by Betty Webb
I loved it.
She gave me a paint-smeared smile. “Tell you what, Sweetie. You can take a walk today. A short one.”
“Define ‘short.’”
“Fifteen minutes tops. I’ll time you.” She shook her watch at me.
As I headed toward the door, she called out, “Make sure you don’t get dirty! The doctor warned me infection’s still a possibility!”
“I promise not to play in the mud.” Not that there was any. Too dry.
I’ve always been happy living in Scottsdale, but there’s something about being out in undeveloped desert that lifts my spirits. Out here you don’t smell car exhaust, you smell sage. There were no shopping malls, just cacti: tall saguaro, with their arms lifted to an unpolluted sky; teddy bear cholla nestling in family groups; fat barrel cacti, their wet pulp often serving as lifesavers for lost desert wanderers; the purple prickly pears, with their rose-to-lavender pads glimmering in sweet contrast to the surrounding miles of gold, gray, and pale green. At the tail-end of July, it was still hotter than hell, but because the ground beneath me was earth instead of asphalt or concrete, the temperature was at least ten degrees lower than in the city.
I inhaled the sweet fruits of the desert, and in the spirit of full disclosure, yes, I also got a faint hint of manure from the neighboring cattle. At least they grazed downwind.
I walked.
Madeline’s property sat on a raised, triangular-shaped wedge of land bordered by two deep ravines that met in a tangle of boulders at the apex. The triangle’s base was the wiggly two-lane blacktop that ran from U.S. 60 to Florence, a small desert city, then on toward Tucson. Exulting in my new freedom, I race-walked the property’s perimeter again and again, once narrowly avoiding stepping on a rattler seeking shade beneath a mesquite. As I walked, I thought about the Camerons, especially about Ali. In a way, we were sisters, united by grief, kept company by the ghosts of murdered parents.
Was Ali back with her cold uncle, living in a hotel? Or was she still at Juliana’s? If so, how had Juliana explained such an unusual arrangement, not only to Ali, but to her campaign manager? Kids have always been my weak spot, so I thought about Kyle, too, and his horrific life. Although I had only met the boy once, I’d been impressed by his courage and his devotion to Ali.
Maybe someday someone would love me as much as he loved her.
Then I caught myself. Fairy tale endings? I’ve never believed in them. In this modern world, the best we can hope for is an absence of pain.
“Time’s up!” Madeline’s voice silenced the sweet call of a cactus wren.
“Yeah, yeah,” I muttered, turning back toward the big red barn.
My own private prison.
***
Given my constant state of boredom, the sound of Madeline’s students arriving downstairs a couple of hours later came as a relief. Her Sunday afternoon class proved her most advanced, several of them having slipped loose the surly bonds of photographic realism to explore the more demanding realm of post-modernism and whatever the hell else they called contemporary art these days. Boredom aside, there was another reason I was glad for their arrival.
I had a plan.
It’s always easy to pick out the rebel in a group. This one’s name was June-Mae Ronstadt, a grim-looking woman of about fifty. When Madeline instructed the class to mix their pigments with sand, June-Mae mixed them with bird droppings and weeds. If Madeline told them to stretch their canvases into rhomboids, June-Mae created a perfect disc. Oppositional temperament aside, she remained Madeline’s favorite student because her work was flat-out brilliant, if distressing. Finding her inspiration in Florence’s state prison complex, she turned out canvas after canvas filled with shadowy shapes hunched at the base of forbidding gray walls. But her most useful trait, at least to me, came from the fact that June-Mae was the only person in Madeline’s class who smoked.
Five minutes before the class took its regular break, I asked Madeline if I could go outside again and get some fresh air, explaining that the turpentine fumes drifting upstairs were making me sick. Ever alert to my health needs, she agreed.
“Just don’t wander off the property,” she said.
“Oh, I won’t.”
Smiling sweetly, I headed straight for the big boulder where June-Mae regularly befouled her lungs, and waited.
