Minor in possession jpb-8

by J. A. Jance

  "Delcia?" I asked, uncertainly, feeling more and more like an outsider with every passing moment.

  "You know, Delcia. Detective Reyes-Gonzales in Prescott. I talked to her early this afternoon. She said that she didn't have a problem with Rhonda inviting Michelle to the funeral."

  "What the hell do you think you're doing, messing around in a homicide investigation like that?"

  "We're not messing around in any investigation, Beau," Ames countered. "Inviting Michelle Owens to attend Joey Rothman's funeral has nothing whatsoever to do with his murder. Is she going to come, by the way?" he asked, turning to Rhonda.

  "If she can," Rhonda replied. "At least that's what she told me on the phone. She seemed touched that I had bothered to call. According to her, she hasn't heard a word from JoJo and Marsha. I don't expect she will, either."

  My brief warning to Ames on the way into the restaurant hadn't included Rhonda Attwood's exact words about intending to "take out" the people responsible for her son's death, so he wasn't playing with an entirely full deck, but I was still astounded at the conversation shifting back and forth across the table between them.

  I had the sickening feeling that Ralph Ames was being royally suckered, neatly led into the trap, and there I sat, watching but helpless to derail the process. Sentence by sentence Rhonda Attwood deftly plied him for information, asking innocent-sounding questions that drew him further and further into what I saw as her own private vigilante agenda.

  It galled me to watch Ralph Ames, my trusty, sophisticated, man-of-the-world attorney who should have known better, be led like a lamb to the slaughter, smiling and laughing all the while. After all, it wasn't the first time. For either one of us.

  "What about Michelle's father?" I asked ingenuously. I folded my arms across my chest and waited to see how Rhonda would respond to that one.

  "He wasn't invited," she responded carefully.

  "I'll just bet he wasn't."

  There was a sudden flash of anger in Rhonda Attwood's eyes, one that wasn't masked by the flattering candlelight. "What's that supposed to mean?" she demanded.

  Our waiter reappeared as if on cue. It seemed like a deliberate plot. "Are you ready now?" he asked.

  Together, Ralph and Rhonda settled for something that roughly translated into mesquite grilled rack of lamb seasoned with thyme and garlic and served with jalapeno jelly and a still-burning sprig of rosemary. I ordered the Cornish game hen. Ralph insisted that we each try one of the appetizers-the tamales, cucumber soup, and red and yellow bell pepper soup.

  The food was fine, but I would have enjoyed the dinner a whole lot more if I could have eaten without the sense that the artistic bullshit that passed for conversation around our table was nothing but a convenient camouflage for Rhonda Attwood's keg of emotional dynamite.

  The fuse was already lit. The best I could hope for was to keep it from blowing sky-high and taking an unsuspecting Ralph Ames right along with it.

  CHAPTER 12

  While Rhonda and Ralph continued to talk about art and things artistic, I contented myself with people watching. The dining room grew crowded and noisy with fashion-plate people, including several who were evidently deeply entrenched in city politics. The women, dressed to the nines, were there to see and be seen. The men were there because the women were.

  Our table afforded me an almost unobstructed view of the small grill area where no fewer than six men dove back and forth in a complicated ballet that was almost comic to watch although I have no quarrel with the quality of the food that ultimately ended up on our platter-sized plates.

  Dessert, an unpronounceable creme brulee, consisted of three flavors of custard served in sweet miniature taco shells and topped with a rich raspberry sauce. Ames must have cued someone about my birthday, because my chocolate-glazed plate arrived with a lit candle stuck right in the middle of one of my custards. Thank God they didn't light all the candles I deserved.

  I kept waiting for Rhonda to steer the conversation back to her son's murder, but that didn't happen, nor was there any further reference to plans for Joey's funeral. Two and a half hours after we had been seated, we were waiting outside for the valet to retrieve our cars. He brought the Fiat first. As Rhonda was getting in, she turned back to Ralph.

  "Thank you for getting me the room," she said, almost as an afterthought. "It's so convenient, but…"

  If she was going to voice an objection, Ralph waved it away. "Don't worry about it. It's my pleasure."

