by J. A. Jance
I waved my thanks to the bartender with an apologetic shake of my head. "Some other time," I said, and followed Shorty out into the street. His truck was nowhere in sight.
"Who is it?" I asked, figuring that Calvin Crenshaw had changed his mind and was ready to call the sheriff's department.
"Joey Rothman's mother," Shorty said. "She wants to talk to you."
"Marsha? What does she want with me?"
"Not his stepmother," Shorty answered. "His real mother."
"Where did she come from?" I asked.
I knew vaguely that Joey Rothman's mother existed, but she had been conspicuously absent during Joey's family week.
"She drove down from Sedona this afternoon. She just got in a little while ago."
"Where's Sedona?"
"North of here, a hundred miles give or take. She tried coming down the Black Canyon Highway, but she had to backtrack and come around the other way because of the river."
Karen had told me about the kinds of pressure Ironwood Ranch personnel had exerted on her in order to get her and my kids to drive over from Cucamonga. If Joey's mother lived only a hundred miles away, how had she managed to resist the hard sell and stay away from Joey Rothman's family week?
"Where is she now?" I asked.
"I left her back at your motel and told her I'd come find you."
"Why?"
"Didn't figure she'd be able to pick you out in this crowd."
"But what does she want with me?"
Shorty shrugged. "Beats me. I just follow orders. Lucy told me to bring her to you, and that's what I'm doing."
A decrepit-looking, dark-colored Fiat 128 was parked in front of my unit at the Joshua Tree Motel. Shorty's looming pickup stood guard behind it.
"That's her," he said. "I'll leave you two alone to talk. I've got to get back home."
He hurried into the Ford and it turned over with its customary roar. Tentatively, I approached the Fiat and knocked on the driver's window. There was a lone woman sitting inside the car. She opened the window a crack.
"Are you Joey's roommate?" she asked.
"Yes," I answered. "My name's Beaumont. J. P. Beaumont."
"And you're the cop, right?"
"Yes."
"Will you help me?" I assumed she meant would I help her get out of the car. I reached for the door handle but the door was locked. She made no move to unlatch it.
"We can talk in my room if you want to, Mrs. Rothman."
"My name is Attwood," she corrected. "Rhonda Attwood. I took back my maiden name when I divorced Joey's father. But before I get out of the car, I want your answer, yes or no. Will you help me find the man who killed my son?"
"That's a police matter, ma'am," I said politely. "This isn't my jurisdiction. It's not my case."
"That's not what I heard."
She was peering up at me through the open crack of window with a look that was almost conspiratorial while the glow of the halogen streetlight behind her made a lavender halo of her lush blonde hair.
"Maybe you'd better tell me what you heard," I said guardedly. "This is all news to me."
"Joey said he thought you were a plant, a narc working undercover. I'm sure that's why he tried to kill you."
Women drive me crazy. They're forever trying to tell you things while leaving out vital details, those critical specifics that make what they're saying understandable.
"Why who tried to kill me? Lady, you're talking in circles."
"Joey, of course. My son. Who did you think? Ringo belonged to him, you know."
"I don't know anything of the kind," I responded irritably. "Besides, who the hell is Ringo?"
"The snake. Joey's rattlesnake. I ought to know. I lived in the same house with that damned thing long enough that I'd recognize Ringo anywhere, even in somebody else's glass jar a hundred miles from home."
Understanding dawned. Joey's snake.
"You're right," I said. "You'd better come inside. We need to talk."
"But will you help me?" she insisted. "I'm not getting out of the car unless I have your word of honor."
At that point, I would have agreed to almost anything. "Yes," I told her. "You have my word."
I reached down to take hold of the door handle, but Rhonda Attwood didn't wait long enough for me to prove myself a gentleman. She had already unlocked the door, opened it herself, and was getting out.
She straightened up and looked around uncertainly. She was a medium-sized woman, five-five or so, with a dynamite figure.
"Which is your room?" she asked.
"Right here. The one with the burned-out porch light."
