by Webb, Betty
At first, the portrait seemed little different from any which could be found in a thousand boardrooms across the country. A closer study showed that the artist had a unique talent for revealing more about his subject than his subject probably realized. He had captured arrogance in the uplifted chin, greed in the narrowed eyes, and—incongruously—a hint of sensitivity in the thin-lipped mouth. I peered at the artist’s signature: Pearl Tuc Nguyen.
I turned away from the portrait and gestured toward the typewriter. “Zach, you mentioned something about your grandmother’s writing. Did you mean business correspondence?”
“No, she dictated that. I’m talking about her memoir-cum-family history,” he answered, unlocking the last file cabinet. “The Alden ancestry was her true obsession. To hear her talk, you’d think we Aldens rowed the Mayflower across the Atlantic all by ourselves. Her opinions should have made intriguing reading, but from the few pages she showed me, she didn’t have much writing talent. It’s my guess our ancestors were a lot more interesting, not to mention less saintly, than the flag-waving stereotypes she created.
“As for dramatic tension, well, even memoirs need focus and an arc of action, but she was weak there, too. If she’d been in one of my writing classes at ASU, I’d have flunked her. But that’s all water under the bridge. Since she’s dead, I doubt if her scribblings will ever see the light of day. They would have been nothing but a vanity project anyway, printed by her own publishing house because no one else would want to publish them. Now you’ll have to excuse me.” He pocketed the keys, then started for the door.
“Zach, wait!” I had to scratch an itch, whether it helped solve Gloriana’s murder or not.
He turned back around, his ugly/handsome face a study in impatience. “Make it quick.”
“I’m appreciative that you’re giving me free rein in her office, but I’ve always felt that seeing where someone lives, how they live, can tell even more about them than their working environment.” Certainly about the secrets they kept. “Do you think I could take a look at the Hacienda?”
He didn’t say anything at first, and I feared I had lost his good will. But then he said, “Why not? I consider Owen a friend, and if it’ll help him.…” He picked up the phone on Gloriana’s desk. After punching in a number and waiting mere seconds for an answer, he began speaking in fluent Spanish to the party on the other end of the line.
Even with my rudimentary Spanish I could follow that he was telling Gloriana’s maid to let me in the house, to stay with me and make certain I removed nothing, but to give me total access.
“What time can you get up there?” he said, holding the phone away from my ear. “Rosa has tomorrow off, so if you’re going, it has to be today.”
I figured that it would take me a couple of hours to go through Gloriana’s office, probably less at the house. Then I remembered that I had another appointment, one I didn’t dare break.
I looked at my watch. “Is five o’clock too late?”
He checked with Rosa again. “Five is fine. Rosa’s been with my grandmother for going on thirty years, so she can give you the grand tour and tell you anything you need to know. She liked Owen, too.” Scribbling the address down, he said, “Honk three times at the gate,” then turned and left me standing alone in the office.
Did he trust me that much? Or was his apparent openness a ploy to make me believe he had nothing to hide? If so, it backfired. His apparent lack of concern, an attitude I had seen in many convicted murderers, put me on my guard.
I dropped the keys into my carry-all, gave Gloriana’s portrait one final look, and then proceeded to burrow my way through her papers. Most, I discovered, related strictly to the business. Invoices for printing (I’d never realized it cost so much), gargantuan shipping invoices (per cubic inch, books were apparently heavier than pianos), and all the usual odds and ends relating to any business. Electric bills, plumbing bills (three in the last year for the office toilet alone), and bills from a cleaning service.
I found her memoir filed under M, what else? A quick look at the last page—page 203, in which Gloriana reflected on the family’s role in the American Revolution—warned that my original time estimate was way off. A cursory read-through of a few pages proved that Zach’s literary critique had been dead-on. Gloriana’s writing might have been serviceable enough for business correspondence, but even to my own unliterary ear, the style seemed weak. So weak that even the Mayflower’s voyage—which I’d been taught in school had been fraught with thrills and chills—sounded dull. I decided to get back to the memoirs later so I set them aside and scanned through other material.
