Desert Rage

by Betty Webb

  She transferred her glower to him. “It’s still withholding evidence.” Her eyes narrowed. “And there’s that little problem with breaking-and-entering, and no, I don’t buy her lame-ass story that the window was intact when she got here. We can haul her in for that.”

  Ignoring his partner’s refreshed temper tantrum, Bob said to me, “Let’s handle it this way, Lena. Next time you find something of interest, why not let us know before we all have to put on our good clothes to show up in court? Hmmm?” Turning to Sylvie, he said, “Lena might not have broken in. It rained last night, and if you’ll remember, once we got inside, we had to wade through the collected water right below the window. Worse comes to worst, Lena can claim she was doing her civic duty by checking out the safety of the structure. Sure, we could get her for trespass, but under the circumstances, she wouldn’t even get her wrist slapped. That’s an awful lot of paperwork to go through for nothing.”

  I’d always admired Bob’s ability to pour oil on Sylvie’s troubled waters, so I added my two cents. “Especially since upon entering the house, I just happened to come across evidence I thought the fine ladies and gentlemen at Scottsdale PD should know about. Not to mention my concern over the safety issues you just brought up, Bob. Gee, what would happen if one of those kids accidentally burned the place down with that Stone Age cookstove in there and didn’t make it out in time? This place is not just an attractive nuisance, it’s a dangerous one.”

  I directed my next comment to Sylvie. “Another thing. Since the receipt has the exact time Kyle was in the Circle K, he should be on their surveillance video. Look, Sylvie, you may talk a mean game, but I know you’re no more interested in railroading a couple of innocent kids than I am.”

  “Hmph.” But her glower had vanished. After a few moments’ silence, she said, “Get the hell out of here before I change my mind and cuff you.”

  “I’m already gone.”

  As I drove away, something occurred to me.

  The Circle K probably wasn’t the only structure around with a surveillance camera. This was a pretty expensive neighborhood, and that meant expensive security. Chances were good that somewhere between the party house and the murder scene, some of those houses probably had their own surveillance systems.

  All I needed to do was find them.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Another night, another nightmare, but this time I was able to scream it out without bringing a half-naked Indian to my bed.

  After a hasty and overpriced breakfast at the restaurant next door, I headed up to North Scottsdale, where I traced the route from the party house to the murder scene. What I found made me wonder if another meeting with Ali was in the offing. The path from the two places was a straight shot, so how could she have missed seeing Kyle when she went to apologize for her temper tantrum?

  But on my second drive-through, I discovered that the boy could have taken another route from the Circle K back to their little love nest. Instead of walking along Appaloosa Way, he could have used Pinto Lane, a small side street, to connect with Indian Bend, then over to Appaloosa. If Ali had gone the other way—Appaloosa to Scottsdale Road, then south to the Circle K—they would have missed each other by two blocks. Still, I would ask her to make sure. Just not tomorrow, when her father, mother, and brother would be buried.

  I then set off in search of Ancient Alice, the woman whose dog Kyle said he rescued. Tracking her down didn’t take long. A block from the Circle K, I found a faded LOST DOG flyer tacked to a telephone pole. The owner’s telephone number was attached to pull-off tabs at the bottom, and yes, one was missing. I called, and five minutes later was sitting in a chair covered with dog hair, listening to Ancient Alice tell me about the wonderful boy who had kept a spectacularly ugly mutt named Precious from becoming a coyote’s dinner.

  “Kyle said when he found Precious she was headed straight for the Pima Reservation, and you know what would have happened to her there, what with all those coyotes running loose. Awful things are always prowling around this neighborhood, looking for strays. A good friend of mine, her Chihuahua got loose once, and she found it the next day, nothing left of the poor thing but a bit of fur and its collar.” During all this, Precious, who looked half possum and half javelina, sat on her lap, drooling and farting. Ancient Alice didn’t seem to mind.

  Trying not to breathe too deeply, I said, “The flyer offered the finder a one hundred dollar reward. Did you give it to him?”