A few minutes later the studio door opened and the students streamed out, breathing in the clear desert air. June-Mae split off from the others and headed for her usual spot. At first she looked disconcerted to see me, but her tobacco craving trumped her irritation.
“Nice day,” I said, as she lit up.
Nothing. Just a big inhale, then a phlegmy exhale of poisonous fumes.
“That your ’92 Nissan over there?” I asked, pointing to a decrepit sedan parked under the mesquite.
A grunt.
“Windshield’s cracked.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“It could get you a ticket. A very expensive one.”
Another grunt.
“Bet you could use some extra money. Maybe enough to fix that windshield.”
“You’re cute, but I don’t swing that way.”
I chuckled. “Neither do I, but I need a ride into Florence tomorrow, and I don’t have a car.”
“Use Madeline’s panel van.”
“See, there’s the problem. She’s delivering a couple of paintings to a Scottsdale gallery tomorrow, which will leave me high and dry at the very hour I need to be in Florence. Didn’t I once hear you tell one of the other students you have Mondays off?”
She flicked her eyes toward the front of the studio, where Madeline stood chatting with the other students, then gave me a slit-eyed stare. Mimicking me, she said, “Didn’t I once hear Madeline say you’re recovering from a head injury?” In her own voice she added, “What kind of numbskull do you take me for?”
“A broke one. Tell you what, June-Mae. If you pick me up tomorrow at nine, that’s when Madeline’s leaving for Scottsdale, drive me over to the public library so I can take care of some business, and get me back here before she returns, I’ll buy you a tank of gas as well as a new windshield. Oh, and I’ll need to borrow your cell phone for the duration, which means I’ll throw in another hundred to pay for the calls.”
She flashed nicotine-stained teeth. “Deal.”
***
The next morning she picked me up at nine-fifteen, five minutes after Madeline disappeared down the road with a load of paintings. When I hopped into June-Mae’s Nissan sedan, I found the backseat occupied by three toddlers whose identical faces and identical pink clothes suggested they were triplets. They took one look at me and started to scream. The car’s decibel level rose high enough to make your ears bleed, but its driver’s expression was stoic.
“Who’re they?” I asked.
“They are my granddaughters. They live with me. Along with my bat-shit crazy daughter-in-law. Don’t ask why.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Oh, people and their traps. No wonder her paintings looked so depressing.
The triplets screamed all the way into town, where June-Mae shoved an old flip-top cell phone into my hand along with two estimates for windshield replacement, and dropped me off in front of the Florence Public Library. As soon as she drove away, I sat down on a bench near the entrance and placed my first call.
“How’s Ali?” I asked Juliana.
She answered my question with a question. “How are you?”
“I’m perfectly fine. Tell me about Ali.”
“She, too, is perfectly fine, and is staying with me for the interim. Right now, she’s over at Kyle’s house. Fiona said they’re all going to the movies.”
When I expressed surprise, she said, “Trying to keep those two separated would be more trouble than it’s worth. You know teenagers.�
�
I was starting to. “You said she’s staying with you ‘for the interim.’ Define ‘interim.’”
“Dr. Teague and I are waiting for an emergency hearing on the custody issue. It’ll be just a formality, because he and I are in perfect agreement as to the girl’s best interest. Meanwhile, Ali and I are using the time to get better acquainted.” Before I could ask, she added, “At this point she knows only that I’m an old friend of her mother’s, but that will eventually change. Speaking of Alexandra, the police haven’t been exactly forthcoming about the case, so I applied a little pressure in certain quarters. I don’t know yet if it worked, but we’ll see. Now, as for you, I know you’ve been injured because I had a long chat with your partner.” Her voice took on a new seriousness. “The charges against Ali may have been dropped, but the public’s perception of her remains one of guilt, and that must be remedied. It’s been a month since the Cameron murders and there’s still no arrest.”
Sometimes there never is. Sometimes a case just drags on and on until it’s filed away in a back room. I didn’t share that possibility with Juliana, just assured her that despite my injury I was still working the case and promised to inform her of any new developments.