She started toward the door. If she felt any concern about entering a strange man's motel room alone at night, it certainly didn't show. She paused on the unlit doorstep and waited for me.
I closed the car door behind her, first checking to be sure both doors were properly locked. They weren't, and so I locked them. After all, I'm from the big city.
She laughed at my precautions. "Thanks, but I'm sure the car would have been fine," Rhonda Attwood said, as I opened the door to let her in. "Nobody's going to bother stealing a broken-down old wreck like that."
Considering Ringo's unannounced presence in my room at Ironwood Ranch earlier in the day, potential car thieves were the least of my worries.
"Better safe than sorry," I murmured.
I glanced around the room nervously, trying not to appear too obvious about it, but checking for snakes just the same. Right about then I felt a certain kinship with the little old ladies in this world who are forever checking in their closets and under beds, searching for prowlers.
Maybe I was being paranoid, but I wanted nothing more at that moment than to be out of Arizona and back home in Seattle, where the rattlesnake population is exceedingly low.
And where Karen Moffit Beaumont Livingston can't make unscheduled surprise appearances.
CHAPTER 9
In terms of quality, the Joshua Tree Motel is a long way from, say, the Westin Bayshore, and I was embarrassed to show anyone, especially an unknown lady, into that dingy hovel of a room, but Rhonda Attwood appeared to be totally unaffected by the bleak surroundings. Without waiting to be invited, she settled herself at the spindly-legged kitchen table with its chipped and mottled gray Formica top.
Seeing her out of the car and in the light, I was startled by her uncanny resemblance to Marsha Rothman. At forty-one or so, Rhonda was a good ten years older than her husband's second wife, but they were both uncommonly attractive women-small-boned, narrow-shouldered, blue-eyed blondes with similarly delicate facial features and classic profiles. Both wore their hair in below-the-ear bobs, but Marsha's flawless honey blonde was courtesy of Lady Clairol herself. No hair dared wiggle out of place in Marsha Rothman's chiseled, precision cut. Rhonda's seemed more nonchalant, breezy, and genuine. The ash blonde was highlighted by marauding streaks of premature silver from Mother Nature's own paintbrush.
"What's the matter?" she asked, settling back against the ragged plastic-covered chair and regarding me curiously. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
"It's just that you're so much alike," I mumbled in confusion.
Her lips curled into a tight smile with just a hint of rancor. "You mean Marsha and me? You're not the first to mention it, and I don't suppose you'll be the last. JoJo Rothman never drew a faithful breath in his life, but he's certainly true to type."
"JoJo?" I asked.
"He goes by James now. He got rid of JoJo when he got rid of me. He always picks blue-eyed blondes, but I've got some bad news for Marsha Rothman. She's going to lose her gravy train. JoJo ditched me around the time I hit thirty. She'll reach that soon enough herself. He'll give her the slip then, too. Women age, you see. JoJo doesn't."
She paused for a moment, unabashedly meeting my gaze and giving me an opportunity to study her more closely. Everything about Rhonda Attwood seemed contradictory. Her skin glowed with a healthy, wholesome vitality that showed little
assistance from makeup of any kind. A softly feminine pink angora cardigan was worn over a garish Powdermilk Biscuit T-shirt and faded, belted jeans. Her feet were shod in much-used waffle-stomping hiking boots with thick leather thong laces.
A complex woman, I thought, internalizing the full paradoxical effect. Rhonda Attwood was pretty, not beautiful, but capable of making a stunning appearance. At the moment she simply chose not to.
"I don't believe you came here to tell me about your former husband's martial difficulties with his present wife," I said, tentatively, trying to bring her back to the subject at hand.
She nodded, allowing herself to be herded. "You're absolutely right, Mr. Beaumont. I came because I need your help. I came to talk to you about Joey. About my son, and, as I said outside, to ask for your help."
