Desert Lost (9781615952229) (7 page)

Sighing, I promised.

Unless my ears tricked me, she was crying. “Don't forget, I'm countin' on you. Well, see you around, girlfriend. Somewhere. Sometime.”

With that, she hung up.

Chapter Eight

Four good nights in a row, couldn't get much better than that. Jonah exited the Lexus fifty dollars richer, but after he made his connection, he was broke again.

The meth tucked safely inside his jacket, he hurried through the cloudless night to the abandoned building where he'd been squatting for the past couple of weeks. So far, the cops hadn't noticed that the plywood covering a ground floor rear window had been pried loose at the corner, but once they did, he and the other boys would have to move on again. For now, though, it sure beat a cardboard box.

After crawling through the window, he scurried through a litter of paper to his regular corner, knocked a few empty cans aside, and wrapped the blankets around him. The old office must have had something to do with travel, because big pictures of places he'd never even heard of hung on the dusty walls. Hawaii. Tahiti. New Zealand. Easter Island.
Easter Island,
where was that? Off the coast of Oregon? He had cousins in Oregon, supposedly, maybe even half-brothers and sisters. Maybe they'd seen those big stone faces and knew what they were all about. Maybe Easter Island was a place where they celebrated Easter every day, maybe prayed all the time. Maybe, as soon as he made a big enough score, Jonah would go there and get right with the Prophet again.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

All those maybes scared him, so he readied his glass pipe. Lit up and inhaled the magic. Watched as the darkness brightened around him and the dusty walls gleamed.

Easter Island!

Easter, a time when the dead came back to life.

“You do all right tonight?” Meshach sidled up beside him and reached for the pipe.

Jonah looked around, his eyes now accustomed to the dark. None of the other boys were back yet, just his cousin.

“Good enough. You?” Jonah passed the pipe but kept his hand on the stem.

Meshach took a deep drag. “Nothing. So why bother hangin' around for more nothing?”

Even through Meshach was six months younger than Jonah, he looked twenty years older. Teeth pretty much gone, yellow hair dry as stable straw, paler-than-pale skin marred by spreading sores. On the street, he was a bargain basement boy. Sometimes not even that.

Jonah tugged at the pipe. Gently, at first. Didn't want to break it.

Meshach tightened his grip. “Once more. Please.”

Feeling momentary pity, Jonah allowed him one more hit. Then he snatched the pipe from Meshach's mouth. “Go earn your own.”

After all, kinship only went so far.

Hadn't they both learned that the hard way?

Chapter Nine

Another Tuesday night, another stakeout, another wig.

Since I conducted this surveillance in Jimmy's small pickup instead of a fully-furnished Winnebago, it was hard to get comfortable. And truth be told, Henny's RV storage yard had been considerably more attractive than Frugal Foods' crowded parking lot.

Clusters of stressed-looking people wheeled baskets of discount staples out of the market and unloaded them into the trunks of their luxury cars. When times grew hard in Scottsdale, people kept up their glitzy fronts but modified their shopping habits. No more strolling around the gourmet stores with their pastel-colored shopping baskets; just sneaked trips to Costco, Sam's Club, and Frugal Foods.

The owner of Little Rick's You-Store-It had told me that the women seldom showed earlier than ten o'clock, but in need of my own foodstuffs, I'd arrived at nine and checked the place out while doing my own shopping. About half the size of the Scottsdale Costco, this super-discount store specialized in family-sized containers of off-brand products, mostly from Mexico or China. I'd loaded up on enough ramen noodles to keep me fed for a month, along with two cases of generic diet soda, and several pounds of “ultra-dark, slow-roasted, genuine Arabica beans.” The store also boasted a no-frills deli, so I'd filled my thermos.

Now back in the truck, I took a few sips of coffee, which brought beads of perspiration to my brow. In one of March's quick turnarounds, the temperature hovered in the low seventies, and I would have been better off with a Diet Coke. The unusually warm night turned out to be helpful, too, because it made the three women who exited the silver Aerostar van the next parking lane over stand out from the rest of the crowd.

Covered from chin to toe in blousy calico dresses and polyester sweaters, each face bore a striking resemblance to Rosella's. The gray-haired woman, tall and broad enough for two women, appeared to be in charge, driving two younger women before her like a Border collie herding sheep. There
was
something almost sheep-like in those two's expressions, a dutiful acquiescence I'd observed many times on the Arizona/Utah border.

