One Last Look

by Linda Lael Miller

  “Nothing,” I said, and averted my eyes.

  “Liar,” she replied.

  I glanced at the clock over the stove. Six-thirty. If I left then, I could swing by the supermarket and pick up a bouquet for Madge.

  Fifteen minutes later, as I was dashing out of the store with twelve pink gerbera daisies in a plastic sleeve, Sonterra’s cell phone rang.

  I fished it out of the side pocket of my purse, fumbling a little. What if it was the FBI, or a snitch, or somebody calling to report another dead body? “Chief Sonterra’s—office,” I said.

  Sonterra’s chuckle vibrated in my inner ear. “Interesting response,” he observed dryly. “What am I supposed to say if your phone rings? Clare’s Purse?”

  I unlocked the Hummer, tossed the daisies across to the passenger seat, and climbed in. Not as easy in a sundress as it was in my fat jeans, earlier in the day. “Have you got a location for Suzie? Did she call again?”

  When Sonterra answered, there was no trace of the chuckle he’d greeted me with. “One question at a time, Counselor. No and no. The satellite couldn’t pick up the signal—either the battery’s dead, or somebody destroyed the phone.”

  I rested my forehead against the steering wheel for a moment, almost convulsed with worry, dragging in breaths that seemed to go no deeper than my collarbone.

  “Clare?”

  “I’m okay,” I said.

  “Suzie’s alive, Clare. Keep that in mind. We’ll find her.”

  If I started crying, my mascara would run, and I’d look like a raccoon by the time I got to the Rathburns’ house. It was touch-and-go, just the same. “She’s so little—”

  “We’ll find her,” Sonterra repeated.

  “Where could she be?” I was thinking aloud. I knew Sonterra didn’t have the answer—if he had, Suzie would be safe. Her dad would be on his way from Bisbee to claim her.

  “Timmons figures she’s within a twenty-five-mile radius of Dry Creek,” Sonterra said. I could tell he didn’t like parting with the information, but he knew I was frantic, and he was cutting me a break. Score one for SuperCop.

  “How does he know that if there’s no signal?”

  “He checked with the provider, and they told him it was some kind of short-range, cheapo deal. You need a calling card to get long-distance minutes, and Doc Holliday didn’t have any on the books.”

  I frowned as I hooked up my seat belt and got the Hummer fired up and rolling. “Does that seem strange to you? A doctor with a cut-rate cellular plan?”

  Sonterra huffed out a sigh. Clearly, he was about to spill even more of the inside skinny, but he begrudged it. “The woman wasn’t rich, Clare. She had student loans up to her earlobes, and she ran a charity practice. All her credit cards were maxed.”

  I remembered what a bare-essentials kind of place Judy Holliday’s office had been. No receptionist. I hadn’t even seen a phone, let alone the usual high-tech equipment common to any medical practice. Like her place of business, her house was also small and modest, and very sparsely furnished.

  I recalled Esperanza remarking that Holliday had given her medication samples when her daughter, Maria, got sick. Obviously, she was an old-fashioned, caring kind of physician. Her loss was doubly tragic—the world needs more people like Judy, not fewer.

  “You’re still having dinner with the Rathburns, I suppose?” Sonterra asked.

  “You suppose correctly.”

  “Have a good time,” Sonterra said, sounding distracted. “I’ll see you at home later.”

  I nodded. “Call me if anything happens.”

  He hung up, making no promises.

  Fifteen

  T here were gnomes in the front yard of the Rathburns’ rambling pink stucco house, just as Deputy Dave had said. Testy-looking little buggers, garishly painted and fashioned of resin or plaster, standing an average of three feet tall, they seemed to be plotting a home invasion. I imagined them kicking in the door, storming over the threshold, demanding to know Sleeping Beauty’s exact whereabouts.

  Madge greeted me through the screen, smiling and sporting a cotton apron over a clone of the double-knit pantsuit she’d worn to Danielle’s book club meeting the night before. “Clare,” she said, sounding pleased as she raised the little metal hook to let me in.

  I handed over the gerberas. “I’m sorry Emma couldn’t come along,” I said. “She had homework.”

