck of a Dodge with the mismatched doors. What is it with men and old cars?’

  ‘I have one,’ Ollie said. ‘They’re fun because they’re so worthless you don’t have to worry about what happens to them.’

  ‘I guess. And the ugly old hats are part of the fun. They call themselves the Marana Hunt Club, which is really a joke. Mostly what they do is fish. Between you and me they’re not even very good at that – they don’t come home with much. Once in a while they take out some old rifles they’ve had forever, go out in the desert and plink at tin cans and bottles.’

  Sarah said, ‘You’re still close, then?’

  ‘We’re like brother and sister. No less and never any more. We need to ease away from being so close now because it’s not going anywhere. We each need to find other people and the next big thing to do.’

  ‘I see you’ve started a quilt,’ Ollie said.

  ‘Just last week and I already know the next big thing isn’t going to be quilting. Call me if you have any more questions.’

  ‘Well, once again we come back with something very close to zero,’ Sarah said as they rolled past the gravel pit and headed back to their desks. ‘What time is it? God, the whole morning’s gone.’

  ‘Hey, ease up. Did you expect to solve this whole crazy puzzle by yourself in one morning? Why are you so wound up?’

  ‘Well, I thought, a fresh lead, and she mentioned Mexico – maybe we’re finally getting somewhere. But as usual we just opened up more questions.’

  ‘Did we? Like what?’

  ‘Like we’ll probably never know if the Bill McGinty Mabel knew in Mexico killed his wife on the beach or just left her there drunk for somebody else to kill. And so far we’re not even sure if we’re talking about the same William McGinty.’

  ‘Well, we can’t be sure until we get some concrete evidence about the one who’s been making the deposits.’

  ‘Which we already knew we wanted to do before we came over here.’

  ‘But we can get that evidence fast enough, can’t we? Surely the bank in Benson will have his picture?’

  ‘Yes. I called them to make sure. We have to take along a subpoena but then we can get a nice clear picture, they said. They’re proud of their camera equipment.’

  ‘Come to think of it, though,’ Ollie stretched like a cat in the sunshine, ‘why do we even care if it’s the same Bill McGinty she knew? If that ICE lady is right and he’s a plant from the cartel, he’s probably the murderer, isn’t he?’

  ‘Or he knows who did it. He’s almost certainly back in Mexico by now. And if he works for the cartel we won’t be able to get our hands on him. You see what I mean?’ Sarah twitched restlessly. ‘This case is like smoke – every time I get close it drifts away.’

  ‘Look at it another way, though. We got out of that dungeon we work in for a whole bright morning and we met a terrific woman. That’s never a waste of time.’

  ‘I could see you were favorably impressed. I liked her too. What was it for you?’

  ‘She’s so enterprising. She went to Mexico on a sailboat to accommodate the two men in her life but then she found ways to get a memorable experience out of it for herself.’

  ‘Yeah, she did, didn’t she? And now she’s being refreshingly unsentimental about her need to move on from her husband’s death. I never got the feeling she was lying or holding anything back, did you?’

  ‘No, it all came rolling out like she was just unspooling the tape. She’s a great storyteller, isn’t she?’

  ‘She is. We should all be more like Mabel, who by the way also makes a great cup of coffee.’

  ‘And the best date-nut cookies I ever tasted, and— Oh my God, look at that baby coyote, he must be lost.’

  They watched in breathless silence while a small russet creature darted through roaring Interstate traffic, looking desperately right and left. He escaped death by a couple of inches and disappeared into a culvert in a terrified streak.

  Exhaling, Ollie said, ‘I love these parts of the desert where it’s still a little wild, don’t you? Mabel’s right, we’re lucky to live here.’

  ‘Yes. I’m not quite ready to stop bitching about taxes but I agree, this is a great place to live.’

  NINE

  ‘Ease up, I never expected her to have all the answers to everything,’ Delaney said after Sarah had shared her frustration with him. ‘But think about it, Sarah, it’s not just nothing. They did know a man named Bill McGinty and he sounds like a possible match for the one we’re trying to find.’