  "What room?" I asked, once Rhonda had roared out of the parking lot past a waist-high sign that through some inexplicable coincidence said "Beaumont Properties."

  "At La Posada," Ralph said. "The manager and I are good friends. We trade favors back and forth all the time. It's just up the street from the church. I told her to stay there until after the funeral."

  The drive to Sky Harbor in Ames' Lincoln was thorny. When I tried to recap some of what Rhonda had told me the night before, Ralph listened politely enough. When I finished, he brushed aside my concerns, telling me I was completely off base, out of my head. When I hinted that he might be losing his objectivity in regard to Rhonda Attwood, he came as close as Ralph Ames ever comes to losing his cool.

  "Look," he said finally, sounding somewhat annoyed. "I appreciate your concern, Beau, but give me a little more credit than that. Right now Rhonda Attwood is a woman beset by numerous legal difficulties. She also happens to be a gifted artist whose work I've admired for some time. Certainly I jumped at the chance to be of service, but just because I've decided to help her, don't assume there's a whole underlying agenda for either one of us, because there isn't."

  "So you're not interested in her personally?"

  "Professionally, not personally."

  "And you're not worried that she might try to draw you into the fray?"

  "I don't believe there's going to be any ‘fray,' as you put it, but I'll take your warning under advisement."

  That was the best I could do.

  At the Alamo office near the airport, Ames started to park and come inside with me, but I told him not to bother, that wouldn't be necessary. Promising to see him at home, I trudged into the office prepared to face down the folks at the rental desk. They treated me with an air of less than cordial distrust, regarding me as an auto-renting leper who, however inadvertently, had managed to involve one of their precious Grand AMs in a homicide investigation.

  A supervisor, not the same one I had talked to earlier on the phone, was summoned from a back room. She subjected me to a lengthy and public lecture on my general automotive character and deportment. The lecture concluded with a recitation of rental agreement no-nos, the strongest of which was a forcefully worded prohibition against taking my Subaru anywhere into the wilds of Old Mexico. I received my keys only after promising, cross my heart, that I had no such evil intention.

  Relieved to escape the office, I retreated to the welcome solitude of the Subaru, even though, compared to the luxury of Ames' Lincoln with its car phone and liquid-crystal dashboard instrumentation or to my own Porsche, the modest four-wheel-drive station wagon represented a big step downward. It seemed gangly and awkward, but it still beat walking.

  As I left the airport area, my first inclination was to drive directly back to Ralph's place, but by the second stoplight, I rethought that plan. I had slept away most of the day, and it was far too early for bed. I certainly didn't want to resume my non-conversation with Ralph Ames regarding Rhonda Attwood's questionable intentions.

  My second inclination was to turn in at the very next HAPPY HOUR sign on the right-hand side of the street and buy myself a drink, a double, but the place turned out to be a topless joint in an exceedingly marginal neighborhood. Repelled, I kept on driving. Besides, did I really want to stop there with the dust of Ironwood Ranch still sticking to the heels of my shoes? That thought brought me abruptly back to the business with Calvin and Louise Crenshaw.

  According to Ames, Louise herself was spreading the
story that the snake in my cabin had somehow wandered in from the wild. She was, was she? Maybe it was time to see about that.

  I glanced at my watch and saw that it was only nine o'clock, still plenty of time to drive the seventy miles or so to Wickenburg and beard the lions in their cozy ranch-style den. With any kind of luck, I'd manage to see both of them at once. I turned left at the next intersection and headed west on McDowell, a major east-west arterial, figuring correctly that eventually I'd run into Interstate 17 headed north.

  By ten-fifteen, I was parked in front of the Crenshaws' one-level rambler, where both the porch light and several interior lights were on. The flickering glow of a television set told me someone was home. I rang the bell.

  Calvin, clad in a bathrobe and floppy slippers and wearing a sleepy yellow tabby cat draped across one shoulder, came to the door. He opened it and frowned when he saw who I was. "What are you doing here?"

  "I came to talk. Can I come in?"

