Rode Hard, Put Away Dead

by Sinclair Browning

  “I'm not surprised,” María said. “He probably looks pretty good to her with his saddlebagsful of money.”

  “That's one of the problems with this case.” I stood and walked over to her window and looked out. Below, miniature people scurried along the sidewalks and jay-walked across the streets. “With Abby dead, everyone stands to gain—J.B., Lateef Wise, Abby's staff, the charities.”

  “Not to mention the peripherals.”

  “Right. So now I've added Jackie Doo Dahs to the list.” I turned back to the desk.

  “I'd be interested in what she has to say.” María twirled a pen with her long slim fingers. It was like watching a kaleidoscope as the gold of her many rings sparkled and flashed with each turn. “I've advised him to take the Fifth.”

  I let this sink in. While I'm not a lawyer, I do know a little about the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution. The part we were talking about here had to do with a defendant not being compelled to be a witness against himself.

  “What in the hell is he afraid of?”

  “Not him. Me. I'm not willing to let even the smallest part of the case be made against him by his own words.”

  “So you think he knows something?”

  She shook her head. “Not necessarily. But he was in the neighborhood of the scene of the crime and he's been arrested for it. If he admits he knew the victim or was wearing a blue shirt, any little detail at all could be used to help convict him.”

  While I knew this was a strategy used by a lot of defense lawyers, it seemed a lot more suspicious when the person doing it was my client. I always thought the guilty guys were the ones taking the Fifth.

  “I guess it's a good thing that he came to see you first then,” I said.

  “We talked about it last week, so when they read him his Mirandas, he chose to remain silent and, as far as I know, has remained so. We do have another problem though. He wants to take a lie detector test.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “Definitely not a good idea. They're unreliable and there's a chance he'd fail.”

  “I didn't think they were admissible in court.”

  “They're not. But he has this idea in his head that if he takes one and passes, that will make him look good and the police will start looking for the real murderer.”

  “Is that true?”

  She nodded her head. “Usually it means they'll look elsewhere, saving valuable time they might have wasted on the suspect. That's why cops love them. But even if I let him take the test, and even if he passed, that's not going to happen here. Not with the drugs they found.”

  “Ketamine,” I guessed.

  She wasn't surprised I knew about the veterinary drug.

  “It's been placed in evidence.”

  “What's J.B. say about it?”

  “That he's never seen it before. Claims he didn't even know there was such a drug. Unfortunately the detectives found it among his bull riding paraphernalia.” She gathered up a stack of manila folders on her desk and put them in a slim leather briefcase. “Trade, I've got to run. I'm late for a deposition. Keep in touch.”

  The next morning the elephant poop on my tennis shoes was driving me crazy. I'd accidentally stepped in it looking for Jackie Doo Dahs. Thank God I hadn't worn my sandals.

  I finally found Jackie, or what I thought was Jackie, anchored to a chain link fence near the Tucson Community Center. There were four of them, waving protest signs saying things like CIRCUS IS CRUEL TO ANIMALS and WOULD YOU WANT TO PERFORM WITH THE FLU?

  Since two of the protesters were men, I immediately discounted them. The third, a heavyset woman, was also probably out unless Jackie had gained a lot of weight that Tommy hadn't mentioned.

  My target was a tiger mask with giant tears painted below its feline eyes. This was a schizophrenic beast, judging from its downstairs, which was clad in a very skimpy, barely-cover-the-butt Zena warrior princess costume. The strapless top did an excellent job of showcasing a huge set of Doo Dahs. The Tiger Woman was waving a placard that read, BORN FREE, LEAVE ME BE.

  Catching the tiger's eye was impossible since I had no idea where to look in the giant mask. Finally I just marched up to the cat face. Now that I was closer I could see that it was pretty raggedy. The thing looked like it was molting with large bare hairless patches scattered across its oversized cheeks. “Are you Jackie Doo Dahs?”

  Something that sounded like a muffled “yes” came back.

  I placed one of my cards in her hand, relieved that it wasn't a paw.