  Ancient Alice, who was only around fifty and in tennis-player shape, answered, “I tried, but he refused to take it, told me to make a donation to Liberty Wildlife instead. So I did. Two hundred, as a matter of fact, and in his name. Kyle Gibbs. Too bad more young people these days aren’t like him, instead of playing that awful rap and wearing their pants down around their knees. Why, it’s terrible how…”

  I broke in before she was well away into her diatribe. “Don’t you watch the news? Read the newspapers?”

  She gave me a look. “Of course I do. Why do you ask?”

  “But…” I remembered that because of Ali’s and Kyle’s ages, neither their names nor their faces had appeared in the media, a practice set in place years ago to protect minors’ identities. This time, the compassionate practice had worked against them.

  I wasted no time in bringing Ancient Alice up-to-date on Kyle’s situation.

  “But he was here a little after noon. I’d just come back to take a lunch break from looking for Precious before I went out again. I was eating and watching Arizona Live, that news program, and they’d started to do their feature section, which is around halfway through, so that would be, um, about 12:15. I can assure you that boy had no blood on his shirt whatsoever. It was white with a small blue logo that said LIBERTY WILDLIFE, and the only thing on it, besides the logo, was a little bit of hair from Precious. She was limping so bad he had to carry the poor thing.”

  It was all I could do to keep her from rushing down to the police station to demand Kyle’s release, and she settled down only when I told her that placing a call to Curtis Racine, Kyle’s attorney, would be the wiser course. I gave her his number.

  When I left, she was already reaching for the phone.

  During my search for Ancient Alice, I had listed the addresses of every home between the crime scene and the party house that sported surveillance cameras. Now I doubled back, making certain I hadn’t skipped any. Then I called Detective Sylvie Perrins.

  “I have some addresses for you,” I told her. “All the houses with security cameras along the routes Ali and Kyle took the day of the murders.”

  “About how many are there?”

  “Twenty three.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Lena. I’m not your secretary. Email the addresses to me.”

  Click.

  ***

  Once back at the Best Western I typed up the list on my new laptop and sent it to Sylvie, as per her command. The woman might be a pain to get along with, but I knew she and Bob would waste no time viewing whatever action all those surveillance cameras caught. Unless I was wrong, Kyle and Ali would be released from custody in a matter of days. To make certain, I followed up with calls to their attorneys. Although I got Curtis Racine’s voice mail, Zellar actually picked up the phone.

  “Tell me you have something good for me,” he said.

  I told him what I’d found out about the party house and my hopes for the security cameras.

  “Good news for the boy, but what about Ali?”

  “I’m going to check for surveillance cameras on her, too. By the way, when Ali gets released, and I’m certain she will be, where will she go?”

  “To her uncle’s, I imagine. Remember, as per the deceased’s wishes, Dr. Teague has filed for legal custody.”

  “Wish I felt better about that.”

  “Life doesn’t always cooperate with our wishes, Ms. Jones.”


  “Tell me about it. Ah, about the funeral tomorrow. Were you able to talk the judge into letting Ali attend?”

  “He’s allowing her to attend, but she’ll be in shackles.” He didn’t sound happy.

  When we said our good-byes, I didn’t sound happy, either. In fact, I felt less optimistic than I’d felt at the start of our conversation. Shackled at a funeral, Jesus. And the idea of loyal, sensitive Alison Cameron being raised by her uncle wasn’t pleasant, either. But Zellar was right and there was nothing I could do about it. Deciding that a trip to the gym would take my mind off the situation, I changed into my Walmart workout clothes and headed back out into the heat. But since the drive took me within spitting distance of Desert Investigations, I stopped by to see how Scottsdale Restore was doing with my apartment.

  Not well, it appeared. At least not as far as my moving back in was concerned.

