by Diane Capri
One of the nice things? A new coffee shop had just opened. Better yet? It had Internet service.
Laura always carried her laptop, which she preferred to do research on as opposed to her phone.
The place was almost empty. She managed to snare Wi-Fi and got to looking. She didn’t even have the first name of Ruby’s husband, but she knew the last. She Googled Ruby Ballantine.
At the top of results was a mention of her store, All Souls Shoppe. Its location, hours—in the Internet yellow pages.
She had Ruby’s address in her notes: 14509 Candelaria Way. She punched it in and it came up on Google Maps.
The house was in the Tucson Mountains.
The house was all by itself.
The road to the house consisted of two concentric circles, the lower one straightening out and meeting up with Gates Pass Road.
She switched to Satellite, although she hardly needed to. It was easy to see the rise in elevation. She switched again, this time to Street View.
Yup. Palace.
Sean Perrin had told the truth for once.
It turned out Sean did have a Facebook page. For some reason, it was still up. Perhaps because no one had notified Facebook of his death. Perhaps because he didn’t seem to have any real friends.
Apparently, his sister Ruby hadn’t bothered to post on his page.
His timeline was filled with the usual crap—sharing photos. He favored Grumpy Cat and muscle cars—and photos of Hollywood stars, all of whom he knew. “My Pal Johnny Depp.” “I told Beyonce she looks like herself in this pic.”
In Photos there were pictures of his fake wife and his two fake kids. The same ones he had in his apartment.
In fact, Sean’s photo of himself wasn’t Sean. It was a handsome man, same coloring—the guy looked like a cross between Bradley Cooper and Matthew McConaughey.
He also had a photo of his childhood home. Laura recognized it immediately; it was the house on Candelaria Way. His father’s house.
But there was no photo of his shabby apartment in Las Vegas. Instead, he lived in a villa. Typical nouveau Vegas: cobblestone drive, stucco fountain, massive house complete with palms and a new Corvette. Maybe he got it from an ad.
There were pictures of his dog, Beano.
Beano was a pit bull.
Laura thought she had seen Beano before—in a dog food ad. Maybe she was imagining it.
His friends were legion. Regular people commenting on his posts. Pretty straightforward: “Happy Birthday,” “Great Corvette!,” “I like Sinatra, too,” in reply to an image of Frank Sinatra and Sean’s comment, “The Best!”
Surface, like a lot of Facebook was. No causes. Just boasting. He was subtle about it, though. As she scrolled down his page she saw more and more facets of Sean Perrin coming out, eliciting responses like, “I didn’t know you drove NASCAR” and “What was it like to be the inspiration for Breaking Bad.” Laura scrolled way down to the year before, and saw the pattern clearly. People would be surprised and delighted at some aspect of his life, and some just kept getting more impressed. But a number of “friends” seemed to drop away. They didn’t comment. By the time he revealed he was in the Victim Witness Program, he had a whole new crop of the impressed. But the names were different.
He was a walking Bullshit Machine.
Laura went back to the photo of the house on Candelaria Way. “My ancestral home.”
One truth buried into a web of lies. The cars weren’t real, the dog wasn’t real, the friends weren’t real, the chicks who hung out with him weren’t real, the celebrity pals weren’t real, his wife and children weren’t real.
But hidden in plain sight was the modern and very expensive manse on the hill.
Just as Laura was about to call Anthony, he called her. “I just went through Sean Perrin’s phone records. Couple of things.” He paused, possibly to heighten the suspense. “One, he called Ruby Ballantine’s landline.”
“He did? When?”
“The day after he checked in. Either he left a message or just hung up. That was how short it was. But that’s not all.”
Draw it out why don’t you. “I take it there’s something else?”
“Just six phone calls from the same number in the week and a half before he died. One of them the evening he drove up and parked at the trailhead. Eight twenty-nine p.m., duration of seven minutes and a few seconds. That’s the good news.”
“What’s the bad news?”
“Whoever called used a burner phone.”
A burner phone. A cheap pre-paid phone like the drug dealers used. A throwaway.
Anthony said, “The crime lab guys were able to pinpoint where the phone was sold from the serial number—a Walgreens on Ajo Way pretty close to I-19, actually. You wanna meet me there? After that we can go from there to Ruby’s house and see what’s up.”
As Laura emerged from the car she was blasted by the heat: May in Tucson. Inside, though, the cold air was first a godsend, and then frosty. Walgreens was gearing up for summer. The phones were in the aisle with beach towels. Anthony was already there.
The pre-paid mobile phone was a Starr, a cheap knock-off made in some developing country. There were five hundred minutes on the phone, about eight hours worth.
Laura and Anthony weren’t surprised that there was no record of a credit or debit card purchase. Whoever bought the prepaid phone had paid cash. The young woman at the counter didn’t remember the last person who bought a phone with cash. In fact, she didn’t remember the last person who bought any phone with a credit card.
They also weren’t surprised to learn that the store’s security camera hadn’t worked since Christmas.