“Half an hour, no more,” Top Dog barked.

“Yes, Opal,” said the younger of the other two women, a petite blond probably still in her teens. The vacancy in her face made me suspect mental retardation.

Before the women could catch sight of me, I lowered myself in my seat. The older woman had been called “Opal,” and if I remembered correctly, Rosella had told me Prophet Shupe's first wife—before he'd added dozens more to his collection—was named Opal. Because of her title as first wife, she was the most powerful of the women, if you could call any blind follower “powerful.” What was she doing in Scottsdale? Being a mere woman, Shupe wouldn't have chosen her to run a satellite compound; only men carried out such important functions. But was she still a member of his harem? Just because she'd been his first wife meant little to him. The Living Presence of God on Earth was notorious for pawning off used wives to other men; he preferred fresh meat.

When the three women entered Frugal Foods, I eased my sore arm into a more comfortable position, my mind exploring Opal's spousal possibilities. Ezra Shupe, Prophet Hiram Shupe's brother, was Second Zion's enforcer, the overseer of the God Squad. If anyone had the power to set up a new compound, Ezra sure did. And this probably meant that the Prophet had handed Opal down to his brother.

Along with Celeste King, the murder victim.

I checked my Timex Indiglo: ten o'clock. The women had been right on time. I settled myself for a half-hour wait.

One of the bad things about running surveillance is that you can't indulge in the usual distractions. You can't read, play music, make phone calls, or watch TV. All you can do is sit there. And, sometimes, think about your screw-ups.

I wasn't supposed to be sitting in the Frugal Foods parking lot tonight; I was supposed to be over at the Paradise Valley house getting things ready for Warren's return early the next morning. But I hadn't even begun to pack my own clothes yet, let alone organize his dishes and sheets. My idle mind kept replaying the many voice mail messages Warren had left on my cell, beginning at ten-thirty that morning.

“Miss you, Lena. Call me.”

Twelve-fifteen: “Lena, can't wait for tomorrow. We'll go out and celebrate.”

Twelve-forty: “Lena, are you all right?”

One-oh-six: “Lena, this isn't funny.
Call me
.”

One-forty-two: “I just called your office but Jimmy claims he doesn't know where you are. Is something wrong?”

At that point I'd stopped checking my messages.

What was wrong with me? In Warren I had a man who was everything any sane woman could want: talented, good-looking, an unselfish lover. I couldn't possibly expect more.

But God, I was so scared
.

I forced my mind back to the business at hand. By now it was ten-twenty-two, and only four other vehicles remained in Frugal Foods' parking lot, including the polygamists' silver Aerostar. How long could shopping take? The answer came a few minutes later when the three appeared, pushing six filled-to-the-brim shopping carts. Little Rick was right; they looked like they'd shopped for an army. Lowering my head again, I listened as they maneuvered to their Aerostar and began loading the grocery bags inside. They didn't say much, just puffed and panted as they positioned everything carefully.

“Josie, don't you squash those hamburger buns,” Top Dog/Opal snapped. “They're only one day old.”

The blonde mumbled a subservient reply, then said something that shivered me. “When is Celeste coming back?”

In my shock, I almost blew my cover by sitting up straight.

“Shut up about her, I told you!” Opal hissed.

“But I miss our sister-wife. When's she…?”

Our sister-wife
. For Josie to use that phrase meant that all three women probably belonged to one man. Ezra Shupe, the prophet's brother?

Another voice interrupted Josie's wistful plaints about Celeste. “Opal, I sure wish you'd let us get that Crisco. That other stuff we bought's not as good. It tastes like medicine.”

Opal was having none of it. “I'll determine what's good and what isn't, Darnelle. In the meantime, you need to get a handle on that pride of yours. Thinking you know what's best for others is a sin.”

Darnelle, the dark-haired woman I'd seen earlier, said nothing. I wondered if she was thinking the same thing I did, that Opal seemed to have no problem committing that particular sin herself, if the right to make a nutritional choice
was
a sin.

Opal continued to bark orders until the groceries were loaded, then I heard doors slam shut and the Aerostar's engine start up. It sounded a lot like the engine I'd heard the night of Celeste's murder, but Scottsdale PD would never be able to obtain a search warrant based on such flimsy evidence. Perhaps once I followed the women to their destination, I'd come up with something more concrete.