  “Bad news,” said, Cal Kinsley, the project foreman, after taking off his face mask. A hands-on type of boss, he was as grungy as his workers. Soot stained his overalls and flecks of sawdust peppered his light brown hair. “You’ve got extensive smoke damage to the carpet, drywall, and ceiling, so they’ll all have to be replaced. Yes, yes, I know you’re anxious to move back in, but right now the place is a health hazard. Plus, the fire damaged the meter box, and the city inspector can’t make it out to look at it until Thursday. That’s at the earliest.”

  “But I could…” I was about to tell him I was willing to sleep wearing a painter’s mask to keep out the fumes, but he saved me from myself.

  “It really is a safety issue, Miss Jones. Count yourself lucky we didn’t find asbestos.” When he smiled, I realized that underneath all that grime was a handsome man, so I didn’t mind when he looked me up and down. “Headed to the gym?”

  I nodded.

  “Good. It’ll help work off all that anxiety.”

  “I didn’t realize it was that obvious.”

  “Well, you are wearing workout clothes.”

  “I meant the anxiety.”

  He laughed. “Which gym you belong to?”

  “L.A. Fitness. And Scottsdale Fight Pro.”

  “Hey, same here! Maybe I’ll run into you at one of the smoothie bars.”

  After checking his left hand for a wedding ring and finding none, I smiled back. “Maybe at the smoothie bar.”

  “I’m into the Banana Strawberry with Power Boost. How about you?”

  “Mango Delite. But I’m always willing to try anything new.”

  “Me, too.” He waggled his eyebrows.

  There’s nothing like a flirtation with a good-looking man to cheer a woman up, so I was whistling a happy tune when I rolled into the Fight Pro parking lot, which for a change, still had a few spaces open. But I rolled back out when I saw Big Black Hummer parked near the entrance. Hell. She’d made bail already? On an arson charge? With her damned Hummer, yet? For a moment I sympathized with Congresswoman Thorsson about the laxity of our criminal justice system, but there was nothing I could do about it. While I wasn’t averse to having a face-off with Monster Woman, legally speaking it wasn’t a good idea so I turned the Jeep around and headed for the Best Western. Seeing the Hummer had reminded me of something, though, so I pulled to the curb and placed a call to Jimmy.

  “Find out everything you can about Terry Jardine,” I told him. “I’m thinking we might have dropped the ball there. If she’s crazy enough to get engaged to a multiple murderer like Kenny Dean Hopper, and firebomb Desert Investigations just because I had her Hummer towed, she might be crazy enough to kill the Cameron family.”

  Jimmy made negative noises. “No woman would commit that kind of crime, Lena. Remember, a child was one of the victims.”

  “You saw the crime scene pictures, didn’t you?”

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  “Man or woman, steroid abuse does strange things to the mind. And who says women can’t be stone cold killers, or have you forgotten one of our recent cases?”

  He grumbled some more, but in the end, agreed to do it. Then, before I could hang up, he said, “Lena, we really need to talk.”

  “About what?”

  “About your nightmares. About you moving back to the motel.”

  “No we don’t.”

  “Yes, we do. You keep avoiding the issue, and that’s affecting our work relationship.”

  “It was just a dream, so what’s the big deal? Don’t you ever dream?”

  “Not like that.”

  “Lucky you.” Irritated beyond measure, I ended the call.

  In summer, a cool shower always relaxes me, so I stripped off my sweaty clothes and went into the bathroom. Twenty minutes later I emerged, smelling like Best Western soap and Best Western shampoo. Best of all, something had occurred to me while the water rained down.

  Mrs. Lorraine Hillier DuCharme, matriarch of DuCharme Chocolatiers, may have refused to talk to me, but there could be a way around that problem. A mecca for chocoholics everywhere, her Scottsdale-based chocolate company offered tours of the factory, each of which culminated in a visit to the factory’s retail outlet in the same building. I had just enough time to make it over there to sign on for the one o’clock. Besides, they say chocolate’s good for whatever ails ya, so a few truffles might be the medicine I needed to lift my spirits.

