by Betty Webb
The woman’s moan turned into a whisper.
“Tommy…why?”
Before Gunter could move to shield her, Das Kapitan brought the tire iron down and silenced her forever.
Chapter Nine
When I arrived at the set Monday morning, the rising sun was spreading its golden glow over the Papago Buttes. In the honeyed light, the buttes glowed as if they were on fire, cooled only slightly by the muted greens of sage and mesquite on the flat plain below. After parking my Jeep, I threaded my way through the half-dozen trailers that by day provided shelter for Escape’s cast and crew, and by night kept the expensive film equipment locked up safely. The usual contingent of onlookers was already in attendance, kept from edging into camera range by a thin strip of barrier tape and the ever-present guard.
If I remembered correctly from the shooting schedule, my reporter friend Fay Harris was due to film her scene early this morning before she went in to work at the Scottsdale Journal. By now familiar with the fits and starts of film-making, I planned to catch her between takes. It was becoming increasingly obvious to me that the Bollinger and Ernst cases were connected, and I was curious why the Bollingers weren’t mentioned in her book.
I ducked under the tape barrier and walked toward the replica of one of the original officer’s quarters, a small, wooden shack outside of which were gathered several actors dressed as German POWs. Warren was nowhere in evidence, but I spotted Fay immediately. She was dressed in a safari-flavored pantsuit, and was tromping across the site of the old prison camp toward a faux camp tower, trailed by a sound man and a Steadicam-wielding cameraman. Her chestnut hair stood out in wild curls around her face, and even from a distance of around twenty yards, I could see that her eyes were frantic. Lindsey, looking more like a runway model than an assistant director, followed close behind her, bawling orders for everyone to do this, do that. The whole thing looked so comical that one of the spectators behind me began to laugh.
Lindsey turned and stood with hands on her hips. “Who did that?”
The looky-loo shut up.
Casting a final glare around, Lindsey yelled, “Quiet on the set!” Then she turned and snapped her fingers at Fay as if the reporter was no more than her trained terrier. “For the fifth time, Fay, do it like I told you to. Walk straight ahead toward that guard tower and recite your lines. Walk and talk, talk and walk. Or can’t you do both?”
From the expression on Fay’s face, I feared there might be another murder. Where was Warren, and what in the world did he think he was doing, allowing the always-abrasive Lindsey to direct this scene? Up until this point, he’d only used her for off-set location shots; scenery, not people.
At the words, “Roll camera!” Fay walked forward yet again, trying desperately to avoid a patch of cholla cactus which threatened to spike her shins. “The German POWs were very clever,” she said, as she huffed along. “Before they began digging their tunnel, they obtained permission from camp commandant Colonel William A. Holden to build a sports field for a game they called “faustball,” which is similar to soccer. Therefore, the guards didn’t suspect a thing when they saw wheelbarrows full of dirt being piled on the field, then leveled. By the time the Germans were through digging their one-hundred-and-seventy-eight-foot tunnel, it is estimated that more than…. SHIT!” Fay hopped back and forth on one foot.
“Cut!” Lindsey’s face grew red. “We were rolling, you idiot! Don’t you know film costs money?”
“I’ll idiot your skinny ass as soon as I get these cactus spines out of my leg.” With a dark look at Lindsey, Fay limped over to a rock, sat down and began to de-spine herself.
Lindsey started for her. “Listen, bitch, you…”
I was about to insert myself between the two when from the corner of my eye, I heard a door creak open from one of the trailers. When I turned to look, I saw Warren standing there with a beautiful blond woman. As soon as he saw what was going on, he ran toward us. “That’ll be enough, Lindsey!” he called, as he ran. Usually a neat man, his shirt flapped out of his pants and his collar was crooked. “Fay, are you okay? I can get the first aid kit…”
Fay waved him away, muttering something about being a native Arizonan and knowing how to deal with fucking cactus spines. “But it would have been nice if I hadn’t been directed to walk straight through the damned cactus patch!”
Lindsey was quick to defend herself. “It was picturesque!”
