by Betty Webb
“Didn’t get much sleep. Snowball kept trying to smother me. As for the noise you hear, he’s still trying. Either he’s draped over my head and playing with my hair like he is now, or he’s lying across my face. I can hardly breathe.”
“You’re still in bed?”
“He bites my nose every time I try to get up. Anyway, as per your request, before I slept in your apartment last night to keep the vicious little thing company, I did some checking on those names you gave me.”
“Get anything useful?”
“Only if you think the fact that Magda Pierce, who was once Mrs. Elroy Grice, once ran down a man with her Cadillac Escalade. He just happened to be a convicted child molester.”
I almost spit out my burned toast. “Are you serious?!”
“Serious as a heart attack. Hit him with her car while she was living in Dallas, Texas. Luckily enough for her, several witnesses said the guy wasn’t in the crosswalk and the lovely Magda had the light, and thus the law, on her side. She also wasn’t speeding, wasn’t impaired, just braked the Escalade a couple of seconds too late.”
I thought about that for a moment, replaying the accident in my mind. It didn’t look right. “What was victim’s story?”
“He said zip since he was DOA at the hospital. Before you ask, I checked but couldn’t find any prior connection between Magda and the squashed-flat-as-a-bug-in-the-proverbial-rug Joseph Fellows.”
“When was this?”
“Ten years ago, a week before Magda’s husband filed for divorce.”
“He divorced her right after the accident?”
“Exactamundo. Now listen to this. Magda’s second husband—one James Basker Pierce—divorced her, too, claiming spousal abuse. He made his case well enough that she didn’t get one penny from the sale of their house; her share was applied toward his medical expenses. She served thirty days, he still walks with a limp.”
“Holy shit!”
“I’m guessing that’s what Mr. Pierce said when he saw the hospital bill.”
So the seemingly together flight attendant had serious anger management issues, and had once run down a convicted child molester. Boy, do I hate coincidences.
“Then there is Shana Genovese Ferris,” Jimmy continued. “Quite the gal, it appears, our Shana.” A long pause.
“Don’t be coy with me, Jimmy. Spit it out.”
“Before she married her now ex-husband, she received two citations for prostitution, both in Scottsdale. Seems she catered to the upscale crowd.”
Since private investigators are not unacquainted with life’s dirty underbelly, I don’t know why I was surprised, but I was. On the other hand, given the behavior of her disturbed mother, her childhood must have been less than idyllic. In fact, I’d have bet my Jeep against a hip-switching Chevy Corvair that Wycoff had molested Shana, too.
“That’s bad,” was all I could say.
As he always is where women are concerned, Jimmy was quick to leap to Shana’s defense. “Both citations came right after two hospitalizations for injuries suffered at the hands of her boyfriend. He was a druggie and didn’t care how he got his drug money, even if it meant prostituting the love of his life. The second hospitalization turned out to be the charm, because that’s when Ms. Ferris fled to a women’s shelter, then began taking classes at ASU, where she met her future husband. They opened an ad agency together, and everything seemed to be coming up roses for her until he began taking an interest in the female employees. She eventually took the kids and moved back in with her parents, where I take it she still resides?” He ended the last in the form of a question.
“Yeah, she’s up here in Black Canyon City with them and is working at their restaurant. Temporarily, she says. Now what about Casey Starr?”
“Nothing.”
Somehow that surprised me more than any of the other information. “Did you dig? I mean, really dig?”
He sounded vaguely offended when he said, “Dug my way to China and came up with nothing but a battered copy of Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book. Oh, by the way, as soon as Casey turned eighteen, he changed his name from Richfield to Starr. Didn’t want to be associated with his parents, I guess. Other than his encounter with the legal system at Wycoff’s trial, your boy’s clean.”
“Try again.”
A long silence. Then, “Sure. I’ve got plenty of time to waste.”
With that, he ended the call.