The R for “Rejections” file was more entertaining. A few authors had taken rejection hard, firing back letters of protest. One such letter, dated several months back, said, “Ms. Alden-Taylor, you wouldn’t recognize talent if a B-52 dropped it on your head in a sack. I hope you choke, bitch. Sincerely yours, Sanford Leavitt.”
I looked at the envelope stapled to the letter and saw a Hartford, Connecticut, postmark. Would a rejectee travel more than two thousand miles to bump off his rejector? Doubtful.
A few more letters from rejected authors echoed Leavitt’s opinion of Gloriana, but their postmarks bore addresses also too far away to worry about, at least for now. Still, I took note of the names. Regardless of current security measures and rising fuel prices, air travel remained relatively fast and cheap. Of more interest was a series of letters written on Arizona Department of Corrections stationery which revealed an ongoing correspondence between Gloriana and Barry Fetzner, one of Patriot’s Blood’s authors. The first letter, dated a year earlier, expressed gushing delight that Patriot’s Blood had found A Man Stands Alone deserving of publication.
At last a publisher of INTEGRITY, a publisher who has found the advancement of TRUTH superior to the mindless pursuit of MAMMON, wrote Fetzner, A.K.A. Inmate No. 947303-37. Fetzner (the name sounded familiar but I couldn’t quite place it) continued purring with gratified ego for a month or so, then eventually began to express irritation at Gloriana’s request for manuscript changes.
What I said in the third paragraph on page 42 is perfectly clear to ANYONE with even MINIMAL I.Q. But if you INSIST I will comply. After all, my warning to the AMERICAN people is more important than your CONSTANT QUIBBLING over STYLE.
Maybe Gloriana had told him to knock off the upper case.
Last month, the tone of Fetzner’s correspondence changed dramatically. In a letter wild with caps and underlinings, he informed Gloriana that he had decided against publication, and demanded that she return his manuscript. Gloriana wrote back that she was holding him to the terms of the SIGNED contract (caps hers). His book was already at the binder’s. Fetzner fired back another letter threatening a lawsuit.
Gloriana didn’t answer, or at least I didn’t find a copy of her answer. But I did find one last letter from Fetzner, postmarked the week before Gloriana’s death.
I repeat, HAG, you must STOP, CEASE, DESIST publication of A MAN STANDS ALONE immediately. This is an ORDER from GOD’S AVENGER HIMSELF, and you WILL OBEY or be subject to the DIREST of CONSEQUENCES! YOU KNOW WHAT THEY ARE! What I have learned about you, MRS. LIAR, proves that you and your FELLOW TRAVELERS AT PATRIOT’S BLOOD are UNFIT to carry my HOLY MESSAGE to the FAITHFUL. You hid your true nature well, but I NOW know you are the ENEMY, you are a TRAITOR to your BLOOD, you are herewith sentenced to HELL AND DAMNATION. And you can FORGET the sequel.
“God’s Avenger!” I whispered. Now I remembered. Fetzner had been sentenced to death for killing seven Hispanic prostitutes working Phoenix’s red light district on Van Buren Boulevard. Or at least he’d been convicted of seven killings. We suspected Fetzner had been responsible for nineteen. He would pose as a customer and lure the working girls into his car. Then, after knocking them out with the wrench he kept on his front seat, he would drive them into the desert where he disemboweled their still-living bodies. Real Jack the Ripper stuff.
In the notes he l
eft at the scenes—the man was proud of his work—he accused the women of breaking “GOD’S HOLY LAW” and contributing to the weakening of “GOD’S HOLY SPIRIT IN MAN.”
He signed them, “GOD’S AVENGER.”
I had encountered Fetzner once. Lucky Lil, as prostitute Lilly Salazar had been dubbed by the press, had been staked out in the desert a few miles east of Scottsdale and was actually watching Fetzner’s knife descend when two Pima men rode their horses onto the scene and broke up the party. God’s Avenger managed to run back to his car and speed away. He’d taken the trouble to rub mud onto his license plate, but both Pimas had seen his face. As, of course, had Lucky Lil. The subsequent IdentiKit rendering resembled a man who had recently spent a night in our drunk tank. My partner and I were among the hordes of uniforms dispatched to his Scottsdale apartment as backup for the detectives.
