by R. P. Dahlke
“So what can I do for you, Mrs …?”
“Call me Darlene. I need someone to find my husband’s killer.”
Seeing my confused expression, she grabbed my hand. “Suzi said you two girls are private investigators.”
“Well….” I didn’t know what to say.
She tightened her grip. “Don’t you see? It’s divine providence that sent you here. I need someone besides the county sheriff’s department to help bring my husband’s killer to justice.”
.
Chapter Nineteen:
I got into the Jeep, looked in the rearview mirror and groaned.
Pearlie snickered. “Love the new look. I think you’d fit right in at the Houston Women’s Club”
“Oh, stop,” I said, reaching for a hairbrush and digging a comb into the hairspray. “Nobody wears big hair anymore. Well maybe in Darlene’s church.” Satisfied that I’d calmed the tornado on my head, I added, “You realize she thinks she’s hired us to find her husband’s killer.”
“Yep. Suzi handed me an envelope full of cash.”
“She did what? Pearlie, I was just kidding. We couldn’t cash Mac Coker’s check if he gave us one, and we certainly couldn’t sign a contract with Darlene. We’re not legal!”
“Darlene doesn’t want a contract. She’s wants this deal kept on the Q-T. No one is to know that she’s hired a P.I. Which works just fine for us. As for the money, that’s for expenses. And we get hair-cuts and color for free for the rest of our lives. Ain’t that sweet? I’m hungry, where’re we gonna eat?”
We were working for haircuts. Yessir, we were big time P.I.‘s all right.
“I saw a Mexican place on the way out of Wishbone,” Pearlie said. “Let’s eat there.”
“Mexican? You are feeling frisky today, aren’t you?” I asked, feeling decidedly grumpy. “This close to the border you’re just beggin’ for Tijuana two-step.”
“We need to make a plan before we get home.”
“You mean, get our stories straight, don’t you?” I asked.
“You’re right, and that may take a while. We better get take-out for the guys,” she said. “Men behave better on a full stomach.”
“Oh, all right.” I looked at my watch. “It’s eleven a.m. If we don’t take too long,” I said, and pulled onto Highway 92.
In my rear view mirror was a white Prius, and in front, was a white Ford F350 with dualies and a fake bull sack attached to the chrome hitch.
“I guess Karen was right about white trucks,” I said.
“Whad’ya mean?”
“Deputy Dumb-Ass was annoyed because Dad’s only description of the killer’s vehicle was that it was white. Evidently, white and faded are the state colors for Arizona.”
“It was a truck, right?”
“And too far away to tell what make or model. White trucks aside,” I said, “we need to talk about Darlene.”
“Yeah? What about her?”
“We can’t have two clients for the same case. We’re supposed to be working for Bethany’s father, remember?”
Pearlie shrugged and looked out the window at the passing scenery.
“And I’m really annoyed that you sat there with your face in a magazine while Darlene poured her heart out to a perfect stranger. I’m uncomfortable making promises we may not be able to keep.”
“Forget about that for a minute. What’d she tell you about her husband? Word for word, if you can?”
I struggled to get my temper under control. My cousin was again overlooking the little details that could get us in trouble, or killed.
“Oh come on, Lalla. She wasn’t going to talk to us unless we agreed to work for her.”
She had me there. I told her what Darlene said about her husband insisting on being first responder to any crime scene.
Pearlie snorted. “Gotta wonder about a man who can’t live without a police radio in his personal vehicle. The hero type, huh? How romantic. Except guys like that are all about their job, and no romance at all. What else?”
“If he was on his way out of town for his annual fishing trip, then why was he wearing a sports coat and dress slacks?”
“What? When did she tell you that?” Pearlie asked.
“Dad told us. Sorry. He was in that pit with the police chief, remember? He also said the man had on too much aftershave.”
“Okay, but you forgot to mention what he was wearing.”
“Slipped my mind, okay?” I said.
