The Laura Cardinal Novels (62 page)

Laura could see it; she’d fallen prey to the same kind of delusional thinking herself. God gave young girls beauty and brains and free will, but he also gave them peer pressure, insecurity and a desperate need for validation from the other sex.

“When did Shana call Bobby?” Laura asked.

“Last night.”

“Did you have margaritas then?”

“No. We were drinking gin.” Defiant look:
We’re grownups now
. “I’ve got to hit the head, all right? Be back in a minute.” She ducked into the bathroom off the main room.

Laura found herself looking at the photos ranged along the walls. Most of them were family photos, blown up into eight-by-tens. One picture in particular caught her eye, two rows of boys and girls, four to a row, the boys in suits and the girls wearing white dresses.

She heard a toilet flush. Behind her Jillian said, “That was Natasha’s First Communion.”

“Natasha?”

“My little sister.”

Laura was more interested in the girl sitting next to Natasha. “Is that Erin Wingate?”

Jillian walked up and stared at the girl. “Uh-huh.”

“You know her?”

“I
should
know her. She spent more time at our house than she did at her own. My mom baby sat for Erin’s mom when she was a doctor at the health center.” She wrinkled her nose. “Little brat.”

“Why do you say that?”

“She was always getting Natasha in trouble. Daring her to do things, and then Natasha would get the blame. She always liked to be the center of attention.”

Laura remembered the listless child who showed only slight interest in her new horse. “Sounds like she was hell on wheels.”

“You got that right. Finally my mom had enough and said she couldn’t come to our place anymore.”

“How long ago was this?”

She shrugged. “Oh, a couple of years ago. You know what happened to her mom and dad, don’t you? They died in a car accident. I hear Erin’s with her grandmother now.”

Laura nodded. “Erin’s not doing too well these days.”

“I’ll bet. She worshipped her mom.”

“No, I mean she’s sick.”

“Sick? What, does she have cancer or something?”

“They don’t know what it is, but she’s been sick for a while.”

“Well, that’s too bad. I remember she used to get hurt sometimes—kid stuff—probably because she was always doing something. One time she broke her arm. But sick … hard to think of her lying around in bed all day.”

“Do you mind if we go out on the deck?” Laura asked. She thought that being outside would make Jillian more comfortable, bring the interview down to an intimate level—two girls talking. The idea of soaking up the sun and watching the water wasn’t so bad either.

Laura asked her, “What do you think about Shana and Bobby, as a couple?”

Jillian sipped her ice water—Laura suspected it was the only drinkable water in the house—and looked out toward the gulf. “Well, you know, I don’t know what she sees in him. But love is love, you know?”

“You don’t like him?”

“It’s not that,” she said hastily. She didn’t want to appear disloyal. “But he
is
a lot older. Some girls like older men, though, and there’s nothing wrong with that.”

“So the reason she left Bobby and came down here was because he slapped her?”

“Well, there was other stuff. She thought he wasn’t really in love with her. That maybe he was stringing her along. But
that
worked out.”

“What do you mean it worked out? How did she know he really loves her?”

Jillian tossed her mane and shaded her eyes with a slim hand. “It really was romantic, you should have seen him. He didn’t get down on his knee or anything like that, but he took her out here—I was in the house, but I saw it all—and he gave her the ring.”

“An engagement ring?”

“Yeah. She was so excited.”

“You’re sure it was an engagement ring?”

“She came in and showed it to me.” Jillian made a little face. “It wasn’t very big—you know, carat-wise? But Bobby never had much money and it’s the thought that counts. Besides, he said it was just a first ring, you know? That down the line he’d get her something really nice.”

“So off they went. Did they say where they were going?”

Jillian shrugged. “Back to Williams? That’d be my guess. I’m sure Shana wants to show everyone her ring. Plus, she said there was stuff she had to do.”

“Stuff?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Any idea what she was talking about?”

Jillian shook her head.

Laura tried another tack. “So what’s going on with Shana these days? With the kids and everything?”

