Arizona Dreams Series, Book 4

by Jon Talton

  The company’s suite was not nearly so lax about security. The entry doors led you to a reception desk with standard-issue pleasant young woman. But off to the side was a waist-high partition, behind which sat a pair of serious-looking and well conditioned young men. Think Army Special Forces. They scowled at me. They even scowled at Lindsey. But they lost interest when we showed our badges and asked to see Ms. Baker. While we waited, there was the scale model to keep us busy. It took up a table that looked the size of our bedroom and was protected by a Plexiglas shell. Inside were hundreds of tiny houses on curvy streets, golf courses, hiking trails, and desert preserve. The legend said Arizona Dreams would be one of the largest master-planned communities in the state’s history. At build-out, in 2020, it was to have 40,000 houses. I tried to imagine why Louis Bell, desert rat who lived in a trailer, would want anything to do with it. The project would go west of the White Tank Mountains, a mountain range away from the Salt River Valley. But it would still be miles east of the Bell property.

  Just then a tall woman in a red suit came out and introduced herself as Shelley.

  “Expecting trouble?” Lindsey nodded toward the muscle cubicle.

  “Oh,” Shelley Baker said, “there have been threats from environmentalists.”

  I figured there were about three environmentalists in Arizona, and they had contractor’s licenses. But I took her word for it as she led us past an inner door and down a hallway of offices to a conference room. Out the windows were the slopes of the McDowell Mountains. Running up to them were some of the priciest houses in town. I remembered going out there to target shoot as a teenager, when it had all been virgin desert. Now there was probably a kid who was doing the same thing in the empty desert west of the White Tank Mountains, and someday, when it’s chock-a-block with tract houses, he might remember.

  Baker was talking. “This isn’t really the Arizona Dreams sales office. We will open that next month, along with several models.” We sat and she faced us. “But that’s not why you’re here.”

  I put her around fifty, with honey-colored hair worn swept back and good features, as angular as an ironing board. The sun, of course, had done its work. Her hair was as dried as hay. Her tan was the texture and color of a saddlebag. But her face looked frozen into a perpetual look of happy curiosity—and people pay big money for these face-lifts. Maybe she was really pushing seventy, and I shouldn’t be so critical. I told her there wasn’t much I could tell her. Her business card had been found at a crime scene, a homicide. I told her where. Nothing registered on her taut skin.

  “I’ve never even been there,” she said. “People can get business cards anywhere.”

  Lindsey said, “Your card didn’t say what you do for the company.”

  “I’m the general counsel,” she said.

  “So your card might not be available to just anybody trying to buy a house,” I said.

  “That’s kind of argumentative, Deputy…”

  “Mapstone,” I said. She noted it on a legal pad in front of her, and when her eyes settled on me again they were paying attention.

  I thought about Davey Crockett, abandoned in the desert by his sleazebag contractor father, only to be beaten to death. Lindsey could sense my anger, and gave me a subtle look. It said, Be calm, Dave. So I swallowed hard and asked Baker for information on the owners of Arizona Dreams.

  “It’s an LLC, a limited liability company. We’re not required to disclose our partners. Unless, of course, you have something from the court. Do you?”

  “Not yet,” I said.

  “I didn’t think so,” she said. “This kind of an entity is established in part for the privacy of the corporate structure and ownership. But you wouldn’t be disappointed. These are big names, respected people. We’re capitalized as well as any master-planned community in the West. And every major homebuilder has signed on, all national names. This is big business, deputies.”

  “It does sound impressive,” Lindsey said.

  “It is,” Baker said. “You really ought to consider buying at Arizona Dreams. There are special communities there for professionals like law enforcement and teachers…”

  “Who are paid badly,” Lindsey said.

  “But who deserve the best in a community,” Baker came right back. It was startling to see the sales pitch kick in, even for the general counsel. “My husband and I have been out, and seen the sweet spot of the development, right in the foothills where the Sierra Montana clubhouse will be. We decided right then to buy out there. What part of town do you live in?”