Warren gave her an exasperated look. “That’s enough, Lindsey. Go get yourself a cup of coffee while I attend to this.” Then he turned his back on her and leaned over Fay, holding out his hand. “Come on, kiddo, let me help you over to the first aid trailer to get that leg fixed up.”
Fay looked mollified, but refused his help. “You know, Warren, this thing took more time than I ever dreamed it would, and I have to get to the paper. The mayor’s holding a news conference this morning and I need to cover it. Tell you what. Let me know what day you want me to come back and I’ll try, but promise I won’t be working with that…that crazy assistant of yours. Otherwise, you can count me out of this production.” She made “assistant” sound like a curse.
“But…” He noticed me for the first time. “Oh, hi, Lena.”
“Hi yourself.” Hyper-aware of Warren’s disheveled condition and its probable cause, I couldn’t bring myself to sound friendlier. Instead, I followed the limping Fay toward the parking lot. “Hold on, Fay. I need to talk to you about the Bollinger case.”
She stopped dead. “Edward Bollinger and his family?”
So she did know about them. “Yes. I want to know why…”
After looking around, she lowered her voice. “Interesting you should bring the Bollingers up, what with old Ernst getting his brains bashed in the other day just like they did. Yeah, we can talk, but you need to know that this is something I’m following up on my own. In the meantime, I wasn’t lying to Warren. I have to head over to City Hall. Drop by the paper tomorrow and we’ll talk.”
Disappointed, I walked with her to her car, a dust-covered Nissan. As she opened the door, maps and clipboards slid onto the asphalt. “Oh, crap. What a perfect day.” I helped her shovel everything back in. Nissan re-packed, she straightened up and smoothed her unruly hair. “Remember, anything I tell you has to be off the record. We may be buds, Lena, but I’m not about to let you nose me out of a scoop.”
She sped off as the car salesman from the autoplex cruised up in the Studebaker Golden Hawk that Warren had his eye on. “Say, it’s Lena, isn’t it? Aren’t you some kind of private investigator?”
When he got out of the Golden Hawk, I shook his offered hand. “Yep, that’s me, Lena Jones, some kind of detective.”
He was in his forties, and despite his lack of height, with his silver hair graying at the temples, he looked almost as distinguished as Warren. Unlike Warren, he’d gone soft around the middle, but then again, he probably didn’t get as much exercise as Warren did. Especially not with beautiful blondes in trailers.
Oblivious to my foul mood, he beamed an insincere salesman’s smile. “We’ve never actually met. I’m Mark Schank, of Schank Classic Cars.”
I decided to get my own back. “Oh. That Mark Schank. I used to laugh at your car commercials. Especially the one where you wore the huge cowboy hat and sat on a burro with a monkey perched on your shoulder. Your dad, who had the good sense to wear a hat that fit and ride a real horse, called you ‘My Little Buddy.’”
His smile grew pained. “Thank you for that memory. I only did it because at the time I was naive enough to think it might lead to a career in Hollywood. When that didn’t pan out, I followed Dad into the business. Now I satisfy my film jones by watching Warren work.”
Actually, Schank wasn’t just any car salesman. In addition to their large fleet of Cadillacs and Hummers, he and his father hosted an annual collectible car auction, a spectacular event that had begun to rival the success of the legendary Barrett-Jackson Classic Car Auction in North Scottsdale
. Every May high rollers flew in from all over the world to bid on the Schanks’ Deusenbergs, Cords, and Ferraris. The auction was so popular that, like the Barrett-Jackson, it had turned into a ticketed arts festival, with rock bands, crafts booths, and gourmet food vendors. For the non-billionaires, the father-son team also sold less expensive collectibles, such as the sleek Golden Hawk and muscle cars from the Seventies and Eighties.
Ever the salesman, he gestured toward my Jeep. “A ’45, right? Bet I could get some good money on that for you, especially with that custom paint job. Think about it.”
When I bought the Jeep from a desert tours company five years back, it had been painted hot pink, and a set of steer horns did duty as a hood ornament. Then Jimmy’s uncle, the owner of Pima Paint and Collision, repainted the Jeep a beautiful sandstone color and covered it with many of the same Pima mythological figures as he’d painted on Jimmy’s trailer: Earth Doctor, Elder Brother, Coyote, Night Singing Bird, and Spider Woman. As one of the Jeep’s many fans once pointed out, my ride was a rolling petroglyph.