Minutes later the Aerostar's tail lights disappeared down a small dead end street about a half-mile from where I'd found Celeste's body. This area, too, was commercially zoned, with a variety of small electrical firms, janitorial services, and other businesses unidentifiable by their names. At the end of the street, the van turned into the driveway of a heavy equipment yard. The sign, only faintly illuminated, read TEN SPOT CONSTRUCTION.

Cutting the Toyota's lights, I coasted to a stop in front of the self-storage facility next door. With my window open and the dark street quiet except for a few sleepy birds, I was able to hear a gate at the back of the yard clatter open. When it closed again, I heard the crunch of tires across gravel, the squeak of brakes, doors opening and closing. Then the scent of something cooking. Beans, maybe, with pork. More women's voices drifted to me, different timbres than the three from the Aerostar.

Suddenly a man's deep bass rumbled through the night air. “You girls bring me somethin' nice?”

I'd head that voice only once, but I'd never forget it.

Ezra Shupe.

The leader of the Prophet's God Squad had taken up residence in Scottsdale.

Chapter Ten

The next morning found me renting a unit at Kachina 24-Hour Storage. By happy coincidence, I was able to get an air-conditioned and well-ventilated ten-by-ten at the rear of the complex, on the side closest to Ten Spot Construction. A razor-wired fence fronted by ten-foot-high oleanders rendered the construction yard almost invisible, but that didn't bother me. I was interested in the house behind it.

Now I finally had a use for those empty cartons stacked all over my apartment. Wearing a bubble-cut brunette wig and a pink polyester pantsuit from my collection of disguises, I spent the rest of the morning shuttling back and forth between Desert Investigations and the storage company in a rented panel van, moving in what appeared to be a small house full of furniture. Actually, the only real piece of furniture was the cheap aluminum chaise lounge I'd purchased at Wal-Mart. As I toted cartons into my key pad-protected unit, I could hear children playing on the other side of the fence, a baby crying, women conversing in low voices. There was little snooping I could do in the daytime, but that made no difference since Kachina 24-Hour Storage was, as its name proclaimed, always open. Well-lit, and with an abundance of security cameras to ensure the safety of its patrons and their possessions, the complex even provided a public restroom at the back of the facility. The restroom's location, just a few steps away from my unit, was an added bonus.

One of the things I loved about Arizona was its liberal audio taping laws, which allowed any form of taping as long as one party to a conversation knew it was being taped, an ironic distinction since the
taper
was always one up on the usually ignorant
tapee
.

Sometimes the law actually works in your favor.

The weather being mild and sunny, the Kachina bustled with entrepreneur-ish activity. Two units away, a woman turned a pot on a foot-controlled potter's wheel; in the corner unit, a photographer hot-mounted black-and-white prints on stiff board; not far enough away, a garage band floundered its way through a Papa Roach rip-off. But the usual self-storage crowd was out and about, too. An elderly couple stuffed stacks of
National Geographic
and
Arizona Highways
magazines into the unit next to mine, and the pregnant woman across from me scrambled through her piled-high unit, heaping baby blankets and toys into a bassinet. As far as I was concerned, the more the merrier. The constant din from the storage units had probably inured the polygamists next door to unusual noises, while disguising their own.

Such as the screams of beaten women and children.

My job at Kachina 24-Hour Storage finished for the present, I locked up my unit and returned the panel van to Enterprise. There I picked up my own ride and drove off to Paradise Valley to mend some fences.

The day was cloudless, but a hint of yellow spoiled the western horizon. Smog riding the sky highway from Los Angeles, or Phoenix's home-grown variety? Turning up the narrow blacktop that led to the house, I saw Mummy Mountain rising steeply into that questionable sky, the mountain itself a ruined patchwork of gray rock and bad architecture. Twitching movements of brown hinted at roaming wildlife, but this peaceful panorama was spoiled by a radio blasting Green Day from a raucous poolside party below. Plop down seven figures for real estate and this was what you got: somebody else's noise. In comparison, Kachina 24-Hour Storage was a pocket of tranquility.

When I pulled into the driveway I saw Warren stuffing flattened shipping boxes into a commercial-sized recycle bin.

“Looks like you're making progress,” I said, alighting from the Jeep.

He didn't turn his head.

As it always did when I saw him, my heart gave a little flutter. His scruffy jeans fit tightly around his ass and his bare torso glistened with sweat. He looked more like a movie star than most of the surgically-altered actors he'd directed.