Fetzner hadn’t put up a fight. He had been so certain that the legal system would reward him for ridding the world of sin that he cheerfully confessed. The surprise on his face when he was sentenced to death had been highly gratifying to the prosecutor.
Fetzner was nuts, of course, but the court ruled that since he could tell the difference between right and wrong, he was legally sane. The Arizona Supreme Court and then the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals had both upheld his conviction. As far as I knew, he was still slated for execution within the month unless the U.S. Supreme Court found constitutional problems in his trial.
I had heard that while awaiting the needle, Fetzner had become involved with the Aryan Brotherhood, as did so much of the prison’s rough trade, which might explain how his memoirs eventually wound up at Patriot’s Blood. With Fetzner’s hatred of women in general and of Gloriana in particular, he made a tempting suspect. Yes, it would probably be difficult to sprinkle water hemlock on someone’s salad when you were locked behind several feet of reinforced concrete, steel, and razor wire, but the Aryan Brotherhood’s arms were long. Easily long enough to reach all the way from Florence to the Desert Shadows resort.
As I mulled over this new element, Poor Sandra stuck her head in the office.
“I’m going to lunch, so I’d appreciate it if you would, uh.…”
“Leave?” I offered.
She gave me an embarrassed smile of agreement, which turned to horror when she saw Gloriana’s memoirs spread across the desk.
“Do you think you could copy all this before you go?” I asked her. “I’ve checked out most of the other stuff, but I wasn’t able to get to these.”
Poor Sandra’s face crumpled, but she nodded. “I’d be happy to.”
As I followed her to the copier, I wondered if being kicked down a flight of stairs also made her happy. “How long have you worked here?” I asked, merely to make conversation as she fed sheets to the machine, which began to spew smudgy-looking copies.
“Since my husband left me,” Poor Sandra replied. “That’s two years ago.”
“Do you like your job?”
“Not much.”
“Can’t you get a job anywhere else?”
“Probably. But Gloriana not only gave me a decent paycheck, she let me live in the servant’s quarters for about half the rent I’d have to pay elsewhere.”
“That was nice of her.”
“First time I’ve ever heard that word in connection with Gloriana.” As Poor Sandra was about to continue, the copier made a rattling sound, followed by a heavy clank. Then, with an almost human grunt of spite, it shut down.
“Broke again,” she moaned. “Just like the toilet. Everything in this office is falling apart. God, it’s like the Hacienda. Maybe you could come back next week? We should have it fixed by then, and I’ll have someone run off those copies for you.”
I hated to leave the unread memoirs in the office and told her so. “Why don’t you let me take them with me? My office is right down the street. I can copy them myself, then bring them back tomorrow morning good as new.”
She shook her head. “Regardless of my feelings about Gloriana, this manuscript represents almost four hundred years of Alden-Taylor family history. I can’t simply let it walk out the door.”
Disappointed, I fished a business card out of my carry-all. “Could you give me a call as soon as the copier is fixed?”
She threw a disgusted look at the copier. “If I remember. I have so much to do. I have to get the plumber over here before we all float away, there’s seven manuscripts on my desk waiting to be read, the fall catalog needs to go to the printer.…Oops. Not that. Not anymore.” Her smile was malicious.
“Then why don’t you give me your card and I’ll call you.” Daily. Starting tomorrow.
“I’ll try to find one.” She turned on her heel and began walking down the hall. I grabbed the few pages the copier had spit out before it broke down and followed her. Back at her desk, Poor Sandra rummaged through a drawer and finally came up with a card that looked as if mice had been chewing on it.
I looked at it. SANDRA DESIREE ALDEN-TAYLOR. “You took your maiden name back when you got divorced?”
She shook her head. “I never changed it. Gloriana didn’t change hers, either, when she got married. When there aren’t enough boys around to carry on the family name, the husbands of Alden-Taylor women are expected to change theirs instead so that their children will be Alden-Taylors. Tradition, you know.” Showing the first sign of spirit, she spat out the word as if it were an Anglo-Saxon expletive.
