by Betty Webb
Not exactly an answer to my question, but a hint that something was already off about Casey. Remembering the name change from Fairfield to Starr, and that his identity was more or less protected, I decided to take a chance.
“I’m investigating a suspicious death,” I told her, “so anything you can remember, however small, might be helpful.”
Beth’s face went white. “A death that involved Casey? But…but wouldn’t the police…?”
“How long did Casey live with your parents?”
“Less than a year.”
“How old was he at the time?”
“Ten, I think. Maybe nine, eight, I’m not sure. Why do you want to know, anyway?”
“Just following up leads. Talking to a lot of people about a lot of people, and Casey is only one of them.”
“So you don’t actually suspect him of anything.”
I shook my head.
“Then why does this sound like you do?”
I tried a reassuring smile, for myself as much as her. “How about any of the other children your parents fostered. Any trouble with them?”
“Just Casey. He…” She caught herself too late. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
I always like it when I can interject an element of truth into an interview. My own aggressive behavior is what had led to my prolonged trek through the CPS foster care system, so I said, “All kids get into a little trouble at some point,” I soothed.
Beth was eager to agree. “It was just small stuff. Casey tried to shoplift some gum from the Circle K down the street but got caught. And every now and then, something would come up missing around the house. A little money, some of mother’s costume jewelry, you know, things like that. But his grades, hey, the kid got straight-A’s. Mom was always talking about how smart Casey was. Me, I was lucky to get C’s. Too hung up on boys.”
She and I both. “Anything else?”
“About Casey? Nothing…” She paused, then added, “Well, there was some concern about a couple of sheds that caught fire in the neighborhood.”
“Concern? What do you mean?”
She shrugged. “One of the neighbors said he’d seen Casey fooling around his shed before it burned down, but he was one of those weird guys into conspiracy theories, convinced the government was spying on him from cameras they’d hidden in his light bulbs, so nobody paid any attention to him. Especially since he hated kids in the first place.”
“I’d like to talk to him.”
“Good luck there, since he died something like twenty, thirty years ago.”
I didn’t like the sound of the fires, never a good sign for a troubled boy. And remembering Manfred Stephen Chapman the Fourth’s accusation that Casey had purposefully broken a little girl’s arm, I pressed on. “As you said, most foster children led crappy lives before they wound up in the system, and it’s not unusual for unhappy children to act out in physical ways. Do you remember anything like that?”
“Like fights? Not that I know of.”
“You said that Casey was the last foster your parents took in. What made them change their minds about the program?”
“I don’t…I don’t…”
“Beth, this could be important.”
She cleared her throat before replying. “Well, there was Sprinkles. Not that it was ever proven.”
“Sprinkles?”
“My kitten. Dad found her half-buried behind the garden shed in back. Someone had, um, it looked like they had, um, operated on her.”
I thought about Snowball. His trusting eyes. His soft purr. It took me a few seconds to respond, and when I did, I had trouble controlling the quaver in my voice. “Is that when your folks withdrew from the foster care program?”
“They, um, they returned Casey to CPS right after that, but it doesn’t mean anything, does it?”
I had to make myself stop thinking about Snowball. About his tiny sisters and brothers. And his sweet-faced mother. Clearing my throat, I said, “Do you know if CPS provided psychiatric treatment while Casey was with your family?”
The question touched another nerve. With a bitter laugh, she answered, “Are you kidding me? Not in this state! A kid could be drooling, flat-out psycho in Arizona, running around with knives or guns or who knows what else, and the powers-that-be would just go ‘so sad, too bad’ and do squat-all—until he finally killed somebody. Whatever psychiatric help those foster kids got, my parents paid for out of their own pocket.”
The dust rag, in pieces now, fell to the floor.
Beth bent over and picked them up. When she raised her head again, her face was flushed. “So if Casey sometimes seemed a little creepy, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone.”
