Minor in possession jpb-8

by J. A. Jance

  "I heard you mention at breakfast that you hadn't slept well last night, Beau. Is there any specific problem you'd like to discuss with the group?"

  Like hell I was going to discuss it with the whole group. "Not really," I replied as nonchalantly as possible. "I was waiting up to talk with Joey, but he never came in."

  Kelly swung her head around and stared at me in disbelief. "Why don't you tell them the truth, Daddy?" she blurted passionately. "Why don't you tell them that you were mad at Joey because he's a really awesome guy? You caught us kissing and jumped to all kinds of terrible conclusions. You acted like I was a stupid two-year-old or something. I've never been so embarrassed in my whole life." With that, she burst into tears.

  Her frontal attack left me with no line of retreat. Everyone looked at me. Glared is more like it. I felt like I was totally alone, standing naked at center stage under the glare of an immense spotlight with every flaw and defect fully exposed. I waited, hoping a hole would open in the floor and swallow me, but just when I was at my lowest ebb, help came from a totally unexpected quarter.

  Scott, sitting on the other side of Kelly, leaned back in his chair far enough to catch my eye behind the back of his sister's head. He winked at me as if to say "It's okay, Pop. I've seen these kinds of fireworks before. Hang on; it'll pass."

  For the first time in years, I could feel that ineffable bond of kinship flowing back and forth between my son and me. It lanced across the room like a ray of brilliant sunshine, giving me something to cling to, putting a lump in my throat.

  "Is that true, Beau?" Burton Joe asked.

  That blinding sense of renewed connection with Scott left me too choked up to answer. I nodded helplessly. Misreading the cause of my emotional turmoil, Burton Joe nodded too, an understanding, encouraging nod. As far as he was concerned, my uncontrolled show of emotion demonstrated a sudden breakthrough in treatment.

  "Just go with it," Burton Joe said solicitously. "Let it flow."

  Other words of reassurance and support came from around the circle. Ed Sample, sitting next to me, gave the top of my thigh a comforting, open-handed whack. I couldn't explain to any of them what had really happened. Talking about it would have trivialized it somehow, when all I really wanted to do was grab Scott in my arms and crush him against my chest. But that didn't happen, either.

  The outside door opened. Everyone shifted slightly in their seats, disturbed by the sudden intrusion into the privacy of the session. This time, instead of Nina or Louise Crenshaw, Calvin Crenshaw himself stood in the doorway.

  "Sorry to disturb you, Burton," he said slowly, "but I need to speak to Mr. Beaumont."

  Burton Joe nodded. "All right," he said. "You can go, Beau."

  We were all used to Louise popping in and out, but for Calvin Crenshaw to interrupt a group was unusual to begin with. Beyond that, and despite an apparent effort to maintain control, it was clear to me that something was dreadfully wrong. Calvin Crenshaw's complexion was generally on the florid side. Now his skin was livid-his cheeks a pasty shade of gray and his full lips white instead of pink.

  I got up quickly and followed him from the room. I waited until he had closed the door to the portable before I spoke.

  "What's wrong?" I asked.

  Before the session started, I had been ready to tear into the deputy for putting me off, for not calling me in to talk to him as soon as he arrived at Ironwood Ranch, but the emotional roller-coaster of the past few minutes had left me hollow and drained. I didn't want to fight anymore, but I did want to know what was going on. Calvin didn't answer right away. He seemed to be having some difficulty in making his lips work.

  "Where's the deputy?" I asked. "I know he showed up, but I still haven't seen him."

  "Up there," Calvin croaked, waving his hand vaguely in the direction of the path that detoured around the ranch house and led up to the parking lot. He swallowed then, as if recovering control of his voice. "Where are your car keys, Mr. Beaumont?" he asked.

  "Excuse me?"

  "Your car keys. Where are they?"

  Something about the way he spoke, the timbre of his voice as he asked the question, put my interior warning system on yellow alert. "Why do you want to know?"

  "Just tell me."

  "They're not in my desk," I said, stalling for time, hoping for a hint of what was really behind the question.