“Is there anything else you forgot to tell me?”
“I can’t think of anything,” I said, through clenched teeth.
“I’ll let it go for now,” she said. “If you can get over working both sides of this case. So his fishing trip had nothing to do with trout. Do you think she suspected?”
“She sounded more heart-broken than angry, but surely they handed over his personal effects. His dress slacks and shirt would be her first clue there was something wrong.”
“Yeah, she knew.”
Pearlie held onto the notion that all men were cheaters. Of course, she’d had some experience to back up that theory, too. Come to think of it so did I, but those memories receded with every year I spent with Caleb.
“If he was on his way to see a girlfriend, he missed his chance when he took that 9-1-1 call,” I said.
I wheeled into a gravel parking lot next to the Mexican café and noted several more white trucks, one looked like the truck I’d followed out of town, but it didn’t have a silly fake bull sack hanging from the hitch.
“Any place with this many cars must be good,” Pearlie said, hopping out of the Jeep and striding for the door of the cafe.
~~~~~~~~~~
Lunch dispensed with, we gathered up our take-out bags and left.
Getting into the Jeep, I glanced up at the sky. The clear blue dome over our heads should have been heartening, but all I could think of was my dad watching the same sky while stranded in the bottom of a mine pit. And then there was the possibility that the killer might have lined up my father as his next victim.
Pearlie pointed to the levers next to the steering column. “What’re those for?”
“They activate the lockers. You use the locker to shift the four-wheel drive into the slowest gear so the tires don’t slip.”
“Oh yeah? Then let’s give it a try,” she pointed to a side road snaking uphill.
“Red Mountain Road?” I said, reading the sign. “This is our road. It looks like one big circle.”
“A short cut home? Perfect.”
I figured if we ran out of pavement the Jeep could handle it, and throwing up a cloud of dust behind us, sped past a solitary mailbox and narrow lane ending in a lonely rooftop.
Shifting down into four wheel drive low, we started climbing. Cresting the hill, I slowed and stopped on the bluff. Stretched out below us, afternoon light glinted off rooftops and skipped across the green of the San Pedro River to nudge up against the Huachuca Mountains.
“For being out in nowheresville, there sure are a lot of houses,” Pearlie said.
“Sierra Vista has a population of forty-five thousand, and that’s not counting the snowbirds that start trickling in about this time of year. They have a shopping mall, too, but it’s nothing like Tucson.”
“What do folks here do for work?”
“There’s Fort Huachuca and the border patrol. Are you looking for a job?”
“I’m going back to Modesto to look for an office to rent for our P.I. business.”
“About that Pearlie, I don’t think—”
She swatted away my objections. “You got your plate full right now, what with your dad being under a microscope with the local gendarmes and all. Let’s find a killer, and if you still want to back out, I’ll quit trying to convince you to come with me.”
“Deal,” I said, and put the Jeep in gear.
A big white truck, its heavy chrome grill glinting like sharp teeth, roared up the hill and headed straight at us.
&n
bsp; I gasped and looked for a way to move out of his way.
He must’ve seen us, we weren’t that hard to miss, but instead of slowing, he gunned his engine.
Hoping to avoid a collision, I did what came naturally—I twisted the wheel to the right. The big truck passed so close I felt the paint whisper off the side of the Jeep.
Unfortunately, the passenger side wheels slipped off the edge of the road and the Jeep was now listing precariously.
Pearlie squealed and yelled, “What the hell’re you doing? Get this damn thing back onto the road, now!”
“Okay, don’t yell,” I said, and yanked the wheel to the left.
The wheel spun but the Jeep didn’t move.
“Use that locker thingy!”
I looked at the switch. Good idea, except I had no idea how it worked. I flipped the switch, but when nothing happened, I said, “It won’t work.”
I was now sorry I’d dismissed Dad’s offer to teach me how to use his new gadget.