Until she spoke Joey Rothman's name aloud, there had been little outward evidence of the grieving mother about her. Her distress was muted and kept a firmly under control. People who succeed in not showing emotions under these circumstances come from the two opposite ends of the grieving spectrum. Either they genuinely don't care about what happened or they're afraid to show it for fear it will tear them apart.
"I'm sorry about what happened," I said, trying to smoke out which definition applied.
She looked at me appraisingly. "I suppose you think I ought to cry or something, don't you," she said.
"We're all different," I assured her. "No two people react in exactly the same way."
She nodded thoughtfully. "I'm sure most mothers do cry, but I can't anymore. You see, I used up all my tears years ago. Maybe Joey finally died last night, at least his body did, but he's been gone a long, long time. The only thing left for me to do is bury him. After that, I plan to get even."
Her voice was low and husky and deadly serious.
"Get even?" I asked, playing dumb. "What do you mean?"
"I think you know what I mean. Like in the Old Testament. An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. I'm going to find whoever did this to him, and I'm going to take them out."
Her words seemed totally at odds with a lady of her demeanor, but there was a chilling certainty about them, a dogged, unemotional resolve, that put me on edge. Determined women who decide to even scores scare hell out of me.
"That's a job for professional police officers," I cautioned.
Unblinking, she stared at me. For a scary moment or two I wondered if maybe that was why she had come looking for me. Maybe she was operating under the misapprehension that I was somehow personally responsible for her son's death. She had laid a narrow purse on the table in front of her. With tension tightening across my shoulders, I gauged how thick the bag was and wondered if it was big enough to hold a handgun. Unfortunately, the answer was yes.
"I had nothing to do with Joey's death," I said.
She arched one finely shaped eyebrow. "Oh? Convince me."
"Convince you of what? That I'm not a narc? That I'm a drunk, dammit, just like everybody else at Ironwood Ranch? We're all drunks or addicts, one way or the other. Believe me, I wasn't there on some kind of undercover assignment. I was there under protest, on doctor's orders."
"That's not what Joey thought," she countered.
"I don't give a damn what Joey thought. He was wrong."
"He said you didn't seem that sick to him, that you made his suppliers nervous."
"I made them nervous? That's a laugh. Why the hell would he tell you something like that?"
"He was afraid you'd do something that would blow the whole operation. He thought he might have to leave the state for a while until things blew over."
"But he wasn't afraid you'd turn him in," I suggested.
"Evidently not," she replied, but the piercing blue-eyed gaze never left my face.
"When did Joey tell you all this?"
"Last night," she said.
"What time?"
She paused before she answered, her blue-eyed gaze cool and assessing. When the answer came, it seemed as though she had reached a decision about me.
"Eleven o'clock maybe. It was fairly late, but I didn't notice the time exactly. He called to ask me for money and a place to stay after he got out."
"He asked you for money? How much?"
"Ten thousand dollars. He said he wanted to go somewhere and start over."
I whistled. "That's a lot. Did you agree to give it to him?"
"Are you kidding? I may have been his mother, but that doesn't make me stupid. I knew what my son was."
"And what was that?"
She smiled bitterly. "A liar and a cheat. A chip off the old block."
"You mean like his father?"
She nodded again. "JoJo uses people too. I'm sure Joey had absolutely on intention of starting over someplace else. Not really. That was a lie to see if I would bite. He would have used the money to bankroll himself into some other deal, and if he got caught again, I'm sure his father could have fixed it again."
"You mean the plea-bargained MIP?"
"That's right. His father's a big-time developer with lots of friends in high places."
"What exactly did they catch him doing?"
"When he got sent to Ironwood Ranch? I suppose he was dealing drugs, but I'm not sure. JoJo passes information along to me only on a need-to-know basis, and he doesn't think I need to know much."
"It doesn't sound like you approve of the plea arrangement."
"I don't," she returned coldly, "but no one bothered to ask my opinion. If my son really was a drug dealer, he should have been in jail, not at Ironwood Ranch. I know they call it a hospital, a treatment center, but it looks more like a resort to me."