“See that you do,” she said, and hung up.
My second call was to Arizona Pet Lab, which for a hefty surcharge, had promised a faster than usual turnaround. The technician I talked to told me the DNA results on Monster Woman’s Rottweiler had been completed, and what did I want done with them.
“Hang onto them until the police pick them up,” I answered.
My third call was to Sylvie Perrins, who, wonder of wonders, was at her desk, probably filling out the reams of paperwork that are a cop’s lot. After a too-long discussion of my physical health, I told her about my visit to Arizona Pet Lab.
She laughed. “You don’t miss a trick, do you, Lena? Okay, Bob and I’ll get over there as soon as we finish up here. By the way, you’ll be interested to know that our own lab completed the tests from the murder scene, so we’ll know right away if there’s a match-up.”
I was surprised. “That was fast.”
“No shit, Sherlock. Apparently your big deal client became impatient and placed a call to a higher authority, namely the governor. Next thing we know—ta da!—we had the DNA results from the murder scene in our hot little hands. Bob was so thrilled he did the Dougie dance all over the office, talk about one butt-ugly sight. This brings me to the bad news. That impounded van, the one belonging to the Pebble Creek gardener? Turns out he was telling the truth. He didn’t use it to kill the Camerons. The stench came from common fertilizer, not doggie do.”
“How about those two surveillance cameras from the neighborhood? Did the real murder van show up on either of them?”
“Fat lotta good that was. Both cameras caught a white ’83 Ford Econoline tooling down the street at the time the boy was headed to the Cameron house, but the plate was rigged out with one of those anti-radar film overlays, as well as some good ’ol Arizona dust. Our tech did what he could, but it was a no go. Got nada. We sent out a statewide BOLO on that model, though, and ran it through the Motor Vehicles base, but there’s a couple thousand ’83 Econolines still on the road, and with the manpower problem being what it is, well, you know. Say, did I tell you what Bob did the other day? He…”
I tried not to let disappointment leak into my voice. At least the DNA results from the murder house were in, and that was something. But we needed something to match them to.
Sylvie was still talking. “…and that was that. You should have seen Bob’s face. Hey, what’s this number you’re calling me from? It’s not your phone.”
Rather than narc off June-Mae, I muttered a quick good-bye and rang off.
Maybe the DNA results at Arizona Pet Lab would match the DNA from the murder scene, maybe not. Terry Jardine, aka Monster Woman, was out-of-control enough to kill someone—she’d sure as hell tried to kill me—but where the Camerons were concerned, it didn’t feel right. Too much planning there for an off-the-walls ’roid rage situation.
Calls completed, I got off the bench and went inside the library.
Florence may be small, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t joined the twenty-first century. Same for its library, which offered a bank of new Internet-connected computers on the second floor. Once a helpful librarian showed me how to sign on, I was off and running.
I’m no Jimmy Sisiwan, but using my Desert Investigations password allowed me access to the Cameron case files. Although I’d been careful not to let anyone know, that blow to my head had fuzzed my memory to the point where it could no longer be trusted, so a refresher course on the facts seemed wise. I’m a quick study, and within minutes, had brought myself up-to-date on the investigation. Jimmy’s own recently added notes weren’t as helpful as hoped, but at least I found out how much we still didn’t know. Sighing, I closed out the file and stared at the red and blue FLORENCE PUBLIC LIBRARY welcome screen until my head started hurting again and I had to look away. As I did, something nagged at me, something about those case notes…
Whatever it was, I couldn’t track it. A glance at my watch revealed I’d been at the library a little more than an hour. From her studio, it would have taken Madeline around forty minutes to drive to Scottsdale, a few minutes to fill out some papers and chat with the gallery owner, then another forty for the drive back, let’s say two hours total. Enough time to give my poor, under-exercised legs a good tune-up.