“I'm sorry. I just… I just got busy.”

“Too busy to return my calls?”

Maybe it was time to tell him the truth. After taking a deep breath, I said, “I'm scared, Warren.”

“Of what?”

“Of me. Of us. Of having everything go wrong and being left alone to pick up the pieces.” As had happened to me so many times.

When he turned to look at me, his handsome face was pinched with hurt. “You think I'd do that to you?”

I swallowed. “No, not really. It's just that, well, I haven't done anything like this before. Move in with someone.”

“Make a commitment, you mean.”

“But I'm trying now. So, how about I help with those boxes.”

After a brief silence—during which I went through all kinds of hell—he said, “If you want.”

We spent the next half hour working without conversation, stomping cardboard boxes flat, shoving them into the Dumpster. He'd made more headway than I would have believed possible, with the living room furniture positioned in the exact places he'd diagrammed, and an already-made bed in the master suite. The twins' room waited for the girls to move into, and even the large bath/sauna was finished, with sandalwood-scented soap in the dishes and gauze-soft toilet paper properly hung in an antique brass holder. In the kitchen, an espresso/cappuccino/coffee machine twice the size of the one at Desert Investigations awaited its master's command. The house had already begun to resemble a home.

His
home.

I finally broke the uncomfortable silence we'd both been laboring under. “How'd you get so much done?”

“It's amazing how much work disappointment can produce.” His eyes met mine for the first time.

I put down the box I had been about to toss into the Dumpster. “I said I'm sorry.”

He held up his hand. “Apologies aren't necessary.”

“If you…” This time I stopped myself before I finished with
if you want to call it off, I'll understand.

“Real life's a lot different than screen romance, isn't it, Lena?”

I was afraid to ask him what he meant, but I figure it had something to do with happy endings.

“It's my own fault, because I know you better than you know yourself, and there've been no surprises. Now, are you ready to tell me what happened to your face? And your arm? Or are you under the impression my eyesight's going?”

“Car trouble.”

“Lena. Stop it.”

I told him.

Instead of renewing his pleas for me to quit the case, he stared off into the distance through the yellow sky. “And they say Los Angeles has smog.”

“Ours isn't as bad.”

“Give it time.”

“It's blue, most days.”

He finally looked at me through troubled eyes, and I knew it wasn't the smog he was worried about. But he just said, “Let's get the rest of this stuff unpacked, okay?”

By one o'clock, we had emptied the rest of the cartons except for those stacked in his office. Exhausted, I plopped myself down on the sleek leather sofa positioned to overlook the city.

He sank down next to me. “I'm keeping the bulk of my stuff at the Beverly Hills house. Probably a good thing, too, since it looks like I might be spending more time out there than I'd planned. But that's all right, seeing as how you don't have much time to spend with me these days.” His tone was neutral, yet his words stung.

“Warren…”

He put a gentle hand over my mouth. “No more apologies. Your life is your life. My life, well, it'll be what it's going to be, with you or without you. I'd just hoped it would be with you.”

I pressed his hand closer, kissed it. “It's not too late.”

What with one thing and another, we wound up in bed, smearing our grungy, sweaty bodies all over fresh sheets.

***

Later, Warren asked, “When are you going to tell me you have to get back to the office?” His tanned chest gleamed against the white sheets.

Finally relaxed, I smiled. “I'm working nights this week. Running surveillance on the polygamists while Jimmy holds down the fort.”

“Lena, those people…”

“We'd better not get started talking about them. I made a promise to Rosella.”

“As if Scottsdale PD can't conduct a simple murder investigation. You used to be a cop, so you have to know better.”

“Like I said, I made a promise.”

He said nothing else for a while, then reached for me again.

***

We'd skipped lunch so we had an early dinner by the pool, with Warren doing chef's honors. Due to the Environmental Advisory, the second in a week, he didn't crank up the barbeque, just quick-seared two New York strips on the kitchen stove while I put together a salad.

“We'd make a good team, Lena,” he said, his voice wistful.

I leaned over the table and gave him a quick kiss. “Because we both work in the film industry?”

I'd meant it as a joke, but his face grew serious. “Hardly. If anything, that's an impediment. But now that you bring it up, Angel's in trouble.”