They walked outside. “I’m ninety-nine percent sure they paid cash,” Anthony said. “No way we can trace it.”
“I know.”
“But, if we ever do find the person who bought the phone—impossible as it may seem—we can be pretty sure they had something to do with Sean’s death.”
As hot as it was out here, goosebumps sprouted on Laura’s arms. They had tracked the killer here—to a dead end.
They knew someone had called Sean and asked him to meet them right before his death. Someone had planned to kill him. Whoever they were after was cold-blooded. Now they had the proof—the phone call made to Sean Perrin shortly before his death.
As she got into her car, she squinted through the windshield at the drugstore, seeing in her mind’s eye the shelves stacked with hand lotion and sunscreen and mosquito repellent—all meant to sell the carefree days of summer. Someone had walked up and down those aisles, looking for a prepaid phone. And that someone, she knew, killed Sean Perrin.
But right now, there was nothing they could do about it.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Xanadu In The Desert
The single-lane blacktopped road looped around a hill in the Tucson Mountains. The hill even had a name. Davison Hill, ostensibly after an early settler who saw it and decided to put his name on it. Laura had spotted the roofline near the top, but they’d been on the wrong side.
Now she could see the house.
It looked far more impressive than the photo she’d seen.
Like someone had set a Beverly Hills mansion on the hill.
Anthony pulled over and got out of his car. He framed the house on the hill with his hands, director-style.
Laura pulled up next to him and lowered the window. “You figure out who’s going to play you in the movie?”
“Tom Cruise.” He rested his arm on the roof of her car. “Sis has real buckos,” Anthony said. “She sure didn’t give me that impression at that hole-in-the-wall shop of hers. Why didn’t Sean just come here to hide out?”
“Because they were estranged?”
“Pride’s fine, but … damn. If she was my sister I’d make it up to her in a hurry.”
“Why did Sean have to take out a loan for his car, coming from money like this?”
“Good question. How ‘bout a ride?�
�
She nodded and he climbed in, his long legs folding up like bat wings.
“Seat lever’s broken.”
“That’s okay. Looks to me like new money. Kind of crass in a billion-dollar way.”
“It doesn’t look that pricey,” Laura said. “If you notice, a lot of folks have plunked down mansions on hills around here.”
“I guess their homes really are their castles.”
Tall palms lined the last quarter mile of road in two perfect files. The house itself had many windows, stark lines, and the parts that weren’t glass were made of some kind of metal siding the color of a rusty barge.
And it was huge.
They passed a tennis court on the right. A desert garden on the left, contoured to follow the hill, a needlepoint of various types of exotic cactus, forming circles and paisley patterns—exquisite and unusual.
They pulled up to the gate and spoke into the intercom.
The gate buzzed open. They followed the blacktop to the point where it gave off to a circular flagstone area.
A woman stood on the steps of the rusty barge. Dwarfed by double doors that would shame a museum, she shaded her eyes and pointed in the direction of an open parking bay. She looked the way she did in the closet of a shop on 4th Avenue, dressed in capri pants and a simple blouse, nothing expensive.
Anthony said, “I think we just went through the looking glass.”
She took them to the “sun room”. There were lots of plants and lots of sun and the most beautiful oriental carpet Laura had ever seen.
Strangely, Ruby Ballantine looked like she didn’t belong here. She looked like a tourist in the White House, sitting on a chair when she thought she shouldn’t.
Laura reminded herself that it was possible this woman might have killed her brother for money.
Possible.
Ruby said, “Are you here because you know—who killed my brother?”
Anthony leaned forward, elbows on knees, hands clasped. “We’re getting close,” he said. The sun arrowed off a statuette and beamed onto his shaved head. Laura averted her eyes; it was blinding.
Ruby shaded her eyes—she, too, was getting flashed. “Why would someone kill Sean? It doesn’t make sense.”
Anthony said, “I understand your father is very ill?”
“He’s dying,” she said bluntly. “He’s been in a coma for seven months now, but he can’t seem to let go.”
“No end in sight?”
Anthony sounded sympathetic. Anthony did great sympathetic. Some women—the ones not intimidated by his naked skull and height—warmed to him, and liked his courtliness. The ones who warmed to him would tell him their deepest secrets. Laura could see that Ruby was warming to him like a stove.
“It’s been so hard watching him go downhill. He’s skin and bones. But something is keeping him here.”
“He doesn’t know about his son.”
“No, I don’t think so. Although I told him. I told him he should go and then he could be with Sean. But I don’t think he hears.”
“Just curious. Do you have any other siblings?”
“No. It was just Sean and me.”
“But you’re married?”
A brief hesitation. “I was, but it didn’t work out. So you’re no closer to finding out who would do such a thing?”
Changing the subject.
“No, not really,” Anthony said. “Do you have any ideas?”
“Me?”
Anthony nodded encouragement. “He was your brother. You knew him pretty well. Can you think of anything that would get him crosswise with someone? Make them angry?”
“You have to remember I haven’t seen or talked to him in ages. We exchange Christmas cards. I don’t really know anything about his life.”