  “I'm Trade Ellis. J.B.'s been arrested and he's hired me to check out Abby's murder.” While this wasn't the exact sequence of events, it was close enough.

  A mumbled “I know.”

  “I'd like to talk to you about it.”

  “Busy,” she muttered.

  While I couldn't see her face because of the mask I thought she was probably surprised to see me. I imagined that J.B. had told her that he wasn't giving her name out.

  I was cranky with the heat, the drought, the price of cattle and my reeking tennis shoe so I grabbed her arm, the one carrying the sign, and pinched it just a little.

  “Jackie, we've got some serious stuff going down here and I need your help if J.B.'s ever gonna get out of jail.”

  She hit me with her chained hand and the metal hit my wrist bone hard, causing me to immediately release her arm. I'd been warned about her temper and probably shouldn't have provoked her. Provoke her? Hell, now I was ready to kill her.

  There was a long pause. Finally her hands went up to the cat's neck and she began tugging on the huge furry mask. She was having a tough time with it, but my wrist was red and hurting and I saw no reason to help her out.

  When she was finally unveiled, our Lady of the Perpetual Protest had black hair sticking out all over from the static electricity generated by the cat's head. She had buggy brown eyes, the kind that look like they don't fit in their sockets, and thin-arced penciled lines for eyebrows. Her lipstick had gotten a little smeared and ran off the side of her uneven lips.

  “What's with the chain?” I asked, rubbing my sore wrist.

  She rattled her arm, the one that was still attached to the fence. “That's in case they try to arrest us. Makes them work harder.”

  The way she said it made me think she'd done this before. Maybe her cop relations weren't all associated with animal protest. Could Jackie Doo Dahs have a police record? If she did, I was sure Uncle C and his gang would find it. “Good for self-defense too,” I suggested.

  “Hey, you asked for it. So what's the deal with J.B.?”

  “He's in jail and won't be out any time soon. I just came from seeing his attorney.”

  “Bummer.”

  “I understand you had dinner with him a few weeks ago.”

  “Is there a crime against that?”

  “No. Just a bit unusual since he was married.”

  She rolled her bug eyes. “We used to be married.”

  “I know. Twice.”

  “So we were just good friends.”

  “That's not what I hear.”

  She glared at me and then dropped her eyes. “Look, I'll come clean with you. I wanted him back.”

  “The dog and the bone thing.”

  “Huh?”

  “A dog has a bone, loses interest in it and another dog comes along and picks up the bone causing the first dog to go crazy because it's his bone and he wants it back, even though he threw it away.”

  She thought about this for a minute. “Are you saying Abby was a bitch?”

  “God, no. I'm just giving you a discourse on human nature. You just said you wanted J.B. back.”

  “I was sure trying.” She smiled briefly. “But he wasn't interested. He'd found Mrs. Got Rocks and didn't want to upset that apple cart.”

  “Well you got him to dinner. Sounds like that may have been a start.”

  She laughed. “I had to lie to get him there. Said I'd had some bad news from my doctor.”

  “I'll
bet that sold well.” I was having no trouble feeding her lines.

  “He was pretty mad.” Some early circus goers were walking by and Jackie waved her placard in their faces, earning her a healthy scowl from a mother who pulled her small child closer to her.

  “So how long were you blackmailing him?” I guessed.

  “Blackmail? I wasn't blackmailing him. It was more like a loan. I was gonna pay it back.”

  “Then you never threatened to tell his wife that you and J.B. had been married?”

  She grinned again. “Well as my mother used to say, nothing ventured, nothing gained. But it wasn't really blackmail.”

  “Did J.B. ever hit you?”

  “Maybe once or twice. No big deal.”

  The way she said it really did sound like no big deal, something I could never relate to. If a man laid a finger in anger on me it'd be the last time he ever had the chance. “So you wouldn't call him abusive?”

  “I thought you said you were working for J.B.,” she said suspiciously.

  “Oh, I am. I just need to know what's going on, what his past married history was, that kind of thing. You told the cops that he abused you.”

