Desert Rage: A Lena Jones Mystery (8 page)

Before I could answer, the scowl relaxed into a mere frown. Then she stared hard at me, as if bringing my face into focus. “Wait a minute. Did you say your name is Lena Jones?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

She motioned to my pictograph-covered Jeep. “Anyone see you drive up in that thing?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“Good.” She grabbed me by the arm and jerked me into the entrance hall so quickly I almost fell.

“You’re probably on a few new security cameras, though,” she muttered, walking away from me toward the babbling sounds. “Ever since the murders, this neighborhood’s been paranoid as a chicken on a fox farm. They’re afraid Kyle’s going to be released for a home visit and kill them all in their beds. As if. We can’t even visit him. Not yet, anyway. We’re appealing the judge’s decision but as for now, Glen and I have no legal standing. Crazy, huh? When I think about that boy sitting all alone in that juvie hellhole…Well, nothing I can do about that. Not until the judge changes his stupid mind.” She took a breath. “So, Ms. Jones, what do you want to know? Push comes to shove, I’ll deny I told you anything. You’ll back me up on that, right?”

Confused by her quick turnaround, all I could do was answer, “Uh, right.”

“Good, ’cause I’m not about to give up the others, too.”

She didn’t explain, just kept moving. We passed through a two-story great room filled with toys in various states of shabbiness and elderly furniture in need of repair. Some money once, not so much now. But still enough to buy out the stock of Toys “R” Us.

I kicked a Tickle Me Elmo out of my way before I tripped over it. “Mrs. Etheridge, do you know me from somewhere?”

Without turning her head, she continued in those short, choppy sentences of someone perpetually in a hurry. “Call me Fiona. You helped my sister once. Stacey Larchmont? Married to that sleazy dope dealer? You were a cop at the time. Damn near got yourself killed saving her stupid ass. Took a bullet for her. How’s the hip? Kept up with you ever since. So does she. Not that hard to do these days, damned Internet. No privacy anymore. We’re all doomed.” At the entrance to a large, well-lit kitchen, she stopped and turned around. “That’s what you want, isn’t it? Me to give up Kyle’s right to privacy?”

The baby’s muttering rose to a wail. No. Make that two wails.

“Twins,” she said, noting my surprise. “You never saw them. And don’t bother asking their names because I won’t tell you.”

Fostered-out twins. She didn’t have to tell me their names. I knew who the children were and why they’d been removed from their parents’ care. With luck, the parents—who didn’t deserve the title—would stay in prison until they rotted.

“We’ll talk while I feed them, okay, Ms. Jones? Not quite their mealtime, but babies aren’t clocks.”

“Sounds good to me. And call me Lena.”

At first glance, the kitchen was every woman’s dream. Big skylight shining on a cream marble floor and countertop, mahogany cabinets, a prep island as long as a ’76 Cadillac, a shiny Sub-Zero refrigerator, and a massive Viking range that could have prepared a meal for the entire crew of a marauding longboat. On closer inspection, I saw that one of the cabinet doors hung crookedly, and a large crack ran the entire length of the marble countertop.

But the toddlers she settled into matching high chairs weren’t in perfect shape, either.

Despite their obvious injuries—scars from old cigarette burns running up and down their arms—they looked happy and well cared-for. I thought back to the media coverage of their parents’ arrest and trial and guestimated that Fiona had been fostering the twins for around eight months.

Crooning something sappy from
The Sound of Music,
she began spooning yellow gook into the toddlers’ mouths. “So what do you want to know about Kyle?” she asked, after the boy spit the gook into her face.

Me, I would have gagged, but she just laughed, wiped it away, and thrust another spoonful into the spitter’s gaping maw. This time it stayed in.

“Fiona, do you think Kyle murdered that family?”

“Does a bear shit in a Manhattan subway?”

“Uh, no.”

“There’s your answer.”

In denial, just like Kyle’s aunt. I tried a fresh approach. “Let me see his room. If he’s as innocent as you claim, it’ll give me an idea of what he’s really like, not what the arresting officers say he’s like.”

She was silent for so long I thought she was going to deny my request, but eventually she nodded. “Upstairs, first room on the left, right next to the twins’ nursery. Won’t do you any good. Cops took everything.”

Before she could change her mind, I left her shoveling more food into the toddlers’ mouths.