Jillian continued to stare out at the gulf, but her eyes narrowed. “She isn’t much into her kids. Hardly ever talks about them. If
I
had a kid, I’be talking about them all the time. I wondered what happened with the kids while she came down here, and she said they stay with Ronnie and his parents.”

Laura realized that Jillian didn’t know her friend very well. Maybe it was the physical distance between them—Jillian living in Tucson now.

“Did she talk about Dan?”

“That was so awful. He was such a nice guy.”

“She must have been pretty broken up.”

“Oh, she was. One night we were out here, drinking margaritas, and she started telling me how awful it was. I mean, they were really close. He was more of a best friend than a brother, and she felt so guilty.”

“Why would she feel guilty?”

Jillian shrugged. “I don’t know. She was saying crazy things—we were both pretty drunk. How it was all her fault. Well, you
know
she didn’t mean that.”

“Did she say anything specific? How it could be her fault.”

“No. Just that sometimes she hated herself, that she could have maybe done something—to save him? But when I asked her what she could have done, she didn’t answer me.”

“Do you think she was hiding something?”

“Maybe. She just got this scared look on her face and said she was just sad because her brother was gone. And that was it.”

“What then?”

“We went to bed. Well, actually, I went to bed. She sat out here a while longer, just crying? I thought I should leave her alone, let her cry it out. She was still asleep on the chaise when I came out the next morning.”

The drive back took more than four hours. Once again Laura would be home late at night. Driving through the darkness through the Tohono O’odham reservation, she tried to figure out what was going on with Shana and Bobby.

They could be anywhere by now. But she was betting on Williams, which meant another trip up north.

She wondered if he really meant to marry her, or if it was a ploy to get her to go with him. From everything she had heard, Shana sounded like a user. Shana was a user and Bobby was a user. Who won when two users got together?

Laura was betting on Bobby.

As she got on I-10 to drive across Tucson, her mind turned to home, and to Tom. She realized that she’d been overreacting. The idea that he had suddenly fallen in love with a lost hiker—that sounded just a little bit paranoid. She hadn’t talked to him for several days, and there was nothing to prove that things had changed between them, except for her own bad feeling. If she looked at it logically, from an investigator’s viewpoint, there was no evidence that anything was amiss.

She needed to chill.

But when she got home, Tom was still gone. No evidence that he had come back.

Where would he be now? Presumably the hiker was in the hospital for observation or out and going on about her life. Laura walked over to the cantina looking for him, but he wasn’t there. Mina saw her and held up a hand, a signal that she would come by when she was done serving other customers.

Tom obviously wasn’t here, and Laura didn’t want to hear a lecture tonight. She walked back along the horse trail toward her house, stopping at the corrals.

Tom’s trailer was back, but his truck was gone. His decrepit retired saddle bronc, Ali— named for Mohammed Ali—was in the corral.

Laura was relieved that Tom hadn’t left for good. He wouldn’t leave without taking Ali.

She went back to the house, which was still empty. Got into bed, but couldn’t sleep. Frustrated and angry that she was listening for him again.

She felt shut out. She wanted to know what was going on—if anything
was
going on. But there was no way to reach him. He didn’t have a cell phone. He didn’t have much of anything. He was the kind of man who lived his life the way he wanted to, and didn’t worry about what other people thought.

Laura hated not being able to do anything about it.

She turned on the TV set. It was the same channel from last night, one of those movie channels where they repeat movies, because
The Sixth Sense
was on again.

Haley Joel Osment and Bruce Willis were back at the wake for the little girl.

The little girl handing Haley Joel the box.

The girl getting out of her bed and turning on the video camcorder.

The mother coming in with the tray, setting it down, pouring something into the child’s food—all of it caught on tape.

Laura turned off the set. She remembered something Wendy had told her about Mrs. Wingate. How she haunted the Health Care Center, buttonholing the doctors, riding herd on them, never taking “no” for an answer.

An expert by now.

It seemed strange that Erin had suffered a setback at the soda fountain in Flagstaff while Laura was there. What were the odds of that happening?

The mother of one of the other girls said these incidents had happened a few times—twice? Three times? So much so that it seemed unfair to the other girls.