Creepy? The Casey Fairfield/Starr I had met was the opposite of creepy. To the contrary, he’d been charming. Maybe even too charming. And the cats in his house looked perfectly fine, witness Snowball. Just as I was about to formulate my next question, the doorbell rang.
The real estate agent, right on time.
Chapter Twenty-seven
By the time I made it back to Scottsdale, the temperature was the Devil’s favorite—one hundred-ten and climbing. The streets were deserted, the tourists hiding out in their air-conditioned hotels or slugging down ice colds at the Rusty Spur. Since my open Jeep didn’t have air conditioning, I was not a happy camper.
I became even less of a happy camper when, after parking my Jeep in its covered space, I walked around the corner to my office and saw Frank Gunnerston, my wife-beating ex-client, about to open the door to Desert Investigations. The holster strapped to his thigh looked big enough to house a cannon.
He didn’t see me come up behind him.
“Don’t you just hate August, Frank?” I said, pressing the barrel of my .38 against his neck. “Heat. Humidity. Irritated private investigators.”
When he tensed, I knew he was about to whirl around so I stepped back quickly and cocked the .38 before he could draw. I aimed. “Which ball do you like best, Frank. The right or the left? I’ll let you keep one of them.”
“Bitch!”
“I love you, too. Now let’s go inside.” As we went through the door to Desert Investigations, I eased the hammer back, but didn’t holster my gun.
Jimmy was working so intently at his computer that he hadn’t noticed the action outside. When he turned around he got a big surprise.
“Look who dropped by to visit us,” I said.
My partner, slow to anger but quick on the uptake, was on the phone to 9-1-1 before the door closed behind me. Once he’d given our particulars, he hung up and said, “Mr. Gunnerston, are you aware that with your prior felony convictions, it is illegal for you to own a firearm?”
“Fuck you with a broom, Indian.”
Jimmy ignored the insult. “Our records show that you pistol-whipped Mrs. Gunnerston, which is a Class Three felony, but because you had such a fine attorney, you only served six months. Add that to the fact that you are now carrying a handgun—loaded, I presume—and you’ve obviously entered our office with intent to cause bodily harm. That’s a potential five to fifteen years.”
Before Gunnerston could grow more agitated than he already was, I told him to lie down on the floor with his hands behind his back. Once he obeyed. I put my foot on his neck and pressed down. “Jimmy, would you be so kind as to get a pair of those plastic ties out of my lower desk drawer?” To Gunnerston, I said, “Looks like you’re gonna be the one fucked with a broom, Frank. That’s if you’re lucky. From what I hear, you made some enemies among our red-wearing friends the last time you went down. Or was it the Crips? My memory isn’t what it used to be.”
“Whore.”
I put a little weight on my foot. “Remind me to send you a copy of Emily Post’s book on etiquette. You’re sadly lacking in the manners department.”
“Cunt
.”
“Don’t have much a vocabulary either, do you? I recommend Roget’s Thesaurus for that. Daily improvement, Frank, it’s the path to a successful life.”
Foot still on his neck, I took the plastic ties from Jimmy and secured Gunnerston’s wrists. Then I relieved him of his firearm—a monster Beretta 96A1, for God’s sake, and stepped away, re-aiming my comparatively itty-bitty .38 at his ass. I didn’t want to kill him, just give him something to think about.
The wait wasn’t long. The whoop-whoop of a siren and the glare of red and blue lights announced the arrival of friends. Two cars, this time. Aren’t I the popular girl?
The first officers through the door were detectives Bob Grossman and Sylvie Perrins.
“Oh, looky, looky!” Sylvie crowed. “It’s our old friend, Frank Gunnerston! Whatcha been doing, Frank? Disturbing the peace again?”
Upon her orders, the two uniformed officers who followed the detectives through the door yanked Gunnerston to his feet and hauled him and his whopper of a handgun out to their squad car.
Fun over, Sylvie settled herself into a chair while Bob remained standing.