  Through the four weeks Calvin Crenshaw had come across as a fairly easygoing guy. He seemed content to linger in the background while Louise hogged center stage. Not everybody would have caught the slight grimace of impatience that flashed across his face in reaction to my answer. I could see in his face that Calvin Crenshaw already knew that the keys to the rented Grand AM weren't in my desk. Someone had already looked.

  "What were you doing in my room?" I demanded.

  Calvin turned to walk away, but not before I caught the giveaway blink of his eye that told me I was right. There was something else there as well, a hardened line of resistance that I had never seen before. He started up the path, but I strode after him and caught him by the arm.

  "Look, Calvin, I asked you a question."

  "Go talk to the deputy," he replied. "He's waiting for you in the parking lot. I hope you have the keys with you."

  Saying that, he shook off my restraining hand and hurried away. For a moment I stood there watching him go, then I did as I was told, heading up to the parking lot with the car keys in my pocket. Unwilling to give Joey Rothman another chance at making a damn fool out of me, I had carried them with me when I left the cabin.

  Once I reached the parking lot I saw a lanky man wearing a khaki uniform and a wide-brimmed hat standing next to my rental.

  "You Detective Beaumont?" he asked as I approached.

  I nodded. No one at Ironwood Ranch had called me Detective since my arrival four weeks before. For reasons of personal privacy, I had played down the police officer part of my life as much as possible. As I came closer I noticed that the leather snap on his holster had been loosened. He held one arm away from his body in a stance that would allow immediate access to the handle of his weapon. His bronze-plated name tag said Deputy M. Hanson. He studied me appraisingly for a moment or two and then relaxed a little.

  "What seems to be the problem?" I asked.

  "Is this your vehicle?"

  "Not mine. Rented, yes."

  "Mind opening it up?"

  "Not at all, but what seems to be the problem?"

  "Let me ask the questions, please, Detective Beaumont. Unlock the door and then step away from the vehicle."

  I did as I was told. As soon as I turned the key in the lock, Hanson pulled a penknife from his pocket and gingerly lifted the latch. When the door swung open, he leaned inside, carefully examining the floor mats of both the front and back seats. When he was finished, Hanson straightened up and stepped away from the car, studying me carefully.

  "Did you disturb the vehicle in any way when you found it here in the lot this morning?" he asked.

  "I got in it," I said. "On the driver's side. The keys had been left in the ignition. I took them out and put them in my pocket."

  "Did you touch anything else?"

  "I unlocked the glove box to check the rental agreement. I wanted to see how far the car had been driven. What exactly is going on here?" I asked, exasperated. "I call to report a car prowl. You turn up three hours later and act as though the case has suddenly turned into a major crime and I'm somehow at fault for stealing my own car."

  "It has turned into a major crime, as you call it," Deputy Hanson said seriously. "It's my understanding that you believe your roommate, Joseph Rothman, took your vehicle, drove it?"

  "Joey. That's correct. I left the keys in my desk drawer. He must have lifted them from there."

  Hanson nodded. "That could be," he said "We'll have to check all that out later. In the meantime, I'll have to impound this vehicle. I'll need you to ride along up to Prescott with me after a bit. We'll need your fingerprints." />
  "Impound my car! Take my prints! What the hell are you talking about? I tell you, I didn't steal my own damn car!"

  Hanson looked at me first with a puzzled frown and then with dawning awareness. "I'm sorry. I thought you'd been told."

  "I haven't been told a goddamned thing except to get my butt up here and bring my car keys along."

  "Your roommate is dead, Detective Beaumont."

  That stopped me cold. "Dead?" I repeated.

  "That's right. A rancher just up the road found the body hung up on a mesquite tree along the bank of the river about six-fifteen this morning. That's why I'm so late getting here. It was right on the boundary, so it took a while to figure out if the body was found in Maricopa or Yavapai County. The line runs right through Don Freeman's ranch. Don's an old geezer, ninety-one if he's a day. He got all confused and thought it was on the Maricopa side. Then, when Mrs. Crenshaw called to report one of her residents missing, we started putting two and two together."

  The news staggered me. Joey Rothman dead? A parade of one-word questions, detective questions, zinged through my head like so many bouncing Ping-Pong balls in a lottery bottle: How? When? Who? Where?