  “That’s all right,” Madge said. She didn’t seem like the same woman who’d driven me out into the desert to a murder scene and stood chain-smoking beside her car while I walked around. “Dave’s going to be late. He’s on a call.”

  Madge had turned her back on me, heading toward the kitchen, so I took the opportunity to look around. Early American furniture, the kind that was in style in the fifties. A fireplace, the mantel lined with framed photos of children, boys and girls, several of them missing their front teeth. A TV in the corner, muted, with a newscaster mouthing all the latest local, national, and global atrocities. Hand-crocheted throws neatly draped over chair backs.

  The scene was entirely normal, and yet it gave me an uneasy feeling. I could almost hear those gnomes murmuring in the front yard.

  I followed Madge into the kitchen, which was cheery and filled with the savory aroma of supper bubbling in the oven.

  “Have a seat,” she said, indicating the old-fashioned chrome dining set in the breakfast nook. The walls were covered with copper gelatin molds, in the shape of various farm animals, and the linoleum floor gleamed with fresh wax.

  I drew back a chair and sat down. Madge put the flowers into a vase and set them on the counter.

  “It’s a pity about poor Micki Post,” she said, stepping lively to the stove and opening the oven door to peer in at a huge casserole dish. The luscious smell intensified for a moment, steamy and inviting. “But, then, she’s always had a talent for picking bad men—except for the first one, that is, and of course that didn’t last. Before Bobby Ray, she was writing to some yahoo in the penitentiary. Iced tea?”

  I took a moment to negotiate the gap where the segue should have been. “Please,” I said.

  Madge took a pitcher from the fridge and poured tea into a tall glass with a cartoon character on the side. “There’s sugar and packets of artificial sweetener on the lazy Susan, right there behind the napkin holder,” she said, setting the drink down in front of me, along with a spoon, and bustling back to the counter, where a pile of salad makings waited on a chopping block.

  “I’m sorry the chief couldn’t join us,” she told me chattily.

  “He’s kind of busy,” I replied. There were no ashtrays in sight, and there was no tinge of cigarette smoke in the air. I figured Madge for a patio smoker.

  “Don’t I know it,” Madge said, sundering a lettuce head with one swift blow of her knife.

  I jumped slightly. “It was nice of you to invite us,” I prattled.

  Madge paused to smile at me, showing those purple gums again. “Nice of you to come,” she replied, and started whacking away at a pile of green onions. “I like to get to know new folks. Make them feel welcome.”

  Except for the menacing band of elves in the yard, the place was homey. Madge was homey. “I saw a lot of photographs on your mantel,” I said. “Your grandchildren?”

  She nodded, without looking my way, and her neck pinkened faintly, probably with pride. “Six of them. We don’t see them often, but the boys are good about sending pictures. Especially Dave, Jr., since he’s a photographer.”

  “It must be hard, having them live so far away.”

  Madge looked at me in mild surprise. “Dave, Jr. lives in Nogales, on the Arizona side, and Mark’s got himself a little air-conditioning repair business in Tucson.”

  Since she’d said she didn’t see the grandkids on a regular basis, I’d assumed her family resided in distant states. Nogales, like Tucson, was within easy driving distance of Dry Creek.

  Madge sighed, fumbled in her apron pocket and pulled ou
t a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. “Let’s step out onto the patio,” she said, and headed for the back door.

  I followed, iced tea in hand, sensing she was about to share a confidence, and, oddly, wishing I didn’t have to hear it.

  “Dave was too hard on those boys,” Madge said, lighting up, inhaling, and puffing smoke out of her nostrils. There went the Happy Homemaker image. “Neither one of them will set foot in this house unless they know he’s out of town.”

  How do you respond to something like that?

  “I’m sorry,” I said. It was a sincere statement, but lame.

  “Me, too,” Madge answered, and there was bitterness in her voice and in her manner. She dragged in another load of tar and nicotine.

  “You’re not saying Dave abused your sons, are you?” I ventured. Sometimes I know when to keep my mouth shut. Then there are the other twenty-three-and-a-half hours of the day.