  Lindsey volunteered, “We both live in the Willo Historic District, north of downtown.”

  Baker drew in a breath. “I don’t know anyone who would live there.”

  I was tempted to say the same about her suburban sprawl. I asked, “Who do you work for, Ms. Baker?”

  “I work for Jared Malkin. He’s our managing partner.” The face still looked happy to see me. The eyes definitely weren’t.

  “Is Mr. Malkin in?”

  “No,” she said. “He’s at a business meeting in Malibu. But I can speak for the entire company on this matter. Lots of people have literature from Arizona Dreams. Even, apparently, your unfortunate victim. But dreaming about a great master-planned community is no crime, Deputy Mapstone.”

  I watched her in silence to see if she really believed the sales jargon she was spouting. That damned frozen face again. It was stuck open like a garage door. I said, “The crime is a young man beaten to death. Have you ever seen anyone beaten to death, Ms. Baker?”

  She stared at me sternly, but her face drained of its saddlebag tan.

  “I don’t see…” she started.

  “Your card was at this crime scene, Ma’am,” I said, in my best patrol deputy voice. “Not the card of a Realtor, or subcontractor, but you, the general counsel of Arizona Dreams. Why was your card there?”

  I expected her to lash back at me. But she just sat there. Her right index finger tapped quietly on the dark wood of the conference table. I was tempted to look at the beauty of the mountains out the windows. But I kept staring at her.

  I asked, in a quiet, even voice, “Ever hear of Louis or Harry Bell?”

  “No,” she said.

  “They were landowners west of Tonopah,” I shot back.

  “I don’t know them.” She was speaking through gritted teeth, like someone impersonating a Clint Eastwood character. “We would have had no interest in property that far out.”

  I asked, “Alan Cordesman?”

  She pursed her lips and shook her head.

  “How about Earl Rice?”

  She kept shaking the head. “As I say, I’m afraid I just can’t help you. Do you realize what Arizona Dreams is? If not, I may have to fire our marketing person.” Her mouth and cheeks struggled to turn their surgical smile into a genuine insincere smile. “This is a project unlike any Arizona has ever seen. We’ll be the size of a small city…”

  We were getting nowhere when Lindsey said, “Well, you must feel pretty good having Dana Earley…”

  Shelley Baker said quickly, “As I say, there’s nothing I can disclose about our investors.” And her right cheek twitched. As we walked out into the lobby, workmen had removed the plastic dome over the giant model of Arizona Dreams, no doubt to add more houses.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  We walked out into the blast furnace of a morning. I’m usually not a fast walker, but I felt Lindsey take my hand to slow me down.

  “Dave, are you okay?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Dave.” She stopped me and took both my hands. “You’re not okay. And if you don’t want to talk about it right now, that’s okay, too. I’m just a little concerned. You seemed angry in there...”

  “I just hate the summer,” I lied, and kissed her, which was no lie. A pair of office workers walked by and smiled. I smiled at Lindsey. Even in the intense sunlight, her eyes were their usual soothing dark blue.

  She said, “
We’ll reschedule that trip, Dave. I promise. I’m sorry. Don’t be angry.”

  “I’m not mad at you,” I said, and stroked her soft hair. My hand caught on plastic. A tiny headphone.

  “Sorry,” she said. “You’re married to gadget girl.”

  I stroked her face and we walked to the car. I wasn’t lying: I do hate Phoenix in the summer. I just wasn’t being completely honest. I wasn’t mad at Lindsey, really. It was Robin who had planted this ugly feeling in me. The secret child, unrevealed by the woman who claimed she could tell me anything. The old boyfriend who still had the power to move her unlike any other man. The sister who carried this news like a Typhoid Mary, and yet for a moment I was kissing her back, willing to walk on that wild side. An ugly feeling, made in the kiln of late-night insomnia. It was powerful enough to crack through all the walls that adults painstakingly build around primal emotions. It surprised me and scared me. David Mapstone, sophisticated intellectual, was just as insecure and jealous as the next guy. All of it was made worse in the echo chamber of my thoughts—but I was uncharacteristically wary of raising any of it with Lindsey. I hated revisionist history when it got personal.