I gunned the engine again. Instead of moving back up onto the road, now two wheels hung over the edge spiting dust. This is what lockers were for, if only I knew how to use them.
Jamming the gas pedal to the floor only caused more wheel spinning and suddenly all I could see was a cloud of dust covering the windshield. Stifling a groan of self-pity, I hit the gas again, willing us to back up onto the road. Fat lot of good that did. I had absolutely no traction.
Then I felt the uphill side of the jeep start to come loose.
“No, no!” I yelled, and cranking the wheel over, I gunned the motor in a futile attempt to change the laws of gravity.
The Jeep’s wheel spun out of my hands, and Pearlie started screaming, “Make it stop!”
I felt the uphill side of the Jeep lift off and as if the vehicle had a mind of its own, we started to lean over.
The Jeep groaned, metal on metal as if it was gnashing its teeth.
I gasped in shock and yelled for Pearlie to keep her hands close to her body and, oh crap … “Hang on! We’re going to roll!”
In another second, we became air-borne.
We had on our safety belts, but that didn’t do anything for the take-out bags, the contents becoming wet, soggy projectiles slapping us in the face.
We jerked upright from the first roll, rocked once. Twice. Done, I hoped.
I wiped a tortilla off my forehead, thinking we were finished, but then I heard the painful sound of the uphill tires as they came lose and momentum once again took over.
We went over again, banging into rocks, crashing through a bush as we rolled.
Pearlie was screaming and cursing. Our lungs were clogged with dust and yet, we continued to scream.
All I could think of was how I wished I had never heard of Arizona.
.
Chapter Twenty:
The windows were caked with dust and visibility was zero, but at least it felt like all the wheels were on solid ground again.
I was bruised and my jaw hurt from tightly clenching my teeth with every roll, but I was glad to be alive.
Pearlie’s eyes were closed and blood trickled down from a wound somewhere in her scalp.
“Pearlie. Wake up!” I yelled, terrified that she was dead.
She opened her eyes and whimpered, “Are we there yet?”
“If you can call it that,” I said, relieved to see that she was alive and able to joke about it.
“Thank God for the roll cage Dad installed,” I said. “Or we would’ve been crushed. Don’t unbuckle just yet. It might not be safe.”
“Why is it so dark in here? I can’t roll down the window. Ow, ow. I can’t move my arm.”
“It’s the dirt clogging everything and don’t move your arm. Wait a minute and I’ll—”
“No! I have to get out!” she shoved against the door.
“Wait, Pearlie. Something’s not right. Let me—”
Pearlie threw open the door and dangled a leg out of the passenger side, fished around for something solid to stand on, and screamed again.
“What is it?” I asked.
“There’s nothin’ out here but air.”
“Get back inside,” I said, yanking her into her seat.
I pushed my door open, crawled out, and argued my way through the fangs of another Mesquite tree.
Hanging onto the corner of the Jeep, I peered over the ledge. We were still on the hill, but the passenger side was wedged up against a boulder.
“We’re okay,” I said. “It’s just that your side is jammed up on a boulder.”
The Jeep rocked and her dusty, tear-stained face peeked at me from the driver‘s side. When I signaled that it was okay to come out, she swiped at her wet cheeks, and dragging our purses behind her, crawled out, cautiously leaned over, slipped and she landed on her fanny.
I offered her a hand up. “Are you okay?”
Giggling, she pointed at me and laughed. “You should see yourself. Your hair is standing on end, and you look like you’re wearin’ brown makeup.”
Her laughter had a touch of hysteria to it, but at least she wasn’t cussing at me for rolling the Jeep.
She touched the oozing wound on her head. “My shoulder hurts,” she said, gingerly moving it around. “But nothin’s broken, I guess. Boy howdy, I never realized how heavy my purse was until it came flying at me. Where are we?”
“Not where we need to be,” I said, pointing down at a rooftop. “But I’ll bet that farm house has a phone we can use.”
“How about you?” Pearlie asked. “Anything broken? I mean besides your driving skills?”