  ‘And the way to find out,’ Sarah said, ‘is to get over there to that bank in Benson with a subpoena. They can print out a history of the Argos account. That’ll give us the date and time of his last deposit and we can run that segment of the tape. They say they don’t discard or print over them – they’ve got miles of film stored.’

  ‘Good. I’ll put in a request for a subpoena right away. And in case the pictures aren’t perfectly clear I’m going to send a tech team along with the detectives. We might be able to lift some prints or DNA off anything McGinty handled there. Another thing: maybe if you talked to this Jack Ames just right – without accusing him of anything, just asking. Sounds like he got pretty close to that swinging wife. Maybe he hung onto a keepsake or two from her boat. If he did he might not tell Mabel about it.’

  ‘You’re probably right about that.’

  ‘And anything the wife had the husband might have handled. It’s a long shot but these days they only need fragments of DNA. You need to talk to him anyway, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes. OK, I’ll call Jack Ames tomorrow. And in the meantime I’ve been thinking some more about Calvin’s skimming.’

  ‘Oh? What about it?’

  ‘I mean, I’ve been thinking about what Lois said about it. She claims her team proved he was definitely skimming. And we’ve examined his house enough to know he didn’t spend much of it on anything we can see there. So there must be a pile of money somewhere and we know he liked to keep his business simple.’

  ‘For sure. So?’

  ‘So aren’t the chances pretty good that it’s in cash and that he kept it close by?’

  ‘Yes. But none of those boxes held an extra key, did they?’

  ‘No. Nor a slip of paper with numbers for a combination lock. I’ve checked with four local storage businesses and they all said their customers furnish their own locks, either a padlock or a combination lock. But we haven’t cleaned up the crime scene yet, have we?’

  ‘No. I’ve been thinking we should give it to the cleanup crew pretty soon. It’s part of the forfeit we’ve agreed to share with ICE.’

  ‘So let’s all go over there today and crawl around that house and yard one more time.’

  ‘In the afternoon? It’s predicted to get to a hundred and five.’

  ‘Oh, well … all right, how about tomorrow morning?’

  Delaney stared at her for a few seconds, put his pen down with a click and said, ‘Oh, what the hell, it’ll be
hot in the morning too. Who’s around? Could we get a team on the road without debating for an hour?’

  Leo Tobin was back in cold cases and in the interest of his blood pressure they left him there. Ray Menendez was across town interviewing a witness on another case that Delaney felt might be going to court soon. All the other detectives were at their desks. They took a crime-scene van and all rode under the highway together. Delaney stayed behind to do a couple of chores. He said he needed his own car anyway in case he got called to some new calamity, so he’d catch up in a bit. His detectives left him behind with his phone at his ear.

  The house smelled worse than ever when they first opened it. Even the seasoned noses of Tucson’s experienced crime crew quivered with distaste. But nobody said anything – they just slogged on through the usual moves: open all the doors, turn the fans on, resist – just in case – the urge to wipe up. They got ready to take notes as soon as the A/C started putting out because Delaney was already parking behind the van, looking pumped. Delaney had found no new calamities and was suddenly overtaken by a feeling, like a break was close by waiting for him to catch it.

  He began firing orders as soon as his foot hit the threshold: Ollie must go to work on the vent spaces inside and out since he knew them so well. Jason should survey the backyard and Oscar the front, looking for fragments of evidence out there, paper, footprints, wheel marks – anything they might have missed in the storm.

  ‘Even under the rocks?’ Jason asked him, cocking an ironic eyebrow.

  ‘Especially under the rocks,’ Delaney said and turned away from Jason’s startled expression.

  Sarah was to look again at the rest of the interior – windows, doors, furniture, shelves. ‘Every last freaking inch,’ Delaney said.

  He was going to be watching the whole operation, thinking about corners they might have missed, and of course talking on the phone.

  They went to work. As the A/C groaned on, Sarah and Delaney grew more comfortable and thoughtful. Ollie alternated inside and out, working his way around the overhang again and coming in panting from time to time to rip up the vent pipes some more. The two men scanning gravel in the yard drank water constantly and gradually reduced their clothing to sweaty rags but made no comment. They were Tucson police detectives, it was July; what else was new?