Angel—Angelique Grey, as she was known in her acting credits—was Warren's ex-wife and the mother of his twin girls. She was also the star of
Desert Eagle
, the private eye TV series I did consulting work for. Against all odds, we'd become friends. “What kind of trouble? And why hasn't she called me? She knows I'll help.”

He frowned. “Don't you remember the last time you ‘helped' her? Angel, along with an entire conference room full of people, wound up involved in a criminal case. None of them were happy about it, especially the writers. Thanks to you, they had to rewrite an entire season's worth of scripts.”

“Oh. That.”

“Yeah.
That
.”

Before I could remind him that my actions had halted a long-standing case of child abuse, he continued, “Be that as it may, her stalker's back.”

“Nevitt's been released?”

“Apparently. I don't know what they did to him in that mental hospital, but something's changed big time and not for the better. He's sending her threatening letters now.”

Dean Orval Nevitt had stalked Angel for years, and despite California's strengthened laws against stalking, she'd never been able to shake him. While he usually stayed just back of the one-hundred-fifty-foot boundary the courts had ordered, when he went off his meds he would still make his way to her front door. Sometimes he pretended to be a pizza deliveryman, sometimes the mailman. Sometimes he just showed up as himself. Last summer he'd arrived with a dozen long-stemmed roses to celebrate their fifth wedding anniversary. Delusional, yes, but he'd never before threatened to harm her.

Still, stalkers who appeared relatively harmless sometimes did turn dangerous, especially when thwarted over a long period of time. Such had been the case with Robert John Bardo, the man who shot and killed actress Rebecca Schaeffer because she wouldn't admit to their in-his-mind-only relationship. Suffering from a similar mental disorder, Nevitt was under the impression that he and Angel had been married in Mexico after her divorce from Warren. All Nevitt wanted, he swore in his several-times-daily letters, was to take up his rightful duties as husband and step-father to the twins.

I put my fork down. “He needs to be locked up again.”

“The authorities can't find him. But Angel swore she saw him at the end of her street this morning, hiding behind a jasmine bush.”

“Did she call the cops?”

“Of course. They came right out and conducted a search. No Nevitt.”

Unlike me, gym-toned and karate-quick, Angel had a slight, almost too-delicate build. I couldn't see her fending off anyone, let alone a deranged fan. “Does she still have that big body guard?”

“The Black Monk? Sure, but he can't be around all the time. Even bodyguards have lives. Angel received another letter from Nevitt this morning and it has her so worried that she called and asked me to fly back and bring the girls here until the situation is resolved.”

“But you were just out there! I thought we'd be able to spend some time together.”

He raised his eyebrows. “That, coming from you?”

Sounds of the city below rose around us. Car horns. Dogs barking. A child crying. At least the noise from the nearby pool party had subsided, with Green Day's shrill lead singer replaced by the seductive tones of Barry White.

“Maybe I should go out there, too, see if I can do anything. Hey, we could even fly out together. What time's your flight?”

He gave me a look that started out grateful, then clouded over. “I'm just going to pick up the girls then head right back.”

I noticed that he didn't give me a flight time.

***

I spent the evening in my unit at Kachina 24-Hour Storage, pushing my worries about Warren to the back of my mind while setting up surveillance equipment. I'd brought a directional mike connected to a recorder, but more importantly, a wireless remote-control camera equipped with a night vision lens so small that it would disappear into the oleanders. I didn't expect the polygamists to discuss Celeste's murder in the open air; they weren't that naive. But there was always the chance that I might capture evidence of a crime—even a lowly misdemeanor—which would provide Scottsdale PD with enough grounds for a search warrant. Although Arizona's attorney general deeply resented Rosella's so-called interference in “child custody” matters, he would never be able to ignore a local, non-Rosella-connected polygamy situation. Scottsdale's movers and shakers wouldn't allow it: the polygamists might scare the tourists.

I'd jumpstart that process tonight, then tomorrow morning, help Angel take care of the Dean Orval Nevitt situation. If tonight's efforts were successful, by the time I returned from L.A., the Scottsdale authorities might even have fingered Celeste's killer.

I waited until traffic at the storage facility died down and most of the tenants had gone home. On my row, the last to leave was the potter, who continued to pedal her wheel to the accompaniment of Vivaldi until almost nine o'clock. Then, to my relief, she finally called it a day. As soon as she'd shuttered her unit and disappeared into the night, I gathered up my equipment and crossed over to the fence.