“I’ll never sell my baby,” I told Schank.
His smile didn’t diminish. “First time I talked to him, that’s exactly what the Golden Hawk’s owner said. But life can throw curve balls. Wouldn’t matching his-and-hers Mercedes look great in your garage? We sell those, too.”
“Sorry, not interested.” I didn’t own a garage, and a Mercedes would look stupid covered with petroglyphs. As for matching “his and hers” cars, first you have to have a “his,” and I didn’t.
Alert to the edge in my voice, Schank dropped the sales pitch. “Well, it’s been pleasant talking to you, Lena, but I promised I’d bring the Golden Hawk over for a test drive.”
I watched him head toward Warren, who had taken Lindsey aside and was talking to her quietly, pausing every now and then to pat her on the shoulder. My, my. Quite the ladies’ man. Then I looked at my watch and saw that the morning was slipping away and I had yet to accomplish a thing, so I climbed into my Jeep and headed for Desert Investigations. Before I pulled out of the parking lot, I saw Warren head back to his trailer. When he opened the door, I caught a quick glimpse of the tall blond woman who’d remained inside.
I wondered if he’d send her roses, too.
***
“The info on Jack Sherwood’s on your desk,” Jimmy said, as I entered Desert Investigations.
Still furious with myself for being taken in by Warren, I shuffled through the readouts. Somehow Jimmy had managed to access Sherwood’s cell phone records (illegal, yes, but show me a private eye who stays within legal limits and I’ll show you an inept private investigator). Within the past two months, Beth Osmon’s boyfriend had placed seventy-six calls to a number registered to Jack Rinn, in Hamilton, Alabama. I punched in the number and when a drawl-voiced woman answered, asked for Mr. Jack Rinn.
“I’m sorry, my husband’s in Phoenix on business.” She sounded young. Children chattered and laughed in the background.
Oh, Jack Rinn, you dog. “Ah, yes, Mrs. Rinn, I’m calling from Phoenix and I haven’t been able to reach him at his office. An emergency’s come up and I have to reach him within the next couple of hours or we’re…” Or we’re what? “Or we’re going to lose considerable money. I’ve lost his cell…”
Without any more prompting, Mrs. Rinn gave me Jack Rinn’s cell phone number, which just happened to be the same as Jack Sherwood’s. I thanked her and hung up.
There was little doubt that Rinn was Sherwood, and the alias meant that he was probably a grifter, after Beth Osmon’s money. When I called and told her, she sounded less than happy at the news. After ironing out the quaver in her voice, she said, “There could be an innocent explanation, Lena. Maybe Mr. Rinn is Jack’s cousin or something. You know those Southern families, they tend to do a lot of business together. It wouldn’t be odd at all for cousins to give each other’s phone numbers as emergency contacts. And the same first names run in families all the time. We…In my family, there are three Beths. We’re all named for the same great-aunt.”
Probably a great-aunt with money. “Anything’s possible.” I didn’t worry about her knee-jerk defense of the man. Women reacted that way all the time when first confronted with proof of their men’s infidelities. Once the news settled in, though, everything changed.
When she next spoke, her voice was firm. “I want you to find out exactly who Jack Rinn is. I don’t care if you have to fly to Alabama and interview his dog!”
That’s my girl. “It probably won’t be necessary. I’ll contact an Alabama private investigator I’ve dealt with in the past and have him take over from that end. With your approval, of course. It’ll cost you a lot less than paying me to fly out there.” Alabama was said to be particularly pretty in April, but so was Arizona and I had other cases here that needed my direct attention. Especially Rada Tesema’s.
“You have my approval to do whatever you need to do. Just get to the bottom of this.”
“Will do. And Beth?”
A sniffle. Now her emotions were swinging back the other way. That, too, was normal considering the circumstances. I felt like sniffling myself. “What?”