Temporarily stymied, I sat there for a while thinking as the breakfast room emptied out. Everything about this investigation seemed off. Madga Pierce, one of Wycoff’s victims, had killed a child molester, whether accidentally or not. Magda also had a record for domestic violence. Shana Genovese may or may not have been at the Coyote Corral when he was murdered. Yet Debbie Margules, who suspected Wycoff of abducting her long-disappeared daughter, hit the murder trifecta with motive, method, and opportunity. As much as I liked Debbie, maybe she had killed him, after all.
But if I could find anything to weaken the case against her, I would.
I sat there and thought some more. Almost an hour later, all that thinking had availed me little but one idea had insinuated itself into my exhausted brain. I picked up my phone again.
“What now?” Jimmy sounded annoyed, as well he should.
“Run a check on Casey Starr’s wife.”
“Kay Starr? Why?”
“Just a hunch.”
“Lena, you do realize Mrs. Starr heads up the Engineering Department at Phoenix College, and you don’t attain that kind of position with a criminal record.”
“It never pays to ignore a hunch, okay?”
A sigh, then a click.
Feeling guilty about piling another set of background checks on my work-swamped partner, I went into the kitchen to ask Nicole if she needed help with the dishes.
Despite her glowing skin, Nicole didn’t appear happy, which wasn’t surprising since she had more dishes than the dishwasher had room for. “This is the first time in years I’ve had to do this.”
“You must eat off paper plates.”
She gave me an odd look. “Of course not. I just stack everything in the dishwasher and run it every few days.”
“You’re more domestic than me, then.” I eyed a dish towel hanging from a peg above the sink. “Want me to dry?”
“As long as you know how.”
We worked in amiable silence for the next few minutes, but when we reached the last skillet, Nicole turned to me and said, “How would you feel if I asked you to help me straighten out a couple of trailers?”
I smiled my answer.
The job turned out not to be as onerous as I’d expected. Nancy Miller-Borg, the hiker in Mustang, was a neat type who made her own bed, and the two guys in Fishin’ Frenzy were cleaner than fishermen had a right to be. Since Debbie enforced a non-smoking policy for each of the trailers, we didn’t have to sanitize the hell out of them, just empty the garbage, change the linens, clean the toilet, and spritz a little air freshener around.
“You look quite the professional,” Nicole said to me as we carried a heap of dirty towels through the trees toward the yellow house.
I smiled. “You, too. There’s something about mindless activity that’s rather relaxing, isn’t there?”
“Almost as good as yoga.”
“I’m not sure I’d go that far.” I’d tried yoga once, but my hyperactive mind refused to let me torture my body as much as the instructor demanded. As for relaxing, applying liniment to my aching muscles after that first and only yoga session had mitigated the so-called relaxation.
This was what I needed. Nature’s balm. Above us, the sky was a clear blue and birds were in full song. Other than the crunch of a car’s tires traveling the gravel road at the edge of Debbie’s property, the pine-scented morning was uninterrupted by the usual noise pollution of mod
ern life. How had I let myself get so far away from it?
“What do you think that’s supposed to be?”
Nicole’s voice startled me out of my reverie. We were just crossing the small meadow where one of Debbie’s larger sculptures stood, the six feet-and-something conglomeration of iron, bronze, pipe fittings, and rocks. As I’d noted before, the piece didn’t seem to be representative of anything, and the bronze plate on its stone base merely said MEMORY. An aura of sadness enveloped it.
In answer to Nicole’s question, I said, “No clue, but one of my foster mothers, an artist, taught me that when it comes to art, we don’t have to ‘understand’ a piece in order to like it.”
Obviously not sharing my reaction to MEMORY, Nicole grimaced. “Non-objective art isn’t my cup of…”
A spurt of dust kicked up a few feet in front of us. A nanosecond later I heard a loud pop.
Instinctively, I dropped the pile of laundry I was holding and grabbed Nicole. Not recognizing the noise, she stood stock-still, looking toward the origin of the sound. Ignoring her protests, I pulled her with me to the ground behind MEMORY.
“Lena, what…?”