“How’s things up in Black Canyon City, Lena? They still partying hearty at that pie place?”
So she’d been keeping tabs on me. “The Dutch apple is as good as ever.”
She snorted. “You old traditionalist, you. Myself, I go for the rhubarb crumble. More daring.”
“Banana cream, here,” Bob offered.
Sylvie pulled out a notebook. Seeing that, Bob lowered his big bulk into another chair, and Jimmy returned to typing.
“So,” Sylvie said, her voice all business, “tell me what just went down here. You lure Gunnerston in with your feminine wiles, then have your way with him?”
There wasn’t much to tell, but she kept interrupting my story with questions about my time in Black Canyon City.
“Hear you were shot at up there, too.”
“Occupational hazard.”
“We also hear that the gun used in the Norma Wycoff homicide was the same one that got cozy with you.”
“That’s what Ballistics said.”
“Small world, isn’t it, Lena?”
“Planes, trains, and automobiles. You can get anywhere these days. Besides, BCC’s not much more than an hour’s drive away.”
“Report I read said the bullets never came closer than two feet from you. Shooter was a lousy shot, wasn’t he?”
“Who said the shooter was a he?”
“Funny how sexism rears its ugly head in the simplest of sentences.”
At this, Bob rolled his eyes. “Would you two get to the frickin’ point?”
Sylvie turned to him. “Don’t we still have a stash of porn magazines we took off that idiot kid over on Camelback? If you’re bored, go read them.” Then, to me, while Bob muttered darkly under his breath, “You never owned a .22 rifle in your life, did you, Lena?”
“Not after four years old. My memory’s a bit hazy before that.”
“There you go, then.”
“Go then, what?”
“Then you can’t be Norma Wycoff’s killer.” She grinned. “See ya at the submarine races.” With that, she got up and left, Bob trailing behind her, still muttering.
From behind me, Jimmy said, “I feel sorry for Bob.”
I laughed. “I do, too.”
But something Sylvie had said made me think.
***
Once Gunnerston was driven off to the holding tank at the Scottsdale pokey, I got back to business, which in this case, was a drive to Queen Creek, yet another Phoenix suburb, this one south of Gilbert on the far southeast side. Once a series of dairy and produce farms, it was now headed down Subdivision Boulevard, with cookie-cutter homes all over the place.
It took me a while to find Daniel Shea, the retired fire captain of the Queen Creek Fire Department, but once I did, he delivered a gold mine of information.
“I’ll never forget that Morris fire,” he said. “It killed the mother and father and the eight-week-old baby sleeping in their room. Smoke inhalation, thank God for small favors. Three other kids made it out okay.”
Shea had to be pushing eighty, if not already there, but he looked as fit as a tennis pro. Brown from work in the sun, and with a completely bald head and bushy white eyebrows, he looked like Mr. Clean’s grandfather.
We were sitting in his kitchen in what had once been a farmhouse but was now less than a hundred yards away from one of those cutesy suburban developments where all the houses mimic Tuscan farmhouses. The developer had tried to buy his land, Shea explained, but he’d been born in his house and planned to die in it, too. What land remained of the old Shea farm was still being put to use. A sorrel mare and a dappled gray gelding grazed in the pasture outside, while a palomino and her colt stared at us quizzically over the fence. All four looked in rough shape, which wasn’t surprising. They were rescue horses, taken from their original owner because of neglect. Besides the horses, Shea’s house was overrun by five dogs and what looked like a dozen cats. More rescues. Animals swarmed under our feet as we talked at the kitchen table.
After I turned down a cold beer, Shea served me up a tall glass of ice water and got busy with his memories. “Ever see a dead baby, Ms. Jones?”
There was no point in telling him I had seen several, so I said no.
“Awful thing, just awful. Oldest kid was a hero, though. Got the others out alive.”
“That was Casey?”