  “Did I?” She seemed confused and I wondered if she was a drinker, like J.B.

  “So they say.” I was stretching the truth a bit. Uncle C had said that Jackie had missed work because of her bruises, that was all.

  “Well, he didn't really abuse me. He's a nice guy. A real nice guy. Yeah, we had our problems, what married couple doesn't? Maybe I mentioned the bruises to the cops, but he's not a wife beater or anything like that.”

  We talked a while longer and then when I was pretty sure I had her off guard, I hit her with the big one. “Where were you when Abby was killed?”

  She glared at me. She was quicksilver, this one. Furious one minute, beguiling the next. And she wasn't falling for my trick. “Home in bed. Reading.”

  I'll bet. What? Honey Bunch at Snow Top?

  As I drove out of the community center parking lot I couldn't help but think of J.B.'s wives.

  What would the elegant Abigail Van Thiessen have thought of the woman dressed up in the ratty cat mask?

  30

  WHILE I NEEDED TO VISIT J.B. IN JAIL, I WASN'T EAGER TO head right over. I wanted some time to help me cool off about the business with Jackie Doo Dahs. I was still feeling very betrayed and stupid. I was stupid to have trusted what J.B. Calendar told me. I should have taken what he told me with a grain of salt. And I didn't.

  Besides, how in the hell could J.B. expect me to do my job if he wasn't willing to come clean with his past? The thought crossed my mind that maybe I was his smoke screen. That by hiring me he'd deflect attention from himself. Did he do it? Probably not too far a stretch since I had had clients in the past who had done just that—hired me even though they'd done the thing they'd hired me to investigate. I was their insurance policy, the radar detector that would let them know when the evidence against them was stacking up and when the police were getting close.

  My private eye work brings me into town a lot more frequently than I like. Since I always have a long list of errands to run, I decided to knock off some of them.

  By noon I was starving. I headed to Rosa's Mexican Food at Campbell and Ft. Lowell. During the week there's usually a wait, but I lucked out, perhaps because it was Saturday, and was immediately seated. I ordered an avocado enchilada and I nibbled on chips and salsa while I admired—not for the first time—the great Frank Franklin murals. After spreading my computer-generated notes out on the tile table I began rereading them.

  When I got to the part about Dr. Mullon's death, I circled his home address. It was in the university area, not far from where I was sitting.

  I paid my bill and headed back out into the heat. As long as I was this close, why not check out Mullon's house?

  I wasn't really expecting to discover anything when I arrived at the compact mission style home on Third Street half a block east of Campbell Avenue. This is one of Tucson's major bicycle routes and in spite of the heat a few bicyclists were cruising by.

  As I pulled up I noticed that Mullon's lawn was dry and overgrown, his marigolds shriveled and brown. Even his palm trees looked stressed by the heat. It looked as though no one was taking care of the place.

  As I walked up to the front door I could see that the draperies were pulled so there was no way to look inside, even if I wanted to, which, of course, I did. I rang the doorbell, but there was no answer.

  I walked around the side of the house to the carport and was greeted with a dark, suspicious stain on the concrete. God, was that his blood? I shuddered in spite of the heat. There's just something about being where you know someone has been killed that's downright creepy.

  Other than the blood, the carport was tidy with a long workbench against the far wall, paint cans neatly lined up on it, gardening tools hung on racks along with a set of jumper cables. When a startled neighborhood cat leaped out from behind one of the paint cans I jumped and stumbled backward, my heart racing. After all, someone had killed Abby and someone had killed Dr. Mullon. If the murders were connected, I could be putting myself in serious danger just by snooping around.

  A small walkway aligned itself with an adobe patio wall west of the carport. In the dark it wouldn't have been much of a trick to stand on the walkway flush against the back patio wall and wait, undetected, for Mullon to come home.