“I’m fine, fine,” I said, but I couldn’t stop my hands from shaking.
“How far do you reckon we’ll have to walk?”
“Maybe a mile. At least it’s downhill,” I said, and pulled the cell phone out of my purse. “Before we go, let’s see if we can get a signal.”
I shook my head in defeat. “You?”
Agreeing that neither of us had a signal for our cell phones, we started the downhill trek to civilization.
With the adrenaline leaking out of my system, the only thing left was self-pity. “I’ve just ruined my dad’s brand new Jeep. But then I suppose it goes with letting me drive anything of his.”
“Wasn’t your fault. That idiot came outta nowhere, and tried to knock us off the road.”
“This isn’t the first vehicle I’ve ruined. I suppose you and Mad-Dog have had some good laughs about all my screwups.”
Not interested in my pity party, my cousin grunted and went back to carefully selecting her next footfall.
“I thought you were going to nurse Mad-Dog back to health,” I said. “What happened to that idea?”
When she didn’t answer, I figured she’d discovered his little black book. “Did he get late night calls from old girlfriends or what?”
She sucked in a quick breath and stopped walking. “It was nothing like that,” she said, her voice quivering. “We-we just needed some time apart, that’s all.”
I felt like a heel. I’d found his phone book in his locker and enjoyed teasing him about it, but why was I trying to bait my poor cousin?
“I’m sorry,” I said. “That was uncalled for.”
She lifted her chin and picked up her speed, putting some distance between us.
I caught up with her and snagged her arm. “Wait up, Pearlie. I said I’m sorry. It’s just—”
“Yeah, I know,” she said, jerking away from my touch. “We’re both a couple of screwups. But you know what the difference is between us?”
“I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”
“At least I’m not stuck in the past. You get all het up about your two failed marriages—then run off from your third wedding because you think Caleb jilted you, when it wasn’t even his fault. The man followed you out here, gets carjacked and left to wander around in the desert. It’s just dumb luck he made it out alive. All because he wouldn’t, couldn’t give up on you. You know what I’d do to h
ave a man love me like that? Jeez, Lalla.”
“Yeah, I know. He’s a treasure and—”
“Oh put a sock in it, will ya?”
Shocked, I missed my footing and slipped. My arms wind-milled but thankfully Pearlie reached out and yanked me back onto solid ground.
“Sorry I yelled,” she said. “But sometimes you’re just so darn self-absorbed.”
My anger popped up again. “Look who’s talking? You were so set on Mad-Dog that you couldn’t tell he wasn’t going to sit, much less stay.”
She chuckled at my dog metaphor. “Granny says you and I are more alike than we know. She says we just can’t see it. In spite of ourselves, our screwups, our bad record with men, you and I have a real talent for solving crimes.
“It must be in the genes ‘cause keeping books for my granny’s ranch sure don’t give me the same thrill as I get solving a murder case. You’re the same, I know it. Besides, what’re the options for an out of work aero-ag pilot these days? Working as a receptionist in a dentist’s office? Walmart customer service? The thought makes your skin crawl, don’t it?”
Seeing my mouth drop open, she said, “Shut it Lalla, you’re letting out good moisture and we didn’t bring water.”
“Oh crap. I left the water bottles in the back of the Jeep.”
“Yeah, so stop talking.”
“You’re doing all the talking.”
“And you better start thinking on what I said.”
It was a long walk down that hill.
And once again, hot, sweaty, out of breath, I knocked on a stranger’s door.
The door was opened by an old man in overalls, house slippers, and a shotgun in the crook of his arm.
“Injuns!” he yelled, raising the shotgun at us.
Our hands flew into the air and we stumbled off the porch.
“Wait! Sir, we’re not Indians,” Pearlie pleaded.
I stepped forward. “We’re just covered with dirt because …”
The old man mumbled something, and leaving us standing on the porch, disappeared inside.