He nodded. “Casey Fairfield. I’ll never forget his name. Handsome boy. Quite the cool character for his age. He was about twelve then, maybe thirteen, wetted down a towel and tied it around his face. Led the other kids to safety.”
“What caused the fire?”
He took another sip of his Bud. “The thing you have to understand is that we were an all-volunteer department back then. Sure, once we got the fire out we reached out to the sheriff’s office, and they called in some arson investigator from Phoenix, but he came up with nothing. Case closed.”
“No sign of accelerants?”
“Not that anyone found.”
“Tell me about the kids Casey saved.”
“Foster kids like him. Two boys and a girl. Those Morrises, they were great people. They’d been taking care of other people’s kids for years.”
“Was the baby, the one who perished, a foster, too?”
Shea shook his head. “No, the Morrises’. Kind of a surprise pregnancy because everybody, including Jessica Morris herself—beautiful woman, by the way, looked something like Sophia Vergara on a good day—thought she couldn’t have kids. Say, you being a private investigator and all, do you happen to know where Casey wound up? I’ve always wondered. Brave boy like that, I’m betting he turned into something terrific.”
I gave Shea a weak smile. “I have no idea where Casey Fairfield is.”
Or who he really was.
***
I made it out of Queen Creek just in time for evening rush hour, which added to my bad mood. Stop-and-go traffic is lousy enough in the winter when the temps average in the sublime seventies, but in muggy August it means you eat fumes and sweat. By the time I arrived back at Desert Investigations, Jimmy had turned off the lights and locked up, so I bypassed the office and went upstairs.
Snowball acted thrilled to see me until I realized he was under the impression that a new scratching post had just walked through the door. I allowed him to claw his way up my once-black cargo pants to my thigh before lifting him by the scruff of the neck and cuddling him against my once-black tee shirt.
“See what you did?” I asked as he nuzzled my chin. “White fur all over me. Why can’t you keep it to yourself?”
Maybe cats stopped shedding when they grew older. Or maybe not. Whichever, I certainly wasn’t going to change out my entire ward
robe in order to co-exist with my newly acquired friend, which is why on my way home I’d stopped off at PetSmart and picked up an entire carton of Sticky Buddys. I made my way into the bedroom, where I plopped the bankers’ box down at the foot of my floor-length mirror. Looking around, I noted with pleasure that Snowball hadn’t destroyed my Roy Rogers and Trigger bedspread. In fact, the entire bedroom appeared untouched, except for the small stuffed rabbit I’d bought for him, which he’d deposited on Trigger’s rump.
After feeding the little dervish, I nuked some ramen for myself, then set my laptop on the kitchen table and began transcribing my case notes. Before I’d entered the first paragraph, Snowball jumped onto my lap, turned around three times like a dog, then purred himself to sleep. He stayed there until I finished typing, then I cuddled him in my arms and carried him to the sofa.
“TV time,” I told him, switching on the news.
It was the same old, same old. Muggings, shootings, and Kardashians. Bored, I eased Snowball off my lap and returned to my laptop. Something was nagging at me, but no matter how often I scrolled through my notes, I couldn’t pinpoint it. In my business, if a statement didn’t sound right, it wasn’t. But who was the liar? The most flagrant contradictions in my notes were the statements concerning Casey Fairfield/Starr. Two people had described him as a budding psychopath. Another, as a hero.
But I also couldn’t help remembering what Guy DeLucca, the social worker who’d placed the foster children with the Wycoffs, had said. “You’ve done the best of them all.”
I read the notes again. And again. What was I missing?
The fifth time through, something struck me.
I grabbed my landline and called Jimmy’s trailer.
He answered, sounding out of breath. “I’m in the middle of something, Lena.”
“Hot date?” I teased.
“Very funny. Say what you called to say or I’m hanging up.”
I bit back a retort and got down to it. “When you ran that backgrounder on Casey Starr-nee-Fairfield, did you check on his wife?”
“Why would I? She’s not involved in this mess.”
“Which means you didn’t.”