  He hesitated for a moment before stepping away from the door and holding it open. "I suppose." It was hardly an engraved invitation. "What do you want?"

  "To talk," I repeated. "With both you and Louise."

  "She isn't here," he said.

  "When will she be back?"

  He shook his head. "Who knows? We don't keep very close tabs on one another."

  He shut the front door and padded back into the living room, moving carefully so as not to disturb the cat. I followed a few paces behind him. Calvin settled comfortably into a high-backed chair that made me homesick for my own leather recliner back home in Seattle.

  "Have a seat," he said, motioning me onto the couch.

  The cat raised its head, blinked once or twice, then stood and stretched before climbing languorously down from its shoulder perch. In Calvin's ample lap, it circled several times and then settled contentedly into a compact gold-and-orange-striped ball. The cat's noisy purring could be heard all the way across the room.

  Calvin scratched the cat's chin affectionately. "His name is Hobbes," he said to me. "You know, like in the comics?"

  I didn't know someone named Hobbes from a hole in the ground. "I don't read the comics," I explained. "I don't read newspapers at all."

  Calvin Crenshaw looked at me with one raised eyebrow and then he nodded. "I see," he said. "So what is it you came here to talk about?"

  "The snake. Ringo. Joey Rothman's pet rattlesnake. Why is Louise insisting that the snake I found in my cabin was a wild snake that wandered in out of the rain? Rhonda Attwood saw it and positively identified it when Lucy Washington pawned her off on Shorty to come find me. Rhonda told me right then that it was Joey's snake, that he'd had it for almost fourteen years."

  Calvin sighed. "It's gone. I told Louise that was a mistake, but by then she'd already ordered Shorty to get rid of it. It's useless to try to cover up that kind of thing, you know, but Louise was all upset at the time and not thinking very straight. She was in no condition to listen to advice from anybody, me included."

  "You mean you already knew about the snake?"

  "Shorty told me about Mrs. Attwood's identification. I knew right away that it was only a matter of time, but I try to let Louise handle things her own way. I thought a day or two might give her a chance to pull herself together. This has really been hard on her, you know."

  "Hard on Louise!" I exclaimed. "How about me? Covering up an attempted homicide is a crime-obstruction of justice. I should think that detective from Prescott would have pointed that out to you by now."

  "I've talked to her," Calvin said, "and straightened things out. It was unfortunate that the snake disappeared in all the confusion. The detective told me she'll be down tomorrow morning to take Shorty's statement."

  It was some small consolation, but not much.

  "I take it, then, that now you do finally believe that somebody tried to kill me?"

  Calvin Crenshaw nodded reluctantly. "I suppose so."

  "You wouldn't happen to have any idea who, would you?"

  He laughed. "You're asking me?"

  "That's right. You and your wife seem to have gone to a good deal of trouble to conceal what really happened. I'm wondering why."

  "You're barking up the wrong tree, Mr. Beaumont. Murder, attempted or otherwise, isn't my bailiwick."

  "Unless you were covering up for your wife."

  That single blunt statement was a calculated attack, a ploy I had been planning on the drive up from Phoenix. I waited quietly, watching Calvin Crenshaw's reaction.

  He blinked in what seemed like genuine astonishment. "Covering up for Louise? You've got to be kidding. Certainly you don't think she's the one who tried to kill you, do you?"

  "Her behavior as far as I'm concerned has been totally irrational since the very first day I set foot on Ironwood Ranch."

  "Oh, that," Calvin said, sounding immensely relieved, as if it had all suddenly become clear to him. "Of course. I can see how you could misread it."

  "Misread what?"

  "Her behavior toward you. Louise doesn't handle rejection very well. You hurt her feelings."

  It was my turn to blink. "I hurt her feelings?"

  "Joey Rothman was nothing but a temporary aberration," Calvin continued, "a ship passing in the night. You're far more Louise's type, far more to her liking generally. If you had given her the least bit of encouragement, I'm sure she would have tossed Joey aside completely, but you made it clear that you weren't interested. You didn't take the bait when she offered it. Yes, you hurt her feelings."