  Although the DuCharme home store was located in Old Town Scottsdale where herds of tourists roamed, the factory itself sat a couple of miles southeast. Mere minutes later I was pulling into the parking lot. Once inside the building, I realized throwing questions at Carl DuCharme, who conducted the tours, wouldn’t work. Still, I went along as a busload of tourists and senior citizens trailed after him through a factory that was so clean you could have eaten your chocolate truffles right off the floor.

  Carl was the younger of the two DuCharme brothers. In his thirties, tall, and with a lean physique that hinted he didn’t avail himself of the family product too often, he only vaguely resembled the old booking shot of his infamous older brother. Unlike Blaine DuCharme’s manic stare, Carl’s eyes gleamed with intelligence, not drugs, and his gentle manner with the older people on the tour hinted at a different personality altogether.

  Due to the infirmaries and advanced ages of some of the tour-goers, he led us slowly alongside a contraption he jovially called the “I Love Lucy Assembly Line.”

  “Whenever we get a new hire,” he said, flashing a good-natured smile, “we turn up the speed of the conveyer belt.”

  Obediently, we all laughed.

  He directed his next remark to the senior members of our group. “Just kidding, of course. We wouldn’t do that to our worst enemies. I’m sure some of you remember what happened to Lucy and her pal Ethel when the conveyer belt got too fast for them. They started eating the chocolate instead of processing it.” He wagged a finger, and added, to more laughter, “We need to ration our sins, not overindulge them, even when chocolate is involved. But remember, one DuCharme truffle a day keeps the doctor away.”

  More laughter.

  Since the sound level in the factory was so high—something I had not expected—he spoke through a hand-held mike. I’d expected to see huge vats with dark chocolate dripping down the sides. Instead, the chocolate—both white and dark—ran through the gleaming, stainless steel pipes hanging from the ceiling until their addictive cargo gushed into the appropriate containers. From there they were mixed with different flavorings, coated with something equally addictive, or pressed into bars. At no time during this sanitized procedure did I see a drop spill. The factory was so sanitized you couldn’t even smell the chocolate.

  “I’m actually not kidding about the health benefits of chocolate,” DuCharme continued, as we baby-stepped along in deference to our elders. “Dark chocolate helps lower the risk of heart failure, reduces blood pressure, reduces stroke risk, and is loaded with flavonols
which boost cognitive function. Plus, as we all know, chocolate gives us energy. Great energy! Why, eating one chocolate chip alone gives you enough energy to walk a hundred and fifty feet, and if you could manage to eat eighteen thousand bars of dark chocolate—although I don’t advise it—you’d have the energy to walk around the world!”

  Ooohs and ahhhs.

  Picking out the oldest person on the tour, an eighties-something woman who hobbled behind a walker, he added, “Just think, Ma’am, chocolate’s good for your heart, your blood pressure, and your mind—plus it gives you energy. Imagine what that can do for your love life!”

  The elderly lady giggled. So did the elderly man hobbling along next to her.

  On we went, past spotless, gleaming machines that covered pretzels in dark chocolate, machines that popped out white chocolate golf balls and every other shape imaginable, past mixing machines that blended various flavors of mousse, and so on. The addictive, albeit healthful, delights the DuCharmes manufactured seemingly continued into infinity. By the time the tour was over, I, along with the rest of the crowd, was eager for Carl DuCharme to lead us into the retail area where he himself stood ready to ring up our purchases.

  And did we buy.

  After availing myself of a small shopping basket, I filled it with three dozen singly-wrapped and boxed white golf balls for Desert Investigations’ regular clients, a bag of white chocolate-dipped pretzels for Madeline, a six-inch high dark chocolate cowboy boot for Jimmy, and for myself, five dark chocolate bars and an assortment of truffles that included orange spice, vanilla mousse, crème de pistachio, caramel walnut, and a brand new variety labeled Original Sin. There was method to my madness. I hung back until DuCharme had rung up the last customer, approached him with my overstuffed basket.

  “Methinks the lady doth have a taste for chocolate,” he said, smiling.

  “You thinks right. But not all of that’s for me. The golf balls are for my clients.”