  “Took a belt to them on a regular basis, until I sicced Oz Gilbride on him for it. Oz straightened him right out.” She sighed out more smoke. “Just the same, once Dave, Jr. and Mark left here, they stayed scarce.”

  I’d been in a ton of foster homes in my life, and in a few of them, the volunteer parents had been more interested in the monthly check from the state than helping out a troubled kid. Still, in all that time, no one had ever laid an angry hand on me—not even my raving drunk of a mother.

  My expression must have been bleak.

  Madge summoned up an apologetic smile. “I don’t know why I told you all that,” she said with a shake of her head. “It’s ancient history. Nothing to do with right now. And I wanted you to think well of me, too.”

  “Of course I think well of you,” I protested. “It wasn’t your fault—”

  “It was,” Madge insisted, grim again. I pictured her joining forces with the gnomes, trashing the house, and hitting the road. “I should have stopped him sooner. I should have left his sorry ass.”

  “Madge, did Dave—does he—?”

  “Hit me?” Madge finished my sentence just as a car door slammed in front of the house. “That would make him look bad, wouldn’t it?” She bent over a planter and snuffed out the cigarette hastily, not expecting an answer. “Best get supper on,” she said, and headed back inside.

  I hesitated, then went in behind her.

  Dave stood in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room, still in his uniform. “I told the chief he ought to join us,” he boomed jovially. “But he’s locked away in the back office with that federal agent.”

  I was looking at the present-day Dave, but I saw his younger, angrier, belt-wielding self. Goose bumps spilled down my arms.

  Madge, meanwhile, opened the fridge and brought out a can of cold beer. She didn’t just hand it to her husband, she popped the top, got a chilled mug from the freezer, poured the suds, and carried it to him.

  Dave took the beer without a thank-you, and his gaze never left my face. I’d have given a lot to know what he was thinking, and it’s a safe bet that the reverse was true. There was a shrewdness in his eyes that I’d never noticed before.

  “Supper’s just about ready,” Madge said.

  “Why’s that TV on in there?” Dave asked his wife, finally looking away. I felt like a captured butterfly with the pins just pulled from its wings. Inwardly, I flapped a little, ready to fly. “Nobody’s even watching it.”

  “I was watching it,” Madge told him evenly. “Then Mark called, so I turned down the sound.”

  Dave focused on me again, shaking his head. His hair was creased, sweaty and limp where his hat brim had rested. “The woman’s never paid an electric bill in her life,” he said in a tone that made us buddies, even collaborators.

  Inside, I was seething. Outside, I smiled.

  Madge banged some plates onto the table, served up the food, and we all sat down. I still didn’t have an appetite, but I was going to have to eat.

  I started with salad, and Madge chattered on about Danielle’s book club, and how relieved she was not to have to read another Oprah pick, since they never seemed to have a happy ending. Dave sat there like a lump, shoveling in food, and I watched him out of the corner of my eye.

  At Sonterra’s swearing-in, he’d seemed friendly enough.

  He’d behaved in a downright gentlemanly manner, the night before, squiring Emma and me home from the cemetery in his squad car, after Micki’s body was discovered, reminding us to lock the door as soon as we were inside.

  Yes, he’d shown an antipathy for Sonterra, but I’d thought that was natural, and entirely human, given that he’d probably hoped to land the chief’s job himself.

  Obviously, there was another side to Deputy Dave.

  My inclination was to tell him I thought he was three kinds of an SOB, but I was afraid he’d take it out on Madge after I left, so I kept my opinion to myself.

  The spaghetti concoction was delicious, even if it did wad up in a ball in the pit of my stomach, like so much wood putty. Madge had made lemon chiffon pie for dessert, and I coveted it, but I knew it wouldn’t go down. Remarking upon my modest appetite—I couldn’t wait to share that one with Sonterra, along with my modified opinion of Deputy Dave—Madge cut three generous slices and popped them into a large plastic container.

  “You can take these home with you,” she said.

  We cleared the table and loaded the dishwasher together, while Dave sat at the table, consuming a second piece of pie. I thanked them and made a graceful exit, and the minute I was outside, Sonterra’s cell phone rang.

  On the porch, I took the phone out and answered with a circumspect, “Yes?”