  I followed the footpath back to the alley where there were two battle-weary garbage cans. Looking west I could see the high-volume traffic on Campbell whiz by. Access to the target—Mullon—would have been a snap, and as far as a getaway was concerned, anyone could have used the alley and then pulled out on Campbell or driven up it east to Tucson Boulevard to make his escape. By using the back street, the killer would have most likely escaped the attention of any neighbor that may have heard the gunshots.

  As I walked back to my pickup, the only thing I'd learned after checking out Samuel Mullon's residence was that it would have been relatively easy for someone to pull a trigger and then walk away.

  I couldn't help but wonder: who was next?

  My last errand was at Southwest Animal Health, where I picked up some horseshoes, nails and salve for Chapo's leg. Also some parvo vaccine for the dogs. The owner, Bobby, put the vaccine in a bag with a couple of cold sacks and once I got to Priscilla, I slipped them into the cooler I had brought from the ranch. If I kept the truck windows down when I made my stops, the medicine would probably be okay until I got home.

  The Pima County jail is out on Silverlake Road. I parked in the lot and headed to the maximum security area.

  I crossed the lobby and showed my PI identification to a woman behind the front counter. After filling out the inmate visitation form, I handed my purse to the woman, who placed it in a locker. She then handed me a yellow pass with a large V on it, indicating that I was a visitor. After clipping it to my shirt, I walked through the magnetometer and then through the sally ports.

  It's always chilling to hear the heavy iron doors shut behind you, knowing that you are as much a prisoner as the inmates, at least until someone decides to open the doors and let you out. I'm claustrophobic and the clang of the doors bothered me. I tried not to think about it.

  When I got to the professional visitation area I handed the officers J.B.'s card. They noted it with 4D, his housing unit, and then called for him.

  Looking through the glass window above the command center I could see that there were only two prisoners visiting on this side of the area. Inmates are required to sit facing the center aisleway. In this way, an officer can look through the glass at any time and verify that all heads are accounted for.

  I waited for my client in one of the small individual rooms and took my assigned seat, a blue plastic chair that was closest to the unlocked door.

  A few minutes later J.B. Calendar strolled into the room in his orange jumpsuit and rubber sandals, the dress code favored by the Pima County sheriff's
department. He didn't appear at all surprised to see me.

  J.B. looked haggard and unsteady as he took his seat in a beige plastic chair across the narrow table from me. Was he feeling alcohol withdrawal?

  “We've got to quit meeting like this,” he said with a shaky grin.

  “Right. How are you doing?”

  “All right, but they don't let you chew in here. Guess I'm gonna be here a while, huh?”

  “That's what I hear. Finding that ketamine in your stuff didn't help.”

  He looked nervously around the room.

  “It's okay, these rooms aren't monitored.”

  “God, Trade, I have no idea where that shit came from. I've never seen it before.”

  “You never used it on any of the animals, maybe a horse or bull?”

  “I swear.” He held up a trembling hand as though he was pledging his allegiance to the flag.

  “Well, I guess that's what we're going to have to find out, how it got there,” I said with a confidence I didn't feel.

  “You know Abby gave a lot of money to her preacher. Have you found out anything about him?”

  “I'm checking him out. Nothing yet. Tell me about the Covarubbiases. What was Abby's relationship with them?”

  “She never said much to José, he doesn't talk much. She was pretty close to Gloria though. I think that's why she gave her more money than José.”

  “Fifty-eight thousand dollars could be a pretty good motive.”

  “Yeah, well, that's what they're saying about $60 million,” he said with a dry laugh.

  “You want to tell me about Jackie Doo Dahs?” I studied his face carefully.

  “Shit. I should have told you about that.”

  “You sorry son-of-a-bitch! You sure should have. I should throw this case in your face and let you rot in here!” I didn't feel good about losing my temper, but I was still hurting from the trust issue and pissed because he'd taken advantage of me. Why had I let that happen anyway?

  “Look, I'm sorry. I really am. I should have told you, I know that, but I didn't want to get her involved. Not because I'm playing around with her or anything like that.” He glanced through the glass to the inmate in the next room. “It's just that I knew that she'd be a suspect and that people would think there was some kind of conspiracy or something between the two of us.”