  "You said they pulled him out of the water. Drowned?"

  Deputy Mike Hanson shook his head. "Nope."

  "What then?" I demanded, feeling a clammy sinking in my gut, remembering the acrid odor of burnt gunpowder in the car when I opened the glove box of the Grand AM at four-thirty in the morning, the smell that had told me the Smith and Wesson had been fired sometime within the previous few hours, to say nothing of the two missing rounds.

  "You can tell me," I insisted. "I'm a homicide cop."

  "Not here you're not," Hanson replied decisively.

  He didn't add that here in this god-forsaken corner of Nowhere, Arizona, I was just another one of the suspects. Hanson didn't have to say it, because I already knew it was true.

  Desperately my mind swung back and forth as I tried to decide on the best path to follow, given the incriminating circumstances. It seemed as though I'd be better off making full disclosure right away than I would be letting Deputy Hanson find out about the gun later-the recently fired gun with my fingerprints on it and hopefully the killer's as well. If I told Hanson first, it might look a little less as though I was withholding information.

  "Deputy Hanson," I said quietly, "you should probably know that my departmental issue. 38 is locked in the glove box."

  The startled look on Deputy Hanson's face confirmed my worst suspicions. Joey Rothman hadn't drowned. Somebody had plugged him. And I knew with dead certainty that the murder weapon had to be my very own Smith and Wesson.

  Just then I heard the sound of laughter and approaching voices. Finished with the Round Robins, early morning Group had broken up. Family members from my session and others were on their way to an outlying portable, this one a new addition across the parking lot. The group had to pass down the aisle directly in front of where Deputy Hanson and I were standing.

  Several people gave us curious glances as they went by. Kelly walked past without acknowledging my existence. Karen nodded but didn't stop. Scott walked past but then turned and came back, frowning.

  "Dad, is something wrong?"

  "No," I said quickly. "I'm fine. It's nothing."

  Scott smiled. "Good," he said. He started away again, but stopped once more. "I just wanted to tell you in there that it's all right. Kelly's a spoiled brat. She carries on like that all the time, and Dave and Mom let her get away with it. You know how it works."

  "Yeah," I said. "I know."

  "And I…" Scott paused.

  "You what?"

  "I just wanted to tell you that I love you," he said.

  The lump returned to my throat. I grabbed Scott then, right there in the parking lot with a puzzled Deputy Hanson looking on, and held him tightly against me, feeling his strong young body next to mine, marveling at how tall my little boy had grown, how well built and capable.

  "I needed that, Scotty," I said at last, when I could talk again. "You've no idea how badly I needed that."

  CHAPTER 5

  Despite the extraordinary circumstances, Louise Crenshaw sent word through her secretary that I was to return to Group until the sheriff's department investigators were ready to speak to me. Deputy Hanson reluctantly agreed to let me leave the parking lot only after cautioning me not to mention Joey Rothman's death to anyone at all until after a decision had been made on an official announcement.

  Bearing that in mind, I returned to our portable where Burton Joe was leading the client group through a meandering discussion about denial and its impact on a dysfunctional, chemically dependent families. The bottom line revolved around the catch-22 that denying you have the disease of alcoholism is in and of itself a symptom of the disease. Naturally, until you admit you have a problem, you can't fix the problem. According to Burton Joe, breaking through denial is a major step on the road to recovery.

  I've heard it before, and I must confess I didn't pay very close attention during the remainder of the morning. My mind wandered. There was no denying I had a problem all right. Regardless of the fact that the weapon belonged to me, the presence of my fingerprints as the most recent prints on a possible murder weapon clearly posed a very touchy problem, one that had nothing to do with alcoholism or liver disease, although I'd say that in terms of potential for long-term damage it rivals either one.

  I could feel myself being sucked inevitably into the vortex of circumstances surrounding Joey Rothman's death. If any homicide cop worth his salt started asking questions, it wouldn't take much effort to discover that J. P. Beaumont had both motive and opportunity. I took small comfort from the fact that all the circumstantial evidence pointing at me also pointed at Lieutenant Colonel Guy Owens. (In the course of the long night and longer morning, his official title and rank had surfaced in my memory.) Whatever fatherly motive I might have had, Owens had more. In spades. Kelly Beaumont wasn't pregnant. Michelle Owens was.