I put my mouth close to her ear. “Duck your head and be quiet.”
When she started to speak again, I clamped my hand over her mouth, hoping she wouldn’t bite me. She didn’t, but began to struggle, so I tightened my hold on her.
Nicole continued to struggle even when she saw two more dust spurts rise from the ground, followed quickly by two more pops. City girl.
“Someone’s shooting at us,” I whispered in her ear.
Fear has a smell. Sharp. Acrid. It rose off her in rank waves, but she stopped struggling. Having been through this sort of thing several times during my career, I stopped worrying and slipped my .38 out of my pocket holster.
Due to the dense vegetation, I could see nothing. The tree line was approximately five yards away, interspersed with clusters of creosote, sage, and other brush. It provided cover for the shooter, leaving us only MEMORY, and as large as the sculpture was, it wasn’t enough. Although I hated the idea of a firefight with the unarmed Nicole beside me, I had no choice. At least I could draw the shooter’s fire away.
“Stay quiet and no matter what happens, don’t move,” I whispered to Nicole.
Her eyes remained wide in fear, but she didn’t make a sound, just nodded. With that, I bent myself double and rushed toward the trees, expecting at any moment to receive a bullet in my back for my trouble. It didn’t happen. I reached the cover of the trees unscathed, but to my dismay, the woods that had seemed so peaceful earlier now seemed to broadcast every step I took. Because of the monsoon the other night, the forest floor was littered with debris, and there was simply no step I could take without rustling leaves or snapping a twig. Where was all that birdsong now that I needed it? Even the hum of insects might have helped, but it seemed as if the entire world had fallen silent at the shooter’s intrusion.
Well-hidden now, I snapped off two quick shots toward the shooter’s last location.
No returned fire. No cry of pain.
I looked over at MEMORY. Nicole had followed my instructions, and although I could see the edge of her sleeve, most of her body remained hidden behind the sculpture.
Guessing that he—at least I surmised the shooter was a he—had arrived in the car I’d heard earlier, I inched in the direction of the road, hoping to circle around him.
Then, just as I was tippy-toeing past a stunted pine, I heard the sound of running feet.
A car door slam.
Tires on gravel.
Noise be damned now, I crashed through the underbrush with all the delicacy of a bull elephant and reached the road just in time to see the tail end of a white sedan disappear around the bend at the bottom of the hill. Not only hadn’t I managed to get the license plate number, I wasn’t even certain the car bore an Arizona plate. Still, I holstered my .38 and grabbed my cell from my other pocket. Breathing heavily, I hit 9-1-1 and within seconds I was talking to a dispatcher. I duly made my report. Once assured a patrol car was on the way, I went back to the meadow to check on Nicole, who by then had emerged from behind MEMORY, her fear transformed into fury.
“Someone shot at us! Three times!”
My pulse had returned to normal, and I tried to calm her. “Whoever it was is gone now and the important thing is that we’re okay.”
“Fucking hunters!”
I shook my head. “That was no hunter.”
Chapter Twenty-two
Not as many officers showed up at the Desert Oasis as had at the scene of Wycoff’s murder, but enough rolled in to ensure me that my 9-1-1 call was being taken seriously. In fact, Detective Eastman was serious enough to forgo her usual rendition of “Maria.” While she interviewed Nicole and me in the kitchen of the yellow house, two crime techs dug around in the dirt by MEMORY.
“You say you never saw the shooter?” Eastman asked.
“Afraid not.”
“Ms. Beltran? How about you?”
“Sorry, Detective. I was too busy ducking to get a good look.” Attorneys are made of tough stuff, so Nicole had already regained her calm. Color was back in that beautiful complexion and she even managed a smile.
Eastman wasn’t smiling. “The car, Ms. Jones. Any idea of the make?”
“Sorry. It was too far away by the time I made it to the road.”
“Do you know how many white sedans there are in Arizona?”
“Most popular car color here since white reflects heat.”
She tsk-tsked. “Could you at least tell if it had an Arizona plate?”