If Erin was that sick, why did Mrs. Wingate insist she go in for extracurricular activities?

Maybe the activities were therapeutic.

But Laura also remembered what Jillian had told her about Erin Wingate:
Hard to think of Erin lying around all day
.

The first thing Laura did when she arrived at the Flagstaff airport was rent a car. It was on her dime, but that didn’t matter. Whether or not she got reimbursed, she was fine with it. She didn’t gamble, she didn’t travel, she didn’t buy herself expensive toys. Her job was her vice. She had no idea how long she’d be in Williams, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to spend it riding around in Richie Lockhart’s Starskymobile.

When Laura got in to work this morning, she found out that Richie was already on his way up to Williams. This was after the Williams PD informed him that Luke Jessup had turned up. Laura needed to be there, too. There was Luke Jessup, and there was the possibility that Bobby Burdette and Shana Yates had gone straight back home.

She called ahead to the Williams PD to let them know she didn’t need anyone to come and pick her up. Something was lost in translation, though; Officer Tagg was waiting for her outside at the curb.

“I’ve got a car,” she told him, holding up the key tab.

He looked at her morosely. She could almost hear what was going on in his mind.
Women: They can never make up their minds.

Laura’s conservation-minded upbringing had come out when she chose the car. Personally, she didn’t like the new American-made cars, although she never offered her opinion. If that got out, she’d be universally despised by her squad-mates; DPS bled red, white and blue. Laura had been razzed unmercifully when she chose her take-home car, the only Toyota in a pantheon of Excursions and Silverados. Drug dealers liked American cars as much as the cops did—which made a good argument that enforcing the law and breaking the law were, in some ways, two sides of the same coin.

Laura wanted another 4Runner—or God forbid, a
Camry
—but she got a Chevy Impala instead. Richie wouldn’t have an excuse not to ride with her now.

The Impala was the color of freshly-overturned dirt. She wondered what great marketing exec came up with the color. How did they describe it in the brochure? Coffee? Peat Moss? Mole?

It was mid-afternoon by the time Laura pulled her big duffle into the same room she’d occupied only three days ago.

She dropped off her stuff and drove out to meet Richie, who was waiting for her at the gate to Unicorn Farm. When he saw her drive up behind him, he got out of his car.

“So you finally came to your senses,” he said, nodding at her vehicle. “Didn’t they have any Monte Carlos?”

“Didn’t want to steal your thunder.” She walked around to the passenger side and opened the door. “Shall we?”

He smiled, but shook his head. “I would, but I can’t leave this baby by the side of the road. Especially so close to a golf course.”

Of course not. They drove across the meadow to the Wingate house. This time the wildflowers were shriveled and the grass had a decidedly brownish cast.

Laura was thinking about coincidences. Turned out Luke Jessup had been living in a trailer on Barbara Wingate’s property, where he did odd jobs. He’d probably been up at the trailer when Laura came here last.

As they came up on the blue house, she noticed a beat-up ranch truck with the name UNICORN FARM painted on the doors, and a bumper sticker on the back that said COMMIT RANDOM ACTS OF KINDNESS.

Richie parked in the cleared space near the truck and got out, the sun haloing his white hair.

“You see a trailer?”

“No.”

Richie glanced toward the barn. Laura followed his gaze, which had fallen on a stack of fresh lumber and rolls of shiny silver fencing wire.

“You think building a fence falls under odd jobs?” Richie said.

“If you’re good enough.”

Laura heard a noise and glanced toward the house. Josh Wingate had opened the door and propped the screen open. “We’re in here.”

Laura looked at Richie. “Did you call first?”

“Me? No.”

She smiled. She never called first either.

They entered the house.

“My mother is in the kitchen. You came to see her, right?”

“Actually—”

Laura shot Richie a look. Richie grinned, but didn’t finish the sentence.

Josh Wingate was looking at Laura. He looked sheepish. “Just want you to know, my mom never mentioned he was here. And I don’t talk with her about police business, so … well, anyway.” He shrugged.