Two of the stairs creaked loudly, and one of the balusters had crumpled under the weight of the heavy oak handrail. More evidence that the Etheridge household was tight for cash, probably the reason they had started fostering in the first place. Fostering pays, which is one of the reasons it sometimes attracts the less-than-kid-friendly.

Once I walked into Kyle’s room, I understood why Fiona had allowed me access. The room was almost as large as the master bedroom across the hall, and twice as crowded. No electronics, though. The police would have taken them away. Still, it was nice, for a change, to see a kid’s room that hadn’t been trashed.

Nothing but the usual boy-clutter. Shoulder pads, a catcher’s mask and mitt, an aluminum bat, hockey knee guards, and a few items I couldn’t identify. But sports played second fiddle to the supposed killer’s obsession with animals. Only one sports poster decorated the walls: a photograph of Hank Aaron hitting his seven hundredth and fifty-fifth homer. The other posters showed various young animals at play: colts, puppies, kittens, kangaroo joeys, tiger cubs, fawns…There were so many, you could hardly see the pale blue walls that perfectly matched the bedspread.

Kyle’s obsession with animals didn’t stop at posters. In a large Plexiglas cage on the top of the chest of drawers, two gerbils snuffled happily through wood shavings while a third exercised its stumpy legs on a wheel. In the corner, a forty-gallon aquarium played home to an assortment of colorful fish swimming around a tiny plastic castle. On a sunlit window seat, two fat gray kittens snuggled alongside an equally fat mixed-breed puppy.

Other than Hank Aaron, the only human presence in the room was two photographs on the nightstand. One showed Fiona with a man I took to be her husband. The other was of a still-blond Ali, her face glowing. When I opened the nightstand’s drawer, I found it bare.

The desk drawers looked the same. The police hadn’t left so much as a paper clip. There was nothing under the bed, either, nor in the chest of drawers.

As I crossed the room to check out the closet, a movement out of the corner of my eye startled me. I turned to see a minor scuffle between two of the aquarium fish—an orange and yellow something-or-other nipping at the fins of a blue something-or-other. Amused, I watched as Bluefish—who had to be twice the size of its attacker—head-butted Yellowfish, knocking him into the side of the tiny castle. Chagrined, Yellowfish swam away with Bluefish chasing him through a small forest of seaweed. I’d started to turn away when I noticed something out of place.

The fish fight had moved the castle about a quarter of an inch, revealing what looked like a white strip of plastic underneath. It was probably nothing, but I dipped my hand into the cool water, lifted the castle off its base…

And pulled out a fat plastic envelope waterproofed by generous application of duct-tape.

At the sound of footsteps on the stairs, I stuffed the envelope into my carryall. I was just drying my hand on my jeans when Fiona stepped into the room. Fortunately, she didn’t notice.

“So, you think this looks like the bedroom of a homicidal maniac?” She sounded more relaxed now that the twins had been fed.

“Not at first glance.”

“Hmph.” She stared at the two fish. They were fighting again.

Eager to turn her attention away from the aquarium, I pointed to the kittens and pup on the window seat. “Who’s taking care of Kyle’s pets now?” I asked, although I could guess the answer.

“Me, since I have so much time on my hands.” She walked over to the seat and scratched a variety of heads. Only one, the puppy, opened its eyes briefly in grateful acknowledgement. “Kyle’s rescues. Along with dozens of others. Squirrels. Snakes. A desert tortoise with a broken shell. Carried home a three-legged coyote pup, once. Turned it over to Adobe Mountain Wildlife Rescue. Always nagging me to drive him up there to visit it. Know how far that is?”

I nodded. The rescue center was on the opposite side of the county.

“Damn near thirty miles. He named it Bruce. Cute little thing. Semi-tame now. Never be returned to the wild. Too crippled up.”

For obvious reasons, it was rare for foster parents to allow their wards to adopt animals. When a child is on the move through the foster system, he or she must remain unencumbered. Only once had I been allowed to keep a pet, a yellow dog named Sandy. It hadn’t ended well.

Not for me, anyway.

“Why’d you let Kyle keep all of them?” I asked Fiona. “If he was moved to a different foster home he’d be forced to leave them behind.”

“We were having adoption papers drawn up when, well, when Ali’s family was killed.”

“You were going to adopt him?” I couldn’t keep the surprise out of my voice.

“Still will when this mess is over.”