  Blocking out Burton Joe's psycho-babble, I wondered about the official time of death. Lacking that critical piece of information, I couldn't assess exactly how much trouble I was in. If the coroner happened to declare that the murder occurred while Guy Owens and I were together in the cabin, then life would be good. Each of us could provide the other with an airtight alibi.

  But if Joey Rothman died later than that, I thought uneasily, if the autopsy indicated that the crime occurred sometime after Guy Owens left my cabin and before I went to see Lucy Washington and to report the problem with my car, that would be a white horse of a different color.

  Around eleven o'clock, Nina Davis came to the door of the portable and crooked a summoning finger in my direction. Annoyed at the barrage of unexplained interruptions, Burton Joe nonetheless nodded that I could go. I followed Nina out the door wondering why Louise had once more sent her secretary instead of coming herself. This was exactly the kind of one-woman show Louise did so well, playing the part of a grande dame puppet master, jerking the strings of anyone dumb enough to let her.

  But even outside, Louise Crenshaw was nowhere in sight. Instead, waiting on the path was an attractive Mexican-American woman in her mid-thirties. Nina Davis introduced her as Yavapai County Sheriff's Detective Delcia Reyes-Gonzales.

  I've survived a good portion of my career in the fuzzy world of affirmative action. Years of departmental consciousness-raising seminars have taught me better manners than to call women girls, especially not the ladies who make their way up through the law enforcement ranks and land on their feet in detective divisions.

  The female detectives with the Seattle police are women who definitely carry their own weight. Although I can't say the trail-blazers have always been welcomed with open arms, they've done all right for themselves and for the department as well, because the ones who really make it in a man's world, quotas notwithstanding, have to be smart and capable both.

  Detective Delcia Reyes-Gonzales seemed to qual
ify on both counts. She was only about five six, slim and olive-skinned, but I sensed tensile strength packed in that slender body. Lustrous ebony curls were pulled away from her face while silver earrings dangled from each delicate earlobe. She was far and away the prettiest and most exotic detective I've ever seen, but there was nothing frivolous about her dignified carriage. Her brown eyes sparkled with intelligence and purpose.

  Delcia Reyes-Gonzales inclined her head and held out her hand, acknowledging Nina's introduction. She smiled slightly, revealing a row of straight white teeth.

  "Sorry to disturb your session," she said. "Hopefully this won't take too long."

  "No problem," I replied. "I was getting a little antsy in there. Can I do anything to help?"

  "We'd like to go through your cabin, if you don't mind, since it belonged to you as well as the deceased. We'll need to search your vehicle as well since presumably he was in it shortly before he died.

  "I have someone standing by in Prescott ready to obtain search warrants if necessary, but that will take several hours. In the meantime, I have a Consent-to-Search form here. If you'd be so good as to sign that, it would certainly speed things up."

  "I don't mind at all," I said. "Hand it over."

  The detective withdrew the consent form from a maroon leather briefcase and handed it to me. Using the case as a writing surface, I signed the paper on the spot.

  "I suppose you've already called in a crime scene team," I commented, passing the signed paper back to her.

  Detective Reyes-Gonzales shook her head. "We do our own crime scene work," she replied, "although the state crime lab in Phoenix does the actual analysis. This way, please, Detective Beaumont. We're to use Mrs. Crenshaw's office. Mr. Crenshaw will be making the official announcement as soon as people come to the dining hall for lunch."

  In the course of the morning a new bank of lowering clouds had blown in from the west. Now it began sprinkling in earnest. Walking briskly through the spattering rain, Detective Reyes-Gonzales led the way up the path to the main building, through the deserted dining room, and down the tiled hallway to Louise Crenshaw's office. She opened the door without knocking and motioned me into a chair before pausing to speak briefly to someone who had followed us down the hall. Finished with that, Detective Reyes-Gonzales closed the door firmly behind her, then settled herself easily into Louise Crenshaw's executive chair.