  We waited for the air conditioning to cool the inside of the car, and Lindsey asked for a shady spot so she could see her computer screen. It was no easy task. New Phoenix buildings were there to make money, not waste it on shade structures or rediscovering the cool spaces of old Spanish or Moorish architecture. Even in tony north Scottsdale every surface was exposed, and the only trees were ineffective palo verdes. I finally found a building to hide behind, the sun went away, and the temperature seemed to drop ten degrees.

  “I’m always afraid this will melt,” she said, retrieving her laptop computer from its case stashed behind the passenger seat. “Let’s find out about Earl Rice. All you have is a name?”

  “Yes, it was written on a piece of paper that was along with the stash in the school bus.”

  “I could do more with a Social Security number,” she said, opening the laptop and booting it up.

  “Can’t you find it with all your government spy stuff?”

  “Oh, Dave,” she said. “Now I have to kill you. But for you, it will be the petit mort.” She rubbed a hand across my thigh. “This is just my regular G-4 Mac. I can’t use the super-duper stuff for mere sheriff’s work. They monitor every keystroke, and I’d be no fun in a federal prison.”

  I rubbed her neck while she typed.

  “Oh, God, I missed that while I was in Washington,” she sighed. “This is interesting. Earl Rice is a hydrologist, and it just so happens he did some work for Arizona Dreams LLC. He’s listed in their prospectus. Hang on. Wireless reception sucks up here…”

  While we waited we talked about the house, the stray cats of Willo, the next book we would read to each other now that she was back. It was comforting, part of our life without Robin, without these new revelations. Then Lindsey said Robin had asked her if she could rent the garage apartment for a few months. She asked me what I thought.

  “I don’t know,” I said slowly, wishing she were gone.

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Lindsey said. Then, “Check this out. Rice is listed on documents that Arizona Dreams had to file with the Department of Water Resources, attesting that the land has a 100-year water supply.”

  “Researching my dissertation would have been a lot more fun with you,” I said.

  “You probably used dead trees, too,” she said. “So there are two things in that envelope that connect to Arizona Dreams—Baker’s business card, and Earl Rice’s name written down.”

  “And,” I said, “thanks to your brilliant police work, the Earleys are apparently investors in the limited partnership.”

  “Just luck, my love. Here’s another lucky stroke. Rice’s office and home are close. The office is right on the south side of the airpark.”

  She directed me to an address on Seventy-Eighth Place, an older one-story building. Out here, “older” meant from the 1980s. We stepped out to the noise of a Lear jet taking off. But we were back in the car in five minutes. The office was dark and empty, and someone in the neighboring suite, an office of construction defect attorneys, said Rice had retired last year. So we drove again, this time down Scottsdale Road to Shea, then east across the Pima Freeway. Five more minutes, and we found the right cul-de-sac.

  Hydrologists must do well, at least based on the Rice house. It was a custom job, with more attention paid to the quality of the stucco and coloring and tile roof. Native stone turrets provided the grand entryway. On the opposite side, another turret had French doors from a patio to a dining room, or maybe a study. The lot was spacious, and shaded by tangly mesquite and cottonwood trees. We pulled into the curving drive, directly in front of the entry. I started out but Lindsey’s voice stopped me.

  “Dave,” she said, handing me my holstered Colt Python. “I know it’s hot outside, and you don’t like to carry. But someone tried to hurt you, and he may be the same one who murdered three people.” I took the gun and she smiled. That smile alone was worth it. We walked up the flagstones to the double front doors, which were painted a glossy black and looked out from darkened, beveled glass. The street was quiet except for a leaf blower, far away. I rang the doorbell, and just out of old habits, habits I had learned in the academy and then had carried with me for years, even as a college professor—out of old habits, I stood aside. Lindsey was already standing on the other side of the door, with the wall to her side.