“The sedan was kicking up enough dust that I couldn’t even see the color.”
“Did you…?”
Her question was interrupted by the entrance of a crime tech. “Got a couple,” the woman said. “Impact was pretty clean, no rocks, just dirt. Looks like a .22LR, but ballistics can tell us for sure.” With that, she bustled off.
A rifle.
Eastman shot a quick look at my handgun, which I’d unloaded and set on the table. I had been concerned she might commandeer the .38—I had, after all, fired it—but the tech’s information made me breathe easier. I breathed even easier when she thanked us for our information and left.
***
Being shot at raises your adrenaline level. Energized, I spent the next few hours in Monarch making phone calls and typing up new case notes.
What, besides gunshots, had I heard? Just branches snapping as the shooter fled. No coughs, no muttered words.
What had I seen? Nothing. Just trees and brush. And that damned white sedan snaking out of sight.
Nothing, in fact, that would be of any use to me or Detective Eastman. No wonder she had looked so disgusted as she drove away.
Typing done, I shut down my laptop and went out for a late afternoon run to burn off the rest of the adrenalin. It didn’t go well because by then the temps were high enough that every step was a struggle. To make matters worse, on the way back I skidded on a rock, almost twisting my ankle, and when I finally limped back to the Oasis I felt as disgusted as Eastman. This case was going nowhere, and to top things off, I’d almost gotten myself killed for my trouble, and now I had a swollen ankle.
A half hour and an ice pack later, my ankle and my mood had eased. Finally relaxed, I sat on the trailer steps listening to birdsong and the creek burbling below. From the human voices that floated to me on the wind, I was aware of the Oasis’ other guests returning. From their soft laughter and easy banter, I surmised that word about the shooting hadn’t yet gone out.
I spent the rest of the day on the steps, enjoying the smell of pine, rushing water, and leafing through a book on Arizona butterflies I found in the nightstand. It included monarchs, of course, those big, beautiful gold and brown things, but also hundreds of other colorful-winged sp
ecimens whose Latin names I couldn’t even pronounce. Limenitis arthemis astyanax. Heliconiinae. Speyeria coronis. Euptoieta claudia. Their brilliance dazzled my eyes, reminding me that I really needed to get out more.
By dinner time I remembered that I hadn’t eaten lunch, so I drove over to the Coyote Corral for a couple of tacos. I would have liked to talk to Shana again and ask her some more questions, but the minute she saw me come through the door, she made herself scarce.
I finished my meal and left.
***
“Why’re you lookin’ so jumpy, darlin’?” Dusty asked the next morning, as our horses picked their way along the bank of Black Canyon Creek.
“I didn’t sleep well last night.”
“You know what’s good for that, don’t you?” He had a sly smile. Before I could answer, he said, “Meditation.”
It being a Saturday, I’d expected to be safe from temptation among a trail-riding crowd of tourists, but Dusty had pulled another fast one. The Red Rock Ranch trail ride didn’t begin until eight, so I was all alone with one of the most seductive men I’d ever known.
As we rode along, the world woke up.
Knowing Dusty’s penchant for gossip, I had decided not to tell him about the gunfight. He would find out about it eventually—but by then I would be back in Scottsdale. In fact, I had originally been tempted to return as soon as Eastman finished interviewing Nicole and me, but the memory of Arabella, Dusty’s bay mare, had kept me here. Besides, the clip-clop of horses’ hooves is as calming as a kitten’s purrs.
How had I become so busy that I’d forgotten the joy being outside with a horse could bring?
The day was perfect. The breeze was soft and pure. Early birds were out getting their worms, and hungry fish were leaping at flies swooping too low near the creek. I needed more of this, but given my schedule, I didn’t know how I could manage it. Due to the ongoing spread of development in the outer Phoenix area, riding stables and dude ranches have been pushed further and further away, many of them almost as far as Black Canyon City. But oh, God, what a wonderful thing a horse was! There was something about a horse that renewed my spirit.