I couldn't help feeling a certain grudging admiration for this tough-minded woman. In my experience, most mothers of punks opt for whatever plea bargains are available when their little boys get caught doing what they shouldn't. That made Rhonda Attwood a very unusual specimen. Mentally ticking off what I had learned so far, I went back to something she had said earlier, while we were still outside, her unflinching assumption that Joey had tried to kill me by turning his pet rattlesnake loose in or cabin. That too wasn't exactly standard mother-of-scumbag behavior.
"So you think Joey tried to kill me?"
"Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it was nothing more than a practical joke and he was only trying to scare you."
"It worked," I said grimly. "It scared hell out of me."
She laughed ruefully. "I know how you feel. Joey turned Ringo loose in my house once as well. It was a full week before I found him hiding behind the detergent in the laundry room. Joey claimed it was all a joke, that he wanted to see what I'd do."
"Nice kid," I interjected. "I'd have moved out of the house, or moved him out."
"I couldn't, at least not then. I tried to get him into counseling, though, but his father wouldn't hear of it. He said there was nothing wrong with him."
She closed her eyes and seemed to wander far away from the Joshua Tree Motel. I watched her for a moment, marveling once more at what a tough, remarkable woman she was. Eventually I dragged her back to the present.
"Supposing it wasn't a joke. Why would I have been the target?"
"I'm sure it was just like what he said on the phone. The suppliers thought you were a narc and they told him to get rid of you."
"Instead, someone got to him first."
Rhonda nodded pensively while a shadow of grief flitted briefly across her face, then her blue eyes hardened once more in the harsh light from the overhead fixture.
"You have to understand, Mr. Beaumont, Joey Rothman was my son, but I lost him years ago. I had to emotionally disassociate myself or be a party to my own destruction. No. I didn't promise him the money, and I told him he wasn't welcome to come live with me, either. I couldn't afford to be drawn into his machinations."
Hers was an odd perspective. She seemed to differentiate between her loss of Joey and his death. They were two separate and distinct occurrences. For some reason, his death hurt her less t
han whatever had happened years earlier, although the anguish in her voice was real enough.
"How did you lose him?" I asked, following her lead.
She shrugged hopelessly. "That question has plagued me for years. The divorce, I guess, although sometimes it seems like the trouble started well before that. At the time of the divorce, I couldn't take him, not in good conscience. I didn't have the money. I never would have been able to provide for him financially the way JoJo could-private schools, the swimming pool, his friends."
"Money isn't everything," I said.
"If you don't have any, it seems like it. If I had fought for it hard enough, the court probably would have ordered JoJo to pay child support, but collecting it would have been something else. It was easier to give in. By my letting his father have custody, Joey was able to have some continuity in his life, to stay in the same school system, have the same friends. It hurt like hell, but at the time I thought I was doing what was best for all concerned."
She paused and bit her lower lip. Talking about her divorce and losing custody still bothered her. She smiled sadly. "I wish you could have seen Joey when he was little, when he was smart and kind, both. He was only five when he rescued a Gila monster that came washing by on a piece of driftwood during a flash flood. I was standing on the bank and watched him do it. He managed to catch the branch as it floated by and drag it to high ground."
"A Gila monster?" I asked. "Aren't they just as dangerous as snakes?"
She laughed then. The memory of that experience seemed to ease her pain. "That one wasn't. It was so pale I thought it was dead, but Joey said it would be all right. And sure enough, after the sun warmed it and it dried out, it got up and wandered away.
"And that was the beginning of Joey's interest in snakes and lizards. He pored over books, begged us to take him to zoos and museums. He wanted to be a herpetologist when he grew up. A herpetologist or a writer. He caught Ringo that same year, up near our summer cabin in Pinetop. The snake was just a baby then. Joey dragged it home in a quart jar. I didn't find out until years later that it's illegal to keep snakes in captivity, but by the time I figured it out, it was too late. I didn't live there anymore. It was no longer any of my concern. Marsha said he could keep it."