I shut down the computer, waved good-bye to the librarian, and went outside. After calling June-Mae at home and telling her where and when to meet me, I hitched into a race-walk and tooled along Florence’s mesquite-shaded streets for a while, finally slowing down to study the authentic Western storefronts once used in the Sally Fields-James Garner film, Murphy’s Romance. Like much of the town, they took me back to a simpler time, a time when you were on speaking terms with your neighbors and knew which ones to be wary of. Finally tiring, I ambled over to the bank and made a large withdrawal from Desert Investigations’ account—windshield replacement is expensive these days—then headed for one of my favorite places: the Pinal County Historical Society & Museum, where I’d told June-Mae to pick me up.
The museum was an oddity in a town filled with oddities. Like everything else in Florence, the prison complex dominated its exhibits. Not unusual, when you realize that of the town’s population of twenty-five thousand, only eight thousand were civilians; the other seventeen thousand were inmates. Besides the Indian and pioneer artifacts, which included furniture built from saguaro cactus spines, the inspiration for my own apartment’s décor, one full room of the museum was dedicated to prison memorabilia. My favorites were the actual nooses used to hang condemned prisoners. Placed in the center of each noose was a small card giving the prisoner’s name and his death date.
A few women’s nooses numbered in the exhibit, too, including that of infamous Eva Dugan, a former cabaret singer who, after being found guilty of murdering a local rancher, was sentenced to death by hanging. In 1933 Eva became the last guest of honor at a state-sponsored necktie party. It didn’t go well. Due to a miscalculation by the state executioner, when Eva dropped through the scaffold floor she was instantaneously decapitated. The resulting mess (several witnesses fainted when her head rolled toward them) spelled the end of official hangings in the great state of Arizona. Today we no longer pop off a condemned person’s head. We just put them to sleep via the needle, in the same way we would a sick dog.
Until recently, Dr. Arthur Cameron had been Arizona’s dog-killer-in-chief.
***
June-Mae was prompt. Her raggedy Nissan clattered to a stop in front of the museum at the appointed time. I saw no sign of the triplets.
“Where are your beautiful granddaughters?” I was trying to be polite, because from what I had been able to view under all that red-faced, snot-nosed screaming, they
didn’t even rate as cute.
“At home with my husband. Thank God his shift’s over.”
I hadn’t thought about her being married, and a quick look at her left hand revealed how inattentive I’d been. “He work at MacDonald’s, too?”
“No, Miss Nosy. He works at the prison complex. Most people in Florence do, except for the lucky few, such as myself.”
Still trying to be polite, I asked, “He like it? Working at the prison, I mean.”
“Don’t make me laugh. Where’s my money?”
I forked over the fat envelope the bank teller had given me. Before we pulled away from the curb, she counted it right down to the last penny.
***
I was staring out the upstairs window when Madeline returned home. A coyote was dragging something furry into the arroyo.
“How you doing up there?” Madeline called out.
“Just watching good old Mother Nature, red in tooth and claw,” I called back, clomping down the stairs. “I’m hungry. You going to make lunch, or should I?”
My offer came too late. She was already in the kitchen, concocting something that involved rice, beans, and carrots. While I had to admit her vegetarian lifestyle was healthier than mine, I was jonesing for a Big Mac. Put it down to June-Mae’s unhealthy influence.
“Uuumm, that looks good,” I said.
She gave me a maternal smile. “I sure wish you wouldn’t lie so much, Sweetie.”
“Caught me.”
“Vegetables are good for you.”
“I know,” I said, glumly. “Here, I’ll help you chop.”
Lunch was ready in an hour, and by then I was hungry enough to eat anything. To Madeline’s satisfaction, I cleaned my plate.
“Looks like you got your appetite back, Sweetie.”
I opened my mouth to answer that it was probably due to my morning’s exercise, but caught myself in time. “I’m feeling better. So much better I think it’s time for me to get out more, say into Florence, maybe pick up some library books.” Something about the Cameron case file still niggled at the back of my mind. If I could just log on again, maybe I could figure it out. There was something…