I’d heard that aristocratic English families sometimes required that men take their wives’ names, but this was the first time I’d seen an American version of the custom. Not my business, but I asked, “How did your husband feel about that?”
A wry smile twisted her face, making her look even more unattractive. “Bob was fine with it as long as he believed I’d inherit.”
“But Zach was the actual heir. Did you know that then?”
A dark laugh. “Of course I did. Excluding Vicky, Zach is Gloriana’s only direct descendant. If I’d told Bob that, though, he never would have married me. And I was pregnant, so what was I supposed to do? Have an illegitimate Alden-Taylor? As it is, he eventually found out the truth and left. Now the laugh’s on him. I do inherit something, enough to buy a house for cash. Frankly, a little independence looks good to me. Now that Zach’s got a kid of his own on the way, I can foresee all kinds of problems if I stay where I’m at.”
She knelt down to pat Casey, who had emerged from wherever she’d been hiding. “It’s not easy being a single mother.”
“I’m sure it’s not.”
When I got back in my Jeep I sat there for a moment, wondering how hard Poor Sandra’s life really was. Would she kill to change it?
Chapter 9
I have a memory…
A memory of a soft hand against my cheek, a quiet laugh. My mother’s laugh. The woman who would later shoot me.
“You see?” she says, the wind whipping her blond hair across her face. “We’ll finally be free.”
She is not talking to me, her eyes are on the man next to her. A tall, red-haired man.
We are standing by the door of a white bus. It is open, calling us in. The wind increases, chilling me. I begin to cry. I don’t want to leave this place. It is my home.
“None of this feels right,” the man says.
The woman caresses me again. “Life’s too hard here. Do it for her. For me. Things will get better.”
The man again, quietly. “Only because I love you.”
He follows us onto the bus.
Chapter 10
It should have taken less than five minutes to get back to my office from Patriot’s Blood, but throngs of tourists swarmed on foot back and forth across the streets in pursuit of postcards and bolo ties. So intent were they upon finding these treasures that they paid little attention to traffic lights. More than once as I edged the Jeep down Main Street, I almost hit some sunburned fool.
“Light, light!” I shouted to one wingtips-and-shorts-clad man who’d sto
pped in the middle of the street to goggle at my ride. Yes, my sandstone-colored vehicle, with its custom paint job of Pima symbols (courtesy of Jimmy’s uncle) and hood-mounted steer horns, was somewhat unusual, but he could have admired it safely from the sidewalk.
“You interested in selling that thing?” Mr. Tourist asked, refusing to budge. I noticed that his big, red nose had begun to peel.
“It’s not for sale,” I snapped. “Now move before you get gored.” I revved the Jeep’s engine. He moved.
I beeped and nudged the rest of the way back to my office, and with relief parked in the side lot. I couldn’t wait for summer, when most of the tourists, shocked by the city’s 120-plus-degree heat, would return home. We natives didn’t like summer either, but at least it thinned the herd.
Jimmy was in the process of shutting down his computer when I walked through the door.
“Good news, partner,” I announced. “Zachary Alden-Taylor is on his way to bail Owen out.”
Jimmy threw me a brilliant smile, his facial tattoo softening into smokey curves. “Zach called Janelle and told her. She’s busy with the kids, so I volunteered to pick Owen up. The paperwork will probably take a few hours, but I don’t want him to wait a second more than necessary.”
I waved him goodbye as he headed out the door, then sat down at my desk and flipped through Gloriana’s memoirs. Seventy-seven pages had made it through the copier before it broke. The smudgy copies promised a challenge, but plowing through them would be worthwhile if they held the answer to her murder.
I began to read.
How does one begin to tell the history of such an illustrious family as the Alden-Taylors? With great humility, I, Gloriana Alden-Taylor, will attempt to do so for the benefit of not only my descendants, but for the world.
I had a bad feeling about this.
What magic, what divine touch of the Godhead brought the Alden-Taylors from the cold villages of England, first to the unfriendly, narrow streets of Holland, then finally to the warm, welcoming arms of Plymouth Rock?