  "Wait just a damn minute here. Take what bait? What the hell are you talking about?"

  "The results of long-term drinking aren't always entirely reversible," Calvin said circumspectly, seeming to change the subject entirely.

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "I've been with a rather permanent impairment in the sexual activity department."

  "Oh," I said, although I still couldn't make out exactly where he was leading.

  Calvin continued. "Louise doesn't seem to mind, at least not most of the time, but every once in a while, she does. When that happens, she tends to target one of the clients. For strictly recreational purposes, you see."

  "You're telling me that periodically your wife gets her rocks off with one of your clients at Ironwood Ranch? That you know about it and let her?"

  He shrugged. "It doesn't bother me particularly. None of it's ever serious. After all, you people are only here for six weeks at a time, and then you go away, back home where you belong, and Louise is fine for a few more months."

  I was dumbfounded. Calvin Crenshaw, talking smoothly and without hesitation, discussed his wife's ongoing recreational infidelities among her patients the way he might describe her suffering from the ill effects of a common cold.

  "And as I said," he added, "most of the time it's been with men like you-fortyish, good-looking macho types, fairly stable except for the drinking. Louise seems to prefer drinkers to other kinds of addicts, so I'll admit I was a bit startled when she took up with Joey, but then maybe he was the one who made the first move. It's been my observation that older women are always flattered when younger men find them attractive. Just like older men with younger women."

  "So this has been a long-term thing and you've done nothing about it?"

  "What would you have had me do, Beau? Throw the men involved out of the program? Not on your life, not at nine thou a crack. Get rid of her, then? No way. I need Louise here. She runs the place. Without her running the show, Ironwood Ranch would fall apart in two minutes flat. No matter what you think about her personal foible, Louise is a helluva good administrator. She may have her idiosyncracies, but she doesn't miss a trick."

  Calvin Crenshaw seemed unfazed by his own unfortunate choice of words. Maybe they didn't register with him. They did with me.

  "I was under the impression that professional medical ethics preclude taking patients to bed," I observed sarcastically.

  "My wife is a healthy, red-bloo
ded, middle-aged, sexually liberated woman who has had the misfortune of marrying an involuntary monk. She's making the best of a bad bargain."

  "It doesn't sound like such a bad bargain to me. She gets you, complete with a suitable balance sheet and a going-concern business, along with blanket permission to screw around as much as she likes."

  "Are you implying that she only married me for my money?"

  "It seems possible," I returned.

  "And maybe it's true," Calvin agreed. "In fact, the thought occurred to me a time or two in the early years, but she's been a tremendous help in this business, a tireless worker and a real asset. In your eyes our marital arrangement may seem a bit unconventional, but it's been eminently satisfactory to both of us. I don't have any complaints, and I'd be surprised if Louise did either. The status quo suits us both perfectly."

  "It didn't suit Joey Rothman," I pointed out. "He's dead, and your satisfactory marital arrangement, as you call it, may very well have had something to do with his death."

  Before, Calvin Crenshaw had been talking easily, confidently, something he was evidently capable of doing privately if not publicly. Now he bristled. "Is that some kind of accusation?" he demanded.

  "It's a theory," I said.

  "No. Absolutely not. Joey's death had nothing to do with Louise or me. I'm sure of that."

  "Maybe not you," I countered. "But what about Louise? Look at the way she's been acting."

  Calvin remained adamant. "It's a preposterous idea. Totally preposterous. All this may have left Louise a bit unbalanced in the short run, for a day or two at most, but she'll bounce back. You'll see. She's like that unsinkable Molly Brown."

  "Where is she?" I asked.

  "Taking the weekend off. In Vegas. R and R. She needs it."

  "Aren't you worried about her bringing home a sexually transmitted disease?"

  "I think it's time you left, Mr. Beaumont. You seem to have worn out your welcome. I'm sure you can find your way out."

  I got up and stood there for a moment, trying to figure out what made Calvin Crenshaw tick, why someone who wouldn't give me the time of day earlier was now spilling his guts to me. Was he complaining about his wife's infidelities or bragging about them? I couldn't figure it out.