“Under no circumstances should you confront Mr. Sherwood about this. It could be dangerous.”
There was such a long pause on the other end of the phone that I thought I’d lost her. But at last she spoke. “I’m not stupid, Lena. Just in love.” Then she hung up.
Stupid. Love. Two different words for the same damned thing.
***
I’d barely finished giving Alabama PI Eddy Joe Hughey the details on the Sherwood/Rinn case when the other line rang.
“I’m sorry I missed you this morning, but there was a problem on the set that I had to see to.” Warren. “Did you get the flowers I sent?”
“They’re beautiful. Ah, we need to get together.” Although I’d told Beth not to indulge in any confrontation, I felt ripe for one of my own. I needed to keep it civilized, however, because the checks coming in from Living History Productions were more necessary than ever now that Jimmy was leaving. Besides, I’d only gone out with the man once, so whatever woman he wanted to mess around with in his trailer was none of my business. “Let’s get together this evening, if you have the time.” So you can hear my speech on the dangers of mixing business with pleasure.
The pleasure in his voice almost made me feel guilty. “I’ll pick you up at seven again. But let’s try a different place this time, bigger. There’s something…”
Something I want to tell you? No problem. I’m a big girl. I forced a laugh. “How about India Palace, on McDowell?” Bigger and brighter.
“I’ll make the reservations.”
When I hung up, I noticed Jimmy looking at me with pity.
Did I look as depressed as I felt?
***
Warren picked me up in his leased Range Rover on the dot of seven, and as we drove along McDowell Road where it wound its way through the Papago Buttes, he inserted a CD of Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik into the CD player. I would have preferred a little Hound Dog Taylor, but at least he wasn’t playing something as overt as Bolero. Considering the circumstances, that would have been unforgivable.
The Mozart little more than a cricket’s chirp in the background, I seized my chance to pump him for information before our relationship went south. “Warren, why aren’t you doing anything about the murder of Werner Dreschler in your film? That was quite the big case in its day, and there was a rumor that Erik Ernst was involved.”
“I know.”
His answer took me aback. “You knew?”
He stomped on the brake to avoid hitting a coyote that decided at the last minute to cross the road. As he accelerated again, he resumed the conversation as if nothing had happened. “Sure I knew. I do my research. The major problem is that if I attempted to tell the Werner Dreschler story, it would take over the whole documentary. One of the first things you learn in film school is focus, to not get so caught up i
n side issues that you lose the narrative thread. So I’m limiting Escape Across the Desert to the escape itself. But I’m already making notes to include the Dreschler case in my next film, the one I’m making about capital punishment. Did you know that the six POWs hanged for Dreschler’s murder were the victims of the last mass execution in the United States?”
No, I hadn’t known that, although if I had, I doubted if I would have used the word “victims” to describe the men, remembering that Dreschler had suffered scores of cigarette burns before the six POWs, possibly egged on by Das Kapitan, mercifully hanged him from a shower. But at least Warren had answered the question to my satisfaction.
When we arrived at India Palace, the turbaned maître d’ ushered us toward a small private dining room at the back. I’d planned a business discussion, not an intimate tête à tête, so I balked at the glass-beaded entrance, but Warren slipped his arm around my waist and hustled me through. “There’s someone I want you to meet.”
Sitting at a table waiting for us was the blond woman I’d briefly glimpsed at Warren’s trailer this morning, wearing a silk dress that probably cost more than my Jeep and who closely resembled the famous movie star Angelique Grey. The twin girls with her, who appeared to be around six years old, were her spitting image. The moment they spotted Warren, they gave twin squeals of “Daddy!” and ran toward him. Within seconds, he looked as if he’d been blown backward through a wind tunnel—collar askew, shirt-tail out of his pants, hair mussed.
Just like he’d looked when he emerged from the trailer this morning.
When he finally peeled the girls off him and sent them back to their seats, he repaired himself as best he could. “What a perfect evening, surrounded by beautiful women!” Then he introduced me to his ex-wife, who really was the famous Angelique Grey, and their two daughters, Star and Moon. Not quite knowing how to handle the situation, I gave everyone a weak smile.