“You don’t know anything?”
She gave him a look. For the first time, he seemed to strike a nerve. She said, “I know it sounds strange. We’re blood, but he and I just had nothing in common. It’s almost as if we didn’t live in the same family. Maybe because I’m older, maybe I resented having a sibling, I suppose you’ll tell me I need a psychiatrist. But he was a … a sneakly little kid, always trying to catch a glimpse of me when I was coming out of the shower, just a little shit. And he lied. He lied all the time about everything, made up stories, just … blatant. My Dad raised me to be normal, despite our financial situation. Not to lord it over people. Not make myself bigger than I am. But Sean was always showing off.
“Finally, Dad told him to go out on his own.”
Anthony said, “You mean he cut him off?”
“That’s exactly what I mean. To be fair, Sean took it pretty well. He said he’d make his own fortune, which was bravado. I know he was shaken by it. But he was always the kind who was … confident. Like he was way ahead of everyone else. He thought he could do things he couldn’t. He had no idea that he wasn’t as good as advertised. I don’t know, but I think that’s why he told stories all the time. Self-aggrandizing, trying to make himself look better and feel better.”
“You’ve been thinking about this for a long time.”
“Not really. I just know him so well.”
“You say you contacted him earlier to tell him his father was ill?”
“Months ago, when Dad went into the hospital and we knew he wouldn’t be coming out.”
“What did he say?”
“Something about how busy he was and he’d try to get away but he couldn’t promise anything. He didn’t care about Dad.”
“He didn’t?”
“Sometimes I wondered if he cared about anyone except himself. He lived in a … fantasy land.”
“What about his wife?”
“Sharon?”
“I thought her name was…” He consulted his notes. “Gina.”
“No, that was his fake wife, from the picture. You know, Huffpo. No, Sharon was a girl who married him when he was in college. That lasted about a year.”
“No children?”
“Oh, no.
“Why did the marriage break up?”
“Because it was reality? That’s my guess.”
“You didn’t call him to tell him to come in the last couple of weeks?”
She looked at him, then looked at Laura. “What are you talking about?”
She seemed agitated.
Lying?
“Someone Sean talked to mentioned he was on his way to Tucson to see his father. They said he preferred to stay in Madera Canyon and drive in for a visit. He never visited your father?”
She stared at him. “Not that I know of. But then, he wouldn’t tell me.”
Laura thought Anthony was getting to her.
Ruby said, “Do you know who it was?”
“Who it was?”
“The person he talked to? You said you did.”
“One or two of the guests at the Madera Canyon Cabins.”
“I told him months ago. And he didn’t follow through—as usual.”
Anthony said gently, “But you didn’t speak to him lately?”
“No.”
“He didn’t call you here at your house? To tell you he was coming?”
She looked from Anthony to Laura. “What are you talking about? He never called here.”
Anthony said, “His phone records show he made a call to this number on May ninth. The call lasted one minute.” His voice was low, gentle. “You don’t remember that?”
“He didn’t call me.”
“Couldn’t he have left a message on your answering machine?”
She looked at Anthony as if he were a unicorn she’d just discovered in her living room. “Are you kidding? He wouldn’t call me! He never called me.”
“Phone records don’t lie, ma’am. Someone called from his phone. Are you sure they didn’t leave a message?”
She looked at Laura, then at Anthony. Her voice firm. “He didn’t call me here. I never once heard from him. I had no idea he was here.”
She was adam
ant.
“Is there anyone else he might have talked to? If he called here?”
“No. Nobody.”
“No friend? Not your husband?”
She colored. “Nobody.”
“Did you buy all that?” Anthony said as they walked out to the car.
“She seems believable. She didn’t seem to be evading. Confused maybe—something’s bothering her.”
“You don’t think she was the one who bought the burner?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
“Have to admit, she didn’t act guilty. Not that that counts for much. So—what about her estranged husband?”
Ruby had mentioned her husband, Joel Strickland, in passing. They had been apart for a couple of years. She’d told them he had been responsible for the renovation. She’d made a point of telling them she’d liked the old house much better.
“Why no divorce?”
“One party or the other was dragging his feet? Like the guy who rebuilt this house to suit himself?”
Ruby had also told them her father had been in an assisted living facility for the last five years. He had Alzheimer's, among other infirmities.
“He went to all the trouble to raze the one house and build that monstrosity,” Anthony said. “Sounds to me like he wanted to live there.”
Laura knew what Anthony was thinking. Maybe Sean talked to Strickland. “You mean Strickland intercepted the message. He knew Sean was staying in Madera Canyon?”
“It could happen.”
“And he erased the message so Ruby wouldn’t know?”
“If he’s a sociopath, yeah. That could work.”
“Why not just go to Vegas and take him out there? Or hire someone?” Laura realized that they were into a realm of speculation unrelated to the facts.
Anthony shrugged. “Familiar turf?”
Laura brought up Ruby’s phone number and called. She put the phone on speaker.
Ruby answered on the first ring. “Can you tell me about the will?”