That day sounded like a cold day in Hell to me, but I let it slide. “What does his aunt think about that?”

A variety of emotions swept across her face: anger, contempt, pity. “She knows it’s for the best. Given her criminal record, they’d never allow her to take custody. She loves him, though, so we’ve promised to let her see him. We drive him over to her trailer every week, drink crappy coffee in that greasy spoon down the street while he visits.”

I noted her use of the present tense, as if nothing had changed. “That must be a comfort to them both.”

“Hmph. I happen to believe, although I’ve never said this to Kyle, that the less he sees of what remains of his so-called family, the better. Still, love is love, no matter where you find it.”

There was nothing to say to that, so I opened the door to the closet, peered inside. Nothing. The closet was as empty as the drawers.

“They really cleaned everything out, didn’t they?”

“He had a laptop and iPod we bought for him, but the cops impounded them. Along with his cell. They hauled out cartons and cartons of stuff, all the new clothes we bought for him. Probably looking for blood stains.” She sniffed.

“Did Kyle keep a journal?”

“What teen doesn’t? The cops took it before I could do anything. I would’ve burned or buried it in the backyard before I let them get their hands on it. And I can guess your next question, so no, I never read his journal. Kids have a right to their private thoughts. Especially foster kids.”

“Then you don’t know what he wrote about.”

“Nope, although I guess Ali figured heavily, young love and all that. If you’re finished here, let’s go back downstairs before the twins make a break for it.” The rushed tone came back into her voice.

We went downstairs, where I discovered that before Fiona had come upstairs to check on me, she’d cleaned the twins up and transferred them to a large playpen filled with stuffed animals. The boy was trying to eat a teddy bear while the girl poked a turtle into his ear. Fiona picked up each in turn, giving prolonged hugs. I couldn’t tell if they appreciated it or not, because both tried to ram their toys into her eye. Maybe they were aiming for her mouth.

“What’s going to happen to them?” I asked.

“There’s a long line of people wanting…” Suddenly hoarse, she cleared her throat. “…wanting to adopt them, so they’ll be fine. Caucasian newborns and toddlers, they’re the adoption superstars. It’s the mixed-race children and older kids, teens like Kyle, who have trouble finding permanent homes. Given your own background, you ought to know that.”

Yes, I did. After entering the CPS system at the age of four, I’d dragged my garbage-bag suitcase through a dozen foster homes before I aged out of the system at eighteen. In a way, it was understandable. Not everyone felt comfortable caring for a parentless child who’d stabbed someone. Oh, well. Water and blood under the bridge.

“How ’bout some coffee?” Fiona asked, gesturing toward the kitchen. “I was up with the twins half the night, and if I don’t get a jolt of caffeine, I’m going to fall flat on my face.” Without waiting for my answer, she headed for the kitchen again.

The coffee tasted like mud, but I drank it anyway. Anything to keep her talking. Back in the living room, the twins gibberished happily to each other.

“What does Mr. Etheridge do?” I asked.

“Glen owns a print shop. Used to employ fourteen people. Down to eight. Economy, you know.” She looked around, at the damaged countertop and broken cabinet door. “We’re barely hanging on, so the money from fostering helps. Some, anyway. We wind up blowing it on the kids. Kyle and the twins aren’t the first we’ve fostered, they’re more like the…” She closed her eyes, counted silently, opened them again. “Right, right. They’re the sixteenth kids we’ve taken in. Need everything from underwear to shoes. Glasses. Hearing aids. Prosthetics. The state’s supposed to cover those expenses, but we add to it out of our own pocket. Our sofa’s so old Napoleon probably warmed his ass on it.”

I surveyed the kitchen again. Chips on the mahogany cabinets, a couple of drawers with broken pulls. Such bedlam wouldn’t be everyone’s cup of tea, especially in Scottsdale. Curious, I asked, “How does your husband feel about this?”

She laughed. “Glen wouldn’t notice if the refrigerator fell on his head unless it clipped one of the kids on the way down.”

“He likes kids, then?”

“Came from a big family. Eight brothers and sisters, he was the youngest. Me, I was one of those lonely-onlys, spent my childhood wanting a big family, so when Glen and I married, I got pregnant right off the bat. We had Drake and a year and a half later, Emilie came along. Happiest years of my life.” Her smile faded. “Both away at school now. Empty nester, that’s me.”