  I didn’t recognize the voice. “Is this Chief Sonterra’s line?” a man asked.

  “Yes,” I repeated.

  “Put him on,” the caller snapped.

  I started down the walk, casting one glance back over my shoulder to confirm an intuitive hit. Sure enough, Deputy Dave was watching me through the screen door, and he was scowling.

  “Hello?” barked the grouch on the other end of the line.

  “Who is this?” I whispered, hightailing it through the gnome horde for the Hummer. Somehow, purse, pie, and all, I got the door open and climbed inside.

  I looked toward the house again, before starting the ignition. The squad car was parked in the driveway, and Dave was still watching me through the screen. By comparison, the gnomes looked friendlier.

  “I beg your pardon? I called Sonterra’s number, and I got you, whoever the hell you are. And you’re asking me who I am?”

  “There is no need to be rude,” I said, cranking on the engine. “And I asked you first.”

  The caller swore and hung up with a crash that could be managed only on a landline. I certainly hoped he hadn’t been calling to report a crime in progress.

  Hell, if there was a crime, he was probably the perpetrator.

  I keyed in my own cell number to relay word of a possible problem.

  Sonterra answered in an urgent undertone.

  I broke the bad news. “It’s me,” I said.

  Sonterra swore.

  “I love you, too,” I told him peevishly. “And I only wanted to tell you that some misogynist just called, looking for you. He wouldn’t give his name.”

  “Great,” Sonterra said. “That’s just great.”

  I frowned, maneuvering through the streets of Dry Creek, clipping the occasional curb. Those Hummers are big suckers, hard to drive with one hand. “Is there a problem?”

  Sonterra was hardly more polite than Caller Number One. “Go home, Clare. If the guy calls again, give him this number.”

  I was in no mood to take orders, especially after a dose of Deputy Dave. “Whoever he is, his phone manners suck.”

  “So do yours. Go home.”

  “Sonterra—”

  He hung up. I stared at the phone, affronted, until I almost took out a fire hydrant, then tossed the cell onto the passenger seat.

  I decided to cruise by the cop sho
p and give Sonterra back his stupid phone, along with a piece of my mind, but when I got there, the lot was empty, except for a single Crown Vic—Jesse’s, no doubt.

  Conclusion: Sonterra was in the field, which probably meant that one, they’d gotten a lead on Suzie, or two, there had been yet another crime committed in our sleepy little town.

  The cell chirped. I retrieved it.

  “Hello!” I yelled.

  “Let’s try this again,” said the stranger.

  Sixteen

  I still wanted to grill the mystery caller, but I refrained. Sonterra hadn’t actually said the guy was involved in the investigation of Suzie’s disappearance, but I’d jumped on the clue train just as the last car passed. I rattled off my cell phone number and said he could reach the chief there.

  “Thanks,” was the terse response. The call disconnected just as I pulled into the driveway at home.

  “You’re so freaking welcome,” I said into empty space.

  Juggling the pie and my purse, I got out of the Hummer, locked it with the push button, and headed for the house.

  When the dogs didn’t rush to greet me the moment I opened the front door, I was instantly alarmed.

  All the lights were on, and Sonterra’s big-screen was tuned to MTV, but there was no sign of my niece.

  My skin prickled. “Emma?”

  I heard a faint but ominous woof in the distance, attributed it to Waldo, and tracked the sound to the kitchen, where Emma’s homework lay forgotten on the table. The basement door stood ajar.

  I called Emma’s name again, louder this time.

  “Come down here—please.” Her voice echoed off the cinder-block walls of the basement, and there was an urgent note to it, but I was so relieved to get a reply that I didn’t immediately register her tone.

  I set the plastic food container and my bag on the table and started down the basement steps. The dank, musty odor common to underground rooms, which are rare in Arizona, rose to meet me. Bernice came halfway up, yapping a belated welcome.

  Because of the angle of the stairway, I couldn’t see my niece until I was all the way down. She knelt on the concrete floor, peering into one of those odd little doors in the lower part of the wall, presumably opening onto a crawl space. A flashlight glowed, forgotten, in her right hand.