  The explosion of gunfire and shattering of glass came at the same instant. I turned my head away from the wash of shards and watched nickel-sized chunks of wood fly out of the trunk of a mesquite tree. My brain said “automatic weapon,” but my body was in charge, crouching down against the wall. The heavy .357 Magnum was in my hand, and I couldn’t recall how it got there. Lindsey was in a similar pose on the other side of the doorway, holding her black baby Glock 26 in a two-handed combat grip. The Mapstones, enjoying one of the finer neighborhoods of north Scottsdale.

  “Hey!” A bald, tanned man in green shorts was marching our way. “You don’t live here!”

  “Get away, you idiot!” Lindsey yelled, and another burst of fire sent the man scuttling back behind his wall. My ears were ringing.

  “Sheriff’s deputies!” I shouted, producing yet another string of gunfire. The poor mesquite was looking quite wounded. “That obviously did a lot of good,” I said in a conversational voice.

  Lindsey tried to smile at me, but in her eyes I could see that she had done the same calculus that kept me melted against the wall. Neither of us could hope to get on the other side of the Prelude, and relative safety, without a perhaps fatal run across the drive. Moving along the wall was no good, either. The windows could become gun-ports. I kept glancing behind, toward the French doors that opened onto a patio. Aside from the ringing in my ears, it became quiet. Not even the leaf blower was sounding. I cleaved closer to the wall and motioned for Lindsey to get down more.

  Sweat sluiced off my sides and back, but I fought to stop shivering. Lindsey produced a cell phone from her bag and held it to her face. A piece of glass clattered out of the door, nearly making me open fire. I pulled the Python back, the four-inch barrel close to my face, reducing my profile as much as possible. The barrel was surprisingly cool. The bulk of the car seemed as far away as Paris. And all my strength was going to tamp down the panic that threatened to engulf me: Lindsey was in danger.

  In an instant, something heavy put me on the ground, and the ground seemed to shift for a second. It took my ears and brain a couple seconds more to process what had happened. Something big had blown up. It sounded like it had come from the back of the house. A nauseating chemical smell was in the air. Lindsey was still crouched, leaning against the far wall, safe. Then, in the distance, sirens.

  It was only a few hours of report writing and a cautionary visit to the emergency room, and even that didn’t yield Earl Rice. As the Scottsdale cops explained it, Ri
ce had sold the house the previous winter, and an investor in Minneapolis had bought it. The renters were cooking meth and protecting it with automatic weapons. They blew the place when they thought we were raiding it. The cops didn’t ask much about what we were doing there once it became clear we weren’t narcotics detectives trying to steal a showy bust in their town. Peralta never arrived. By the time we left Scottsdale Police Headquarters, the sun was far in the west and the air was broiling with heat and dust.

  We had celebratory martinis at Z-Tejas with the fashionable Scottsdale crowd, all the rapturous bodies and perfect tans. Then we ate Thai food at Malee’s on Main. Peralta’s deadline was glaring at us with the same intensity as his obsidian eyes, but for a few hours it was just good to celebrate being alive, and being alive with my love. When we left Scottsdale it was full dark. Although the heat was unbearable, at least the sun was gone for a few hours. We drove back home through light mid-week traffic on Indian School Road.

  This soothing streetlight contentment in me lasted until I caught sight of the police cruisers in front of our house.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The front door was standing open to Cypress Street, a fortune in air-conditioning being lost. We identified ourselves to a uniformed officer on the porch. He led us inside, where Robin was sitting on the leather sofa, her blond mane more disheveled than usual. Kate Vare was standing behind her with a satisfied look on her thin face.

  “David!” Robin leapt up and grabbed me, kissing me on the mouth before I could push her away. “You’ve got to stop them!” she pleaded. I didn’t notice if she hugged Lindsey, because soon Vare and a couple of the uniforms were pulling her back onto the sofa.

  “Kate…” I began.